559 research outputs found

    'If I could be equall with Solomon...' - Ecclesiastes and English practical divinity c.1590, with particular reference to Henry Smith & George Gifford

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    The book of Ecclesiastes is a scripture that has been notoriously vexing and endlessly inspiring to Christians and students of Christianity through the ages, and it has been a standout text in the diachronic study of biblical reception. Nevertheless, there is no dearth of problems, questions, potential advances, and needful correctives that remain outstanding. One such set of issues relates to the reception of the scripture in sixteenth century England. When the Tudor dynasty began, interest in Ecclesiastes was limited, mainly to humanist scholars and the upper echelons of English society. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, it had emerged as a focus of engagement, worldly application, and personal emulation for all, from puritan and conformist divines to London liverymen and independent craftswomen, from governing intellectuals like Francis Bacon to social outliers like the author(s) of Hæc-Vir. To date, the relevant historiographies have largely bypassed this arc of change. The present thesis is an interdisciplinary study that identifies bands added to this arc of change by the generation of certain scripted prayers and sermons delivered c.1590 by the puritan ministers Henry Smith and George Gifford. Treating these materials as events of the imagination as well as texts, it also ascertains specific modes of their enduring influences, and argues that they were the vanguard of historically significant evolutions in the reception of Ecclesiastes that both deepened the scripture’s role in English practical divinity and had wider, abiding effects on English thought and expression well into the seventeenth century. Refinements to current scholarship are also offered, such as further pruning to the origins of the Victorine (Hugh of St Victor) influence on Reformed exegesis of vanitas. Certain bibliographical correctives are suggested as well, such as the place and importance of The Books of Homilies in the pre-1590 reception of Ecclesiastes

    Behavior quantification as the missing link between fields: Tools for digital psychiatry and their role in the future of neurobiology

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    The great behavioral heterogeneity observed between individuals with the same psychiatric disorder and even within one individual over time complicates both clinical practice and biomedical research. However, modern technologies are an exciting opportunity to improve behavioral characterization. Existing psychiatry methods that are qualitative or unscalable, such as patient surveys or clinical interviews, can now be collected at a greater capacity and analyzed to produce new quantitative measures. Furthermore, recent capabilities for continuous collection of passive sensor streams, such as phone GPS or smartwatch accelerometer, open avenues of novel questioning that were previously entirely unrealistic. Their temporally dense nature enables a cohesive study of real-time neural and behavioral signals. To develop comprehensive neurobiological models of psychiatric disease, it will be critical to first develop strong methods for behavioral quantification. There is huge potential in what can theoretically be captured by current technologies, but this in itself presents a large computational challenge -- one that will necessitate new data processing tools, new machine learning techniques, and ultimately a shift in how interdisciplinary work is conducted. In my thesis, I detail research projects that take different perspectives on digital psychiatry, subsequently tying ideas together with a concluding discussion on the future of the field. I also provide software infrastructure where relevant, with extensive documentation. Major contributions include scientific arguments and proof of concept results for daily free-form audio journals as an underappreciated psychiatry research datatype, as well as novel stability theorems and pilot empirical success for a proposed multi-area recurrent neural network architecture.Comment: PhD thesis cop

    Connecting to make a difference : social learning and radical collective change in prefigurative online communities

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    In view of the current global social and ecological predicament, what might constitute relevant forms of radical collective change? What role can processes of social learning play in facilitating such change? And to what extent are online networks able to support the unfolding of such processes? This thesis addresses these questions. I first present the results of two participatory action research projects, taking place in two different prefigurative online communities attempting to bring about very different forms of collective change. The first focuses on building a transnational, decentralised grassroots economic system as an alternative to global capitalism, but struggles to shake free from the toxic influence of global financial markets, and from unhelpful ways of relating and organising. The second aims to foster self-organisation and new forms of relationality between humans and with the rest of the living world, but struggles to address the heritage of historical violence and injustice, or to bring about visible political change. With the help of the Wenger-Trayner social learning theory and evaluation framework, I consider what processes of social learning have been taking place (or not) in these networks, and their outcomes; and what other social change efforts may learn from these experiments and their limitations. Finally, I present a reflexive account of my own process of learning and unlearning through my involvement with these projects and others, with regards to the question of what may constitute radical collective change. This critical assessment of my own thinking and aspirations leads me to argue in favour of decolonial approaches to social change as potentially relevant responses to the global predicament. This thesis contributes to the understanding of social learning processes within prefigurative online communities, and to the practice of social change efforts in such contexts

