The Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) is a rapidly evolving region that experiences significant changes in land use patterns over time. Analogous to other Indian cities, these transformations are particularly evident in the periphery of Chennai's urban core, where substantial land use shifts have occurred between 2001 and 2021. These changes were assessed utilizing LANDSAT 7 Thematic Mapper (TM), LANDSAT 5 Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) for the years 2001 and 2011, and LANDSAT 8 (OLI) for 2021. This study (...) employs unsupervised classification to investigate major land use/land cover alterations. Findings indicate that CMA has undergone substantial land use modifications over the past two decades. Notably, there has been a marked decline in open land and vegetation due to extensive reclamation for urban and commercial development. The results demonstrate that the area covered by open land and vegetation decreased by 70.23% and 4.56%, respectively, while the built-up area increased by 56%. The study also identified a pattern of urban expansion primarily along the GST road, OMR road, and Thirupati highway. The research further examines land use changes by creating buffer zones at distances of 500 meters, 1 km, 1.5 km, and 2 km. The detailed analysis, along with the spatio-temporal differentiation maps and tables generated through geospatial data, will be invaluable for understanding the growth dynamics of CMA. This information will also support the decision-making process for local planners, stakeholders, and academicians. (shrink)

Publication date: 26 January 2017 Source: Author: Edward Echidime Eke, Michael A. Oyinloye, Isaac Oluwadare Olamiju - African cities are experiencing uncontrolled expansion. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the impact of urban expansion on landuse types of Akure for the period of 1972 to 2009. In analyzing the u rban expansion of the cit y, 1972 MSS, 1986 Landsat Thematic TM and Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus images for 2002 and 2009 satellite image captured from googleearth website (...) were used in a post classification comparison analysis to map the spatial dynamics of landuse / land cover changes and identify the urban expansion of Akure. Questionnaire was also used to determine the factors responsible for the expansion of Akure. The findings showed a rapid expansion in the built-up are a of Akure from 1.00% in 1972 to 2.46% in 1986, 2.46% in1986 to 3.90% in 2002 with an annual growth rate of 10.63% and 3.66% due to increasing population of Akure within these periods respectively. Prediction made showed that the built-up of A kure would expand to 2.66 % in 2022. Th e study recommends review of the outdated 1980 master plan and development control mechanism that will guide the rapid expansion that had been accompanied by loss of vegetation in Akure. (shrink)

Perforation or gap formation in a vegetation is a major process in landscape transformation. The occurrence of gaps profoundly alters the microclimatical conditions in a vegetation. A method is proposed to quantify perforation by using the three main 2-D characteristics of the gaps: area, number and boundary length. New measures are developed by normalizing the observed values to the reference status of minimum and maximum perforation. As minimum perforation status, the presence of one single gap with area equal to the (...) map resolution is assumed. The new measures are combined using a 3-D Euclidean distance to visualize the process and to detect changes. The method is exemplified using a field case of gaps in a tropical terra firme rainforest at Tiputini, Ecuador. (shrink)

Image segmentation in land cover regions which are overlapping in satellite imagery, is one crucial challenge. To detect true belonging of one pixel becomes a challenging problem while classifying mixed pixels in overlapping regions. In current work, we propose one new approach for image segmentation using a hybrid algorithm of K-Means and Cellular Automata algorithms. This newly implemented unsupervised model can detect cluster groups using hybrid 2-Dimensional Cellular-Automata model based on K-Means segmentation approach. This approach detects different (...) class='Hi'>land use land cover areas in satellite imagery by existing K-Means algorithm. Since it is a discrete dynamical system, cellular automaton realizes uniform interconnecting cells containing states. In the second stage of current model, we experiment with a 2-dimensional cellular automata to rank allocations of pixels among different land-cover regions. The method is experimented on the watershed area of Ajoy river (India) and Salinas (California) data set with true class labels using two internal and four external validity indices. The segmented areas are then compared with existing FCM, DBSCAN and K-Means methods and verified with the ground truth. The statistical analysis results also show the superiority of the new method. (shrink)

The requirement of gauge invariance for the Schwinger-DeWitt equations, interpreted as a manifestly covariant quantum theory for the evolution of a system in spacetime, implies the existence of a five-dimensional pre-Maxwell field on the manifold of spacetime and “proper time” τ. The Maxwell theory is contained in this theory; integration of the field equations over τ restores the Maxwell equations with the usual interpretation of the sources. Following Schwinger's techniques, we study the Green's functions for the five-dimensional hyperbolic field equations (...) for both signatures ± [corresponding to O(4, 1) or O(3, 2) symmetry of the field equations] of the proper time derivative. The classification of the Green's functions follows that of the four-dimensional theory for “massive” fields, for which the “mass” squared may be positive or negative, respectively. The Green's functions for the five-dimensional field are then given by the Fourier transform over the “mass” parameter. We derive the Green's functions corresponding to the principal part ΔP and the homogeneous function Δ 1 ; all of the Green's functions can be expressed in terms of these, as for the usual field equations with definite mass. In the O(3, 2) case, the principal part function has support for x2⩾τ2, corresponding to spacelike propagation, as well as along the light cone x2=0 (for τ=0). There can be no transmission ofinformation in spacelike directions, with this propagator, since the Maxwell field, obtained by integration over τ, does not contain this component of the support. Measurements are characterized by such an integration. The spacelike field therefore can dynamically establish spacelike correlations. (shrink)

it is sometimes said that one of Kant’s decisive advances over his predecessors was to have anticipated Frege’s functional theory of concepts, along with its corollary that a concept has significance only in the context of the whole proposition.1 Kant is said to break with a tradition that held that there is a self-standing species of concept-use—called apprehensio simplex, or the conceiving of an idea—in which one represents objects by having a concept before one’s mind, independently of connecting it with (...) other concepts in judgment.2 Since Kant’s use of ‘judgment’ covers what Frege calls judging as well as what he calls grasping a thought, the idea is that according to Kant the only way for a thinker to use a.. (shrink)

