5,631 research outputs found
UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024
The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp
Utilitarianism and the Social Nature of Persons
This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williamsâs âA Critique of Utilitarianismâ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williamsâs Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern worldâs most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williamsâs objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition â in particular, that traditionâs emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williamsâs objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophyâs rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions
List Construction in Finland-Swedish Sign Language
Finland-Swedish Sign Language (FinSSL) is an endangered minority signed language used by approximately 90 deaf and 100 hearing persons in Finland and a smaller group of users in Sweden. Finland-Swedish Sign Language is in need of revitalization, and this study contributes to this with a detailed description of the form and usage of list construction in informational monologues published between 2014 and 2019.
This study examines the use of list constructions in FinSSL. In list construction and its basic form, the non-dominant hand âcountsâ and its fingertips are associated with entities while the dominant hand is used for pointing at these non-dominant handâs fingers. In previous studies, list constructions have been called, for example, digital enumeration, finger(tip) loci or enumeration, and list buoys. List constructions have been described as a simultaneous expression involving the use of a numeral sign, since the non-dominant list hand often borrows its handshape from a corresponding numeral sign. The list hand can be held in place throughout a stretch of discourse (perseverating) or the hand can alternate between perseveration, simultaneous presentation of list fingers, sequential presentation of the list fingers, and various mixed versions of these.
This study focuses on how FinSSL signers use list constructions in informational videos published on Teckeneko (www.teckeneko.fi). Teckeneko is a web-based information channel and broadcast service administered by the association Finlandssvenska teckensprÄkiga rf and the media company Moxio AB.
The data for this study consists of 48 videos (2 hours and 16 minutes) where the list construction was used 241 times by seven different signers. The data was first annotated with the ELAN annotation program, and then the usage-events were analyzed by using Cognitive Grammar as the theoretical framework. In this analysis, list constructions consist of a list hand and a pointing device. The list hand and its fingers represent the different listed entities. The other hand acts as the pointing device and directs attention to the referents on the list hand fingers.
The results of this study are the detailed description of the list construction usage in informational videos signed in FinSSL. The signers were found to use list construction, e.g., in enumerating topics in the video in question or for a project, events, dates, program numbers, participants, and organizations. The signers also used list construction for grouping the enumerated entities and for referring to the group of entities instead of individual entities. The results show a more nuanced understanding of the use of list constructions in FinSSL and in signed languages in general but also a need for further research on list constructions in other types of data.Listakonstruktio suomenruotsalaisessa viittomakielessÀ
TÀmÀ vÀitöstutkimus kÀsittelee listakonstruktiota suomenruotsalaisessa viittomakielessÀ. Suomenruotsalainen viittomakieli on toinen Suomessa kÀytettÀvistÀ viittomakielistÀ. Se on vakavasti uhanalainen kieli, jolla on Suomessa noin sata natiivia kielenkÀyttÀjÀÀ. TÀmÀ on ensimmÀinen vÀitöstutkimus suomenruotsalaisen viittomakielen kieliopista. Tutkimus on deskriptiivinen, ja se on teoreettiselta viitekehykseltÀÀn kognitiivisen kieliopin alalta. Työn teoreettiseen osaan on kerÀtty laajalti kuvauksia listakonstruktiosta ja sen kÀytöstÀ ja tutkimuksesta muista viittomakielistÀ ympÀri maailmaa.
Listakonstruktiossa viittoja ojentaa toisesta kÀdestÀÀn (nk. listakÀsi) yhdestÀ viiteen sormea ja toisella kÀdellÀÀn (nk. osoitin) osoittaa joko yhteen tai useampaan nÀistÀ ojennetuista sormista. Listakonstruktiota kÀytetÀÀn, kun viittoja listaa asioita ja paikantaa listattavat asiat nÀihin listakÀden sormiin. ListakÀden ojennettujen sormien lukumÀÀrÀ riippuu siitÀ, montako asiaa viittojan listalla on. Tarvittavat sormet voidaan ojentaa joko kaikki kerralla (nk. simultaaninen lista) tai yksitellen listan edetessÀ (nk. sekventiaalinen lista). ListakÀsi voi myös olla joko nÀkyvillÀ, listasormet ojennettuina, koko sen ajan, kun listakonstruktiota tuotetaan (nk. pysyvÀ lista), tai listakÀsi voi osallistua listattavien asioiden viittomiseen ja ottaa listamuodon, kun on seuraavan listasormiin tehtÀvÀn osoituksen vuoro.
