6,533 research outputs found
Writing Facts: Interdisciplinary Discussions of a Key Concept in Modernity
"Fact" is one of the most crucial inventions of modern times. Susanne Knaller discusses the functions of this powerful notion in the arts and the sciences, its impact on aesthetic models and systems of knowledge. The practice of writing provides an effective procedure to realize and to understand facts. This concerns preparatory procedures, formal choices, models of argumentation, and narrative patterns. By considering "writing facts" and "writing facts", the volume shows why and how "facts" are a result of knowledge, rules, and norms as well as of description, argumentation, and narration. This approach allows new perspectives on »fact« and its impact on modernity
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Presidential Administration: An Intellectual and Legal History, 1888-1938
This dissertation explores the intellectual and legal history of presidential administration â that is, the presidentâs ability to direct the operations of the administrative state. The dissertation argues that presidential administration was closely connected to changing ideas about how to realize democratic government. It shows how, in the late 19th and early 20th century, the presidency acquired the institutions that lay the foundations for executive control of administration. This was a deliberate reform project, driven by ideas about what would make government responsible.
The dissertation tells this story by tracking transformations in democratic thought and law through attention to court cases and scholarship, among other genres, and looks at both published and archival sources. It draws on methods from legal history, intellectual history, and American Political Development, and occasionally makes use of an Atlantic perspective. Besides historians, law professors, and political scientists, it may be of interest to scholars of the presidency, public administration, and analysts of current legal debates about presidential power and administration
Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse
This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses.
This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups.
In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in usersâ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018â6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena
Writing Facts
»Fact« is one of the most crucial inventions of modern times. Susanne Knaller discusses the functions of this powerful notion in the arts and the sciences, its impact on aesthetic models and systems of knowledge. The practice of writing provides an effective procedure to realize and to understand facts. This concerns preparatory procedures, formal choices, models of argumentation, and narrative patterns. By considering »writing facts« and »writing facts«, the volume shows why and how »facts« are a result of knowledge, rules, and norms as well as of description, argumentation, and narration. This approach allows new perspectives on »fact« and its impact on modernity
An exploration of adherence and persistence in overactive bladder and other long-term conditions
Background and aims
Overactive bladder is a common, bothersome, and chronic condition associated with
symptoms of urinary urgency, incontinence, increased daytime micturition frequency and
nocturia. Despite exerting a significant burden on quality of life, adherence, and persistence
behaviours with OAB are particularly poor in comparison with other long-term conditions.
The aims of the present work were to explore themes relating to medicine-taking
behaviours in OAB and other long-term conditions and to suggest ways to improve them.
Methods
A systematic literature review was undertaken to understand the current landscape of
qualitative work exploring adherence and persistence with OAB patients. A qualitative study
involving 1:1 semi-structured interviews was conducted with OAB patients to explore the
context and drivers for adherence and persistence behaviours using thematic analysis. A
comparative analysis was then undertaken with qualitative papers exploring medicinetaking behaviours in a chronic bowel condition, type II diabetes, and multimorbidity to
explore the themes identified in the OAB study for convergence and divergence in other
conditions and to contextualise the learnings from the former study.
Results
The systematic literature review revealed a gap in the literature of qualitative exploration of
adherence and persistence behaviours in OAB patients. The OAB study found a range of
drivers for non-adherent behaviours including a perceived lack of treatment efficacy, side
effects, unclear instructions, and drug and condition hierarchies, as well as the rich context
within which these themes sit. The comparative analysis study supported the findings of the
OAB study demonstrating evidence of key themes transcending across conditions, including a perceived lack of treatment efficacy and side effects, as well as nuances associated with
the OAB experience.
Conclusions
The present work has identified key drivers for non-adherent behaviours in OAB patients
and sets out a number of recommendations categorised within the World Health
Organisationâs 5 dimensions of adherence. These include addressing the poor understanding
and illness perception of OAB by patients and others, by improving the provision and
availability of information, as well as the work of patient support groups; scrutiny on the
support within primary care to OAB patients before and after diagnosis; and the
encouragement of realistic expectations of the condition and treatment with mindful use of
prescriberâs language at the point of prescribing. The present work has further highlighted
the utility of conceptual models of adherence such as COM-B and the NCF in understanding
medicine-taking behaviours in the context of OAB
A scientometric analysis of deep learning approaches for detecting Fake News
The unregulated proliferation of counterfeit news creation and dissemination that has been
seen in recent years poses a constant threat to democracy. Fake news articles have the power to
persuade individuals, leaving them perplexed. This scientometric study examined 569 documents
from the Scopus database between 2012 and mid-2022 to look for general research trends, publication
and citation structures, authorship and collaboration patterns, bibliographic coupling, and productivity patterns in order to identify fake news using deep learning. For this study, Biblioshiny and
VOSviewer were used. The findings of this study clearly demonstrate a trend toward an increase in
publications since 2016, and this dissemination of fake news is still an issue from a global perspective.
