World War iii and the Dynamics of Emerging Markets

This paper presents World War III, analyzed in its various dimensions: economic, of monetary currency, cybernetic, against the so-called terrorism and other types of unconventional wars. The outbreaks of war multiply, the great powers are in relations of complementarily but also conflict, a chaotic world full of uncertainty and insecurity is spreading around us. This paper also treats the dynamics of Emerging Markets amid spiritual devolution and not only that of the Western power (economic, military and symbolic power). Two great civilizational forces are configured (Gog and Magog), the relations between which could escalate into a major conflict for keeping or taking leadership. The conflict is interior at its origins, between the ego and self, in Jung-ian sense. Man lost his true identity and lives with a hypertrophied ego, being domineering, materialistic and mercantile, greedy and speculator, hence resulting all evils. The Solution: the restoring of the ego-Self axis, to the fusion and recovery of the lost unit. We have at hand archetypes, myths, symbols, etc., in order to recover the true human nature, which is a divine one. Keywords: War, Emerging Markets, Cyclicity of Civilizations, Ego, Self

THE GEOPOLITICS OF HELPLESSNESS

The events in Ukraine are in the thick of actuality, at the crossroads of East and West. From a buffer zone it has become an acute space of exhibition of Russia’s interests, on one side, and of the European Union’s, on the other side. As the EU does not have a unique army or a strong political leadership, the presence - as major actors - of NATO and the United States of America is necessary. Huge geostrategic, military, economic, politic, cultural, social and even religious interests are involved. As a neighbour state, member of the EU and NATO, Romania is directly concerned by the present deployments. We wonder if its foreign politics is an appropriate one. Moreover, great stakes aim at the statehood and independence of the Republic of Moldova, but also at the status of the Romanians living in the Cernowits region. Thus, we try to analyse what will happen in Ukraine and with the actors involved, in general. There are several possible scenarios, among which: the success of the elections and the stabilization of Ukraine in integrum; the federation, with the preservation of the frontiers or with the amputation of these ones; Russia’s conquest of the country, taking into account EU’s demonstrated incapacities; a war that can dangerously escalate; the maintenance of a grey situation, whre the two camps explore each other, sanction each other, but not too drastically, elections and referendums are organized, weapons are pacing around, threats are teething, but nothing important is decided, not even a new cold war. The title hints to everyon’s weaknesses (is Ukraine a selfsustainable state?), but especially to EU’s, the geopolitical objectives of which are in complete disagreement with its means. That is why, in a short term, Russia can win. But in a medium and long term..

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING AND THE ORIGINS OF EUROPEAN UNION

Many papal encyclicals were not directly concerned about the appearance of European Union due to many historical, political and social contexts. The fundamental principles developed through several encyclicals from early 19th century to the present day reaffirmed the neutrality of the Church regarding to many forms of government. But the most important idea has its root in the restoration of the Christian principles in society. In a time of de-Christianization and secularism, the role of Church as the foundation of peace is also important to notice. It was considered that every modern democracy is the image of the revealed heart of the universal law of charity (Jacques Maritain). That is why between a supranational entity like the European Union and the Catholic Church should be a friendly and close relationship. A unite Europe has its roots in Christianity, especially in Catholicism. The soul of Europe is animated by religious principles. Whether we talk about Schuman or Adenauer, their Christian faith is the engine for their political success. After the Second World War, in Western Europe, the Christian democratic parties had a huge impact for the democratic governance. The socio-economic policies of these parties were anchored in Catholic social teaching

The Remoralization of Capitalism

Nor the capitalism nor the communism didn’t proved to be the ideal systems. The second has imploded, while the first is transformed under the impact of the strong forces of globalization, crisis, technology, demography and ongoing ideas. It is looking for some kind of mixtum compozitum, which often prove just pure illusions. The crisis is proving to be a structural one, even a systemic one, not as cyclical as it was thought. The deepest wound of the current hyper-capitalism comes from its desecration and demoralization, reaching to some excessive consumption behaviors, speculation, virtualization, financialization, merchantability, alienation, manipulation etc. The background solution may come, in our opinion, only from a system’s remoralization and re-enchantment, even though Hayek once said that the markets are amoral

Cohort Differences in Cognitive Aging in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to examine cohort differences in cognitive performance and rates of change in episodic memory, processing speed, inductive reasoning, and general cognitive performance and to investigate whether these cohort effects may be accounted for by education attainment. METHOD: The first cohort (N = 705) was born between 1920 and 1930, whereas the second cohort (N = 646) was born between 1931 and 1941. Both birth cohorts were aged 65 to 75 years at baseline and were followed up 3 and 6 years later. Data were analyzed using linear mixed models. RESULTS: The later born cohort had better general cognitive performance, inductive reasoning, and processing speed at baseline, but cohort differences in inductive reasoning and general cognitive performance disappeared after adjusting for education. The later born cohort showed steeper decline in processing speed. Memory decline was steeper in the earlier born cohort but only from Time 1 to Time 3 when the same memory test was administered. Education did not account for cohort differences in cognitive decline. DISCUSSION: The later born cohort showed better initial performance in certain cognitive abilities, but no better preservation of cognitive abilities overtime compared with the earlier born cohort. These findings carry implications for healthy cognitive aging

