The debate between the amodal and the grounded views of cognition seems to be stuck. Their only substantial disagreement is about the vehicle or format of concepts. Amodal theorists reject the grounded claim that concepts are couched in the same modality-specific format as representations in sensory systems. The problem is that there is no clear characterization of format or its neural correlate. In order to make the disagreement empirically meaningful and move forward in the discussion we need a neurocognitive criterion (...) for representational format. I argue that efficient coding models in computational neuroscience can be used to characterize modal codes: These are codes which satisfy special informational demands imposed by sensory tasks. Additionally, I examine recent studies on neural coding and argue that although they do not provide conclusive evidence for either the grounded or the amodal views, they can be used to determine what predictions these approaches can make and what experimental and theoretical developments would be required to settle the debate. (shrink)

In this paper we evaluate how to effectively use the crowdsourcing service, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), to content analyze textual data for use in psychological research. MTurk is a marketplace for discrete tasks completed by workers, typically for small amounts of money. MTurk has been used to aid psychological research in general, and content analysis in particular. In the current study, MTurk workers content analyzed personally-written textual data using coding categories previously developed and validated in psychological research. These codes (...) were evaluated for reliability, accuracy, completion time, and cost. Results indicate that MTurk workers categorized textual data with comparable reliability and accuracy to both previously published studies and expert raters. Further, the coding tasks were performed quickly and cheaply. These data suggest that crowdsourced content analysis can help advance psychological research. (shrink)

A distinguishing feature of neural computation and information processing is that it fits models that describe the most efficient strategies for performing different cognitive tasks. Efficiency determines a distinctive sense of teleology involving optimal performance and resource management through a specific strategy. I articulate this kind of teleology and call it efficient teleological function. I argue that efficient teleological function is compatible with mechanistic explanation and, most likely, neural computational mechanisms are efficiently functional in this sense. They (...) are members of a distinctive class of computational mechanisms whose efficiency is intertwined with their functionality. This is illustrated by widely discussed approaches to mind, such as Barlow’s efficient coding hypothesis or the ones associated with the so-called “predictive mind”, which propose that the brain employs highly efficient coding strategies to save energy resources that are critical to the organism’s survival. (shrink)

Predictive coding – sometimes also known as ‘predictive processing’, ‘free energy minimisation’, or ‘prediction error minimisation’ – claims to offer a complete, unified theory of cognition that stretches all the way from cellular biology to phenomenology. However, the exact content of the view, and how it might achieve its ambitions, is not clear. This series of articles examines predictive coding and attempts to identify its key commitments and justification. The present article begins by focusing on possible confounds with (...) predictive coding: claims that are often identified with predictive coding, but which are not predictive coding. These include the idea that the brain employs an efficient scheme for encoding its incoming sensory signals; that perceptual experience is shaped by prior beliefs; that cognition involves minimisation of prediction error; that the brain is a probabilistic inference engine; and that the brain learns and employs a generative model of the world. These ideas have garnered widespread support in modern cognitive neuroscience, but it is important not to conflate them with predictive coding. (shrink)

Code Choice and Face This paper starts by presenting the factors that govern language choices among multilinguals, to show then that they can be seen as the result of face considerations:1) "Natural" or "efficient" language choice: choosing the language for which the product of the competences of both partners is highest. This maximizes the negative face, i.e. the freedom of action, of both partners.2) Language practice: choosing a language not because it is the easiest one but because one wishes (...) to practice it. This means reducing one's positive and negative face for the moment in order to increase them in the long run.3) Prestige or its opposite, fear of losing face by making mistakes. This is clearly the positive face aspect of language choices.4) And finally, compliance: adapting to the language preferences of one's partner by speaking either his mother tongue, or a language s/he has a preference for. This means reducing one's own negative face in order to increase the one of the partner. Which in turn will contribute to the positive face of both partners, one feeling important because s/he is being complied with, and the other getting the image of a kind and polite person. (shrink)

A central problem in the cognitive sciences is identifying the link between consciousness and neural computation. The key features of consciousness—including the emergence of representative information content and the initiation of volitional action—are correlated with neural activity in the cerebral cortex, but not computational processes in spinal reflex circuits or classical computing architecture. To take a new approach toward considering the problem of consciousness, it may be worth re‐examining some outstanding puzzles in neuroscience, focusing on differences between the cerebral cortex (...) and spinal reflex circuits. First, the mammalian cerebral cortex exhibits exascale computational power, a feature that is not strictly correlated with the number of binary computational units; second, individual computational units engage in noisy coding, allowing random electrical events to gate signaling outcomes; third, this noisy coding results in the synchronous firing of statistically random populations of cells across the neural network, at a range of nested frequencies; fourth, the system grows into a more ordered state over time, as it encodes the predictive value gained through observation; and finally, the cerebral cortex is extraordinarily energy efficient, with very little free energy lost to entropy during the work of information processing. Here, I argue that each of these five key features suggest the mammalian brain engages in probabilistic computation. Indeed, by modeling the physical mechanisms of probabilistic computation, we may find a better way to explain the unique emergent features arising from cortical neural networks. (shrink)

