Meeting Minutes of the Consistory of the First Reformed Church

The clerk of the consistory of the First Reformed Church, J. Schrader, reported in the minutes that the consistory had received a letter from Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte. It is not clear what Van Raalte wrote about.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1870s/1171/thumbnail.jp

Ten thousand times faster: Classifying multidimensional data on a spiking neuromorphic hardware system.

Discrimination of sensory inputs is a computational task that biological neuronal systems perform very efficiently. Assessing the principles in those systems is a promising approach to develop technical solutions for many problems, such as data classification. A particular problem here is to train a classifier in a supervised fashion to discriminate classes in multidimensional data. We implemented a network of spiking neurons that solves this task using a neuromorphic hardware system, that is, analog neuronal circuits on a silicon substrate. This system enables us to do high-performance computation in a biologically inspired way, with spiking neurons as computational units. In this contribution, we illustrate solutions to technical challenges that occur when implementing a classifier on neuromorphic hardware. 

The network topology of the insect olfactory system provides a well suited template for a neuronal architecture processing multidimensional data. In our classifier network, the value of each dimension of a data vector determines the rate of a stochastically generated spike train. The spike trains are fed into non-overlapping populations of neurons. Those populations project onto an association layer with winner-take-all properties representing the output of the classifier. During classifier training, the weights in this projection are adjusted according to a firing-rate based learning rule. 

The values in multidimensional data sets are typically real numbers, but neuronal firing rates are restricted to values between zero and some maximal value. Hence, the data must be transformed into a positive, bounded representation. We achieved this by representing each data point as a vector of distances to a number of points in data space (“virtual receptors” [1]). The representation by virtual receptors inevitably introduces correlation between input dimensions. We reduced this correlation using lateral inhibition in the first neuronal layer, leading to a significant increase in classifier performance. We found that decorrelation was most efficient when we scaled the inhibitory weights according to the correlation between the connected populations. 

We ran our classifier network on a neuromorphic hardware system that runs at ten thousand times the speed of biological neurons, thus suited for high performance computing [2]. However, the considerable variance of rate-response sensitivity across hardware neurons decreased classification performance. We therefore developed a calibration routine to counteract the neuronal variance.

References

[1] Schmuker, M. and Schneider, G. (2007). Processing and classification of chemical data inspired by insect olfaction. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 104, 20285-20289. 
[2] Brüderle, D., Bill, J., Kaplan, B., Kremkow, J., Meier, K., Müller, E. and Schemmel, J. (2010). Simulator-like exploration of cortical network architectures with a mixed-signal VLSi system. In Proc. of IEEE Intern. Symp. on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2784–8787

Meeting Minutes of the Consistory of the First Reformed Church

At a meeting of the consistory of the First Reformed Church at which Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte presided, the resignation of the clerk, Gerrit Wakker, was accepted. He had served for many years as clerk of consistory but due to domestic conflict with his wife, he felt he had to resign. Two elders were appointed to look into this offensive situation. J. Schrader was chosen as clerk.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1860s/1471/thumbnail.jp

Kufor-Rakeb syndrome, pallido-pyramidal degeneration with supranuclear upgaze paresis and dementia, maps to 1p36

Kufor-Rakeb syndrome is an autosomal recessive nigro-striatal-pallidal-pyramidal neurodegeneration. The onset is in the teenage years with clinical features of Parkinson’s disease plus spasticity, supranuclear upgaze paresis, and dementia. Brain scans show atrophy of the globus pallidus and pyramids and, later, widespread cerebral atrophy. We report linkage in Kufor- Rakeb syndrome to a 9 cM region of chromosome 1p36 delineated by the markers D1S436 and D1S2843, with a maximum multipoint lod score of 3.6. (J Med Genet 2001;38:680–682

A feasibility study of ortho-positronium decays measurement with the J-PET scanner based on plastic scintillators

