The results of a previous study (Craig & Lipp, 2018) into the effects of multiple social category cues (face race and face sex) on facial emotion recognition indicate that face sex dominates face race, and moreover, participant sex differences contribute little to the observed effects. Here, I modelled the same dataset (https://osf.io/rsmxb/) using the ex-Gaussian, a distribution that is 1) well suited to RT data and 2) separates slow from relatively fast influences. Corroborating recent results (Tipples, 2022) current results (...) show larger effects of face sex (for the faces of White individuals) for female participants. Further novel interaction effects were revealed. For example, results support a different time course for the influence of face sex on expression for the faces of Black compared to White individuals. (shrink)

Determining the nature of binding in grapheme-color synaesthesia has consequences for understanding the neural basis of synaesthesia and visual awareness in general. We evaluated type- and token-based letter-color binding using a synaesthetic version of the object-reviewing paradigm. Although mean response times failed to reveal any significant differences between synaesthetes and control participants, RT analyses with ex-Gaussian distributions revealed that the response facilitation in the synaesthesia group reflected type representations exclusively, while response facilitation in the control group, who learned letter-color (...) associations, was dominated by token representations. Thus, letter-color associations in associator synaesthetes are type-based, and do not involve binding to object tokens, consistent with their subjective reports. Contrary to recent studies that failed to find differences between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes with behavioral measures, response time distribution analyses indicate that color sensations in synaesthetes are not simply the extreme form of normal letter-color associations, and cannot be attributed to demand characteristics. (shrink)

Concern about air-quality in urban areas has led to the implementation of Low Emission Zones as one of many other initiatives to control it. Recently in Spain, the enactment of a law made this mandatory for cities with a population larger than 50k inhabitants. The delimitation of these areas is not without controversy because of possible negative economic and social impacts. Therefore, clear assessments of how these initiatives decrease pollutant concentrations are to be provided. Madrid Central is a major initiative (...) of Madrid city council for reducing motor traffic and the associated air pollution in the city centre. This Low Emission Zone starts at the end of 2018, but the first fully-operational period corresponds to the second quarter of 2019. In this work, a methodology based on the Gaussian Process to analyse the evolution of Nitrogen Dioxide inside Madrid Central is undertaken. A Gaussian Process is a stochastic process suitable for interpretable model selection and predictions. Due to its probabilistic nature it provides error estimation at predictions. After the activation of Madrid Central, a relevant reduction of Nitrogen Dioxide has been observed. However, the role of the meteorology during this period must be ascertained to correctly evaluate the role of the activation of the Low Emission Zone against a prone weather. In this work, a model based on the Gaussian Process is trained with meteorological information to predict the concentration of Nitrogen Dioxide at Madrid Central, $[NO_{2}]$. This probabilistic description allows extracting statistical information on the reduction affected by the meteorological scenario and separately by the Madrid Central activation. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an adaptive Gaussian incremental expectation stadium parameter estimation algorithm for sports video analysis and prediction through the study and analysis of sports videos. The features with more discriminative power are selected from the set of positive and negative templates using a feature selection mechanism, and a sparse discriminative model is constructed by combining a confidence value metric strategy. The sparse generative model is constructed by combining L1 regularization and subspace representation, which retains sufficient representational (...) power while dealing with outliers. To overcome the shortcomings of the traditional multiplicative fusion mechanism, this paper proposes an adaptive selection mechanism based on Euclidean distance, which aims to detect deteriorating models in time during the dynamic tracking process and adopt corresponding strategies to construct more reasonable likelihood functions. Based on the Bayesian citation framework, the adaptive selection mechanism is used to combine the sparse discriminative model and the sparse generative model. Also, different online updating strategies are adopted for the template set and Principal Component Analysis subspace to alleviate the drift problem while ensuring that the algorithm can adapt to the changes of target appearance in the dynamic tracking environment. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the experimental results, it is verified that the algorithm proposed in this paper has stronger robustness compared with other classical algorithms. Our proposed visual object tracking algorithm not only outperforms existing visual object tracking algorithms in terms of accuracy, success rate, accuracy, and robustness but also achieve the performance required for real-time tracking in terms of execution speed on the central processing unit. This paper provides an in-depth analysis and discussion of the adaptive Gaussian incremental expectation stadium parameter estimation algorithm for sports video analysis. Using a variety of county-level algorithms for analysis and multiple solutions to improve the accuracy of the results, we obtain a more efficient and accurate algorithm. (shrink)

