Ultimate Intelligence Part I: Physical Completeness and Objectivity of Induction

We propose that Solomonoff induction is complete in the physical sense via several strong physical arguments. We also argue that Solomonoff induction is fully applicable to quantum mechanics. We show how to choose an objective reference machine for universal induction by defining a physical message complexity and physical message probability, and argue that this choice dissolves some well-known objections to universal induction. We also introduce many more variants of physical message complexity based on energy and action, and discuss the ramifications of our proposals.Comment: Under review at AGI-2015 conference. An early draft was submitted to ALT-2014. This paper is now being split into two papers, one philosophical, and one more technical. We intend that all installments of the paper series will be on the arxi

Portfolio entrepreneurship in farming: Empirical evidence from the 1881 census for England and Wales

This paper examines portfolio entrepreneurs: those who operate more than one business at any one time. It focuses on the conditions that influence the occurrence of multiple businesses as compared with single business. Empirical evidence on the choice between portfolio entrepreneurship and a single occupation are scarce. In particular, most previous studies discuss the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship without providing further insights into what influences the decision to engage in multiple activities. To fill this gap in the literature, our objective is to test empirically the factors that affect choice. Drawing for the first time from the historical resource of the 1881 census data for England andWales, we use a multi-level logit model to explore how employee size, farm size in acres, population density, age, gender, marital status, household size, the entrepreneurial ratio, and regional heterogeneity affect the probability of portfolio entrepreneurship. This historical resource allows a unique whole population analysis which offers opportunities, for the first time, to compare factors influencing portfolio choices between modern and past farming practices.This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/M010953 ‘Drivers of Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses’. Piloting of the research for 1881 was supported by Leverhulme Trust grant RG66385 ‘The long-term evolution of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)’

Towns in victorian England and Wales: A new classification

ABSTRACT:This article describes the creation of a new urban classification based on the 1891 census of England and Wales. It is the first attempt to use the recently available electronic version of the census (I-CeM) to classify all large towns in late Victorian England and Wales on their economic structure. Where previous scholars were restricted by the form of occupation data contained in the published census reports, I-CeM allows manipulation of the data in order to aggregate urban units and examine their occupational structures in great detail. The classification is then used to compare key socio-economic characteristics of different towns.</jats:p

Management adaptation of business association services: long-term stability 1783-2012 and ‘change points’ for Irish chambers of commerce

This paper seeks to fill an important gap in literature on institutional adaptation, using Irish chambers of commerce services to examine how managers of business associations adjust long-term balances in services, and respond to short-term challenges. The paper uses the theoretical expectations from collective action theory, transactions cost economics, the theory of organisational evolution and interactions with state supports to explore how the management strategies of chambers adapted to challenges from the economic and institutional environment. The paper demonstrates durability in the long term over the 200- year history of chambers, by an adaptation of service bundles and resource mixes, with major ‘change points’ being critical to re-balancing services and income sources. Using the example of challenges arising from the ‘change point’ of the Irish economic contraction 2008–2012, the paper shows how short-term adaptation mechanisms operate. Larger chambers generally survived better. Smaller chambers had more challenges, but demonstrate the durability of engaged management by volunteers.Support for the collection of historical data came from British Academy grants SG39253 and SG44870

How Do Audiologists Respond to Emotional and Psychological Concerns Raised in the Audiology Setting? Three Case Vignettes

Objectives: Emotional and psychological well-being are essential to overall health, but there is little research showing how to approach emotional and psychological concerns in the audiological setting. This study investigated audiologists’ self-reported clinical behaviors in response to emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms raised by audiology clients. Design: A sample of 83 Australia-based audiologists completed a survey including vignettes presenting older adults with hearing loss and experiencing symptoms consistent with either depression or grief. Content analysis was used to explore: (1) audiologists’ self-reported usual response when clients present with emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms in the audiological setting; (2) audiologists’ ability to identify and describe psychological symptoms; and (3) audiologists’ self-reported clinical behaviors relating to client referral for psychological support. Results: When asked to describe their usual clinical course of action in response to the vignettes, over one half the audiologists described actions that address the clients concerns related to psychological well-being. Where audiologists described how they would provide psychological support, they described modifications to the audiological rehabilitation program including involving significant others in the rehabilitation process, recommending additional support outside of the audiology setting (such as General Practitioner or psychologists), and providing emotional support and counseling. When prompted, the majority of participants recognized the two cases with depression as having a mental health condition; however, 48% of participants indicated the control case as also having a mental health condition. When asked directly, the majority of audiologists indicated that they would refer the three vignettes for specialist support; however, less than one third described referral to a General Practitioner and less than 5% described referral to a mental health professional as their normal course of action in the open response item. Twenty-five different professions/people were reported as potential sources for referral. Conclusion: These findings support the need for further training and/or resources for audiologists to enable them to appropriately detect, describe and refer for emotional and psychological concerns and/or symptoms raised by clients’ in the audiology setting

