Defenses to International Antitrust Suits: An Aggregate Approach

Part I of this Comment will discuss briefly the cases in which the defenses have been asserted. Part I will examine the underlying policies of each defense. In Part II of this Comment each of the defenses will be applied separately to the facts of a recent antitrust case, In re Uranium Antitrust Litigation. Finally, in Part III, the application of the separatist approach to those facts will be critiqued, and an alternative approach to the defenses will be discussed

Defenses to International Antitrust Suits: An Aggregate Approach

Part I of this Comment will discuss briefly the cases in which the defenses have been asserted. Part I will examine the underlying policies of each defense. In Part II of this Comment each of the defenses will be applied separately to the facts of a recent antitrust case, In re Uranium Antitrust Litigation. Finally, in Part III, the application of the separatist approach to those facts will be critiqued, and an alternative approach to the defenses will be discussed

A comparison of fuzzy approaches to e-commerce review rating prediction

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the performance of fuzzy approaches on the task of predicting customer review ratings using a computational intelligence framework based on a genetic algorithm for data dimensionality reduction. The performance of the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), a neurofuzzy approach combining FCM and the Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), and the Simplified Fuzzy ARTMAP (SFAM) was compared on six datasets containing customer reviews. The results revealed that all computational intelligence predictors were suitable for the rating prediction problem, and that the genetic algorithm is effective in reducing the number of dimensions without affecting the prediction performance of each computational intelligence predictor

Interoperable services based on activity monitoring in ambient assisted living environments

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is considered as the main technological solution that will enable the aged and people in recovery to maintain their independence and a consequent high quality of life for a longer period of time than would otherwise be the case. This goal is achieved by monitoring human’s activities and deploying the appropriate collection of services to set environmental features and satisfy user preferences in a given context. However, both human monitoring and services deployment are particularly hard to accomplish due to the uncertainty and ambiguity characterising human actions, and heterogeneity of hardware devices composed in an AAL system. This research addresses both the aforementioned challenges by introducing 1) an innovative system, based on Self Organising Feature Map (SOFM), for automatically classifying the resting location of a moving object in an indoor environment and 2) a strategy able to generate context-aware based Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) services in order to maximize the users’ comfort and hardware interoperability level. The overall system runs on a distributed embedded platform with a specialised ceiling- mounted video sensor for intelligent activity monitoring. The system has the ability to learn resting locations, to measure overall activity levels, to detect specific events such as potential falls and to deploy the right sequence of fuzzy services modelled through FML for supporting people in that particular context. Experimental results show less than 20% classification error in monitoring human activities and providing the right set of services, showing the robustness of our approach over others in literature with minimal power consumption

Deep neural networks for quantum circuit mapping

AbstractQuantum computers have become reality thanks to the effort of some majors in developing innovative technologies that enable the usage of quantum effects in computation, so as to pave the way towards the design of efficient quantum algorithms to use in different applications domains, from finance and chemistry to artificial and computational intelligence. However, there are still some technological limitations that do not allow a correct design of quantum algorithms, compromising the achievement of the so-called quantum advantage. Specifically, a major limitation in the design of a quantum algorithm is related to its proper mapping to a specific quantum processor so that the underlying physical constraints are satisfied. This hard problem, known as circuit mapping, is a critical task to face in quantum world, and it needs to be efficiently addressed to allow quantum computers to work correctly and productively. In order to bridge above gap, this paper introduces a very first circuit mapping approach based on deep neural networks, which opens a completely new scenario in which the correct execution of quantum algorithms is supported by classical machine learning techniques. As shown in experimental section, the proposed approach speeds up current state-of-the-art mapping algorithms when used on 5-qubits IBM Q processors, maintaining suitable mapping accuracy

Rethinking Law Enforcement Responses to Guns and Gun Violence: Elevating Alternatives to Traditional Enforcement Approaches

