Feature selection is a widely studied technique whose goal is to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by removing irrelevant features. It has multiple benefits, such as improved efficacy, efficiency and interpretability of almost any type of machine learning model. Feature selection techniques may be divided into three main categories, depending on the process used to remove the features known as Filter, Wrapper and Embedded. Embedded methods are usually the preferred feature selection method that efficiently obtains a selection of the (...) most relevant features of the model. However, not all models support an embedded feature selection that forces the use of a different method, reducing the efficiency and reliability of the selection. Neural networks are an example of a model that does not support embedded feature selection. As neural networks have shown to provide remarkable results in multiple scenarios such as classification and regression, sometimes in an ensemble with a model that includes an embedded feature selection, we attempt to embed a feature selection process with a general-purpose methodology. In this work, we propose a novel general-purpose layer for neural networks that removes the influence of irrelevant features. The Feature-Aware Drop Layer is included at the top of the neural network and trained during the backpropagation process without any additional parameters. Our methodology is tested with 17 datasets for classification and regression tasks, including data from different fields such as Health, Economic and Environment, among others. The results show remarkable improvements compared to three different feature selection approaches, with reliable, efficient and effective results. (shrink)

Time series forecasting is a well-known deep learning application field in which previous data are used to predict the future behavior of the series. Recently, several deep learning approaches have been proposed in which several nonlinear functions are applied to the input to obtain the output. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to improve the performance of deep learning models in time series forecasting. This method divides the model into hierarchies or levels from simpler to more complex ones. (...) Simpler levels handle smoothed versions of the input, whereas the most complex level processes the original time series. This method follows the human learning process where general/simpler tasks are performed first, and afterward, more precise/harder ones are accomplished. Our proposed methodology has been applied to the LSTM architecture, showing remarkable performance in various time series. In addition, a comparison is reported including a standard LSTM and novel methods such as DeepAR, Temporal Fusion Transformer, NBEATS and Echo State Network. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

In this paper we deal with some new axiom schemes for Peano's Arithmetic that can substitute the classical induction, least-element, collection and strong collection schemes in the description of PA.

The multilinear extension of a cooperative game was introduced by Owen in 1972. In this contribution we study the Lovász extension for cooperative games by using the marginal worth vectors and the dividends. First, we prove a formula for the marginal worth vectors with respect to compatible orderings. Next, we consider the direct market generated by a game. This model of utility function, proposed by Shapley and Shubik in 1969, is the concave biconjugate extension of the game. Then we obtain (...) the following characterization: The utility function of a market game is the Lovász extension of the game if and only if the market game is supermodular. Finally, we present some preliminary problems about the relationship between cooperative games and combinatorial optimization. (shrink)

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

Background The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in (...) biomedical research. Methods This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 to 5. Results Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be ‘moderately important’ to ‘very important’ for their decision making. Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF. Conclusions Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. If this thesis is correct, then we should expect the defeasibility conditions for knowledge-how and knowledge-that to be uniform—viz., that the mechanisms of epistemic defeat which undermine propositional knowledge will be equally capable of imperilling knowledge-how. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, against intellectualism, we will show that knowledge-how is in fact resilient to being undermined by (...) the very kinds of traditional (propositional) epistemic defeaters which clearly defeat the items of propositional knowledge which intellectualists identify with knowledge-how. Second, we aim to fill an important lacuna in the contemporary debate, which is to develop an alternative way in which epistemic defeat for knowledge-how could be modelled within an anti-intellectualist framework. (shrink)

Knowledge, like other things of value, can be faked. According to Hawley (2011), know-how is harder to fake than knowledge-that, given that merely apparent propositional knowledge is in general more resilient to our attempts at successful detection than are corresponding attempts to fake know-how. While Hawley’s reasoning for a kind of detection resilience asymmetry between know-how and know-that looks initially plausible, it should ultimately be resisted. In showing why, we outline different ways in which know-how can be faked even when (...) a given performance is successful; and in doing so, we distinguish how know-how can be faked (no less than know-that) via upstream and downstream indicators of its presence, and within each of these categories, we’ll distinguish (in connection with detection resilience) both faking symptoms and (various kinds of) criteria. The unappreciated resilience of faked knowledge-how to successful detection highlights a largely overlooked dimension of social-epistemic risk – risk we face not just in our capacity as recipients of testimony, but in our capacity as both (would-be) apprentices and clients of knowledge-how. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show through the concrete example of epileptic seizure anticipation how neuro-dynamic analysis and “pheno-dynamic” analysis may guide and determine each other. We will show that this dynamic approach to epileptic seizure makes it possible to consolidate the foundations of a cognitive non pharmacological therapy of epilepsy. We will also show through this example how the neuro-phenomenological co-determination could shed new light on the difficult problem of the “gap” which separates subjective experience from neurophysiological (...) activity. (shrink)