Ethnopedology is the study of local knowledge of soil and land management in an ecological perspective. It is an emerging hybrid discipline that is a component of ethnoecology and stands to offer much for land-based studies. This paper reviews the field of ethnopedology in Latin America and compares some of the many case studies from that region. Various literature sources are considered, including the ethnographical, ethnohistorical, archaeological, geographical, agronomic, ethnoecological, and development studies. Our review invokes the theory of (...) ethnoecology that focuses on the linkages between kosmos, corpus, and praxis of local land-users. The main topics covered are the ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence of ethnopedology, local soil and land classification, local land management systems, local perceptions and beliefs of soil and land resources, and local soil fertility management. After analysing past and present research trends, recommendations are given on how ethnopedological studies can contribute to enhance sustainable land use and management in Latin America. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments. INTRODUCTION In contrast to the classic model of randomized-control trials, often with a large number of (...) subjects enrolled, precision medicine attempts to optimize therapeutic outcomes by focusing on the individual.[i] A recent publication highlights the strengths and weakness of both traditional evidence-based medicine and precision medicine.[ii] Plus, it outlines a tension in the shift from evidence-based medicine’s inductive reasoning style (the collection of data to postulate general theories) to precision medicine’s abductive reasoning style (the generation of an idea from the limited data available).[iii] The paper’s main example is the application of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer.[iv] I argue that this examination and appreciation for the shift to abductive reasoning should be extended to the intersection of neuroscience and novel brain-computer interfaces too. As the name suggests, brain-computer interfaces are a significant advancement in neurotechnology that directly connects someone’s brain to external or implanted devices.[v] Among the various kinds of brain-computer interfaces, adaptive deep brain stimulation devices require numerous personalized adjustments to their settings during the implantation and computation stages in order to provide adequate relief to patients with treatment-resistant disorders. What makes these devices unique is how adaptive deep brain stimulation integrates a sensory component to initiate the stimulation. While not commonly at the level of sophistication as self-supervising or generative large language models,[vi] they currently allow for a semi-autonomous form of neuromodulation. This paper highlights the implications of applying abductive reasoning to personalized implantable neurotechnologies. Then, it explores whether abductive reasoning is sufficient to justify insurance coverage for devices absent widespread clinical trials, which are better applied to one-size-fits-all treatments.[vii] ANALYSIS I. The State of Precision Medicine in Oncology and the Epistemological Shift While a thorough overview of precision medicine for the treatment of cancer is beyond the scope of this article, its practice can be roughly summarized as identifying clinically significant characteristics a patient possesses (e.g., genetic traits) to land on a specialized treatment option that, theoretically, should benefit the patient the most.[viii] However, in such a practice of stratification patients fall into smaller and smaller populations and the quality of evidence that can be applied to anyone outside these decreases in turn.[ix] As inductive logic helps to articulate, the greater the number of patients that respond to a particular therapy the higher the probability of its efficacy. By straying from this logical framework, precision medicine opens the treatment of cancer to more uncertainty about the validity of these approaches to the resulting disease subcategories.[x] Thus, while contemporary medical practices explicitly describe some treatments as “personalized”, they ought not be viewed as inherently better founded than other therapies.[xi] A relevant contemporary case of precision medicine out of Norway focuses on the care of a patient with cancer between the ventricles of the heart and esophagus, which had failed to respond to the standard regimen of therapies over four years.[xii] In a last-ditch effort, the patient elected to pay out-of-pocket for an experimental immunotherapy (nivolumab) at a private hospital. He experienced marked improvements and a reduction in the size of the tumor. Understandably, the patient tried to pursue further rounds of nivolumab at a public hospital. However, the hospital initially declined to pay for it given the “lack of evidence from randomised clinical trials for this drug relating to this [patient’s] condition.”[xiii] In rebuttal to this claim, the patient countered that he was actually similar to a subpopulation of patients who responded in “open‐label, single arm, phase 2 studies on another immune therapy drug” (pembrolizumab).[xiv] Given this interpretation of the prior studies and the patient’s response, further rounds of nivolumab were approved. Had the patient not had improvements in the tumor’s size following a round of nivolumab, then pembrolizumab’s prior empirical evidence in isolation would have been insufficient, inductively speaking, to justify his continued use of nivolumab.[xv] The case demonstrates a shift in reasoning from the traditional induction to abduction. The phenomenon of ‘cancer improvement’ is considered causally linked to nivolumab and its underlying physiological mechanisms.[xvi] However, “the weakness of abductions is that there may always be some other better, unknown explanation for an effect. The patient may for example belong to a special subgroup that spontaneously improves, or the change may be a placebo effect. This does not mean, however, that abductive inferences cannot be strong or reasonable, in the sense that they can make a conclusion probable.”[xvii] To demonstrate the limitations of relying on the abductive standard in isolation, commentators have pointed out that side effects in precision medicine are hard to rule out as being related to the initial intervention itself unless trends from a group of patients are taken into consideration.[xviii] As artificial intelligence (AI) assists the development of precision medicine for oncology, this uncertainty ought to be taken into consideration. The implementation of AI has been crucial to the development of precision medicine by providing a way to combine large patient datasets or a single patient with a large number of unique variables with machine learning to recommend matches based on statistics and probability of success upon which practitioners can base medical recommendations.[xix] The AI is usually not establishing a causal relationship[xx] – it is predicting. So, as AI bleeds into medical devices, like brain-computer interfaces, the same cautions about using abductive reasoning alone should be carried over. II. Responsive Neurostimulation, AI, and Personalized Medicine Like precision medicine in cancer treatment, computer-brain interface technology similarly focuses on the individual patient through personalized settings. In order to properly expose the intersection of AI, precision medicine, abductive reasoning, and implantable neurotechnologies, the descriptions of adaptive deep brain stimulation systems need to deepen.[xxi] As a broad summary of adaptive deep brain stimulation, to provide a patient with the therapeutic stimulation, a neural signal, typically referred to as a local field potential,[xxii] must first be detected and then interpreted by the device. The main adaptive deep brain stimulation device with premarket approval, the NeuroPace Responsive Neurostimulation system, is used to treat epilepsy by detecting and storing “programmer-defined phenomena.”[xxiii] Providers can optimize the detection settings of the device to align with the patient’s unique electrographic seizures as well as personalize the reacting stimulation’s parameters.[xxiv] The provider adjusts the technology based on trial and error. One day machine learning algorithms will be able to regularly aid this process in myriad ways, such as by identifying the specific stimulation settings a patient may respond to ahead of time based on their electrophysiological signatures.[xxv] Either way, with AI or programmers, adaptive neurostimulation technologies are individualized and therefore operate in line with precision medicine rather than standard treatments based on large clinical trials. Contemporary neurostimulation devices are not usually sophisticated enough to be prominent in AI discussions where the topics of neural networks, deep learning, generative models, and self-attention dominate the conversation. However, implantable high-density electrocorticography arrays (a much more sensitive version than adaptive deep brain stimulation systems use) have been used in combination with neural networks to help patients with neurologic deficits from a prior stroke “speak” through a virtual avatar.[xxvi] In some experimental situations, algorithms are optimizing stimulation parameters with increasing levels of independence.[xxvii] An example of neurostimulation that is analogous to the use of nivolumab in Norway surrounds a patient in the United States who was experiencing both treatment-resistant OCD and temporal lobe epilepsy.[xxviii]Given the refractory nature of her epilepsy, implantation of an adaptive deep brain stimulation system was indicated. As a form of experimental therapy, her treatment-resistant OCD was also indicated for the off-label use of an adaptive deep brain stimulation set-up. Another deep brain stimulation lead, other than the one implanted for epilepsy, was placed in the patient’s right nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum region given the correlation these nuclei had with OCD symptoms in prior research. Following this, the patient underwent “1) ambulatory, patient-initiated magnet-swipe storage of data during moments of obsessive thoughts; (2) lab-based, naturalistic provocation of OCD-related distress (naturalistic provocation task); and (3) lab-based, VR [virtual reality] provocation of OCD-related distress (VR provocation task).”[xxix] Such signals were used to identify when to deliver the therapeutic stimulation in order to counter the OCD symptoms. Thankfully, following the procedure and calibration the patient exhibited marked improvements in their OCD symptoms and recently shared her results publicly.