This paper adopts Hadoop to build and test the storage and retrieval platform for painting resources. This paper adopts Hadoop as the platform and MapReduce as the computing framework and uses Hadoop Distributed Filesystem distributed file system to store massive log data, which solves the storage problem of massive data. According to the business requirements of the system, this paper designs the system according to the process of web text mining, mainly divided into log data preprocessing module, log data storage (...) module, log data analysis module, and log data visualization module. The core part of the system is the log data analysis module. The analysis of search keywords ranking, Uniform Resource Locator, and user click relationship, URL ranking, and other dimensions are realized through data statistical analysis, and Canopy coarse clustering is performed first according to search keywords, and then K-means clustering is used for the results after Canopy clustering, and the calculation of cosine similarity is adopted to realize the grouping of users and build user portrait. The Hadoop development environment is installed and deployed, and functional and performance tests are conducted on the contents implemented in this system. The constructed private cloud platform for remote sensing image data can realize online retrieval of remote sensing image metadata and fast download of remote sensing image data and solve the problems in storage, data sharing, and management of remote sensing image data to a certain extent. (shrink)

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the kind (...) of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a "kingdom of ends." The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses. (shrink)

Community search is a query-oriented variant of community detection problem, and the goal is to retrieve a single community from a given set of nodes. Most of the existing community search methods adopt handcrafted features, so there are some limitations in applications. Our idea is motivated by the recent advances of node embedding. Node embedding uses deep learning method to obtain feature representation of nodes directly from graph structure automatically and offers a new method to measure the distance (...) between two nodes. In this paper, we propose a two-stage community search algorithm with a minimum spanning tree strategy based on node embedding. At the first stage, we propose a node embedding model NEBRW and map nodes to the points in a low-dimensional vector space. At the second stage, we propose a new definition of community from the distance viewpoint, transform the problem of community search to a variant of minimum spanning tree problem, and uncover the target community with an improved Prim algorithm. We test our algorithm on both synthetic and real-world network datasets. The experimental results show that our algorithm is more effective for community search than baselines. (shrink)

The relationship between workaholism and work performance is explored by meta-analysis in this article. After searching relevant references, we had gained 94 individual effect sizes, 45 individual samples, and 37 references. Through the heterogeneity test, it was shown that the random effect model is more suitable. The main effect analysis showed that there is a significant positive correlation between workaholism, working excessively, working compulsively, and work performance, and further analysis showed that workaholism emphasizes the improvement of contextual performance. The subgroup (...) test showed that the relationship between workaholism, working excessively, working compulsively, and work performance is influenced by the measurement tools of workaholism, but not influenced by the cultural background differences and time-lag research. The above results show that workaholism and its dimensions have different influences on different aspects of work performance. Besides, it is worthy to consider the moderating function of the measurement tools of workaholism in the relationship between workaholism and work performance. (shrink)

Software testing is a very important technique to design the faultless software and takes approximately 60% of resources for the software development. It is the process of executing a program or application to detect the software bugs. In software development life cycle, the testing phase takes around 60% of cost and time. Test case generation is a method to identify the test data and satisfy the software testing criteria. Test case generation is a vital concept used in (...) software testing, that can be derived from the user requirements specification. An automatic test case technique determines automatically where the test cases or test data generates utilizing search based optimization method. In this paper, Cuckoo Search and Bee Colony Algorithm (CSBCA) method is used for optimization of test cases and generation of path convergence within minimal execution time. The performance of the proposed CSBCA was compared with the performance of existing methods such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Cuckoo Search (CS), Bee Colony Algorithm (BCA), and Firefly Algorithm (FA). (shrink)

We introduce a construct called “humanness sensitivity,” which we define as the ability to recognize uniquely human characteristics. To evaluate the construct, we used a “concurrent study design” to conduct an internet-based study with a convenience sample of 42,063 people from 88 countries (52.4% from the U.S. and Canada).We sought to determine to what extent people could identify subtle characteristics of human behavior, thinking, emotions, and social relationships which currently distinguish humans from non-human entities such as bots. Many people (...) were surprisingly poor at this task, even when asked simple questions about human relationships or anatomy. Participants were best at identifying subtle aspects of human cognition and worst at identifying subtle aspects of human communication. Test scores were good predictors of whether someone was employed and modest predictors of other self-reported criterion measures. We also found that people identifying themselves in marginal societal categories (e.g., in the “other” category for gender or sexual orientation) identified themselves as less human and also scored lower on our test. As computers continue to become more human-like, our study suggests that the vast majority of humankind will likely have great difficulty distinguishing them from people. Can methods be devised for improving this ability? Might humanness sensitivity help people to make such distinctions? Will people who excel at differentiating humans and non-human entities—like the “blade runners” in the 1982 and 2017 feature films—someday hold a special place in society? (shrink)

The hybridization of two or more energy sources into a single power station is one of the widely discussed solutions to address the demand and supply havoc generated by renewable production, heating power, and cooling power) and its energy storage issues. Hybrid energy sources work based on the complementary existence of renewable sources. The combined cooling, heating, and power is one of the significant systems and shows a profit from its low environmental impact, high energy efficiency, low economic investment, (...) and sustainability in the industry. This paper presents an economic model of a microgrid system containing the CCHP system and energy storage considering the energy coupling and conversion characteristics, the effective characteristics of each microsource, and energy storage unit is proposed. The random forest regression model was optimized by the gravitational search algorithm. The test results show that the GSA-RFR model improves prediction accuracy and reduces the generalization error. The detail of the MG network and the energy storage architecture connected to the other renewable energy sources is discussed. The mathematical formulation of energy coupling and energy flow of the MG network including wind turbines, photovoltaic, CCHP system, fuel cell, and energy storage devices are presented. The testing system has been analysed under load peak cutting and valley filling of energy utilization index, energy utilization rate, the heat pump, the natural gas consumption of the microgas turbine, and the energy storage unit. The energy efficiency costs were observed as 88.2% and 86.9% with heat pump and energy storage operation comparing with GSA-RFR-based operation costs as 93.2% and 93% in summer and winter season, respectively. The simulation results extended the rationality and economy of the proposed model. (shrink)

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to (...) have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions, The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interesting, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent from previous internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing and communicating. (shrink)

Recent experiments suggest that search direction causally affects the discounted valuation of delayed payoffs. Comparisons between options can increase individuals’ patience toward future payoff options, while searching within options instead promotes impatient choices. We further test the robustness and specificity of this relationship using a novel choice task. Here individuals choose between pairs of delayed payoffs instead of single delayed outcomes. We observe a relationship between search styles and temporal discounting that are the opposite of those previously reported. (...) Integrators – those who tend to compare attributes within alternatives – discount and choose more slowly than comparators – those who are more likely to compare between alternatives. This finding supports and augments the view that individuals’ search strategy is predictive of subsequent discount rates. In particular, the direction of this relationship is further modifiable based on the spatial layout and varying information within an individual’s decision-making environment. (shrink)

