1,181 research outputs found

    Minoritized Knowledges: Agency, Literature, Temporalities

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    Abstract “I am not erudite enough to be interdisciplinary, but I can break rules.” Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, xiii “Minoritized Knowledges: Agency, Literature, Temporalities,” queries an agency exercised by literature in excess of authorial intention as well as the text itself, which is transforming in its unoriginality, as a convergence of exploited, minoritized knowledges. The six chapters engage multiple fields as discourses rather than territories. “Nonidentity and Vectors of History,” brings Critical Theory’s notion of nonidentity into dialogue with key literary work by authors including Claudia Rankine and Elfriede Jelinek. The historical principle of nonidentity illuminates a convergence in their writing, which facilitates understanding history as vectors of trauma rather than modes of domination. Chapter 2. “Literary Agency and Minoritized Grammar'' addresses the political work of contemporary poets, including Fred Moten, contesting the sequestering of alternative minoritized grammars in poetic terms. Limiting alternative grammar to poetic experimentation perpetuates melancholy and epistemic hegemony. Chapter 3. “Economies of Sacrifice,” situates the work historically, where sacrifice emerges as central to western hegemonic logic. Recent feminist and queer mobilizations of the figure of Antigone highlight how sacrifice undergirds western tradition/s of exploitation and increasingly generates economies of violence that mobilize current knowledge markets. Chapter 4. “Unfinished Knowledge,” sets the stage by underscoring the convergence of partial, situated and unfinished knowledges in the works of Black, feminist and queer theorists for which literature is key. Such incomplete epistemologies continue to be underestimated and ambivalently received. Chapter 5. “The Folly of Narrative,” engages with current critical re-readings of literary realism, to draw out alternative epistemological figures and temporalities that contest the logic of sacrifice. Chapter 6. “Literary Agency and Minoritized Knowledges” revisits the history of western ideas decentering eurocentrism’s deployment of certainty qua mastery and completion under the guise of knowledge. Pivoting from the convergence of decolonial queer feminist critique, I elaborate alternative epistemological figures, including counter-grammar, nonidentity and folly. By undermining dominant dichotomous epistemologies and inviting diasporic study, these figures challenge epistemic injustice. The contrast between epistemologies of exploitation versus decolonization is not dichotomous but performative. Hence, it is situated, situational, contextual, temporal, historical and (dis)located

    Innovation in Energy Security and Long-Term Energy Efficiency Ⅱ

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    The sustainable development of our planet depends on the use of energy. The increasing world population inevitably causes an increase in the demand for energy, which, on the one hand, threatens us with the potential to encounter a shortage of energy supply, and, on the other hand, causes the deterioration of the environment. Therefore, our task is to reduce this demand through different innovative solutions (i.e., both technological and social). Social marketing and economic policies can also play their role by affecting the behavior of households and companies and by causing behavioral change oriented to energy stewardship, with an overall switch to renewable energy resources. This reprint provides a platform for the exchange of a wide range of ideas, which, ultimately, would facilitate driving societies toward long-term energy efficiency

    The Witcraft of Seeing Things Differently : Hyperdetermined Humor, Unusual Viewpoints, and Narrative Rhetoric in Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels

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    Sir Terry Pratchettin maineikasta ja menestynyttĂ€ Discworld-romaanisarjaa luonnehditaan yleensĂ€ koomiseksi fantasiaksi, ja vaikka sitĂ€ on aiemmin tutkittu etupÀÀssĂ€ fantasiakirjallisuutena, niin fantasiamiljöön lisĂ€ksi toinen nĂ€iden kirjojen silmiinpistĂ€vĂ€ piirre on huumorin ylenpalttinen runsaus. TĂ€ssĂ€ vĂ€itöskirjassa olen valinnut harvinaisemman lĂ€hestymistavan tutkiessani Discworld-romaaneja ensisijaisesti humoristisena kirjallisuutena, ja sen mukaisesti vĂ€itöskirjani keskeisimpĂ€nĂ€ tavoitteena on tutkia Terry Pratchettin huumorin poetiikkaa. Tarkemmin sanottuna olen asettanut tĂ€ssĂ€ vĂ€itöskirjassa tehtĂ€vĂ€kseni kartoittaa Terry Pratchettin huumorille ominaisimmat komiikan keinot ja tutkia, mikĂ€ tekee Discworld-romaaneista hauskoja. Discworld-romaaneille ominainen huumorin runsaus koostuu humorististen kuvausten ja koomisten kohtausten tiheĂ€n esiintymisen lisĂ€ksi komiikan keinojen laajasta valikoimasta. TĂ€ssĂ€ vĂ€itöskirjassa vĂ€itĂ€n, ettĂ€ Terry Pratchettin huumori on hyperdeterminoitua, mikĂ€ tarkoittaa, ettĂ€ hĂ€n yhdistelee erilaisia komiikan keinoja samassa kuvauksessa tai kohtauksessa. Siksi Pratchettin huumorin poetiikkaa kĂ€sittelevĂ€ vĂ€itöskirjani on samalla myös tutkimus hyperdeterminoidun huumorin rakentumisesta. SelkeyttÀÀkseni huumorin hyperdeterminaation rakentumista jaottelen komiikan keinot neljÀÀn kategoriaan: tilanteellisiin, kontekstuaalisiin, rakenteellisiin ja tyylillisiin. Sovellan tĂ€tĂ€ jaottelua vĂ€ittĂ€mĂ€llĂ€, ettĂ€ humoristista kuvausta tai koomista kohtausta voidaan perustellusti sanoa hyperdeterminoiduksi silloin, kun siinĂ€ yhdistellÀÀn komiikan keinoja useammasta kuin yhdestĂ€ kategoriasta. PidĂ€n Pratchettin huumorille ominaisten komiikan keinojen kartoittamista yhtenĂ€ tĂ€mĂ€n vĂ€itöskirjan keskeisimmistĂ€ kontribuutioista kirjallisen huumorin tutkimukselle. Tilanteellisista komiikan keinoista tarkastelen Discworld-romaaneista löytĂ€miĂ€ni esimerkkejĂ€ draamallisesta ironiasta ja absurdista logiikasta. Kontekstuaalisista komiikan keinoista kĂ€sittelen Pratchettin parodiaa ja satiiria, kun taas rakenteellisista komiikan keinoista tutkin, kuinka Pratchett kĂ€yttÀÀ paraprosdokiania, bathosta, toistuvia piloja (”figgin”) ja koomisia alaviitteitĂ€. TyylillisistĂ€ komiikan keinoista tutkailen Pratchettin koomisia kielikuvia (hyperbolia, metaforia, vertauksia ja personifikaatioita), hĂ€nen sanaleikkejÀÀn (paronomasia, antanaklasis, sanataskut ja kaksikieliset sanaleikit) sekĂ€ Pratchettin koomisia eufemismeja. LisĂ€ksi osoitan vĂ€itöskirjassani, ettĂ€ Terry Pratchettin huumorille on ominaista kulttuuristen kliseiden (eli tuttujen kulttuuri-ilmiöiden, totunnaisten ajattelutapojen ja vakiintuneiden esittĂ€misen konventioiden) esittĂ€minen humoristisen epĂ€tavallisista nĂ€kökulmista kĂ€sin. Discworld-romaaneissa Pratchett siirtÀÀ erilaisia oman maailmamme kulttuuri-ilmiöitĂ€ Discworld-nimiseen (suom. Kiekkomaailma) fantasiamaailmaansa, ja tĂ€mĂ€n maailmojen törmĂ€yttĂ€misen seurauksena kulttuuriset kliseet nĂ€yttĂ€ytyvĂ€t lukijalle samanaikaisesti tuttuina ja koomisen outoina. TĂ€llaiset humoristiset nĂ€kökulmat vahvistavat osaltaan huumorin hyperdeterminaatiota. Samalla kun fantasiamiljöö mahdollistaa kahden maailman koomisen törmĂ€yttĂ€misen ja oman maailmamme kulttuuristen kliseiden peilaamisen toisen maailman avulla, huumori toisaalta mahdollistaa Kiekkomaailmassa normaalia fantasiaa vapaamman mielikuvituksen lennon, eikĂ€ monia Discworld-romaaneissa kuvattuja asioita, tapahtumia ja ilmiöitĂ€ voisi esiintyĂ€ maailmoissa, jotka eivĂ€t rakennu absurdin logiikan, kulttuurisilla kliseillĂ€ leikittelyn ja koomisen liioittelun kaltaisten todellisuuta vÀÀristĂ€vien periaatteiden luoman ”taikuuden” varaan. Komiikan keinojen moninaisuuden, hyperdeterminoidun huumorin ja epĂ€tavallisten nĂ€kökulmien lisĂ€ksi tutkin vĂ€itöskirjassani sitĂ€, millaisia arvottavia asenteita kertojan humoristiset nĂ€kökulmat ja humoristisiin kuvauksiin sisĂ€ltyvĂ€t henkilöhahmojen tunnereaktiot paljastavat. Tulkitsen tĂ€llaisen arvottavan huumorin kirjalliseksi retorisen vaikuttamisen keinoksi, jonka avulla kirjailija pyrkii ohjailemaan lukijansa hyvĂ€ksyviĂ€ ja paheksuvia asenteita. Useimmiten Pratchettin huumori on kulttuurikriittistĂ€, eli parodista ja satiirista, mutta toisinaan humoristiset nĂ€kökulmat esittĂ€vĂ€t todellisen maailman kulttuuri-ilmiöitĂ€ myönteisinĂ€ ja ihailtavina. VĂ€itĂ€n tutkimuksessani, ettĂ€ kirjallisuuden retoriikka perustuu tĂ€llaisten