[xxx] In both cases, there is a similar level of abductive justification for the efficacy of the delivered therapy. In the case study in which the patient was treated with adaptive deep brain stimulation, they at least had their neural activity tested in various settings to determine the optimum parameters for treatment to avoid them being based on guesswork. Additionally, the adaptive deep brain stimulation lead was already placed before the calibration trials were conducted, meaning that the patient had already taken on the bulk of the procedural risk before the efficacy could be determined. Such an efficacy test could have been replicated in the first patient’s cancer treatment, had it been biopsied and tested against the remaining immunotherapies in vitro. Yet, in the case of cancer with few options, one previous dose of a drug that appeared to work on the patient may justify further doses. However, as the Norwegian case presents, corroboration with known responses to a similar drug (from a clinical trial) could be helpful to validate the treatment strategy. (It should be noted that both patients were resigned to these last resort options regardless of the efficacy of treatment.) There are some elements of inductive logic seen with adaptive deep brain stimulation research in general. For example, abductively the focus could be that patient X’s stimulation parameters are different from patient Y’s and patient Z’s. In contrast, when grouped as subjects who obtained personalized stimulation, patients X, Y, and Z demonstrate an inductive aspect to this approach’s safety and/or efficacy. The OCD case holds plenty of abductive characteristics in line with precision medicine’s approach to treating cancer and as more individuals try the method, there will be additional data. With the gradual integration of AI into brain-computer interfaces in the name of efficacy, this reliance on abduction will continue, if not grow, over time. Moving forward, if a responsive deep brain stimulation treatment is novel and individualized (like the dose of nivolumab) and there is some other suggestion of efficacy (like clinical similarities to other patients in the literature), then it may justify insurance coverage for the investigative intervention, absent other unrelated reasons to deny it. III. Ethical Implications and Next Steps While AI’s use in oncology and neurology is not yet as prominent as its use in other fields (e.g., radiology), it appears to be on the horizon for both.[xxxi] AI can be found in both the functioning of the neurotechnologies as well as the implementation of precision medicine. The increasing use of AI may serve to further individualize both oncologic and neurological therapies. Given these implications and the handful of publications cited in this article, it is important to have a nuanced evaluation of how these treatments, which heavily rely on abductive justification, ought to be managed. The just use an abductive approach may be difficult as AI infused precision medicine is further pursued. At baseline, such technology relies on a level of advanced technology literacy among the general public and could exclude populations who lack access to basic technological infrastructure or know-how from participation.[xxxii] Even among nations with adequate infrastructure, as more patients seek out implantable neurotechnologies, which require robust healthcare resources, the market will favor patient populations that can afford this complex care.[xxxiii] If patients already have the means to pay for an initial dose/use of a precision medicine product out of pocket, should insurance providers be required to cover subsequent treatments?[xxxiv] That is, if a first dose of a cancer drug or a deep brain stimulator over its initial battery life is successful, patients may feel justified in having the costs of further treatments covered. The Norwegian patient’s experience implies there is a precedent for the idea that some public insurance companies ought to cover successful cancer therapies, however, insurance companies may not all see themselves as obligated to cover neurotechnologies that rely on personalized settings or that are based on precision/abductive research more than on clinical trials. CONCLUSION The fact that the cases outlined above rely on abductive style of reasoning implies that there may not be as strong a justification for coverage by insurance, as they are both experimental and individualized, when compared to the more traditional large clinical trials in which groups have the same or a standardized protocol (settings/doses). If a study is examining the efficacy of a treatment with a large cohort of patients or with different experimental groups/phases, insurance companies may conclude that the resulting symptom improvements are more likely to be coming from the devices themselves. A preference for inductive justification may take priority when ruling in favor of funding someone’s continued use of an implantable neurostimulator. There are further nuances to this discussion surrounding the classifications of these interventions as research versus clinical care that warrant future exploration, since such a distinction is more of a scale[xxxv] than binary and could have significant impacts on the “right-to-try” approach to experimental therapies in the United States.[xxxvi] Namely, given the inherent limitations of conducting large cohort trials for deep brain stimulation interventions on patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, surgically innovative frameworks that blend abductive and inductive methodologies, like with sham stimulation phases, have traditionally been used.[xxxvii] Similarly, for adaptive brain-computer interface systems, if there are no large clinical trials and instead only publications that demonstrate that something similar worked for someone else, then, in addition to the evidence that the first treatment/dose worked for the patient in question, the balance of reasoning would be valid and arguably justify insurance coverage. As precision approaches to neurotechnology become more common, frameworks for evaluating efficacy will be crucial both for insurance coverage and for clinical decision making. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This article was originally written as an assignment for Dr. Francis Shen’s “Bioethics & AI” course at Harvard’s Center for Bioethics. I would like to thank Dr. Shen for his comments as well as my colleagues in the Lázaro-Muñoz Lab for their feedback. - [i] Jonathan Kimmelman and Ian Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine,” Nature Reviews. Clinical Oncology 15, no. 6 (June 2018): 341–42, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-018-0016-0. [ii] Henrik Vogt and Bjørn Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology: A Formative Case from Norway,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 28, no. 6 (December 2022): 1205–12, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13649. [iii] David Barrett and Ahtisham Younas, “Induction, Deduction and Abduction,” Evidence-Based Nursing 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2024): 6–7, https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2023-103873. [iv] Vogt and Hofmann, “How Precision Medicine Changes Medical Epistemology,” 1208. [v] Wireko Andrew Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines: The Recent Advances of Brain-Computer Interfaces in Neurological and Neurosurgical Applications,” World Neurosurgery, May 22, 2024, S1878-8750(24)00867-2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2024.05.104. [vi] Mark Riedl, “A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype,” Medium (blog), May 25, 2023, https://mark-riedl.medium.com/a-very-gentle-introduction-to-large-language-models-without-the-hype-5 f67941fa59e. [vii] David E. Burdette and Barbara E. Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” in Neurostimulation for Epilepsy, ed. Vikram R. Rao (Academic Press, 2023), 97–132, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-91702-5.00002-5. [viii] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018. [ix] Kimmelman and Tannock, 2018. [x] Simon Lohse, “Mapping Uncertainty in Precision Medicine: A Systematic Scoping Review,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 29, no. 3 (April 2023): 554–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13789. [xi] Kimmelman and Tannock, “The Paradox of Precision Medicine.” [xii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xiii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xiv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1206. [xv] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xvi] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xvii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1207. [xviii] Vogt and Hofmann, 1210. [xix] Mehar Sahu et al., “Chapter Three - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Precision Medicine: A Paradigm Shift in Big Data Analysis,” in Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science, ed. David B. Teplow, vol. 190, 1 vols., Precision Medicine (Academic Press, 2022), 57–100, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pmbts.2022.03.002. [xx] Stefan Feuerriegel et al., “Causal Machine Learning for Predicting Treatment Outcomes,” Nature Medicine 30, no. 4 (April 2024): 958–68, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02902-1. [xxi] Sunderland Baker et al., “Ethical Considerations in Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation,” Deep Brain Stimulation 3 (October 1, 2023): 8–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdbs.2023.11.001. [xxii] David Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces,” 2024, 7, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.dnb.2024.02.003. [xxiii] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 103–4; “Premarket Approval (PMA),” https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfpma/pma.cfm?id=P100026. [xxiv] Burdette and Swartz, “Chapter 4 - Responsive Neurostimulation,” 104. [xxv] Burdette and Swartz, 126. [xxvi] Sean L. Metzger et al., “A High-Performance Neuroprosthesis for Speech Decoding and Avatar Control,” Nature 620, no. 7976 (August 2023): 1037–46, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06443-4. [xxvii] Hao Fang and Yuxiao Yang, “Predictive Neuromodulation of Cingulo-Frontal Neural Dynamics in Major Depressive Disorder Using a Brain-Computer Interface System: A Simulation Study,” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 17 (March 6, 2023), https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2023.1119685; Mahsa Malekmohammadi et al., “Kinematic Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation for Resting Tremor in Parkinson’s Disease,” Movement Disorders 31, no. 3 (2016): 426–28, https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.26482. [xxviii] Young-Hoon Nho et al., “Responsive Deep Brain Stimulation Guided by Ventral Striatal Electrophysiology of Obsession Durably Ameliorates Compulsion,” Neuron 0, no. 0 (October 20, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.034. [xxix] Nho et al. [xxx] Nho et al.; Erik Robinson, “Brain Implant at OHSU Successfully Controls Both Seizures and OCD,” OHSU News, accessed March 3, 2024, https://news.ohsu.edu/2023/10/25/brain-implant-at-ohsu-successfully-controls-both-seizures-and-ocd. [xxxi] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines”; Haslacher et al., “AI for Brain-Computer Interfaces.” [xxxii] Awuah et al., “Bridging Minds and Machines.” [xxxiii] Sara Green, Barbara Prainsack, and Maya Sabatello, “The Roots of (in)Equity in Precision Medicine: Gaps in the Discourse,” Personalized Medicine 21, no. 1 (January 2024): 5–9, https://doi.org/10.2217/pme-2023-0097. [xxxiv] Green, Prainsack, and Sabatello, 7. [xxxv] Robyn Bluhm and Kirstin Borgerson, “An Epistemic Argument for Research-Practice Integration in Medicine,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 43, no. 4 (July 9, 2018): 469–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhy009. [xxxvi] Vijay Mahant, “‘Right-to-Try’ Experimental Drugs: An Overview,” Journal of Translational Medicine 18 (June 23, 2020): 253, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02427-4. [xxxvii] Michael S. Okun et al., “Deep Brain Stimulation in the Internal Capsule and Nucleus Accumbens Region: Responses Observed during Active and Sham Programming,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 78, no. 3 (March 1, 2007): 310–14, https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.2006.095315. (shrink)