Sympatric speciation illustrates how natural and sexual selection may create new species in isolation without geographic barriers. However, recent genomic reanalyses of classic examples of sympatric speciation reveal complex histories of secondary gene flow from outgroups into the radiation. In contrast, the rich theoretical literature on this process distinguishes among a diverse range of models based on simple genetic histories and different types of reproductive isolating barriers. Thus, there is a need to revisit how to connect theoretical models of (...) sympatric speciation and their predictions to empirical case studies in the face of widespread gene flow. Here, theoretical differences among different types of sympatric speciation and speciation‐with‐gene‐flow models are reviewed and summarized, and genomic analyses are proposed for distinguishing which models apply to case studies based on the timing and function of adaptive introgression. Investigating whether secondary gene flow contributed to reproductive isolation is necessary to test whether predictions of theory are ultimately borne out in nature. (shrink)

Network reconfiguration is one of the most effective methods to reduce line power loss in the distribution system, which causes higher losses than the other parts of the power system. This paper proposes a modified symbiotic organisms search algorithm to solve the NR problem. For the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of MSOS, the mutualism and parasitism strategies of the original symbiotic organisms search have been modified to create better new solutions. In the mutualism strategy, the so-far best (...) solution is updated immediately as soon as new solutions are created. In the parasitism strategy, the update is only implemented for the first half of control variables, whereas another half still remains unchanged. The comparison results between MSOS and SOS on twenty-five benchmark functions and different scales of test distribution systems with 14, 33, 69, and 119 nodes show that the improvement level of MSOS over SOS is significant with higher success rates and better quality of gained solutions. Similarly, MSOS also reaches better results than other methods in the literature. Consequently, MSOS can be a favorable method for determining the most appropriate configurations for the distribution systems. (shrink)

Heuristic programming was the first area in which AI methods were tested. The favourite case-studies were fairly simple toyproblems, such as cryptarithmetic, games, such as checker or chess, and formal problems, such as logic or geometry theorem-proving. These problems are well-defined, roughly speaking, at least in comparison to real-life problems, and as such have played the role of Drosophila in early AI. In this chapter I will investigate the origins of heuristic programming and the shift to more knowledge-based and (...) real-life problem solving. (shrink)

IntroductionHearing loss in adults has a pervasive impact on health and well-being. Its effects on everyday listening and communication can directly influence participation across multiple spheres of life. These impacts, however, remain poorly assessed within clinical settings. Whilst various tests and questionnaires that measure listening and communication abilities are available, there is a lack of consensus about which measures assess the factors that are most relevant to optimising auditory rehabilitation. This study aimed to map current measures used in published studies (...) to evaluate listening skills needed for oral communication in adults with hearing loss.MethodsA scoping review was conducted using systematic searches in Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science and Google Scholar to retrieve peer-reviewed articles that used one or more linguistic-based measure necessary to oral communication in adults with hearing loss. The range of measures identified and their frequency where charted in relation to auditory hierarchies, linguistic domains, health status domains, and associated neuropsychological and cognitive domains.Results9121 articles were identified and 2579 articles that reported on 6714 discrete measures were included for further analysis. The predominant linguistic-based measure reported was word or sentence identification in quiet. In contrast, discourse-based measures were used in 2.7% of the articles included. Of the included studies, 36.6% used a self-reported instrument purporting to measures of listening for communication. Consistent with previous studies, a large number of self-reported measures were identified, but 60.4% of these measures were used in only one study and 80.7% were cited five times or fewer.DiscussionCurrent measures used in published studies to assess listening abilities relevant to oral communication target a narrow set of domains. Concepts of communicative interaction have limited representation in current measurement. The lack of measurement consensus and heterogeneity amongst the assessments limit comparisons across studies. Furthermore, extracted measures rarely consider the broader linguistic, cognitive and interactive elements of communication. Consequently, existing measures may have limited clinical application if assessing the listening-related skills required for communication in daily life, as experienced by adults with hearing loss. (shrink)

In an era marked by rapid information flows, search engine use often precedes online exploration. Search engines like Google function through reliance on over 200 signals that fine tune consumer behavior and provide ordered results. This process "adds a little something extra" to the idea of results ordered by pure conceptual relationships between keywords and phrases, and may stifle critical reflection. The search interface we test, ThoughtShuffler, designed using principles of Gordon Pask's cybernetics, reorders Google's results (...) class='Hi'>based on the degree to which they contain varied co-occurring keywords both inputted by the user, and suggested by the tool; giving preference to sources that may pique the curiosity of the user to explore other sources and critically analyze them. We conducted an experimental mixed methods study to analyze argumentative essays written by 39 adult participants using ThoughtShuffler and Google, about universal and privatized healthcare models. We used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool to calculate word frequencies for emotional tone, and moralization/argumentation in the essays. We analyze these dimensions owing to the strong ties between morality, emotion, and critical thinking. Through t-tests of LIWC scores, and narrative inquiry of essays with high anger and moralization frequencies, we firstly found essays using ThoughtShuffler were marked by lower levels of anger-related words and less frustration related to the limitations of universal and privatized healthcare. Secondly, we found that the essays written using ThoughtShuffler contained more morality-related words, and featured more humanistic moral rationale about why a certain model of healthcare would be more viable. We suggest that tools like ThoughtShuffler, through their capacity to spur user's critical thinking and concept development, may contribute towards creating an informationally healthy society. (shrink)

When searching for concepts in memory—as in the verbal fluency task of naming all the animals one can think of—people appear to explore internal mental representations in much the same way that animals forage in physical space: searching locally within patches of information before transitioning globally between patches. However, the definition of the patches being searched in mental space is not well specified. Do we search by activating explicit predefined categories and recall items from within that category, or do (...) we activate and recall a connected sequence of individual items without using categorical information, with each item recalled leading to the retrieval of an associated item in a stream, or both? Using semantic representations in a search of associative memory framework and data from the animal fluency task, we tested competing hypotheses based on associative and categorical search models. Associative, but not categorical, patch transitions took longer to make than position-matched productions, suggesting that categorical transitions were not true transitions. There was also clear evidence of associative search even within categorical patch boundaries. Furthermore, most individuals' behavior was best explained by an associative search model without the addition of categorical information. Thus, our results support a search process that does not use categorical information, but for which patch boundaries shift with each recall and local search is well described by a random walk in semantic space, with switches to new regions of the semantic space when the current region is depleted. (shrink)