VÀitöstutkimuksessa kuvataan, kuinka suomenruotsalaista viittomakieltÀ kÀyttÀvÀt hyödyntÀvÀt listakonstruktiota informatiivisissa monologeissa, jotka on julkaistu Teckeneko-sivustolla (teckeneko.fi) ja todetaan, ettÀ kÀyttö on monipuolista ja luovaa. Osoittavan kÀden kÀsimuoto ja sen tekemÀ liike nimittÀin poikkeaa usein prototyyppisestÀ, pelkÀllÀ etusormella tehtÀvÀstÀ osoituksesta ja kosketuksesta yhden listakÀden sormenpÀÀstÀ. Osoittava kÀsimuoto voi sisÀltÀÀ sekÀ etu- ettÀ keskisormet ja tÀten on mahdollista koskettaa kahta listakÀden sormenpÀÀtÀ yhtÀ aikaa ja nÀin viitata kahteen listan kohtaan simultaanisesti. Osoittava kÀsi voi myös melkein suoran liikkeen ja pienen kosketuksen sijaan tehdÀ pyörÀhtÀvÀn liikkeen listakÀden ojennettujen sormien ympÀri tai linjamaisen liikkeen ojennettujen sormenpÀiden yli tai vieressÀ. TÀllÀ pyörÀhtÀvÀllÀ tai linjamaisella liikkeellÀ viittoja viittaa listan asioihin yhtenÀ ryhmÀnÀ, tai jos linjamainen liike ei kosketakaan kaikkia listakÀden ojennettujen sormien sormenpÀitÀ, viittoja voi ryhmitellÀ listan asiat kahdeksi ryhmÀksi: nÀmÀ, joihin koskettiin, ja nuo, joihin ei koskettu.
Listkonstruktionen i finlandssvenskt teckensprÄk
Doktorsavhandlingen behandlar om listkonstruktionen i finlandssvenskt teckensprÄk som Àr ett av de tvÄ teckensprÄken i Finland. Det finlandssvenska teckensprÄket Àr ett allvarligt hotat sprÄk med ungefÀr hundra nativa sprÄkanvÀndare i Finland. Det hÀr Àr den första doktorsavhandlingen som fokuserar det finlandssvenska teckensprÄkets grammatik. Studien Àr deskriptiv och har kognitiv lingvistik som sin teoretiska ram. I avhandlingens teoretiska del har samlats beskrivningar av hur listkonstruktionen Àr beskriven och hur den anvÀnds i flera teckensprÄk runt omkring i vÀrlden.
DÄ en person tecknar en listkonstruktion, visar hen med ena handen (den s.k. listhanden) ett till fem utstrÀckta fingrar och pekar med den andra handen (den s.k. pekhanden) antingen pÄ ett eller flera av listhandens fingrar. Listkonstruktionen anvÀnds dÄ man listar olika saker eller enheter och dessa listenheter placeras pÄ listhandens fingrar. Antalet utstrÀckta listfingrar beror pÄ antalet enheter pÄ listan. Dessa fingrar kan strÀckas ut antigen alla pÄ en gÄng (s.k. simultan lista) eller i tur och ordning dÄ listan framskrider (s.k. sekventiell lista). Listhanden kan ocksÄ hÄllas kvar i listformen under hela den tiden som listkonstruktionen produceras (s.k. permanent lista), eller listhanden kan förlora listformen under den tiden listhanden deltar i tecknandet av de listade sakerna och kan Äteruppta listformen dÄ det Àr dags för följande pekning pÄ listfingrarna.
