In this article, we aimed to evaluate the utility of critical posthumanism for nurses interested in planetary health—a growing area of study that requires a decentering of the human, and environmental justice considerations. We used Chinn and colleagues' method to describe and critically reflect on critical posthumanism, extending the theory analysis method to include a wide range of academic and video sources. We found that critical posthumanism is like a double‐edged sword: It provides a lens through which to transcend human‐centric (...) approaches to healthcare but is marred by its lack of clarity and inaccessibility. We argue critical posthumanism can be adapted to enhance its potential at the intersection of nursing and planetary health. An analysis of critical posthumanism is followed by a discussion framed by five ways of knowing in nursing, highlighting real‐world examples of how critical posthumanism can aid nurses in dealing with planetary health concerns. By exploring the intersections of critical posthumanism with nursing knowledge, we demonstrate how critical posthumanism can enable nurses to comprehend and tackle environmental issues intricately linked to human health. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Welcome to the world of cutting-edge math, physics, and neuroscience, where the search for the ultimate vacuum, the point of nothingness, ground zero of theory, has rendered the universe deep, rich, and juicy. "Modern physics has animated the void," says K. C. Cole in her entrancing journey into the heart of Nothing. Every time scientists and mathematicians think they have reached the ultimate void, new stuff appears: a black hole, an undulating string, an additional dimension of space or time, (...) repulsive anti-gravity, universes that breed like bunnies. Cole's exploration at the edge of everything is as animated and exciting as the void itself. Take Cole's hand on this adventure into the unknown, and you'll come back informed, amused, and excited. (shrink)

Spatially and temporally restricted expression of Hox genes requires multiple mechanisms at both the transcriptional and the post-transcriptional levels. New insight into this precise expression mechanism comes from recent findings of a novel sense–antisense miRNA combination from the bithorax complex of Drosophila melanogaster.1-4 These two miRNAs encoded from the same locus target 3′ untranslated regions of anterior hox genes, Antp, Ubx and abd-A to establish the dominance of posterior hox gene Abd-B in its expression domain. Such double-edge tools, sense–antisense (...) miRNA combinations, also operate at multiple loci in the genome implicating their wider impact on the post-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes. BioEssays 30:1058–1061, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article sets out a manifesto for the development of an international values-based practice fully engaged with the diversity of cultural values and implemented through the resources of the international movement in philosophy and psychiatry. Anticipated by mid-twentieth century ordinary language philosophy of the “Oxford School,” the last three decades have witnessed a remarkable flowering of cross-disciplinary work between philosophy and psychiatry. The article indicates the scope and scale of this work and then describes the emergence of contemporary values-based practice (...) as its philosophy-into-practice cutting edge. Values-based practice although originating in philosophy and psychiatry is currently being developed mainly in areas of bodily medicine such as surgery. As such, it has been criticized for focusing, as contemporary health care has largely focused, on the individual at the expense of cultural values. Hence arises the need for extending values-based practice internationally. The resources available from international philosophy and psychiatry for so extending values-based practice are outlined and some of the challenges are indicated. The article concludes with the hope that psychiatry in supporting the development of international values-based practice will by the same token take poll position in the development of contemporary science-led clinical care. (shrink)

[About the book]: This volume is a state-of-the-art survey of the psychology of reasoning, based around, and in tribute to, one of the field's most eminent figures: Jonathan St B.T. Evans.In this collection of cutting edge research, Evans' collaborators and colleagues review a wide range of important and developing areas of inquiry. These include biases in thinking, probabilistic and causal reasoning, people's use of 'if' sentences in arguments, the dual-process theory of thought, and the nature of human rationality. These (...) foundational issues are examined from various angles and finally integrated in a concluding panoramic chapter written by Evans himself.The eighteen chapters, all written by leading international researchers, combine state-of the-art research with investigation into the most fundamental questions surrounding human mental life, such as:What is the architecture of the human mind?Are humans rational, and what is the nature of this rationality?How do we think hypothetically? The Science of Reason offer s a unique combination of breadth, depth and integrative vision, making it an indispensable resource for researchers and students of human reason. (shrink)

