Kim jestem? Kim się staję? Od praktyki do teorii

W artykule w zakresie metody teologiczno-fundamentalnej przedstawione zostały następujące główne zagadnienia. 1. Konspekt edukacyjno-psychologicznych warsztatów, 2. Uzasadnienie metodyczne i metodologiczne przyjętej konstrukcji. W konspekcie szczegółowo opisane zostały kolejne kroki, które powinien podjąć prowadzący z pewnymi sugestiami ku czemu dane działania prowadzą. Szerzej zostały podane wnioski, do których prowadzący powinien podprowadzić uczestników warsztatów w obszarze teologii fundamentalnej – jako pomoc w poszukiwaniach celu, całości i sensu – wykorzystano elementy psychologii, filozofii, teologii duchowości. Procedura ćwiczeń przeprowadza uczestnika od pytań o samego siebie do pytań o siebie poprzez relacje z drugim, tak by uświadomić mu możliwość kontaktu z Drugim. W dalszej części przedstawienia opisano próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie „Co było potrzebne, od strony metody, by ten konspekt mógł powstać?” Koniecznym było skonstruowanie swoistej metafory i opracowano narrację, które razem stały się hipotezą wyjaśniającą obejmującą szerokie spektrum badanych relacji, pomiędzy konspektem i procesem jego powstawania a jego twórcą, procesem przeprowadzonych warsztatów a czytelnikiem, prowadzącym warsztaty a uczestnikiem. Na zakończenie przedstawiono ewaluację przeprowadzonych warsztatów.

Education in occupational health psychology: Where have we been, where are we now and where are we going?

At the first full conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (Lund, 1999), the decision was ratified to organise activities around three fora. These together represented the pillars on which the European Academy had been founded that same year: education, research and professional practice. Each forum was convened by a chair person and a small group of full members; it was agreed that a forum meeting would take place at each full conference and working groups would be established to move developments forward between conferences. The forum system has proven an effective means by which to channel the energies of individual members, and the institutions that they represent, towards advancements in all three areas of activity in occupational health psychology (OHP) in Europe. During the meeting of the education forum at the third full European Academy conference (Barcelona, 2001), the proposal was made for the establishment of a working party that would be tasked with the production of a strategy document on The Promotion of Education in Occupational Health Psychology in Europe. The proposal was ratified at the subsequent annual business meeting held during the same conference. The draft outline of the strategy document was published for consultation in the European Academy’s e-newsletter (Vol. 3.1, 2002) and the final document presented to the meeting of the education forum at the fourth full conference (Vienna, 2002). The strategy document constituted a seminal piece of literature in so far as it provided a foundation and structure capable of guiding pan-European developments in education in OHP – developments that would ensure the sustained growth of the discipline and assure it of a long-standing embedded place in both the scholarly and professional domains. To these ends, the strategy document presented six objectives as important for the sustained expansion and the promotion of education in the discipline in Europe. Namely, the development of: [1] A core syllabus for education in occupational health psychology [2] A mechanism for identifying, recognising and listing undergraduate and postgraduate modules and courses (programmes) in occupational health psychology [3] Structures to support the extension of the current provision of education in occupational health psychology [4] Ways of enhancing convergence of the current provision of education in occupational health psychology [5] Ways of encouraging regional cooperation between education providers across the regions of Europe [6] Ways of ensuring consistency with North American developments in education and promoting world wide co-operation in education Five years has elapsed since the presentation of these laudable objectives to the meeting of the education forum in Vienna in December 2002. In that time OHP has undergone considerable growth, particularly in Europe and North America. Expansion has been reflected in the evolution of existing, and emergence of new, representative bodies for the discipline on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. As such, it might be considered timely to pause to reflect on what has been achieved in respect of each of the objectives set out in the strategy document. The current chapter examines progress on the six objectives and considers what remains to be done. This exercise is entered into not merely in order to congratulate achievements in some areas and lament slow progress in others. Rather, on the one hand it serves to highlight areas where real progress has been made with a view to the presentation of these areas as ripe for further capitalisation. On the other hand it serves to direct the attention of stakeholders (all those with a vested interest in OHP) to those key parts of the jigsaw puzzle that is the development of a self-sustaining pan-European education framework which remain to be satisfactorily addressed.