The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration achieved the first ‘direct detection’ of gravitational waves in 2015, opening a new “window” for observing the universe. Since this first detection (‘GW150914’), dozens of detections have followed, mostly produced by binary black hole mergers. However, the theory-ladenness of the LIGO-Virgo methods for observing these events leads to a potentially-vicious circularity, where general relativistic assumptions may serve to mask phenomena that are inconsistent with general relativity (GR). Under such circumstances, the fact that GR can ‘save the phenomena’ (...) may be an artifact of theory-laden methodology.This paper examines several ways that the LIGO-Virgo observations are used in theory and hypothesis testing, despite this circularity problem. First, despite the threat of vicious circularity, these experiments succeed in testing GR. Indeed, early tests of GR using GW150914 are best understood as a response to the threat of theory-ladenness and circularity. Each test searches for evidence that LIGO-Virgo’s theory-laden methods are biasing their overall conclusions. The failure to find evidence of this places constraints on deviations from the predictions of GR. Second, these observations provide a basis for studying astrophysical and cosmological processes, especially through analyses of populations of events. As gravitational-wave astrophysics transitions into mature science, constraints from early tests of GR provide a scaffolding for these population-based studies. I further characterize this transition in terms of its increasing connectedness to other parts of astrophysics and the prominence of reasoning about selection effects and other systematics in drawing inferences from observations.Overall, this paper analyses the ways that theory and hypothesis testing operate in gravitational-wave astrophysics as it gains maturity. In particular, I show how these tests build on one another in order to mitigate a circularity problem at the heart of the observations. (shrink)

This study gathered preliminary baseline data on the moral development of journalists using the Defining Issues Test, an instrument based on Kohlberg's 6 stages. Results show that a sample of journalists scored 4th highest among professionals tested using the DIT. The journalists ranked behind seminarians/philosophers, medical students, and physicians but above dental students, nurses, graduate students, undergraduate college students, veterinary students, and adults in general. No significant differences were found between various groups of journalists, including men and women, and (...) broadcast and print journalists. The journalists in the study scored significantly higher on the 3 journalism-specific dilemmas than on 3 nonjournalism dilemmas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Genetic Testing and Genetic ScreeningPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)In recent years there has been an enormous expansion in the knowledge that may be gleaned from the testing of an individual's genetic material to predict present or future disability or disease either for oneself or one's offspring. The Human Genome Project, which is currently mapping the entire human gene system, is identifying progressively more genetic sequencing information (see Scope (...) Note 17, The Human Genome Project). Information obtained from genetic testing raises ethical and legal questions about its uses by society. The ethical dilemmas were foreseen two decades ago by bioethicists who asked whether questionable applications could stop "legitimate pursuits" (IV, Gaylin 1972) and whether genetic disease might come to be viewed as "transmissible" in the sense of being contagious (IV, Veatch 1974).Not only has knowledge expanded, but the practice of genetic testing and screening has greatly increased as well. For example, in the case of testing for cystic fibrosis (CF), the U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) estimates that instances of screening jumped from 9310 tests in 1991 to 63,000 tests in 1992 (I, OTA [Cystic Fibrosis] 1992). In addition, the OTA estimates that within the next few years, the six million women who become pregnant each year routinely will be informed of available CF carrier tests (I, OTA [Cystic Fibrosis] 1992).Following the recent identification of a gene linked to breast cancer, Dr. Francis Sellers Collins, director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, said that "it is not inconceivable that every woman in America may want to be screened for this gene. The economic, ethical, and counseling issues will be very daunting." Dr. Collins opines that in the near future physical examinations for 18-year-olds will include DNA testing for diseases with genetic components and that physicians, in the interests of preventive medicine, will make risk-based recommendations for a healthy life-style (IV, Breo 1993). The U.S. President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research predicted as early as 1983 that before the end of the century genetic screening and counseling would become major components of both public health and individual medical care (I, U.S. President's Commission 1983). [End Page 333]The OTA defines genetic testing as "the use of specific assays to determine the genetic status of individuals already suspected to be at high risk for a particular inherited condition. The terms genetic test, genetic assay, and genetic analysis are used interchangeably to mean the actual laboratory examination of samples." In contrast, genetic screening usually uses the same assays employed for genetic testing but is distinguished from genetic testing by its target population (I, OTA [Genetic Monitoring] 1990). The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defines screening as the systematic search of populations for persons with latent, early, or asymptomatic disease (III, NAS 1975). Some of the literature annotated for this Scope Note appears to use the terms "testing" and "screening" interchangeably.Philip Boyle of the Hastings Center points out that the language used to describe genetic variation is important and asks what words should be used: "Defects, flaws, deleterious genes, disorders, or the more neutral conditions? Using words such as normal—and its corollary, abnormal—is likely to foster stigmatization and discrimination" (III, Genetic Grammar, Boyle 1992).Areas of focus in genetic testing include: prenatal diagnosis, newborn screening, carrier screening, forensic screening, and susceptibility screening.Prenatal diagnosis discerns whether a fetus is at risk for various identifiable genetic diseases or traits. Prenatal diagnosis is made using amniotic fluid, fetal cells, and fetal or maternal blood cells obtained during amniocentesis testing; alpha fetoprotein assays or chorionic villus sampling; or ultrasound tomography, which creates fetal images on a screen. Another method, known as fetoscopy, uses a camera on a needle inserted in the uterus to view the fetus. Since prenatal screening began in 1966 (I, U.S. President's Commission 1983), the number of metabolic defects and genetic disorders that can be diagnosed prenatally has expanded greatly. There is also discussion of requiring testing for parents who are participating in an in vitro fertilization program and are at genetic... (shrink)

Heuristic programming was the first area in which AI methods were tested. The favourite case-studies were fairly simple toy- problems, such as cryptarithmetic, games, such as checker or chess, and formal problems, such as logic or geometry theorem-proving. These problems are well-defined, roughly speaking, at least in comparison to real-life problems, and as such have played the role of Drosophila in early AI. In this chapter I will investigate the origins of heuristic programming and the shift to more knowledge-based (...) and real-life problem solving. (shrink)

The multiple detections of gravitational waves by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), operated by Caltech and MIT, have been acclaimed as confirming Einstein's prediction, a century ago, that gravitational waves propagating as ripples in spacetime would be detected. Yunes and Pretorius (2009) investigate whether LIGO's template-based searches encode fundamental assumptions, especially the assumption that the background theory of general relativity is an accurate description of the phenomena detected in the search. They construct the parametrized post-Einsteinian (ppE) framework (...) in response, which broadens those assumptions and allows for wider testing under more flexible assumptions. Their methods are consistent with work on confirmation and testing found in Carnap (1936), Hempel (1969), and Stein (1992, 1994), with the following principles in common: that confirmation is distinct from testing, and that, counterintuitively, revising a theory's formal basis can make it more broadly empirically testable. These views encourage a method according to which theories can be made abstract, to define families of general structures for the purpose of testing. With the development of the ppE framework and related approaches, multi-messenger astronomy is a catalyst for deep reasoning about the limits and potential of the theoretical framework of general relativity. (shrink)

