29,583 research outputs found

    Early detection of dry bubble disease in Agaricus bisporus using volatile compounds

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    Lecanicillium fungicola is a pathogen of the commercial white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) and is the causal agent of dry bubble disease, which can cause severe economic losses to mushroom growers. Volatile compounds were measured by GC/MS techniques over pure cultures of mycelia on agars, over microcosms of growing mushrooms, and over harvested mushrooms to identify compounds that might give an early warning of the disease. The mushroom strain tested was Agaricus bisporus, strain Sylvan A15; either deliberately infected with L. fungicola or water as a control. Over microcosms, the appearance of β-copaene, β-cubebene, and ι-cedrene coincided with, but did not precede, the earliest visual signs of the disease. Mushrooms with dry bubble symptoms also had high levels of β barbatene and an unknown diterpene (UK 1821). Over some harvested mushroom sets, high levels of cis-ι-bisabolene developed as a defence reaction to infection

    The pathos of finitude: Ordinariness, solitude, and individuality in non-philosophy

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    Although sometimes construed as a mere negation of philosophical discourse, François Laruelle maintains that there is a positive side to his project of “non-philosophy.” Often, this takes the form of a defense of the “ordinary man” [sic], a faceless individual, without qualities, defined by their absolute finitude. Laruelle claims to articulate a rigorous science of man, capable of thinking the human individual in their essence, outside the philosophical interpellation to which they are usually submitted. This science intends to finally break apart the post-Kantian empirico-transcendental doublet, which is, for Laruelle, emblematic of the divided, fragmented, and alienated figures with which philosophy has always (mis)represented man. It does this by striving to relinquish all empirical and figural content in the name of an uncompromising formalism – a purely transcendental method. And yet, in spite of this intention, a preoccupation with subjective finitude, and the pathos derived from it, is both retained and amplified, describing an invariably fraught relationship between the ordinary man and the extraordinary world furnished by philosophy. Ultimately, non-philosophy offers less a science of ordinary individuals, and more an ethos for academic philosophers, guiding its readers toward a specific subject position, achieved through an ongoing labor of abstraction

    Neighbourhood Policing: Context, Practices and Challenges

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    Neighbourhood policing has been called the “cornerstone of British policing” but changing demand, pressures on funding and the cyclical nature of political support mean that this approach is under considerable pressure. Locating neighbourhood policing in its social and political context, the book investigates whether this UK model - intended to build confidence and legitimacy - has been successful. Exploring effective policing strategies and the importance of funding and philosophical support, it concludes with an assessment of the model’s future, and the challenges that it needs to overcome

    Novel externalities

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    Novel externalities are social activities for which the emerging cost (or benefit) of the spillover is unknown and must be discovered. Negative novel externalities have regained international salience following the COVID-19 pandemic. Such cases frequently are invoked as evidence of the limits of liberal political economy for dealing with public emergencies. Through a re-reading of classical political economy with the modern state’s confrontation with infectious disease in mind, we defend the comparative efficacy of liberal democracy against authoritarian alternatives for coping with these social problems. Effective responses to novel externalities require producing and updating trustworthy public information and an independent scientific community to validate and interpret it. Those epistemic capacities are prevalent in liberal democratic regimes with multiple sources of political power, an independent civil society, and practices of academic freedom. Our analysis highlights the theoretical value of polycentrism and self-governance beyond their more familiar role of increasing accountability and competition in the provision of local public goods and facilitating effective national policy

    Militant aesthetics: art activism in the 21st century

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    Militant Aesthetics explores the world of militant art activism in the 21st Century. This book draws on over a decade of research that includes interviews with many of the artists featured in the book, including Etcétera (Argentina), Public Movement (Israel), The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (UK), and Voina (Russia). These artists provide the basis for much of the original material and strongly inform the analyses of the case studies in this book. Militant Aesthetics introduces the concept of ‘dialectical ethicism’, which synthesizes arguments from analytic philosophy of art, the debate between Theodor Adorno and Jean-Paul Sartre about politically committed art, and Jacques Rancière's notion of the 'double effect'. Martin Lang uses the result to create a unique aesthetic framework for judging art that is both aesthetically autonomous and politically committed and which contains a dialectical tension between these two positions. He argues that militant art is ‘militant’ because it believes in the possibility of radical political change. This type of art goes against the prevailing contemporary micro-politics that seeks to make minor tweaks to improve specific issues, but which does not dare to challenge or even imagine an alternative to neoliberalism. Consequently, militant art is macro-political and targets corporations, institutions (including the police, the UN and the G8), and even national governments. Lang proposes that militant art is ‘aesthetic’ because it makes anaesthetized subjects deeply feel the world again. He reasons that it is this aesthetic aspect, more than the politically committed part within dialectical ethicism, that contains the potential to expose a given target as dysfunctional or absurd. When this happens, militant art demonstrates how the apparently necessary and inevitable order of things is merely contingent and makes what was previously deemed impossible seem attainable. Militant Aesthetics offers a fresh perspective on the role of art in political activism, making it a must-read for scholars, students, and practitioners of art and politics