Precision agriculture is a breakthrough in digital farming technology, which facilitates the application of precise and exact amount of input level of water and fertilizer to the crop at the required time for increasing the yield. Since agriculture relies on direct rainfall than irrigation and the prediction of rainfall date is easily available from web source, the integration of rainfall prediction with precision agriculture helps to regulate the water consumption in farms. In this work, an edge computing model is (...) developed for predicting soil moisture in real time and managing the water usage in accordance with rain prediction. A soil moisture prediction hybrid algorithm has been developed that revolves around the decision-making techniques with live environmental parameters including weather parameters for the prediction of soil moisture through the impact of precipitation. Numerous algorithms with the combination of regression + clustering are estimated, and it is inferred that XGBoost + k-means outperforms other algorithmic combinations that is deployed in edge model. This model is used as an intermediary between the end IoT devices and cloud that results in the saving of computationally intensive processing performed on cloud servers. The servers located on a local edge network perform the developed algorithmic computations. Avoiding transmission over the cloud results in significant latency, response time, and computation power savings and therefore increases the efficiency of data transfer. The proposed edge computing model is implemented in Raspberry Pi as an edge, Heroku as cloud, and edge nodes as the combination of Pi with actuators and sensors. The monitored data from Pi are stored in MongoDB webserver that is controlled by Web dashboard. Finally, the developed model is implemented in cloud and edge where the edge server implementation performs better in terms of latency, bandwidth, throughput, response time, and CPU memory usage. (shrink)

In early March 2014, some of the members of Culture on the Edge—a scholarly research collaboration of seven scholars of religion, interested in more theoretically sophisticated studies of identity, and all of whom are at different career stages and at a variety of North American institutions—had a conversation online on the use of the terms “critique” and “critical,” terms widely used in the field today but employed in such a variety of ways that the members of the group thought (...) it worthwhile to focus some attention on them. What follows is the transcript of their conversation. (shrink)

The college athletics environment within the USA is ethically complex and often controversial. From an academic standpoint, athletes are often viewed as a privileged class receiving undue benefit. Yet closer inspection reveals that student athletes are at risk psychologically, physically, and intellectually in ways that undermine development and flourishing. This reality stands in troubling contrast to the prosocial, virtue-based goals expressed by university mission statements. Given the role of sport in many university business models, college athletics invites scrutiny from a (...) business ethics standpoint. Using a humanistic leadership perspective (Pirson in: Humanistic management: protecting dignity and promoting well-being, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017), we organize our analysis around three challenges facing the college athletics system: (1) navigating the tension between claiming college athletes are amateurs rather than professionals; (2) defining the ethical edge between winning and winning fairly; and (3) moderating the insatiable drive to win while protecting student athlete well-being. We then articulate three strategies for successfully addressing these challenges: leadership role modeling, putting structural supports in place and holding people accountable. We argue that humanistic leadership and a ‘balanced motivational drive mindset’ (Lawrence and Nohria in: J Bus Ethics 128:383–394, 2002, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2090-2 ; Pirson 2017) could help move college athletics from an economistic model toward a more humanistic model that prioritizes the dignity and well-being of its participants, particularly student athletes. (shrink)

For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. _Beyond Bioethics_ addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and (...) notions of democracy—a "new biopolitics." This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values. (shrink)

In this pioneering book Kasia Jaszczolt lays down the foundations of an original theory of meaning in discourse, reveals the cognitive foundations of discourse interpretation, and puts forward a new basis for the analysis of discourse processing. She provides a step-by-step introduction to the theory and its application, and explains new terms and formalisms as required. Dr Jaszczolt unites the precision of truth-conditional, dynamic approaches with insights from neo-Gricean pragmatics into the role of speaker's intentions in communication. She shows that (...) the compositionality of meaning may be understood as merger representations combining information from various sources including word meaning and sentence structure, various kinds of default interpretations, and conscious pragmatic inference. Among the applications the author discusses are constructions that pose problems in semantic analysis such as referring expressions, propositional attitude constructions, presupposition, modality, numerals, and sentential connectives. She proposes solutions to cutting edge problems in the semantics/pragmatics interface - for example, how many levels of meaning should be distinguished; the status of underspecification; how much contextual information should be placed in the representation of the speaker's meaning; whether there are default interpretations; the stage of utterance interpretation at which pragmatic inference begins; and whether compositionality is a necessary feature of the theory of meaning and if so how it is to be defined.The book is for students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics, computational linguistics, and philosophy of language at advanced undergraduate level and above. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

