Who says aging is lonely? A phenomenology of Filipino older adults’ experiences of happiness when joining international group tours

Across the literature, travelling has been viewed as a recurring activity for older adults and is driven by a multitude of purposes and reasons. Previous studies have probed touristic activities of older adults however, little is known about their emotional experiences specifically their sense of happiness when joining international group tours, hence this phenomenological study. A qualitative approach was utilized to gather data from a group of 15 purposively selected participants aged 60 years and above. A two-part instrument consisting of a robotfoto and a semi-structured interview was used in this study. Through vertical and horizontal analyses of the field text, this study afforded the development of The Spiraling Model of Aging Filipino Tourists’ Happiness. This model describes aging tourists’ happiness while travelling as a product of Shared Moments, Shared Culture, Shared Memories, and Shared Transcendence. Summarily, findings of this study may provide significant insights to service providers such as hotels, airlines and travel agencies across the globe in developing innovative marketing strategies that cater to this promising age group. Empirically, this study may stimulate further exploration in the field of Cognitive Psychology aimed at adding large-scale data regarding the study of emotions specifically older adults’ happiness when joining international group tours.     

Discrimination of Biomechanically Possible and Impossible Hand Movements at Birth

The development of human body perception has long been investigated, but little is known about its early origins. This study focused on how a body part highly relevant to the human species, namely the hand, is perceived a few days after birth. Using a preferential‐looking paradigm, 24‐ to 48‐hr‐old newborns watched biomechanically possible and impossible dynamic hand gestures (Experiment 1, N = 15) and static hand postures (Experiment 2, N = 15). In Experiment 1, newborns looked longer at the impossible, compared to the possible, hand movement, whereas in Experiment 2 no visual preference emerged. These findings suggest that early in life the representation of the human body may be shaped by sensory‐motor experience.     

An application of the Udwadia-Kalaba dynamic formulation to flexible multibody systems

For the transient response analysis of a flexible slider-crank mechanism, the coordinate partitioning scheme and the Udwadia-Kalaba formulation are herein compared. The flexibility of the coupler has been modelled by means of a single Timoshenko beam element. The present analytical treatment can be viewed as an extension of the model discussed by Shabana in his textbook.     

Numerical model application for the restoration of the Racconigi Royal Park (CN, Italy)

After years of neglect and an almost complete lack of maintenance, the Racconigi Royal Park was in an inevitable and widespread state of decay. This decay also involved the waterways that were designed in the nineteenth-century by Xavier Kurten (1811–1840). The seasonal lack of water and the agricultural needs of the farms around the Park made it necessary, during the planning stage of the restoration project, to consider the practicability and the effectiveness of some measures that were conceived to optimize the operation of the restored waterways, without altering the historical structure of the system. The realization of a hydraulic numerical model of the system, which is briefly illustrated in the first part of this case study, resulted to be the most suitable tool to study different possible solutions of the problem. The model simulations in fact helped the restorers put into effect the right remedies to favour the correct flow of the water, to make the whole historical system more efficient and to make its future maintenance easier.     

Does Graduating from a Private University Make a Difference? Evidence from Italy

The main aim of this article is to explore similarities and differences in the institutional features of private and state universities in the Italian higher education system and to assess whether graduating from a private university conveys advantages in the labour market. In the first part we use administrative data to describe the main institutional features of the two types of university, looking at organisational aspects, enrolments and graduates, financial resources, tuition fees, and teachers' characteristics. In the second part we develop a theoretical framework looking at sociological and economic theories of education and labour market, from which we derive some hypotheses on the expected results. In the last part, we apply a propensity score matching analysis on data from the Italian University Graduates Survey conducted in 2007 by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, which provides information on more than 40,000 graduates who obtained their degree in 2004. The main results indicate that graduates from private universities are younger, have a higher socio-economic background and a slightly better previous school career than those from state universities. Contrary to a widespread belief, once accounted for self-selection into the type of university using a wide range of variables, graduating from a private university has neither a significant nor a substantial effect on employment probability, hourly wage and occupational level three years after graduation.     

The “Medico-Pedagogical Institutes” and the failure of the collaboration between psychiatry and pedagogy (1889–1978)

ABSTRACT

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a number of Italian psychiatrists were convinced that medicine and education should work together to treat children with mental disabilities, then commonly defined as “feeble-minded”. To this end they promoted the establishment of “Medico-Pedagogical Institutes”, institutes, that is, with medical and psychological staff, reserved for disabled minors considered “amendable” or “educable”. These institutions were to serve, on the one hand, to remove children from Mental Hospitals, and on the other, to enable them to be educated and to improve their psycho-physical attitudes. Nevertheless, over their long history, which lasted about a hundred years, the educational component decreased significantly and many Medico-Pedagogical Institutes ended up by resembling adult Mental Hospitals. At the end of the 1970s, several scandals erupted, revealing the inhuman conditions in which children were treated, and all the Institutes were closed. It is impossible to understand the overall sense of the value and the functions exercised by the Medico-Pedagogical Institutes over the century of their existence, unless we take a long-term perspective, which can help to create a detached and balanced history, revealing of our relationship with diversity and biopower.