An intervention may have an effect on units other than those to which it was administered. This phenomenon is called interference and it usually goes unmodeled. In this paper, we propose to combine Lauritzen-Wermuth-Frydenberg and Andersson-Madigan-Perlman chain graphs to create a new class of causal models that can represent both interference and non-interference relationships for Gaussian distributions. Specifically, we define the new class of models, introduce global and local and pairwise Markov properties for them, and prove their equivalence. We (...) also propose an algorithm for maximum likelihood parameter estimation for the new models, and report experimental results. Finally, we show how to compute the effects of interventions in the new models. (shrink)

In the data collection phase, the digital images are captured using sensors that often contaminated by noise (undesired random signal). In digital image processing task, enhancing the image quality and reducing the noise is a central process. Image denoising effectively preserves the image edges to a higher extend in the flat regions. Several adaptive filters (median filter, Gaussian filter, fuzzy filter, etc.) have been utilized to improve the smoothness of digital image, but these filters failed to preserve the image (...) edges while removing noise. In this paper, a modified fuzzy set filter has been proposed to eliminate noise for restoring the digital image. Usually in fuzzy set filter, sixteen fuzzy rules are generated to find the noisy pixels in the digital image. In modified fuzzy set filter, a set of twenty-four fuzzy rules are generated with additional four pixel locations for determining the noisy pixels in the digital image. The additional eight fuzzy rules ease the process of finding the image pixels,whether it required averaging or not. In this scenario, the input digital images were collected from the underwater photography fish dataset. The efficiency of the modified fuzzy set filter was evaluated by varying degrees of Gaussian noise (0.01, 0.03, and 0.1 levels of Gaussian noise). For performance evaluation, Structural Similarity (SSIM), Mean Structural Similarity (MSSIM), Mean Square Error (MSE), Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE), Universal Image Quality Index (UIQI), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Visual Information Fidelity (VIF) were used. The experimental results showed that the modified fuzzy set filter improved PSNR value up to 2-3 dB, MSSIM up to 0.12-0.03, and NMSE value up to 0.38-0.1 compared to the traditional filtering techniques. (shrink)

Effective feature representation is the key to success of machine learning applications. Recently, many feature learning models have been proposed. Among these models, the Gaussian process latent variable model for nonlinear feature learning has received much attention because of its superior performance. However, most of the existing GPLVMs are mainly designed for classification and regression tasks, thus cannot be used in data clustering task. To address this issue and extend the application scope, this paper proposes a novel GPLVM for (...) clustering. Specifically, by combining GPLVM with the subspace clustering method, our C-GPLVM can obtain more representative latent variable for clustering. Moreover, it can directly predict the new samples by introducing a back constraint in the model, thus being more suitable for big data learning tasks such as analysis of chaotic time series and so on. In the experiment, we compare it with the related GPLVMs and clustering algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed model not only inherits the feature learning ability of GPLVM but also has superior clustering accuracy. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum total (...) of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)

According to contractualist theories in ethics, whether an action is wrong is determined by whether it could be justified to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. Contractualists then think that reasonable rejectability of principles depends on the strength of the personal objections individuals can make to them. There is, however, a deep disagreement between contractualists concerning from which temporal perspective the relevant objections to different principles are to be made. Are they to be made on the basis of (...) the prospects the principles give to different individuals ex ante or on the basis of the outcomes of the principles ex post? Both answers have been found to be problematic. The ex ante views make irrelevant information about personal identity morally significant and lead to objectionable ex ante rules, whereas ex post views lead to counterintuitive results in the so-called different harm and social risk imposition cases. The aim of this article is to provide a new synthesis of these views that can avoid the problems of the previous alternatives. I call the proposal ‘risk-acknowledging’ ex post contractualism. The crux of the view is to take into account in the comparisons of different objections both the realized harms and the risks under which individuals have to live. (shrink)

