1,721,119 research outputs found
Lo specchio della trasparenza. La metafora come strumento concettuale tra scienza e cultura e il caso dei neuroni specchio
No full textThe author examines the visual-motor hypothesis of the ‘mirror neuron mechanisms’, and highlights how the term ‘mirror’ is metaphorically used in this field to account for an instantaneous and evident understanding of the action performed by the others. By contrast, by the analysis of the ‘culture of the mirror’– focused on the crossover between philosophy, literature and psychology – ‘understanding the other’ is shown as non-linear, discontinuous and controversial.
In the analysis of the ‘metaphor of the mirror’, as an ordinary and cultural object, examples of the process of understanding the other can be found outlined in their complexity, which seemed to have been eluded in the neuroscientific account
Variations on the theme of invariants: conceptual and mathematical dualities in physics vs biology
No full textIn a work of Bailly and Longo (2010), a comparison between the invariants in physics and some particular invariants in biology is presented through conceptual dualities that we highlight and further specify here in their main theoretical differences. Many controversies in relating physics and biology, for instance the question of a physicalist approach in biology, derive from strong and well-established epistemological and cultural guardrails. Our purpose is to identify at least some of the patterns or principles that may guide theory building in biology by physico-mathematical methodologies which simultaneously takes into account its autonomy. In other terms, we discuss biological extensions of physical theories that are based just on "conceptual practices" from physics and not necessarily on its laws and objects. To this purpose we stress the divergence between mathematical invariants and variables in physics with respect to biological variability (and evolvability), which is the leading idea of this work. We shall also stress the unstable instability of living entities, in reference to the notion of extended criticality, a notion which goes beyond the physical theory of point-wise critical transitions. Protensive activities will then be mentioned as proper to the "living state of matter" and extraneous to physical theoretizing
Crossovers between epigenesis and epigenetics. A multicenter approach to the history of epigenetics (1901-1975)
Full text linkThe origin of epigenetics has been traditionally traced back to Conrad Hal Waddington's foundational work in 1940s. The aim of the present paper is to reveal a hidden history of epigenetics, by means of a multicenter approach. Our analysis shows that genetics and embryology in early XX century--far from being non-communicating vessels--shared similar questions, as epitomized by Thomas Hunt Morgan's works. Such questions were rooted in the theory of epigenesis and set the scene for the development of epigenetics. Since the 1950s, the contribution of key scientists (Mary Lyon and Eduardo Scarano), as well as the discussions at the international conference of Gif-sur-Yvette (1957) paved the way for three fundamental shifts of focus: 1. From the whole embryo to the gene; 2. From the gene to the complex extranuclear processes of development; 3. From cytoplasmic inheritance to the epigenetics mechanisms
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
PROPRIETÀ, APPARTENENZA E PROCESSO DI OGGETTIVAZIONE DEI BENI. SUGGESTIONI A PARTIRE DALLA «INTRODUZIONE ALLA PROBLEMATICA DELLA PROPRIETÀ» DI PIETRO PERLINGIERI
No full textCOVID-19 in school settings: webinar aimed at both teachers and educators
No full textIn the COVID-19 era, we designed the webinar "COVID-19: instructions for use" with the aim of providing clear and actionable information to school staff about the characteristics of the disease, the preventive measures to adopt and the path for early detection and control of COVID-19 in primary schools of Modena province
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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