We propose a novel edge detector in the presence of Gaussian noise with the use of proximal support vector machine (PSVM). The edges of a noisy image are detected using a two-stage architecture: smoothing of image is first performed using regularized anisotropic diffusion, followed by the classification using PSVM, termed as regularized anisotropic diffusion-based PSVM (RAD-PSVM) method. In this process, a feature vector is formed for a pixel using the denoised coefficient’s class and the local orientations to detect edges (...) in all possible directions in images. From the experiments, conducted on both synthetic and benchmark images, it is observed that our RAD-PSVM approach outperforms the other state-of-the-art edge detection approaches, both qualitatively and quantitatively. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual framework for studying the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. We draw on mood-congruency theory and the affect infusion model to propose that mood influences managerial ethical decision making through deliberate and conscious assessments of the moral intensity of an ethical issue. By accounting for proscriptive and prescriptive morality—i.e., harmful and prosocial behavior, respectively—we demonstrate that positive and negative mood may have asymmetrical and paradoxical effects on ethical decision making. Specifically, our analysis suggests (...) that individuals in a positive mood will be more likely to engage in prosocial behavior but less likely to refrain from activities that have harmful consequences for others, whereas individuals in a negative mood will be more likely to avoid activities that put others at risk or harm but at the same time less prone to engaging in activities that have positive consequences for others. Importantly, we account for the context within which managers make their decisions by examining how situational strength may moderate the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. Finally, we discuss how organizations can leverage the double-edged sword effect of mood on ethical decision making and prevent, control and manage the risk of unethical decision making on the part of managers. (shrink)

Current United States guidelines for neonatal resuscitation note that there is no mandate to resuscitate infants in all situations. For example, the fetus that at the time of delivery is determined to be so premature as to be non-viable need not be aggressively resuscitated. The hypothetical case of an extremely premature infant was presented to neonatologists from the United States and four other European countries at a September 2006 international meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Reproductive (...) Health of Atlanta (currently, the Global Collaborating Center in Reproductive Health). Responses to the case varied by country, due to differences in legal, ethical and related practice parameters, rather than differences in medical technology, as similar medical technology was available within each country. Variations in approach seemed to stem from physicians’ perceptions of their ability to remove the neonate from life support if this appeared non-beneficial. There appears to be a desire for greater convergence in practice options and more open discussion regarding the practical problems underlying the variability. Specifically, the conference attendees identified four areas that need to be addressed: (1) lack of international consensus guidelines in viability and therapeutic options, (2) lack of bodies capable of generating these guidelines, (3) variation in laws between countries, and (4) the frequent failure of physicians and families to confront death at the beginning of life. (shrink)

There is a growing tendency to hyperbolize the U.S.-Mexican borderlands as a “dystopian zone of terror.” Dystopian borderlands hyperbole is double-edged. It can be used to create virulently racist mischaracterizations of borderlands life, and it can be used critically, as Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Sayak Valencia use it in Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore, to draw attention to structural forms of violence that imperil the borderlands on a daily basis. Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore exemplify a tendency in borderlands (...) literature to hyperbolically magnify borderlands crises of violence, misogyny, exploitation, and racism to all-encompassing dimensions. That magnification serves to highlight historical and structural conditions that have created and perpetuated those crises. The borderlands in Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore are hyperbolically reimagined as dystopias of neoliberal patriarchal violence. Gaspar de Alba and Valencia hyperbolize those dystopias to critique and ultimately abolish them. (shrink)

The Hermit’s Hut offers an original insight into the profound relationship between architecture and asceticism. Although architecture continually responds to ascetic compulsions, as in its frequent encounter with the question of excess and less, it is typically considered separate from asceticism. In contrast, this innovative book explores the rich and mutual ways in which asceticism and architecture are played out in each other’s practices. The question of asceticism is also considered—as neither a religious discourse nor a specific cultural tradition but (...) as a perennial issue in the practice of culture. The work convincingly traces the influences from early Indian asceticism to Zen Buddhism to the Japanese teahouse—the latter opening the door to modern minimalism. As the book’s title suggests, the protagonist of the narrative is the nondescript hermit’s hut. Relying primarily on Buddhist materials, the author provides a complex narrative that stems from this simple structure, showing how the significance of the hut resonates widely and how the question of dwelling is central to ascetic imagination. In exploring the conjunctions of architecture and asceticism, he breaks new ground by presenting ascetic practice as fundamentally an architectural project, namely the fabrication of a “last” hut. Through the conception of the last hut, he looks at the ascetic challenge of arriving at the edge of civilization and its echoes in the architectural quest for minimalism. The most vivid example comes from a well-known Buddhist text where the Buddha describes the ultimate ascetic moment, or nirvana, in cataclysmic terms using architectural metaphors: “The roof-rafters will be shattered,” the Buddha declares, and the architect will “no longer build the house again.” As the book compellingly shows, the physiological and spiritual transformation of the body is deeply intertwined with the art of building. The Hermit’s Hut weaves together the fields of architecture, anthropology, religion, and philosophy to offer multidisciplinary and historical insights. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, it will appeal to readers with diverse interests and in a variety of disciplines—whether one is interested in the history of ascetic architecture in India, the concept of “home” in ancient India, or the theme of the body as building. (shrink)

