What we have discovered about the Cold War is what we already knew : Julius Mader and the Western secret services during the Cold War

Maddrell, John, 'What we have discovered about the Cold War is what we already knew: Julius Mader and Western Espionage during the Cold War', Cold War History (2005) 5(2) pp.235-258 RAE2008

Coronal loops heated by turbulence-driven Alfven waves

Li, Xing, Habbal, S. R., 'Coronal loops heated by turbulence-driven Alfven waves', The Astrophysical Journal, (2003) 598(2) pp.L125-L128 RAE2008

Edward Sapir’s View About International Auxiliary Language

The search for common attributes of all languages is connected with the search for characteristics which differentiate languages. If some attributes cannot be found in every language, what is cause of this situation? Is it linked up with the origin of language or with users of the language?

Impacto das variáveis sociodemográficas no potencial dos jovens com formação superior em Portugal

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa, como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Psicologia, ramo de Psicologia do Trabalho e das Organizações

That Whole Business about the Cross

digital audio recording

A Collection of Memorial Addresses about the Death of James A. Garfield

Printed pamphlet of sermons presented by ministers and pastors after the death of President James A. Garfield.

A brief history of the Bhopal principality in Central India : from the period of its foundation, about one hundred and fifty years ago, to the present time.

http://www.archive.org/details/briefhistoryofth014373mbp

On the Efficiency and Fairness of Transmission Control Loops: A Case for Exogenous Losses

We postulate that exogenous losses-which are typically regarded as introducing undesirable "noise" that needs to be filtered out or hidden from end points-can be surprisingly beneficial. In this paper we evaluate the effects of exogenous losses on transmission control loops, focusing primarily on efficiency and convergence to fairness properties. By analytically capturing the effects of exogenous losses, we are able to characterize the transient behavior of TCP. Our numerical results suggest that "noise" resulting from exogenous losses should not be filtered out blindly, and that a careful examination of the parameter space leads to better strategies regarding the treatment of exogenous losses inside the network. Specifically, we show that while low levels of exogenous losses do help connections converge to their fair share, higher levels of losses lead to inefficient network utilization. We draw the line between these two cases by determining whether or not it is advantageous to hide, or more interestingly introduce, exogenous losses. Our proposed approach is based on classifying the effects of exogenous losses into long-term and short-term effects. Such classification informs the extent to which we control exogenous losses, so as to operate in an efficient and fair region. We validate our results through simulations.

Efficient Support for Common Relations in Lightweight Formal Reasoning Systems

In work that involves mathematical rigor, there are numerous benefits to adopting a representation of models and arguments that can be supplied to a formal reasoning or verification system: reusability, automatic evaluation of examples, and verification of consistency and correctness. However, accessibility has not been a priority in the design of formal verification tools that can provide these benefits. In earlier work [Lap09a], we attempt to address this broad problem by proposing several specific design criteria organized around the notion of a natural context: the sphere of awareness a working human user maintains of the relevant constructs, arguments, experiences, and background materials necessary to accomplish the task at hand. This work expands one aspect of the earlier work by considering more extensively an essential capability for any formal reasoning system whose design is oriented around simulating the natural context: native support for a collection of mathematical relations that deal with common constructs in arithmetic and set theory. We provide a formal definition for a context of relations that can be used to both validate and assist formal reasoning activities. We provide a proof that any algorithm that implements this formal structure faithfully will necessary converge. Finally, we consider the efficiency of an implementation of this formal structure that leverages modular implementations of well-known data structures: balanced search trees and transitive closures of hypergraphs.

Accurate and Efficient Gesture Spotting via Pruning and Subgesture Reasoning

Gesture spotting is the challenging task of locating the start and end frames of the video stream that correspond to a gesture of interest, while at the same time rejecting non-gesture motion patterns. This paper proposes a new gesture spotting and recognition algorithm that is based on the continuous dynamic programming (CDP) algorithm, and runs in real-time. To make gesture spotting efficient a pruning method is proposed that allows the system to evaluate a relatively small number of hypotheses compared to CDP. Pruning is implemented by a set of model-dependent classifiers, that are learned from training examples. To make gesture spotting more accurate a subgesture reasoning process is proposed that models the fact that some gesture models can falsely match parts of other longer gestures. In our experiments, the proposed method with pruning and subgesture modeling is an order of magnitude faster and 18% more accurate compared to the original CDP algorithm.