Most growth models for complex networks consider networks comprising a single connected block or island, which contains all the nodes in the network. However, it has been demonstrated that some large complex networks have more than one island, with an island size distribution obeying a power-law function Is~s-α. This paper introduces a growth model that considers the emergence of islands as the network grows. The proposed model addresses the following two features: the probability that a new island is generated decreases (...) as the network grows and new islands are created with a constant probability at any stage of the growth. In the first case, the model produces an island size distribution that decays as a power-law Is~s-α with a fixed exponent α=1 and in-degree distribution that decays as a power-law Qi~i-γ with γ=2. When the second case is considered, the model describes island size and in-degree distributions that decay as a power-law with 2<α<∞ and 2<γ<∞, respectively. (shrink)

One of the main limitations of natural language‐based approaches to meaning is that they do not incorporate multimodal representations the way humans do. In this study, we evaluate how well different kinds of models account for people's representations of both concrete and abstract concepts. The models we compare include unimodal distributional linguistic models as well as multimodal models which combine linguistic with perceptual or affective information. There are two types of linguistic models: those based on text corpora and those derived (...) from word association data. We present two new studies and a reanalysis of a series of previous studies. The studies demonstrate that both visual and affective multimodal models better capture behavior that reflects human representations than unimodal linguistic models. The size of the multimodal advantage depends on the nature of semantic representations involved, and it is especially pronounced for basic‐level concepts that belong to the same superordinate category. Additional visual and affective features improve the accuracy of linguistic models based on text corpora more than those based on word associations; this suggests systematic qualitative differences between what information is encoded in natural language versus what information is reflected in word associations. Altogether, our work presents new evidence that multimodal information is important for capturing both abstract and concrete words and that fully representing word meaning requires more than purely linguistic information. Implications for both embodied and distributional views of semantic representation are discussed. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point significant similarities between a formal language model—Grammar Systems—and a grammatical theory—Autolexical Syntax—in this paper we suggest the application of the former to the topic of the latter. To show the applicability of Grammar Systems Theory to grammatical description, we introduce a formal-language-theoretic framework for the architecture of natural language grammar: Linguistic Grammar Systems. We prove the adequacy of this model by highlighting its features (modularity, parallelism, interaction) and by showing the similarity between this framework and (...) accepted and well-known grammatical models (e.g. Autolexical Syntax). (shrink)

Digital transformation has allowed to offer additional services - which complement the main product - both in terms of use, emotional and relationship terms. Focused on a traditionally rational insurance customer offering a value that explores the customer's emotions, from co-creating with the user, allows brand differentiation. Given this idea, this document has three purposes. First, identify the role of expectations and the perceived quality of the customer's digital experience. Secondly, to identify the relationship between experience and satisfaction gained in (...) private insurance web areas. Third, identify the most valued digital attributes by the user. A sample of 4,178 customers registered was analyzed using the partial least squares technique. The model is highly predictive to customer experience and evidence the important relationship between the WOW effect and satisfaction, as well as the weak but doble role that expectations play on insurance digital self-service. The model demonstrates that expectations are only relevant before web consumption, because during the process it is the perceived digital quality, in particular the usefulness, information and technology, that offer a true customer experience. This article offers high academic value because it more accurately defines the determinants of the digital insurance customer experience and its effect on customer satisfaction in digital services. While expectations influence attitude before service, this research reveals that perceived digital quality is what delivers a true customer experience. Strategically, the implications are immediate in the field of business as it shows the importance of co-creation in digital design, not only because of the significant savings in implementation costs but also because it guarantees a greater experience, essential in the loyalty of its customers. This ensures the sustainable growth of the company. (shrink)

Abstract:: This essay addresses the notion of public order from the point of view of biopolitics. With that aim, it relates the authoritarian response to social protest with the moral ordering of public space, using the case of the 15-M movement in Spain. Then, it reads the notion of public order as a dispositive, in the Foucauldian sense of the term. Departing from there, it presents a brief genealogical approach to the relations among sexual and racial ordering o public space. (...) Finally, in dialogue with Sarah Ahmed and Mary Douglas, it explores the role of the biopolitics of public order in the constitution and policing of the moral and physical, internal and external borders separating the political community from its various others. (shrink)

Human languages vary in many ways but also show striking cross-linguistic universals. Why do these universals exist? Recent theoretical results demonstrate that Bayesian learners transmitting language to each other through iterated learning will converge on a distribution of languages that depends only on their prior biases about language and the quantity of data transmitted at each point; the structure of the world being communicated about plays no role (Griffiths & Kalish, , ). We revisit these findings and show that when (...) certain assumptions about the relationship between language and the world are abandoned, learners will converge to languages that depend on the structure of the world as well as their prior biases. These theoretical results are supported with a series of experiments showing that when human learners acquire language through iterated learning, the ultimate structure of those languages is shaped by the structure of the meanings to be communicated. (shrink)

