Quantitative Redundancy in Partial Implications

We survey the different properties of an intuitive notion of redundancy, as a function of the precise semantics given to the notion of partial implication. The final version of this survey will appear in the Proceedings of the Int. Conf. Formal Concept Analysis, 2015.Comment: Int. Conf. Formal Concept Analysis, 201

A Community-Based Participatory Action Research for Roma Health Justice in a Deprived District in Spain

Addressing health disparities and promoting health equity for Roma has been a challenge. The Roma are the largest disadvantaged ethnic minority population in Europe and have been the victims of deep social and economic injustices, institutional discrimination, and structural antigypsyism over many centuries. This has resulted in a much worse health status than their non-Roma counterparts. Current strategies based on ameliorative and top-down approaches to service delivery have resulted in paradoxical e_ects that solidify health disparities, since they do not e_ectively address the problems of vulnerable Roma groups. Following a health justice approach, we present a community-based participatory action research case study generated by a community and university partnership intended to address power imbalances and build collaboration among local stakeholders. This case study involved a group of health providers, Roma residents, researchers, Roma community organizations, and other stakeholders in the Poligono Sur, a neighborhood of Seville, Spain. The case study comprises four phases: (1) identifying Roma health assets, (2) empowering Roma community through sociopolitical awareness, (3) promoting alliances between Roma and community resources/institutions, and (4) building a common agenda for promoting Roma health justice. We highlighted best practices for developing processes to influence Roma health equity in local health policy agendas

Relative Entailment Among Probabilistic Implications

We study a natural variant of the implicational fragment of propositional logic. Its formulas are pairs of conjunctions of positive literals, related together by an implicational-like connective; the semantics of this sort of implication is defined in terms of a threshold on a conditional probability of the consequent, given the antecedent: we are dealing with what the data analysis community calls confidence of partial implications or association rules. Existing studies of redundancy among these partial implications have characterized so far only entailment from one premise and entailment from two premises, both in the stand-alone case and in the case of presence of additional classical implications (this is what we call "relative entailment"). By exploiting a previously noted alternative view of the entailment in terms of linear programming duality, we characterize exactly the cases of entailment from arbitrary numbers of premises, again both in the stand-alone case and in the case of presence of additional classical implications. As a result, we obtain decision algorithms of better complexity; additionally, for each potential case of entailment, we identify a critical confidence threshold and show that it is, actually, intrinsic to each set of premises and antecedent of the conclusion

A level-set method for thermal motion of bubbles and droplets

Published under licence in Journal of Physics: Conference Series by IOP Publishing Ltd. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.A conservative level-set model for direct simulation of two-phase flows with thermocapillary effects at dynamically deformable interface is presented. The Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the energy conservation equation are solved by means of a finite-volume/level-set method. Some numerical examples including thermocapillary motion of single and multiple fluid particles are computed by means of the present method. The results are compared with analytical solutions and numerical results from the literature as validations of the proposed model.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Learning definite Horn formulas from closure queries

A definite Horn theory is a set of n-dimensional Boolean vectors whose characteristic function is expressible as a definite Horn formula, that is, as conjunction of definite Horn clauses. The class of definite Horn theories is known to be learnable under different query learning settings, such as learning from membership and equivalence queries or learning from entailment. We propose yet a different type of query: the closure query. Closure queries are a natural extension of membership queries and also a variant, appropriate in the context of definite Horn formulas, of the so-called correction queries. We present an algorithm that learns conjunctions of definite Horn clauses in polynomial time, using closure and equivalence queries, and show how it relates to the canonical Guigues–Duquenne basis for implicational systems. We also show how the different query models mentioned relate to each other by either showing full-fledged reductions by means of query simulation (where possible), or by showing their connections in the context of particular algorithms that use them for learning definite Horn formulas.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The SIMCE as objective of the “Hours of free disposal” of the school curriculum in Chile