Evidence from visual-search experiments is discussed that indicates that there is spatially parallel encoding based on three-dimensional (3-D) spatial relations between complex image features. In one paradigm, subjects had to detect an odd part of cube-like figures, formed by grouping of corner junctions. Performance with cube-like figures was unaffected by the number of corner junctions present, though performance was affected when the corners did not configure into a cube. It is suggested from the data that junctions can be grouped to (...) form 3-D shapes in a spatially parallel manner. Further, performance with cube-like figures was more robust to noncollinearity between junctions than was performance when junctions grouped to form two-dimensional planes. In the second paradigm, subjects searched for targets defined by their size. Performance was affected by a size illusion, induced by linear-perspective cues from local background neighbourhoods. Search was made more efficient when the size illusion was consistent with the real size difference between targets and nontargets, and it was made less efficient when the size illusion was inconsistent with the real size difference. This last result occurred even though search was little affected by the display size in a control condition. We suggest that early, parallel visual processes are influenced by 3-D spatial relations between visual elements, that grouping based on 3-D spatial relations is relatively robust to noncollinearity between junctions, and that, at least in some circumstances, 3-D relations dominate those coded in two-dimensions. (shrink)

Companies are increasingly singing up to a range of corporate responsibility codes and other voluntary commitments. Using evidence from the mining industry’s experience with the Australian Greenhouse Challenge, the Minerals Council’s Code for Environmental Management and the ISO14001 Specification for Environmental Management Systems, this article examines whether the outcomes from the adoption of multiple voluntary approaches differ from those outcomes that would be expected if each voluntary approach was adopted in isolation. The article demonstrates that it is feasible for companies (...) to participate in multiple voluntary approaches and to derive benefits such as reduced transaction costs, improved data quality and enhanced implementation. However, there is limited evidence that the voluntary approaches in combination have enhanced environmental performance, economic efficiency, innovation or competitiveness beyond that which would be achieved from each of the approaches in isolation. Furthermore, many of the limitations of voluntary approaches (in particular, environmental performance, acceptability to NGOs) remain. (shrink)

In the debate about human bio-sampling the interests of patients and other sample donors are believed to stand against the interests of scientists and of their freedom of research. Scientists want efficient access to and use of human biological samples. Patients and other donors of blood or tissue materials want protection of their integrity. This dichotomy is reflected in the Swedish law on biobanks, which came into effect 1 January 2003. In this article I argue that if the basic (...) interest of scientists using human biological samples is in increasing knowledge and developing better treatments, and if the concept ‘integrity’ is properly understood, then sample donors should also be interested in promotion of efficiency as well as in the protection of their integrity. The basic premise of this argument is that donors of samples have interests related to the donation and use of samples as well as to the use of the results of the research, that is, new medical products and treatments. They have a role both as donors or participants in research and as end users of the research. I conclude that if access to information acquired through biobank research is strictly limited to researchers, the information is protected by secrecy safeguards through coding and the procedures governing the research are open to public and democratic control, then most research using human biobanks may be carried out on the basis of making general information available when collecting biological samples, without further contact with participants. (shrink)

Barbieri introduced and developed the concept of organic codes. The most basic of them is the genetic code, a set of correspondence rules between otherwise unrelated sequences: strings of nucleotides on the one hand, polypeptidic chains on the other hand. Barbieri noticed that it implies ‘coding by convention’ as arbitrary as the semantic relations a language establishes between words and outer objects. Moreover, the major transitions in life evolution originated in new organic codes similarly involving conventional rules. Independently, dealing (...) with heredity as communication over time and relying on information theory, we asserted that the conservation of genomes over the ages demands that error-correcting codes make them resilient to casual errors. Moreover, the better conservation of very old parts of the genome demands that they result from combining successively established nested codes such that the older an information, the more numerous component codes protect it. Barbieri’s concept of organic code and that of genomic error-correcting code may seem unrelated. We show however that organic codes actually entail error-correcting properties. Error-correcting, in general, results from constraints being imposed on a set of sequences. Mathematical equalities are conveniently used in communication engineering for expressing constraints but error correction only needs that constraints exist. Biological sequences are similarly endowed with error-correcting ability by physical-chemical or linguistic constraints, thus defining ‘soft codes’. These constraints are moreover presumably efficient for correcting errors. Insofar as biological sequences are subjected to constraints, organic codes necessarily involve soft codes, and their successive onset results in the nested structure we hypothesized. Organic codes are generated and maintained by means of molecular ‘semantic feedback loops’. Each of these loops involves genes which code for proteins, the enzymatic action of which controls a function needed for the protein assembly. Taken together, thus, they control the assembly of their own structure as instructed by the genome and, once closed, these loops ensure their own conservation. However, the semantic feedback loops do not prevent the genome lengthening. It increases both the redundancy of the genome and the information quantity it bears, thus improving the genome reliability and the specificity of the enzymes, which enables further evolution. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers and social scientists have turned their attention to the epistemological shifts provoked in established sciences by their incorporation of big data techniques. There has been less focus on the forms of epistemology proper to the investigation of algorithms themselves, understood as scientific objects in their own right. This article, based upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Russian data scientists, addresses this lack through an investigation of the specific forms of epistemic attention paid to algorithms by data scientists. (...) On the one hand, algorithms are unlike other mathematical objects in that they are not subject to disputation through deductive proof. On the other hand, unlike concrete things in the world such as particles or organisms, algorithms cannot be installed as the objects of experimental systems directly. They can only be evaluated in their functioning as components of extended computational assemblages; on their own, they are inert. As a consequence, the epistemological coding proper to this evaluation does not turn on truth and falsehood but rather on the efficiency of a given algorithmic assemblage. This article suggests that understanding the forms of algorithmic rationality employed in such inquiry is crucial for charting the place of data science within the contemporary academy and knowledge economy more generally. (shrink)

