American postmodernist fiction and the past by Theophilus Savvas

A review of American Postmodernist Fiction and the Past by Theophilus Savva

Aqueous alteration on the parent bodies of carbonaceous chondrites: Computer simulations of late-stage oxidation

CI carbonaceous chondrites may be products of hydrous alteration of CV- or anhydrous CM-type materials. The CIs typically contain veins filled with carbonates and sulfates, probably indicating a period of late stage aqueous alteration under oxidizing conditions. To test this idea, computer simulations of aqueous alteration of CV- and CM-type carbonaceous were performed. Simulations were restricted to the oxidation of hydrous mineral assemblages produced in previous simulations in order to determine whether further reaction and oxidation results in the phyllosilicate, carbonate, sulfate and oxide vein assemblages typical of CI carbonaceous chondrites. Our simulations were performed at 1, 25, 100, and 150 C (the appropriate temperature range) for the CV and CM mineral assemblages and using the computer code EQ3/6

Aspects linguistiques de la preuve par tradition orale en droit autochtone

La décision rendue par la Cour suprême du Canada dans l'affaire Delgamuukw en décembre 1997 est particulièrement importante pour deux aspects des revendications autochtones : le titre aborigène et la preuve par tradition orale. Ces deux notions sont en relation puisque la seconde est souvent essentielle pour revendiquer le premier. Il existe toutefois deux différences fondamentales entre la tradition orale et les documents historiques qui ont un effet important sur le poids à accorder à cette preuve : la tradition orale est souvent conçue et exprimée dans une langue autochtone parlée par un très petit nombre de locuteurs et la connaissance de son contenu est toujours liée à une performance individuelle momentanée. L'objet du présent article est d'offrir certaines indications linguistiques sur l'interprétation de la tradition orale de façon à permettre aux autochtones comme aux juristes de mieux en évaluer la valeur probante.With its decision in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia of December 11, 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada has touched upon two sensitive issues for Aboriginal claims in Canada : the existence of an Aboriginal title and the use of oral tradition to prove such a title. These two notions are related since oral tradition is often essential to support an Aboriginal Title claim. There is however two fundamental differences between oral traditions and historical documents that can create important problems in evaluating such a proof : oral traditions are often conceived and expressed in an aboriginal language spoken by few speakers and the knowledge of what is embedded in these traditions is always dependent on the perfomance of an individual. The goal of this article is to propose some linguistic evidence used to interpret oral tradition that may help Aboriginal people as well as lawers to better evaluate the quality of that proof

Comment s'accorder sur les normes ? Le droit et la Gouvernance face à Internet

Un résumé en anglais est également disponible.[À l'origine dans / Was originally part of : CRDP - Droit et technologies d'information et de communication]La complexification de nos sociétés et les limites des instruments législatifs (rigidité, opacité, etc.) minent l’efficacité du droit. Il y a un besoin criant de renouveau entre ce que l’auteur appelle la société civile et les pouvoirs de décision C’est pourquoi sont apparues au fil des années des formes alternatives d’organisations collectives, ouvertes et autorégulées. On parle alors de gouvernance. L’auteur explique cette évolution de la relation droit/gouvernance non seulement par les limites de la législation à proprement parler mais également par le développement de nouvelles techniques et technologies comme Internet qui ouvrent la porte à de nouvelles possibilités de coordination plus efficaces ainsi qu’à la protection d’intérêts divers au même titre que la loi. Internet devient alors un nouvel observatoire d’où l’on peut développer de nouvelles méthodes de gouvernance, le tout dans une optique de consensus sur la norme. En effet, il ne s’agit pas ici d’écarter le droit au profit de nouvelles formes de gouvernance ou vice-versa. On cherche à créer un système complémentaire qui viendra pallier aux faiblesses d’une législation rigide et complexe par moment et qui produira tout de même une dynamique juridique au niveau national et international