Pratiques parentales coercitives, anxiété et traitement de la peur chez les jeunes en bonne santé: corrélats neuronaux, biologiques, physiologiques et comportementaux

L’adversité tôt dans la vie est associée au développement de symptômes anxieux pouvant perdurer jusqu’à l’âge adulte (Casey et el, 2010, Pine 2003). Des études chez l’adulte suggèrent que ces liens pourraient être associés à des altérations du « circuit de la peur » qui inclut l’amygdale, l’hippocampe antérieur, l’insula et le cortex préfrontal (Marek, 2013, Etkin & Wager, 2007). Ceci a cependant peu été étudié chez les jeunes. L’objectif principal de cette thèse était de définir les corrélats comportementaux, physiologiques, biologiques et neuronaux du traitement de la peur chez les jeunes en bonne santé, en lien ou non avec un historique d’adversité -- sous la forme de pratiques parentales coercitives -- et d’anxiété. D’abord, puisque nous nous intéressions aux pratiques parentales coercitives chroniques, nous avons examiné leur évolution et facteurs de risque, en nous concentrant sur la période de 17 à 72 mois. Un total de 2045 dyades mère-enfant ont été incluses dans une analyse de courbe de croissance latente. Nous avons démontré que la coercition maternelle suit une évolution non linéaire durant cette période et atteint un sommet à 42 mois. Les facteurs de risque relatifs à l’enfant et à la mère, mesurés à 17 mois, permettent de prédire les niveaux de coercition à 42 mois. Finalement, les prédicteurs relatifs à l’enfant et l’efficacité maternelle prédisent l’évolution des pratiques parentales coercitives entre 17 et 72 mois. Ensuite, afin de définir une méthodologie solide pour étudier le traitement de la peur chez des jeunes, nous avons adapté une tâche développée par Lau et ses collaborateurs (2008), employant des visages féminins comme stimuli. Le sexe des participants et des visages employés comme stimuli pouvant potentiellement moduler le traitement de la peur (Kret & de Gelder, 2012; McClure, 2000), nous avons étudié leurs influences respectives sur les réponses électrodermales et subjectives de peur durant le conditionnement et l’extinction de la peur chez 117 jeunes. Nous avons démontré que les stimuli féminins suscitent des réponses davantage comparables entre les garçons et les filles que les stimuli masculins. De plus, nous avons observé un effet du « même sexe », caractérisé par un conditionnement différentiel uniquement face aux stimuli du même sexe que le participant. Finalement, nous avons exploré les différences individuelles et conjointes associées aux différents niveaux de pratiques parentales coercitives et d’anxiété en termes de réponses de peur et d’activité cérébrale, durant le conditionnement et l’extinction de la peur chez 84 jeunes. Nous avons démontré que la coercition est spécifiquement associée au fonctionnement du lobe temporal médian et aux interactions entre l’amygdale et l’insula, durant le conditionnement. Durant l’extinction, les niveaux d’anxiété étaient associés à des différences spécifiques d’activation du gyrus cingulaire antérieur (GCA) dorsal. Enfin, les pratiques parentales coercitives et l’anxiété interagissent et viennent moduler la connectivité fonctionnelle amygdale - GCA rostral, l’activation d’une sous-région du GCA dorsal et les réponses subjectives de peur. Ces résultats ajoutent une pièce au casse-tête des neurosciences développementales et fournissent des pistes intéressantes pour le développement d’interventions futures.

Programación de videojuegos de puzzles en 2D usando Unity: tutorial y ejemplo práctico del juego.

Unity3d es un motor gráfico para la implementación de videojuegos creado por Unity3d Technologies que tiene el honor de ser una de las principales herramientas que propició el auge de los estudios independientes. Pese a estar enfocado al desarrollo de videojuegos en 3D, los desarrolladores lograban crear contenido en 2D a base de manipulaciones como la cámara y de utilizar herramientas no nativas. Afortunadamente, a partir de la versión 4.3 Unity3d integra herramientas nativas que facilitan esta tarea. Este proyecto consiste en la creación de un tutorial sobre la implementación de un videojuego del género puzles en 2D y enfocado a plataformas móviles, empleando para ello Unity3d y concretamente las nuevas herramientas nativas para 2D. La implementación de un videojuego es una tarea muy complicada y extensa, es por ello que en el tutorial se va a tratar la fase de diseño del videojuego y a nivel de implementación centrarse en dichas herramientas para el 2D, mostrando al final una versión jugable del videojuego implementado. Por otra parte, al ser numerosas las herramientas, es imposible tratar cada una de las herramientas aunque se intentará abarcar lo máximo posible y mencionar las que no se incluyan dentro de la implementación del videojuego. El resultado generado de este proyecto puede constituir una referencia para otras personas interesadas en aprender cómo usar Unity3d para programar videojuegos en 2D, lo cual les allanará seguramente el camino y les suavizará la curva de aprendizaje.