The first brief description is given of a project aimed at searching for the neural correlates of consciousness through computer simulation. The underlying model is based on the known circuitry of the mammalian nervous system, the neuronal groups of which are approximated as binary composite units. The simulated nervous system includes just two senses - hearing and touch - and it drives a set of muscles that serve vocalisation, feeding and bladder control. These functions were chosen because of their (...) relevance to the earliest stages of human life, and the simulation has been given the name CyberChild. The system's pain receptors respond to a sufficiently low milk level in the stomach, if there is simultaneously a low level of blood sugar, and also to a full bladder and an unchanged diaper. It is believed that it may be possible to infer the presence of consciousness in the simulation through observations of CyberChild's behaviour, and from the monitoring of its ability to ontogenetically acquire novel reflexes. The author has suggested that this ability is the crucial evolutionary advantage of possessing consciousness. The project is still in its very early stages, and although no suggestion of consciousness has yet emerged, there appears to be no fundamental reason why consciousness could not ultimately develop and be observed. (shrink)

Informed by a search of the literature about the usage of genetic testing information (GTI) by insurance companies, this paper presents a practical ethical analysis of several distinct public policy options that might be used to govern or constrain GTI usage by insurance providers. As medical research advances and the extension to the Human Genome Project (2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/human_genome_project_-_write) moves to its fullness over the next decade, such research efforts will allow the full synthesis of human DNA to be (...) connected to predictive health dispositions. As testing costs fall, there will be ever more pressure for citizens to disclose GTI. Genetic testing information is integral to future medical care because it can be used to better assess individually tailored medical therapies as well as to allow a more informed risk analysis by the insurance industry, which in some countries such as the USA underwrites a majority of citizen medical expenses. As discussed in this examination, the revelation of people’s uniquely personal GTI to insurers has enormous societal implications. The major contribution of the paper is to offer policy makers and concerned citizens a nuanced articulation of the basic options to regulate GTI, with a special consideration for ethical fairness and equity. As genetic-based medicine blossoms and pressures to reduce healthcare costs increase, there will be an ever greater impetus for countries to revisit their genetic testing policies. Organizations and policy makers striving to create GTI oversights perceived to be both “fair and effective” need to be aware of the ethical perspectives discussed in this paper. (shrink)

Modeling law search and retrieval as prediction problems has recently emerged as a predominant approach in law intelligence. Focusing on the law article retrieval task, we present a deep learning framework named LamBERTa, which is designed for civil-law codes, and specifically trained on the Italian civil code. To our knowledge, this is the first study proposing an advanced approach to law article prediction for the Italian legal system based on a BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) learning framework, (...) which has recently attracted increased attention among deep learning approaches, showing outstanding effectiveness in several natural language processing and learning tasks. We define LamBERTa models by fine-tuning an Italian pre-trained BERT on the Italian civil code or its portions, for law article retrieval as a classification task. One key aspect of our LamBERTa framework is that we conceived it to address an extreme classification scenario, which is characterized by a high number of classes, the few-shot learning problem, and the lack of test query benchmarks for Italian legal prediction tasks. To solve such issues, we define different methods for the unsupervised labeling of the law articles, which can in principle be applied to any law article code system. We provide insights into the explainability and interpretability of our LamBERTa models, and we present an extensive experimental analysis over query sets of different type, for single-label as well as multi-label evaluation tasks. Empirical evidence has shown the effectiveness of LamBERTa, and also its superiority against widely used deep-learning text classifiers and a few-shot learner conceived for an attribute-aware prediction task. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple (...) spatial filters at early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

The feature selection (FS) process has an essential effect in solving many problems such as prediction, regression, and classification to get the optimal solution. For solving classification problems, selecting the most relevant features of a dataset leads to better classification accuracy with low training time. In this work, a hybrid binary crow search algorithm (BCSA) based quasi-oppositional (QO) method is proposed as an FS method based on wrapper mode to solve a classification problem. The QO method was (...) employed in tuning the value of flight length in the BCSA which is controlling the ability of the crows to find the optimal solution. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, four benchmark datasets have been used which are human intestinal absorption, HDAC8 inhibitory activity (IC50), P-glycoproteins, and antimicrobial. Accordingly, the experimental results are discussed and compared against other standard algorithms based on the accuracy rate, the average number of selected features, and running time. The results have proven the robustness of the proposed method relied on the high obtained value of accuracy (84.93–95.92%), G-mean (0.853–0.971%), and average selected features (4.36–11.8) with a relatively low computational time. Moreover, to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, Friedman test was used which declared that the performance supremacy of the proposed BCSA-QO with four datasets was very evident against BCSA and CSA by selecting the minimum relevant features and producing the highest accuracy classification rate. The obtained results verify the usefulness of the proposed method (BCSA-QO) in the FS with classification in terms of high classification accuracy, a small number of selected features, and low computational time. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to use a formal approach to the Turing test. This approach is based on a tool developed within Inferential Erotetic Logic, so called erotetic search scenarios. First, I reconstruct the setting of the Turing test proposed by A.M. Turing. On this basis, I build a model of the test using erotetic search scenarios framework. I use the model to investigate one of the most interesting issues of the TT setting – the (...) interrogator’s perspective and role in the test. (shrink)

The current strategy of searching for an effective treatment for COVID-19 relies mainly on repurposing existing therapies developed to target other diseases. Conflicting results have emerged in regard to the efficacy of several tested compounds but later results were negative. The number of conducted and ongoing trials and the urgent need for a treatment pose the risk that false-positive results will be incorrectly interpreted as evidence for treatments’ efficacy and a ground for drug approval. Our purpose is twofold. First, we (...) show that the number of drug-repurposing trials can explain the false-positive results. Second, we assess the evidence for treatments’ efficacy from the perspective of evidential pluralism and argue that considering mechanistic evidence is particularly needed in cases when the evidence from clinical trials is conflicting or of low quality. Our analysis is an application of the program of Evidence Based Medicine Plus to the drug repurposing trials for COVID. Our study shows that if decision-makers applied EBM+, authorizing the use of ineffective treatments would be less likely. We analyze the example of trials assessing the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and mechanistic evidence in favor of and against its therapeutic power to draw a lesson for decision-makers and drug agencies on how excessive hypothesis testing can lead to spurious findings and how studying negative mechanistic evidence can be helpful in discriminating genuine from spurious results. (shrink)

The tree-based data structure of -tree for propositional formulas is introduced in an improved and optimised form. The -trees allow a compact representation for negation normal forms as well as for a number of reduction strategies in order to consider only those occurrences of literals which are relevant for the satisfiability of the input formula. These reduction strategies are divided into two subsets (meaning- and satisfiability-preserving transformations) and can be used to decrease the size of a negation normal form (...) A at (at most) quadratic cost. The reduction strategies are aimed at decreasing the number of required branchings and, therefore, these strategies allow to limit the size of the search space for the SAT problem. (shrink)

