From the Visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the Voices of Schizophrenia

The life of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the most famous mystic of sixteenth-century Spain, was characterized by recurrent visions and states of ecstasy. In this paper, we examine social components related to Teresa’s personal crises and the historical conditions of her times, factors that must be taken into account to understand these unusual forms of experience and behavior. Many of these factors (e.g., increasing individualism and reflexivity) are precursors of the condition of modern times. Indeed, certain parallels can be observed between Saint Teresa and certain present-day psychopathological disorders. The analogy should not, however, be carried too far. Religion played a particularly crucial role in Teresa’s cultural context; as a result, it would be misleading to view her mystical experiences as resulting from a mental disorder

Learned Feedback & Feedforward Perception & Control

The notions of feedback and feedforward information processing gained prominence under cybernetics, an early movement at the dawn of computer science and theoretical neuroscience. Negative feedback processing corrects errors, whereas feedforward processing makes predictions, thereby preemptively reducing errors. A key insight of cybernetics was that such processes can be applied to both perception, or state estimation, and control, or action selection. The remnants of this insight are found in many modern areas, including predictive coding in neuroscience and deep latent variable models in machine learning. This thesis draws on feedback and feedforward ideas developed within predictive coding, adapting them to improve machine learning techniques for perception (Part II) and control (Part III). Upon establishing these conceptual connections, in Part IV, we traverse this bridge, from machine learning back to neuroscience, arriving at new perspectives on the correspondences between these fields.</p

The Impact of Organizational Goal Setting on the Industrial Munificence-goal Attainment Relationship

In seeking to exploit environmental resources and opportunities, CEOs can either set multiple goals or narrow their focus on a few targets for the organizations. What approach will help organizations to benefit more from industrial munificence? In this paper, we investigate the moderating effects of CEOs’ goal setting (including the number of goals and the prioritization of these goals) on the relationship between industrial munificence and the satisfaction of goal attainment. By examining 277 small and medium-size firms in four countries, we find that CEOs need to stretch their goal list while keeping a clear priority order among these goals in order to capitalize on industrial munificence. Implications of our study are discussed

PREDIÇÃO DO DESEMPENHO ACADÊMICO FINAL PELA PERFORMANCE NO PRIMEIRO ANO DO ENSINO SUPERIOR: UM ESTUDO DE CASO NO CURSO DE GRADUAÇÃO EM ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE UMA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL

O presente estudo procura verificar a validade preditiva do desempenho acadêmico de um estudante ao final do primeiro ano do ensino superior para a tendência de seu desempenho ao longo de todo o ensino superior, até a conclusão. A intenção de estudo que se coaduna com tal objetivo surge da preocupação com a criação de indicadores que permitam um diagnóstico antecipado dos casos de estudantes que tenham tendência a baixo desempenho, permitindo assim, atuação tempestiva da gestão universitária no sentido de intervir com ações de gestão acadêmica ativa para tratar dos casos antes que se consolidem ou agravem. Para a realização da análise foi feito estudo de caso incidente sobre os dados dos ingressantes no Curso de Graduação em Administração de uma Universidade Federal no ano de 2009. Selecionados os sujeitos, realizaram-se operações de correlação entre o desempenho no primeiro ano e na conclusão do curso para verificar se aquele fator prediz este. O estudo, quali-quantitativo, com ênfase na segunda componente do título metodológico, identificou que existe relevante correlação entre as variáveis, apontando que – ao menos para o caso em tela – o desempenho no primeiro ano seria suficiente para indicar a tendência de desempenho globa

Entrepreneurial Orientation: The Dimensions' Shared Effects on Explaining Firm Performance

We shed new light on the structure of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance and how this relationship varies across contexts. Using commonality analysis, we decompose the variance in performance—in terms of the effects of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking—into parts that are attributable to unique variations in these dimensions (unique effects) and those attributable to covariation between these dimensions (shared effects). By demonstrating the empirical relevance of unique, bilaterally shared, and commonly shared effects in a heterogeneous sample of low–tech, high–tech, and multi–sector firms, we consolidate existing conceptualizations of EO and propose an extension of the extant theoretical views of the construct. </jats:p

The effective action of Type IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds

The N=1 effective action for generic type IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds in the presence of background fluxes is computed from a Kaluza-Klein reduction. The Kahler potential, the gauge kinetic functions and the flux-induced superpotential are determined in terms of geometrical data of the Calabi-Yau orientifold and the background fluxes. The moduli space is found to be a Kahler subspace of the N=2 moduli space and shown to coincide with the moduli space arising in compactification of M-theory on a specific class of G_2 manifolds. The superpotential depends on all geometrical moduli and vanishes at leading order when background fluxes are turned off. The N=1 chiral coordinates linearize the appropriate instanton actions such that instanton effects can lead to holomorphic corrections of the superpotential. Mirror symmetry between type IIA and type IIB orientifolds is shown to hold at the level of the effective action in the large volume - large complex structure limit.Comment: 51 pages, typos correcte

Twistor Approach to String Compactifications: a Review

We review a progress in obtaining the complete non-perturbative effective action of type II string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold. This problem is equivalent to understanding quantum corrections to the metric on the hypermultiplet moduli space. We show how all these corrections, which include D-brane and NS5-brane instantons, are incorporated in the framework of the twistor approach, which provides a powerful mathematical description of hyperkahler and quaternion-Kahler manifolds. We also present new insights on S-duality, quantum mirror symmetry, connections to integrable models and topological strings.Comment: 99 pages; minor corrections; journal versio

The effective action of D7-branes in N=1 Calabi-Yau orientifolds

Using a Kaluza-Klein reduction of the Dirac-Born-Infeld and Chern-Simons action we compute the four dimensional N=1 effective action for the massless modes of a D7-brane which is wrapped on a four-cycle of a compact Calabi-Yau orientifold. We do not consider a specific orientifold but instead determine the Kahler potential, the gauge kinetic functions and the scalar potential in terms of geometrical data of a generic orientifold and its wrapped four-cycle. In particular we derive the couplings of the D-brane excitations to the bulk moduli of the orientifold as they are important for the study of soft supersymmetry breaking terms. We relate the resulting Kahler geometry to the N=1 special geometry of Lerche, Mayr and Warner. Finally we comment on the structure of the D-term which is induced by a Green-Schwarz term in the Chern-Simons action.Comment: LaTeX, 47 pages; references added; minor correction

GUTs in Type IIB Orientifold Compactifications

We systematically analyse globally consistent SU(5) GUT models on intersecting D7-branes in genuine Calabi-Yau orientifolds with O3- and O7-planes. Beyond the well-known tadpole and K-theory cancellation conditions there exist a number of additional subtle but quite restrictive constraints. For the realisation of SU(5) GUTs with gauge symmetry breaking via U(1)_Y flux we present two classes of suitable Calabi-Yau manifolds defined via del Pezzo transitions of the elliptically fibred hypersurface P_{1,1,1,6,9}[18] and of the Quintic P_{1,1,1,1,1}[5], respectively. To define an orientifold projection we classify all involutions on del Pezzo surfaces. We work out the model building prospects of these geometries and present five globally consistent string GUT models in detail, including a 3-generation SU(5) model with no exotics whatsoever. We also realise other phenomenological features such as the 10 10 5 Yukawa coupling and comment on the possibility of moduli stabilisation, where we find an entire new set of so-called swiss-cheese type Calabi-Yau manifolds. It is expected that both the general constrained structure and the concrete models lift to F-theory vacua on compact Calabi-Yau fourfolds.Comment: 138 pages, 9 figures; v2, v3: typos corrected, one reference adde