Naïve realism and unconscious perception: A reply to Berger and Nanay

In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations

Preparing students for their Year Abroad in the Hispanic World

We will share the TEACHERS' BOOK with the answer keys for all the exercises, all the transcriptions and some audio tracks, *FREE OF CHARGE* to all teachers currently using or would like to adopt the texbook, here in Language Box, from the end of August 2012. Watch this space! Many thanks for taking the time to read this. The author

TEACHERS BOOK, Pasaporte al Mundo Hispano

We will share the TEACHERS' BOOK with the answer keys for all the exercises, all the transcriptions and some audio tracks, *FREE OF CHARGE* to all teachers currently using or would like to adopt the texbook, here in Language Box, from the end of August 2012. Watch this space! Many thanks for taking the time to read this. The author

SPEC Kit 356 Diversity and Inclusion

Today, diversity is defined beyond racial and ethnic groups and includes gender, sexual orientation, ability, language, religious belief, national origin, age, and ideas. The increase of published literature about cultural competencies, microaggressions, and assessment of diversity issues, as well as the inclusion of social justice movements in libraries, suggests diversity-related activities have increased and evolved over the last seven years. Over this time span, several libraries have obtained funding to support strategies to increase the number of minority librarians on their staff and support their advancement within the organization. There also appears to be an increase in the number of diversity or multicultural groups at the local, state, and national levels. However, these changes have not been consistently documented. Therefore, it is important to re-examine this topic to evaluate the impact of evolving endeavors, to see if more ARL libraries are involved, to see how diversity plans have changed over the years, and to document the current practices of research libraries. The main purpose of this survey was to identify diversity trends and changes in managing diversity issues in ARL libraries through exploring the components of diversity plans and initiatives since 2010, acknowledge library efforts since the 1990s, provide evidence of best practices and future trends, and identify current strategies that increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries and the types of programs that foster a diverse workplace and climate. The survey was conducted between May 1 and June 5, 2017. Sixty-eight of the 124 ARL member institutions responded to the survey for a 55% response rate. Interestingly, only 22 of the respondents to the 2010 SPEC survey participated in this survey, but this provides an opportunity to explore the diversity and inclusion efforts of a new set of institutions in addition to seeing what changes those 22 institutions have made since 2010. The SPEC Survey on Diversity and Inclusion was designed by Toni Anaya, Instruction Coordinator, and Charlene Maxey-Harris, Research and Instructional Services Chair, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These results are based on responses from 68 of the 124 ARL member libraries (55%) by the deadline of June 12, 2017. The survey’s introductory text and questions are reproduced below, followed by the response data and selected comments from the respondents. The purpose of this survey is to explore the components of diversity plans created since 2010, identify current recruitment and retention strategies that aim to increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries, identify staff development programs that foster an inclusive workplace and climate, identify how diversity programs have changed, and gather information on how libraries assess these efforts

Cost and losses associated with offshore wind farm collection networks which centralise the turbine power electronic converters

Costs and losses have been calculated for several different network topologies, which centralise the turbine power electronic converters, in order to improve access for maintenance. These are divided into star topologies, where each turbine is connected individually to its own converter on a platform housing many converters, and cluster topologies, where multiple turbines are connected through a single large converter. Both AC and DC topologies were considered, along with standard string topologies for comparison. Star and cluster topologies were both found to have higher costs and losses than the string topology. In the case of the star topology, this is due to the longer cable length and higher component count. In the case of the cluster topology, this is due to the reduced energy capture from controlling turbine speeds in clusters rather than individually. DC topologies were generally found to have a lower cost and loss than AC, but the fact that the converters are not commercially available makes this advantage less certain

Local mixture models of exponential families

Exponential families are the workhorses of parametric modelling theory. One reason for their popularity is their associated inference theory, which is very clean, both from a theoretical and a computational point of view. One way in which this set of tools can be enriched in a natural and interpretable way is through mixing. This paper develops and applies the idea of local mixture modelling to exponential families. It shows that the highly interpretable and flexible models which result have enough structure to retain the attractive inferential properties of exponential families. In particular, results on identification, parameter orthogonality and log-concavity of the likelihood are proved.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/07-BEJ6170 in the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Naïve realism and phenomenal similarity

It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterizes the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently

Evaluation of the causes of error in the MCD45 burned-area product for the savannas of northern South America [Evaluación de las causas de error en el producto de área quemada MCD45 para las sabanas del norte de Suramérica]

Forest fires contribute to deforestation and have been considered a significant source of CO2 emissions. There are global maps that estimate the area affected by a fire using the reflectance variation of the surface. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and the causes of error of the MCD45 Burned Area Product, by applying the confusion matrix method to the Orinoco River Basin. This basin is located in the northern zone of South America, and consists mainly of savanna ecosystems. For the evaluation, we used as reference data five pairs of Landsat images, covering 165,000 km2. The Burned Area Product estimated a burned area of 7,576.43 km2, which is lower than the area of 12,100.16 km2 found with Landsat images, leading to an overall underestimation. The causes of error are associated to the spatial resolution of the map, and to some structures of the algorithm that generates the map