Modelli o metafore?

La conoscenza, scientifica o filosofica che sia, si avvale spesso di modelli per avvicinarsi a una più compiuta comprensione del reale. E i modelli, in quanto tali, debbono all’andamento spurio del linguaggio più di quanto siano disposti a concedere. E allora: in quanto strumenti di comprensione, vale a dire di semplificazione di una realtà per definizione più complessa, non rischiano di rimanere, sempre e comunque, poco più che delle metafore? È forse possibile dire dei modelli teorici sviluppati dalle scienze quello che Nietzsche pensava delle metafore adoperate dai “ricercatori di verità”

Psichiatria e filosofia. Allittero ergo sum. Psicolatrie e filosofemi_psicolatrati e filosofischi

In the story of culture, Philosophy and Psychiatry have intercepted each other more frequently to emphasize methodological distinctions than to integrate their respective analyses into a coherent picture. A story of disagreements, of categorical closures followed by sudden and not always sincere concordance in the name of the opposing concepts of Universality and Medicine, one would say. Here we ask whether it is still possible to rebuilt a conceptual framework, a new chapter in this relationship, to imagine new discursive possibilities

Implementation of the PaperRank and AuthorRank indices in the Scopus database

We implement the PaperRank and AuthorRank indices introduced in [Amodio & Brugnano, 2014] in the Scopus database, in order to highlight quantitative and qualitative information that the bare number of citations and/or the h-index of an author are unable to provide. In addition to this, the new indices can be cheaply updated in Scopus, since this has a cost comparable to that of updating the number of citations. Some examples are reported to provide insight in their potentialities, as well as possible extensions

A tutto neuros

Le nuove tecnologie legate al neuroimaging funzionale come il fMRI stanno conducendo a una vera e propria mappatura del cervello umano. I neuroscienzati ritengono di aver compreso (o di essere sulla buona strada per comprendere) le regole del comportamento umano e di poter leggere chiaramente le motivazioni inconsce che stanno dietro ogni nostra scelta

About Life (forget_about_it). Da lontano sembrano mosche

ABOUT LIFE (FORGET_ABOUT_IT). THEY LOOK LIKE FLIES FROM A DISTANCE Philosophy struggles to determinate and specify the concept of life in its various connotations and meanings. The dichotomy between Zoé and Bios helps in articulating the distinction between a notion of life conceived respectively as something simply lived, as an object, and life as something characterized by a duration, a biography, to which we may ascribe a specific and higher value. These conceptual couples underlie on the one hand the controversial and intensively discussed separation between organic and inorganic world and on the other hand the relationship between animal and human life. In this sense, the human being has to be considered not only as a biological organism, a mere member of a species, but also as an individual, part of a larger context. This seems to widen the horizons of philosophical research towards a deeper investigation on the boundaries between individual and collective, framed both in biological (organism and species) and in socio‐political and cultural dimension (individual and society). Although many reductionist attempts have been made in order to explain specificity of life exclusively through physical, chemical, i.e. non‐living language, hard sciences tend to accept the challenge of a philosophical and anti‐reductionist thought. Is it possible to address the peculiarity of life and the living without violating the legal limits of natural science? How could it be done

Su Vero e Falso in senso gravitazionale, ovvero di virtuosismi virtuali

ON TRUTH AND FAKE IN A GRAVITATIONAL SENSE, OR ABOUT VIRTUAL VIRTUOSITIES The discovery of the existence of gravitational waves not only represents the experimental proof of Einstein’s theory, but also an improvement of the world of Physics. In fact, gravitational waves are directly connected to the structure of the radiant objects, it is just like they gave us back a “snapshot”, thus making possible the construction of new maps of the Sky, that will no longer be based on visible light, Xrays, or infrared rays, but exactly on the particles forming the gravitational waves. So, the President of “Società Italiana di Relatività Generale e Fisica della Gravitazione (Sigrav)” can affirm: «We may discover new Worlds, identify wormholes and live the experience of deforming the order of past, present and future as well as the way we are used to perceiving them». Plurality of Worlds and deformation of Time: in a way, the Virtuality of physic Reality gets stronger. Hence, S&F_ aims to open a consideration about the state of the art of the “Virtual” – a notion that from Medieval ontology seems to set up itself as the litmus paper no longer and not only of “potential” Reality, but of Reality itself. The purpose of this Dossier will be investigating virtual Semantics in a multidisciplinary key, in order to verify if the concept of Virtual has effectively ceased to mean the Fake and, by consequence, to which extent it has become able to designate the Truth

Spectral solution of ODE-IVPs by using SHBVMs

Recently, Hamiltonian Boundary Value Methods (HBVMs), have been used as spectral methods in time for effectively solving multi-frequency, highly-oscillatory and/or stiffly-oscillatory problems. A complete analysis of their use in such a fashion has been also carried out, providing a theoretical framework explaining their effectiveness. We report here a few numerical examples showing their potentialities to provide a fully accurate solver for general ODE problems

Susceptibility of SARS-CoV2 infection in children

Coronavirus disease 2019 in children presents with distinct phenotype in comparison to adults. Overall, the pediatric infection with a generally milder clinical course of the acute infection compared to adults still faces several unknown aspects. Specifically, the presence of a wide range of inflammatory manifestations, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), myocarditis, and long COVID in the period after infection suggests a particular susceptibility of some children upon severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Albeit peculiar complications such as long covid are less frequent in children compared to adults, research on the relationship between inflammatory syndromes and SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly evolving. Conclusions: new studies and findings continue to emerge, providing further insights into the underlying mechanisms and potential therapeutic strategies. In the present work, we revised current knowledge of the main factors accounting for such variability upon SARS-CoV-2 infection over the pediatric age group.What is Known:& BULL; COVID19 in children overall showed a milder course compared to adults during the acute phase of the infection.& BULL; Children showed to be susceptible to a wide range of post infectious complications including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), myocarditis, neuroinflammation, and long COVID.What is New:& BULL; Mechanisms underlying susceptibility to a severe course of the infection were recently shown to pertain to the host.& BULL; A specific combination of HLA was recently shown to be associated to higher susceptibility to MIS-C in children