Rethinking Representation: the Challenge of Non-humans

This article argues that the standard model of political representation mischaracterises the structure of representation. After surveying the classical types of representation and their application to non-humans, the basic nature of representation is shown to have been unduly centred on interests, responsiveness and unidirectional protocols. It proposes a different structure by drawing inspiration from recent scholarship and developments in political philosophy, as well as the representation of non-human actors. It proposes an ontological grounding of representation in ‘irreducible multiplicity’, and a structural analysis based on the concepts of claim and relation. This abstract form of representation can take into account both human and non-human cases, and works to ground different typologies. The relational structure of representation creates interests and preferences, subjects and actors, power dynamics and seemingly immutable identities

The recalculation of the original pulse produced by a partial discharge

The loads on a dielectric or an insulation arrangement cannot be precisely rated without properly assessing the manner in which a pulse produced by a partial discharge is transmitted from the point of the event to the point where it is recorded. A number of analytical and graphic methods are presented, and computer simulations are used for specific cases of a few measurement circuits. It turns out to be possible to determine the effect of each circuit element and thus make some valid corrections

Toward user oriented semantic geographical information systems

User Oriented Geographical Information Systems, a recent adaptation of classical GIS concepts to everyday usage, are becoming more and more present in the web landscape. Recent developments show the need of adding higher semantic levels to the existing frameworks, to improve their usage, as well as to ease scalability. We point out limits of actual examples, related to handling heterogeneous data, scalability issues, and expressiveness, and suggest a framework for building a Semantic User Oriented GIS. Notably this framework aims to address the peculiarities of the geographical space domain, and to offer a cognitively sound interface to the user

Spatial groundings for meaningful symbols

The increasing availability of ontologies raises the need to establish relationships and make inferences across heterogeneous knowledge models. The approach proposed and supported by knowledge representation standards consists in establishing formal symbolic descriptions of a conceptualisation, which, it has been argued, lack grounding and are not expressive enough to allow to identify relations across separate ontologies. Ontology mapping approaches address this issue by exploiting structural or linguistic similarities between symbolic entities, which is costly, error-prone, and in most cases lack cognitive soundness. We argue that knowledge representation paradigms should have a better support for similarity and propose two distinct approaches to achieve it. We first present a representational approach which allows to ground symbolic ontologies by using Conceptual Spaces (CS), allowing for automated computation of similarities between instances across ontologies. An alternative approach is presented, which considers symbolic entities as contextual interpretations of processes in spacetime or Differences. By becoming a process of interpretation, symbols acquire the same status as other processes in the world and can be described (tagged) as well, which allows the bottom-up production of meaning

Towards general spatial intelligence

The goal of General Spatial Intelligence is to present a unified theory to support the various aspects of spatial experience, whether physical or cognitive. We acknowledge the fact that GIScience has to assume a particular worldview, resulting from specific positions regarding metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, mind, language, cognition and representation. Implicit positions regarding these domains may allow solutions to isolated problems but often hamper a more encompassing approach. We argue that explicitly defining a worldview allows the grounding and derivation of multi-modal models, establishing precise problems, allowing falsifiability. We present an example of such a theory founded on process metaphysics, where the ontological elements are called differences. We show that a worldview has implications regarding the nature of space and, in the case of the chosen metaphysical layer, favours a model of space as true spacetime, i.e. four-dimensionality. Finally we illustrate the approach using a scenario from psychology and AI based planning

An analysis of equity in insurance. The mathematical approach of risk of ruin for insurers

The goal of the present paper is a short analysis for the insurers’ foreign equity in Romania and the development of a mathematical approach for the chronological evolution of the study regarding the insurers’ equity from the point of view of assessing the insolvency probabilities and the risk provision so the estimating insolvency risk will not over overcome an accepted value.Insurer, broker, adjusting coefficient, overcharging factor, probability of ruin, compound Poisson repartition.

The Convergence Degree of Innovation Potential of Romanian Economy, by Comparison with the Developed Economies of the EU Member States

In this paper we analyze the convergence degree of innovation potential of Romanian economy, by comparison with the developed economies of the economical and monetary union, on one hand, and with the last wave of integration countries – in most cases, economies in process of development, therefore with an economical development trajectory like our country – on the other hand. The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is the instrument developed at the initiative of the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to evaluate and compare the innovation performance of the EU Member States. The EIS includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU Member States, plus the two new Member States: Bulgaria and Romania, as well as for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the US and Japan. The Summary Innovation Index gives an “at a glance” overview of aggregate national innovation performance. It measures 5 key innovation dimensions: Innovation drivers, Knowledge creation, Diffusion, Applications and Intellectual property.innovation; Summary Innovation Index; research; knowledge creation