The imperfect observer: Mind, machines, and materialism in the 21st century

The dualist / materialist debates about the nature of consciousness are based on the assumption that an entirely physical universe must ultimately be observable by humans (with infinitely advanced tools). Thus the dualists claim that anything unobservable must be non-physical, while the materialists argue that in theory nothing is unobservable. However, there may be fundamental limitations in the power of human observation, no matter how well aided, that greatly curtail our ability to know and observe even a fully physical universe. This paper presents arguments to support the model of an inherently limited observer and explores the consequences of this view

Public sector efficiency according to COFOG classification in the European Union

The budgetary constraints governments have to deal with on a daily bases require a new approach in public spending as well as the revision of public goods definition. Consequently the key words are efficiency and effectiveness, in order to comply with the new management approach requirements. Assessing the efficiency and performance of public expenses is a key item for analyzing the quality of public expenses because it connects the entries as public resources and their yield (efficiency) or the entries to the results obtained (performance)public spending, performance, efficiency, effectiveness

The role and the performance of public sector in the European Union

The role of the state is finally the decision of the citizens. The government, being a result of elections, can provide more or less protection and increase or decrease expenditures. Anyway for achieving goals and for being performant the state definitly has to promote a good governance. Good governance means the way unions, public institutions, civil society and tax payers work together. An other important factor is the transparency and accountability of the elected government. As regards public services and goods, it is definitly important to grow efficiency of the government. Therefore themes like tax competition, public expenditures and harmonization of the tax system have to be analysed. There are main differences between eastern and western countries of the European Union witch generate social and economical consequences. It is also important to think of measuring performances of the public sector and of finding the most appropriate way in which government size and efficiency can lead to economical growth.distributive role; regulation; welfare; performance; public expenditures;

The prerequisites of public sector performance: governance and effectiveness

In modern economies, the public authority entrusted to manage the public affairs of the community is the state. In fulfilling their objectives the public decision makers assume a number of tasks according to the doctrines embraced by the government. The government results as an outcome of the election process and thus, faithful to its own doctrine is more or less invasive in the economy provides more or less protection and public goods therefore increasing or decreasing its spending according to its needs. The final outcome pursued by the state is the welfare of its citizens. Eventually, the way this goal is achieved as well as the perception the society has regarding the way the state performs is a matter of choice the state makes in order to fulfill its tasks. Traditionally, the main roles assumed by the state are: the distributive role, the regulation role, the stabilising and the assurance role.public sector, governance, public spending, performance

Knowledge representation system for assembly using robots

Assembly robots combine the benefits of speed and accuracy with the capability of adaptation to changes in the work environment. However, an impediment to the use of robots is the complexity of the man-machine interface. This interface can be improved by providing a means of using a priori-knowledge and reasoning capabilities for controlling and monitoring the tasks performed by robots. Robots ought to be able to perform complex assembly tasks with the help of only supervisory guidance from human operators. For such supervisory quidance, it is important to express the commands in terms of the effects desired, rather than in terms of the motion the robot must undertake in order to achieve these effects. A suitable knowledge representation can facilitate the conversion of task level descriptions into explicit instructions to the robot. Such a system would use symbolic relationships describing the a priori information about the robot, its environment, and the tasks specified by the operator to generate the commands for the robot

Money as a Global Public Good

The main objective of this paper is to discuss a complex and yet not taken in consideration global public good: money. Money is a social convention created and accepted by people in order to facilitate economic transactions, being a symbol, without an intrinsic value (fiduciary money). It is universally used and it has value only in connection with the products and services that can be acquired, based on people’s consent and their psychological acceptance. In other words, its value lies in the purchasing power given by the quantity of commodities and services that can be bought with money. During history, as people began to become fully aware of the importance of money for their own survival, economic growth and development, institutions were created to manage and pass the necessary rules and regulations to grant stability to the financial intermediation process. The entire process was possible because money were always perceived as a particular “asset”: to society as a whole and to each individual as well. The strength of each currency reflects the strength of the public authorities that contribute to its creation (central banks, government, and society) as well as the strength of the economy it reflects. Besides its social value, money bear psychological value for each individual, as they serve in facilitating the fulfilment of necessities, dreams, of all people could ever want or need in their lives. Moreover, money can be regarded as a constant throughout history: changeable over time and yet the same, of vital importance in people’s lives.money, global public good, social and psychological value

The γ\gamma-ray Milky Way above 10 GeV: Distinguishing Sources from Diffuse Emission

One of the most prominent features of the $\gamma$-ray sky is the emission from our own Galaxy. The Galactic plane has been observed by Fermi-LAT in GeV and H.E.S.S. in TeV light. Fermi has modeled the Galactic emission as the sum of a complex 'diffuse' emission model with the predominately point source catalogs of 1FHL and 2FGL, while H.E.S.S. has primarily detected extended TeV sources. At GeV energies, Galactic diffuse emission dominates the $\gamma$-ray Milky Way but, as sources have hard spectra, it is likely their emission dominates at TeV energies. Generally the spatial shape and fraction of source emission compared to diffuse emission in the Galactic plane is not well known and is dependent on the source detection method, threshold and diffuse emission modeling methods used. We present a simple image-analysis based method applied to Fermi-LAT data from 10 GeV to 500 GeV, covering a region of +/- 5 degrees in Galactic latitude and +/- 100 degrees in Galactic longitude, to separate source and diffuse emission. This method involves elongated filter smoothing, combined with significance clipping to exclude sources. We test the method against models based on the 1FHL catalog and very simple model Galaxies to evaluate the response for an input of known fraction and shape of diffuse and source emission.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Science with the New Generation of High-Energy Gamma-ray experiments (SciNeGHE) - PoS(Scineghe2014)03

EMPIRICAL STUDY REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL INSURANCES IN ROMANIA

Maintaining a certainty degree for the agricultural producers in order to obtain stable and efficient results makes it both necessary and welcomes the protection through insurance and reinsurance in this field. In this paper we carry out an analysis regaragricultural corps’ insurance, gross premiums subscribed, damage rate, insurance coverage

gamma-sky.net: Portal to the Gamma-Ray Sky

Gamma-sky.net is a novel interactive website designed for exploring the gamma-ray sky. The Map View portion of the site is powered by the Aladin Lite sky atlas, providing a scalable survey image tesselated onto a three-dimensional sphere. The map allows for interactive pan and zoom navigation as well as search queries by sky position or object name. The default image overlay shows the gamma-ray sky observed by the Fermi-LAT gamma-ray space telescope. Other survey images (e.g. Planck microwave images in low/high frequency bands, ROSAT X-ray image) are available for comparison with the gamma-ray data. Sources from major gamma-ray source catalogs of interest (Fermi-LAT 2FHL, 3FGL and a TeV source catalog) are overlaid over the sky map as markers. Clicking on a given source shows basic information in a popup, and detailed pages for every source are available via the Catalog View component of the website, including information such as source classification, spectrum and light-curve plots, and literature references. We intend for gamma-sky.net to be applicable for both professional astronomers as well as the general public. The website started in early June 2016 and is being developed as an open-source, open data project on GitHub (https://github.com/gammapy/gamma-sky). We plan to extend it to display more gamma-ray and multi-wavelength data. Feedback and contributions are very welcome!Comment: 6th International Meeting on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy, Heidelberg, 2016. 6 pages, 5 figures. Website: http://gamma-sky.ne