    Italian entrepreneurial decision-making under lockdown: the path to resilience

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    Purpose – This study addresses current research gaps by integrating resilience literature with crisis management theories, focusing on SMEs. Specifically, we examine how the entrepreneurial decision-making process, via the interplay of causation and effectuation logic, impacts a firm’s ability to respond to unpredictable events. Our investigation seeks to unearth the potentially complex interplay between causation and effectuation logic in fostering organisational resilience, particularly in the face of unprecedented disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach – This study includes the responses of 80 Italian entrepreneurs operating in the hospitality sector. The paper deployed a joint analysis through a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling technique (PLS-SEM) and a Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) to assess how the decision-making logics impact the entrepreneurs’ decision when reacting to the pandemic. Findings – The findings show that how entrepreneurs make decisions influence how they react to the crisis. Causation was found as a direct cause of resilience and preparedness, and effectuation was a direct cause of resilience and agility. Moreover, causation indirectly caused resilience through preparedness, and effectuation indirectly caused resilience through agility. Finally, both preparedness and agility are direct causes of resilience. Practical implications – Our research generated insights into why and how some SMEs respond more effectively to uncertainty than others. It provides actionable strategies that business owners and managers can employ to enhance their ability to withstand and recover from crises. Originality – This study’s originality and novelty lie in its empirical investigation of the roles of causation and effectuation logic in entrepreneurial decision-making and, consequently, their influence on SME resilience. Focused on the Italian hospitality sector, it provides unique insights into resilience strategies under severe, real-world conditions, contributing to theoretical development and practical applications in crisis management

    Self-regulatory processes in goal striving during excellent distance-running performances: A qualitative study

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    Objective: Goal setting can improve endurance performance, yet how endurance performers maintain goal striving and bring it to a successful close has received limited attention. In this study, we investigated the self-regulatory processes employed by long-distance runners during goal striving in excellent competitive performances. Method: Through in-depth, event-focused interviews, we explored 21 long-distance runners’ experiences of goal striving in excellent competitive performances (M = 77.43 hours post-race). Furthermore, we recruited 10 additional participants with relevant experiences (runner n = 7, coach n = 2; sport psychologist n = 1) for external member-reflection interviews. Findings: Through our matrix analysis, we interpreted that by contrasting their current and future goal status periodically throughout their excellent performances, using a process called mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII), this helped the runners to make decisions about whether to persist with a goal, or disengage from a goal and reengage with an alternative. Furthermore, our findings depict how these goal decisions unfolded when runners perceived they were behind, equalling, or exceeding their goal(s). We also illustrate how goal revision was used as an adaptive process to maximise performance, and to avert or manage action crises. Conclusions: Our findings extend theoretical understandings of goal striving and the self-regulatory processes endurance performers employ to attain and/or adapt their goals. Psychological support provided for athletes should go beyond simply setting goals, but also include training on mental frameworks such as MCII to manage goal-striving challenges and decisional conflict encountered during performances

    CSR Communication

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    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is considered a “fuzzy concept” because it lacks conceptual clarity. Typically, CSR communication is approached as a dichotomous category: a message is either related to CSR or not. However, there is no clear definition of what type(s) of content count as CSR-related communication and what is the cut-off point that separates a message that relates to CSR and one that does not. For effective CSR, which is defined by its voluntary nature and societal benefits, continuous communication and engagement are necessary. CSR communication facilitates, restores and renews relationships with both internal and external stakeholders and enhances brand loyalty and equity. Despite the increased use of modern communication technology, traditional CSR reporting is still essential and continues to develop as a CSR communication tool with the advent of more stringent reporting standards, third-party assurance and enhanced quality and production values. But CSR communication as a discipline is still developing. Answers to some central questions, like the very definition of the concept, remain elusive and there are several issues hotly contended

    LACTA: A Lightweight and Accurate Algorithm for Cherry Tomato Detection in Unstructured Environments

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    Developing cherry tomato detection algorithms for selective harvesting robots faces many challenges due to the influence of various environmental factors such as lighting, water mist, overlap, and occlusion. To this end, we present LACTA, a lightweight and accurate cherry tomato detection algorithm specifically designed for harvesting robot operation in complex environments. Our approach enhances the model’s generalization ability and robustness by selectively expanding the original dataset using a combination of offline and online data augmentation strategies. To effectively capture the small target features of cherry tomatoes, we construct an adaptive feature extraction network (AFEN) that focuses on extracting pertinent feature information to enhance the identification ability. Additionally, the proposed cross-layer feature fusion network (CFFN) preserves the model’s lightweight nature while obtaining richer feature representations. Finally, the integration of efficient decoupled heads (EDH) further enhances the model’s detection performance. Experimental results demonstrate the adaptability and robustness of LACTA, achieving precision, recall, and mAP values of 94%, 92.5%, and 97.3%, respectively. Compared to the original dataset, the offline-online combined data augmentation strategy improves precision, recall, and mAP by 1.6%, 1.7%, and 1.1%, respectively. The AFEN + CFFN network structure significantly reduces computational complexity by 28% and number of parameters by 72%. With a compact size of only 2.88M, the LACTA model can be seamlessly deployed into selective harvesting robots for the automated harvesting of cherry tomatoes in greenhouses. The code is available at https://github.com/ruyounuo/LACT

    UROS Origami project

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    This is for data produced by my Origami project with Ewan Dalgliesh; initially, diagrams for each of the 2-fold axioms defined by Alperin and Lang. If more data is produced later, it will be added
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