Over the years, artificial neural networks have been applied successfully in many areas including IT security. Yet, neural networks can only process continuous input data. This is particularly challenging for security-related, non-continuous data like system calls of an operating system. This work focuses on five different options to preprocess sequences of system calls so that they can be processed by neural networks. These input options are based on one-hot encodings and learning word2vec, GloVe or fastText representations of system calls. As (...) an additional option, we analyse if mapping system calls to their respective kernel modules is an adequate generalization step for replacing system calls or enhancing system call data with additional information regarding their context. When performing such preprocessing steps it is important to ensure that no relevant information is lost during the process. The overall objective of system call analysis in the context of IT security is to categorize a sequence of them as benign or malicious behavior. Therefore, this scenario is used to evaluate different system call representations in a classification task. Results indicate that a broader range of attacks can be detected when enriching system call representations with corresponding kernel module information. Prior learning of embeddings does not achieve significant improvements. This work is an extension of the work by Wunderlich et al. [1] published in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. (shrink)

With the rapid development of the economy, the land use/cover change in the Greater Bay Area has undergone tremendous changes, which have had directly negative effects on ecosystem functions and services. The development of sustainable land use strategies to quantitatively evaluate ecosystem services is required. Based on multitemporal land use data, the equivalent coefficients table method was used to assess the ecosystem service values, and the impact of LUCC on ecosystem services was analyzed. A future (...) class='Hi'>land use simulation model and multiscenario simulations were employed to predict land use change in 2030. Our results indicated that the loss of ESVs decreased by 14.29 billion yuan from 2005 to 2020. The spatial distribution of the high-value ecosystem services was concentrated around the peripheral area of the northern regions in the GBA, and those areas had less land use development and human activity. Compared with those in 2020, the total ESVs of the business-as-usual scenario, socioeconomic development scenario, and cultivated protection priority scenario in 2030 decreased, while they increased in the ecological protection priority scenario. In the CPP scenario, regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural services increased slightly, but they decreased in the other scenarios. The patterns of LUCC were the main reasons for the decrease in ESVs, such as the loss of land with high ecological value. Additionally, a four-quadrant analysis is introduced to determine which land use simulation will be expected to be adopted by the government. The findings of this study provide valuable information for decision-making and policy development in the coastal zones and for the sustainable management of ecosystems. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

The recent phenomenon of land grabbing—that is, the large-scale acquisition of private land rights by foreign investors—is an effect of increasing global demand for farmland, resources, and development opportunities. In 2008–2010 alone, land grabs covered approximately 56 million hectares of land, dispossessing and displacing inhabitants. This article proposes a philosophical framework for evaluating land grabbing as a practice of territorial alienation, whereby the private purchase of land can, under certain conditions, lead to a de (...) facto alienation of territorial sovereignty. If land grabs alienate territorial sovereignty, it follows that inhabitants can claim a violation of the people’s right to “permanent sovereignty over natural resources.” However, because sovereignty is entangled in the historical and contemporary causes of land dispossession, I cast doubt on this strategy. Territorially sovereign regimes often undermine democratic land governance by obstructing participation in activities such as zoning, land use, property regulation, and environmental stewardship. These activities, which I theorize as practices of “world-building,” are key to democracy because they give occupants a say in the shape of their common home. The perplexities of sovereignty in matters of land governance suggest that establishing democratic participation in rule over land requires fracturing sovereignty. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 145-147. Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em- ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des- cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; (...) and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex- amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per- son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise. William Godwin Caleb Williams (352). Giorgio Agamben. Nudities . Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95 A. The Protective Overcoat. The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an ancient world in which human society and its beings were not subject to such separation. He implies that these separations are damaging to human beings, crippling them at the very level of their identities. $4.99 B. The Handsome Gloves. Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities , like Profanations before it, employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. $2.50 C. The Hoop Earrings. Religion separates humans from things by procuring for itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with them, unable to change their use-value. They become off-limits, museified. $1,499.00 D. The Uncomfortable Shoes. Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass persecution. $111.75 E. The Prince Albert. One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that human beings are separated from knowledge by language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be saved? $49.50 + tip F. The Corset. Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be confined to self-trial, and that with every passage he flays the unclothed page with prophetic intent. $27.00 G. The Derby. Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various separations through exploratory play. He is not a performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a tattered corpse. $11.00 H. The Trousers. Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he would like to consider what is consumed during days of inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. $24.50 I. The Stylish Belt. The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project human bodies. $.01 I The aim here is not to tap into an original state prior to the separation but to comprehend and neutralize the apparatus that produced this separation. (66) II The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. (13) III We can therefore only experience nudity as a denudation and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. (65) IV Just as genius and talent originally distinct and even opposite—are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work of creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they represent the two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined. (6) V In our culture, the face-body relationship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces remain for the most part naked, while our bodies are normally covered. (88) VI Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. (21) VII The glorious body is not some other body, more agile and beautiful, more luminous and spiritual; it is the body itself, at the moment when inoperativity removes the spell from it and opens it up to a new possible common use. (103) VIII As Kleist understood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonknowledge is a dance. (114) IX The deactivation of this apparatus retroactively operates, therefore, as much on nature as on grace, as much on nudity as on clothing, liberating them from their theological signature. (90) X At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or results from the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential here is a dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner. (112) XI This is just how much [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch a glimpse. (36). (shrink)

Land registration systems are used throughout the world in order to store information on the ownership of land, rights attached to it, and burdens affecting it. A smoothly functioning land registration system guarantees the security of land transfer operations. However, there are significant differences in the way national land registration systems are run due to their historical development and divergent legislative approaches to land registration. Consequently, the need arises to compare different systems so as (...) to find both common ground and discrepancies between them. The paper contains such a comparative analysis which has been carried out with translation in mind: to discover the best ways of transferring land registration legal concepts expressed in one linguistic framework and characteristic of a given legal culture into target legal spaces using other linguistic frameworks. The comparison in question has taken place in a third space, a space where selected aspects of selected legal systems mingle revealing more or less clear similarities and more or less distinct differences between them. The juxtaposition of source and target legal cultures in a third space has resulted in finding translation equivalents that do not abuse the original ideas or—if this has been unavoidable—abuse them to the smallest extent possible. The analysis has covered the Polish land registration system and equivalent systems in English- and German-speaking countries and has been conducted from the point of view of a Polish-English and Polish-German translator. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

This paper examines potential differences in land use between Q'eqchí Maya and Ladino farmers in a remote agricultural frontier in northern Petén, Guatemala. The research site, the Sierra de Lacandón National Park, is a core conservation zone of Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. In recent years, much has been written about the dramatic process of colonization and deforestation in Petén, Guatemala's largest and northernmost department. Since the early 1980s a rapid rural transformation has occurred where once remote forested regions have (...) been colonized by small farmers, and lands have been converted to maize fields and cattle pastures. Consequently, less than half of the original forest cover in the department remains. Although approximately half of Petén's rural settlers have been Q'eqchí Maya, their land use, and its subsequent impact on Petenero forests, has been little studied. Results suggest that despite heterogeneous land use systems in migrant origin areas, given similar physical and socio-economic conditions following settlement in this remote frontier, Q'eqchí and Ladino farmer land use is remarkably similar. Only a modest land use difference appears to exist between the two groups: Q'eqchí Maya appear to have more extensive swidden maize rotations while Ladinos dedicate more land to pasture. (shrink)

In rural Cambodia the rampant allocation of state land to political elites and foreign investors in the form of “Economic Land Concessions (ELCs)”—estimated to cover an area equivalent to more than 50 % of the country’s arable land—has been associated with encroachment on farmland, community forests and indigenous territories and has contributed to a rapid increase of rural landlessness. By contrast, less than 7,000 ha of land have been allotted to land-poor and landless farmers (...) under the pilot project for “Social Land Concessions (SLCs)” supported by various donor agencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two research sites in Kratie Province, this article sheds light on the mechanisms and discourses surrounding the allocation of ELCs and SLCs. Our findings suggest that large-scale and non-transparent land leases in the form of ELCs are discursively justified as land policy measures supporting national development, creating employment opportunities in rural areas, and restoring “degraded” and “non-use” land, while SLCs are presented by the government and its international donors as a complementary policy to reduce landlessness, alleviate rural poverty, and ensure a more equitable land distribution. We argue that the SLC pilot project is a deliberate strategy deployed by the Cambodian ruling elite to instrumentalize international aid agencies in formalizing displacement and distributional injustices, in smoothing the adverse social impacts of their very own land policies and in minimizing resistance by dispossessed rural people. (shrink)