The concept of ‘pareto superiority’ plays a central role in ethics, economics, and law. Pareto superiority is sometimes taken as a relation between outcomes, and sometimes as a relation between actions—even where the outcomes of the actions are uncertain. Whether one action is classed as (ex ante) pareto superior to another depends on the prospects under the actions for each person concerned. I argue that a person’s prospects (in this context) can depend on how that person is designated. Without any (...) constraints on acceptable designators, then, the concept of pareto superiority is ill defined and gives inconsistent results. I consider various ways of completing the definition and draw out some surprising implications. (shrink)

In this article, we extend the Bayesian nonparametric regression method Gaussian Process Regression to the analysis of longitudinal panel data. We call this new approach Gaussian Process Panel Modeling (GPPM). GPPM provides great flexibility because of the large number of models it can represent. It allows classical statistical inference as well as machine learning inspired predictive modeling. GPPM offers frequentist and Bayesian inference without the need to resort to Markov chain Monte Carlo-based approximations, which makes the approach exact (...) and fast. GPPMs are defined using the kernel-language, which can express many traditional modeling approaches for longitudinal data, such as linear structural equation models, multilevel models, or state-space models but also various commonly used machine learning approaches. As a result, GPPM is uniquely able to represent hybrid models combining traditional parametric longitudinal models and nonparametric machine learning models. In the present paper, we introduce GPPM and illustrate its utility through theoretical arguments as well as simulated and empirical data. (shrink)

This study aims to identify the necessary strategies for the development of a sustainable financial system. For this purpose, a novel approach could be provided for soft computing with Gaussian-based fuzzy DEMATEL approach to understand the significant levels and impact-relation degrees of these criteria. For robustness check, this evaluation has also been performed for triangular and trapezoidal fuzzy sets. There are many novelties of this study. Firstly, computer science has a significant role in the decision-making process. Another specificity is (...) that the use of Gaussian numbers with fuzzy numbers is a new area. In addition, interval type-2 fuzzy sets also provide a significant advantage in decision-making under uncertainty. The results demonstrate that the size of the alternative financing, investment in efficient projects, and effective advertisement/promotions are the most important items to affect the performance of alternative banking system of emerging economies. Hence, it is recommended that the new banking applications should be applied by the state or the state can provide some incentives for foreign banks to invest in emerging economies, such as tax reduction. Another important point is that the financial intermediations should generate a component financial analysis team to examine the financial reports of the companies in detail so that the financial credibility of these companies can be evaluated more effectively. (shrink)

Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to an analogous puzzle in (...) quantified epistemic logic. We also show that even if the puzzle were to remain unsolved, its impact on welfare economics and ethics would be limited. (shrink)

Individuals convicted of crimes are often subject to numerous restrictions — on housing, employment, the vote, public assistance, and other goods — well after they have completed their sentences, and in some cases permanently. The question of whether — and if so, when — ex-offender restrictions are morally permissible has received surprisingly little philosophical scrutiny. This article first examines the significance of completing punishment, of paying one's debt to society, and contends that when offenders' debts are paid, they should be (...) restored to full standing as citizens. Thus all ex-offender restrictions are presumptively unjustified. Nonconsequentialist defences of these restrictions are ultimately unsuccessful in defeating the presumption against them. In a limited range of cases, consequentialist considerations — namely, of risk reduction — may be sufficient to override the presumptive case against these restrictions. The article concludes by suggesting a number of criteria for assessing whether particular restrictive measures are permissible on grounds of risk reduction. (shrink)

Ex ante contractualism holds that in situations involving risk we ought to act in accordance with principles that license the action that satisfies the strongest individual claim, where those claims are a function of the expected value that a given policy gives each person ex ante. I here challenge ex ante contractualism on contractualist grounds. I argue that adopting ex ante contractualism would have far reaching implications that contractualists, or many nonconsequentialist in general, would find very hard to accept. I (...) conclude that to block these implications, contractualists should adopt an ex post approach to deal with decisions under risk. (shrink)

