Traditional navigation visualization utilizes two-dimensional. maps for road guidance or arrow symbols for turn by turn information. While the advantage of map views is supposed to be the inherent understanding of the surroundings, often these schematic line-drawing bird's eye views are rather confusing than helpful because they cannot provide an overview and an appropriate level of detail in an area of interest at the same time, i.e. the user is forced to change between different resolutions. In this paper we describe (...) a 3D visualization system for vehicle navigation that overcomes these shortcomings by providing a realistic and perspective 3D view of the environment. (shrink)

As part of the SYNBIOSAFE project, we carried out an open electronic conference (e-conference), with the aim to stimulate an open debate on the societal issues of synthetic biology in a proactive way. The e-conference attracted 124 registered participants from 23 different countries and different professional backgrounds, who wrote 182 contributions in six different categories: (I) Ethics; (II) Safety; (III) Security; (IV) IPR; (V) Governance and regulation; (VI) and Public perception. In this paper we discuss the main arguments brought up (...) during the e-conference and provide our conclusions about how the community thinks, and thinks differently on the societal impact of synthetic biology. Finally we conclude that there is a chance for an open discourse on the societal issues of synthetic biology happening, and that the rules to govern such a discourse might be set up much easier and be respected more readily than many would suggest. (shrink)

The aim of the present investigation was to describe and to classify significant ethical problems encountered by the members of the staff during the daily clinical work at a hospital medical department. A set of definitions was prepared for the purpose, including the definition of a 'significant ethical problem'. During a three month period 426 inpatients and 173 outpatients were admitted. Significant ethical problems were encountered during the management of 106 in-patients (25 per cent) and 9 out-patients (5 per cent). (...) No significant difference was found between the frequency of ethical problems in female and male patients, but a positive correlation was noted between the number of problems and the patients' age. The problem types were classified according to a problem list. The results of this investigation suggest that greater attention must be paid to discussions about ethical problems among doctors and other categories of health personnel and that, among others, medical students ought to be taught the analysis of ethical problems. (shrink)

As synthetic biology develops into a promising science and engineering field, we need to have clear ideas and priorities regarding its safety, security, ethical and public dialogue implications. Based on an extensive literature search, interviews with scientists, social scientists, a 4 week long public e-forum, and consultation with several stakeholders from science, industry and civil society organisations, we compiled a list of priority topics regarding societal issues of synthetic biology for the years ahead. The points presented here are intended to (...) encourage all stakeholders to engage in the prioritisation of these issues and to participate in a continuous dialogue, with the ultimate goal of providing a basis for a multi-stakeholder governance in synthetic biology. Here we show possible ways to solve the challenges to synthetic biology in the field of safety, security, ethics and the science-public interface. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

Semantic memory encompasses one's knowledge about the world. Distributional semantic models, which construct vector spaces with embedded words, are a proposed framework for understanding the representational structure of human semantic knowledge. Unlike some classic semantic models, distributional semantic models lack a mechanism for specifying the properties of concepts, which raises questions regarding their utility for a general theory of semantic knowledge. Here, we develop a computational model of a binary semantic classification task, in which participants judged target words for the (...) referent's size or animacy. We created a family of models, evaluating multiple distributional semantic models, and mechanisms for performing the classification. The most successful model constructed two composite representations for each extreme of the decision axis (e.g., one averaging together representations of characteristically big things and another of characteristically small things). Next, the target item was compared to each composite representation, allowing the model to classify more than 1,500 words with human‐range performance and to predict response times. We propose that when making a decision on a binary semantic classification task, humans use task prompts to retrieve instances representative of the extremes on that semantic dimension and compare the probe to those instances. This proposal is consistent with the principles of the instance theory of semantic memory. (shrink)

Im Zentrum der politischen Theorie des Liberalismus steht die Aufgabe, die Institutionen gesellschaftlicher Kooperation und staatlicher Rechtsordnung durch vernünftige Gründe zu legitimieren. Erst die Möglichkeit einer vernünftigen Zustimmung aller Betroffenen zeigt, dass die Vorstellung einer „gerechten und stabilen und darum wohlgeordneten Gesellschaft unter den Bedingungen moderner pluralistischer Demokratien [...] mehr als eine bloße Fiktion“ ist. Dies setzt voraus, dass die Bürger*innen einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft, unabhängig von ihren jeweiligen partikularen Überzeugungen, die Legitimität ihres gemeinsamen politischen Handelns akzeptieren können.