Özkal-Sanver (Theory Decis 59:193–205, 2005) studies stability and efficiency of partitions of agents in two-sided matching markets in which agents can form partitions by individual moves only, and a matching rule determines the matching in each coalition in a partition. In this study, we present the relationship between stability and efficiency of partitions that is analyzed for several matching rules and under various membership property rights codes, now allowing coalitional moves.

We contend that if efficiency and reliability are important factors in neural information processing then distributed, not localist, representations are “evolution's best bet.” We note that distributed codes are the most efficient method for representing information, and that this efficiency minimizes metabolic costs, providing adaptive advantage to an organism.

In this article codes over lattice valued intuitionistic fuzzy set type-3 are defined. Binary block codes and linear codes are constructed over LIFS-3. Hamming distance and related properties of these newly established codes are examined. The research findings are applied to genetic codes. The set L of sixty-four codons is converted into a lattice and then codes are created over the set S of twenty amino acids by defining membership and nonmembership functions from the set of twenty amino acids to (...) the sixty-four codon set. Comparison of codes over L -fuzzy set and LIFS-3 conducted in terms of hamming distance for codon system that ensures the efficiency of newly established codes. (shrink)

We describe a deep generative model in which the lowest layer represents the word-count vector of a document and the top layer represents a learned binary code for that document. The top two layers of the generative model form an undirected associative memory and the remaining layers form a belief net with directed, top-down connections. We present efficient learning and inference procedures for this type of generative model and show that it allows more accurate and much faster retrieval than (...) latent semantic analysis. By using our method as a filter for a much slower method called TF-IDF we achieve higher accuracy than TF-IDF alone and save several orders of magnitude in retrieval time. By using short binary codes as addresses, we can perform retrieval on very large document sets in a time that is independent of the size of the document set using only one word of memory to describe each document. (shrink)

Facial appearance changes with age and health affecting skin color as well as facial and head hair. Yet somehow the brain is able to see past shared structure and dynamic deformations to focus on subtle details that distinguish one face from another. This article argues that the brain takes an efficient approach to this problem using prior knowledge about the structure of faces in its analysis. It employs intrinsic norms to focus on subtle variations in the shared face configuration (...) that differentiate one face from another. The study reviews evidence that the brain uses multiple norms to extract face identity that these norms are shaped by visual experience, and that norm-based coding is well-suited to meeting the challenges of image-based face perception mentioned above. By encoding faces with reference to stored perceptual norms the visual system can focus on what is unique to each individual, allowing for the discrimination of thousands of faces despite their similarity. (shrink)

Abuse of authority is an unsolved problem in the new institutional theory of the firm. This paper attempts a double attack to this problem by developing a contractarian view of corporate codes of ethics. From the ex-ante standpoint the paper elaborates on the idea of a Social Contract based on Co-operative Bargaining Games and deduces from it the fair/efficient 'Constitution' of the firm endorsed by means of a well-devised corporate code of ethics. From the ex-post standpoint, codes of ethics (...) are proved to be self-enforcing norms, by showing how they put at work the mechanism of a Repeated Game of Reputation within hierarchical transactions (firms) characterised by incomplete contracts and unforeseen events. To accomplish this task a theory of rationality in the face of unforeseen contingencies is sketched by working out the idea that the domain of a principle of ethics defines a fuzzy event, i.e. an event to which also the ex-ante unforeseen, unimaginable states of the world belong to a certain degree. (shrink)

Information and communications technology (ICT) is now used more by non-IT professional end-users than by IT professionals. A survey of 125 London-based organisations found that the majority had instituted codes of conduct designed to govern the use of ICT by their employees. However, the primary purpose of adopting such codes was to ensure the security and efficient operation of the organisation's information systems rather than for wider ethical considerations. Hence, few of the codes of conduct addressed issues relating to (...) the collection, storage and dissemination of data about individuals (personal data); this was especially the case with codes emanating from IT departments rather than senior management. In general, codes of conduct were found to be ineffective in influencing end-user behaviour in the organisations surveyed. Codes of conduct are a means by which organisations seek to exercise power, control and ownership, but their effectiveness is compromised by the nature of ICT itself as well as the attitudes of employees. The failure of well-publicised ethical policies to influence use of ICT by business studies students – the managers of tomorrow – suggests that these tensions are likely to remain unresolved. (shrink)

