Neurolimits

La neurociencia promete explicar asuntos filosóficos, tanto éticos como filosóficos en general, desde la actividad del cerebro. En este artículo nos proponemos exponer el carácter naturalista de la neurofilosofía, enumerar los problemas de esta propuesta, mostrar como una ontología dualista permite tratar estos problemas de forma más eficaz y ofrecer algunas alternativas a tal dualismo.Neuroscience promises us to explain philosophical issues, from ethics to general philosophy, as brain activity. I this paper we will propose expose the naturalistic view of neurophilosphy, show many problems of this proposal, how a dualistic ontology helps solve efficently these problems and provide some alternative views to such dualism

Training African-American Social Workers Through the NUL Fellowship Program

The National Urban League (NUL), under Dr. George Edmund Haynes\u27 leadership made the training and education of African American social workers one of its major functions during the early 1900s. This article provides detailed information about the unique and timely fellowship program which provided funding and opportunities for many African American to study social work at leading schools of social work in the country. The Social Science Department of Fisk University also played a significant role in pioneering African American social work education, and is also briefly discussed

Gender effect on the relationship between talent identification tests and later world triathlon series performance

Background: We examined the explanatory power of the Spanish triathlon talent identification (TID) tests for later World Triathlon Series (WTS)-level racing performance as a function of gender. Methods: Youth TID (100 m and 1000 m swimming and 400 m and 1000 m running) test performance times for when they were 14–19 years old, and WTS performance data up to the end of 2017, were obtained for 29 female and 24 male “successful” Spanish triathletes. The relationships between the athletes’ test performances and their later best WTS ranking positions and performance times were modeled using multiple linear regression. Results: The swimming and running TID test data had greater explanatory power for best WTS ranking in the females and for best WTS position in the males (R2a = 0.34 and 0.37, respectively, p ≤ 0.009). The swimming TID times were better related to later race performance than were the running TID times. The predictive power of the TID tests for WTS performance was, however, low, irrespective of exercise mode and athlete gender. Conclusions: These results confirm that triathlon TID tests should not be based solely on swimming and running performance. Moreover, the predictive value of the individual tests within the Spanish TID battery is gender specific.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB / 00447/202

Os grupos económicos e o desenvolvimento em Portugal no contexto da globalização.

Doutoramento em Sociologia Económica e das OrganizaçõesEste trabalho de investigação procura responder a seguinte questão: Qual e o tipo de associação que existe entre grupos económicos e desenvolvimento em Portugal? E isto no contexto da globalização. Para isso, numa primeira parte, analisou-se as abordagens de diversos autores sobre os grupos económicos. Depois, numa segunda parte, analisou-se detalhadamente cada um dos principais grupos económicos que operam em Portugal com o objetivo de conhecer o grau de dominio que detem nos segmentos de mercado onde operam, muitos deles estratégicos para o crescimento económico e desenvolvimento do país, suas estrategias, sua integração no processo de globalização, e quem controla esses grupos. Finalmente, na última parte, para além de se completar a análise do dominio que ja exercem sobre a economia, sobre a sociedade portuguesa e sobre o poder politico atraves do estudo das participações cruzadas entre os vários grupos económicos, das ligações existentes entre eles e as pessoas singulares, e da ocupação de cargos nas administrações dos grupos por exgovernantes, e o inverso, procurou-se identificar os efeitos desse dominio sobre o crescimento económico e sobre as várias dimensões do desenvolvimento em Portugal. E termina-se apresentando um conjunto de conclusões que procuram responder explicitamente à questão inicialmente colocada.This research work seeks to answer the following question: What kind of connection exists between economic groups and development in Portugal? And this in a context of globalisation. With that purpose, we analysed, in the first part, the opinions published by several authors on economic groups. In the second part we analysed in detail each of the main economic groups operating in Portugal, to try and acquire knowledge on the degree of domination they hold over each market segment, many of these segments being strategic for the country's economic growth and development, their strategies, their integration in the globalisation process and who controls those groups. Finally the last part - besides completing the analysis of the domination they exert over the economy, over the Portuguese society and over political power, by studying the cross participations among several economic groups, the connections among them and among individuals, the fact that ex-members of governments hold managerial positions in some of them, and the other way round as well - we tried to identify the effect of that domination on economic growth and on the different dimensions of development in Portugal, meaning that we tried to answer the question initially raised. KE

Analog Transmission of Correlated Sources Over Fading SIMO Multiple Access Channels

