The argument of this paper is that Kuhn's account of rational theory choice is too permissive and that an account that recognizes the large-scale nature of the system of scientific beliefs is more plausible and has more practical force.

One determining characteristic of contemporary sociopolitical systems is their power over increasingly large and diverse populations. This raises questions about power relations between heterogeneous individuals and increasingly dominant and homogenizing system objectives. This article crosses epistemic boundaries by integrating computer engineering and a historicalphilosophical approach making the general organization of individuals within large-scale systems and corresponding individual homogenization intelligible. From a versatile archeological-genealogical perspective, an analysis of computer and social architectures is conducted that reinterprets Foucault’s disciplines and political (...) anatomy to establish the notion of politics for a purely technical system. This permits an understanding of system organization as modern technology with application to technical and social systems alike. Connecting to Heidegger’s notions of the enframing (Gestell) and a more primal truth (anfänglicheren Wahrheit), the recognition of politics in differently developing systems then challenges the immutability of contemporary organization. Following this critique of modernity and within the conceptualization of system organization, Derrida’s democracy to come (à venir) is then reformulated more abstractly as organizations to come. Through the integration of the discussed concepts, the framework of Large-Scale Systems Composed of Homogeneous Individuals (LSSCHI) is proposed, problematizing the relationships between individuals, structure, activity, and power within large-scale systems. The LSSCHI framework highlights the conflict of homogenizing system-level objectives and individual heterogeneity, and outlines power relations and mechanisms of control shared across different social and technical systems. (shrink)

This NATO Advanced Study Institute centered on large-scale molecular systems: Quantum mechanics, although providing a general framework for the description of matter, is not easily applicable to many concrete systems of interest; classical statistical methods, on the other hand, allow only a partial picture of the behaviour of large systems. The aim of the ASI was to present both aspects of the subject matter and to foster interaction between the scientists working in these important areas of theoretical (...) physics and theoretical chemistry. The quantum-mechanical part was mostly based on the operator-algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics and comprised quantum statistics of infinite systems with special em phasis on macroscopic observables, equilibrium conditions, irreversibility on the one hand, symmetry breaking for molecules in the radiation field and macroscopic quantum phenomena in the theory of superconductivity (BCS-theory) on the other hand. In addition, phase-space methods for many-body systems were also presented. Statistical physics was the main topic in the other lectures of the School; much emphasis was put on the statistical features of macros copic ("large") systems, the lectures dealt with mass and energy transport im polymers, in gels and in microemulsions, with aggregation and growth phenomena, with relaxation in complex, correlated systems, with conduction and optical properties of polymers, and with the means of describing disordered systems, above all fractals and related hierarchical models. (shrink)

As one of the most effective medical technologies for the infertile patients, in vitro fertilization has been more and more widely developed in recent years. However, prolonged waiting for IVF procedures has become a problem of great concern, since this technology is only mastered by the large general hospitals. To deal with the insufficiency of IVF service capacity, this paper studies an IVF queuing network in an integrated cloud healthcare system, where the two key medical services, that is, egg retrieval (...) and transplantation, are assigned to accomplish in the general hospital, while the routine medical tests are assigned into the community hospital. Based on continuous-time Markov procedure, a dynamic large-scale server scheduling problem in this complicated service network is modeled with consideration of different arrival rates of multiple type of patients and different service capacities of multiple servers that can be defined as doctors of the general hospital. To solve this model, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed, where the reward functions are designed for four conflicting subcosts: setup cost, patient waiting cost, penalty cost for unsatisfied patient personal preferences, and medical cost of patient. The experimental results show that the optimal service rule of each server’s queue obtained by the RL method is significantly superior to the traditional service rule. (shrink)

This article examines the expansion of agrofuels in the Americas and the ecological impacts associated with the technologies used in the production of large-scale monocultures of corn and soybeans. In addition to deforestation and displacement of lands devoted to food crops due to expansion of agrofuels, the massive use of transgenic crops and agrochemical inputs, mainly fertilizers and herbicides used in the production of agrofuels, pose grave environmental problems.