In many high-income countries, agricultural land is highly concentrated in a few hands, but detailed knowledge of ownership structures is limited. We examined land ownership structures and agricultural land concentration for the entire state of Brandenburg, Germany (1.3 million ha), using cadastral and company network data. Our aim was to characterise all landowners, analyse the degree of ownership concentration, and examine the role of the largest landowners in more detail. We found a high fragmentation of ownership among (...) 185,000 different owners. Most of the land was owned by individuals not active in agriculture and only a third of the land was owned by farmers and other agricultural actors. Absentee ownership covered a quarter of the land. Ownership concentration was low to moderate in most regions and reached high levels in only a few areas. The largest owners were public institutions, private investors and nature protection institutions. Areas where public institutions owned a lot of land showed high concentrations, but also some areas where private landowners owned a lot of land. In summary, our analysis provides rare information on the concentration of agricultural land ownership in a large region. Such analysis facilitates better justification and design of policies that regulate agricultural land markets. (shrink)

At a time when the ‘end’ of comparative philosophy has been announced1 or comparative philosophy has been taken to be a pragmatic enterprise, implying the ‘end’ of a realist interpretation of comparative philosophy,2 the book under review here, The Misty Land of Ideas and the Light of Dialogue: An Anthology of Comparative Philosophy: Western & Islamic, edited by Ali Paya, appears to be aiming at bucking the trend. It sets out, according to its editor, to contribute to a realist (...) conception of comparative philosophy. The book chapters cover topics related to both comparative philosophy and meta-comparative philosophy. This... (shrink)

Mobile app stores provide an extremely rich source of information on app descriptions, characteristics, and usage, and analyzing these data provides insights and a deeper understanding of the nature of apps. However, manual analysis of this vast amount of information on mobile apps is not a simple and straightforward task; it is costly in terms of human effort and time. Computational methods such as topic modeling can provide an efficient and satisfactory approach to mobile app information analysis. Topic modeling is (...) a type of statistical modeling technique for discovering abstract topics that occur in a set of documents. This study explores the relationship between features of Arabic apps and investigates how well the current predefined Google Play app categories represent the type and genre of Arabic mobile apps. Based on the textual app description analysis, we aim to design and develop a sustainable classification system using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation method of topic modeling in order to cover the Arabic apps classification in Google Play app store. Our study supports the hypothesis that the textual app descriptions are effective in suggesting new categories for Arabic mobile apps in Google Play app store. Also, the results indicated that the current classification on Google Play app store is not suitable for our case study “Arabic apps,” as well as it is not sustainable, as it can not cover the new app types including Arabic apps. This study offers an important contribution to Arabic app analysis and design, to improve app search and exploration in several domains such as business, marketing, and technical development. Furthermore, it provides insights for the future of Arabic app research and provides guidance for the development of an Arabic app dashboard that will support users on how to select an app based on their specific needs. (shrink)

The Sciences of the Qurʾān contain information about the process of Qurʾān and its structural characteristics, language and stylistic features, as well as statistical data on the content of the Qurʾān. This information, which contributes significantly to the understanding of the Qurʾān, is generally classified within the relevant narratives and the classifications are sometimes associated with verses. In this context, the way in which the Sciences of the Qurʾān explain the verses, which do not act solely on methodical premises, differs (...) from the Qurʾānic exegesis books. In the Sciences of the Qurʾān, the subject of revelation forms are classified within the frame of the narrations, and the 51st verse of the Sūrat al-Shūrā is frequently referred to. In other words, the related classifications are matched with the 51st verse of the Sūrat al-Shūrā. In the exegesis, this verse is handled more comprehensively considering its context and the literal possibilities. There are two remarkable comments about this verse in terms of its reflection in the revelation classifications. However, on the contrary, it is possible to encounter examples where the verse is subject to specific discussions. One of them belongs to Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (d.538/1144) and the other to Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286). When the exegesis of al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī are examined, it is seen that this verse is the subject of ru’yat Allah (seeing Allah) discussion between Muʿtazila and Ahl al-Sunnah and the classifications are made in this context. However, it is interesting to note that the classification of al-Zamakhsharī is more suitable for the perspective of the Sciences of the Qurʾān. In this study, the codes of the determinations made by al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī related to the 51st verse of Sūrat al-Shūrā was read on the commentaries. While al-Zamakhsharī explains this verse as a proof for the argument that God cannot be seen, al-Bayḍāwī develops an example of reactionary interpretation upon Zamakhsharī’s view. The Sciences of the Qurʾān (as a discipline), which opens a separate title to the ways of revelation, uses this verse as a template and takes it away from the discussion. In the study, the subjective dimensions of the discussion and classifications made in the context of this verse were evaluated. As a result, it is concluded that a classification similar to classification of al-Zamakhsharī has been made in the literature of the Sciences of the Qurʾān as it provides more comprehensive framework. Summary: During the period of revelation of the Holy Qurʾān not only the sunnah and actions of the Prophet which explained the Holy Qurʾān, but also various sources of information based on language and consultation, were used in order to understand the Holy Qurʾān. The first people introduced to the revelation used their own language/oratory skills, which were natural them, to understand the Qurʾān and were also able to observe the events and problems that brought about the revelation of the verses. These elements, used by those first people for understanding the Qurʾān, were readily available in their society. Therefore, understanding of the Qurʾān while the Prophet was still alive did not require a codification of those resources or treatment of the matter on a theoretical level. Subsequent generations mostly compensated the lack of those advantages by the use of the Sciences of the Qurʾān books penned individually after 2nd Century (A.H.), and those written systematically under the collective name "the Sciences of the Qurʾān" starting from the 6th century (A.H.). These works covered many subjects such as the beginning of the revelation, the accentuation of the Qurʾān, the physical development process of the Qurʾānic text, information based on observation as well as the tone and content of the Qurʾān and provided information details for Qurʾānic interpretations. Over time, this information was classified in the Sciences of the Qurʾān literature, organized under various relevant titles and enhanced with examples, numerical and qualitative information. One of the main topics of the Sciences of the Qurʾān is the subject of “revelation and its forms”. In the literature of the Sciences of the Qurʾān, the classifications made under this topic are generally associated with the verse 51 of Sūrat al-Shūrā. In this verse, the forms of communication between Allah (Jalla Jalaluhu) and the servant/prophet are categorized. The context of the verse 51 of the Sūrat al-Shūrā in the tafsīr literature is different from the context in the Sciences of the Qurʾān literature. As a matter of fact, while this verse is examined in detail with respect to the context, concept analysis, and the possibilities of i‘rāb (classical Arabic grammar), it is merely referred to in the Sciences of the Qurʾān. This is due to the fact that the determinations and classifications made in the Sciences of the Qurʾān are shaped mostly in the light of the historical context and narrations of the subject.It is also possible to encounter examples of tafsīr where the 51st verse is made the topic of detailed discussions. There are two remarkable comments about this verse in terms of its reflection in the revelation classifications. One of them belongs to Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (d.538/1144) and the other belongs to Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286). The tafsīr s of al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī make it clear that this verse is the subject of ru’yat Allah discussion between the Muʿtazila and Ahl al-Sunnah and the classifications are made accordingly. The fact that i‘rāb examinations of the two authors are similar and both took into account other linguistic possibilities despite their preferences, which also prove that the points of conflict are not literal. Al-Zamakhsharī thinks that this verse determines the way Allah speaks not only with his prophets but also with all people. According to al-Zamakhsharī, the 51st verse refers to the three forms of communication that takes place between God and any of His servants. Allah communicates with His servants; a) through inspiration, inspiration to heart or through dreams, b) by making His words heard through certain channels, c) by sending one of his angels as a messenger. In the verse, the first is expressed as revelation, the second is to speak behind a veil, and the third is to send a messenger. According to al-Zamakhsharī, Allah's inspiration to the mother of Moses, the dream that He showed to Abraham regarding the sacrificing of his son and inspiration of Psalms to David, all relate to the revelation concept mentioned in the first option. Al-Zamakhsharī believes that revelation from behind a veil is an adage. This adage can be compared to a king speaking with one of those at his service behind a veil/curtain, where the person hears the voice of the king but cannot see him. Allah only spoke to Moses and angels in that manner, and sent angels to speak to His other servants/prophets.As a response to al-Zamakhsharī, al-Bayḍāwī interpreted the verse concisely explaining the 'revelation' (وحيا) as a secret word that is quickly understood. Because, in terms of its nature, revelation is not a word made up of sound waves that come one after another to make words. In the verse, this word refers both to the Night Journey (Mi‘rāj) and the talk mentioned in the hadiths regarding the ru’yat Allah, and Allah speaking to Moses without Moses seeing Allah. However, in the verse min verâi ḥicâb/attributed to the word 'revelation 'من وراء حجاب makes it clear that the expression refers to a form of speech in which Allah is heard but not seen. Therefore, the word 'revelation' refers to a mutual talk and according to al-Bayḍāwī, this is proof that ru’yat Allah is possible. The fact that the classifications made in the Sciences of the Qurʾān literature agrees with the classification of al-Zamakhsharī, not al-Bayḍāwī. This result is closely related to the structural features of the Sciences of the Qurʾān in which authors strive to make general explanations that are beyond sectarian preferences and views. Understanding the verse as a conversation between Allah and man, and not between Allah and His prophet, provides a more comprehensive classification in terms of the use of revelations (not only the use of the word revelation) in the Qurʾān. Thus, the address that was made to Abraham in his dream, the revelation of to Moses' mother, and inspiration to our holy Prophet and other people can be interpreted according to this verse. In addition, the ru’yat Allah debate was excluded from the subject in the classifications made in the Sciences of the Qurʾān and implication of the verse was limited to the talks made in a worldly manner. (shrink)