A vehicle-commodity matching problem is presented for service providers to reduce the cost of the logistics system. The vehicle classification model is built as a Gaussian mixture model, and the expectation-maximization algorithm is designed to solve the parameter estimation of GMM. A nonlinear mixed-integer programming model is constructed to minimize the total cost of VCMP. The matching process between vehicle and commodity is realized by GMM-EM, as a preprocessing of the solution. The design of the vehicle-commodity matching platform for (...) VCMP is designed to reduce and eliminate the information asymmetry between supply and demand so that the order allocation can work at the right time and the right place and use the optimal solution of vehicle-commodity matching. Furthermore, the numerical experiment of an e-commerce supply chain proves that a hybrid evolutionary algorithm is superior to the traditional method, which provides a decision-making reference for e-commerce VCMP. (shrink)

At the beginning there was an act of extraordinary generosity: when I first met Jeff at a legal semiotics conference in the early eighties, he approached me after my presentation of mostly half-baked ideas and wild conjectures, congratulating me on my visual displays, and enquiring if I should be interested in developing my work into a joint book project. In the portrait of the scholar as a young man or woman, this is the kind of turn of events I should (...) hope will happen for all my colleagues in the first, still insecure phases of their careers. I have had the honour and privilege of becoming a member of the Collegium Invisibile Semioticae with Jeff as the Decanus subtilis of this enterprise, special in many ways. In the abstract of my contribution to his festschrift colloquium I remarked that “The idea of the academy has to be recreated from nothing. Ex nihilo quodlibet: ad multos annos” — hoping for many more than the seven years that were to follow. In the following seven Paninian quodlibeta I have endeavoured to come to terms with the intellectual and existential appeal of economy and minimalism: fail, fail again, fail better. (shrink)

At the beginning there was an act of extraordinary generosity: when I first met Jeff at a legal semiotics conference in the early eighties, he approached me after my presentation of mostly half-baked ideas and wild conjectures, congratulating me on my visual displays, and enquiring if I should be interested in developing my work into a joint book project. In the portrait of the scholar as a young man or woman, this is the kind of turn of events I should (...) hope will happen for all my colleagues in the first, still insecure phases of their careers. I have had the honour and privilege of becoming a member of the Collegium Invisibile Semioticae with Jeff as the Decanus subtilis of this enterprise, special in many ways. In the abstract of my contribution to his festschrift colloquium I remarked that “The idea of the academy has to be recreated from nothing. Ex nihilo quodlibet: ad multos annos” — hoping for many more than the seven years that were to follow. In the following seven Paninian quodlibeta I have endeavoured to come to terms with the intellectual and existential appeal of economy and minimalism: fail, fail again, fail better. (shrink)

William Lane Craig claims that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is strongly supported by the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In the present paper, I critically examine Craig’s arguments for this claim. I conclude that they are unsuccessful, and that the Big Bang theory provides no support for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Even if it is granted that the universe had a “first cause,” there is no reason to think that this cause created (...) the universe out of nothing. As far as the Big Bang theory is concerned, the cause of the universe might have been what Adolf Grünbaum has called a “transformative cause”---a cause that shaped something that was “already there.”. (shrink)