Despite the impressive amount of financial resources invested in carrying out large-scale brain simulations, it is controversial what the payoffs are of pursuing this project. The present paper argues that in some cases, from designing, building, and running a large-scale neural simulation, scientists acquire useful knowledge about the computational performance of the simulating system, rather than about the neurobiological system represented in the simulation. What this means, why it is not a trivial lesson, and how it advances the literature on (...) the epistemology of computer simulation are the three preoccupations addressed by the paper. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the integration of generic software such as enterprise resource planning into organisational life. These applications have gained prominence as the IT systems of choice in many organisations. The perspective that dominates the literature studying these applications reflects a rationality based on alignment of the software and organisational processes and fails to consider the ethical issues that arise when a new work system is being constructed, such as the possibilities for end‐user participation. Drawing on the strand (...) of research that studies implementations of new technologies as social relations, this paper considers the experiences of end user groups as they engage in adaptation of the software and embed technology in contexts of local use. Design and use activities are complex and multifaceted and the embedding of software for local use represents an overlap between them. This paper explores whether the shift towards large scale generic software allows for a blurring of a boundary between what are construed as design activities and use activities in applications for office work. It is significant to the construction of this boundary that office work is gendered female in the U.K. where clerical and secretarial work is usually done by and considered to be suited to women. The paper draws on a case study of the introduction and integration of a generic software application for supporting the administration of student records at a UK university to explore the social relations of end‐user participation in the implementation of these software packages. The paper presents an analysis of the implementation activity, IToffice worker relations, and the different constructions of skills and knowledge understood to be required as the workers attempted to deal with this software application. (shrink)

We have arrived at a situation in which policymakers and ethicists are considering abandoning informed consent in the governance of certain new technologies, many of which are related to large-scale information systems. A paradigm case is the problem with using individuals’ informed consent to regulate biobanks. As sometimes suggested, there is a need for “new ethical frameworks.”.

Low frequency oscillation is an important attribute of human brain activity, and the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation is an effective method to reflect the characteristics of low frequency oscillation, which has been widely used in the treatment of brain diseases and other fields. However, due to the low accuracy of the current analysis methods for low frequency signal extraction of ALFF, we propose the Fourier-based synchrosqueezing transform, which is often used in the field of signal processing to extract the (...) ALFF of the low frequency power spectrum of the whole-time dimension. The low frequency characteristics of the extracted signal are compared with those of FSST and fast Fourier transform through the resting-state data. It is clear that the signal extracted by FSST has more low frequency characteristics, which is significantly different from FFT. (shrink)

The Metis research project aims at supporting maritime safety and security by facilitating continuous monitoring of vessels in national coastal waters and prevention of phenomena, such as vessel collisions, environmental hazard, or detection of malicious intents, such as smuggling. Surveillance systems such as Metis typically comprise a number of heterogeneous information sources and information aggregators. Among the main problems of their deployment lies their scalability with respect to a potentially large number of monitored entities. One of the solutions to (...) the problem is continuous and timely adaptation and reconfiguration of the system according to the changing environment it operates in. At any given timepoint, the system should use only a minimal set of information sources and aggregators needed to facilitate effective and early detection of indicators of interest. Here, we describe the Metis system prototype and introduce a theoretical framework for modelling scalable information-aggregation sys.. (shrink)

Systems biologists often distance themselves from reductionist approaches and formulate their aim as understanding living systems “as a whole.” Yet, it is often unclear what kind of reductionism they have in mind, and in what sense their methodologies would offer a superior approach. To address these questions, we distinguish between two types of reductionism which we call “modular reductionism” and “bottom-up reductionism.” Much knowledge in molecular biology has been gained by decomposing living systems into functional modules or (...) through detailed studies of molecular processes. We ask whether systems biology provides novel ways to recompose these findings in the context of the system as a whole via computational simulations. As an example of computational integration of modules, we analyze the first whole-cell model of the bacterium M. genitalium. Secondly, we examine the attempt to recompose processes across different spatial scales via multi-scale cardiac models. Although these models rely on a number of idealizations and simplifying assumptions as well, we argue that they provide insight into the limitations of reductionist approaches. Whole-cell models can be used to discover properties arising at the interfaces of dynamically coupled processes within a biological system, thereby making more apparent what is lost through decomposition. Similarly, multi-scale modeling highlights the relevance of macroscale parameters and models and challenges the view that living systems can be understood “bottom-up.” Specifically, we point out that system-level properties constrain lower-scale processes. Thus, large-scale modeling reveals how living systems at the same time are more and less than the sum of the parts. (shrink)