Seventy-three children between 6 and 7 years of age were presented with a problem having ambiguous subgoal ordering. Performance in this task showed reliable fingerprints: a non-monotonic dependence of performance as a function of the distance between the beginning and the end-states of the problem, very high levels of performance when the first move was correct, and states in which accuracy of the first move was significantly below chance. These features are consistent with a non-Markov planning agent, with an inherently (...) inertial decision process, and that uses heuristics and partial problem knowledge to plan its actions. We applied a statistical framework to fit and test the quality of a proposed planning model. Our framework allows us to parse out independent contributions to problem-solving based on the construction of the value function and on general mechanisms of the search process in the tree of solutions. We show that the latter are correlated with children's performance on an independent measure of planning, while the former is highly domain specific. (shrink)

: Our paper discusses the epistemic attitudes of particle physicists on the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. It is based on questionnaires and interviews made shortly before and shortly after the discovery in 2012. We show, to begin with, that the discovery of a Standard Model Higgs boson was less expected than is sometimes assumed. Once the new particle was shown to have properties consistent with SM expectations – albeit with significant experimental uncertainties –, (...) there was a broad agreement that ‘a’ Higgs boson had been found. Physicists adopted a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they treated the particle as a SM Higgs boson and tried to establish its properties with higher precision; on the other hand, they searched for any hints of physics beyond the SM. This motivates our first philosophical thesis: the Higgs discovery, being of fundamental importance and establishing a new kind of particle, represented a crucial experiment if one interprets this notion in an appropriate sense. By embedding the LHC into the tradition of previous precision experiments and the experimental strategies thus established, underdetermination and confirmational holism are kept at bay. Second, our case study suggests that criteria of theory preference should be understood as epistemic and pragmatic values that have to be weighed in factual research practice. The Higgs discovery led to a shift from pragmatic to epistemic values as regards the mechanisms of electroweak symmetry breaking. Complex criteria, such as naturalness, combine epistemic and pragmatic different values, but are coherently applied by the community. (shrink)

A modified visual search task demonstrates that humans are very good at resuming a search after it has been momentarily interrupted. This is shown by exceptionally rapid response time to a display that reappears after a brief interruption, even when an entirely different visual display is seen during the interruption and two different visual searches are performed simultaneously. This rapid resumption depends on the stability of the visual scene and is not due to display or response anticipations. These (...) results are consistent with the existence of an iterative hypothesis-testing mechanism that compares information stored in short-term memory (the perceptual hypothesis) with information about the display (the sensory pattern). In this view, rapid resumption occurs because a hypothesis based on a previous glance of the scene can be tested very rapidly in a subsequent glance, given that the initial hypothesis-generation step has already been performed. (shrink)

This research proposes a modified metaheuristic optimization algorithm, named as improved stochastic fractal search, which is formed based on the integration of the quasiopposition-based learning and chaotic local search schemes into the original SFS algorithm for solving the optimal capacitor placement in radial distribution networks. The test problem involves the determination of the optimal number, location, and size of fixed and switched capacitors at different loading conditions so that the network total yearly cost is minimized with (...) simultaneous fulfillment of operating constraints. Also, the hourly on/off scheduling plans of switched shunt capacitors considering a modified cost objective function are obtained. The proposed ISFS algorithm has been tested on two IEEE 69-bus and 119-bus RDNs and a practical 152-bus RDN. For clarifying the effectiveness and validation of the ISFS, the simulated results have been compared with those of other previously utilized solution approaches in the literature as well as the original SFS. From result comparison, the proposed ISFS outperforms other previous approaches regarding solution quality and statistical performance for the compared cases, especially in the complex and large-scale networks. Notably, compared with the original SFS, the proposed ISFS shows a significantly better performance in all the tested cases. (shrink)

The paper aims at analyzing Lambert’s conception of empirical knowledge that is part of scientific learning. Indeed, in the Neues Organon, he claims that science is obtained with the help of both a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Lambert’s originality lies on the application of the analytic and synthetic methods of reasoning, which are traditionally used in formal disciplines, to the realm of experience. Transforming common knowledge into scientific a posteriori knowledge is mainly based on the employment of such (...) demonstrative methods. This allows Lambert to introduce some important theoretical tools in his theory of experience, in particular about the search for the conditions of observations and experimentations as well as the establishment of hypothesis. For Lambert, the synthetic method in empirical deductions requires the use of conjectures and probable principles. (shrink)

Smart lighting systems utilize advanced data, control, and communication technologies and allow users to control lights in new ways. However, achieving user comfort, which should be the focus of smart lighting research, is challenging. One cause is the passive infrared sensor that inaccurately detects human presence to control artificial lighting. We propose a novel classification-integrated moving average model method to solve the problem. The moving average increases the Pearson correlation coefficient of motion sensor features to human presence. The classification model (...) is for a smart lighting intelligent control based on these features. Several classification models are proposed and compared, namely, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, decision tree, näive Bayes, and ensemble voting. We build an Internet of things system to collect movement data. It consists of a PIR sensor, a NodeMCU microcontroller, a Raspberry Pi-based platform, a relay, and LED lighting. With a sampling rate of 10 seconds and a collection period of 7 days, the system achieved 56852 data records. In the PC test, movement data from the PIR sensor has a correlation coefficient of 0.36 to attendance, while the MA correlation to attendance can reach 0.56. In an exhaustive search of an optimum classification model, KNN has the best and the most robust performance, with an accuracy of 99.8%. It is more accurate than direct light control decisions based on motion sensors, which are 67.6%. Our proposed method can increase the correlation value of movement features on attendance. At the same time, an accurate and robust KNN classification model is applicable for human presence-based smart lighting control. (shrink)

This paper applies a proposed modified stochastic fractal search algorithm (MSFS) for dealing with all constraints of optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) and finding optimal solutions for three different cases including power loss optimization, voltage deviation optimization, and L-index optimization. The proposed MSFS method is newly constructed in the paper by modifying three new solution update mechanisms on standard stochastic fractal search algorithm (SSFS). The first modification is to keep only one formula and abandon one formula in the (...) diffusion process while the second modification and the third modification are used in the first update and the second update. In two updates of SSFS, solutions with low quality are updated with high probability while other solutions with high quality do not get chances to be updated. This manner results in the fact that some promising solutions around the high quality solutions can be missed. In order to tackle this restriction, the second modification of MSFS is to newly update the worst solutions in the first update and the best solutions in the second update. In the third modification, all existing formulas of SSFS in the two updates are abandoned and the same new proposed technique is used for updating such solutions in two updates. Compared to SSFS, the three modifications can bring advantages to MSFS such as using smaller number of produced solutions per iteration, spending shorter execution time, finding better optimal solutions, and owning more stable search ability. Furthermore, the proposed method also sees its effectiveness and robustness over SSFS by testing on IEEE 30-bus system and IEEE 118-bus system with three different single objectives for each system. The proposed method can find less minimum, average, and maximum for all the cases in addition to faster search speed. Besides, the proposed method is also compared to other methods such as PSO-based method group, GA-based method group, DE-based method group, and other recent methods. Result comparisons also indicate that the proposed method can be more efficient than almost all these methods with respect to less minimum and smaller values of control parameters. As a result, evaluation of the performance of the proposed method is that it should be used for seeking solutions of ORPD problem. (shrink)