This work contrasts Giovanni Sartor’s view of inferential semantics of legal concepts with a probabilistic model of theory formation. The work further explores possibilities of implementing Kemp’s probabilistic model of theory formation in the context of mapping legal concepts between two individual legal systems. For implementing the legal concept mapping, we propose a cross-categorization approach that combines three mathematical models: the Bayesian Model of Generalization, the probabilistic model of theory formation, i.e., the Infinite Relational Model first introduced by Kemp et (...) al. and its extended model, i.e., the normal-IRM proposed by Herlau et al.. We apply our cross-categorization approach to datasets where legal concepts related to educational systems are respectively defined by the Japanese- and the Danish authorities according to the International Standard Classification of Education. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a conceptual framework of the cross-categorization approach that, inspired by Sartor, attempts to explain reasoner’s inferential mechanisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 432-442 [Access article in PDF] The Legacy of the Enlightenment James Schmidt What's Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question, edited by Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill; ix & 203 pp. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History, edited by Daniel Gordon; vi & 227 pp. New York: Routledge, (...) 2001, $80.00 cloth, $22.95 paper. IF THE ENLIGHTENMENT did not exist, postmodernists would have had to invent it. It performs the same function, Daniel Gordon argues in his introduction to Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, that the Ancien Regime did for the French revolutionaries: as the "other of postmodernism," it represents "the modern that postmodernism revolts against" (P&E, p. 1). Indeed, the image of the Enlightenment that emerges from the postmodern critique does seem, in large part, to be an invention. As Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill suggest in the introduction to their collection What's Left of Enlightenment? the various strands of thought commonly grouped under the label postmodernism "have at least one thing in common": "they all depend upon a stereotyped, even caricatural, account of the Enlightenment" which sees the Enlightenment as the point of origin for the "rationalism, instrumentalism, scientism, logocentrism, universalism, abstract rights, eurocentrism, individualism, humanism, masculinism, etc." that [End Page 432] defines the modernity which postmodernity hopes to supersede (WLE? p. 1).One consequence of the inclination to trace the origin of the various failings of modernity to the Enlightenment is that arguments about the "legacy of the Enlightenment" tend to get out of hand. In a particularly sharp-sighted contribution to the Baker and Reill collection David Hollinger notes that it is all too easy for a critic of Enlightenment to argue that "I'm hot stuff because I'm not only refuting you, my puny opponent, but... every great thinker from Descartes to Popper," and, conversely, all too enticing for those who have been criticized to counter, "watch out, you think you are arguing only against me, but the implications of your reasoning are to deny the common sense of every humane and rational mind since the seventeenth century" (WLE? p. 9). Historians of the eighteenth century have been curiously reluctant to join this battle and have, for the most part, left the field to philosophers, literary scholars, and political theorists (WLE? pp. 17-18; P&E, p. 3). The intent of the two collections reviewed here is to remedy this situation by setting a group of historians to work scrutinizing differing aspects of the postmodernist critique of the Enlightenment. More often than not, the results are quite rewarding, though the question of the relationship between postmodernism and the Enlightenment remains, in the end, somewhat ambiguous.The scope of these two volumes is quite impressive. Baker and Reill's collection opens with essays by David Hollinger and Richard Rorty (one of the two nonhistorians invited to the festivities) offering contrasting characterizations of the relationship of postmodernism and the Enlightenment. It continues with a discussion of a few important interpretations of the Enlightenment (including articles by Jonathan Knudsen on German historicism, Hans Sluga on Heidegger, Johnson Kent Wright on Cassirer, and Michael Meranze on Foucault) and concludes with essays by Lorraine Daston ("Enlightenment Fears, Fears of Enlightenment"), Dena Goodman (on gender difference in the Enlightenment), and Lawrence Klein (on the idea of "conversation" in the Enlightenment) that seek, in differing ways, to reveal "the existence within the Enlightenment of elements frequently seen as characteristic of Postmodernity itself" (WLE? p. 3).Gordon's volume offers a counterpoint to the final part of Baker and Reill's collection: each of its nine essays is intended as confrontation between a postmodernist characterization of a particular aspect of the Enlightenment and an account of "how the theme really operates in [End Page 433] Enlightenment thought" (P&E, p. 5). Thus Malick W. Ghachem examines how Montesquieu's account of law was applied to French colonies in the Caribbean, Arthur Goldhammer discusses Diderot's view of language, Daniel Rosenberg... (shrink)