An extension to a rating system for tracking the evolution of parameters over time using continuous variables is introduced. The proposed rating system assumes a distribution for the continuous responses, which is agnostic to the origin of the continuous scores and thus can be used for applications as varied as continuous scores obtained from language testing to scores derived from accuracy and response time from elementary arithmetic learning systems. Large-scale, high-stakes, online, anywhere anytime learning and testing inherently comes with (...) a number of unique problems that require new psychometric solutions. These include (1) the cold start problem, (2) problem of change, and (3) the problem of personalization and adaptation. We outline how our proposed method addresses each of these problems. Three simulations are carried out to demonstrate the utility of the proposed rating system. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of research projects have been proposed whose goal is to build large-scale simulations of brain mechanisms at unprecedented levels of biological accuracy. Here it is argued that the roles these simulations are expected to play in neuroscientific research go beyond the “synthetic method” extensively adopted in Artificial Intelligence and biorobotics. In addition we show that, over and above the common goal of simulating brain mechanisms, these projects pursue various modelling ambitions that can be sharply distinguished (...) from one another, and that correspond to conceptually different interpretations of the notion of “biological accuracy”. They include the ambition to reach extremely deep levels in the mechanistic decomposition hierarchy, to simulate networks composed of extremely large numbers of neural units, to build systems able to generate rich behavioural repertoires, to simulate “complex” neuron models, to implement the “best” theories available on brain structure and function. Some questions will be raised concerning the significance of each of these modelling ambitions with respect to the various roles played by simulations in the study of the brain. (shrink)

Automatic Generation Control in modern power systems is getting complex, due to intermittency in the output power of multiple sources along with considerable digressions in the loads and system parameters. To address this problem, this paper proposes an approach to calculate Power System Restoration Indices of a 2-area thermal-hydro restructured power system. This study also highlights the necessary ancillary service requirements for the system under a deregulated environment to cater to large-scale power failures and entire system outages. An abrupt (...) change in consumer load demands and disturbances in any control region of a multiarea system causes severe fluctuations in frequency and interarea power exchanges. However, simple Proportional and Integral controllers are most prevalent in the literature to effectively resolve AGC issues, while its integral gain is smaller due to the larger overshoot in transient performance. Therefore, an attempt has been made with a novel control strategy, known as the pseudoderivative feedforward with feedback controller, is developed to keep the interarea power exchanges and the frequency to the specified limits after load changes. A PDFF controller is designed and implemented using the flower pollination algorithm to obtain optimal dynamic performance for different types of potential power flows in a restructured power system under investigation. The proposed PDFF controller localizes the zero at an optimal place that reduces the rise time of the step-response to reduce the excessive overshoot and gives much better dynamic performances as compared to the PI control structure. The Integral Square Error is considered as a performance criterion to derive the optimized gain of the PDFF control structure using FPA. Different PSRI are computed based on the transient response of the 2-area deregulated multisource system and different restoration measures to be taken are also discussed. The simulation results clearly show that the proposed approach is very powerful in decreasing the frequency and tie-power digressions under different load perturbations. (shrink)