© 2017 IEEE. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.2017.2695197.[Abstract]: Joint source-channel coding for discrete-time analog sources is an appealing transmission approach because of its extremely low delay and complexity. When the users access the channel orthogonally, analog transmission of correlated information over fading multiple access channels (MACs) using modulo-like mappings provides better performance than uncoded transmission. In this paper, we propose a simplified decoder for modulo mappings in possibly non-orthogonal MAC scenarios with a single-antenna users and a multiple-antenna receiver. Sphere decoding is investigated to reduce the computational complexity when the number of users is large. In addition, affordable strategies are proposed to optimize the mapping parameters according to the channel conditions and the source correlation. The obtained results show that the use of modulo mappings is suitable when the number of antennas at the receiver is larger than the number of users and for high correlation between user data.This work has been funded by the ONRG of United States (N62909-15-1-2014), the NSF (award CCF-1618653), Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2016-045), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain (TEC2013-47141-C4-1-R, TEC2016-75067-C4-1-R) and ERDF funds of the EU (AEI/FEDER, UE).United States. Office of Naval Research; N62909-15-1-2014United States. National Science Foundation; CCF-1618653Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-04

Novel method for an optimised calculation of modal analysis of girder bridge decks

A correct modal analysis of girder bridge decks requires a correct characterisation of the deformation of their cross-section, governed by the longitudinal bending of the girders and the transverse bending of the slab. This paper presents a novel method that allows the modal analysis of girder bridge decks by applying a matrix formulation that reduces the structural problem to one degree of freedom for each girder: the deflection at the centre of the beam span. A parametric study is presented that analyses the structural response of 64 girder bridge decks. The study compares the dynamic structural response obtained by the proposed method with that obtained by traditional grillage calculation methods. The method is experimentally contrasted by a dynamic load test of a full-scale girder bridge. As a result of the analysis, the proposed method reflects adequate convergence with the experimental dynamic structural response. The use of the proposed novel analysis method contributes to the intelligent modelling process for the analysis of the dynamic behaviour of bridges opening the way to easily feed a Digital Twin accelerating the demands of the Decision Support System in real time.Tis work has received funding from the European’s Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the grant agreement No 769373 (FORESEE project)

Analog joint source-channel coding over MIMO channels

[Abstract]: Analog joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a communication strategy that does not follow the separation principle of conventional digital systems but has been shown to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff over additive white Gaussian noise channels. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of analog JSCC over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels. Since, due to complexity constraints, directly recovering the analog source information from the MIMO channel output is not possible, we propose the utilization of low-complexity two-stage receivers that separately perform detection and analog JSCC maximum likelihood decoding. We study analog JSCC MIMO receivers that utilize either linear minimum mean square error or decision feedback MIMO detection. Computer experiments show the ability of the proposed analog JSCC receivers to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff both in the low and high channel signal-to-noise ratio regimes. Performance is analyzed over both synthetically computer-generated Rayleigh fading channels and real indoor wireless measured channels.This work has been funded by Xunta de Galicia, MINECO of Spain, and FEDER funds of the EU under grants 2012/287, TEC2010-19545-C04-01, and CSD2008-00010; and by NSF award CIF-0915800.Xunta de Galicia; CN 2012/287United States. National Science Foundation; CIF-091580

Low-Complexity Near-Optimal Decoding for Analog Joint Source Channel Coding Using Space-Filling Curves

© 2013 IEEE. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.2013.021913.122782[Abstract]: Analog Joint Source-Channel Coding (JSCC) is a communication strategy that does not follow the separation principle of conventional digital systems but approaches the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff over AWGN channels. Conventional Maximum Likelihood (ML) analog JSCC decoding schemes suffer performance degradation at low Channel Signal to Noise Ratio (CSNR) values, while Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) decoding presents high complexity. In this letter we propose an alternative two step decoding approach which achieves the near-optimal performance of MMSE decoding at all CSNR values while maintaining a low complexity comparable to that of ML decoding. An additional advantage of the proposed analog JSCC decoding approach is that it can also be used in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) fading channels.This work has been funded by Xunta de Galicia, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain, and FEDER funds of the European Union under grants 2012/287, TEC2010-19545-C04-01 and CSD2008-00010. J. G. F.’s work has been funded by NSF awards EECS-0725422 and CIF-0915800.Xunta de Galicia; CN 2012/287United States. National Science Foundation; EECS-0725422United States. National Science Foundation; CIF-091580