Predictive coding models of brain processing propose that top-down cortical signals promote efficient neural signaling by carrying predictions about incoming sensory information. These “priors” serve to constrain bottom-up signal propagation where prediction errors are carried via feedforward mechanisms. Depression, traditionally viewed as a disorder characterized by negative cognitive biases, is associated with disrupted reward prediction error encoding and signaling. Accumulating evidence also suggests that depression is characterized by impaired local and long-range prediction signaling across multiple sensory domains. This (...) review highlights the electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence for disrupted predictive processing in depression. The discussion is framed around the manner in which disrupted generative predictions about the sensorium could lead to depressive symptomatology, including anhedonia and negative bias. In particular, the review focuses on studies of sensory deviance detection and reward processing, highlighting research evidence for both disrupted generative predictions and prediction error signaling in depression. The role of the monoaminergic and glutamatergic systems in predictive coding processes is also discussed. This review provides a novel framework for understanding depression using predictive coding principles and establishes a foundational roadmap for potential future research. (shrink)

In recent years, a multitude of datasets of human–human conversations has been released for the main purpose of training conversational agents based on data‐hungry artificial neural networks. In this paper, we argue that datasets of this sort represent a useful and underexplored source to validate, complement, and enhance cognitive studies on human behavior and language use. We present a method that leverages the recent development of powerful computational models to obtain the fine‐grained annotation required to apply metrics and techniques from (...) Cognitive Science to large datasets. Previous work in Cognitive Science has investigated the question‐asking strategies of human participants by employing different variants of the so‐called 20‐question‐game setting and proposing several evaluation methods. In our work, we focus on GuessWhat, a task proposed within the Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing communities that is similar in structure to the 20‐question‐game setting. Crucially, the GuessWhat dataset contains tens of thousands of dialogues based on real‐world images, making it a suitable setting to investigate the question‐asking strategies of human players on a large scale and in a natural setting. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of computational tools to automatically code how the hypothesis space changes throughout the dialogue in complex visual scenes. On the one hand, we confirm findings from previous work on smaller and more controlled settings. On the other hand, our analyses allow us to highlight the presence of “uninformative” questions (in terms of Expected Information Gain) at specific rounds of the dialogue. We hypothesize that these questions fulfill pragmatic constraints that are exploited by human players to solve visual tasks in complex scenes successfully. Our work illustrates a method that brings together efforts and findings from different disciplines to gain a better understanding of human question‐asking strategies on large‐scale datasets, while at the same time posing new questions about the development of conversational systems. (shrink)

A complex conjuncture of ideological constructions obscured and rationalized the systematic exploitation of farm women. First, farming and homemaking, to which people cling in an attempt to avert the alienation of wage labor, provide a basis for evaluating one's labor in terms that, ironically, makes them vulnerable to super-exploitation. Second, agrarian ideologies, with their strongly patriarchal bias, did not allow women to understand themselves as public actors. Modernizing elite ideologies, specifically the equation of entrepreneurial individualism and efficiency with “progress” and (...) affluence, and the “cult of domesticity” with its redefinition of men's and women's roles, promised women greater equality within the family; however, these normative codes simultaneously opened the farm and home to greater dependence on capitalist markets. The ideology of entrepreneurial individualism also provided templates through which farm men and women (mis)understood their relative poverty as being the result of private, individual choices. In addition, virtually all media assumed a sector differentiated only by commodity, rendering size, class, or other distinctions invisible. Finally, the ideology of separate spheres, as it developed in the nineteenth century, created a segmented and discriminatory labor market for women. The period focused on, the late 1940s and the 1950s, was crucial in establishing the terms of the post-War order. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to clarify the answer to the question: "What does it mean to measure the efficiency (or effectiveness) of an ethical code? Is this efficiency measurable?" Although this phrase is frequently used, it covers difficulties, both conceptual and of implementation. The proposed solution is to abandon the above question and redirect our attention towards a more complex one: What does it mean to measure the "efficiency" of a moral enhancement program, grounded on a code (...) of ethics and having as the objective to increase the organization's "moral content"? This outcome is brought about by "encapsulating" and dissolving the immoral behavior according to the guide of the seven institutional virtues identified by Kaptein. After introducing the "praxiological" concept of "moral efficiency", in which the "efficiency of the ethical code" is substituted by the "efficiency of moral programs", one shows how is it possible to measure the efficiency of the moral enhancement programs introduced to strengthen the moral content of an organization. (shrink)

Proteins account for the catalytic and structural versatility displayed by all cells, yet they are assembled from a set of only 20 common amino acids. With few exceptions, only 61 nucleotide triplets also direct incorporation of these amino acids. Endeavors to expand the genetic code recently progressed to nucleus‐containing cells, after Chin et al.1 transferred Escherichia coli genes for a mutant tyrosine‐adaptor molecule and its synthetase into Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Transformed yeast cells were produced that exhibit efficient site‐specific incorporation of (...) non‐biotic amino acids into proteins. This makes it likely that code complexity can be elevated experimentally in mammals. BioEssays 26:111–115, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