kielteisten ja myönteisten asenteiden esittĂ€miselle ja ettĂ€ huumori on yksi kertomuksen retoriikan vaikutuskeinoista.Sir Terry Pratchett’s bestselling Discworld series of novels has been commonly described as comic fantasy, and although it has been previously studied mainly as fantasy literature, another conspicuous feature in these novels, in addition to the fantasy milieu, is their rich and abundant humor. In this study, I have chosen the road less travelled by approaching the Discworld novels as humorous literature, and, consequently, my main goal here is to study the poetics of Terry Pratchett’s humor— his “witcraft”. To be more precise, in this dissertation I have set myself the task of mapping out the comic devices that are most characteristic for Terry Pratchett’s witcraft and investigating what makes the Discworld novels funny. The richness of humor that is characteristic for the Discworld novels consists partly of the frequent occurrences of humorous descriptions and comic scenes, but also of the numerous comic devices that Pratchett deploys. In this dissertation, I argue that Terry Pratchett’s humor is hyperdetermined, which means that he tends to combine numerous comic devices in the same description or scene. Consequently, this study on the poetics of Terry Pratchett’s humor is at the same time a study on the construction of hyperdetermined humor. To better understand how hyperdetermined humor is constructed, I have devised a taxonomy that divides comic devices into four categories: situational, contextual, structural, and stylistic. Based on this taxonomy, I argue that the humor of a humorous description or a comic scene can be said to be truly hyperdetermined whenever it combines comic devices from more than one of these categories. I consider mapping out the comic devices that are most characteristic for Terry Pratchett’s witcraft to be one of the major contributions of this dissertation to the academic study of humor in literature. Of situational comic devices, I discuss and analyze examples of dramatic irony and absurd logic that I have detected in the Discworld novels. Of contextual comic devices, I discuss Pratchett’s parody and satire; of structural comic devices, I study Pratchett’s use of paraprosdokian, bathos, figgins (or running gags), and comic footnotes. Of stylistic comic devices, I investigate Pratchett’s comic imagery (hyperboles, metaphors, similes, and personifications), his puns (paronomasia, antanaclasis, portmanteaux, and bilingual puns), as well as Pratchett’s comic euphemisms. In this dissertation, I also demonstrate that representing cultural clichĂ©s (i.e., familiar cultural phenomena, customary ways of thinking, and conventional ways of representing) from humorously unusual viewpoints is characteristic for Terry Pratchett’s witcraft. In the Discworld novels, Pratchett transfers various cultural phenomena from the real world, our “Roundworld”, to a fantasy world called the Discworld, and as a result of this interworldly resonance, the cultural clichĂ©s of our Roundworld appear to the reader simultaneously as familiar and comically strange. These humorous viewpoints can be viewed as an additional constituent of hyperdetermined humor. While the fantasy setting of the Discworld novels allows Pratchett to set up comic resonance between the worlds, Pratchett’s humor also makes the Discworld a more imaginative and fantastic place than typical fantasy worlds. Many events and phenomena that are represented in the Discworld novels can only exist in a world where reality is distorted and enhanced by the special “magic” of comically absurd logic, playing with cultural clichĂ©s, and humorous exaggerations. In addition to the abundance of comic devices, hyperdetermined humor, and humorously unusual viewpoints, I also study in this dissertation what kinds of evaluative attitudes the narrator’s humorous viewpoints and the characters’ emotional reactions reveal. According to my interpretation, such evaluative attitudes are means of narrative rhetoric, where the author attempts to guide the reader’s attitudes of approval or disapproval. Pratchett’s humor is often critical—parodical or satirical—although occasionally the narrator’s humorous viewpoints represent the cultural phenomena of our Roundworld in a positive light, as something admirable. In this dissertation, I argue that narrative rhetoric is based on representing negative and positive attitudes, and that humor is one possible means of narrative rhetoric