Many studies of the labour market spatial mismatch rely on the deductivenomological model of causation to test the theory that low-skilled, inner-city residents have been isolated from the knowledge of job opportunities by the suburbanization of jobs. The logic of this approach follows the deductivenomological model of explanation which establishes causation by measuring the constant conjunctions between ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. As an alternative, I have used a realist approach to the study of the labour market spatial mismatch that uses a (...) ‘causal-explanatory’ method. This approach entails the qualitative description of the causal mechanism in order to discover and conceptualize its causal properties. The results suggest that the spatial mismatch theory could be refined in order to accommodate the finding that workers in excluded ghettos do not necessarily rely solely on local social networks to find out about job vacancies. Instead, workers with employment experience have strong workplace-based social networks. Since employers recruit workers by relying on referrals from trusted workers, these workplacebased social networks can put job seekers at the front of the hiring queue, regardless of where they live. (shrink)

When we learn how to throw darts we adjust how we throw based on where the darts stick. Much of skill learning is computationally similar in that we learn using feedback obtained after the completion of individual actions. We can formalize such tasks as a search problem; among the set of all possible actions, find the action that leads to the highest reward. In such cases our actions have two objectives: we want to best utilize what we already (...) know (exploitation), but we also want to learn to be more successful in the future (exploration). Here we tested how participants learn movement trajectories where feedback is provided as a monetary reward that depends on the chosen trajectory. We mathematically derived the optimal search policy for our experiment using decision theory. The search behavior of participants is well predicted by an ideal searcher model that optimally combines exploration and exploitation. (shrink)

This paper proposes an agent community based information retrieval method, which uses agent communities to manage and look up information related to users. An agent works as a delegate of its user and searches for information that the user wants by communicating with other agents. The communication between agents is carried out in a peer-to-peer computing architecture. In order to retrieve information related to a user query, an agent uses two histories : a query/retrieved document history(Q/RDH) and a query/sender (...) agent history(Q/SAH). The former is a list of pairs of a query and retrieved documents, where the queries were sent by the agent itself. The latter is a list of pairs of a query and sender agents and shows ``who sent what query to the agent''. This is useful to find a new information source. Making use of the Q/SAH is expected to cause a collaborative filtering effect, which gradually creates virtual agent communities, where agents with the same interests stay together. Our hypothesis is that a virtual agent community reduces communication loads to perform a search. As an agent receives more queries, then more links to new knowledge are achieved. From this behavior, a ``give and take''(or positive feedback) effect for agents seems to emerge. We implemented this method with Multi-Agents Kodama which has been developed in our laboratory, and conducted preliminary experiments to test the hypothesis. The empirical results showed that the method was much more efficient than a naive method employing 'broadcast' techniques only to look up a target agent. (shrink)

Algorithms for approximate Bayesian inference, such as those based on sampling (i.e., Monte Carlo methods), provide a natural source of models of how people may deal with uncertainty with limited cognitive resources. Here, we consider the idea that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) may be usefully modeled in terms of the number of samples, or “particles,” available to perform inference. To test this idea, we focus on two recent experiments that report positive associations between WMC and two (...) distinct aspects of categorization performance: the ability to learn novel categories, and the ability to switch between different categorization strategies (“knowledge restructuring”). In favor of the idea of modeling WMC as a number of particles, we show that a single model can reproduce both experimental results by varying the number of particles—increasing the number of particles leads to both faster category learning and improved strategy‐switching. Furthermore, when we fit the model to individual participants, we found a positive association between WMC and best‐fit number of particles for strategy switching. However, no association between WMC and best‐fit number of particles was found for category learning. These results are discussed in the context of the general challenge of disentangling the contributions of different potential sources of behavioral variability. (shrink)

Collision-free autonomous path planning under a dynamic and uncertainty vineyard environment is the most important issue which needs to be resolved firstly in the process of improving robotic harvesting manipulator intelligence. We present and apply energy optimal and artificial potential field to develop a path planning method for six degree of freedom serial harvesting robot under dynamic uncertain environment. Firstly, the kinematical model of Six-DOF serial manipulator was constructed by using the Denavit-Hartenberg method. The model of obstacles was defined by (...) axis-aligned bounding box, and then the configuration space of harvesting robot was described by combining the obstacles and arm space of robot. Secondly, the harvesting sequence in path planning was computed by energy optimal method, and the anticollision path points were automatically generated based on the artificial potential field and sampling searching method. Finally, to verify and test the proposed path planning algorithm, a virtual test system based on virtual reality was developed. After obtaining the space coordinates of grape picking point and anticollision bounding volume, the path points were drew out by the proposed method. 10 times picking tests for grape anticollision path planning were implemented on the developed simulation system, and the success rate was up to 90%. The results showed that the proposed path planning method can be used to the harvesting robot. (shrink)

This paper mainly analyzes the theories related to the financial risk of the company and combines the principles of principal component analysis, particle swarm optimization algorithm, and artificial neural network to derive the financial risk index system of the company. To improve the accuracy of financial risk prediction, principal component analysis and particle swarm algorithm are applied to optimize the BP neural network model, the input data of the prediction model is improved, and the optimal initial weights and thresholds are (...) given to the BP neural network by using particle swarm algorithm search, whereby the financial risk prediction model of particle swarm optimization BP neural network is constructed. The empirical results show that the model constructed by BP neural network not only has a high accuracy rate for static financial risk evaluation but also has a better prediction effect. After training and testing, the BP neural network-based enterprise financial risk evaluation model can accurately determine the existing financial situation of enterprise financial management and has a good prediction effect. Our research method is a fusion of the processing of the two methods, which belongs to the first integration of results. (shrink)