Provable Security for Cryptocurrencies

The past several years have seen the surprising and rapid rise of Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies.” These are decentralized peer-to-peer networks that allow users to transmit money, tocompose financial instruments, and to enforce contracts between mutually distrusting peers, andthat show great promise as a foundation for financial infrastructure that is more robust, efficientand equitable than ours today. However, it is difficult to reason about the security of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is a complex system, comprising many intricate and subtly-interacting protocol layers. At each layer it features design innovations that (prior to our work) have not undergone any rigorous analysis. Compounding the challenge, Bitcoin is but one of hundreds of competing cryptocurrencies in an ecosystem that is constantly evolving. The goal of this thesis is to formally reason about the security of cryptocurrencies, reining in their complexity, and providing well-defined and justified statements of their guarantees. We provide a formal specification and construction for each layer of an abstract cryptocurrency protocol, and prove that our constructions satisfy their specifications. The contributions of this thesis are centered around two new abstractions: “scratch-off puzzles,” and the “blockchain functionality” model. Scratch-off puzzles are a generalization of the Bitcoin “mining” algorithm, its most iconic and novel design feature. We show how to provide secure upgrades to a cryptocurrency by instantiating the protocol with alternative puzzle schemes. We construct secure puzzles that address important and well-known challenges facing Bitcoin today, including wasted energy and dangerous coalitions. The blockchain functionality is a general-purpose model of a cryptocurrency rooted in the “Universal Composability” cryptography theory. We use this model to express a wide range of applications, including transparent “smart contracts” (like those featured in Bitcoin and Ethereum), and also privacy-preserving applications like sealed-bid auctions. We also construct a new protocol compiler, called Hawk, which translates user-provided specifications into privacy-preserving protocols based on zero-knowledge proofs.

El contrato de alimentos a favor de tercero: particularidades de su configuración a la luz del Derecho Europeo de Contratos

La sociedad actual se enfrenta con problemas hasta ahora desconocidos que necesitan una rápida y efectiva solución. El progresivo aumento de la esperanza de vida ha dado lugar a que hoy en día nos encontremos con sociedades envejecidas y necesitadas de protección. Se habla incluso de la «cuarta edad» y de la aparición de un nuevo fenómeno demográfico denominado «envejecimiento del envejecimiento», esto es, el aumento de la población con edad superior a ochenta años. A demás, aunque la vejez no implica necesariamente enfermedad, la tasa de discapacidad crece con la edad. A lo que se debe añadir que muchas de estas personas tienen hijos discapacitados que, con toda probabilidad y debido a los avances médicos, sobrevivirán a sus ancianos padres y necesitarán medios materiales y/o personales para continuar con sus vidas. Para paliar estos problemas existe, entre otras medidas, el denominado contrato de alimentos; y especialmente útil para alcanzar este cometido resulta su configuración a favor de terceras personas. Pero su régimen jurídico cuando se celebra para beneficiar a una persona que no es parte contractual presenta importantes peculiaridades derivadas de la especial relación generada entre alimentista y alimentante. Estas particularidades serán objeto de análisis en este trabajo.

THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

During the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.

Crises and Crisis Generations: International Conflict and Military Participation in Politics