Thematic analysis of papers reveals that research topics related to social media for surveillance and
monitoring of public attitudes and perceptions, as well as fake news, are crucial but underdeveloped,
while studies on deep fake detection, digital contents, digital forensics, and computer vision constitute
niche areas. Furthermore, the results show that China and the USA have the strongest international
collaboration, despite India writing more articles. This paper also examines the current state of the art
in deep learning techniques for fake news detection, with the goal of providing a potential roadmap
for researchers interested in undertaking research in this fiel
Foundation Models and Fair Use
Existing foundation models are trained on copyrighted material. Deploying
these models can pose both legal and ethical risks when data creators fail to
receive appropriate attribution or compensation. In the United States and
several other countries, copyrighted content may be used to build foundation
models without incurring liability due to the fair use doctrine. However, there
is a caveat: If the model produces output that is similar to copyrighted data,
particularly in scenarios that affect the market of that data, fair use may no
longer apply to the output of the model. In this work, we emphasize that fair
use is not guaranteed, and additional work may be necessary to keep model
development and deployment squarely in the realm of fair use. First, we survey
the potential risks of developing and deploying foundation models based on
copyrighted content. We review relevant U.S. case law, drawing parallels to
existing and potential applications for generating text, source code, and
visual art. Experiments confirm that popular foundation models can generate
content considerably similar to copyrighted material. Second, we discuss
technical mitigations that can help foundation models stay in line with fair
use. We argue that more research is needed to align mitigation strategies with
the current state of the law. Lastly, we suggest that the law and technical
mitigations should co-evolve. For example, coupled with other policy
mechanisms, the law could more explicitly consider safe harbors when strong
technical tools are used to mitigate infringement harms. This co-evolution may
help strike a balance between intellectual property and innovation, which
speaks to the original goal of fair use. But we emphasize that the strategies
we describe here are not a panacea and more work is needed to develop policies
that address the potential harms of foundation models
The safety and regulatory challenges associated with the geological disposal of the UKâs higher activity radioactive waste in England and Wales
The UKâs higher activity waste (HAW) is set to be disposed of in a geological disposal facility
(GDF). International consensus is that a GDF provides the most comprehensive means of
isolating and containing HAW and its harmful radionuclides, with nations at different stages in
their implementation of geological disposal. The maturity of some nationsâ disposal programmes
(e.g. Finland, Sweden) ensures a regulatory framework for their GDF is well established. The
UK is currently engaged in a GDF site selection process, as such it is necessary that the
regulatory framework for the geological disposal of its radioactive waste be fully established
to meet the unique challenges posed by this first-of-a-kind facility for the UK. The reduced
hazard potential and unique features of the GDF may mean the existing framework applied
to UK nuclear installations does not proportionately meet the requirements for maintaining
worker and public safety and the protection of the environment. The purpose of the work
presented in this thesis was to investigate the safety and regulatory challenges associated with the
geological disposal of UK HAW. This began by building an understanding of the fundamentals
of radioactive waste and geological disposal in the UK and the risks associated with geological
disposal. Having investigated the performance of proposed engineered barrier materials for
the GDF, a simplified, 1-dimensional risk assessment model was developed for the disposal of
spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in a hypothetical geological setting. The model was verified against
data provided by Radioactive Waste Management Ltd (RWM Ltd), the UKâs GDF delivery
body, and utilised to conduct sensitivity studies, for the purpose of identify factors which could
significantly impact on the radiological risk to the public due to the disposal of Spent Nuclear
Fuel. Where significant, it was considered whether this might impact on the nature of the
regulatory oversight required. The framework applied to nuclear installations in the regulation
of nuclear safety, security, environmental protection and safeguards was mapped and analysed
for its applicability to GDF-specific challenges. International experience in the regulation of
GDFs was drawn upon in order to identify common features. Stakeholder opinion, including
members of industry, regulators, waste producers and local interest groups, was also sought, in
order to highlight their views on the applicability of the current system of nuclear site licensing
to a GDF. This work culminated with a proposal for a regulatory framework, which aims to
proportionately address the unique challenges associated with geological disposal.Open Acces
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