From the Hippocratic Oath on, deontological codes and other professional self-regulation mechanisms have been used to legitimize and identify professional groups. New technological challenges and, above all, changes in the socioeconomic environment require adaptable codes which can respond to new demands.We assume that ethical codes for professionals should not simply focus on regulative functions, but must also consider ideological and educative functions. Any adaptations should take into account both contents (values, norms and recommendations) and the drafting process itself.In this article (...) we propose a process for developing a professional ethical code for an official professional association (Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros Industriales de Valencia (COIIV) starting from the philosophical assumptions of discursive ethics but adapting them to critical hermeneutics.Our proposal is based on the Integrity Approach rather than the Compliance Approach. A process aiming to achieve an effective ethical document that fulfils regulative and ideological functions requires a participative, dialogical and reflexive methodology. This process must respond to moral exigencies and demands for efficiency and professional effectiveness.In addition to the methodological proposal we present our experience of producing an ethical code for the industrial engineers’ association in Valencia (Spain) where this methodology was applied, and we evaluate the detected problems and future potential. (shrink)

Commercial interest in land (large-scale land acquisition, LaSLA) in developing countries is a hot topic for debate and its potential consequences are contentious: proponents conceive of it as much needed investment into the formerly neglected agricultural sector while opponents point to severe social and environmental effects. This contribution discusses, if and how sustainability standards and codes of conduct can contribute towards governing LaSLA. Based on the WCED-definition we develop a conception of sustainability that allows framing potential negative effects as issues (...) of intra- and intergenerational justice. In a second step we specify these claims of justice, drawing on a human rights approach as well as three guidelines for sustainable development, namely, efficiency, consistency and resilience, to arrive at six guidelines for social and environmental sustainability criteria of LaSLA. We compare our suggestions with existing proposals for sustainability standards of LaSLA and with the certification schemes for sustainable production of bioenergy. From this we draw lessons for development and implementation of sustainability standards for LaSLA. (shrink)

Prisoner's dilemmas can lead rational people to interact in ways that lead to persistent inefficiencies. These dilemmas create a problem for institutional designers to solve: devise institutions that realign individual incentives to achieve collectively rational outcomes. I will argue that we do not always want to eliminate misalignments between individual incentives and efficient outcomes. Sometimes we want to preserve prisoner's dilemmas, even when we know that they systematically will lead to inefficiencies. No doubt, prisoner's dilemmas can create problems, but (...) they also create opportunities to practice the cooperative norms that make market institutions possible in the first place. An ethical market culture, I argue, benefits from the presence of prisoner's dilemmas. I first consider standard approaches for solving prisoner's dilemmas. I then argue for the value of prisoner's dilemmas. Finally, I show the significance of this argument for advocating codes of business ethics. (shrink)

The widespread application of QR code technology is best represented by the health codes used in China’s pandemic prevention and control. This technology has enhanced the country’s ability to manage the pandemic by achieving higher efficiency and accuracy. Unfortunately, a certain segment of the older population has encountered difficulties in adapting and maintaining their daily activities. This indicates the limitations of QR code technology in achieving social isolation. This article argues that for a more comprehensive pandemic prevention and control policy (...) system to be established, managing the implementation of this very technology should be done in a more humane fashion, i.e. under the guidance of three moral principles: benevolence, justice, and non-maleficence. By doing so, implementation of QR code technology is done in a way that is not only conducive to COVID-19 prevention and control but also mitigate marginalization of the older people. In the post-pandemic era, the socialization of digital technology will accelerate. Therefore, in the field of public health, we should direct attention not only to the fair distribution of resources but also to the issue of identity that arises due to digital divide. (shrink)

This article presents a model for the procedure of elaboration of an effective ethical code. Taking as the starting point the concept of business ethics as critical hermeneutics, we describe a process which will lead to the creation of a document that is truly ethical and efficient. We believe the elaboration of an ethical code should follow a definite procedure, and that the process is as important as the result, but we also add that in order for the process (...) to be a truly rational dialogue it is necessary to make efforts to ensure the participation of truly valid interlocutors who can represent their interests in conditions that are as close as possible to an ideal community of dialogue. Our model for the elaboration of an ethical code attempts to break with the conventional distinction between processes of elaboration and application in order to develop a truly integrative ethics, while also giving attention to the concrete conditions in which the ethical code is developed. In our view the contribution made by this model is the emphasis it places on the transformation of the will of the participants in the dialogue. (shrink)