Objectives To conduct an independent evaluation of the first phase of the Health Foundation’s Safer Patients Initiative (SPI), and to identify the net additional effect of SPI and any differences in changes in participating and non-participating NHS hospitals. Design Mixed method evaluation involving five substudies, before and after design. Setting NHS hospitals in the United Kingdom. Participants Four hospitals (one in each country in the UK) participating in the first phase of the SPI (SPI1); 18 control hospitals. Intervention The SPI1 (...) was a compound (multi-component) organisational intervention delivered over 18 months that focused on improving the reliability of specific frontline care processes in designated clinical specialties and promoting organisational and cultural change. Results Senior staff members were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about SPI1. There was a small (0.08 points on a 5 point scale) but significant (P<0.01) effect in favour of the SPI1 hospitals in one of 11 dimensions of the staff questionnaire (organisational climate). Qualitative evidence showed only modest penetration of SPI1 at medical ward level. Although SPI1 was designed to engage staff from the bottom up, it did not usually feel like this to those working on the wards, and questions about legitimacy of some aspects of SPI1 were raised. Of the five components to identify patients at risk of deterioration—monitoring of vital signs (14 items); routine tests (three items); evidence based standards specific to certain diseases (three items); prescribing errors (multiple items from the British National Formulary); and medical history taking (11 items)—there was little net difference between control and SPI1 hospitals, except in relation to quality of monitoring of acute medical patients, which improved on average over time across all hospitals. Recording of respiratory rate increased to a greater degree in SPI1 than in control hospitals; in the second six hours after admission recording increased from 40% (93) to 69% (165) in control hospitals and from 37% (141) to 78% (296) in SPI1 hospitals (odds ratio for “difference in difference” 2.1, 99% confidence interval 1.0 to 4.3; P=0.008). Use of a formal scoring system for patients with pneumonia also increased over time (from 2% (102) to 23% (111) in control hospitals and from 2% (170) to 9% (189) in SPI1 hospitals), which favoured controls and was not significant (0.3, 0.02 to 3.4; P=0.173). There were no improvements in the proportion of prescription errors and no effects that could be attributed to SPI1 in non-targeted generic areas (such as enhanced safety culture). On some measures, the lack of effect could be because compliance was already high at baseline (such as use of steroids in over 85% of cases where indicated), but even when there was more room for improvement (such as in quality of medical history taking), there was no significant additional net effect of SPI1. There were no changes over time or between control and SPI1 hospitals in errors or rates of adverse events in patients in medical wards. Mortality increased from 11% (27) to 16% (39) among controls and decreased from 17% (63) to 13% (49) among SPI1 hospitals, but the risk adjusted difference was not significant (0.5, 0.2 to 1.4; P=0.085). Poor care was a contributing factor in four of the 178 deaths identified by review of case notes. The survey of patients showed no significant differences apart from an increase in perception of cleanliness in favour of SPI1 hospitals. Conclusions The introduction of SPI1 was associated with improvements in one of the types of clinical process studied (monitoring of vital signs) and one measure of staff perceptions of organisational climate. There was no additional effect of SPI1 on other targeted issues nor on other measures of generic organisational strengthening. (shrink)

The advancement of computing technology makes it possible to build extremely accurate digital reconstructions of brain circuits. Are such unprecedented levels of biological accuracy essential for brain simulations to play the roles they are expected to play in neuroscientific research? The main goal of this paper is to clarify this question by distinguishing between various roles played by large-scale simulations in contemporary neuroscience, and by reflecting about what makes a simulation biologically accurate. It is argued that large-scale simulations may play (...) model-oriented and prediction-oriented roles in brain research, and that the concept of biological accuracy can be interpreted as related to the plausibility of the theoretical model implemented in the simulation system, to the accuracy of the computer implementation, and to the level of details of the implemented model. Building on these observations and distinctions, it is argued that biological accuracy is not essential for a computer simulation to play the epistemic roles it is expected to play in brain research. (shrink)

The United Nations has shown recurrent inability to respond to international threats caused by severe human rights violations and thus failed to perform one of its main function—preservation of international peace and security in the world. This evidenced gaps in the United Nations, caused mainly by the veto right in the voting system within the Security Council and limited powers of the General Assembly. The international community gave a twofold answer to this problem: radical humanitarian intervention and the recent concept (...) of the responsibility to protect. The main problem with regard to humanitarian intervention is its legality—its compliance with the prohibition of the use of force. The responsibility to protect does not clash with the prohibition of the use of force, but its legal implications are rather vague—being intensively discussed in the international forum, the responsibility to protect has not yet appeared in any legally binding international document. This article discusses the legal significance of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect, and aims to determine how they affect, if at all, the regulation of the use of force in the international relations, as well as how they respond to the issue of large scale atrocities in the world. (shrink)

Despite the impressive amount of financial resources recently invested in carrying out large-scale brain simulations, it is controversial what the pay-offs are of pursuing this project. One idea is that from designing, building, and running a large-scale neural simulation, scientists acquire knowledge about the computational performance of the simulating system, rather than about the neurobiological system represented in the simulation. It has been claimed that this knowledge may usher in a new era of neuromorphic, cognitive computing systems. This study (...) elucidates this claim and argues that the main challenge this era is facing is not the lack of biological realism. The challenge lies in identifying general neurocomputational principles for the design of artificial systems, which could display the robust flexibility characteristic of biological intelligence. (shrink)