La Jornada Escolar Completa aumentó en un 30% las horas pedagógicas de la jornada escolar en Chile, justificada por la idea que una mayor cantidad de tiempo mejoraría los aprendizajes de los estudiantes. Como consecuencia, las escuelas debieron enfrentarse a importantes desafíos en relación a su infraestructura y a la gestión del nuevo tiempo disponible, que contrario a lo propuesto, fue utilizado mayoritariamente para desarrollar dispositivos enfocados en mejorar los puntajes obtenidos en el SIMCE. El siguiente ensayo analiza la influencia de esta evaluación sobre el currículum escolar, específicamente sobre las horas de libre disposición, análisis que da cuenta de la discordancia entre los objetivos propuestos por la normativa y las acciones que el “Estado Vigilante” emprende para su consecuciónThe Full School Day programme increased by 30% the pedagogical hours of the school day in Chile, justified by the idea that a greater amount of time would improve student learning. As a consequence, schools faced significant challenges regarding their facilities and the management of new available time, which, contrary to what was proposed, was mainly utilized to develop devices focused on improving the scores obtained in SIMCE. The following essay analyzes the influence of this evaluation on the school curriculum, specifically on the hours of free disposal, analysis that accounts for the discordance between the objectives proposed by the regulations and the actions that the “Vigilant State” undertakes to achieve the

Des traces et des spectres : une lecture de Pompes funèbres de Jean Genet

Dans l’oeuvre de Jean Genet, la question de l’écriture qui est celle de la littérarité est indissociable d’une réflexion sur le politique et l’éthique. Un des aspects les plus remarquables de l’écriture de Genet est justement la façon dont il montre leur imbrication. C’est cette double dimension de son oeuvre qui sera prise en compte ici, dans une perspective philosophico-littéraire. Il s’agira de s’interroger sur les rapports du littéraire au politique et à l’éthique à partir de l’inscription de l’Histoire dans Pompes funèbres de Jean Genet. L’interrogation de départ concerne évidemment les relations de l’écriture de Genet à la mémoire et à l’Histoire, les articulations ou désarticulations qu’elle met en oeuvre. Ces questions ne sont pas séparables d’une critique de la notion de performativité qui traverse son écriture. Si, selon lui, l’écriture doit faire « oeuvre de vie », comment le pourrait-elle sans se restreindre aux conventions qui régissent l’acte performatif ? Mais la question centrale est celle de l’événement. Pour Genet en effet, il ne suffit pas de commémorer le passé. Il s’agirait de penser une écriture qui tout en conservant la trace de la souffrance puisse produire un effet, se constituer en événement. La réflexion sur ce que l’on pourrait appeler les « politiques de la mémoire » dans ce roman nous portera à étudier également les notions de corps, de figure et d’écriture.In this work by Jean Genet, the matter of writing is one of literariness, which is inextricably linked to political and ethical considerations. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of Genet’s writing is the way he shows their oneness. It is this twin-dimension of his work which will be explored here, from a philosophical and literary viewpoint. The aim is to examine the relationship between the literary, the political and the ethical on the basis of the way History is relayed in Funeral Rites by Jean Genet. The initial question is obviously the relationship between Genet’s writing and memory and History, and the dynamics that this relationship creates and destroys. Such questions must be accompanied by an examination of the notion of performativity which runs through his writing. If, as he says, writing must be a “work of life,” how could this be possible without restricting oneself to the conventions that govern the performative act itself ? But the main issue is that of “event.” For Genet, commemorating the past is not enough. Instead we must develop a form of writing that, while maintaining traces of suffering, is also able to produce an effect and be an event itself. Thoughts on what we could call “politics of memory” in this novel will also bring us around to examining notions of body, figure and writing

The Consistency dimension and distribution-dependent learning from queries

We prove a new combinatorial characterization of polynomial learnability from equivalence queries, and state some of its consequences relating the learnability of a class with the learnability via equivalence and membership queries of its subclasses obtained by restricting the instance space. Then we propose and study two models of query learning in which there is a probability distribution on the instance space, both as an application of the tools developed from the combinatorial characterization and as models of independent interest.Postprint (published version