String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and space-time. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating “Forty Years of String Theory”, it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do not understand. As I will discuss, time remains the least understood concept in physical theory. While we have made significant progress in understanding space, our understanding of time has not progressed much beyond the level of a century ago when Einstein introduced the idea (...) of space-time as a combined entity. Thus, I will raise a series of open questions about time, and will review some of the progress that has been made as a roadmap for the future. (shrink)

There are complex considerations when planning to disclose an attenuated psychosis syndrome diagnosis. In this review, we evaluate ethical, legal, and clinical perspectives as well as caveats related to full, non- and partial disclosure strategies, discuss societal implications, and provide clinical suggestions. Each of the disclosure strategies is associated with benefits as well as costs/considerations. Full disclosure promotes autonomy, allows for the clearest psychoeducation about additional risk factors, helps to clarify and/or correct previous diagnoses/treatments, facilitates early intervention and bolsters communication (...) between providers but there are important considerations involving heritability, comorbidity, culture, and stigma. Non-disclosure advances nonmaleficence by limiting stigma and stress, and confusion in a sensitive developmental period but is complicated by varying patient preferences and the possibility that, as new treatments without adverse effects become available, the risk with false positives no longer justifies the accompanying loss of autonomy. Partial disclosure balances ethical considerations by focusing on symptoms instead of labels, but evidence that laypersons may interpret this information as a pseudo-diagnosis and that symptoms alone also contribute to stigma limits the efficacy of this approach. In addition, there are notable societal considerations relating to disclosure involving conservatorship, the reach of insurance companies, and discrimination. We advocate a hybrid approach to disclosure and recommend future research aimed at understanding the effects of stigma on clinical course and a renewed focus on those help-seeking cases that do not transition but remain clinically relevant. (shrink)

Drawing upon rational choice and investor attention theories, we examine how accusations of corporate bribery and subsequent investigations shape market reactions. Using event study methodology to measure loss in firm value for public firms facing bribery investigations from 1978 to 2010, we found that total market penalties amounted to $60.61 billion. We ran moderated multiple regression analysis to examine further the degree to which the unique characteristics of bribery explain variations in market penalties. Companies committing bribery in less corrupt host (...) countries and with the involvement of compromised executives experienced greater market penalties than did other companies. After partitioning share value losses into components for regulatory penalties, class action settlements, and loss to reputation, we found that reputational penalties account for 81.8¢ of every dollar of share value loss. Omission of reputational penalties in rational choice calculus underestimates bribery costs by 4.5 times. The results suggest that firms should not underestimate the importance of market-imposed reputational penalties by merely considering regulator-imposed fines and sanctions. (shrink)

This essay deals with the manner in which Salman Rushdie’s works engage with the heterogeneous logics of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Rancière it is argued that Rushdie neutralizes the two by introducing what Rancière calls a dissensus in the ethical-aesthetic hierarchy. The dissensus works on a principle of ‘excess’ so that within the domain of aesthetics the ethical is pushed to its limits. The order of desire (aesthetics) and the order of knowledge (ethics) are no (...) longer seen as hierarchical and mutually exclusive categories. By examining two versions of an unpublished novel by Rushdie (‘Madame Rama’) it is suggested that Bollywood cinema functions as a mode in which the two orders come together. In this early and mercifully unpublished novel, one finds the beginnings of Rushdie’s belief that works of art are sites of ideological and ethical contestations. (shrink)

This article responds to Terry Eagleton's claim that Spivak's latest book, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, works against the intent of postcolonial criticism. Reading the work as a search for a just representational strategy, we explore the implications of Spivak's engagement with philosophy - Kant, Hegel, and Marx. As a disciplinary machine, philosophy produces Western subjects who are engendered by simultaneously including and excluding the other. Working through this production of the double location of the 'other' we suggest that systematic (...) thought is inhabited by an absence that is present within, a disturbing otherness that ultimately questions authority and stability, and opens up the question of politics and representation. Drawing Spivak into the representational problematic opened up by Lyotard, we suggest that a responsible postcolonial intervention can be performed in the difficult exergue between representability and unrepresentability. In this account, representation is open to invention, to finding new idioms for articulating otherness. (shrink)

