Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the initiatives providing legal information during the COVID-19 emergency, focusing on the fundamental role of digital libraries in creating, managing and sharing services to support and ensure access to legal information in times of emergency.

To have an overall view of the legal information on COVID-19 available on digital libraries during the outbreak, a desk-research on the Web was conducted looking for both public and private sources of information. The selection of the sources was based on the type of information and services offered, the quality of information structuring, together with the data updating and the target users.

The survey provided a huge and heterogeneous amount of legal information resources on COVID-19. The analysis on the source of information selected showed different kinds of approaches adopted by digital libraries in relation to types of information provided, information categorization, target audiences, purposes and services offered.

Two limitations have been identified: lack of previous studies in the domain and size of the samples cited. The conducted research should be seen as the “building block” upon which further research should be broadened and deepened. Limited samples are cited because of a rational choice; nevertheless, future research should be conducted also addressing a quantitative choice on identifying sources.

The research proposes to give users practical guidance, namely, a first set of authoritative sources which gives legal information on COVID-19.

This review paper could be seen as a first study on the issues related to accessing and sharing legal data at the time of the COVID-19; the research could be a starting point for devising a new form of communication of legal information in times of crisis.

Il problema del sottosviluppo di una larga parte del mondo è sorto nel dopoguerra allorchè Ie principali nazioni europee si stavano risollevando dai gravi danni economici subiti. Allo stesso tempo si ebbe nella dottrina economica una serie di studi dedicati allo sviluppo di «lungo periodo». Questa nuova ottica scaturiva anche dagli insegnamenti keynesiani sui periodi brevi. Risulta questo un non ultimo merito del grande economista inglese che, prospeltando la soluzione della prima questione, aveva permesso anche da un punto di vista teorico l'approccio al nuovo problema.

In the context of American institutions of higher education, the practical implementation of strategies associated with the development of L3+ or multilingual education often remain difficult to implement. Furthermore, students who reach the university level with pre-acquired bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural skills may perceive their competencies as trivialized and undervalued due to the lack of linguistically relevant opportunities available to them.

By contrast, the recent implementation of a multilingual course titled “Intercomprehension of the Romance languages: a pathway to Multilingualism,” at California State University, Long Beach (2014–2018) and St. Lawrence University (2018) offers bi/multilingual students the tools to develop skills geared toward language learning in a continuous effort to appraise, nurture, and upraise the ever-growing linguistic diversity present among students and faculty members in universities across the United States. This course and its iterations specifically benefit students’ pre-existing bi/multilingual competencies while offering them opportunities to reinforce and expand their multilingual repertoire. Students learn how to read in 5+ Romance languages, reinforce their knowledge of English, as well as of their Romance language, all while strengthening their metalinguistic awareness by learning how to navigate a larger repertoire of either foreign or unknown related languages.

In addition to discussing the pedagogical and theoretical framework of the course, the authors propose to explore how this innovative approach favors the development of multilingualism among students in North-American universities by examining course demographic data collected from several of these courses and key results relating certain aspects of students’ initial contact with new languages through intercomprehension.

The complex interaction between the gut flora and central nervous systems made probiotics one promising natural candidate for the management and treatment of depression. Hence, the purpose of this paper was to assess the knowledge, patterns of consumption and attitudes of patients with depression toward probiotics.

In this cross-sectional study, and through simple random sampling, 200 adults who were diagnosed with various depressive symptoms were selected. A link to a self-reported survey was sent to them with the aim of collecting sociodemographic data, assessing participants’ attitudes and knowledge toward probiotic consumption, and measuring their depression status via the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).

A total of 164 participants (82%) provided usable responses. Approximately 55% of participants had moderate depression (PHQ-9). Participants (22.6%) tend to comply with their psychiatrists’ advice regarding probiotics more than other health specialists’ advice (p = 0.04). Only 59 (36%) had knowledge about probiotics and believed that probiotics should be consumed regularly and not only after an antibiotic course. However, many tended to follow marketing tricks and were willing to buy the most expensive and advertised probiotic products. Participants showed some differences in their attitude and knowledge toward probiotics according to symptoms severity; however, the differences were insignificant (p = 0.88).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is believed to be the first investigation assessing the probiotics’ knowledge, patterns of consumption and attitude of patients with various depression symptoms in Bahrain. The findings of this study may help improve the well-being of depressive patients by addressing the probiotic knowledge gap among them, expand the market of probiotics and enrich nutritional psychiatry literature.

This paper is concerned with the retrospective perceptions of alumni towards the general provision of entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions (HEIs). Whilst many HEIs provide some form of enterprise training for their student population, relatively few have considered extending this provision to their alumni community. In addition to exploring retrospective perceptions, the research sought to ascertain the current level of entrepreneurial behaviour and the future entrepreneurial ambitions of alumni, and attempted to determine the demand for post‐qualification entrepreneurship training among HEI alumni. The results are encouraging, in that they demonstrate a keen interest amongst alumni in entrepreneurial activities. The main constraints to setting up in business were perceived to be the generation of a viable idea and the lack of both finance and experience. Respondents believed that HEIs should provide a more practical grounding for graduates, specifically citing financial management and business communications skills as key elements missing from the undergraduate curriculum. There was a consensus that HEIs have an important role to play in providing alumni with both formal post‐qualification training and social support networks to encourage entrepreneurial activity.