A critical comparative analysis of howfarmers and scientists classify and manage soilsreveals fundamental differences as well assimilarities. In the past, the study of local soilknowledge has been predominantly targeted atdocumenting how farmers classified their soils incontrast to understanding how such classificatoryknowledge was made use of in actually managing soilsfor sustaining production. Often, classificatorydesigns – being cognitive and linguistic in nature –do not reflect the day-to-day actions in farming.Instead of merely describing local soil classificationin relation to scientific criteria, understanding howdifferent types (...) of ethnolinguistic soil categories arerelated to crops, climate, subsistence needs,fertility, market demand, and cultural norms of thesociety would be far more effective in focusingresearch and development efforts. (shrink)

USKALI MÄKI (Helsinki, 1951) is a philosopher of science and a social scientist, and one of the forerunners of the strong wave of research on the philosophy and methodology of economics that has been expanding during the last three decades. His research interests and academic contributions cover many topics in the philosophy of economics, such as realism and realisticness, idealisation, scientific modelling, causation, explanation, rhetoric, the sociology and economics of economics, and the foundations of new institutional and Austrian economics. (...) He is a coeditor of The handbook of economic methodology (1998); Economics and methodology: crossing boundaries (1998); Rationality, institutions and economic methodology (1993). And the editor of two compilations of essays that have become highly influential to the shaping of the field: The economic world view: studies in the ontology of economics (2001), and Fact and fiction in economics: realism, models, and social construction (2002). (shrink)

Abstract:In Scotland, policies supporting the development of wind farms frequently come into conflict with those designed to protect wild land. The siting of turbines is, amongst other things, administered by wild land areas, whilst wild land areas are, in part, characterized by the absence of turbines. In this article, I focus on how the classification of wild land has been constructed in official narratives and I describe the substantial scale of collaborative human labor implicated in (...) this process. I draw on the story of a public local inquiry into a wind farm proposal to make visible some of the contradictions implicit in the term's use and to argue that wildness, as conceived by Scottish Government, is primarily an aesthetic category which relies on absences. I argue that employing wild land as an administrative technology conceals the various kinds of labor that are intrinsic to creating wild land. The work of extending and reinforcing the technologies which govern land use is hidden behind the notion of wild land as a place from which human exertions and technologies are absent. (shrink)

Those involved in research with humans confront a host of ethical issues and a maze of regulations. James M. DuBois’s Ethics in Mental Health Research: Principles, Guidance, and Cases is here to help. The book covers a broad range of issues in research ethics, including informed consent, risks and benefits, privacy and confidentiality, and conflicts of interest. Thus, while the title focuses on mental health research, the book should also be of interest to individuals involved in other types of research (...) with humans. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to analyse the relationship between Quaternary geology, the idea of land elevation, nationalism and regionalism in Scandinavia, with special regard to the contribution of Swedish geologists at the end of the nineteenth century. From a scientific point of view, the idea of land elevation was connected to the acceptance of the glaciation theory and the elevation theory of Thomas F. Jamieson, but analysed in a wider cultural context it is possible to understand (...) both the professionalization of Quaternary geology and the new theory of shore-line displacement as expressions of Swedish cultural nationalism. As a complement to the specific cultural history, the Quaternary geology enterprise was a way of constituting a unique natural history of the nation. One of the new theories that developed in this process was that of the Highest Marine Border, a complex concept established by the distinguished geologist Gerard De Geer at the end of the 1880s in order to defend the theory of land elevation, which was threatened by the work of Eduard Suess. The line was considered to be a geographical border that both expressed the elevation pattern and sharply divided Sweden into one part that had been covered by water during the post-glacial period and another part that had not. The study continues by looking more closely at the construction of the border in the north of Sweden. Through an account of a subsequent scientific dispute between De Geer and the geologist Arvid Gustaf Hogbom it is clear that the concept of the Highest Marine Border was shaped not only by nationalism but also by regionalism. (shrink)

Geoengineering is typically defined as a techno-scientific response to climate change that differs from mitigation and adaptation, and that includes diverse individual technologies, which can be classified as either solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal. We analyse the representation of geoengineering on Wikipedia as a way of opening up this dominating, if contested, model for further debate. We achieve this by contrasting the dominating model as presented in the encyclopaedic article texts with the patterns of hyper-link associations between the (...) articles. Two datasets were created tracing the geoengineering construct on Wikipedia, shedding light on its boundary with its context, as well as on its internal structure. The analysis shows that the geoengineering category tends to be associated on Wikipedia primarily with atmospheric solar radiation management rather than land-based carbon dioxide removal type technologies. The results support the notion that the dominant model of defining and classifying geoengineering technology has been beneficial for solar radiation management type technologies more than for land-based carbon dioxide removal ones. The article also demonstrates that controversy mapping with Wikipedia data affords analysis that can open up dominating definitions and classifications of technologies, and offer resistance to their frequent naturalising and decontextualising tendencies. This work is in line with recent work on digital sociology, but the article contributes a new methodology and reports on the first empirical application of controversy mapping using Wikipedia data to a technology. (shrink)

In the dictionary, kināya, which means “to say a word and to mean a second meaning with that word”, means “to use a word both in its true meaning and in a second meaning other than this meaning“ as the Arabic rhetoric term. The conceptualization process of kināya as a sub-title of the ilm al-bayān started in the second century hijrī and took its present form in the seventh century hijrī with Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) and in the eighth (...) century with Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī (d. 739/1338). The authors of modern Arabic rhetoric, based on the methodological approaches of these two authors in their definitions and classifications of kināya, sometimes adopted the same approach as they were, and sometimes made some additions and criticisms by making original evaluations. For example, Qazvinî's لفظ أريد به لازم معناه مع جواز إرادة معناه حينئذ “(Original) meaning can be meant, but the necessary meaning is the word that is meant by it.” While some contemporary authors have taken the definition of kināya with the same words, some have added the phenomenon of clue to this definition. There is a similar situation in the classification of kināya, and while some authors have taken the categorization made by Sakkākī without making any changes, some authors have made various additions to this division. In the modern period covering the last century, many books have been written on Arabic rhetoric, and some of these books have come to the fore in Arab countries and our country. In this study, in the context of the subject of kināya, twelve of the Arabic rhetoric books written in the modern period were selected and the definitions and classifications of kināya in these books were examined. The aim of this study is to bring together and compare various perspectives on kināya in contemporary Arabic rhetoric books and to identify different approaches to the subject. (shrink)

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of tennis match scene classification using an adaptive Gaussian mixture model parameter estimation simulation algorithm. We divided the main components of semantic analysis into type of motion, distance of motion, speed of motion, and landing area of the tennis ball. Firstly, for the problem that both people and tennis balls in the video frames of tennis matches from the surveillance viewpoint are very small, we propose an adaptive Gaussian mixture model parameter estimation algorithm, (...) which has good accuracy and speed on small targets. Secondly, in this paper, we design a sports player tracking algorithm based on role division and continuously lock the target player to be tracked and output the player region. At the same time, based on the displacement information of the key points of the player’s body and the system running time, the distance and speed of the player’s movement are obtained. Then, for the problem that tennis balls are small and difficult to capture in high-speed motion, this paper designs a prior knowledge-based algorithm for predicting tennis ball motion and landing area to derive the landing area of tennis balls. Finally, this paper implements a prototype system for semantic analysis of real-time video of tennis matches and tests and analyzes the performance indexes of the system, and the results show that the system has good performance in real-time, accuracy, and stability. (shrink)