This is a tribute to Ulrich Beck and a rumination on his legacy in work on cosmopolitanism, translation, anxiety, and memory. Historical transitions and symbolic transmissions open up urgent questions about the connection between the structure of collective memory and the system of cosmopolitical thought. Public memory is embedded in an affective matrix of anxiety which is capable of creating the conciliatory conditions of political virtue and of fueling the terror of political passion. The vicious and sudden turn of cosmopolitan (...) memory from reconciliation to revenge is less surprising if anxiety is seen as the translational moment that mediates relations between remembering and forgetting. Anxiety forces the discourse of cosmopolitan memory to confront its own alterity, negotiating a knife-edge balance between sympathy and antipathy. The ethics of cosmopolitanism is an anxious ethics of the past that refuses to die, confronting a future that will not wait to be born. (shrink)

Being building block of data sciences, link prediction plays a vital role in revealing the hidden mechanisms that lead the networking dynamics. Since many techniques depending in vertex similarity and edge features were put forward to rule out many well-known link prediction challenges, many problems are still there just because of unique formulation characteristics of sparse networks. In this study, we applied some graph transformations and several inequalities to determine the greatest value of first and second Zagreb invariant, S (...) K and S K 1 invariants, for acyclic connected structures of given order, diameter, and pendant vertices. Also, we determined the corresponding extremal acyclic connected structures for these topological indices and provide an ordering giving a sequence of acyclic connected structures having these indices from greatest in decreasing order. (shrink)

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the ``reasonable person'' has supplanted the historical concept of the ``reasonable man'' as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are ``gendered to the ground'' and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man in (...) a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a ``reasonable woman'' standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a ``reasonable demand (or expectation)'' by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones. (shrink)

Researchers seek government support for “three-parent IVF” in the United Kingdom, for the purpose of bringing to clinical practice new techniques for avoiding inherited mitochondrial diseases. The author describes the development and processes of pronuclear transfer and maternal spindle transfer and offers an ethical evaluation of this cutting-edge science in light of the Church’s teaching in Dignitas personae. Promoting a eugenic mentality, both pronuclear transfer and maternal spindle transfer involve a radical manipulation of the human genome, inherited from three (...) parents and passed on to future generations. Pronuclear transfer and maternal spindle transfer are immoral, because they represent an offense to marriage and the marital act and involve the destruction of innocent human life. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.4 (Winter 2012): 589–596. (shrink)

In humanities departments across the country Allan Bloom is condemned and reviled—but for what misconduct? The present investigation into our distorted view of Bloom begins by reframing his transgressions. Bloom has offended eminent philosophy professors by boosting students' desire for a philosophic education. He has emboldened promising young people by teaching them to bear up under the deforming forces of convention and corruption and edge their way towards the question, ‘How should I live my life?’ A philosophic education as (...) Bloom sees it ‘means precisely helping students to pose this question to themselves, to become aware that the answer is neither obvious nor simply unavailable, and that there is no serious life in which this question is not a continuous concern’. The philosopher's interests are not shared by most people. Hostility to philosophy is the natural condition of man. This surprising fact, plainly stated, invites so much anger that Bloom—standing in for the philosopher—is forced to defend himself. The story of Bloom, like Socrates', gives an account of philosophy's emergence, distinctive features and always imaginable suppression. Plato's artful writing captured Socrates' way of life for posterity. This essay explores the nature and function of Bloom's bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind (1987), as well as the purpose of Saul Bellow's final novel, Ravelstein (2000), a fictive account of Bloom's life and death. Together these books amount to the true Apology of Allan Bloom. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that about 7,000 languages are spoken across the world today and at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of this century. This state-of-the-art Handbook examines the reasons behind this dramatic loss of linguistic diversity, why it matters, and what can be done to document and support endangered languages. The volume is relevant not only to researchers in language endangerment, language shift and language death, but to anyone interested in the languages and cultures (...) of the world. It is accessible both to specialists and non-specialists: researchers will find cutting-edge contributions from acknowledged experts in their fields, while students, activists and other interested readers will find a wealth of readable yet thorough and up-to-date information. (shrink)