Nowadays, the power systems are getting more and more complicated because of the delays introduced by the communication networks. The existence of the delays usually leads to the degradation and/or instability of power system performance. On account of this point, the traditional load frequency control approach for power system sketches a destabilizing impact and an unacceptable system performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a new LFC based on adaptive integral second-order sliding mode control approach for the large-scale power system with (...) communication delays. First, a new linear matrix inequality is derived to ensure the stability of whole power systems using Lyapunov stability theory. Second, an AISOSMC law is designed to ensure the finite time reachability of the system states. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the AISOSMC is designed for LFC of the LSPSwCD. In addition, the report of testing results presents that the suggested LFC based on AISOSMC can not only decrease effectively the frequency variation but also make successfully less in mount of power oscillation/fluctuation in tie-line exchange. (shrink)

Timetabling problems are specific types of scheduling problems that deal with assigning certain events to the timeslots. This assigning is subject to certain hard constraints that should be achieved to get a feasible timetable and soft constraints that must meet as many as possible during forming a feasible schedule. This paper introduces an adaptive tabu search. Eleven benchmark datasets of the year 2002 are applied to show the effectiveness of the introduced algorithm. These datasets consist of 5-small, 5-medium, and 1-large (...) dataset. As compared to other methods from previous works, the proposed algorithm produces excellent timetables, in comparison with the algorithms as well as the current results, the mathematical results showed the high effectiveness of the suggested algorithm. It has a minor deficit on the medium or the small problem adaptive Tabu, and the tabu search relies on the tabu list and penalty cost when the change in the penalty cost is checked; if it is still unchanged for the period of iterations (1,000 iterations), the tabu list reduces automatically by (−2); furthermore, the tabu list remains constant. (shrink)

A classic avenue that victims can take to hold a corporation to account and obtain redress for the harms they have suffered is civil litigation. In the past decades, such attempts have been pursued against corporations in the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the asbestos industry or industries working with asbestos and, more recently, the extractive industries. However, it is notoriously difficult for victims whose rights have been violated by corporations to obtain effective redress in civil procedures. A rich body (...) of burgeoning scholarly literature and policy documents has addressed the extent to which systematic and institutional factors are obstacles to victims seeking justice for corporate misconduct. In this article, we will not focus on these systemic and institutional factors but on the role of corporate defence lawyers as their functioning also impacts the capacity of victims of corporate wrongdoing to effectuate their rights. We will address the question of what can be expected from a legal-ethical point of view from corporate defence lawyers advising and representing their corporate clients in large-scale civil liability cases. As a partial answer, we will develop a critique of amoral lawyering as a working philosophy in this context. In addition, we will touch upon the feasibility of a possible alternative. (shrink)

In this study, we reconcile conflicting findings from the extant literature on the impact of tax system parameters on tax noncompliance. We argue that social norms play a role of heuristics facilitating tax payers’ response to the instrumental incentives posed by the systemic parameters, such as tax rate and penalties for evasion, and thus moderate the effect of those parameters on willingness to evade taxes. Relying on a unique survey experiment conducted in fourteen countries of Central-Eastern Europe, we demonstrate two (...) types of a conditioning effect of norms. First, the impact of tax rates on respondents’ propensity for tax evasion is moderated by the perceived norms of the society at large. In particular, an increasing tax rate lowers the probability of evasion as long as one views “most others” as honest taxpayers, which highlights the importance of equitability concerns for tax compliance decisions. In contrast, the impact of punishment is moderated by the perceived norms of one’s immediate reference group. Strong subjective compliance norms tend to effectively replace penalties as a mechanism discouraging tax evasion, suggesting that the deterrent effect of a penalty can be entirely suppressed when subjective norms are strong. These findings have important implications for the understanding of tax compliance decisions under different formal and informal regimes. (shrink)

The proliferation of legal documents in various formats and their dispersion across multiple courts present a significant challenge for users seeking precise matches to their information requirements. Despite notable advancements in legal information retrieval systems, research into legal recommender systems remains limited. A plausible factor contributing to this scarcity could be the absence of extensive publicly accessible datasets or benchmarks. While a few studies have emerged in this field, a comprehensive analysis of the distinct attributes of legal data (...) that influence the design of effective legal recommenders is notably absent in the current literature. This paper addresses this gap by initially amassing a comprehensive session-based dataset from Jusbrasil, one of Brazil’s largest online legal platforms. Subsequently, we scrutinize and discourse key facets of legal session-based recommendation data, including session duration, types of recommendable legal artifacts, coverage, and popularity. Furthermore, we introduce the first session-based recommendation benchmark tailored to the legal domain, shedding light on the performance and constraints of several renowned session-based recommendation approaches. These evaluations are based on real-world data sourced from Jusbrasil. (shrink)