The nature of intelligence and how it can be measured has occupied psychologists, educationalists, biologists and philosophers for hundreds of years. However, there has been little investigation into the rise of the traditional dominant educational ideology that intelligence and IQ have innate limits and are unchanging and unchangeable. This book traces the roots of this mind set back to early puritan communities on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing parallels between puritan dogma and the development of the traditional curricula and (...) selection processes that are still firmly embedded in school practice today. Drawing on the work of Galton, Pearson, Burt, Goddard, Terman and others in his search for the truth about intelligence testing, John White looks at the personal histories and socialised religious backgrounds of these key psychologists and casts an entirely new light on schooling in Britain and the USA in modern times. This work also shows how we can transcend this heritage and base our educational system on values and practices more in tune with the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this paper, the most common pepper noise in grayscale image noise is investigated in depth in the median filtering algorithm, and the improved median filtering algorithm, adaptive switching median filtering algorithm, and adaptive polar median filtering algorithm are applied to the OTSU algorithm. Two improved OTSU algorithms such as the adaptive switched median filter-based OTSU algorithm and the polar adaptive median filter-based OTSU algorithm are obtained. The experimental results show that the algorithm can better cope with grayscale (...) images contaminated by pretzel noise, and the segmented grayscale images are not only clear but also can better retain the detailed features of grayscale images. A genetic algorithm is a kind of search algorithm with high adaptive, fast operation speed, and good global space finding ability, and it will have a good effect when applied to the threshold finding of the OTSU algorithm. However, the traditional genetic algorithm will fall into the local optimal solution in different degrees when finding the optimal threshold. The advantages of the two interpolation methods proposed in this paper are that one is the edge grayscale image interpolation algorithm using OTSU threshold adaptive segmentation and the other is the edge grayscale image interpolation algorithm using local adaptive threshold segmentation, which can accurately divide the grayscale image region according to the characteristics of different grayscale images and effectively improve the loss of grayscale image edge detail information and jagged blur caused by the classical interpolation algorithm. The visual effect of grayscale images is enhanced by selecting grayscale images from the standard grayscale image test set and interpolating them with bilinear interpolation, bucolic interpolation, NEDI interpolation, and FEOI interpolation for interpolation simulation validation. The subjective evaluation and objective evaluation, as well as the running time, are compared, respectively, showing that the method of this paper can effectively improve the quality of grayscale image interpolation. (shrink)

Although theoretical results for several algorithms in many application domains were presented during the last decades, not all algorithms can be analyzed fully theoretically. Experimentation is necessary. The analysis of algorithms should follow the same principles and standards of other empirical sciences. This article focuses on stochastic search algorithms, such as evolutionary algorithms or particle swarm optimization. Stochastic search algorithms tackle hard real-world optimization problems, e.g., problems from chemical engineering, airfoil optimization, or bioinformatics, where classical methods from mathematical (...) optimization fail. Nowadays statistical tools that are able to cope with problems like small sample sizes, non-normal distributions, noisy results, etc. are developed for the analysis of algorithms. Although there are adequate tools to discuss the statistical significance of experimental data, statistical significance is not scientifically meaningful per se. It is necessary to bridge the gap between the statistical significance of an experimental result and its scientific meaning. We will propose some ideas on how to accomplish this task based on Mayo's learning model. (shrink)

Because of the lack of interaction between seeking mode cats and tracking mode cats in cat swarm optimization, its convergence speed and convergence accuracy are affected. An information interaction strategy is designed between seeking mode cats and tracking mode cats to improve the convergence speed of the CSO. To increase the diversity of each cat, a top-N learning strategy is proposed during the tracking process of tracking mode cats to improve the convergence accuracy of the CSO. On ten standard test (...) functions, the average values, standard deviations, and optimal values of the proposed algorithm with different N values are compared with the original CSO algorithm and the adaptive cat swarm algorithm based on dynamic search. Experimental results show that the global search ability and the convergence speed of the proposed algorithm are significantly improved on all test functions. The proposed two strategies will improve the convergence accuracy and convergence speed of CSO greatly. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Touching TestAI and the Future of Human IntimacyMartha J. Reineke (bio)Each Friday, the New York Times publishes Love Letters, a compendium of articles on courtship. A recent story featured Melinda, a real estate agent, and Calvin, a human resources director.1 They had met at a market deli counter. On their first date, a lasagna dinner at Melinda's home, Calvin posed the question, "What are you looking for in (...) a man?" To his surprise, Melinda reached into her pocket and pulled out a two-page list, "Melinda's Husband Traits." Her 46-item list begins with "Christian, honor God, put Him first" and includes as entry number 37, "He likes to be touched and likes to touch me." Notwithstanding laudable features of Melinda's inventory, if David Levy, President of the International Computer Games Association and an expert on artificial intelligence (AI), is correct in his predictions, in the years ahead, women like Melinda who know exactly what they are looking for in a husband will desire something radically new: a robot. After all, artificial agents will soon possess or improve on every quality the romantically inclined previously have sought in a human partner. [End Page 123]Levi predicts robots will be preferred romantic partners by the middle of this century.2 Capable of providing erotic satisfaction and creating deep emotional bonds with human partners, these robots will be an achievable outcome of AI engineering that already has brought to market industrial and service robots, virtual pets, and caregiver robots for the elderly. Levi offers a research-based inventory of traits a robot will offer its human partner: kindness and understanding, a sense of humor, expressiveness, intelligence, and sociability.3 He pinpoints additional features that will facilitate romance: The ideal robot partner will elicit erotic attraction, give evidence of readiness for a serious relationship with its verbal assertions, and possess a capacity for mutual intimacy.4 Levi's argument is intentionally provocative, for he emphasizes the centrality of sex to future robot/human pairings, waxing rhapsodic about the performative superiority of robots to humans in the sexual act.5Elaborating on potential human love relationships with robots, Levi asserts that a robot will need to master imitation if a human is to want it as a romantic partner. Not only is imitation a central aspect of every human-to-human relationship, but also imitation has been identified by researchers as a crucial element in romantic desire.6 Levi states that human-to-human attraction is founded on similarities between prospective partners in appearance, personality, and social context. It is sustained only through what Levi calls "reciprocal liking."7 For romantic relationships between humans and robots to flourish, they too must engage in acts of reciprocal imitation.In highlighting the necessity of imitation in effective robot and human interactions, Levi draws close to René Girard's theory of "mimetic desire." According to Girard, imitation structures all "wanting,"8 delineating what we aspire to look like or hope to possess and determining what we value, take comfort in, or experience as a threat. Indeed, the individual is never the origin point of its desires. Each of us always desires mimetically—according to the desire of the other.9 As Scott Garrels confirms in Mimesis and Science, researchers studying imitation in developmental, comparative, and social psychology, as well as in neurophysiology and cognitive neuroscience, support Girard's claims: Imitation is fundamental in human life.10 Likewise, Girard concurs with Levi that romantic relationships are primary examples of imitative desire. As described by Girard in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, imitative behaviors form the romantic triangles that feature prominently in fiction: for example, Odette and the many men enchanted by her in Proust's In Search of Lost Time; Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla in Don Quixote; and Velchaninov and Troussotzki, along with Troussotzki's deceased wife and prospective fiancée, in Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband.11 [End Page 124]Notwithstanding similarities in Levi and Girard's views of imitation, they differ in a crucial respect. Only Girard acknowledges just how extraordinarily fraught mimesis can become. When imitators compete (e.g., for things, status, and experiences), they will contest... (shrink)