    Leveraging Feedback in Conversational Question Answering Systems

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    172 p.Tesi honen helburua martxan jarri eta geroko sistemek gizakiekin duten elkarregina erabiltzeada, gizakien feedbacka sistementzako ikasketa eta egokitzapen seinale bezala erabiliz.Elkarrizketa sistemek martxan jartzerakoan jasaten duten domeinu aldaketan jartzen dugufokua. Helburu honetarako, feedback bitar esplizituaren kasua aztertzen dugu, hau baitagizakientzat feedbacka emateko seinale errazena.Sistemak martxan jarri eta gero hobetzeko, lehenik eta behin DoQA izeneko galdera-erantzunmotako elkarriketez osatutako datu multzo bat eraiki dugu. Datu multzo honekcrowdsourcing bidez jasotako 2.437 dialogo ditu. Aurreko lanekin konparatuz gero, DoQAkbenetazko informazio beharrak islatzen ditu, datu multzo barneko elkarrizketak naturalagoaketa koherenteagoak izanik. Datu multzo sortu eta gero, feedback-weighted learning (FWL)izeneko algoritmo bat diseinatu dugu, feedback bitarra bakarrik erabiliz aurretikentrenatutako sistema gainbegiratu bat hobetzeko gai dena. Azkenik, algoritmo honen mugakaztertzen ditugu jasotako feedbacka zaratatsua den kasuetarako eta FWL moldatzen dugueszenatoki zaratsuari aurre egiteko. Kasu honetan lortzen ditugun emaitza negatiboakerakusten dute erabiltzaileetatik jasotako feedback zaratsua modelatzearen erronka, hauebaztea oraindik ikerkuntza galdera ireki bat delarik

    Towards Video Transformers for Automatic Human Analysis

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    [eng] With the aim of creating artificial systems capable of mirroring the nuanced understanding and interpretative powers inherent to human cognition, this thesis embarks on an exploration of the intersection between human analysis and Video Transformers. The objective is to harness the potential of Transformers, a promising architectural paradigm, to comprehend the intricacies of human interaction, thus paving the way for the development of empathetic and context-aware intelligent systems. In order to do so, we explore the whole Computer Vision pipeline, from data gathering, to deeply analyzing recent developments, through model design and experimentation. Central to this study is the creation of UDIVA, an expansive multi-modal, multi-view dataset capturing dyadic face-to-face human interactions. Comprising 147 participants across 188 sessions, UDIVA integrates audio-visual recordings, heart-rate measurements, personality assessments, socio- demographic metadata, and conversational transcripts, establishing itself as the largest dataset for dyadic human interaction analysis up to this date. This dataset provides a rich context for probing the capabilities of Transformers within complex environments. In order to validate its utility, as well as to elucidate Transformers' ability to assimilate diverse contextual cues, we focus on addressing the challenge of personality regression within interaction scenarios. We first adapt an existing Video Transformer to handle multiple contextual sources and conduct rigorous experimentation. We empirically observe a progressive enhancement in model performance as more context is added, reinforcing the potential of Transformers to decode intricate human dynamics. Building upon these findings, the Dyadformer emerges as a novel architecture, adept at long-range modeling of dyadic interactions. By jointly modeling both participants in the interaction, as well as embedding multi- modal integration into the model itself, the Dyadformer surpasses the baseline and other concurrent approaches, underscoring Transformers' aptitude in deciphering multifaceted, noisy, and challenging tasks such as the analysis of human personality in interaction. Nonetheless, these experiments unveil the ubiquitous challenges when training Transformers, particularly in managing overfitting due to their demand for extensive datasets. Consequently, we conclude this thesis with a comprehensive investigation into Video Transformers, analyzing topics ranging from architectural designs and training strategies, to input embedding and tokenization, traversing through multi-modality and specific applications. Across these, we highlight trends which optimally harness spatio-temporal representations that handle video redundancy and high dimensionality. A culminating performance comparison is conducted in the realm of video action classification, spotlighting strategies that exhibit superior efficacy, even compared to traditional CNN-based methods.[cat] Aquesta tesi busca crear sistemes artificials que reflecteixin les habilitats de comprensió i interpretació humanes a través de l'ús de Transformers per a vídeo. L'objectiu és utilitzar aquestes arquitectures per comprendre millor la interacció humana i desenvolupar sistemes intel·ligents i conscients de l'entorn. Això implica explorar àmplies àrees de la Visió per Computador, des de la recopilació de dades fins a l'anàlisi de l'estat de l'art i la prova experimental d'aquests models. Una part essencial d'aquest estudi és la creació d'UDIVA, un ampli conjunt de dades multimodal i multivista que enregistra interaccions humanes cara a cara. Amb 147 participants i 188 sessions, UDIVA inclou contingut audiovisual, freqüència cardíaca, perfils de personalitat, dades sociodemogràfiques i transcripcions de les converses. És el conjunt de dades més gran conegut per a l'anàlisi de la interacció humana diàdica i proporciona un context ric per a l'estudi de les capacitats dels Transformers en entorns complexos. Per tal de validar la seva utilitat i les habilitats dels Transformers, ens centrem en la regressió de la personalitat. Inicialment, adaptem un Transformer de vídeo per integrar diverses fonts de context. Mitjançant experiments exhaustius, observem millores progressives en els resultats amb la inclusió de més context, confirmant la capacitat dels Transformers. Motivats per aquests resultats, desenvolupem el Dyadformer, una arquitectura per interaccions diàdiques de llarga duració. Aquesta nova arquitectura considera simultàniament els dos participants en la interacció i incorpora la multimodalitat en un sol model. El Dyadformer supera la nostra proposta inicial i altres treballs similars, destacant la capacitat dels Transformers per abordar tasques complexes. No obstant això, aquestos experiments revelen reptes d'entrenament dels Transformers, com el sobreajustament, per la seva necessitat de grans conjunts de dades. La tesi conclou amb una anàlisi profunda dels Transformers per a vídeo, incloent dissenys arquitectònics, estratègies d'entrenament, preprocessament de vídeos, tokenització i multimodalitat. S'identifiquen tendències per gestionar la redundància i alta dimensionalitat de vídeos i es realitza una comparació de rendiment en la classificació d'accions a vídeo, destacant estratègies d'eficàcia superior als mètodes tradicionals basats en convolucions