A common way to understand memory structures in the cognitive sciences is as a cognitive map​. Cognitive maps are representational systems organized by dimensions shared with physical space. The appeal to these maps begins literally: as an account of how spatial information is represented and used to inform spatial navigation. Invocations of cognitive maps, however, are often more ambitious; cognitive maps are meant to scale up and provide the basis for our more sophisticated memory capacities. The extension is not meant (...) to be metaphorical, but the way in which these richer mental structures are supposed to remain map-like is rarely made explicit. Here we investigate this missing link, asking: how do cognitive maps represent non-spatial information?​ We begin with a survey of foundational work on spatial cognitive maps and then provide a comparative review of alternative, non-spatial representational structures. We then turn to several cutting-edge projects that are engaged in the task of scaling up cognitive maps so as to accommodate non-spatial information: first, on the spatial-isometric approach​ , encoding content that is non-spatial but in some sense isomorphic to spatial content; second, on the ​ abstraction approach​ , encoding content that is an abstraction over first-order spatial information; and third, on the ​ embedding approach​ , embedding non-spatial information within a spatial context, a prominent example being the Method-of-Loci. Putting these cases alongside one another reveals the variety of options available for building cognitive maps, and the distinctive limitations of each. We conclude by reflecting on where these results take us in terms of understanding the place of cognitive maps in memory. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive source of guidance for individual contributors who have just transitioned (or about to transition) to new roles in training domain such as training managers, learning managers or instructional design manager or any such roles to accelerate their leadership in training domain. The book describes S2Pro© Model of Strategic Competencies for Training and Learning Management Function, developed out of years of practice and research, which proposes a framework for accelerating leadership and management development path of new (...) training or learning managers. The book delivers 35 powerful, proven strategies across 8 core strategic competencies namely thought process, decision-making, operations management, project leadership, strategic leadership, global team leadership, and professional development. The book provides authentic understanding, knowledge, insight, and guidance required to be successful in training domain. This book is the first-of-its-kind focused exclusively on the aspect of accelerating leadership and management development path for new training and learning managers. Chapter 1 of the book introduces a Model of Strategic Competencies for Training and Learning Function outlining 8 core strategic competencies to accelerate leadership development. Chapter 2 sets the stage on making 3 changes in one’s thought process to be successful in the new role. Chapter 3 of the book provides insight into 3 core skills required by new training and learning managers to make effective training related decisions. Chapter 4 of the book equip new managers with an understanding of 3 pillars that would allow them to manage their training operations amidst the complexity of the organization. Chapter 5 of the book focuses on 2 fundamental characteristics of highly successful training management practices. Chapter 6 describes 2 powerful project leadership styles particular for leading learning or training related projects. Chapter 7 shifts its focus on providing the first-of-its-kind checklist of 10 unique approaches exhibited by well-known training leaders. Chapter 8 then dives into the challenge of team leadership, in particular for global, diverse multi-cultural training teams and describes 3 common-sense principles to handle this challenge. Chapter 9 concludes the book by providing 5 success strategies to new managers to develop themselves professionally to maintain a competitive edge in what they do. (shrink)

The near-interface region of an epitaxial Ba 0.3 Sr 0.7 TiO 3 thin film grown on LaAlO 3 was found to consist of a high density of stacking faults bounded by partial dislocations. The stacking faults can extend over large distances . Various possible atomic configurations of the faults were considered. The atomic structures of the faults were identified using high-resolution electron microscopy and simulation as well as energy-filtered imaging. The and faults were found to lie predominately on the {100} (...) and {110} planes. The faults on , or have never been observed before in perovskites. The stacking faults on {100} have a structure consisting of a double layer of edge-sharing TiO 6 octahedra. The excess of Ti was detected by energy-filtered imaging. The formation of the extended stacking faults is probably related to a small amount of excess Ti during the film deposition, which may originate from the non-stoichiometry of the ceramic targets BaTiO 3 and SrTiO 3 . It is also enhanced by the misfit-induced compressive strain in the early stages of the film growth. (shrink)

(1994). Lithuania. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 109-123.