In recent versions of professional genre analysis, context has assumed increasingly critical importance, thus redefining genre as a configuration of text-internal and text-external factors. The emphasis on text-external properties of genre has brought into focus the notion of interdiscursivity as distinct from intertextuality, which is primarily viewed as appropriation of text-internal resources. Drawing evidence from a number of professional contexts, this article explores the nature, function, and use of interdiscursivity in genre theory, defining interdiscursivity as a function of appropriation of (...) generic resources across discursive, professional and cultural practices, which, it is claimed, is central to our understanding of the complexities of genres that are typically employed in professional, disciplinary, and institutional communication. (shrink)

Merging logic and mathematics in deductive inference-an innovative, cutting-edge approach. Optimization methods for logical inference? Absolutely, say Vijay Chandru and John Hooker, two major contributors to this rapidly expanding field. And even though "solving logical inference problems with optimization methods may seem a bit like eating sauerkraut with chopsticks... it is the mathematical structure of a problem that determines whether an optimization model can help solve it, not the context in which the problem occurs." Presenting powerful, proven optimization techniques (...) for logic inference problems, Chandru and Hooker show how optimization models can be used not only to solve problems in artificial intelligence and mathematical programming, but also have tremendous application in complex systems in general. They survey most of the recent research from the past decade in logic/optimization interfaces, incorporate some of their own results, and emphasize the types of logic most receptive to optimization methods-propositional logic, first order predicate logic, probabilistic and related logics, logics that combine evidence such as Dempster-Shafer theory, rule systems with confidence factors, and constraint logic programming systems. Requiring no background in logic and clearly explaining all topics from the ground up, Optimization Methods for Logical Inference is an invaluable guide for scientists and students in diverse fields, including operations research, computer science, artificial intelligence, decision support systems, and engineering. (shrink)

Broadening access to both computational and educational resources is crit- ical to diffusing machine learning (ML) innovation. However, today, most ML resources and experts are siloed in a few countries and organizations. In this article, we describe our pedagogical approach to increasing access to applied ML through a massive open online course (MOOC) on Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML). We suggest that TinyML, applied ML on resource-constrained embedded devices, is an attractive means to widen access because TinyML leverages low-cost and globally (...) accessible hardware and encourages the development of complete, self-contained applications, from data collection to deployment. To this end, a collaboration between academia and industry produced a four part MOOC that provides application-oriented instruction on how to develop solutions using TinyML. The series is openly available on the edX MOOC platform, has no prerequisites beyond basic programming, and is designed for global learners from a variety of backgrounds. It introduces real-world applications, ML algorithms, data-set engineering, and the ethi- cal considerations of these technologies through hands-on programming and deployment of TinyML applications in both the cloud and on their own microcontrollers. To facili- tate continued learning, community building, and collaboration beyond the courses, we launched a standalone website, a forum, a chat, and an optional course-project com- petition. We also open-sourced the course materials, hoping they will inspire the next generation of ML practitioners and educators and further broaden access to cutting-edge ML technologies. (shrink)

This article provides an Austrian overview of the inflation versus deflation debate which has captured the attention of the economics profession in the years following the US housing bust. Much of the Austrian analysis of this debate has focused on the massive expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and attendant creation of new reserves. Several Austrian economists have predicted that the creation of new reserves will cause a massive increase in inflation. The money multiplier theory, on which these predictions (...) are based, is criticized and an overview of the Austrian business cycle theory is provided to explain why banks are reluctant to issue new credit. Finally, an analysis of the politics of deflation is provided and a class theory is presented to explain why a policy of controlled credit deflation is more likely than a policy that would result in mass inflation or hyperinflation. (shrink)