Why do states facing high levels of international threat sometimes have militaries that are heavily involved in politics and at other times relatively apolitical, professional militaries? I argue that the answer to this puzzle lies in a state's history of 'acute' international crises rather than its 'chronic' threat environment. Major international crises lead to professionalization and de-politicization of militaries in both the short- and long-term. International crises underscore the need for the military to defend the state and highlight military deficiencies in this regard. Accordingly, major international crises lead to military professionalization and withdrawal from politics in order to increase military effectiveness. This effect persists years, and decades, later due to generational shifts in the officer corps. As the "Crisis Generation" of officers become generals, they bring with them a preference for professionalization and de-politicization. They guide the military towards abstention from politics. I test this theory using a new global dataset on military officers in national governing bodies from 1964-2008 and find strong support for the theory. Major international crises lead to two waves of military withdrawal from government, years apart. Further statistical analysis finds that this effect is most strongly felt in the non-security areas of governing, while in some cases, international crises may lead to militaries increasing their involvement in security policy-making. Further, international crises that end poorly for a state — i.e., defeats or stalemates — are found to drive more rapid waves of military withdrawal from government. The statistical analysis is supported by a case illustration of civil-military relations in the People's Republic of China, which demonstrates that the crisis of the Korean War (1950-53) led to two waves of military professionalization and de-politicization, decades apart. The first occurred immediately after the war. The second wave, occurring in the 1980s, involved wholesale military withdrawal from governing bodies, which was made possible by the ascent of the "Crisis Generation" of officers in the military, who had served as junior officers in the Korean War, decades prior.

A perfect day for zebrafish : neuromodulation of sleep in a diurnal vertebrate

Every day, we shift among various states of sleep and arousal to meet the many demands of our bodies and environment. A central puzzle in neurobiology is how the brain controls these behavioral states, which are essential to an animal's well-being and survival. Mammalian models have predominated sleep and arousal research, although in the past decade, invertebrate models have made significant contributions to our understanding of the genetic underpinnings of behavioral states. More recently, the zebrafish (Danio rerio), a diurnal vertebrate, has emerged as a promising model system for sleep and arousal research.

In this thesis, I describe two studies on sleep/arousal pathways that I conducted using zebrafish, and I discuss how the findings can be combined in future projects to advance our understanding of vertebrate sleep/arousal pathways. In the first study, I discovered a neuropeptide that regulates zebrafish sleep and arousal as a result of a large-scale effort to identify molecules that regulate behavioral states. Taking advantage of facile zebrafish genetics, I constructed mutants for the three known receptors of this peptide and identified the one receptor that exclusively mediates the observed behavioral effects. I further show that the peptide exerts its behavioral effects independently of signaling at a key module of a neuroendocrine signaling pathway. This finding contradicts the hypothesis put forth in mammalian systems that the peptide acts through the classical neuroendocrine pathway; our data further generate new testable hypotheses for determining the central nervous system or alternative neuroendocrine pathways involved.

Second, I will present the development of a chemigenetic method to non-invasively manipulate neurons in the behaving zebrafish. I validated this technique by expressing and inducing the chemigenetic tool in a restricted population of sleep-regulating neurons in the zebrafish. As predicted by established models of this vertebrate sleep regulator, chemigenetic activation of these neurons induced hyperactivity, whereas chemigenetic ablation of these neurons induced increased sleep behavior. Given that light is a potent modulator of behavior in zebrafish, our proof-of-principle data provide a springboard for future studies of sleep/arousal and other light-dependent behaviors to interrogate genetically-defined populations of neurons independently of optogenetic tools.

Attitudes towards risk in financial decision making

Doutoramento em Gestão

Social Trust and Demand for Redistribution. Is There a Crowding out Effect?

The debate about the relationship between social capital the welfare state has produced contradictory results for a long time. The crowding out hypothesis states that the growth of the welfare state would erode social capital, as the action of the state leave no room for non-regulated spontaneous cooperation. In sharp contrast, the crowding in hypothesis states that there is virtuous circle between the size of the welfare state and the stock of social capital in a particular country, since generous welfare states (specially those relying on universalistic programs) will produce a particular sense of fairness and solidarity toward fellow citizens. Yet, the empirical evidence testing the explanatory power of these theories is mostly inconclusive. To further our knowledge of this puzzle, in this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between social trust and preferences for redistribution at the individual level in a sample of European countries belonging to different welfare state regimes.

Incorporation of the Health Care System in the West

A reflection is made, from an interpretative perspective, on the historical evolution of health care in the West. It starts from the moment that this became a way to intervene the sick and an instrument for healing diseases, focusing on original documents and written sources which account for results of historical research, which range from XV century until today. To do this, it tries to understand the health care as an ideographic body of knowledge consisting of five pieces of a puzzle composed by: the state policy of hospitals accumulation implemented in Spain, the accumulation of medical practices in what is currently Germany, the hospital wards in England, the nosological rationality in France, and the US sanitizing machine; all these movements as producers of closely linked health care developments, that are nothing more than collective actions regulated by social norms around health.

