Religious Meaning in T.S. Eliot\u27s Plays

Critics of Eliot often deal with his religious themes, but not with sympathy. In general, it seems that they are not at ease with Eliot\u27s religious views; so the tendency has been not to give them a careful, objective treatment. The purpose of my study of the plays is to attempt such an unbiased examination, to keep in view precisely what Eliot dues say and the religious meanings that are clearly implied. Whether Eliot\u27s ideas as they stand may be compatible or incompatible with the current thought climate is not, after all, the most important thing. He is a serious theological writer, sensitive and deep, and his plays deserve to be given a careful, straightforward reading, one that will make his major intentions clear. A number of critics, of course, do offer incisive comment on various matters, but a balanced, whole view of religious content in the\u27main plays seems to be needed. I have hoped at least to make a start toward such an important project

Beyond the Prediction Paradigm: Challenges for AI in the Struggle Against Organized Crime

In the future, audiological rehabilitation of adults with hearing loss will be more available, personalized and thorough due to the possibilities offered by the internet. By using the internet as a platform it is also possible to perform the process of rehabilitation in a cost-effective way. With tailored online rehabilitation programs containing topics such as communication strategies, hearing tactics and how to handle hearing aids it might be possible to foster behavioral changes that will positively affect hearing aid users. Four studies were carried out in this thesis. The first study investigated internet usage among adults with hearing loss. In the second study the administration format, online vs. paper- and pencil, of four standardized questionnaires was evaluated. Finally two randomized controlled trials were performed evaluating the efficacy of online rehabilitation programs including professional guidance by an audiologist. The programs lasted over five weeks and were designed for experienced adult hearing-aid users. The effects of the online programs were compared with the effects of a control group. It can be concluded that the use of computers and the internet overall is at least at the same level for people with hearing loss as for the general age-matched population in Sweden. Furthermore, for three of the four included questionnaires, the participants’ scores remained the same across formats. It is however recommended that the administration format remain consistent across assessment points. Finally, results from the two concluding intervention studies provide preliminary evidence that the internet can be used to deliver education and rehabilitation to experienced hearing aid users who report residual hearing problems and that their problems are reduced by the intervention; however the content and design of the online rehabilitation program requires further investigation

Generating Reality, Silencing Debate: Synthetic Data as Discursive Device

In addition to tapping data from users’ behavioral surplus, by drawing on generative adversarial networks, data for artificial intelligence is now increasingly being generated through artificial intelligence. With this new method of producing data synthetically, the data economy is not only shifting from “data collection” to “data generation.” Synthetic data is also being employed to address some of the most pressing ethical concerns around artificial intelligence. It thereby comes with the sociotechnical imaginary that social problems can be cut out of artificial intelligence, separating training data from real persons. In response to this technical solutionism, this commentary aims to initiate a critical debate about synthetic data that goes beyond misuse scenarios such as the use of generative adversarial networks to create deep fakes or dark patterns. Instead, on a more general level, we seek to complicate the idea of “solving,” i.e., “closing” and thus “silencing” the ethico-political debates for which synthetic data is supposed to be a solution by showing how synthetic data itself is political. Drawing on the complex connections between recent uses of synthetic data and public debates about artificial intelligence, we therefore propose to consider and analyze synthetic data not only as a technical device but as a discursive one as well. To this end, we shed light on their relationship to three pillars that we see associated with them (a) algorithmic bias, (b) privacy, (c) platform economy

Layers of technology in pluriversal design. Decolonising language technology with the LiveLanguage initiative

Language technology has the potential to facilitate intercultural communication through meaningful translations. However, the current state of language technology is deeply entangled with colonial knowledge due to path dependencies and neo-colonial tendencies in the global governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Language technology is a complex and emerging field that presents challenges for co-design interventions due to enfolding in assemblages of global scale and diverse sites and its knowledge intensity. This paper uses LiveLanguage, a lexical database, a set of services with particular emphasis on modelling language diversity and integrating small and minority languages, as an example to discuss and close the gap from pluriversal design theory to practice. By diversifying the concept of emerging technology, we can better approach language technology in global contexts. The paper presents a model comprising of five layers of technological activity. Each layer consists of specific practices and stakeholders, thus provides distinctive spaces for co-design interventions as mode of inquiry for de-linking, re-thinking and re-building language technology towards pluriversality. In that way, the paper contributes to reflecting the position of co-design in decolonising emergent technologies, and to integrating complex theoretical knowledge towards decoloniality into language technology design

Experiências e conhecimentos produzidos na luta social : "Una historia que tiene que ver con el curso de la Vía Láctea"

Desde a ascensão do sistema capitalista a sociedade vem sendo condenada a modelos de desenvolvimento e estilos de vida caracterizados pelo aumento da produtividade e maximização do lucro, tornando-se insustentável e exigindo mudanças profundas na sua estrutura. Tais mudanças exigem uma desconstrução dos valores sociais e uma ruptura do modelo econômico vigente para que seja possível a construção de uma nova concepção de desenvolvimento, que resulte em uma sociedade social e ecologicamente justa, igualitária e que seja ela própria sujeita de seu próprio destino. O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra propõem uma educação que se contrapõem ao modelo clássico de ensino que reflete e reforça as estruturas e as relações desiguais da sociedade além da cultura que as legitima. Estudar o MST como sujeito educativo político e suas práticas pedagógicas, dentro e fora da escola, é uma forma de compreender como a cultura, como modo de vida, do Movimento pode servir de exemplo na concepção de uma nova sociedade mais humana e justa