Machine learning classification of entrepreneurs in British historical census data

This paper presents a binary classification of entrepreneurs in British historical data based on the recent availability of big data from the I-CeM dataset. The main task of the paper is to attribute an employment status to individuals that did not fully report entrepreneur status in earlier censuses (1851-1881). The paper assesses the accuracy of different classifiers and machine learning algorithms, including Deep Learning, for this classification problem. We first adopt a ground-truth dataset from the later censuses to train the computer with a Logistic Regression (which is standard in the literature for this kind of binary classification) to recognize entrepreneurs distinct from non-entrepreneurs (i.e. workers). Our initial accuracy for this base-line method is 0.74. We compare the Logistic Regression with ten optimized machine learning algorithms: Nearest Neighbors, Linear and Radial Support Vector Machine, Gaussian Process, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Neural Network, AdaBoost, Naive Bayes, and Quadratic Discriminant Analysis. The best results are boosting and ensemble methods. AdaBoost achieves an accuracy of 0.95. Deep-Learning, as a standalone category of algorithms, further improves accuracy to 0.96 without using the rich text-data that characterizes the OccString feature, a string of up to 500 characters with the full occupational statement of each individual collected in the earlier censuses. Finally, and now using this OccString feature, we implement both shallow (bag-of-words algorithm) learning and Deep Learning (Recurrent Neural Network with a Long Short-Term Memory layer) algorithms. These methods all achieve accuracies above 0.99 with Deep Learning Recurrent Neural Network as the best model with an accuracy of 0.9978. The results show that standard algorithms for classification can be outperformed by machine learning algorithms. This confirms the value of extending the techniques traditionally used in the literature for this type of classification problem.ESRC Leverhulme Trust Isaac Newton Trus

On the oxidation behavior of titanium within coated nickel-based superalloys

Rutile precipitation within alumina scales grown on coated nickel-based superalloy CMSX-4 has been found to occur preferentially at grain boundaries within the scale. Misorientation analysis using Rodrigues–Frank space has revealed clustering of the misorientation between neighboring grains of corundum and rutile about the established 〈0 0 0 1〉_c{1 1 2¯ 0}_c//〈0 1 0〉_r{1 0 1}_r orientation relationship observed in Ti-containing sapphire crystals. The fraction of interfaces found to exist in this configuration is sufficient to explain the nucleation of rutile from a single corundum grain abutting the rutile grain. The diffusive behavior of Ti has been observed to vary considerably within three commercially used coatings, a plain aluminide coating, a plat-aluminide coating and a diffused platinum coating. Titanium diffusion is enhanced by the presence of Pt. However this did not lead to the precipitation of more rutile, which although observed in all three coatings, was present in sufficient quantity to be detected using XRD only within the plain aluminide coated samples.The work was carried out under the financial support provided by Rolls-Royce plc and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councils, UK under the Rolls-Royce/ESPRC Strategic Partnership (EP/M005607/1 & EP/H022309/1). This study was also supported by Nanotechnology Platform Project (NIMS Nanofabrication Platform) sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. Financial support was also received from the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission: ESTEEM2, contract number 312483. Requests for access to the underlying research data should be directed to the corresponding author and will be considered against commercial interests and data protection.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359645415002281

Energy flow analysis of amputee walking shows a proximally-directed transfer of energy in intact limbs, compared to a distally-directed transfer in prosthetic limbs at push-off