This paper is part of an attempt to clarify the relationship between explanatory reasons and justificatory reasons for actions of various kinds. It draws on a distinction between two notions of rationalization, viz., ex ante and ex post rationalization, to recast the akratic case on the one hand and to explicate an adequate sense in which an explanatory but non-justificatory reason for an action rationalizes the latter on the other hand. The explication is helped by analysis of a hypothetical example, (...) and the name "quasi-rational" is legitimated for the type of actions this example represents. Last, but not least, the paper demonstrates that an implication of the argument is the falsity of one well-known principle in Davidson's action theory, i.e., the principle claiming that the (primary) reason for an action is also its cause. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 577-593 [Access article in PDF] Machina Ex Deo: William Harvey and the Meaning of Instrument Don Bates Introduction Since our clocks do consistently disclose each hour of the day and night--do they not seem to partake of another body (beyond the elements), and that more divine? But if, under the dominion and management of [our human] Art, such splendid things are (...) daily achieved beyond the powers of the objects themselves,... And if, in serving men they carry out such things as are to be marvelled at, what I ask, may we expect from them when they be instruments in the hand of God? These words come near the end of William Harvey's De generatione animalium. 1 As he does often in this work, he is arguing that it is possible for a material object to behave supra vires elementorum, i.e., in a manner that exceeds what can be explained merely from the qualities of the elements from which it is made. In fact, just before this, he argues that human craftsmanship enables the elements of air and water to make ships sail in opposite directions, fire to do one sort of thing in the kitchen, another in the shops of metal-workers, including the production of iron, which in its turn peacefully tills the soil or besieges the town in war. So if even human Art is capable of making something as wonderful as a clock out of the elements, how much more might God be able to do with them? [End Page 577]Not only is it entirely conceivable that the (divinely) artful manipulation of these same elements can account for the wonders of God's nature--such as the generation of a chick out of an egg--there is also no need to infer the existence of additional entities such as faculties, qualities, agents, and the like. All that is needed is the concept of "instrument." Today such things as his appeal to a clock, his reference to "art," and the word "instrument" itself, are liable to arouse in our minds a fairly mechanical sort of image. Therefore, we need to put this idea in its intellectual context, by looking at where Harvey's notion of instrument is coming from.First, our much more mechanical world view was just coming into being as Harvey (1578-1657) wrote these words. Although the philosophy of his younger contemporary, René Descartes (1596-1650) was not yet in full bloom (he died a year before Harvey's book appeared), Cartesianism was certainly on the explanatory horizon, 2 as was the work of another contemporary and contributor to the "new philosophy," Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). 3 And, of course, Harvey had certainly known Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 4 Nevertheless, Harvey was a devout Aristotelian who was adamantly opposed to the efforts of these contemporaries to replace Aristotle. 5 Moreover, it was from the Aristotelian tradition, not from the new mechanics, that Harvey had derived the concept of instrument.If, broadly speaking, the "new philosophy" was about a universe that was built like a clock, then the "old" natural philosophies, whether dominated by Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christian theology, or some combination, were about a universe that was socially constructed. 6 Not only was man at the center, to a large extent the workings of the universe were envisioned in terms of social experience. The regularity, predictability, harmony, and wonder of natural phenomena seemed best explained in the language of reason, moral values, motives, responsibilities, hierarchies, laws (in the social sense), and the like, explanatory resources that, in the late ancient and medieval intellectual cultures of Europe, far outweighed either those that appealed to the passively material and the mechanical, or to the random and the chance.But very central to that social model of nature was the concept of instrument, which gave to it something of a mechanical twist. To see how this was so, we need to go back temporarily to the works of Aristotle, the influence of... (shrink)

Communication and behaviour of animals living ex situ has been one of the major sources of knowledge about wild animals. Nevertheless, it is also acknowledged that depending on the environment that the animals inhabit, there are differences in their communication and behaviour. With some species it is difficult to reproduce their natural environment to an extent that excludes deviations from the behaviour and communication exhibited by animals living in situ. In zoological gardens, welfare measures are introduced in order to counteract (...) the effects of the captive environment and to grant an individual’s good physical and psychological well-being. The relation between good welfare and species-specific communication and behaviour is discussed, and as a result, a general model of ex situ animal communication and behaviour is proposed. The suggested model is inclusive of differences between captive animals and free-ranging animals and serves to explain the welfare-related reasons underlying individual animal’s deviations from species-specific behaviour and communication. (shrink)

Mathematicians use the word ‘deep’ to convey a high appreciation of a concept, theorem, or proof. This paper investigates the extent to which the term can be said to have an objective character by examining its first use in mathematics. It was a consequence of Gauss's work on number theory and the agreement among his successors that specific parts of Gauss's work were deep, on grounds that indicate that depth was a structural feature of mathematics for them. In contrast, French (...) mathematicians had a less structural, more problem-oriented approach to mathematics and did not speak of depth so readily. (shrink)

In this article, we propose a new method to learn the underlying acyclic mixed graph of a linear non-Gaussian structural equation model with given observational data. We build on an algorithm proposed by Wang and Drton, and we show that one can augment the hidden variable structure of the recovered model by learning multidirected edges rather than only directed and bidirected ones. Multidirected edges appear when more than two of the observed variables have a hidden common cause. We detect (...) the presence of such hidden causes by looking at higher order cumulants and exploiting the multi-trek rule. Our method recovers the correct structure when the underlying graph is a bow-free acyclic mixed graph with potential multidirected edges. (shrink)