    Transformative Education: How Can You Become a Better College Teacher?

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    Transformative Education presents a comprehensive approach to college teaching that stresses both the presentation of topical coverage AND the development of critical thinking skills. The book focuses on several key points in the learning process such as student preparation for class, student engagement during class, and student review and organization of the material after class. The book discusses the urgent need for more and better high-quality college education, a goal that can be achieved by a methodical approach to gradual teaching improvement.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1396/thumbnail.jp

    The great moving countering violent extremism show: An ethnography of CVE in the Canadian context

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    My dissertation critically examines through ethnographic fieldwork the rise of countering violent extremism [CVE] programs in Canada. CVE is an offshoot of counter-terrorism, with programs first taking hold in the mid-2000s following ‘homegrown terrorism’ incidents in Madrid and London. CVE is based on the premise that a ‘radicalization process’ precedes terrorism. This allows for security and civil society-based interventions in the ‘pre-crime’ space to interrupt terrorism before it happens. The most thorough and controversial example of this is the UK’s Prevent strategy, which legally mandates human services professionals to refer individuals showing signs of ‘radicalization’. In Canada, no such duty exists, though its national strategy nonetheless aims to harness ‘all of society’ toward preventing violent extremism, enlisting the cooperation of teachers, artists, psychologists, social workers along with actors in the private sector. My study is not about how individuals turn to ‘violent extremism’ or ‘radicalization’ but rather about examining that edifices that have created to respond to these perceived problems The implications of CVE as an ‘all of society’ endeavour are manifold, particularly as the scope of CVE expands beyond ‘Islamism’ toward preventing ‘all types’ of violent extremism, most recently on right-wing groups and violence against racial, ethnic, and gender minorities. Broadly, my research attempts to conceive of the implications of this expansion. What drives CVE’s growth in the face of sustained criticism over its deleterious impacts on Muslim communities? How do practitioners in CVE align their interests with the cause? What social functions does CVE take on? Moreover, can boundaries even be drawn around what constitutes CVE? My study draws on interviews with 46 CVE practitioners and participant observation over a three-year period (2018-2020) with CVE entities operating in Canada. My findings indicate how an absence of knowledge over how to conduct CVE propels its encroachment into ever more diverse areas of social life. The paradigm operationalizes ‘uncertainty’ to enroll actors with diverse interests and foster partnerships with communities including those (racialized, Indigenous, LGBTQ) that have had fraught relationships with security institutions. In Chapter 1 - Searching for the CVE space I discuss my immersion in CVE and the type of fieldwork activities conducted. I also attempt to define my research object, outlining how CVE comprises a field of practice, a paradigm, a moral-social imperative, and lastly a space. Chapters 2 and 3 historicize CVE’s contemporary presence and disturb common understandings of its origins. I critique the explanation of CVE’s rise as a necessary and spontaneous reaction to evolving security threats to understand it as an outcome of performative security knowledge, where new security threats are discursively created rather than responded to. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on my fieldwork experience, examining how actors ‘enroll’ in the CVE cause through the open-ended, speculative quality of its activities. A distinction emerged with Muslim-identifying CVE practitioners, whose motivations to represent their communities in often hostile institutions and reduce the harm of CVE practices were typified by the repeated phrase “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”. In the conclusion chapter I connect the varying threads of preceding analysis and what they portend for CVE’s effects on societies. This includes examining how CVE’s efforts to redirect political grievances toward ‘pro-social’ ends potentially disempowers social justice movements, reinforcing state hegemony and existing power inequities

    24th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NoDaLiDa)

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    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023

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    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (8ª. 2023. Vigo)atlanTTicAMTEGA: Axencia para a modernización tecnolóxica de GaliciaINCIBE: Instituto Nacional de Cibersegurida
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