Reduced capacity and increased metabolic cost of walking occurs in amputees, despite advances in prosthetic componentry. Joint powers can quantify deficiencies in prosthetic gait, but do not reveal how energy is exchanged between limb segments. This study aimed to quantify these energy exchanges during amputee walking. Optical motion and forceplate data collected during walking at a self-selected speed for cohorts of 10 controls, 10 unilateral trans-tibial, 10 unilateral trans-femoral and 10 bilateral trans-femoral amputees were used to determine the energy exchanges between lower limb segments. At push-off, consistent thigh and shank segment powers were observed between amputee groups (1.12W/kg vs. 1.05W/kg for intact limbs and 0.97W/kg vs. 0.99W/kg for prosthetic limbs), and reduced prosthetic ankle power, particularly in trans-femoral amputees (3.12W/kg vs. 0.87W/kg). Proximally-directed energy exchange was observed in the intact limbs of amputees and controls, while prosthetic limbs displayed distally-directed energy exchanges at the knee and hip. This study used energy flow analysis to show a reversal in the direction in which energy is exchanged between prosthetic limb segments at push-off. This reversal was required to provide sufficient energy to propel the limb segments and is likely a direct result of the lack of push-off power at the prosthetic ankle, particularly in trans-femoral amputees, and leads to their increased metabolic cost of walking

Differential effects of SARS-CoV-2 variants on central nervous system cells and blood-brain barrier functions

BACKGROUND: Although mainly causing a respiratory syndrome, numerous neurological symptoms have been identified following of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, how the virus affects the brain and how the mutations carried by the different variants modulate those neurological symptoms remain unclear. METHODS: We used primary human pericytes, foetal astrocytes, endothelial cells and a microglial cell line to investigate the effect of several SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern or interest on their functional activities. Cells and a 3D blood-brain barrier model were infected with the wild-type form of SARS-CoV-2, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Eta, or Omicron (BA.1) variants at various MOI. Cells and supernatant were used to evaluate cell susceptibility to the virus using a microscopic assay as well as effects of infection on (i) cell metabolic activity using a colorimetric MTS assay; (ii) viral cytopathogenicity using the xCELLigence system; (iii) extracellular glutamate concentration by fluorometric assay; and (iv) modulation of blood-brain barrier permeability. RESULTS: We demonstrate that productive infection of brain cells is SARS-CoV-2 variant dependent and that all the variants induce stress to CNS cells. The wild-type virus was cytopathic to all cell types except astrocytes, whilst Alpha and Beta variants were only cytopathic for pericytes, and the Omicron variant cytopathic for endothelial cells and pericytes. Lastly wild-type virus increases blood-brain barrier permeability and all variants, except Beta, modulate extracellular glutamate concentration, which can lead to excitotoxicity or altered neurotransmission. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is neurotropic, with deleterious consequences for the blood-brain barrier integrity and central nervous system cells, which could underlie neurological disorders following SARS-CoV-2 infection

Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices of Australian Audiologists in Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Adults With Hearing Loss

Purpose Emotional and mental health is essential to overall health, but there has been little research on how to approach emotional and mental health in the audiology setting. This study provides a preliminary investigation into the current knowledge, beliefs, and practices of Australian audiologists in addressing the emotional and mental health needs of adults with hearing loss. Method A 22-item survey using open- and closed-ended questions was completed by 95 Australian audiologists using a cross-sectional study design. Results Two thirds of audiologists described being underconfident and lacking the skills required to provide emotional support to people with hearing loss. Barriers to delivering emotional support included feeling out of their depth (56.6%), time/caseload pressures (55.3%), and the perception that the provision of emotional support was not within an audiologist's scope of practice (31.6%). Audiologists described a desire to refer clients to mental health professionals yet highlighted significant barriers, including not knowing who to refer to (54.7%), when to make a referral (49.3%), or how to make a referral (38.6%). Audiologists overwhelmingly (96%) indicated that they would like to develop their knowledge and skills associated with the provision of emotional and mental health support in the audiological setting. Conclusion Knowledge, skills, and time were identified as the key areas that require attention in order to allow audiologists to address the emotional and mental health needs of adults with hearing loss