The parking of cars is a globally recognized problem, especially at locations where there is a high demand for empty parking spaces. Drivers tend to cruise additional distances while searching for empty parking spaces during peak hours leading to problems, such as pollution, congestion, and driver frustration. Providing short-term predictions of parking availability would facilitate the driver in making informed decisions and planning their arrival to be able to choose parking locations with higher availability. Therefore, the aim of this study (...) is to provide short-term predictions of available parking spaces with a low volume of data. The open parking lot provides parking spaces free of charge and one such parking lot, located beside a shopping center, was selected for this study. Parking availability data for 21 days were collected where 19 days were used for training, while multiple periods of the remaining 2 days were used to test and evaluate the prediction methods. The test dataset consists of data from a weekday and a weekend. Based on the reviewed literature, three prediction methods suitable for short-term prediction were selected, namely, long short-term memory, seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous variables, and the Ensemble-based method. The LSTM method is a deep learning-based method, while SARIMAX is a regression-based method, and the Ensemble method is based on decision trees and random forest to provide predictions. The performance of the three prediction methods with a low volume of data and the use of visitor trends data as an exogenous variable was evaluated. Based on the test prediction results, the LSTM and Ensemble-based methods provided better short-term predictions at multiple times on a weekday, while the Ensemble-based method provided better predictions over the weekend. However, the use of visitor trend data did not facilitate improving the predictions of SARIMAX and the Ensemble-based method, while it improved the LSTM prediction for the weekend. (shrink)

By 20 October 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had amended its Emergency Use Authorizations for immunocompetent adults who previously received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. For the 2-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for adults aged 65 years or older and adults aged 18 to 64 years at high-risk for severe COVID-19 or at high risk for occupational or institutional COVID-19 exposure. For the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (...) vaccine, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for all adults aged 18 or older. These eligibility schemes were endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortly after FDA approval. (shrink)

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit (...) masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence. (shrink)

We examine how corporate bribery is impacted by cultural distance between multinational enterprises home and host countries, and organizational distance to core values between MNE entry modes and MNE headquarters. Tension between external and internal legitimacy helps to explain why cultural and organizational distances will affect MNE bribery. The empirical analysis used data from cross-border transactions by MNEs that were sanctioned by US regulatory officials between 1978 and 2011. We find statistical support for all hypotheses capturing main and moderating effects (...) and suggest that MNEs may be seriously risking their legitimacies from transactions in corruption-prone host countries. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline the foundations of the time invariant, non-unitary covering of quantum chemistry known as hadronic chemistry, we illustrate its validity by reviewing the exact representations of the binding energies of the Hydrogen and water molecules, and present new advances.

Can strikes by resident doctors training to become consultants in Indian public-sector teaching hospitals be ethical? These hospitals were established for the medical care of the very poor in a country where health insurance and a national health service are nonexistent. In such a situation, the paralysis of tertiary healthcare centers by striking doctors runs contrary to the raison d'être of the profession. It also violates the first dictum of medicine: Primum,nonnocere. And although there is some discussion in the Western (...) literature on strikes by doctors, authorities in India are silent on the subject. (shrink)

Most of us know of God only as "Our Father in Heaven". However, there is the other view, which declares that "I and my Father are one." That is a very bold view, which only the daring dare to embrace. Proclaimed by fearless thinkers in all ages, this professed Godhood is no one person's exclusive domain, as some would have you believe, but the common property of one and all. Whatever be your station in life, truth remains that you are (...) God. Everything else that you hold yourself to be is pure ignorance. This book is the bold wake-up call to make you realize who you are. Like a distant thunder, we hear a voice rolling down from the past "Never forget the glory of human nature. We are the Greatest God, that ever was, or ever will be. Christs and Buddhas are but waves, on the boundless ocean which I am"; but its sound is getting dimmer; its echoes lost in the din and clutter of fanaticism and materialism. This book is the clarion call that resounds the bugle of that age-old theme once again and with a vengeance. A vengeance that stems from rationality, reasons, and the added weight of discoveries in modern sciences; discoveries, which are all found to resonate with that grand ancient truth. Unlike anything that you may have read, this book questions your most fundamental concepts. Be prepared to abandon all preconceived notions that you may hold about the Self and the Universe. This iconoclastic book shatters all delusions, and will truly revolutionize the way your perceive yourself and the world. (shrink)

As Acharya Vidyanand writes in the Foreword of Samayasara, it is the ultimate conscious reality. The enlightened soul has infinite glory. It has the innate ability to demolish the power of karmas, both auspicious as well as inauspicious, which constitute the cycle of births and deaths, and are an obstacle in the path of liberation of the soul. Samayasara is an essential reading for anyone who wishes to lead a purposeful and contented life. It provides irrefutable and lasting solutions to (...) all our problems, concerning worldly ways as well as spiritual curiosities and misgivings. (shrink)