Discretion is built into the criminal justice system, with branching decision points throughout for police officers, prosecutors, judges, probation officers, and other actors. There is also a growing recognition among municipal officials, police leaders, and district attorneys that local agencies can take actions to reduce unnecessary arrest and confinement. "[C]riminal law does not function as law," wrote criminologist William J. Stuntz. "Rather, the law defines a menu of options for police officers and prosecutors to use as they see fit."This wide variety of options has recently been getting increased attention, with many cities experimenting with the implementation of formal measures that reduce enforcement and sanction. For example, the elected district attorneys in four New York City boroughs recently agreed to clear outstanding arrest warrants for old, low-level charges, like selling loose cigarettes and drinking in public. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) and other major metropolitan departments have made a shift away from arrests for low-level marijuana possession and misdemeanor offenses. Many cities have also taken a cue from Seattle, Washington, whose Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program diverts low-level drug addicts and sex workers directly into treatment programs. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the police department has supported "warrant amnesty days" to clear large volumes of outstanding fines and warrants. These are just a few examples of wide-sweeping, formal uses of less enforcement-focused ideas in general policing. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many jurisdictions released individuals from prisons and jails and reduced new admissions to those facilities to help prevent the spread of the virus.The National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) explores whether and how new techniques such as these could be expanded and applied specifically to guns and gun violence. In particular, this report emphasizes that the encounters between police and firearms do not occur in a vacuum, but are the product of a long chain of decisions. This report seeks to explore that chain of decision-making and how departments can directly apply more innovative decision-making to address the extraordinarily important issue of gun violence. Police engagement with guns and gun violence encompasses more than the singular encounter with a gun, and there are in fact ways that police and police departments think and can think about gun violence that are broader than that encounter. Even more importantly, these innovative practices can reduce violence in communities with a high incidence of gun violence. This review begins with an examination of current discretionary practices in law enforcement at large—including programs and decisions not traditionally thought of as such—and then returns to address new police thinking and practice around police encounters with illegal firearms

Biophilia: Alienation and Solidarity

Biophilia, theorized by Fromm, Wilson, and Kellert, is examined as a potential support for a pro-animal ethos. First, I look at the idea and its definitions at the hands of its chief theorizers. Then I investigate how different stages of human cultural development (foraging, pastoralism, industrial agriculture) have influenced different aspects of biophilia—especially as this bears on animal alienation. Finally, I consider possible remedies in the form of renewed patterns of solidarity with other species, one of which transforms Marx’ concept of species-being. The article has ethical implications, but it is essentially a work in philosophical anthropology

EFFECT OF CLINICALLY RELEVANT MECHANICAL FORCES ON SMOOTH MUSCLE CELL RESPONSE IN MODEL OF BALLOON ANGIOPLASTY

Restenosis remains a common problem affecting the patency of endovascular intervention such as balloon angioplasty and stent placement as treatments for atherosclerosis. Denudation of the endothelial layer and the increased injury from balloon deployment can cause phenotypic changes in surrounding vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) in vivo. The presented work modeled this mechanical environment in vitro to investigate the role of the altered mechanical environment on the phenotypic response of SMCs. Through the system design and CFD channel characterization, a six-independent-channel system providing low oscillating wall shear stress (WSS) was manufactured to apply concurrent shear and tensile forces with uniform strain and WSS profiles over the cell location. The project hypothesis that balloon angioplasty endovascular intervention exposing vascular smooth muscle cells to an altered mechanical environment would evoke a cell phenotype change. The exposure of SMCs to concurrent shear and tensile forces following balloon angioplasty resulted in a more synthetic phenotype behavior marked by such characteristics as increased synthetic morphology, increased proliferation, increased apoptosis and decreased expression of contractile markers. Clinical implications for this work suggest that physiological dynamic regimens should be incorporated into in vitro studies. We simulated balloon angioplasty through increased strains and a clinical heparin bolus administration, both of which evoked different SMC responses compared to controls. SMC response triggered by exposure to the injury model resembled in vivo reactions following balloon angioplasty. Therefore, dynamic concurrent shear and tensile forces should be incorporated in vascular in vitro testing to possibly lead to better treatment and prevention of restenosis following endovascular intervention

In What Senses are Free Spirits Free?

My broadest claim in this article is, unsurprisingly, that there are multiple senses of freedom associated with the freedom of the free spirit. These include both positive and negative senses – that is, when describing how free spirits are free, Nietzsche sometimes characterizes this as freedom to do something, and sometimes as freedom from certain kinds of constraints. In this article, I do not aim to provide an exhaustive catalogue of the different senses invoked in Nietzsche’s ‘free spirit’ texts. Instead, I wish to highlight some particular senses, including some that are less frequently discussed in the scholarly literature and account for how these differing senses are related, including some puzzling ideas that Nietzsche appears to hold regarding how these different senses might be realizable simultaneously. In thinking through this, I believe, we are presented with ideas that bear on Nietzsche’s views about freedom more generally