The Joys and Responsibilities of Being a Catholic Teacher

Louis Dupré uses his experience as a university professor to reflect upon the core principles of education, especially in a liberal arts setting. He outlines that a liberal education provides a medium through which spiritual legacies, contemplative minds, and moral truths are transmitted all through the sense of wonder held by the student and teacher. This, he says, is done especially well at the Catholic university.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award/1005/thumbnail.jp

La idea moderna de cultura en oposición a sus orígenes clásicos y cristianos

En el presente ensayo, me propongo considerar la diferencia entre la concepción de la cultura proveniente de la Antigüedad clásica y de un cristianismo influenciado por ella -quizás más de lo que se cree- y por otra parte, la concepción modema. Paradójicamente, la ruptura entre las dos se establece precisamente cuando el impacto de los antiguos comienza a ser reconocido y ávidamente buscado. Puesto que la diferencia principal radica en la oposición entre naturaleza y cultura entre los modernos, he escrito estas reflexiones desde lo que pudiera llamarse un punto de vista "cosmológico", en el sentido que ha dado Whitehead a este término. Ciertamente, es en la actitud hacia la "naturaleza", donde la diferencia específica de la modemidad aparece con mayor claridad. Sin embargo, tuvo lugar asimismo una transformación igualmente profunda y quizás de mayores consecuencias en la imagen que el hombre se había forjado de sí mismo, y en su posibilidad de concebir una auténtica trascendencia. Por consiguiente, me ocuparé también de estos aspectos, aun cuando de manera más breve

Flatland: a Lightweight First-Person 2-D Environment for Reinforcement Learning

Flatland is a simple, lightweight environment for fast prototyping and testing of reinforcement learning agents. It is of lower complexity compared to similar 3D platforms (e.g. DeepMind Lab or VizDoom), but emulates physical properties of the real world, such as continuity, multi-modal partially-observable states with first-person view and coherent physics. We propose to use it as an intermediary benchmark for problems related to Lifelong Learning. Flatland is highly customizable and offers a wide range of task difficulty to extensively evaluate the properties of artificial agents. We experiment with three reinforcement learning baseline agents and show that they can rapidly solve a navigation task in Flatland. A video of an agent acting in Flatland is available here: https://youtu.be/I5y6Y2ZypdA.Comment: Accepted to the Workshop on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning (ICDL-EpiRob 2018

Flatland: a Lightweight First-Person 2-D Environment for Reinforcement Learning

International audienceFlatland is a simple, lightweight environment for fast prototyping and testing of reinforcement learning agents. It is of lower complexity compared to similar 3D platforms (e.g. Deep-Mind Lab or VizDoom), but emulates physical properties of the real world, such as continuity, multi-modal partially-observable states with first-person view and coherent physics. We propose to use it as an intermediary benchmark for problems related to Lifelong Learning. Flatland is highly customizable and offers a wide range of task difficulty to extensively evaluate the properties of artificial agents. We experiment with three reinforcement learning baseline agents and show that they can rapidly solve a navigation task in Flatland. A video of an agent acting in Flatland is available here: https://youtu.be/I5y6Y2ZypdA

Appréhender le stock de métal monnayé au ive siècle après J.-C.

Parmi les thématiques abordées en numismatique à l’aide de l’archéométrie, les recherches spécifiques sur le stock de métal monnayé au ive siècle s’avèrent fascinantes mais délicates. Afflux de nouvelles ressources métalliques, refontes volontaires de monnaies : tous ces phénomènes sont de grande conséquence pour les monnayages produits dans les différents ateliers de l’Empire romain tardif. Certaines données de ce type sont mesurables. Les alliages métalliques (donc ici monétaires) contiennent en effet des éléments mineurs ou en traces, constituant la « carte d’identité » de l’approvisionnement des ateliers monétaires. Il y a 10 ans Isabelle Bollard et Jean-Noël Barrandon réunissaient plusieurs analyses de monnaies en alliage cuivreux émises au cours du ive siècle. Nos propres observations, obtenues dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche financé par la région Normandie (intitulé FANUM), sur 14 528 monnaies (nummi) de la période constantinienne contenues dans un trésor découvert fortuitement à Saint-Germain-de-Varreville (Manche), nous ont incités à reprendre, de façon plus approfondie, l’étude des alliages utilisés au cours de cette période, en portant notamment notre attention sur les teneurs en or et en argent. En effet, la grande variété des ateliers représentés au sein du trésor favorisait idéalement une telle enquête. Le choix de la fluorescence X portable a permis d’élaborer un protocole d’analyse précis et adapté à un grand nombre de monnaies. L’exploitation de 774 analyses réalisées sur des nummi frappés dans les ateliers occidentaux a permis de compléter les travaux antérieurs, mais également de mettre en évidence l’utilisation de stocks métalliques différents à partir des années 320.Among the thematics studied in numismatics using archeometry, specific research on the stock of metal struck in the 4th century turns out to be fascinating but complex. Influx of new metallic resources, voluntary recasts of coins: these phenomena have great consequences for the coinage produced in all the workshops throughout the late Roman Empire. Some of these data can be measurable. Metallic alloys (coins in this case) contain minor or trace elements that constitute a kind of “identity card” for the supply of monetary workshops. Ten years ago, Isabelle Bollard and Jean-Noël Barrandon collected several analyzes of bronzes struck during the 4th century. Our own observations, obtained within the FANUM project, funded by the Normandy region, on 14 528 coins (nummi) of the Constantinian period, contained in a fortuitously discovered treasure in Saint-Germain-de-Varreville (Manche) have motivated a thorough new study of the alloys used during this period, focusing on the traces of gold and silver. Indeed, the variety of workshops represented in the treasure has encouraged such an inquiry. The choice of portable X-ray fluorescence has enabled to develop a protocol of analysis adapted to a large number of coins. The use of 774 analyzes carried out on nummi struck in the Western workshops has completed previous works, but also enabled to highlight the use of different metal stocks from the 320s