PEGylated DOTA-AHA-based Gd(III) chelates – A relaxometric study

Three PEGylated derivatives of 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1-((6-amino)hexanoic)-4,7,10-triacetic acid) (DOTA-AHA) with different molecular weights were prepared and characterized. Their Gd(III) chelates were studied in aqueous solution using variable-temperature 1H nuclear magnetic relaxation dispersion (NMRD) and 17ONMR spectroscopy in view of the determination of their relaxivity and the parameters that govern it. The relaxivity varied from 5.1 to 6.5 mM-1.s-1 (37 ºC and 60 MHz) with the increasing molecular weight of the PEG chain, being slightly higher than that of the parent chelate Gd(DOTA-AHA), due to a small contribution of a slow global rotation of the complexes. A variable temperature 1H NMR study of several Ln(III) chelates of DOTA-A(PEG750)HA allowed the determination of the isomeric M/m ratio (M = square antiprismatic isomer and m = twisted square antiprismatic isomer, the latter presenting a much faster water exchange) which for the Gd(III) chelate was estimated in circa 1:0.2, very close to that of [Gd(DOTA)]-. This explains why the PEGylated Gd(III) chelate has a water rate exchange similar to that of [Gd(DOTA)]-. The predominance of the M isomer is a consequence of the bulky PEG moiety which does not favor the stabilization of the m isomer in sterically crowded systems at the substituent site, contrary to what happens with less packed asymmetrical DOTA-type chelates with substitution in one of the four acetate C(α) atoms.The authors thank the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT–Portugal) for financial support through the NMR Portuguese network (Bruker 400 Avance III-Univ Minho); FCT and FEDER (European Fund for Regional Development)-COMPETE/QREN/EU for financial support through the research unity PEst-C/QUI/UI686/2013 and the PhD grant attributed to André Fontes (SFRH/BD/63676/2009) also financed by the POPH and FSE

Binuclear DOTA-based Gd(III) chelates: revisiting a straightforward strategy for relaxivity improvement

The need for MRI contrast agents with improved relaxivity maintains the development of new Gd(III) chelates an intensive and demanding field of research. In this work we introduce the new dimeric chelators bis(DOTA-AHA)adipate and bis(DOTA-AHA)1,3-phenyldiacetate (L2 = bis(1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1-((6-amino)hexanoic)-4,7,10-triacetic acid)adipate and L3 = bis(1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1-((6-amino)hexanoic)-4,7,10-triacetic acid)1,3-phenyldiacetate, respectively), based on the bifunctional ligand DOTA-AHA (L1 = 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1-((6-amino)hexanoic)-4,7,10-triacetic acid). Their Gd(III) chelates were studied by variable temperature 1H NMRD and 17O NMR spectroscopy in order to measure the relaxivity and the parameters that govern it. The exchange of inner-sphere water from the monomer GdL1 and from the two binuclear chelates Gd2L2 and Gd2L3 is very similar (298kex ≈ 6.5 x106 s-1) and slightly faster than on [Gd(DOTA)H2O]- (298kex = 4.1 x 106 s-1). All three compounds form weakly bound aggregates with equilibrium constants 298K of 2.9, 15.6 and 14.6 for GdL1, Gd2L2 and Gd2L3, respectively. Even if the aggregates contain only 10 to 15% of the total amount of Gd(III) ions a marked increase in relaxivity between 30 and 100 MHz is observed. Furthermore the distance between the two Gd(III) centers in the binuclear compounds has been determined by double electron-electron resonance (DEER) experiments and by molecular modelling studies affording comparable distances. The linkers between the chelating moieties allow Gd(III)-Gd(III) distances of circa 3.0 nm for completely stretched linker conformation and ≤ 1.9 nm for the conformation with the metal centers at closer distance. These metal to metal distances by themselves cannot explain the considerably long tumbling times of chelates in solution. Only a model consistent with some level of aggregation for the binuclear chelates in aqueous solution could satisfactorily explain our results.The authors thank the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT–Portugal) for financial support through the NMR Portuguese network (Bruker 400 Avance III-Univ Minho); FCT and FEDER (European Fund for Regional Development)- COMPETE/QREN/EU for financial support through the research unity PEstC/QUI/UI686/2013 and the PhD grant attributed to André Fontes (SFRH/BD/63676/2009) also financed by the POPH and FSE. SK and LH thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for financial support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Diversity and Neocolonialism in Big Data Research. Avoiding extractivism while struggling with paternalism.

The extractive logic of Big Data-driven technology and knowledge production has raised serious concerns. While most criticism initially focused on the impacts on Western societies, attention is now increasingly turning to the consequences for communities in the Global South. To date, debates have focused on private-sector activities. In this article, we start from the conviction that publicly funded knowledge and technology production must also be scrutinized for their potential neocolonial entanglements. To this end, we analyze the dynamics of collaboration in an European Union-funded research project that collects data for developing a social platform focused on diversity. The project includes pilot sites in China, Denmark, the United Kingdom, India, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, and Paraguay. We present the experience at four field sites and reflect on the project’s initial conception, our collaboration, challenges, progress, and results. We then analyze the different experiences in comparison. We conclude that while we have succeeded in finding viable strategies to avoid contributing to the dynamics of unilateral data extraction as one side of the neocolonial circle, it has been infinitely more difficult to break through the much more subtle but no less powerful mechanisms of paternalism that we find to be prevalent in data-driven North–South relations. These mechanisms, however, can be identified as the other side of the neocolonial circle.</p