I defend both conceptualists and nonconceptualists against an attack which has been leveled at them by critics such as Byrne (Perception and conceptual content In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, Malden, pp 231-250, 2005), Speaks (Philos Rev 114:359–398, 2005), and Crowther (Erkenntnis 65:5–276, 2006). They distinguish a ‘state’ reading and a ‘content’ reading of ‘(non)conceptual’ and argue that many arguments on either side support only the respective state views, not the respective content views. To prepare (...) the ground for my defense, I argue for an understanding of the state view in terms of concept exercise rather than concept possession and provide an overview of versions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism of different strengths. I then argue that conceptualists and nonconceptualists tacitly accept a so-called ‘state-to-content’ principle, show that existing defenses of this principle fail, and provide a new defense of it. It draws on the sources of the nonconceptualism debate, viz. the need to do justice both to the phenomenology of experience and to its epistemological role and to account for the existence of perceptual content and thought content. I argue that epistemological considerations together with considerations from the subject’s perspective support the claim that conceptual thought has conceptual and propositional content, whereas nonconceptual experience has nonconceptual and non-propositional content. (shrink)

Theorien der "Anerkennung" zeichnen sich durch eine außergewöhnliche Leistungsstärke aus. In den letzten Jahren haben sie die Forschung auf den Gebieten der Moralphilosophie, der Politischen Philosophie und der Sozialphilosophie, aber auch auf denen der Psychologie und der Sozialwissenschaften sowohl thematisch als auch methodisch sehr stark bereichert. Viele dieser Theorien versuchen zudem, Überlegungen, die von klassischen Autoren wie Fichte oder Hegel entwickelt wurden, für die aktuelle Diskussion systematisch fruchtbar zu machen. Dieser Konstellation trägt der vorliegende Band Rechnung. Durch eine Verzahnung von (...) systematischen und philosophiegeschichtlichen Überlegungen leistet er einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Lösung und Weiterentwicklung aktueller anerkennungstheoretischer Probleme und Fragestellungen sowie zu einer Neuinterpretation klassischer philosophischer Texte. Aufgrund seines thematischen Zuschnitts ist das Buch nicht nur für Philosophen, sondern auch für Sozialwissenschaftler von großem Interesse. Mit Beiträgen von: J. Bernstein, D. Brudney, J.-Ph. Déranty, N. Fraser, A. Honneth, H. Ikäheimo, A. Laitinen, F. Neuhouser, T. Pinkard, M. Quante, E. Renault, H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, L. Siep, A. Wildt und Ch. F. Zurn. (shrink)

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defence of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

We say that A ≤LR B if every B-random number is A-random. Intuitively this means that if oracle A can identify some patterns on some real γ. In other words. B is at least as good as A for this purpose. We study the structure of the LR degrees globally and locally (i.e., restricted to the computably enumberable degrees) and their relationship with the Turing degrees. Among other results we show that whenever α in not GL₂ the LR degree of (...) α bounds $2^{\aleph _{0}}$ degrees (so that, in particular, there exist LR degrees with uncountably many predecessors) and we give sample results which demonstrate how various techniques from the theory of the c.e. degrees can be used to prove results about the c.e. LR degrees. (shrink)

The usual way for new cells to come into being is by division of old cells. So the zygote, which is a—new—single cell formed from two, the sperm and ovum, is an exception. Textbooks of human genetics usually say that this new cell is beginning of a new human individual. What this indicates is that they suddenly forget about identical twins.