Der junge Lukács als Diagnostiker der Krise. Subjektivismus und das Problem der Form

This paper argues that the work of the young Lukács can be read as a wide-ranging mediation on what I am labelling ›the crisis of subjectivism‹. Reading Lukács this way allows us to see important continuities between his pre-Marxist and Marxist period. Most significantly, it allows us to see how positing the proletariat as a ›subject-object‹ of history and developing a crisis diagnosis of bourgeois society, allowed Lukács to bring the fruits of his earlier intellectual labour under conceptual control.Das Werk des jungen Lukács wird im vorliegenden Beitrag als umfassende Verhandlung einer ›Krise des Subjektivismus‹ gelesen. Diese Lesart lässt wichtige Verbindungslinien zwischen Lukács̕ vormarxistischer und seiner marxistischen Phase erkennen. Vor allem jedoch wird deutlich, auf welche Weise die Positionierung des Proletariats als ›Subjekt-Objekt‹ der Geschichte und die Entwicklung einer Krisendiagnose der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft es Lukács ermöglichten, die Früchte seiner früheren Gedankenarbeit konzeptuell einzuhegen

Aesthetics of Form as Social Philosophy: Re-reading Lukács. Introduction to the Issue

Uvodnik u broj posvećen konceptu forme kod Georga Lukácsa

ZeST-NeRF: Using temporal aggregation for Zero-Shot Temporal NeRFs

In the field of media production, video editing techniques play a pivotal role. Recent approaches have had great success at performing novel view image synthesis of static scenes. But adding temporal information adds an extra layer of complexity. Previous models have focused on implicitly representing static and dynamic scenes using NeRF. These models achieve impressive results but are costly at training and inference time. They overfit an MLP to describe the scene implicitly as a function of position. This paper proposes ZeST-NeRF, a new approach that can produce temporal NeRFs for new scenes without retraining. We can accurately reconstruct novel views using multi-view synthesis techniques and scene flow-field estimation, trained only with unrelated scenes. We demonstrate how existing state-of-the-art approaches from a range of fields cannot adequately solve this new task and demonstrate the efficacy of our solution. The resulting network improves quantitatively by 15% and produces significantly better visual results.Comment: VUA BMVC 202

DECORAIT -- DECentralized Opt-in/out Registry for AI Training

We present DECORAIT; a decentralized registry through which content creators may assert their right to opt in or out of AI training as well as receive reward for their contributions. Generative AI (GenAI) enables images to be synthesized using AI models trained on vast amounts of data scraped from public sources. Model and content creators who may wish to share their work openly without sanctioning its use for training are thus presented with a data governance challenge. Further, establishing the provenance of GenAI training data is important to creatives to ensure fair recognition and reward for their such use. We report a prototype of DECORAIT, which explores hierarchical clustering and a combination of on/off-chain storage to create a scalable decentralized registry to trace the provenance of GenAI training data in order to determine training consent and reward creatives who contribute that data. DECORAIT combines distributed ledger technology (DLT) with visual fingerprinting, leveraging the emerging C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) standard to create a secure, open registry through which creatives may express consent and data ownership for GenAI.Comment: Proc. of the 20th ACM SIGGRAPH European Conference on Visual Media Productio

Combining the hospital frailty risk score with the Charlson and Elixhauser multimorbidity indices to identify older patients at risk of poor outcomes in acute care

Objective: The Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) can be applied to medico-administrative datasets to determine the risks of 30-day mortality and long length of stay (LOS) in hospitalized older patients. The objective of this study was to compare the HFRS with Charlson and Elixhauser comorbidity indices, used separately or combined. Design: A retrospective analysis of the French medical information database. The HFRS, Charlson index, and Elixhauser index were calculated for each patient based on the index stay and hospitalizations over the preceding 2 years. Different constructions of the HFRS were considered based on overlapping diagnostic codes with either Charlson or Elixhauser indices. We used mixed logistic regression models to investigate the association between outcomes, different constructions of HFRS, and associations with comorbidity indices. Setting: 743 hospitals in France. Participants: All patients aged 75 years or older hospitalized as an emergency in 2017 (n=1,042,234). Main outcome measures: 30-day inpatient mortality and LOS >10 days. Results: The HFRS, Charlson, and Elixhauser indices were comparably associated with an increased risk of 30-day inpatient mortality and long LOS. The combined model with the highest c-statistic was obtained when associating the HFRS with standard adjustment and Charlson for 30-day inpatient mortality (adjusted c-statistics: HFRS=0.654; HFRS + Charlson = 0.676) and with Elixhauser for long LOS (adjusted c-statistics: HFRS= 0.672; HFRS + Elixhauser =0.698). Conclusions: Combining comorbidity indices and HFRS may improve discrimination for predicting long LOS in hospitalized older people, but adds little to Charlson’s 30-day inpatient mortality risk