Nel riprendere come Libero Docente le mie lezioni presso la Facoltà di Giurisprudenza dopo un lungo intervallo di anni in cui il Corso è stato impartito per Incarico, cioè a titolo ufficiale, prima nella facoltà di Scienze Politiche e poi in quella di Economia e Commercie, ritengo opportuno accennare alle vicende di questo insegnamento che ha segnato in certo modo il punto di partenza ed insieme il banco di prova del primo tentativo di sistematica scientifica della trattazione del turismo dal punto di vista economico e statistico. E mancherei ad un preciso dovere e ad un impulso spontaneo del mio animo se in questa occasione non rivolgessi un memore e devoto pensiero al mio grande ed indimenticabile maestro, Augusto Graziani, che seppe inculcarmi la passione per gli studi di economia politica: debbo anzi a lui anche lo specifico orientamento verso l'indagine turistica, perchè il primo tema che egli mi propose nelle esercitazioni di seminario degli Istituti Giuridici dell'Università di Napoli (oh magnifica palestra per noi giovanissimi studenti appena usciti dal Liceo!) fu quello della bilancia dei pagamenti internazionali con particolare riguardo alle cosidette partite «invisibili».

The visualisation and the level of abstraction of complicated organic relations within an urban setting still remains a major problem with regard to urban discipline. This paper captures the dialectic relation within the urban network, in which the interaction between the spatial process of becoming and the temporal state of being is fundamental. ‘Envelopment’ is developed from and based upon Giddens’ structuration theory. It enables visualisation of ‘relations’ and, as problem-setting matrices, allows the fundamentals of the urban network to be itemised within forms of relationships: modalities. Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of deterriorialisation is also adopted into urban studies to support further investigations in respect of decoding and Translating ‘modalities’ as fundamentals in achieving continuous reproduction of Envelopment-as a topological space. Generally, topological space is defined in terms of processes and relations, Vocabularies are accepted as essences of urban dialog embodied in the system, needs to be visualised and meanings to be assigned according to their role and position in the system. In envelopment, system will be considered as macro-scale, multi-scalar topology, where all other modes of relations (amongst people, space and time) can be elaborated. The language game of Wittgenstein, as a metaphoric tool allows us to explore and group the modes of relations as vocabularies; “set of modalities”, enabling dialog upon their role and position in the system. Although the approach of Envelopment can be used as a tool, in enabling the representation of the equilibrium of state and process characteristics of system; it also helps as a tool in enabling the representation of macroscopic space-time scale; enabling representation of urban development and enabling representation of change in urban narrative. The various implementation of the Envelopment will be represented as a final discussion of the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of sensory attributes of milk chocolate on consumers’ emotions and their hedonic ratings using three commercial brands of milk chocolate.

Quantitative descriptive analysis by a trained panel (n=8) was performed to obtain the sensory evaluation of the samples. A group of 127 consumers evaluated the samples to indicate their hedonic ratings (nine-point hedonic scale) and emotions (EsSense Profile®).

The sensory profiles for the three chocolate types showed clear differences. EsSense Profile® methodology revealed that each type of chocolate had a distinct emotional profile. The premium brand was associated with the highest number of positive emotions, whereas the traditional brand was associated with most of the negative emotions (“bored”, “disgusted” and “worried”). The drivers of liking were mainly positive and unclassified emotions. Also, gender differences in emotional profiling were found.

This study illustrates that sensory and emotional measurements can contribute to a better understanding of consumers’ hedonic liking. Moreover, gender differences found in emotional profiling should raise awareness that gender may lead to different emotional profiling. These gender differences are of interest to food companies, for instance, for food product development or marketing purposes.

This study further contributes to the growing literature on emotions. By combining sensory evaluation by a trained panel and emotional profiling by consumers, this paper explores how combining these measurements can contribute to a better understanding of the drivers of liking for milk chocolate.

Hikikomori is a multidimensional condition, characterized by voluntarily social withdrawal, impacting the relational dimension of life. The current study aims to examine secondary school teachers' beliefs, knowledge and needs on hikikomori and students' social withdrawal.

A qualitative method consisting of a semi-structured interview is adopted with 22 Italian secondary school teachers. The interview questions are focused on the beliefs, the profile, the conditions and the role of the school for adolescents socially retired.

Data are analysed using content analysis based on the grounded theory framework. Forty-nine codes emerged from the inductive analysis, which were sorted into the following categories: (1) Characteristics of hikikomori and social withdrawal; (2) Origin, causes and consequences; (3) Sources of information; (4) Socio-relational modalities; (5) Teachers' needs and role of the school. Teachers are aware of the educational issues and risks related to hikikomori and claim for more institutional support. Teachers reconsider the way of working in class for preventing the risk of self-isolation, supporting the development of social and emotional skills, and encouraging collaboration and positive exchanges among students. Participants mention a personalized student-centred method where families and external agencies support the school system.

Although several clinical and psychological interventions have been developed for treating the hikikomori’s self-isolation and concomitant mental disorders, few plans have been implemented for reducing the risk of adolescents' social withdrawal. Preventing hikikomori is crucial as well as to investigate the role and the needs of school teachers, and the current study has tried to explore these.