3,150 research outputs found

    Cybernetics, Fuzziness and Scientific Revolutions

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    Settimo Termini ​pioneered along with Aldo de Luca the concept of fuzziness measures in the sixties. Today he is a Full Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Palermo and an affiliated researcher at the European Center for Soft Computing, Mieres (Asturias), Spain. He has directed from 2002 to 2009 the Istituto di Cibernetica "Eduardo Caianiello" of CNR (National Research Council) in Italy. Among his scientific interests, the introduction and formal development of the theory of (entropy) measures of fuzziness; an analysis in innovative terms of the notion of vague predicate as it appears and is used in Information Sciences, Cybernetics and AI. Recently he has been interested also in the connections between scientific research and economic development and the conceptual foundations of Fuzzy Sets and Soft Computing. He is Fellow of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and of the Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti of Palermo. In 2015 he will be 70, and we want to celebrate his birthday with the Soft Computing community with this interview where he discusses history of Cybernetics. The interview was conducted in Italian and translated by the authors

    Factor Analysis vs. Fuzzy Sets Theory: Assessing the Influence of Different Techniques on Sen's Functioning Approach

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    This paper explores a couple of specific operational interpretations of Sen's approach in view of assessing the extent to which the results originated by the implementation of Sen's concepts are influenced by the choice of the specific technique. By means of a survey based on a representative sample of Belgian individuals, seven achieved functioning's are identified via each technique and subsequently confronted. To structure the information and to facilitate comparisons, standard multivariate analysis is performed, while at the same time considering in more detail the sub-group of the most deprived individuals. In this way, a substantial accordance - yet no perfect equivalence - is uncovered in the general patterns of functionings' achievements.

    Factor Analysis vs Fuzzy Sets Theory: Assessing the Influence of Different Techniques on Sen's Functioning Approach.

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    This paper explores a couple of specific operational interpretations of Sen's approach in view of assessing the extent to which the results originated by the implementation of Sen's concepts are influenced by the choice of the specific technique. By means of a survey based on a representative sample of Belgian individuals, seven achieved functioning's are identified via each technique and subsequently confronted. To structure the information and to facilitate comparisons, standard multivariate analysis is performed, while at the same time considering in more detail the sub-group of the most deprived individuals. In this way, a substantial accordance - yet no perfect equivalence - is uncovered in the general patterns of functioning's' achievements.

    Doubly-Special Relativity: Facts, Myths and Some Key Open Issues

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    I report, emphasizing some key open issues and some aspects that are particularly relevant for phenomenology, on the status of the development of "doubly-special" relativistic ("DSR") theories with both an observer-independent high-velocity scale and an observer-independent small-length/large-momentum scale, possibly relevant for the Planck-scale/quantum-gravity realm. I also give a true/false characterization of the structure of these theories. In particular, I discuss a DSR scenario without modification of the energy-momentum dispersion relation and without the Îș\kappa-Poincar\'e Hopf algebra, a scenario with deformed Poincar\'e symmetries which is not a DSR scenario, some scenarios with both an invariant length scale and an invariant velocity scale which are not DSR scenarios, and a DSR scenario in which it is easy to verify that some observable relativistic (but non-special-relativistic) features are insensitive to possible nonlinear redefinitions of symmetry generators.Comment: This is the preprint version of a paper prepared for a special issue "Feature Papers: Symmetry Concepts and Applications" of the journal Symmetr

    The ‘Little Ice Age’ in the Southern Hemisphere in the context of the last 3000 years : Peat-based proxy-climate data from Tierra del Fuego

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    DM’s research (at Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University) was supported through a European Community Marie Curie Fellowship (Contract HPMF-CT-2000-01056).Peer reviewedPostprin

    Modeling random and non-random decision uncertainty in ratings data: A fuzzy beta model

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    Modeling human ratings data subject to raters' decision uncertainty is an attractive problem in applied statistics. In view of the complex interplay between emotion and decision making in rating processes, final raters' choices seldom reflect the true underlying raters' responses. Rather, they are imprecisely observed in the sense that they are subject to a non-random component of uncertainty, namely the decision uncertainty. The purpose of this article is to illustrate a statistical approach to analyse ratings data which integrates both random and non-random components of the rating process. In particular, beta fuzzy numbers are used to model raters' non-random decision uncertainty and a variable dispersion beta linear model is instead adopted to model the random counterpart of rating responses. The main idea is to quantify characteristics of latent and non-fuzzy rating responses by means of random observations subject to fuzziness. To do so, a fuzzy version of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm is adopted to both estimate model's parameters and compute their standard errors. Finally, the characteristics of the proposed fuzzy beta model are investigated by means of a simulation study as well as two case studies from behavioral and social contexts.Comment: 24 pages, 0 figures, 5 table
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