Data mining technology is an effective knowledge mining and data relationship induction technology based on massive data, which is widely used in data analysis in many fields. In order to improve the utilization effect of students’ performance and meet the teaching needs of modern education, data mining technology can be applied to the existing performance database to mine the data information and treatment. Data mining technology is used to analyse and process the data stored in the student achievement management system, (...) which provides the basis for improving the teaching quality and optimizing the teaching resources. Based on the analysis of the relevant data of large-scale English test results, this paper finds out the relevant rules that affect college English test results, forms the corresponding performance prediction rules, uses data mining technology to more comprehensively analyse the factors that affect students’ performance, establishes a model, and uses data mining tools to mine and analyse students’ English test data. It is of great practical significance to select the model with high accuracy, further optimize the parameters, make good use of the data, and then take targeted measures to guide the teaching reform, help students make more efficient learning plans, and improve and perfect the existing problems in teaching. (shrink)

A general conceptual framework for large-scale neocortical dynamics based on data from many laboratories is applied to a variety of experimental designs, spatial scales, and brain states. Partly distinct, but interacting local processes (e.g., neural networks) arise from functional segregation. Global processes arise from functional integration and can facilitate (top down) synchronous activity in remote cell groups that function simultaneously at several different spatial scales. Simultaneous local processes may help drive (bottom up) macroscopic global dynamics observed with electroencephalography (EEG) or (...) magnetoencephalography (MEG). A local/global dynamic theory that is consistent with EEG data and the proposed conceptual framework is outlined. This theory is neutral about properties of neural networks embedded in macroscopic fields, but its global component makes several qualitative and semiquantitative predictions about EEG measures of traveling and standing wave phenomena. A more general “metatheory” suggests what large-scale quantitative theories of neocortical dynamics may be like when more accurate treatment of local and nonlinear effects is achieved. The theory describes the dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic action fields. EEG and MEG provide large-scale estimates of modulation of these synaptic fields around background levels. Brain states are determined by neuromodulatory control parameters. Purely local states are dominated by local feedback gains and rise and decay times of postsynaptic potentials. Dominant local frequencies vary with brain region. Other states are purely global, with moderate to high coherence over large distances. Multiple global mode frequencies arise from a combination of delays in corticocortical axons and neocortical boundary conditions. Global frequencies are identical in all cortical regions, but most states involve dynamic interactions between local networks and the global system. EEG frequencies may involve a “matching” of local resonant frequencies with one or more of the many, closely spaced global frequencies. Key Words: binding problem; cell assemblies; coherence; EEG; limit cycles; neocortical dynamics; pacemakers; phase locking; spatial scale; standing waves; synchronization. Footnotes1 The relationship between the synaptic action fields proposed in the target article and cell assemblies is clarified with Figure R1 (p. 416) of the Response. (This figure was not available to Commentators. (shrink)

Advanced systems engineering has traditionally paid little attention to ethical concerns relative to other technical and non-technical issues. This is particularly evident in systems analysis, design, and development methodologies. This paper asks if it is possible that the lack of emphasis upon ethical considerations in development methodologies can result in the failure of advanced technology development projects? In order to explore this contention, the paper sets out the findings of a case study of a large-scale advanced technology project (...) in a multinational engineering company involving the implementation of an enterprise resource planning system. The research examined the extent to which ethical issues emerged in the project and assesses the impact of ethical considerations upon the technology development process and its outcomes. Evidence is presented which shows how ethical concerns clearly impacted upon the outcome of the project, supporting the contention that ethics was a success factor in the case presented. However, it was also clear that the kinds of ethical considerations that emerged were highly complex, and associated with an “ethics of care”. The findings suggested that researchers should examine the potential of an “ethics of care” as a way of complimenting the “ethics of rights” currently dominant within engineering ethics. (shrink)