Digital evolution in the banking sector refers to the integration and development of digital innovations, such as internet banking, mobile applications, AI, and data analytics in banking operations and customer service measures. The research examines the influence of digital development on customer interaction strategies in the banking sector. As banks increasingly adopt digital tools to meet customer expectations for convenience and personalized services, the dynamics of customer relationships are changing. The study purpose is to understand how digital transformation influences customer (...) engagement, satisfaction, loyalty and challenges banks face in maintaining personalized interactions in a digital environment. The study looks into a number of factors, including digital engagement, customer satisfaction, service personalization, customer loyalty, service accessibility, trust and security. The study involves 600 banking customers filling out a questionnaire after being informed about the purpose of the survey. SPSS was employed to conduct various statistics tests such as, pearson correlation, chi square, and t-test the obtain data and variables. The result indicates a positive correlation between the adoption of digital banking solutions and increased customer engagement. Research results underscore the importance of continued investment in a digital technologies to maintain a competitive edge in the banking industry. Banks that effectively integrate digital tools into their customer relationship management practices are better positioned to evolving requirement of customers, leading to improved satisfaction and loyalty. (shrink)

Counting models for a two conjunctive formula $F$, a problem known as $\sharp $2Sat, is a classic $\sharp $P complete problem. Given a 2-CF $F$ as input, its constraint graph $G$ is built. If $G$ is acyclic, then $\sharp $2Sat can be computed efficiently. In this paper, we address the case when $G$ has cycles. When $G$ is cyclic, we propose a decomposition on the constraint graph $G$ that allows the computation of $\sharp $2Sat in incremental way. Let $T$ be (...) a cactus graph of $G$ containing a maximal number of independent cycles, and let $\overline{T}=-E)$ be a subset of frond edges from $G$. The clauses in $\overline{T}$ are ordered in connected components $\{K_1, \ldots, K_r\}$. Each $, i=1,\ldots,r$ is a knot of the graph. The arrangement of the clauses of $\overline{T}$ allows the decomposition of $G$ in knots and provides a way of computing $\sharp $2Sat in an incremental way. Our procedure has a bottom-up orientation for the computation of $\sharp $2Sat. It begins with $F_0 = T$. In each iteration of the procedure, a new clause $C_i \in \overline{T}$ is considered in order to form $F_i = $ and then to compute $\sharp $2Sat$$ based on the computation of $\sharp $2Sat$$. (shrink)

The founders of reformational philosophy, H. Dooyeweerd and D.H.Th. Vollenhoven, each published in short succession, viz. 1949 and 1950, a voluminous study in the history of philosophy. Whoever reads both works is struck by the remarkable differences in treatment. In this contribution these differences are analysed, but there is also indication of agreement. The article ends with a number of conclusions based on the analysis.

Objective We sought to understand ethics and education needs of emergency nurses and physicians in paediatric and adult emergency departments in order to build ethics capacity and provide a foundation for the development of an ethics education programme. Methods This was a prospective cross-sectional survey of all staff nurses and physicians in three tertiary care EDs. The survey tool, called Clinical Ethics Needs Assessment Survey, was pilot tested on a similar target audience for question content and clarity. Results Of the (...) 123 participants surveyed, 72% and 84% of nurses and physicians fully/somewhat agreed with an overall positive ethical climate, respectively. 69% of participants reported encountering daily or weekly ethical challenges. Participants expressed the greatest need for additional support to address moral distress, conflict management with patients or families and resource issues. Of the 23 reported occurrences of moral distress, 61% were associated with paediatric mental health cases. When asked how the ethics consultation service could be used in the ED, providing education to teams was the most desired method. Conclusions Nurses report a greater need for ethics education and resources compared with their physician colleagues. Ethical challenges in paediatric EDs are more prevalent than adult EDs and nurses voice specific moral distress that are different than adult EDs. These results highlight the need for a suitable educational strategy, which can be developed in collaboration with the leadership of each ED and team of hospital ethicists. (shrink)

A large number of cross-references to various bodies of text are used in legal texts, each serving a different purpose. It is often necessary for authorities and companies to look into certain types of these citations. Yet, there is a lack of automatic tools to aid in this process. Recently, citation graphs have been used to improve the intelligibility of complex rule frameworks. We propose an algorithm that builds the citation graph from a document and automatically labels each edge (...) according to its purpose. Our method uses the citing text only and thus works only on citations who’s purpose can be uniquely identified by their surrounding text. This framework is then applied to the US code. This paper includes defining and evaluating a standard gold set of labels that cover a vast majority of citation types which appear in the “US Code” but are still short enough for practical use. We also proposed a novel linear-chain conditional random field model that extracts the features required for labeling the citations from the surrounding text. We then analyzed the effectiveness of different clustering methods such as K-means and support vector machine to automatically label each citation with the corresponding label. Besides this, we talk about the practical difficulties of this task and give a comparison of human accuracy compared to our end-to-end algorithm. (shrink)