In recent years quantum probability models have been used to explain many aspects of human decision making, and as such quantum models have been considered a viable alternative to Bayesian models based on classical probability. One criticism that is often leveled at both kinds of models is that they lack a clear interpretation in terms of psychological mechanisms. In this paper we discuss the mechanistic underpinnings of a quantum walk model of human decision making and response time. The quantum walk (...) model is compared to standard sequential sampling models, and the architectural assumptions of both are considered. In particular, we show that the quantum model has a natural interpretation in terms of a cognitive architecture that is both massively parallel and involves both co-operative and competitive interactions between units. Additionally, we introduce a family of models that includes aspects of the classical and quantum walk models. (shrink)

Ante las dificultades que presenta el camino que hace ya algún tiempo se decidió emprender en este país, un camino lúgubre en el que proliferan como hongos diversas reivindicaciones del derecho de autodeterminación, esto es, de la soberanía, por parte de distintos pueblos o naciones, se hace evidente la necesidad de reflexionar sobre el mismo concepto del poder soberano. En este texto se aborda tal problema desde tres perspectivas, fáctica, normativa y racional. Al mismo tiempo que se ponen de manifiesto (...) las insuficiencias de las dos primeras, se defiende una comprensión racional del poder soberano, que quizá podría contribuir a la disolución de los malos augurios que se ciernen sobre nuestro futuro. (shrink)

Particularly in his work Representative Government, J. S. Mill tries to shape the government of social order according to the rules that served as a pattern for the constitution of the literary salons and clubs of the 17 th and 18th centuries. On these rules the Enlightened legal-rational model of society was built, whose demands as well as its differences from reality are enormous. However, this model, which remained in existence, although often broken, during the 19 th and 20 th (...) centuries, does not seem able to survive, even as a regulative ideal. The characteristics that now define the society of the masses in which we live make the fundamentals of Mill’s theory totally inadequate for an understanding of that society. (shrink)

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a complex and multidimensional construct, encompassing both independent objective characteristics (e.g., income or education) and subjective people’s ratings of their placement in the socioeconomic spectrum. Within the growing literature on subjective SES belongingness and psychological well-being, subjective indices of SES have tended to center on the use of pictorial rank-related social ladders where individuals place themselves relative to others by simultaneously considering their income, educational level, and occupation. This approach, albeit consistent with the idea of these (...) social ladders as summative or cognitive SES markers, might potentially constrain individuals’ conceptions of their SES. This research ( N = 368; M age = 39.67, SD = 13.40) is intended to expand prior investigations on SES and psychological well-being by revisiting the role of subjective SES. In particular, it (a) proposes an innovative adaptation of the traditional MacArthur Scale of subjective SES to income, education, and occupation, thus resulting in three separate social ladders; and (b) tests the empirical contribution of such three social ladders to psychological well-being. Overall, our findings showed that the novel education and occupation ladders (excluding the income ladder) are predictive of a significant part of the variance levels of psychological well-being that is not due to canonical objective metrics of SES (i.e., income, education, and occupation), or to the conventional MacArthur Scale of subjective SES. Although preliminary, these results underscore the need to further reconsider (subjective) SES-related conceptualization and measurement strategies to gather a more comprehensive understanding of the SES-psychological well-being link. (shrink)

This paper does resemble a philosophical-juridical perspective that reflects on the possibility to reconstruct the constitutional democracy through a Hegelian focus. Its aim is to tackle the current crisis of our liberal democracy, as well as to determine its causes. These causes are not only found in a deficient praxis of its purposes, but fundamentally in an insufficient understanding of the principles of that type of democracy. At the end, this democracy, if we mind to deter its ruin, has to (...) last on the idea of universal will and its determination through the individual rights and liberties. In this context, political liberties obtain a key role, especially the right of political participation and the freedom of expression, whose final purpose lays in the construction of a rational political will. (shrink)

El análisis de la historia de las relaciones entre el anarquismo español y el movimiento neomalthusiano es el principal objetivo de este artículo. Se centra especialmente en el estudio de una conocida publicación libertaria de los años 20: Generación Consciente (Alcoi y Valencia, 1923-1928), que resultó esencial en el proceso de asimilación y difusión por parte del movimiento anarquista español de las nuevas ideas en torno al neomalthusianismo, la eugenesia y la reforma sexual. Generación Consciente —revista eminentemente cultural y científica— (...) realizó un formidable esfuerzo de divulgación popular de la teoría y la práctica del control de natalidad, desde sus postulados libertarios de búsqueda de una vida digna, armónica y feliz para el proletariado. El ideal de la «maternidad consciente» era el principio inspirador de una campaña desarrollada por los principales colaboradores de la revista, entre los que se contaban también importantes médicos y científicos no vinculados al movimiento libertario, como es el caso de Luis Jiménez de Asúa, Gregorio Marañón o César Juarros. (shrink)