This paper examines how the riparian vegetation of perennial and ephemeral rivers systems in the semi-arid, winter rainfall region of South Africa has changed over time. Using an environmental history approach we assess the extent of change in plant cover at 32 sites using repeat photographs that cover a time span of 36-113 years. The results indicate that in the majority of sites there has been a significant increase in cover of riparian vegetation in both the channel (...) beds and adjacent floodplain environments. The most important species to have increased in cover across the region is Acacia karroo. We interpret the findings in the context of historical changes in climate and land use practices. Damage to riparian vegetation caused by mega-herbivores probably ceased sometime during the early 19th century as did scouring events related to large floods that occurred at regular intervals from the 15th to early 20th centuries. Extensive cutting of riparian vegetation for charcoal and firewood has also declined over the last 150 years. Changes in the grazing history as well as increased abstraction and dam building along perennial rivers in the region also account for some of the changes observed in riparian vegetation during the second half of the 20th century. Predictions of climate change related to global warming anticipate increased drought events with the subsequent loss of species and habitats in the study area. The evidence presented here suggests that an awareness of the region's historical ecology should be considered more carefully in the modelling and formulation of future climate change predictions as well as in the understanding of climate change impacts over time frames of decades and centuries. (shrink)

The Balkan War was a conflict that provoked many parties to intervene. The war was also covered by a number of journalists, who carried out what we may call a “media intervention.” This article ana...

In recent years, the green aviation technology draws more attention, and more hybrid power units have been applied to the aerial vehicles. To achieve the high performance and long lifetime of components during varied working conditions, the effective regulation of the energy management is necessary for the vehicles with hybrid power unit. In this paper, power prediction-based model predictive control for energy management strategy is proposed for the vehicle equipped with HPU based on turboshaft engine in order to maintain proper (...) battery’s state of charge and decrease turboshaft engine’s exhaust gas temperature. First, a modeling approach based on data-driven method is adopted to obtain the mathematical model of turboshaft engine considering time delay and inertial of states. An integrated power predictor consisting of the classification of input status and the subpredictors are developed based on the deep learning method to improve the accuracy of the prediction model of the model predictive control. Subsequently, an EMS based on MPC using the proposed power predictor is introduced to regulate the SOC of battery and the EGT of turboshaft engine. The comparison with experimental results shows the high accuracy of mathematical model of turboshaft engine. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed EMS for the vehicle, and the effects of different weight coefficients of objective function on the proposed EMS are discussed. (shrink)

Cities and towns are expanding and thriving as a result of urbanization, which also significantly changes the local climate. One of the most significant phenomena associated with urbanization is the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This phenomenon is increasingly being studied worldwide. The paper aims to investigate the UHI phenomenon in the metropolitan area of Tirana, Albania. It analyses the impact of the UHI on four specific locations in Tirana, its causes and mitigation measures, as well as variations in surface (...) temperature, CO2 emissions, and relative humidity. The regions are measured and observed using a specific instrument such as the Testo 435. Considering the mean surface temperature variations between urban and rural regions ranging from 28.4°C to 33.7 °C, CO2 emissions from 302.9 ppm to 416.2 ppm, and relative humidity from 34.1% to 41.2%, it is found that the UHI impact in Tirana is significant. The lack of green spaces, high building density, urban patterns, building materials used, transport, and energy use are the main contributors to the UHI in central Tirana. Increasing green spaces, using reflective materials, and promoting sustainable urban design are some of the mitigation techniques suggested to reduce the UHI effect in Tirana. (shrink)

This research was designed to understand better the patterns of agricultural intensification and transformation occurring in Africa south of the Sahara using the Ghanaian case. The paper examines changes in farming systems and the role of various endogenous and exogenous factors in driving the conversion of arable lands to agricultural uses in four villages within two agro-ecologically distinct zones of Ghana: the Guinea Savannah and Transition zones. Using historical narratives and land-cover maps supplemented with quantitative data at regional (...) levels, the research shows that farming has intensified in the villages, as farmers increased their farm size in response to factors such as population growth, market access, and changing rural lifestyle. The overall trend suggests a gradual move toward intensification through increasing use of labor-saving technologies rather than land-saving inputs—a pattern that contrasts with Asia’s path to its Green Revolution. The findings in this paper provide evidence of the dynamism occurring in African farming systems; hence, they point toward a departure from stagnation narratives that have come to prevail in the debate on agricultural transformation and intensification in Africa south of the Sahara. We conclude that it is essential for future research to expand the scope of this work, while policies should focus on lessons learned from these historical processes of genuine change and adaptation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Triumph Of SisyphusJeffrey GordonThe gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of the mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.1The words are, of course, Albert Camus's. They were first published in 1942. Since then, this voice—at once lyrical and austere, personal (...) and oracular—and the ancient image he calls up in these lines have become permanent parts of our postmodern consciousness. Like all the images that capture and create the character of our age, Sisyphus is always there for each of us. In the intimate space of our imagination, we can turn to him at will, and with only the slightest effort, we will find him as before—solitary, weather beaten, resigned, without illusion. I want to make that effort now, not to disturb Sisyphus in his labors, nor to uproot him, surely, but to try to be precise about a matter which is, perhaps, fatally elusive of precision, to try to make explicit the significance of this figure whose implicit significance has haunted us now for over half a century. Let us turn to Sisyphus, then, as we might turn, one aimless afternoon, to some old photographs of a person close to us, perhaps even of ourselves, in the hope that we might find in them something we had missed, some expression or gesture that inadvertently reveals the essence of a life.But we must be silent now, for the figure is emerging. There is the hill, and it is morning, a slight chill in the soundless air. The landscape here is treeless, the land covered only with broken rock and scattered brush. A wide path of sterile earth has been cut in the thick brush of [End Page 183] the hill. And there, at the base of the hill, the rock—grey, mottled with holes, enormous. Slow, laborious breathing is audible. The rough hand comes into view, the flesh thick, sun-burnt, heavily veined. It finds a jut on the rock to grip. And now the weather-worn clothes, the thick trunk and powerful back. And here at last the face of Sisyphus—our own face, of course, or the face of one of our own personae, the eyes squinting against the sun, hair disheveled. He takes his hand from the rock and brings it to his side. Perhaps he is not quite ready yet, perhaps he needs a moment longer of rest. He stands motionless, eyes turning up. What is he gazing at? The summit of the hill, every square inch of which he has seen a million times before? What could he hope to discover there? Is it the cloudless sky that has his attention? Is he noting the progress of the sun? Does he seek in reflection on its course some inspiration for the renewal of his labor? He continues to stare without expression. We can afford to leave him for a moment.The legend abounds in perplexities, or at least this is true of that retelling of the myth that has made it so important to us. Camus calls Sisyphus "the absurd hero." This is, then, the best that we can hope to be, for our lives, too, according to Camus, are absurd. But why should we believe this? Surely it is ludicrously question-begging to conduct an imaginative exercise in which we strip a life of all that could possibly make it worthwhile, then appeal to this figment of ours as proof of the futility of human existence.If we are tempted to see in Sisyphus's eternal rock-rolling a revelation of the emptiness of our own labors, we should be easily dissuaded from this when we consider what little alteration is required to transform this myth from the perfect image of meaninglessness to a perfectly serviceable conception of a meaningful life.2 All we need is to introduce some point, some minimal, common, everyday point to his labors, such as any one of our lives abounds in, and the transformation is accomplished. Assume, then, that Sisyphus rolls... (shrink)