We present a study of the application of the Jagiellonian Positron Emission Tomograph (J-PET) for the registration of gamma quanta from decays of ortho-positronium (o-Ps). The J-PET is the first positron emission tomography scanner based on organic scintillators in contrast to all current PET scanners based on inorganic crystals. Monte Carlo simulations show that the J-PET as an axially symmetric and high acceptance scanner can be used as a multi-purpose detector well suited to pursue research including e.g. tests of discrete symmetries in decays of ortho-positronium in addition to the medical imaging. The gamma quanta originating from o-Ps decay interact in the plastic scintillators predominantly via the Compton effect, making the direct measurement of their energy impossible. Nevertheless, it is shown in this paper that the J-PET scanner will enable studies of the o-Ps$\to3\gamma$ decays with angular and energy resolution equal to $\sigma(\theta) \approx 0.4^{\circ}$ and $\sigma(E) \approx 4.1$ keV, respectively. An order of magnitude shorter decay time of signals from plastic scintillators with respect to the inorganic crystals results not only in better timing properties crucial for the reduction of physical and instrumental background, but also suppresses significantly the pileups, thus enabling compensation of the lower efficiency of the plastic scintillators by performing measurements with higher positron source activities

Social capital, regional governance and economic performance of rural areas - concept and empirical evidence from case studies in East and West Germany

During the last two decades the economic and social conditions of rural areas in Europe have become more and more varying in accordance with different development processes. In addition to ?traditional? location factors such as infrastructure, conditions of labour markets and accessibility, so-called ?soft? location factors like social capital, regional governance and the role of local actor networks have increasingly been taken into consideration in recent studies to explain observable differences in economic performance of the regions. The paper is mainly focussed on the relationships between social capital and governance at the regional level from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Complementary to the well-known concept of social capital the term ?regional governance? is used in the sense of weakly institutionalised and network-oriented modes of co-operation between regional actors to achieve common goals. The properties of the concept will be discussed in relation to other "soft" location factors of rural economic development. The approach is developed on the basis of empirical findings drawn from a number of pair-wise comparisons of differing rural areas in terms of economic performance. The results of the case study analysis are referring to selected rural areas in the eastern and western parts of Germany. The data are derived from business surveys and computerised network analysis, which have been elaborated as the German part of an EU-funded research project regarding dynamics of rural areas (DORA). After explaining the case study approach and clarifying the definition and theoretical properties of ?regional governance? an operational conception of indicators for characterising the term in relation to social capital embodied by formal (professional-related) and informal (private-related) types of local actor networks will be presented with regard to regional-economic analysis. Differing location conditions and socio-economic contexts are taken into account. Furthermore, expert interviews with local/regional actors as well as findings derived from postal business surveys serve as information bases for the investigation. From the comparison of the two regions and their path-depending contextual properties the following conclusion can be derived: existing regional differences regarding the quality of regional governance in combination with the accumulated stock of social capital can contribute considerably to the explanation of differing development paths under similar context conditions. Therefore, the structural elements of governance at the regional and local levels of decision making should be more strongly taken into account for impact assessment of rural development policy.

Engaging with farmers as entrepreneurs and partners: experiences with a self-assessment tool for farmer'organisations (FORCE)

Governments, donors and companies increasingly perceive small farmers and their organisations as development actors and business partners. A practical self-assessment tool, 'Farmers Organizations Reviewing Capacities and Entrepreneurship' (FORCE), takes up the challenge to translate the recognition of farmers' agency into operational practices. we demonstrate that FORCE is an effective tool to quickly map how farmers perceive their organisation and business relations. Self-assessment results of farmer groups in coastal Kenya illustrate how the tool is applied and how farmers' views are plotted in easily understandable scores and graphs

Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God

I have two main goals in this paper. The first is to argue for the thesis that Kant gave up on his highest good argument for the existence of God around 1800. The second is to revive a dialogue about this thesis that died out in the 1960s. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I reconstruct Kant’s highest good argument. In the second, I turn to the post-1800 convolutes of Kant’s Opus postumum to discuss his repeated claim that there is only one way to argue for the existence of God, a way which resembles the highest good argument only in taking the moral law as its starting point. In the third, I explain why I do not find the counterarguments to my thesis introduced in the 1960s persuasive