I den hÀr doktorsavhandlingen beskrivs hur de som tecknar finlandssvenskt teckensprÄk utnyttjar listkonstruktionen i informativa monologer som Àr publicerade pÄ Teckeneko (teckeneko.fi). Studien visar att anvÀndningen Àr mÄngsidig och kreativ. NÀmligen, pekhandens handform och rörelsen den handen gör skiljer sig ofta frÄn den prototypiska pekningen. Den prototypiska pekningen görs med ett pekfinger och rörelsen Àr mot ett listfinger och slutar med kontakt mellan ett av listhandens fingrar och pekhanden. Studien visar att pekhandens handform kan innehÄlla bÄde pek- och mittfingret vilket möjliggör att ha kontakt med tvÄ listfingrar samtidigt och dÀrmed hÀnvisa till tvÄ listpunkter simultant. Pekhanden kan ocksÄ göra en cirkulÀr rörelse runtomkring eller en nÀstan rak linjerörelse över eller nÀra de utstrÀckta listfingrarna i stÀllet för en rörelse till ett finger. Den som tecknar kan med denna cirkulÀra eller linjÀra rörelse hÀnvisa till de listade enheterna i en grupp, eller gruppera enheterna i tvÄ grupper om nÄgot finger lÀmnas utanför den linjÀra rörelsen: de som den pekande handen rörde vid och de som den pekande handen inte rörde vid
Resource Management in Mobile Edge Computing for Compute-intensive Application
With current and future mobile applications (e.g., healthcare, connected vehicles, and smart grids) becoming increasingly compute-intensive for many mission-critical use cases, the energy and computing capacities of embedded mobile devices are proving to be insufficient to handle all in-device computation. To address the energy and computing shortages of mobile devices, mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a major distributed computing paradigm. Compared to traditional cloud-based computing, MEC integrates network control, distributed computing, and storage to customizable, fast, reliable, and secure edge services that are closer to the user and data sites. However, the diversity of applications and a variety of user specified requirements (viz., latency, scalability, availability, and reliability) add additional complications to the system and application optimization problems in terms of resource management. In this thesis dissertation, we aim to develop customized and intelligent placement and provisioning strategies that are needed to handle edge resource management problems for different challenging use cases: i) Firstly, we propose an energy-efficient framework to address the resource allocation problem of generic compute-intensive applications, such as Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based applications. We design partial task offloading and server selection strategies with the purpose of minimizing the transmission cost. Our experiment and simulation results indicate that partial task offloading provides considerable energy savings, especially for resource-constrained edge systems. ii) Secondly, to address the dynamism edge environments, we propose solutions that integrate Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) and Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) with fine-grained task offloading schemes. Similarly, we show the high efficiency of the proposed strategy in capturing dynamic channel states and enforcing intelligent channel sensing and task offloading decisions. iii) Finally, application-specific long-term optimization frameworks are proposed for two representative applications: a) multi-view 3D reconstruction and b) Deep Neural Network (DNN) inference. Here, in order to eliminate redundant and unnecessary reconstruction processing, we introduce key-frame and resolution selection incorporated with task assignment, quality prediction, and pipeline parallelization. The proposed framework is able to provide a flexible balance between reconstruction time and quality satisfaction. As for DNN inference, a joint resource allocation and DNN partitioning framework is proposed. The outcomes of this research seek to benefit the future distributed computing, smart applications, and data-intensive science communities to build effective, efficient, and robust MEC environments
Towards a framework for the study of ongoing socio-technical transitions: explored through the UK self-driving car paradigm
The UK government set out to see self-driving cars on roads by 2021. The idea of a self-driving car has been around for almost a century, and more recent technological developments have made self-driving cars a real-life possibility. While a fully self-driving automobility system is some distance away, real-life testing is bringing autonomous driving closer to consumers. Some claim this to be the biggest disruption to mobility systems since the invention of the car. Claims about the potential of self-driving mobility range from economic and social benefits to environmental improvements. A significant ambiguity however remains concerning how they will be deployed and how the technological innovation will affect mobility aims and related transport and infrastructure systems. So far, the vast majority of studies on AVs have focused on the technology aspect of this transition lacking contributions that address this from a broader socio-technical perspective.
With the accelerated adoption of new technologies, Sustainability Transitions has come to prominence as a research area that seeks to understand and guide socio-technical transitions toward sustainable trajectories. Socio-technical transitions theoretical framework has been used to understand historical transitions in the majority of empirical applications. The ability to apply the same framework to ongoing transitions and to guide these towards sustainable outcomes remains unsubstantiated. To address this gap this thesis examines the foundations of multi-level perspective (MLP) â a socio-technical transitions analytical framework â and develops an analytical framework (SRPM â System Rules Pathways Mechanisms) that is appropriate for the study of ongoing transitions. The refocused framework incorporates critical realism to focus analysis on causation and causal mechanisms. It is used to analyse the ongoing socio-technical transition to self-driving cars in the UK through a four-step analytical process. The study is framed as a case-based process mechanism study. The four steps are: i) contextualisation of the ongoing transition to AVs in the UK as a socio-technical transition based on the MLP theoretical framework; ii) identification of internal and external structural relations within the transition through the notion of rules and the morphogenetic cycle; iii)
aligning observed processes with transition pathways to theorise about the trajectories of the transition; iv) identification of causal mechanisms in the observed processes through identification of demi-regularities through data analysis of grey literature and theorisation about mechanisms through the development of mechanism sketches and schemata.
