Co-integrating relationship between terms of trade, money and current account: the italian evidence

The paper analyses long-run relationships between terms of trade, money and current account for Italy in the period from the first quarter of 1975 to the first quarter of 2001.money, terms of trade, current account, multivariate cointegration

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Personality traits and beliefs about peers\u2019 on-road behaviors as predictors of adolescents\u2019 moped-riding profiles.

Several efforts aimed at discriminating between different degrees of on-road risky attitudes have been devoted to the identification of personality profiles among young drivers. However, the results are often inconsistent because of the limits of selfreport measures. To overcome these limits, we tried to identify different profiles based on our study participants\u2019 driving performances in a virtual environment and to look for psychological predictors of inclusion in one of three profiles. One-hundred and fourteen inexperienced adolescents were involved in this study, which included two experimental sessions. During the first, before riding along five virtual courses on a moped simulator, participants\u2019 sensation seeking, locus of control, aggressiveness and beliefs about their peers\u2019 on-road behaviors were measured by means of self-report tools. During the second session, the participants drove the simulator along six courses that were different from those faced in the first session. A cluster analysis was run on a wide number of indexes extracted from the participants\u2019 performances to detect different riding profiles. Three profiles emerged (Imprudent, Prudent and Insecure), with specific riding patterns. The profiles also differed in terms of riding safety, assessed by means of the scores automatically given by the simulator to the participants\u2019 performances. Reporting an external locus of control, underestimating peers\u2019 on-road risky behaviors and showing less concern for fate among the possible causes of crashes are predictors that increase the risk of being included in the Imprudent profile. Low levels of dangerous thrill seeking predict inclusion in the Prudent profile, whereas high rates of self-reported anger play a role in discriminating the Insecure riders from the other profiles. The study indicates that it is possible to identify riding profiles with different degrees of on-road safety among inexperienced adolescents by means of simulated road environments. Moreover, inclusion in these profiles is predicted by different patterns of personality variables and beliefs. Further research is needed to verify the validity of these conclusions in real road conditions

A First Step toward the Understanding of Implicit Learning of Hazard Anticipation in Inexperienced Road Users Through a Moped-Riding Simulator

Hazard perception is considered one of the most important abilities in road safety. Several efforts have been devoted to investigating how it improves with experience and can be trained. Recently, research has focused on the implicit aspects of hazard detection, reaction, and anticipation. In the present study, we attempted to understand how the ability to anticipate hazards develops during training with a moped-riding simulator: the Honda Riding Trainer (HRT). Several studies have already validated the HRT as a tool to enhance adolescents\u2019 hazard perception and riding abilities. In the present study, as an index of hazard anticipation, we used skin conductance response (SCR), which has been demonstrated to be linked to affective/implicit appraisal of risk. We administered to a group of inexperienced road users five road courses two times a week apart. In each course, participants had to deal with eight hazard scenes (except one course that included only seven hazard scenes). Participants had to ride along the HRT courses, facing the potentially hazardous situations, following traffic rules, and trying to avoid accidents. During the task, we measured SCR and monitored driving performance. The main results show that learning to ride the simulator leads to both a reduction in the number of accidents and anticipation of the somatic response related to hazard detection, as proven by the reduction of SCR onset recorded in the second session. The finding that the SCR signaling the impending hazard appears earlier when the already encountered hazard situations are faced anew suggests that training with the simulator acts on the somatic activation associated with the experience of risky situations, improving its effectiveness in detecting hazards in advance so as to avoid accidents. This represents the starting point for future investigations into the process of generalization of learning acquired in new virtual situations and in real-road situations

Sensation seeking, non-contextual decision making, and driving abilities as measured through a moped simulator.

The general aim of the present study was to explore the relations between driving style (assessed through a moped riding simulator) and psychological variables such as sensation seeking and decision making. Because the influences of sensation seeking and decision making on driving styles have been studied separately in the literature, we have tried to investigate their mutual relations so as to include them in a more integrated framework. Participants rode the Honda Riding Trainer (HRT) simulator, filled in the Sensation Seeking Scale V (SSS V), and performed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). A cluster analysis of the HRT riding indexes identified three groups: Prudent, Imprudent, and Insecure riders. First, the results showed that Insecure males seek thrills and adventure less than both Prudent males and Insecure females, whereas Prudent females are less disinhibited than both Prudent males and Insecure females. Moreover, concerning the relations among SSS, decision making as measured by the IGT, and riding performance, high thrill and adventure seekers performed worse in the simulator only if they were also bad decision makers, indicating that these two traits jointly contribute to the quality of riding performance. From an applied perspective, these results also provide useful information for the development of protocols for assessing driving abilities among novice road users. Indeed, the relation between risk proneness and riding style may allow for the identification of road-user populations who require specific training

Heliodorus' reading of Lucian's Toxaris

This article demonstrates that Cnemon’s story in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica intertexts with the novella of Deinias in Lucian’s Toxaris. The closeness of three textual parallels, along with a subtle use of characters’ names, proves that Heliodorus is deliberately recalling Toxaris. The focus of this intertextuality is Chariclea, the courtesan of Deinias’ story. This immoral figure is a striking counterpart to the lustful Demaenete, the main character of Cnemon’s story and the first immoral lover of the Aethiopica. At the same time, the evocation by Heliodorus of a lustful woman who has the same name as the protagonist Chariclea, paradoxically enriches the characterization of the latter as chaste. Furthermore, this subtle evocation of Chariclea seems to have metaliterary implications as well. In the Aethiopica Chariclea stands for the entire novel: Heliodorus appears to define the nature of his text in opposition to Lucian’s Toxaris and to the different kind of fiction it represents. Heliodorus’ definition of his own novel by means of establishing a contrast with other texts is an important function of his intertextuality with Imperial literature and possibly sheds new light on the status of ancient fiction as a whole

Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales: A Study of the Creation of the “Narrative about Asclepius”

Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales is a complex literary text, and its first book—the diary—puzzles scholars, as it has no parallel in the entire work. This paper offers a justification for this section by arguing for a deliberate contrast between the diary and Books 2–6 of the Sacred Tales, as a result of which the latter section is crafted as a narrative about Asclepius. I will first identify a large series of shifts in the ST: starting with Book 2, change concerns the protagonist, which from Aristides’ abdomen turns to Asclepius, the narrator, dream interpretation, genre, and arrangement of the events. Secondly, I discuss the impact of these shifts upon the readers’ response: while the diary invites the readers to relive the everyday tension between known past and unknown future, the spatial form of Books 2–6 creates the opposite effect, turning the readers’ attention away from the human flow of time towards Asclepius, and leading them to perceive features of his divine time