The diffusion of codes is an important processing technology for big data networks. In previous scheme, data analysis was conducted for small samples of big data and complex problems that cannot be processed by big data technology. Due to the limited capacity of intelligence device, a better method is to select a set of nodes to form a connected dominating set to save energy, and constructing CDS is proved to be a complete NP problem. However, it is a challenge to (...) reduce the communication delay and complexity for urgent data transmission in big data. In this paper, an appropriate duty cycle control scheme is proposed to reduce communication delay and complexity while improving energy efficient in CDS-based WSNs. In ADCC scheme, the method for constructing CDS is proposed at lower complexity. Nodes in CDS are selected according to the degree of nodes. Then, duty cycle of dominator nodes in CDS is higher than that of dominated nodes, so the communication delay in the proposed scheme is far less than that of previous scheme. The duty cycle of dominated nodes is small to save energy. This is because the number of dominator nodes in CDS is far less than the number of dominated nodes whose duty cycle is small; thus, the total energy consumption of the network is less than that of the previous scheme. As a result, the performance of energy consumption and communication delay and complex have been improved. Its complexity O∑i=0vm−i+2m−2v−s is reduced a lot for big data. The theoretical analysis shows that compared to the previous scheme, the transmission delay can be reduced 25–92% and the energy efficiency is improved by about 80% while retaining network lifetime. (shrink)

There is one grand question that lies beneath most of what follows. That question is: what is morality I mean morality as it is contrasted with the non-moral, not as it is opposed to the immoral. The question does not ask, say, whether lying to a friend in a certain situation is moral or immoral, but asks what makes something, for instance lying to a friend, a moral problem. Parts of the same question ask what counts as a moral consideration, (...) as opposed to, say, one of efficiency or aesthetics, or ask what makes a motivation moral as opposed to prudential. The question asks for the boundaries of the domain of morality. (shrink)

Biosemiotics argues that “sign” and “meaning” are two essential concepts for the explanation of life. Peircean biosemiotics, founded by Tomas Sebeok from Peirce’s semiotics and Jacob von Uexkül’s studies on animal communication, today makes up the mainstream of this discipline. Marcello Barbieri has developed an alternative account of meaning in biology based on the concept of code. Barbieri rejects Peircean biosemiotics on the grounds that this discipline opens the door to nonscientific approaches to biology through its use of the concept (...) of “interpretation.” In this article, it is noted that Barbieri does not adequately distinguish among Peirce’s semiotics, Peircean biosemiotics, and “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. Two key arguments of Barbieri are criticized: his limited view of science and his rejection of “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. My argument is based on tools taken from a different approach: Robert Rosen’s relational biology. Instead of “signs” and “meanings,” the study begins in this case from the “components” and “functions” of the organism. Rosen pursues a new definition of a law of nature, introduces the anticipatory nature of organisms, and defines the living being as a system closed to efficient cause. It is shown that Code Biosemiotics and Peircean biosemiotics can share a common field of study. Additionally, some proposals are suggested to carry out a reading of Rosen’s biology as a biosemiotic theory. (shrink)

From the Hippocratic Oath on, deontological codes and other professional self-regulation mechanisms have been used to legitimize and identify professional groups. New technological challenges and, above all, changes in the socioeconomic environment require adaptable codes which can respond to new demands.We assume that ethical codes for professionals should not simply focus on regulative functions, but must also consider ideological and educative functions. Any adaptations should take into account both contents (values, norms and recommendations) and the drafting process itself.In this article (...) we propose a process for developing a professional ethical code for an official professional association (Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros Industriales de Valencia (COIIV) starting from the philosophical assumptions of discursive ethics but adapting them to critical hermeneutics.Our proposal is based on the Integrity Approach rather than the Compliance Approach. A process aiming to achieve an effective ethical document that fulfils regulative and ideological functions requires a participative, dialogical and reflexive methodology. This process must respond to moral exigencies and demands for efficiency and professional effectiveness.In addition to the methodological proposal we present our experience of producing an ethical code for the industrial engineers’ association in Valencia (Spain) where this methodology was applied, and we evaluate the detected problems and future potential. (shrink)

The rapid growth of covert activities via communications network brought about an increasing need to provide an efficient method for data hiding to protect secret information from malicious attacks. One of the options is to combine two approaches, namely steganography and compression. However, its performance heavily relies on three major factors, payload, imperceptibility, and robustness, which are always in trade-offs. Thus, this study aims to hide a large amount of secret message inside a grayscale host image without sacrificing its (...) quality and robustness. To realize the goal, a new two-tier data hiding technique is proposed that integrates an improved exploiting modification direction method and Huffman coding. First, a secret message of an arbitrary plain text of characters is compressed and transformed into streams of bits; each character is compressed into a maximum of 5 bits per stream. The stream is then divided into two parts of different sizes of 3 and 2 bits. Subsequently, each part is transformed into its decimal value, which serves as a secret code. Second, a cover image is partitioned into groups of 5 pixels based on the original EMD method. Then, an enhancement is introduced by dividing the group into two parts, namely k1 and k2, which consist of 3 and 2 pixels, respectively. Furthermore, several groups are randomly selected for embedding purposes to increase the security. Then, for each selected group, each part is embedded with its corresponding secret code by modifying one grayscale value at most to hide the code in a -ary notational system. The process is repeated until a stego-image is eventually produced. Finally, the χ2 test, which is considered one of the most severe attacks, is applied against the stego-image to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in terms of its robustness. The test revealed that the proposed method is more robust than both least significant bit embedding and the original EMD. Additionally, in terms of imperceptibility and capacity, the experimental results have also shown that the proposed method outperformed both the well-known methods, namely original EMD and optimized EMD, with a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 55.92 dB and payload of 52,428 bytes. (shrink)