Translating osteoporosis prevention guidelines: a case study of participatory action and the development of an oversized jigsaw

OBJECTIVE: In Australia, the social gradient of chronic disease has never been as prominent as in current times, and the uptake of preventive health messages appears to be lower in discrete population groups. In efforts to re-frame health promotion from addressing behavior change to empowerment, we engaged community groups in disadvantaged neighborhoods to translate published preventive guidelines into easy-to-understand messages for the general population. METHOD: Our research team established partnerships with older aged community groups located in disadvantaged neighborhoods, determined by cross-referencing addresses with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to translate guidelines regarding osteoporosis prevention. RESULTS: We developed an oversized jigsaw puzzle that we used to translate recommended osteoporosis prevention guidelines. DISCUSSION: Successful participatory partnerships between researchers, health promotion professionals, and community groups in disadvantaged neighborhoods build capacity in researchers to undertake future participatory processes; they also make the best use of expert knowledge held by specific communities.

Implicit Eyewitness Memory

After a crime has occurred, one of the most pressing objectives for investigators is to identify and interview any eyewitness that can provide information about the crime. Depending on his or her training, the investigative interviewer will use (to varying degrees) mostly yes/no questions, some cued and multiple-choice questions, with few open-ended questions. When the witness cannot generate any more details about the crime, one assumes the eyewitness’ memory for the critical event has been exhausted. However, given what we know about memory, is this a safe assumption? In line with the extant literature on human cognition, if one assumes (a) an eyewitness has more available memories of the crime than he or she has accessible and (b) only explicit probes have been used to elicit information, then one can argue this eyewitness may still be able to provide additional information via implicit memory tests. In accordance with these notions, the present study had two goals: demonstrate that (1) eyewitnesses can reveal memory implicitly for a detail-rich event and (2) particularly for brief crimes, eyewitnesses can reveal memory for event details implicitly that were inaccessible when probed for explicitly. Undergraduates (N = 227) participated in a psychological experiment in exchange for research credit. Participants were presented with one of three stimulus videos (brief crime vs. long crime vs. irrelevant video). Then, participants either completed a series of implicit memory tasks or worked on a puzzle for 5 minutes. Lastly, participants were interviewed explicitly about the previous video via free recall and recognition tasks. Findings indicated that participants who viewed the brief crime provided significantly more crime-related details implicitly than those who viewed the long crime. The data also showed participants who viewed the long crime provided marginally more accurate details during free recall than participants who viewed the brief crime. Furthermore, participants who completed the implicit memory tasks provided significantly less accurate information during the explicit interview than participants who were not given implicit memory tasks. This study was the first to investigate implicit memory for eyewitnesses of a crime. To determine its applied value, additional empirical work is required.

Foreign-born CEOs, Country-Specific Skills, Selection, and Strategic Consequences

In this dissertation, I first suggest an extension of the managerial rents model and more specifically the managerial skills typology that it offers. Building on research in international business, I propose adding country-specific skills (CSS) to this typology in addition to firm-specific, industry-specific, and generic skills. I define CSS as managers’ abilities that are applicable and specific to a particular national institutional context. Such skills are distinct from the other three types identified and are likely to influence managers’ performance and the performance of their firms. So if CSS are distinct skills, what are the implications for strategy and international business research? In an attempt to respond to this question, I conduct two empirical essays in which I examine the implications of this refinement of the typology of managerial skills for CEO selection and firms’ mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy. In the first empirical essay, I puzzle at the fact that although CSS constitute a barrier to high-level executive mobility across countries, there have been a growing number of foreign-born CEOs being appointed across the globe. Why are these individuals being selected for the post of CEO? Using information on the appointment of foreign-born and national CEOs from 2005 to 2010 among global 500 companies, I show that internationalization pressures help explain their selection and that two types of firms are likely to appoint foreign leaders: highly internationalized firms and firms that are likely to internationalize. In the second empirical essay, I examine the strategic implications of country-specific skills. Employing the same sample as the one used in the first empirical essay, I demonstrate that given that their mindset is likely to be less focused on firms’ home market, foreign-born CEOs may be prone to institute more changes in firms’ cross-border M&A strategy than their domestic counterparts. I also theorize on the moderating influence of CEOs’ insiderness.