A Memory Model for Concept Hierarchy Representation and Commonsense Reasoning

Most associative memory models perform one level mapping between predefined sets of input and output patterns1 and are unable to represent hierarchical knowledge. Complex AI systems allow hierarchical representation of concepts, but generally do not have learning capabilities. In this paper, a memory model is proposed which forms concept hierarchy by learning sample relations between concepts. All concepts are represented in a concept layer. Relations between a concept and its defining lower level concepts, are chunked as cognitive codes represented in a coding layer. By updating memory contents in the concept layer through code firing in the coding layer, the system is able to perform an important class of commonsense reasoning, namely recognition and inheritance.

Combining and choosing case base maintenance algorithms

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) uses past experiences to solve new problems. The quality of the past experiences, which are stored as cases in a case base, is a big factor in the performance of a CBR system. The system's competence may be improved by adding problems to the case base after they have been solved and their solutions verified to be correct. However, from time to time, the case base may have to be refined to reduce redundancy and to get rid of any noisy cases that may have been introduced. Many case base maintenance algorithms have been developed to delete noisy and redundant cases. However, different algorithms work well in different situations and it may be difficult for a knowledge engineer to know which one is the best to use for a particular case base. In this thesis, we investigate ways to combine algorithms to produce better deletion decisions than the decisions made by individual algorithms, and ways to choose which algorithm is best for a given case base at a given time. We analyse five of the most commonly-used maintenance algorithms in detail and show how the different algorithms perform better on different datasets. This motivates us to develop a new approach: maintenance by a committee of experts (MACE). MACE allows us to combine maintenance algorithms to produce a composite algorithm which exploits the merits of each of the algorithms that it contains. By combining different algorithms in different ways we can also define algorithms that have different trade-offs between accuracy and deletion. While MACE allows us to define an infinite number of new composite algorithms, we still face the problem of choosing which algorithm to use. To make this choice, we need to be able to identify properties of a case base that are predictive of which maintenance algorithm is best. We examine a number of measures of dataset complexity for this purpose. These provide a numerical way to describe a case base at a given time. We use the numerical description to develop a meta-case-based classification system. This system uses previous experience about which maintenance algorithm was best to use for other case bases to predict which algorithm to use for a new case base. Finally, we give the knowledge engineer more control over the deletion process by creating incremental versions of the maintenance algorithms. These incremental algorithms suggest one case at a time for deletion rather than a group of cases, which allows the knowledge engineer to decide whether or not each case in turn should be deleted or kept. We also develop incremental versions of the complexity measures, allowing us to create an incremental version of our meta-case-based classification system. Since the case base changes after each deletion, the best algorithm to use may also change. The incremental system allows us to choose which algorithm is the best to use at each point in the deletion process.

The analytical approach of the European Court of Human Rights in surveillance cases—the implications, justifications, and future of the Court’s reasoning, with a focus on the legislative impact in Ireland

A notable feature of the surveillance case law of the European Court of Human Rights has been the tendency of the Court to focus on the “in accordance with the law” aspect of the Article 8 ECHR inquiry. This focus has been the subject of some criticism, but the impact of this approach on the manner in which domestic surveillance legislation has been formulated in the Party States has received little scholarly attention. This thesis addresses that gap in the literature through its consideration of the Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act, 1993 and the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act, 2009. While both Acts provide several of the safeguards endorsed by the European Court of Human Rights, this thesis finds that they suffer from a number of crucial weaknesses that undermine the protection of privacy. This thesis demonstrates how the focus of the European Court of Human Rights on the “in accordance with the law” test has resulted in some positive legislative change. Notwithstanding this fact, it is maintained that the legality approach has gained prominence at the expense of a full consideration of the “necessary in a democratic society” inquiry. This has resulted in superficial legislative responses at the domestic level, including from the Irish government. Notably, through the examination of a number of more recent cases, this project discerns a significant alteration in the interpretive approach adopted by the European Court of Human Rights regarding the application of the necessity test. The implications of this development are considered and the outlook for Irish surveillance legislation is assessed.