EKILA: Synthetic Media Provenance and Attribution for Generative Art

We present EKILA; a decentralized framework that enables creatives to receive recognition and reward for their contributions to generative AI (GenAI). EKILA proposes a robust visual attribution technique and combines this with an emerging content provenance standard (C2PA) to address the problem of synthetic image provenance -- determining the generative model and training data responsible for an AI-generated image. Furthermore, EKILA extends the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem to introduce a tokenized representation for rights, enabling a triangular relationship between the asset's Ownership, Rights, and Attribution (ORA). Leveraging the ORA relationship enables creators to express agency over training consent and, through our attribution model, to receive apportioned credit, including royalty payments for the use of their assets in GenAI.Comment: Proc. CVPR Workshop on Media Forensics 202

Hydrothermal carbonization of primary sewage sludge and synthetic faeces: Effect of reaction temperature and time on filterability

The effect of reaction temperature and time on the filterability of slurries of primary sewage sludge (PSS) and synthetic faeces (SF) following hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) was investigated and optimised using response surface methodology (RSM). Filterability was shown to improve as the treatment temperature and reaction time at which the solids were carbonised was increased. The best filtration results were achieved at the highest temperature (200°C) and longest treatment time (240 min) employed here. The specific cake resistance to filtration of the carbonised solids was found to vary between 5.43 x 1012 and 2.05 x 1010 m kg–1 for cold filtration of PSS, 1.11 x 1012 and 3.49 x 1010 m kg–1 for cold filtration of SF, and 3.01 x 1012 and 3.86 x 1010 m kg–1 for hot filtration of SF, and decreased with increasing reaction temperature and time for carbonisation. There was no significant difference in the specific resistance of cold and hot filtration for SF. The RSM models employed here were found to yield predictions that were close to the experimental results obtained and should therefore prove useful in designing and optimizing HTC filtration systems for generating solids for a wide variety of end uses

External validation of the Hospital Frailty Risk Score in France

BACKGROUND: The Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) has made it possible internationally to identify subgroups of patients with characteristics of frailty from routinely collected hospital data. OBJECTIVE: To externally validate the HFRS in France. DESIGN: A retrospective analysis of the French medical information database. SETTING: 743 hospitals in Metropolitan France. SUBJECTS: All patients aged 75 years or older hospitalised as an emergency in 2017 (n = 1,042,234). METHODS: The HFRS was calculated for each patient based on the index stay and hospitalisations over the preceding 2 years. Main outcome measures were 30-day in-patient mortality, length of stay (LOS) >10 days and 30-day readmissions. Mixed logistic regression models were used to investigate the association between outcomes and HFRS score. RESULTS: Patients with high HFRS risk were associated with increased risk of mortality and prolonged LOS (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.38 [1.35-1.42] and 3.27 [3.22-3.32], c-statistics = 0.676 and 0.684, respectively), while it appeared less predictive of readmissions (aOR = 1.00 [0.98-1.02], c-statistic = 0.600). Model calibration was excellent. Restricting the score to data prior to index admission reduced discrimination of HFRS substantially. CONCLUSIONS: HFRS can be used in France to determine risks of 30-day in-patient mortality and prolonged LOS, but not 30-day readmissions. Trial registration: Reference ID on clinicaltrials.gov: ID: NCT03905629

Process energetics for the hydrothermal carbonisation of human faecal wastes

Hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) has the capability to convert wet biomass such as sewage sludge to a lignite-like renewable solid fuel of high calorific value. However, to date assessment of the energy efficiency of the HTC process has not been fully investigated. In this work, mass and energy balances of semi-continuous HTC of faecal waste conducted at 200 °C and at a reaction time of 30 min are presented. This analysis is based on recovering steam from the process as well as energy from the solid fuel (hydrochar) and methane from digestion of the liquid product. The effect of the feedstock solids content and the quantity of feed on the mass and energy balance were investigated. The heat of reaction was measured at 200 °C for 4 h using wet faecal sludge, and the higher heating value was determined for the hydrochar. The results indicated that preheating the feed to 100 °C using heat recovered from the process would significantly reduce the energy input to the reactor by about 59%, and decreased the heat loss from the reactor by between 50% and 60%. For feedstocks containing 15–25% solids (for all feed rates), after the process is in operation, energy recycled from the flashing off of steam and combustion of the hydrochar and would be sufficient for preheating the feed, operating the reactor and drying the wet hydrochar without the need for any external sources of energy. Alternatively, for a feedstock containing 25% solids for all feed rates, energy recycled from the flashing off of steam and combustion of the methane provides sufficient energy to operate the entire process with an excess energy of about 19–21% which could be used for other purposes

Obesity, unhappiness, and the challenge of affluence : theory and evidence

Is affluence a good thing? The book "The Challenge of Affluence" by Avner Offer (2006) argues that economic prosperity weakens self-control and undermines human well-being. Consistent with a pessimistic view, we show that psychological distress has been rising through time in modern Great Britain. Taking over-eating as an example, our data reveal that half the British population view themselves as overweight, and that happiness and mental health are worse among fatter people in Britain and Germany. Comparisons also matter. We discuss problems of inference and argue that longitudinal data are needed. We suggest a theory of obesity imitation where utility depends on relative weight