In the Appendix to the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume famously recants his position on personal identity. There he confesses: “upon a strict review of the section concurring personal identity I find myself involv’d in such a labyrinth that... I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent.” By his own admission, then, something has gone wrong in Hume’s account of personal identity, something that, at least to his eyes, did not go wrong in (...) his accounts of body and necessary connection. For those accounts were not grossly inconsistent or patently absurd. The case is different, however, with personal identity. There his philosophical enterprise suffers shipwreck, and it is important to understand why. Unfortunately, however, Hume confesses that he finds his former opinions false as well as inconsistent, but neglects to specify how or why he came to this conclusion. This paper is an attempt to address just that question. (shrink)

By examining the systematic integration of theology, ethics, and teleology in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I address four key interpretational aporiai: the apparently illogicality of the opening lines, the apparent contradiction between practical virtue and contemplation being the highest good, the “dominant” v. “inclusivist” views of eudaimonia, and the immanence v. transcendence of God. I show how proper attention to the link between Aristotle’s conception of the Good as “that at which all things aim” and God as the prime unmoved mover, (...) as well as an appreciation of the overall “aristocratic” context of Aristotelian philosophy, provides a new way of dealing with these aporiai that renders them less perplexing and problematic, while avoiding un-Aristotelian, anachronistic readings. (shrink)

We provide first-order axioms for the theories of finite trees with bounded branching and finite trees with arbitrary (finite) branching. The signature is chosen to express, in a natural way, those properties of trees most relevant to linguistic theories. These axioms provide a foundation for results in linguistics that are based on reasoning formally about such properties. We include some observations on the expressive power of these theories relative to traditional language complexity classes.

This unique volume is a comprehensive,well-illustrated study of the organization of the white matter pathways of the brain. Schmahmann and Pandya have analyzed and synthesized the corticocortical and corticosubcortical connections of the major areas of the cerebral cortex of the rhesus monkey. The result is a detailed understanding of the constituents of the cerebral white matter and the organization of the fiber tracts. The findings from the 36 cases studied are presented on a single template brain, facilitating comparison of (...) the locations of the different fiber pathways. The summary diagrams provide a comprehensive atlas of the cerebral white matter. The text is enriched by close attention to functional aspects of the anatomical observations. The clinical relevance of the pathways is addressed throughout the text and a chapter is devoted to human white matter diseases. The introductory account gives a detailed historical background. Translations of seminal original observations by early investigators are presented, and when these are considered in the light of the authors' new observations, many longstanding conflicts and debates are resolved. This scholarly book is an important addition to systems and cognitive neuroscience that will be of lasting value to neurobiologists, anatomists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and to their students and trainees. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented at National Seminar jointly organized by Somanth Sanskrit University, Veraval and Sanskrit Sahitya Akadami at Gandhinagar on February 21-22, 2022.

A reliable medical image management must provide proper security for patient information. Protecting the medical information of the patients is a major concern in all hospitals. Digital watermarking is a procedure prevalently used to secure the confidentiality of medical information and maintain them, which upgrades patient health awareness. To protect the medical information, the robust and lossless patient medical information sharing system using crypto-watermarking method is proposed. The proposed system consists of two phases: (i) embedding and (ii) extraction. In this (...) paper, we securely share three types of patient information, medical image, electronic health record (EHR), and face image from one hospital to another hospital. Initially, all the three inputs are encrypted and the information is concordant. In order to enhance the robustness of the crypto-watermarking system, the obtained bit stream is compressed, and the compressed bit streams are embedded into the cover image. The same process is repeated for the extraction process. The experimentation result is carried out using different medical images with EHR, and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is analyzed with the help of peak signal to noise ratio. (shrink)

Legislative writing, which is one of the key genres in the practice of law, has mostly been overlooked in pedagogic applications in English for Legal Communication (ELC), even though more than any other professional writing, it demonstrates very typical and distinctive use of linguistic and other semiotic resources, including some of the specific rhetorical conventions and constraints. However, it is surprising that despite its distinctive prominence in legal practice, it has never figured in English for Legal Communication programmes. It seems (...) to be the result of pedagogic convenience rather than curriculum need. In this paper, I would like to argue for the inclusion of legislative genres in English for Legal Communication curriculum design as input to teaching materials, to make it easier for learners to understand and interpret other forms of legal communication, such as cases, judgements, contracts, agreements, and even courtroom interaction. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 109-130.