Reflections on the transformation of my meaning making to support the organic growth of a firm

The objective of my Portfolio is to explore the working hypothesis that the organic growth of a firm is governed by the perspectives of individuals and such perspectives are governed by their meaning-making. The Portfolio presents explorations of the transformation of my meaning making and in adopting new practices to support the organic growth of a firm. I use the work of other theorists to transition my understanding of how the world works. This transition process is an essential tool to engage with and understand the perspectives of others and develop a mental capacity to “train one’s imagination to go visiting” (Arendt, 1982; p.43). The Portfolio, therefore, is primarily located in reflective research. Using Kegan’s (1994) approach to Adult Mental Development, and Sowell’s (2007) understanding of the visions which silently shape our thoughts I organise the developments of my meaning making around three transformation pillars of change. In pillar one I seek to transform an unthinking respect for authority and break down a blind pervasiveness of thought within my reasoning process arising from an instinct for attachment and support from others whom I trust. In pillar two I seek to discontinue using autocratic leadership and learn to use the thoughts and contributions of a wider team to make improved choices about uncertain future events. In pillar three I explore the use of a more reflective thinking framework to test the accuracy of my perceptions and apply a high level of integrity in my reasoning process. The transformation of my meaning making has changed my perspectives and in turn my preferred practices to support the organic growth of a firm. I identify from practice that a transformative form of leadership is far more effective that a transactional form of leadership to stimulate the trust and teamwork required to sustain the growth a firm. Creating an environment where one feels free to share thoughts and feelings with others is an essential tool to build a team to critique the thoughts of one other. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial wisdom to grow a firm must come from a wider team, located both inside and outside the boundaries of a firm. No individual or small team has the mental capacity to provide the entrepreneurship required to drive the organic growth of a firm. I address my Portfolio to leaders in organisations who have no considered framework on the best practices required to lead a social organisation. These individuals may have no sense of what they implicitly believe drives social causation and they may have no understanding if their meaning making supports or curtails the practices required to grow a firm. They may have a very limited capacity to think in a logical manner, with the result they are using guesses from their ‘gut’ to make poor judgements in the management of a firm.

Reasoning with sorted-pareto dominance and other qualitative and partially ordered preferences in soft constraints

In decision making problems where we need to choose a particular decision or alternative from a set of possible choices, we often have some preferences which determine if we prefer one decision over another. When these preferences give us an ordering on the decisions that is complete, then it is easy to choose the best or one of the best decisions. However it often occurs that the preferences relation is partially ordered, and we have no best decision. In this thesis, we look at what happens when we have such a partial order over a set of decisions, in particular when we have multiple orderings on a set of decisions, and we present a framework for qualitative decision making. We look at the different natural notions of optimal decision that occur in this framework, which gives us different optimality classes, and we examine the relationships between these classes. We then look in particular at a qualitative preference relation called Sorted-Pareto Dominance, which is an extension of Pareto Dominance, and we give a semantics for this relation as one that is compatible with any order-preserving mapping of an ordinal preference scale to a numerical one. We apply Sorted-Pareto dominance to a Soft Constraints setting, where we solve problems in which the soft constraints associate qualitative preferences to decisions in a decision problem. We also examine the Sorted-Pareto dominance relation in the context of our qualitative decision making framework, looking at the relevant optimality classes for the Sorted-Pareto case, which gives us classes of decisions that are necessarily optimal, and optimal for some choice of mapping of an ordinal scale to a quantitative one. We provide some empirical analysis of Sorted-Pareto constraints problems and examine the optimality classes that result.