    Geometric Learning on Graph Structured Data

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    Graphs provide a ubiquitous and universal data structure that can be applied in many domains such as social networks, biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science. In this thesis we focus on two fundamental paradigms in graph learning: representation learning and similarity learning over graph-structured data. Graph representation learning aims to learn embeddings for nodes by integrating topological and feature information of a graph. Graph similarity learning brings into play with similarity functions that allow to compute similarity between pairs of graphs in a vector space. We address several challenging issues in these two paradigms, designing powerful, yet efficient and theoretical guaranteed machine learning models that can leverage rich topological structural properties of real-world graphs. This thesis is structured into two parts. In the first part of the thesis, we will present how to develop powerful Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) for graph representation learning from three different perspectives: (1) spatial GNNs, (2) spectral GNNs, and (3) diffusion GNNs. We will discuss the model architecture, representational power, and convergence properties of these GNN models. Specifically, we first study how to develop expressive, yet efficient and simple message-passing aggregation schemes that can go beyond the Weisfeiler-Leman test (1-WL). We propose a generalized message-passing framework by incorporating graph structural properties into an aggregation scheme. Then, we introduce a new local isomorphism hierarchy on neighborhood subgraphs. We further develop a novel neural model, namely GraphSNN, and theoretically prove that this model is more expressive than the 1-WL test. After that, we study how to build an effective and efficient graph convolution model with spectral graph filters. In this study, we propose a spectral GNN model, called DFNets, which incorporates a novel spectral graph filter, namely feedback-looped filters. As a result, this model can provide better localization on neighborhood while achieving fast convergence and linear memory requirements. Finally, we study how to capture the rich topological information of a graph using graph diffusion. We propose a novel GNN architecture with dynamic PageRank, based on a learnable transition matrix. We explore two variants of this GNN architecture: forward-euler solution and invariable feature solution, and theoretically prove that our forward-euler GNN architecture is guaranteed with the convergence to a stationary distribution. In the second part of this thesis, we will introduce a new optimal transport distance metric on graphs in a regularized learning framework for graph kernels. This optimal transport distance metric can preserve both local and global structures between graphs during the transport, in addition to preserving features and their local variations. Furthermore, we propose two strongly convex regularization terms to theoretically guarantee the convergence and numerical stability in finding an optimal assignment between graphs. One regularization term is used to regularize a Wasserstein distance between graphs in the same ground space. This helps to preserve the local clustering structure on graphs by relaxing the optimal transport problem to be a cluster-to-cluster assignment between locally connected vertices. The other regularization term is used to regularize a Gromov-Wasserstein distance between graphs across different ground spaces based on degree-entropy KL divergence. This helps to improve the matching robustness of an optimal alignment to preserve the global connectivity structure of graphs. We have evaluated our optimal transport-based graph kernel using different benchmark tasks. The experimental results show that our models considerably outperform all the state-of-the-art methods in all benchmark tasks

    Quasi-Arithmetic Mixtures, Divergence Minimization, and Bregman Information

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    Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods for sampling from complex distributions and estimating normalization constants often simulate samples from a sequence of intermediate distributions along an annealing path, which bridges between a tractable initial distribution and a target density of interest. Prior work has constructed annealing paths using quasi-arithmetic means, and interpreted the resulting intermediate densities as minimizing an expected divergence to the endpoints. We provide a comprehensive analysis of this 'centroid' property using Bregman divergences under a monotonic embedding of the density function, thereby associating common divergences such as Amari's and Renyi's α{\alpha}-divergences, (α,ÎČ){(\alpha,\beta)}-divergences, and the Jensen-Shannon divergence with intermediate densities along an annealing path. Our analysis highlights the interplay between parametric families, quasi-arithmetic means, and divergence functions using the rho-tau Bregman divergence framework of Zhang 2004,2013.Comment: 19 pages + appendix (rewritten + changed title in revision