Society needs to find new ways to utilise its resources in the best possible way in order to enable satisfactory services for its citizens in the long term. This is particularly important in sparsely populated areas, and in cities and municipalities with a declining population. This study contributes to this field by analysing a project for collaboration between the rescue service and the home-care service that has been introduced in a number of Swedish municipalities. The collaboration is intended to ensure (...) welfare and safety for citizens, to guarantee a more efficient use of municipal resources, and to contribute to improved emergency management and civil protection. The rescue service and the home-care service are two clearly gender-coded occupations that also operate on gender-coded workplaces and places of work. An overarching aim has therefore been to study gendered obstacles and possibilities of the collaboration. In our analysis of the empirical data – interviews with persons involved in the collaboration – place emerged as an important aspect of the collaboration processes, and is therefore elaborated in this article to contribute with knowledge of how conceptions and gender-coding of places and occupations affect sustainable and well-functioning collaboration processes. The results show that collaboration processes between municipal services are complex and challenge ideals of the organisation, content and responsibility of work and who should perform certain work tasks. Notions of gender and gender differences are reproduced through the collaboration, which affect the efforts of municipalities to ensure welfare and safety for citizens. (shrink)

Event integration – the conflation of multiple events into a unitary event – plays a vital role in language and cognition. However, the conditions under which event integration occurs in linguistic representation and the differences in how linguistic forms encode complex events remain unclear. This corpus study examines two types of Japanese complex predicates – compound verbs [V1-V2]V and complex predicates consisting of a deverbal compound noun and the light verb suru ‘do’ [[V1-V2]N suru]V – using an original “related-event approach”. (...) Findings indicate that [[V1-V2]N suru]V can be established based on coextensiveness alone, whereas [V1-V2]V typically requires direct or shared causality (“the inevitable co-occurrence constraint”). The related-event approach examines related events of linguistic concepts, such as causes and purposes of an event, identified through “complex sentences” from ultra-large-scale web corpora. This study demonstrates that such an approach is effective in clarifying causal relationships between verbs. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the “iconicity versus frequency” debate by showing that conceptually more accessible events (causality plus coextensiveness) tend to be represented in a simpler form than less accessible events (coextensiveness only), due to “efficiency”. The frequency of usage is a result of the nature of concepts rather than the driving force of coding asymmetries. (shrink)

A new edge detection technique based on the texture feature coding method is proposed. The TFCM is a texture analysis scheme that is generally used in texture-based image segmentation and classification applications. The TFCM transforms an input image into a texture feature image whose pixel values represent the texture information of the pixel in the original image. Then, on the basis of the transformed image, several features are calculated as texture descriptors. In this article, the TFCM is employed differently (...) to construct an edge detector. In particular, the texture feature number of the TFCM is considered. In other words, the TFN image is used for subsequent processes. After obtaining the TFN image, a simple thresholding scheme is employed for obtaining the coarse edge image. Finally, an edge-thinning procedure is used to obtain the tuned edges. We conducted several experiments on a variety of images and compared the results with the popular existing methods such as the Sobel, Prewitt, Canny, and Canny–Deriche edge detectors. The obtained results were evaluated quantitatively with the Figure of Merit criterion. The experimental results demonstrated that our proposed method improved the edge detection performance greatly. We further implemented the proposed edge detector with a hardware system. To this end, a field programmable gate array chip was used. The related simulations were carried out with the MATLAB Simulink tool. Both software and hardware implementations demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed edge detector. (shrink)

This article studies the emergence of ambiguity in communication through the concept of logical irreversibility and within the framework of Shannon’s information theory. This leads us to a precise and general expression of the intuition behind Zipf’s vocabulary balance in terms of a symmetry equation between the complexities of the coding and the decoding processes that imposes an unavoidable amount of logical uncertainty in natural communication. Accordingly, the emergence of irreversible computations is required if the complexities of the (...) class='Hi'>coding and the decoding processes are balanced in a symmetric scenario, which means that the emergence of ambiguous codes is a necessary condition for natural communication to succeed. (shrink)