The phenomenon of cheating in higher education is of overwhelming importance in that the students engaging in these acts are unlikely to have the skills necessary for their future professional life. Despite its relevance, the empirical evaluation of cheating in universities has been almost exclusively focused on the US context. Little is known about cheating at the European level, let alone in Portugal. Even less is explored at the regional level. In this paper we present evidence on the perception of (...) cheating by Portuguese undergraduate students of economics/business degrees. We undertake a large-scale survey, involving 2675 students from all Portuguese mainland public universities. We found that copying-favourable environments are associated with a higher propensity to cheat. Moreover, in universities where ‘codes of honour’ exist, this propensity tends to be lower. Finally, the propensity to copy seems to be highly influenced by the cultural systems and socially-related factors of different regions. (shrink)

Faced with a minimally participatory democracy, a variety of populists have sought to revitalize popular political participation by strengthening local community mobilizations. Others have called for reliance on frequent referenda. Assessing the limits of these proposals requires theoretical attention to two key issues. The first is the growing importance of very large scale patterns of societal integration which depend on indirect social relationships achieved through communications media, markets and bureaucracies. This split of system world from lifeworld, in Habermas's terms, poses (...) a challenge to democratic theories which assume that the lessons of local social life and political participation are directly translatable into the necessary knowledge for state level (let alone international) activity. Secondly, changes in patterns of community formation and communications media have transformed the basis for democracy. In particular, socio-spatial segmentation by life-style choice, market position and other factors limits direct relationships increasingly to similar individuals. Mass media become increasingly predominant sources of information about people different from oneself, and indirect social relationships form the structural basis for the social integration of most politics. The present paper revised and adapts Habermas's conceptualization of system world and lifeworld in order to address the transformation of patterns of societal integration. This forms the basis for a critical analysis of the implications of changing community form and especially communications media for populist political proposals. (shrink)

Models of culture and representations of changes in culture as changes between such models can be validated without making unreasonable departures from the validating conditions for basic narratives. Von Wright's logic of norms provides a useful analysis of the concept of rule and hence a basis for constructing models of cultures as systems of rules. As illustrations from historical work on the eighteenth-century origins of the British permanent civil service and on administrative developments in Tudor England show, the logic (...) of norms brings to light the logical issues that are of critical importance to changes in culture. These issues, like the models on which they depend, involve human expectations through involving human conventions; but one must also acknowledge parallel systems of description which can figure in covering-law explanations. (shrink)

Modern observations based on general relativity indicate that the spatial geometry of the expanding, large-scale Universe is very nearly Euclidean. This basic empirical fact is at the core of the so-called “flatness problem”, which is widely perceived to be a major outstanding problem of modern cosmology and as such forms one of the prime motivations behind inflationary models. An inspection of the literature and some further critical reflection however quickly reveals that the typical formulation of this putative problem is fraught (...) with questionable arguments and misconceptions and that it is moreover imperative to distinguish between different varieties of problem. It is shown that the observational fact that the large-scale Universe is so nearly flat is ultimately no more puzzling than similar “anthropic coincidences”, such as the specific values of the gravitational and electromagnetic coupling constants. In particular, there is no fine-tuning problem in connection to flatness of the kind usually argued for. The arguments regarding flatness and particle horizons typically found in cosmological discourses in fact address a mere single issue underlying the standard FLRW cosmologies, namely the extreme improbability of these models with respect to any “reasonable measure” on the “space of all spacetimes”. This issue may be expressed in different ways and a phase space formulation, due to Penrose, is presented here. A horizon problem only arises when additional assumptions—which are usually kept implicit and at any rate seem rather speculative—are made. (shrink)

The phenomenon of cheating in higher education is of overwhelming importance in that the students engaging in these acts are unlikely to have the skills necessary for their future professional life. Despite its relevance, the empirical evaluation of cheating in universities has been almost exclusively focused on the US context. Little is known about cheating at the European level, let alone in Portugal. Even less is explored at the regional level. In this paper we present evidence on the perception of (...) cheating by Portuguese undergraduate students of economics/business degrees. We undertake a large-scale survey, involving 2675 students from all Portuguese mainland public universities (10). We found that copying-favourable environments are associated with a higher propensity to cheat. Moreover, in universities where ‘codes of honour’ exist, this propensity tends to be lower. Finally, the propensity to copy seems to be highly influenced by the cultural systems and socially-related factors of different regions. (shrink)