Cohort Differences in Cognitive Aging in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to examine cohort differences in cognitive performance and rates of change in episodic memory, processing speed, inductive reasoning, and general cognitive performance and to investigate whether these cohort effects may be accounted for by education attainment. METHOD: The first cohort (N = 705) was born between 1920 and 1930, whereas the second cohort (N = 646) was born between 1931 and 1941. Both birth cohorts were aged 65 to 75 years at baseline and were followed up 3 and 6 years later. Data were analyzed using linear mixed models. RESULTS: The later born cohort had better general cognitive performance, inductive reasoning, and processing speed at baseline, but cohort differences in inductive reasoning and general cognitive performance disappeared after adjusting for education. The later born cohort showed steeper decline in processing speed. Memory decline was steeper in the earlier born cohort but only from Time 1 to Time 3 when the same memory test was administered. Education did not account for cohort differences in cognitive decline. DISCUSSION: The later born cohort showed better initial performance in certain cognitive abilities, but no better preservation of cognitive abilities overtime compared with the earlier born cohort. These findings carry implications for healthy cognitive aging

A GPU-accelerated real-time NLMeans algorithm for denoising color video sequences

Abstract. The NLMeans filter, originally proposed by Buades et al., is a very popular filter for the removal of white Gaussian noise, due to its simplicity and excellent performance. The strength of this filter lies in exploiting the repetitive character of structures in images. However, to fully take advantage of the repetitivity a computationally extensive search for similar candidate blocks is indispensable. In previous work, we presented a number of algorithmic acceleration techniques for the NLMeans filter for still grayscale images. In this paper, we go one step further and incorporate both temporal information and color information into the NLMeans algorithm, in order to restore video sequences. Starting from our algorithmic acceleration techniques, we investigate how the NLMeans algorithm can be easily mapped onto recent parallel computing architectures. In particular, we consider the graphical processing unit (GPU), which is available on most recent computers. Our developments lead to a high-quality denoising filter that can process DVD-resolution video sequences in real-time on a mid-range GPU

Introduction of Empirical Topology in Construction of Relationship Networks of Informative Objects

Understanding the structure of relationships between objects in a given database is one of the most important problems in the field of data mining. The structure can be defined for a set of single objects (clustering) or a set of groups of objects (network mapping). We propose a method for discovering relationships between individuals (single or groups) that is based on what we call the empirical topology, a system-theoretic measure of functional proximity. To illustrate the suitability and efficiency of the method, we apply it to an astronomical data base

Video enhancement using adaptive spatio-temporal connective filter and piecewise mapping

This paper presents a novel video enhancement system based on an adaptive spatio-temporal connective (ASTC) noise filter and an adaptive piecewise mapping function (APMF). For ill-exposed videos or those with much noise, we first introduce a novel local image statistic to identify impulse noise pixels, and then incorporate it into the classical bilateral filter to form ASTC, aiming to reduce the mixture of the most two common types of noises - Gaussian and impulse noises in spatial and temporal directions. After noise removal, we enhance the video contrast with APMF based on the statistical information of frame segmentation results. The experiment results demonstrate that, for diverse low-quality videos corrupted by mixed noise, underexposure, overexposure, or any mixture of the above, the proposed system can automatically produce satisfactory results

Total Directional Variation for Video Denoising

In this paper, we propose a variational approach for video denoising, based on a total directional variation (TDV) regulariser proposed in Parisotto et al. (2018), for image denoising and interpolation. In the TDV regulariser, the underlying image structure is encoded by means of weighted derivatives so as to enhance the anisotropic structures in images, e.g. stripes or curves with a dominant local directionality. For the extension of TDV to video denoising, the space-time structure is captured by the volumetric structure tensor guiding the smoothing process. We discuss this and present our whole video denoising work-flow. Our numerical results are compared with some state-of-the-art video denoising methods.SP acknowledges UK EPSRC grant EP/L016516/1 for the CCA DTC. CBS acknowledges support from Leverhulme Trust project on Breaking the non-convexity barrier, EPSRC grant Nr. EP/M00483X/1, the EPSRC Centre EP/N014588/1, the RISE projects CHiPS and NoMADS, the CCIMI and the Alan Turing Institute