True Cost of Water: monetization of water risks, shared value creation, and local acceptability of extractive projects

Among industrial sectors, water-related risks are undoubtedly most closely associated with the extractive industries. To date, the response by the sector has been limited to funding philanthropic projects and implementing  Corporate Social Responsibility. However, Veolia has developed a decision-making tool that monetizes water risks, with a view to not only reducing costs and preventing risks, but also creating new business and social opportunities

Mathematical Foundations for a Compositional Account of the Bayesian Brain

This dissertation reports some first steps towards a compositional account of active inference and the Bayesian brain. Specifically, we use the tools of contemporary applied category theory to supply functorial semantics for approximate inference. To do so, we define on the `syntactic' side the new notion of Bayesian lens and show that Bayesian updating composes according to the compositional lens pattern. Using Bayesian lenses, and inspired by compositional game theory, we define fibrations of statistical games and classify various problems of statistical inference as corresponding sections: the chain rule of the relative entropy is formalized as a strict section, while maximum likelihood estimation and the free energy give lax sections. In the process, we introduce a new notion of `copy-composition'. On the `semantic' side, we present a new formalization of general open dynamical systems (particularly: deterministic, stochastic, and random; and discrete- and continuous-time) as certain coalgebras of polynomial functors, which we show collect into monoidal opindexed categories (or, alternatively, into algebras for multicategories of generalized polynomial functors). We use these opindexed categories to define monoidal bicategories of cilia: dynamical systems which control lenses, and which supply the target for our functorial semantics. Accordingly, we construct functors which explain the bidirectional compositional structure of predictive coding neural circuits under the free energy principle, thereby giving a formal mathematical underpinning to the bidirectionality observed in the cortex. Along the way, we explain how to compose rate-coded neural circuits using an algebra for a multicategory of linear circuit diagrams, showing subsequently that this is subsumed by lenses and polynomial functors.Comment: DPhil thesis; as submitted. Main change from v1: improved treatment of statistical games. A number of errors also fixed, and some presentation improved. Comments most welcom

Open Dynamical Systems as Coalgebras for Polynomial Functors, with Application to Predictive Processing

We present categories of open dynamical systems with general time evolution as categories of coalgebras opindexed by polynomial interfaces, and show how this extends the coalgebraic framework to capture common scientific applications such as ordinary differential equations, open Markov processes, and random dynamical systems. We then extend Spivak's operad Org to this setting, and construct associated monoidal categories whose morphisms represent hierarchical open systems; when their interfaces are simple, these categories supply canonical comonoid structures. We exemplify these constructions using the 'Laplace doctrine', which provides dynamical semantics for active inference, and indicate some connections to Bayesian inversion and coalgebraic logic.Comment: In Proceedings ACT 2022, arXiv:2307.1551

Approximate Inference via Fibrations of Statistical Games

We characterize a number of well known systems of approximate inference as loss models: lax sections of 2-fibrations of statistical games, constructed by attaching internally-defined loss functions to Bayesian lenses. Our examples include the relative entropy, which constitutes a strict section, and whose chain rule is formalized by the horizontal composition of the 2-fibration. In order to capture this compositional structure, we first introduce the notion of `copy-composition', alongside corresponding bicategories through which the composition of copy-discard categories factorizes. These bicategories are a variant of the $\mathbf{Copara}$ construction, and so we additionally introduce coparameterized Bayesian lenses, proving that coparameterized Bayesian updates compose optically, as in the non-coparameterized case.Comment: Accepted as a proceedings paper at ACT 202

Typescript of Harriet Emma (Booth) Le Clere\u27s Remembrances of Father (Edmund Booth Deaf Pioneer and California Gold Miner)

https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/grcc/1046/thumbnail.jp

Composition pour retarder l'initiation tumorale de cellules cancereuses chez un mammifère à risque

La présente invention concerne une composition préventive antitumorale comprenant une quantité pharmaceutiquement efficace d\u27au moins un antagoniste du récepteur AT2 de l\u27angiotensine II pour son application comme médicament afin de prévenir le développement de cancers chez un mammifère à risque. La présente invention concerne également un procédé de prévention du développement de cancer chez un mammifère à risque, ainsi qu\u27un kit de prévention du développement de cancers