Preface

Preface to first issue of Orbit

RESCUING POLITICS FROM LYING AND HYPOCRISY: UTILITY AND TRUTH IN JEREMY BENTHAM’S THOUGHT

Como filósofo utilitarista, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) dedicou a maior parte de sua carreira à criação de um novo ambiente institucional que promovesse a maior felicidade do maior número de pessoas, com base no princípio da utilidade. Assim, Bentham comprometeu-se não só com o valor da utilidade mas também com a verdade. Verdade significava interesse universal e a denúncia de todos os abusos de poder e corrupções que sacrificavam o interesse do maior número de pessoas. A mentira e a hipocrisia, enquanto dois adversários da verdade, são os sintomas do sacrifício do interesse universal e opõem-se diretamente ao princípio da utilidade. No entanto, o que está em jogo nesta oposição? De que maneira Bentham valorizou e analisou esses dois fenómenos? Neste artigo, explicarei como o compromisso de Bentham contra a mentira e a hipocrisia na política visa apoiar a verdade do princípio utilitarista e demonstrar a injustiça de outros princípios morais.As a utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) devoted most of his career to create a new institutional setting to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number on the basis of the principle of utility. In doing so, Bentham committed himself not only to the value of utility but also to truth. Truth meant universal interest and denouncing all abuses of power and corruptions thatsacrifice the interest of the greatest number. As two opponents of truth, lies and hypocrisy are the symptoms of the sacrifice of the universal interest and directly oppose the principle of utility. Yet, what is at stake in this opposition? How did Bentham value and analyze these two phenomenon? In this paper, I will explain how Bentham’s commitment against lying and hypocrisy in politics aims to support the truth of the utilitarian principle and demonstrates the wrongness of other moral principles

Computer modeling of the mineralogy of the Martian surface, as modified by aqueous alteration

Mineralogical constraints can be placed on the Martian surface by assuming chemical equilibria among the surface rocks, atmosphere and hypothesized percolating groundwater. A study was made of possible Martian surface mineralogy, as modified by the action of aqueous alteration, using the EQ3/6 computer codes. These codes calculate gas fugacities, aqueous speciation, ionic strength, pH, Eh and concentration and degree of mineral saturation for complex aqueous systems. Thus, these codes are also able to consider mineralogical solid solutions. These codes are able to predict the likely alteration phases which will occur as the result of weathering on the Martian surface. Knowledge of the stability conditions of these phases will then assist in the definition of the specifications for the sample canister of the proposed Martian sample return mission. The model and its results are discussed

Sparse Transfer Learning for Interactive Video Search Reranking

Visual reranking is effective to improve the performance of the text-based video search. However, existing reranking algorithms can only achieve limited improvement because of the well-known semantic gap between low level visual features and high level semantic concepts. In this paper, we adopt interactive video search reranking to bridge the semantic gap by introducing user's labeling effort. We propose a novel dimension reduction tool, termed sparse transfer learning (STL), to effectively and efficiently encode user's labeling information. STL is particularly designed for interactive video search reranking. Technically, it a) considers the pair-wise discriminative information to maximally separate labeled query relevant samples from labeled query irrelevant ones, b) achieves a sparse representation for the subspace to encodes user's intention by applying the elastic net penalty, and c) propagates user's labeling information from labeled samples to unlabeled samples by using the data distribution knowledge. We conducted extensive experiments on the TRECVID 2005, 2006 and 2007 benchmark datasets and compared STL with popular dimension reduction algorithms. We report superior performance by using the proposed STL based interactive video search reranking.Comment: 17 page

Weaving Rules into [email protected] for Embedded Smart Systems

Smart systems are characterised by their ability to analyse measured data in live and to react to changes according to expert rules. Therefore, such systems exploit appropriate data models together with actions, triggered by domain-related conditions. The challenge at hand is that smart systems usually need to process thousands of updates to detect which rules need to be triggered, often even on restricted hardware like a Raspberry Pi. Despite various approaches have been investigated to efficiently check conditions on data models, they either assume to fit into main memory or rely on high latency persistence storage systems that severely damage the reactivity of smart systems. To tackle this challenge, we propose a novel composition process, which weaves executable rules into a data model with lazy loading abilities. We quantitatively show, on a smart building case study, that our approach can handle, at low latency, big sets of rules on top of large-scale data models on restricted hardware.Comment: pre-print version, published in the proceedings of MOMO-17 Worksho