In a development of the ecosemiotic vivo-scape concept, a ‘safety eco-field’ is proposed as a model of a species response to the safety of its environment. The safety eco-field is based on the ecosemiotic approach which considers environmental safety as a resource sought and chosen by individuals to counter predatory pressure. To test the relative safety of different locations within a landscape, 66 bird feeders (BF) were deployed in a regular 15 × 15 m grid in a rural area, surrounded (...) by shrubs, small trees, hedgerows, and buildings. On each of 48 days in November 2021 and February and March 2022, dried mealworms were placed on each BF and counts of larvae at each BF were made at noon and dusk. The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) and the great tit (Parus major) were the most regular visitors to the BFs. Land cover at each BF was recorded. Bird behaviour at the BFs was noted from direct video recordings of the birds at nine selected BFs, totalling 32 daily sessions in March. The different behaviours of the European robin and the great tit were observable. The safety eco-field changed according to the month and the time of day. The distance of the BF from the woodland edges seemed to be important only in the morning. In the afternoon, BFs that were more distant from the woodland edges received the highest number of visits. Weather conditions were found to influence the number of mealworms removed, but this requires further investigation. A significant relationship between land cover and the number of mealworm larvae removed from the BFs was observed. Within the grid of BF, three regions were distinguishable which were related to land cover in the safety eco-field process. The experimental framework confirms the adequacy, at least for birds that have cryptic predators, to map the landscape as a proxy of safety resource. From the video recordings it was noted that the European robin visits were distributed throughout the day without apparent temporal preferences, while the great tit visits were concentrated in the central part of the day. This result has the limitation of the short period of observation (March) and should be extended to the entire period of the experiment to eventually capture seasonal variation. The experimental evidence obtained confirms that the ecosemiotic-based models of safety eco-field are an efficient approach to explain bird feeding preferences and behaviours. (shrink)

Rohwer and Marris (2015) question the existence of a prima facie duty to preserve genetic integrity leaving open the question of what we should preserve. Many of the arguments used to justify their position could set the platform to defend a duty to preserve the diversity of both wild and domesticated species. In times where agricultural land covers a third of world’s land area and major efforts are undertaken to green urban areas a defense of biodiversity could benefit (...) hugely by intelligently incorporating human-induced diversification. It still remains critical to assess in how far new introductions compensate for losses and here the insights of those defending genetic integrity are an important tool. By acknowledging the added value of human-induced biodiversity we could slow down massive extinction of domesticated and semi-wild varieties by giving these a greater space in human-made environments. (shrink)

Nowadays, that part of Amazonia which is situated on Brazilian territory is more and more the focus of attention for communication methods and the international agenda. This enormous expanse of land covered by tropical forest of unequalled beauty, extending over several Brazilian states, possesses an extremely rich biodiversity, with a vast potential reserve of natural resources of all sorts, and inspires admiration as well as inevitable greed. The intensification of human activity in the region has given rise to problems (...) such as deforestation and a resulting loss of organic matter whose importance has yet to be properly evaluated; it has also led to conflict between the different local groups, such as the indigenous population, gold prospectors and the big landowners, and to the degradation of quite extensive areas, thus provoking questions on how best to promote sustained development in the region. (shrink)

One of the challenges that liberal neutrality faces in diverse societies is how to maintain neutrality towards conception of the good life, when establishment of a particular conception of the good and exclusion of other conceptions is inevitable, as in the case of language regulation. A possible solution is to justify this establishment by appealing to universal reasons, thus refraining from endorsing the intrinsic value of the established conception. This paper argues that such a solution is limited, as it does (...) not cover all inevitable-establishment domains. This is because there is a distinction within inevitable-establishment domains: domains in which rival options can coexist, such as language policy, and domains in which options are mutually exclusive, such as land-use policy. The paper argues that language policy is a coexistence domain, since it allows for a degree of personal agency, and it can refrain from making value judgments about the language that is endorsed by the state. Spatial organization and land-use policy, on the other hand, must rest on value judgments about the good life and cannot accommodate neutral justifications. The distinction has important implications for the scope of neutrality: neutrality turns out to be applicable in coexistence domains, and inapplicable in mutually-exclusive domains. Ultimately, it may be the case that neutrality may not be applicable even in language policy, since language policy exhibits characteristics of a mutually-exclusive domain. (shrink)

The author has taken an important subject, one which has pervaded the thinking of scientists, philosophers, and historians, and with impeccable scholarship and great clarity has concerned himself with a specific aspect of it: the way in which the determination of how the unity of the sciences is to be conceived presented itself to philosophers as a specifically philosophical or logical problem. The study is not, therefore, an essay in the history of ideas showing the idea of unity at work (...) in many cultural contexts, or in the history of the classification fo the sciences; nor does it discuss philosophers who suppose a unity but do not discuss it. Rather it is an exposition of what is directly said on the subject of unity by a number of philosphers who view it in their different ways as a problem for solving. Those chosen for discussion belong to the classical period of modern philosophy, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and chapters take up the contributions of Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Condillac, Diderot and D'Alembert, and Kant. This will be an important book for students and teachers in the history of philosophy, of science, of ideas; and will also be useful to students of English and French literature in the period it covers. (shrink)

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is (...) about fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market. As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions. (shrink)

Empathy was investigated in 592 Mainland Chinese youth using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Participants’ empathy-related information covering demographic traits, emotional wellness, as well as academic and social problems were recorded. Results of Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis showed that emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathy-related personal distress was impacted by inherited traits (e.g., sex), acquired traits (e.g., study major), and a combination of both aspects, respectively. Moreover, empathy was found to be higher in youth in a vulnerable social (...) position (i.e., outlander, female, and ethnic minority) than those in a dominant one (i.e., local, male, and ethnic majority). It was also found that personal distress, rather than empathy, was significantly correlated with academic, social, and emotional problems in the cohort of youth. Hence, the current study provided an innovative observation of the relationships between empathy, personal distress, ethnicity, social vulnerability, wellness, study major, and other key characteristics in Mainland Chinese youth. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Among the options of government for reducing negative environmental externalities from agriculture is the institution of a polluter statutory liability. An environmental duty of care imposes a statutory liability on agents who interact with the environment to avoid causing environmental harm. This paper documents environmental duty of care provisions governing landholders in Queensland, Australia, with specific reference to the 2007 Queensland State Rural Leasehold Land Strategy. The paper reports on a positive response by a group of leaseholders within the (...) Northern Gulf Region in Queensland who developed a prototype environmental code of practice for grazing—a land use not previously covered by such an institution in Australia. The paper concludes that (1) a statutory environmental duty of care and specific forms of leasehold tenure are elements of an effective strategy for implementing an agricultural environmental ethics in north Australia’s rangelands and (2) a grazing industry code of practice is a practical and important tool for the grazing industry to safeguard its social licence to operate. (shrink)

Aimed at graduate students, research logicians and mathematicians, this much-awaited text covers over 40 years of work on relative classification theory for nonstandard models of arithmetic. The book covers basic isomorphism invariants: families of type realized in a model, lattices of elementary substructures and automorphism groups.

Le Laboratoire d’ANalyse Cognitive de l’Information (LANCI) effectue des recherches sur le traitement cognitif de l’information. La recherche fondamentale porte sur les multiples conceptions de l’information. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux modèles cognitifs de la classification et de la catégorisation, tant dans une perspective symbolique que connexionniste. La recherche appliquée explore les technologies informatiques qui manipulent l’information. Le territoire privilégié est celui du texte. La recherche est de nature interdisciplinaire. Elle en appelle à la philosophie, à l’informatique, à la (...) linguistique et à la psychologie. Volume 6, Numéro 2007-02 – Août 2007 Publication du Laboratoire d’ANalyse Cognitive de l’Information Directeurs : Luc Faucher, Jean-Guy Meunier, Serge Robert et Pierre Poirier Université du Québec à Montréal Document disponible en ligne à l’adresse suivante : www.lanci.uqam.ca Tirage : 5 exemplaires Aucune partie de cette publication ne peut être conservée dans un système de recherche documentaire, traduite ou reproduite sous quelque forme que ce soit - imprimé, procédé photomécanique, microfilm, microfiche ou tout autre moyen - sans la permission écrite de l’éditeur. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. / All rights reserved. No part of this publication covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical - without the prior written permission of the publisher. Dépôt légal – Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada Dépôt légal – Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec.. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and biology with respect to race. I begin by giving an overview of the disparate origins of racial classification and the population history of South Africa, noting the peculiarity of their roots. I move from there to sketch how knowledge from the social sciences can improve the quality of hypotheses about population history and, conversely, how the biological sciences can be informative to the social sciences. I end by discussing the (...) relationship between race, biology, and social scientific questions in the context of the land debate in South Africa. (shrink)