Jeff Garcia

This paper is concerned with the ancient discussion on privative negation (e.g., 'unjust') and infinite negation (e.g., 'not-just'). We formalize and compare the positions of Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias, of Proclus and Ammonius Hermiae, and of Porphyry (as presented by Boethius). Each of these formalizations takes the form of a logical system, which is intended to capture the main tenets of the position it formalizes. As an additional point of reference, we also discuss the system of contemporary, Boolean predicate logic. Our comparison focuses on the diagrams that each position gives rise to, and we show how our formalizations provide a unified and systematic perspective on these diagrams. In particular, we argue that the ancient discussion on privative and infinite negation can be understood through the lens of the so-called 'logic-sensitivity' of Aristotelian diagrams. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Background: Current interventions to enhance patient self-efficacy, a key mediator of health behavior, have limited primary care application. Objective: To explore the effectiveness of an office-based intervention for training resident physicians to use self-efficacy-enhancing interviewing techniques. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Participants: Family medicine and internal medicine resident physicians at an academic medical center. Measurements: Resident use of SEE IT was coded from audio recordings of the physician-patient portion of two standardized patient instructor training visits and two unannounced post-training SP visits, all involving common physical and mental health conditions and behavior change issues. One post-training SP visit involved health conditions similar to those experienced in training, while the other involved new conditions. Results: Experimental group residents demonstrated significantly greater use of SEE IT than controls, starting after the first training visit and sustained through the final post-training visit. The mean effect of the intervention was significant [adjusted incidence rate ratio for increased use of SEE IT∈=∈1.94 ]. There were no significant effects of resident gender, race/ethnicity, specialty, training level, or SP health conditions. Conclusions: SP instructors can teach resident physicians to apply SEE IT during SP office visits, and the effects extend to health conditions beyond those used for training. Future studies should explore the effects of the intervention on practicing physicians, physician use of SEE IT during actual patient visits, and its influence on patient health behaviors and outcomes.

Code-based cryptography is currently the second most promising post-quantum mathematical tool for quantum-resistant algorithms. Since in 2022 the first post-quantum standard Key Encapsulation Mechanism, Kyber (a latticed-based algorithm), was selected to be established as standard, and after that the National Institute of Standards and Technology post-quantum standardization call focused in code-based cryptosystems. Three of the four candidates that remain in the fourth round are code-based algorithms. In fact, the only non-code-based algorithm (SIKE) is now considered vulnerable. Due to this landscape, it is crucial to update previous results about these algorithms and their functioning. The Fujisaki-Okamoto transformation is a key part of the study of post-quantum algorithms and in this work we focus our analysis on Classic McEliece, BIKE and HQC proposals, and how they apply this transformation to obtain IND-CCA semantic security. Since after security the most important parameter in the evaluation of the algorithms is performance, we have compared the performance of the code-based algorithms of the NIST call considering the same architecture for all of them.

The main objective of this study is to analyse the relationship between peer school victimization and some risk and protection factors and to compare the differences by role in victimization with those of non-involved bystanders. Our participants were 1,264 secondary students (M = 14.41, SD = 1.43) who participated voluntarily, although an informed consent was requested. A logistic regression model (LR) was used in order to identify the victim’s potential risks and protective factors related to non-involved bystanders. A multiple LR and a forward stepwise LR (Wald) were used. The results showed the variables related to the victim profile were: individual features (to be male, to be at the first cycle of compulsory Secondary Education and a few challenging behaviours), school environments (i.e. school adjustment), family environment (parental styles like authoritarianism) and social environment (i.e. friends who occasionally show a positive attitude towards drug consumption and easy access to drugs, access to drugs perceived as easy, rejection by peers or lack of social acceptance and social maladjustment). The results of the study will allow tackling prevention and intervention actions in schools, families and social environment in order to improve coexistence at school and to assist the victimized students in the classroom.

This paper shows that, for a large range of parameters, the journal editor prefers to delegate the choice to review the manuscript to the biased referee. If the peer review process is informative and the review reports are costly for the reviewers, even biased referees with extreme scientific preferences may choose to become informed about the manuscript’s quality. On the contrary, if the review process is potentially informative but the reviewer reports are not costly for the referees, the biased reviewer has no incentive to become informed about the manuscript. Furthermore, if the reports are costly for referees but the peer review processes are not potentially informative, the biased reviewers will never become informed. In this paper, we also present a web resource that helps editors to experiment with the review process as a device for information transmission.