    Overcoming the timescale barrier in molecular dynamics: Transfer operators, variational principles and machine learning

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    One of the main challenges in molecular dynamics is overcoming the ‘timescale barrier’: in many realistic molecular systems, biologically important rare transitions occur on timescales that are not accessible to direct numerical simulation, even on the largest or specifically dedicated supercomputers. This article discusses how to circumvent the timescale barrier by a collection of transfer operator-based techniques that have emerged from dynamical systems theory, numerical mathematics and machine learning over the last two decades. We will focus on how transfer operators can be used to approximate the dynamical behaviour on long timescales, review the introduction of this approach into molecular dynamics, and outline the respective theory, as well as the algorithmic development, from the early numerics-based methods, via variational reformulations, to modern data-based techniques utilizing and improving concepts from machine learning. Furthermore, its relation to rare event simulation techniques will be explained, revealing a broad equivalence of variational principles for long-time quantities in molecular dynamics. The article will mainly take a mathematical perspective and will leave the application to real-world molecular systems to the more than 1000 research articles already written on this subject

    A survey on artificial intelligence-based acoustic source identification

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    The concept of Acoustic Source Identification (ASI), which refers to the process of identifying noise sources has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The ASI technology can be used for surveillance, monitoring, and maintenance applications in a wide range of sectors, such as defence, manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture. Acoustic signature analysis and pattern recognition remain the core technologies for noise source identification. Manual identification of acoustic signatures, however, has become increasingly challenging as dataset sizes grow. As a result, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for identifying noise sources has become increasingly relevant and useful. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of AI-based acoustic source identification techniques. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of AI-based ASI processes and associated methods proposed by researchers in the literature. Additionally, we did a detailed survey of ASI applications in machinery, underwater applications, environment/event source recognition, healthcare, and other fields. We also highlight relevant research directions

    Geometry-Aware Latent Representation Learning for Modeling Disease Progression of Barrett's Esophagus

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    Barrett's Esophagus (BE) is the only precursor known to Esophageal Adenocarcinoma (EAC), a type of esophageal cancer with poor prognosis upon diagnosis. Therefore, diagnosing BE is crucial in preventing and treating esophageal cancer. While supervised machine learning supports BE diagnosis, high interobserver variability in histopathological training data limits these methods. Unsupervised representation learning via Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) shows promise, as they map input data to a lower-dimensional manifold with only useful features, characterizing BE progression for improved downstream tasks and insights. However, the VAE's Euclidean latent space distorts point relationships, hindering disease progression modeling. Geometric VAEs provide additional geometric structure to the latent space, with RHVAE assuming a Riemannian manifold and S\mathcal{S}-VAE a hyperspherical manifold. Our study shows that S\mathcal{S}-VAE outperforms vanilla VAE with better reconstruction losses, representation classification accuracies, and higher-quality generated images and interpolations in lower-dimensional settings. By disentangling rotation information from the latent space, we improve results further using a group-based architecture. Additionally, we take initial steps towards S\mathcal{S}-AE, a novel autoencoder model generating qualitative images without a variational framework, but retaining benefits of autoencoders such as stability and reconstruction quality

    Making Presentation Math Computable

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    This Open-Access-book addresses the issue of translating mathematical expressions from LaTeX to the syntax of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS). Over the past decades, especially in the domain of Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), LaTeX has become the de-facto standard to typeset mathematical formulae in publications. Since scientists are generally required to publish their work, LaTeX has become an integral part of today's publishing workflow. On the other hand, modern research increasingly relies on CAS to simplify, manipulate, compute, and visualize mathematics. However, existing LaTeX import functions in CAS are limited to simple arithmetic expressions and are, therefore, insufficient for most use cases. Consequently, the workflow of experimenting and publishing in the Sciences often includes time-consuming and error-prone manual conversions between presentational LaTeX and computational CAS formats. To address the lack of a reliable and comprehensive translation tool between LaTeX and CAS, this thesis makes the following three contributions. First, it provides an approach to semantically enhance LaTeX expressions with sufficient semantic information for translations into CAS syntaxes. Second, it demonstrates the first context-aware LaTeX to CAS translation framework LaCASt. Third, the thesis provides a novel approach to evaluate the performance for LaTeX to CAS translations on large-scaled datasets with an automatic verification of equations in digital mathematical libraries. This is an open access book
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