The thesis makes two contributions to knowledge: i) methodological and ii) empirical. The methodological contribution is the development of the SRPM analytical framework to study an ongoing socio-technical transition, and the empirical contribution is the application of this framework to the study of the ongoing transition to driverless cars in the UK
Economic Essays on Learning, Inflation Beliefs, and Happiness
Doctoral thesis including six chapters on various topics concerning learning, inflation beleifs and measures of happiness
Routing protocol for V2X communications for Urban VANETs
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) have been attracting tremendous attention in both academia and industry due to emerging applications that pave the way towards safer enjoyable journeys and inclusive digital partnerships. Undoubtedly, these ITS applications will demand robust routing protocols that not only focus on Inter-Vehicle Communications but also on providing fast, reliable, and secure access to the infrastructure. This thesis aims mainly to introduce the challenges of data packets routing through urban environment using the help of infrastructure.
Broadcasting transmission is an essential operational technique that serves a broad range of applications which demand different restrictive QoS provisioning levels. Although broadcast communication has been investigated widely in highway vehicular networks, it is undoubtedly still a challenge in the urban environment due to the obstacles, such as high buildings. In this thesis, the Road-Topology based Broadcast Protocol (RTBP) is proposed, a distance and contention-based forwarding scheme suitable for both urban and highway vehicular environments. RTBP aims at assigning the highest forwarding priority to a vehicle, called a mobile repeater, having the greatest capability to send the packet in multiple directions. In this way, RTBP effectively reduces the number of competing vehicles and minimises the number of hops required to retransmit the broadcast packets around the intersections to cover the targeted area. By investigating the RTBP under realistic urban scenarios against well-known broadcast protocols, eMDR and TAF, that are dedicated to retransmitting the packets around intersections, the results showed the superiority of the RTBP in delivering the most critical warning information for 90% of vehicles with significantly lower delay of 58% and 70% compared to eMDR and TAF. The validation of this performance was clear when the increase in the number of vehicles.
Secondly, a Fast and Reliable Hybrid routing (FRHR) protocol is introduced for efficient infrastructure access which is capable of handling efficient vehicle to vehicle communications. Interface to infrastructure is provided by carefully placed RoadSide Units (RSUs) which broadcast beacons in a multi-hop fashion in constrained areas. This enables vehicles proactively to maintain fresh minimum-delay routes to other RSUs while reactively discovering routes to nearby vehicles. The proposed protocol utilizes RSUs connected to the wired backbone network to relay packets toward remote vehicles. A vehicle selects an RSU to register with according to the expected mean delay instead of the deviceâs remoteness. The FRHR performance is evaluated against established infrastructure routing protocols, Trafroute, IGSR and RBVT-R that are dedicated to for urban environment, the results showed an improvement of 20% to 33% in terms of packet delivery ratio and lower latency particularly in sparse networks due to its rapid response to changes in network connectivity.
Thirdly, focusing on increasing FRHRâs capability to provide more stable and durable routes to support the QoS requirements of expected wide-range ITS applications on the urban environment, a new route selection mechanism is introduced, aiming at selecting highly connected crossroads. The new protocol is called, Stable Infrastructure Routing Protocol (SIRP). Intensive simulation results showed that SIRP offers low end-to-end delay and high delivery ratio with varying traffic density, while resolving the problem of frequent link failures
Mainstreaming of Nature-Based Solutions for the mitigation of hydro-meteorological hazard: governance analysis of a socio- technical change
The Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) concept and approach were developed to simultaneously face challenges such as risk mitigation and biodiversity conservation and restoration. NBSs have been endorsed by major International Organizations such as the EU, the FAO and World Bank that are pushing to enable a mainstreaming process. However, a shift from traditional engineering âgreyâ solutions to wider and standard adoption of NBS encounters technical, social, cultural, and normative barriers that have been identified with a qualitative content analysis of policy documents, reports and expert interviews. The case of the region Emilia-Romagna was studied by developing an analytical framework that brought together the social-ecological context, the governance system and the characteristics of specific NBSs
Fitting Blame without Blameworthiness
Fitting blame is commonly thought to require a blameworthy actor who is in some robust sense âat faultâ for their objectionable behavior. When we cannot be warranted in making this judgment of fault about a person, we cannot be warranted in blaming them. When we cannot be warranted in blaming a person, we also cannot make room for genuinely forgiving themâat best, we can make sense of how we may excuse them or simply let go of our blame. However, in life, we often find ourselves blaming, striving to forgive, and sometimes succeeding in forgiving a person both (i) when we cannot reasonably judge whether they are blameworthy and (ii) when we can reasonably judge that they are not blameworthy. I argue that we should not dismiss our phenomenology of blaming and forgiving people in these types of cases, despite it being rendered incoherent or unwarranted in a conventional framework. By introducing a pluralistic picture of blame and a species of blame without fault, in which warranted blame does not require a warranted judgment of fault within an actor, I provide the resources to illuminate and support our experiences that play a vital role in our individual, interpersonal, and social lives.Doctor of Philosoph
LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volum
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