AimIn case of extremely rare diseases, case reports are often the only experience to draw from for evidence-based management. Carmi syndrome is a rare, mostly lethal combination of junctional epidermolysis bullosa and pyloric atresia. During an ethical board, there were differences in perception of mortality rate. We tested the hypothesis that the cumulative mortality of single case reports is lower than that of multiple case series.CaseA baby girl was born at 33 weeks gestation with Carmi syndrome. The treatment options (...) discussed in an interdisciplinary ethics board were a palliative approach versus surgical gastrojejunostomy. Because about one third of operated children described in case reports survived, we opted for surgical treatment. The patient died a painful death 4 weeks later.MethodsThe PubMed database was systematically searched for reports of Carmi syndrome. Single case reports were compared to case series in terms of outcome.ResultsA total of 102 cases of Carmi syndrome were identified in the literature. Mortality of single case reports was 17 out of 27 patients (63%), while that of case series was higher at 62 out of 74 patients (84%,p = 0.036).ConclusionsSelection and publication bias may lead to inflation of survival rates in single case reports because successful cases are more likely to be published in the literature. These biases may lead to inappropriately aggressive treatment in futile cases. Clinicians should be cautious when discussing prognosis and making decisions based on the cumulative experience of case reports of extremely rare or novel diseases. (shrink)

The original, prescientific Western belief that the mantis is a pious, helpful creature became a widely held explanation for the mantid's unique resting posture, and for one of its cryptic displays. This belief was a characteristic part of a broader discourse about nature in which ancient authority, religious beliefs, and superstition, but few original observations, mixed freely. Gradually, the belief in mantid gentleness and piousness became a commonplace through the continual retelling of the myths and superstitions surrounding this fascinating insect.By (...) the seventeenth century, a growing interest in observation had begun to replace blind reliance on established wisdom and ancient authority. However, the various young sciences to which the period gave rise did not progress equally, and neither did the subdisciplines within each scientific field; biology, especially entomology, was particularly slow to free itself from past beliefs and contemporary superstitions. In the specific case of the praying mantis, the situation may have been at its worst.Early observers of nature found evidence that seemed, at first, to disconfirm the well-established belief that mantids are gentle creatures. These few observers, faced with startling firsthand information about mantid voraciousness, created a new characterization of mantids as merciless predators and then often juxtaposed the two images in their descriptions. However, it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the two characterizations-gentleness versus cruelty— became reconciled.An amalgamation of these seemingly mutually exclusive characterizations was achieved by an interesting accommodation of each to the other. That is, while it could no longer be maintained that mantids are simply gentle insects, neither could it be accepted that they are all cruelty and viciousness. The melding of the two characterizations yielded a hybrid explanation which claimed that the praying mantis actually hastwo sides to its character! On the one hand, and like other creatures, mantids must nourish themselves, and do so quite reasonably by capturing small insects for food. However, even when “well nourished,” and without “the excuse of hunger,” their other, vicious side may surface; when this happens, the darkest of behaviours, cannibalism, is the result.To understand the remainder of the story one must pause to consider what had happened in the other sciences up to this point. In the mid-seventeenth century, professional scientific societies were established throughout Europe. The societies, and the various journals and periodicals that they produced or encouraged, represented an institutionalization of both science and its special, structured discourse. However, as we have stated, entomology lagged behind; and in the case of some insects, superstitions and anthropomorphisms did not fade from descriptions of their behavior for centuries to come.By the time the new scientific discourse was applied to mantids the creatures were already firmly shackled with a dual personality, and this assumption was never challenged. In fact, it was functionally impossible to disconfirm. Captures of small prey were considered part of the mantid's normal side; captures of large prey were considered part of the mantid's abnormal side. There was no alternative explanation.As luck would have it, by the time that the strictures of scientific discourse had tightened sufficiently to disallow the use of anthropomorphisms in the explanation of insect behavior, another acceptable explanation of mantid cannibalism became immediately available: cannibalism became part of mantid mating behavior. That is, the fundamental explanatory model remained unchanged; it was merely couched in more appropriate terms. The acceptance of this new explanation for cannibalism was virtually immediate and complete. For instance, no one ever asked the following questions: If the headless male remains able to mate as a putative precaution against female cannibalism, for what reason does the headless female remain able to fashion “a perfectly constructed ootheca”? Or: If female-on-male cannibalism plays a role in mating behavior, what role is played by genderindifferent cannibalism, especially that among immature mantids? The latter phenomena were simply ignored — they were just uninteresting artifacts of insect life. However, the grand logic of nature was immediately apparent in the headless male's ability to mate. The ruling theory, to use Chamberlin's term, had been able to accommodate itself to, and assimilate, the new scientific discourse. It remained unscathed.A persistent question posed by several historians of this particular topic has been, Why did not the results of Ken Roeder's experiments debunk the myth that males are regularly cannibalized by the females with which they mate? The reason, which we hope is now clear, is that there were two interdependent ruling theories operating here. If one accepts the argument that mantids' cannibalism is simply a normal part of their prey-catching behavior, then one attacks not only the theory that mantids have two separate predatory strategies, but also the more recent theory that mantids have evolved to be the ideal fly-catching machines. This second theory found its first confirming support in the centuries-old practice of feeding flies to captive mantids. Again, the disconfirming evidence of mantids eating prey of various sizes had no impact on the theory. Confirming observations were accepted: disconfirming observations were seen as anomalies.Additional confirmation of both ruling theories was garnered in experiments done in the mid-twentieth century. These experiments were based on the assumption that the original conceptualizations were correct, and consequently they did not test other hypotheses. The combined strength of the two theories is evidenced especially in the Raus' failure to account for the fact that their empirical observations were at odds with many of the conclusions that they drew, and in the fact that Roeder's work is still used to support the belief in the regularity of mating-related cannibalism despite the fact that Roeder, himself, argued the opposite. with both theories well entrenched, it is virtually impossible to promote an alternative theory of mantid behavior: namely, that mantids are generalized, opportunistic predators that manage to survivein spite of the fact that cannibalism sometimes occurs. (shrink)

As Internet sources provide information of varying quality, it is an indispensable prerequisite skill to evaluate the relevance and credibility of online information. Based on the assumption that competent individuals can use different properties of information to assess its relevance and credibility, we developed the EVON (evaluation ofonline information), an interactive computer-based test for university students. The developed instrument consists of eight items that assess the skill to evaluate online information in six languages. Within a simulated search (...) engine environment, students are requested to select the most relevant and credible link for a respective task. To evaluate the developed instrument, we conducted two studies: (1) a pre-study for quality assurance and observing the response process (cognitive interviews ofn= 8 students) and (2) a main study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the EVON and its relation to other variables (n= 152 students). The results of the pre-study provided first evidence for a theoretically sound test construction with regard to students’ item processing behavior. The results of the main study showed acceptable psychometric outcomes for a standardized screening instrument with a small number of items. The item design criteria affected the item difficulty as intended, and students’ choice to visit a website had an impact on their task success. Furthermore, the probability of task success was positively predicted by general cognitive performance and reading skill. Although the results uncovered a few weaknesses (e.g., a lack of difficult items), and the efforts of validating the interpretation of EVON outcomes still need to be continued, the overall results speak in favor of a successful test construction and provide first indication that the EVON assesses students’ skill in evaluating online information in search engine environments. (shrink)