Negotiation between two individuals is a common task that typically involves two goals: maximize individual outcomes and obtain an agreement. However, research on the simplest negotiation tasks demonstrates that although naive subjects can be induced to improve their performance, they are often no more likely to achieve fully optimal solutions. The present study tested the prediction that a decrease in a particular type of argumentative behavior, substantiation, would result in an increase in optimal agreements. As substantiation behaviors depend primarily on (...) supplied content of the negotiation task, it was also predicted that substantiation behavior would be reduced by curtailing the content. A 2 × 2 experimental design was employed, where both negotiation tactics (list of tactics present versus absent) and negotiation task content (high versus low) were varied to determine the processes leading beyond solution improvement to solution optimality. Sixty‐one dyads engaged in a two‐party, four‐issue negotiation task. All negotiations were videotaped and analyzed. Although the list of negotiation tactics resulted in improved performance, only the content manipulation resulted in a significant increase in dyads achieving optimal solutions. Analyses of the coded protocols indicated that the key difference in achieving optimality was a reduction in persistent substantiation‐related operators (substantiation, along with single‐issue preferences and procedures) and an increase in a complex macro‐operator, multi‐issue offers that reduced the problem space, facilitating the search for optimality. (shrink)

In an open, unregulated and globalised economy, it is logical that the problem of corporate government not only occupy the time of academics, but also preoccupy both companies and the public administration. Corporate governance varies depending on several factors, such as the culture of a particular country, the economic situation and the organisational structures. Thus, there is no single recipe which can be applied automatically and is universally valid in all contexts. However, it is possible to propose some general principles (...) which have duly stood the test of experience and are recognised as providing valuable guidance for efficient corporate governance.The aim of this article is to present the Spanish "Olivencia Report", which is an attempt to draft an "ethical code" containing a number of practices and principles, which, if they were to be applied, could improve the governance of the larger Spanish companies listed on the Stock Market. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is regarded in the context of the tasks that are delegated to it during the development of technical projects and the features of the implementation of tasks that must be performed in real time without the possibility of interruption. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that artificial intelligence sees as its main task the formalisation of decision-making with little or no human involvement. The basis of the methodological search are biological and prognostic methods. The (...) current stage of development of socio-humanitarian technologies, and in particular, systems with artificial intelligence, prompts people to conduct such socio-technical projects, for the implementation of which the properties of the human biological brain are no longer enough. The result of research on artificial intelligence is the desire to understand the work of the human brain, to reveal the secrets of human consciousness and the problem of creating machines with a certain level of human intelligence. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the understanding of artificial intelligence is primarily aimed at creating an environment that can distinguish artificial intelligence from the entire array of technological devices not only as a platform of knowledge and program code. The practical significance of the study is determined by the necessity for standardisation and the formation of attitudes and the acceptability of the use of artificial intelligence in tasks that will subsequently affect social development. (shrink)

Communism as our new common sense master code arises in Jameson and Žižek’s recent projects, from Žižek’s volumes on The Idea of Communism, to Jameson’s essay “An American Utopia”. What they both continue to demonstrate is that in the face of the absolute foreclosure of the signifier, the deadlocks of capitalist exploitation, as well as its own inherent internal contradictions, can only go on and transform into absolute excess. As Žižek has put it, “when people tell me that nothing can (...) be changed [my response is] – no it can, because things are already changing like crazy. And what we should say is just this: if we let things change the way they are changing automatically we are approaching a kind of new perverse, permissively authoritarian society, which will be authoritarian but in a new way”. (shrink)

The efficient coding hypothesis posits that sensory systems are tuned to the regularities of their natural input. The statistics of natural image databases have been the topic of many studies, which have revealed biases in the distribution of orientations that are related to neural representations as well as behavior in psychophysical tasks. However, commonly used natural image databases contain images taken with a camera with a planar image sensor and limited field of view. Thus, these images do not (...) incorporate the physical properties of the visual system and its active use reflecting body and eye movements. Here, we investigate quantitatively, whether the active use of the visual system influences image statistics across the visual field by simulating visual behaviors in an avatar in a naturalistic virtual environment. Images with a field of view of 120° were generated during exploration of a virtual forest environment both for a human and cat avatar. The physical properties of the visual system were taken into account by projecting the images onto idealized retinas according to models of the eyes' geometrical optics. Crucially, different active gaze behaviors were simulated to obtain image ensembles that allow investigating the consequences of active visual behaviors on the statistics of the input to the visual system. In the central visual field, the statistics of the virtual images matched photographic images regarding their power spectra and a bias in edge orientations toward cardinal directions. At larger eccentricities, the cardinal bias was superimposed with a gradually increasing radial bias. The strength of this effect depends on the active visual behavior and the physical properties of the eye. There were also significant differences between the upper and lower visual field, which became stronger depending on how the environment was actively sampled. Taken together, the results show that quantitatively relating natural image statistics to neural representations and psychophysical behavior requires not only to take the structure of the environment into account, but also the physical properties of the visual system, and its active use in behavior. (shrink)

An argument recently proposed by Chirimuuta seems to motivate the rejection of the claims that every neurocognitive phenomenon can have a mechanistic explanation and that every neurocognitive explanation is mechanistic. In this paper, I focus on efficient coding models involving the so-called “canonical neural computations” and argue that although they imply some form of pluralism, they are compatible with two mechanistic generalizations: all neurocognitive explanations are mechanistic; and all neurocognitive phenomena that have an explanation have a purely mechanistic (...) explanation. (shrink)