The use of psychometric tools to investigate the impact of school-based wellbeing programs raises a number of ethical issues around students’ rights, confidentiality and protection. Researchers have explicit ethical obligations to protect participants from potential psychological harms, but guidance is needed for effectively navigating disclosure of identifiable confidential information that indicates signs of psychological distress. Drawing on a large-scale study examining student, school, and system-based factors that impact the implementation of a school-based social and emotional learning program, we describe patterns (...) of distress attained from quantitative and qualitative questions and describe the process that we evolved to monitor and disclose sensitive mental health information, providing one example of how researchers might effectively address the responsibilities that emerge when collecting sensitive information from students within an education system. The patterns and processes that emerged illustrate that the inclusion of mental distress information can elicit important insights, but also brings responsibilities for minimising risks and maximising benefits. (shrink)

Problem: Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism has been highly influential in the fields of mathematics and science education. However, its relevance is typically limited to analyses of classroom interactions and students’ reasoning. Methods: A project that aims to support improvements in the quality of mathematics instruction across four large urban districts is framed as a case with which to illustrate the far-reaching consequences of von Glasersfeld’s constructivism for mathematics and science educators. Results: Von Glasersfeld’s constructivism orients us to question the (...) standard view of policy implementation as a process of travel down through a system and to conceptualize it instead as the situated reorganization of practice at multiple levels of a system. In addition, von Glasersfeld’s constructivism orients us to understand rather than merely evaluate policies by viewing the actions of the targets of policies as reasonable from their point of view. Implications: The potential contributions of von Glasersfeld’s constructivism to mathematics and science education have been significantly underestimated by restricting the focus to classroom actions and interactions. The illustrative case of research on the application of these ideas also indicates the relevance of constructivism to researchers in educational policy and educational leadership. (shrink)

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the anatomy of both thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with the relationships between their constituent parts. Based on this analysis, using the renormalization group and finite-size scaling, we give a definition of a large but finite system and argue that phase transitions are represented correctly, as incipient singularities in such systems. We describe the role of the thermodynamic limit. And we explore the implications of this picture of critical phenomena for the questions (...) of reduction and emergence. (shrink)

This paper examines a fundamental problem in applied mathematics. How can one model the behavior of materials that display radically different, dominant behaviors at different length scales. Although we have good models for material behaviors at small and large scales, it is often hard to relate these scale-based models to one another. Macroscale models represent the integrated effects of very subtle factors that are practically invisible at the smallest, atomic, scales. For this reason it has been notoriously difficult to model (...) realistic materials with a simple bottom-up-from-the-atoms strategy. The widespread failure of that strategy forced physicists interested in overall macro-behavior of materials toward completely top-down modeling strategies familiar from traditional continuum mechanics. The problem of the ``tyranny of scales'' asks whether we can exploit our rather rich knowledge of intermediate micro- scale behaviors in a manner that would allow us to bridge between these two dominant methodologies. Macroscopic scale behaviors often fall into large common classes of behaviors such as the class of isotropic elastic solids, characterized by two phenomenological parameters---so-called elastic coefficients. Can we employ knowledge of lower scale behaviors to understand this universality---to determine the coefficients and to group the systems into classes exhibiting similar behavior? (shrink)

This article describes the historical emergence of vital systems security, analyzing it as a significant mutation in biopolitical modernity. The story begins in the early 20th century, when planners and policy-makers recognized the increasing dependence of collective life on interlinked systems such as transportation, electricity, and water. Over the following decades, new security mechanisms were invented to mitigate the vulnerability of these vital systems. While these techniques were initially developed as part of Cold War preparedness for nuclear (...) war, they eventually migrated to domains beyond national security to address a range of anticipated emergencies, such as large-scale natural disasters, pandemic disease outbreaks, and disruptions of critical infrastructure. In these various contexts, vital systems security operates as a form of reflexive biopolitics, managing risks that have arisen as the result of modernization processes. This analysis sheds new light on current discussions of the government of emergency and ‘states of exception’. Vital systems security does not require recourse to extraordinary executive powers. Rather, as an anticipatory technology for mitigating vulnerabilities and closing gaps in preparedness, it provides a ready-to-hand toolkit for administering emergencies as a normal part of constitutional government. (shrink)

From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term "complexity" can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has (...) found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal's circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient--and lives 25% longer. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism's body. (shrink)