This article examines the concepts of retrospective and retroactive—both forms of ex post facto—law. It shows that although the distinction between retrospective and prospective law is difficult to draw (given that laws generally alter rights), the classification of particular laws as retrospective is not arbitrary, since the proposition that only some legal rules interfere with “vested” rights is, while vague, not meaningless. Retroactive legislation is recognized to attract a long list of objections. The article seeks to identify and assess those (...) objections, and to provide a comprehensive account of the various possible (if invariably limited) justifications for retroactivity. The conclusion offers some brief reflections on why the complaint that a law operates ex post facto is less likely to be directed at a judicial decision than at a statute. (shrink)

Frances Kamm distinguishes between changes or enhancements that are made before a child exists (ex ante changes) and those that are made once a child exists (ex post changes), and she argues that ex ante changes do not show disrespect or, as Michael Sandel would put it, lack of love, for a person, since the person does not yet exist. In this paper, I argue that it is important to distinguish between ex ante enhancements that are morally neutral and those (...) that are morally dubious, and that the latter ones are morally objectionable even if the persons do not yet exist. (shrink)

Once upon a time it was assumed that speaking literally and directly is the norm and that speaking nonliterally or indirectly is the exception. The assumption was that normally what a speaker means can be read off of the meaning of the sentence he utters, and that departures from this, if not uncommon, are at least easily distinguished from normal utterances and explainable along Gricean lines. The departures were thought to be limited to obvious cases like figurative speech and conversational (...) implicature. However, people have come to appreciate that the meaning of a typical sentence, at least one we are at all likely to use, is impoverished, at least relative to what we are likely to mean in uttering it. In other words, what a speaker normally means in uttering a sentence, even without speaking figuratively or obliquely, is an enriched version of what could be predicted from the meaning of the sentence alone. This can be because the sentence expresses a “minimal” (or “skeletal”) proposition or even because it fails to express a complete proposition at all.1 Indeed, it is now a platitude that linguistic meaning generally underdetermines speaker meaning. That is, generally what a speaker means in uttering a sentence, even if the sentence is devoid of ambiguity, vagueness, or indexicality, goes beyond what the sentence means. The question is what to make of this Contextualist Platitude, as I’ll call it. It may be a truism, but does it require a radical revision of the older conception of the relation between what sentences mean and what speakers mean in uttering them? Does it lead to a major modification, or perhaps even outright rejection, of the semantic-pragmatic distinction? I think.. (shrink)

This article examines the potential implications of the implementation of artificial intelligence in health care for both its delivery and the medical profession. To this end, the first section explores the basic features of AI and the yet theoretical concept of autonomous AI followed by an overview of current and developing AI applications. Against this background, the second section discusses the transforming roles of physicians and changes in the patient–physician relationship that could be a consequence of gradual expansion of AI (...) in health care. Subsequently, an examination of the responsibilities physicians should assume in this process is explored. The third section describes conceivable practical and ethical challenges that implementation of a single all-encompassing AI healthcare system would pose. The fourth section presents arguments for regulation of AI in health care to ensure that these applications do not violate basic ethical principles and that human control of AI will be preserved in the future. In the final section, fundamental components of a moral framework from which such regulation may be derived are brought forward, and some possible strategies for building a moral framework are discussed. (shrink)

Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is that scientific uncertainty becomes a ready-made dodge for what is in reality just a difficult political decision. Interdisciplinary assessments necessary to address complex environmental policy issues invariably result in findings that are inherently contestable, especially when applied in the unrestrained realm of partisan politics. (...) In this article, the authors argue that predictive scientific assessments are inherently limited in the extent to which they can guide policy development and that rigorous scientific assessments can be much more valuable in the role of ex post policy evaluation than they can in the context of ex ante policy formulation. (shrink)

Trajectories along which phase-space points of the Wigner distribution function move are computed for a Gaussian wave packet moving under the influence of a weak perturbative potential. The potentials considered are a potential step, a potential barrier, and a periodic potential. Trajectories computed exhibit the complex, nonlocal nature of quantum dynamics. It is seen that quantum interference, which takes place in the time development of the wave packet, is taken care of in a simple way by the Wigner trajectory (...) method presented here. (shrink)