Morgane Bos, Damien Claeys, Dorothée Stiernon
et al.
The concept of <i>value</i> seems to have capital importance both in the scientific literature and in various heritage actors’ professional discourse. The actions undertaken to develop the built environment inherited from previous generations seem to depend on the value we assign it. In this essay, the concepts of value, assessor, and heritage assessment are discussed. Two historical contexts are compared: the classical axiology of the 19th century based on the Enlightenment search for rationality and the typologies of contemporary values struggling with complexity. This historical reassessment shows a complexification and multiplication of evaluation grids, as well as the need to question the subjectivity inherent in heritage actors’ decisions. In order to not sink into excessive relativism definitively discrediting any attempt to make the process of heritage assessments more objective, a dynamic point of view is proposed, linking the constructivist approach with the use of a criteria-based value grid.
Abstract In response to the problem of poor imaging quality caused by amplitude and phase errors in synthetic aperture imaging, this study develops an aperture radar-assisted technology based on an array of mathematical models and statistical characteristic calculations. Two error correction algorithms, active correction and iterative self-correction, are proposed by designing error correction algorithms based on the matrix space spectrum correction error concept. Simulation experiments showed that the mean square error of the two correction algorithms has decreased by an average of 36.23% compared to before correction, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio has increased by an average of 33.43% compared to before correction. Compared with other methods, the proposed two algorithms had an average increase of 139.51% in peak signal-to-noise ratio in two-dimensional imaging. The results indicate that it is feasible to use the traditional matrix space spectral correction method for comprehensive aperture imaging error correction. The designed error correction preprocessing algorithm based on an array of mathematical models and statistical characteristic calculations can improve imaging quality, reduce the impact of amplitude and phase errors, and has positive application value in synthetic aperture imaging technology.
Calibration is a widely used method in survey sampling to adjust weights so that estimated totals of some chosen calibration variables match known population totals or totals obtained from other sources. When a large number of auxiliary variables are included as calibration variables, the variance of the total estimator can increase, and the calibration weights can become highly dispersed. To address these issues, we propose a solution inspired by bagging and principal component decomposition. With our approach, the principal components of the auxiliary variables are constructed. Several samples of calibration variables are selected without replacement and with unequal probabilities from among the principal components. For each sample, a system of weights is obtained. The final weights are the average weights of these different weighting systems. With our proposed method, it is possible to calibrate exactly for some of the main auxiliary variables. For the other auxiliary variables, the weights cannot be calibrated exactly. The proposed method allows us to obtain a total estimator whose variance does not explode when new auxiliary variables are added and to obtain very low scatter weights. Finally, our proposed method allows us to obtain a single weighting system that can be applied to several variables of interest of a survey.
The study of microorganisms, or microbiology, has demonstrated significant development since its inception and is currently a key field of biological sciences that has a huge impact on modern society and scientific research. Over the centuries, this discipline has undergone significant changes, shaping our understanding of infectious diseases and food safety. Starting from the simplest observations of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa, and ending with modern molecular and genomic research methods. This article describes a brief historical path of microbiology development. The heuristic, morphological, physiological, immunological, and molecular genetic stages are the main periods into which the development of this science is traditionally divided, despite the lack of full-fledged and precise boundaries between them.
Clinical trials often collect data on multiple outcomes, such as overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and response to treatment (RT). In most cases, however, study designs only use primary outcome data for interim and final decision-making. In several disease settings, clinically relevant outcomes, for example OS, become available years after patient enrollment. Moreover, the effects of experimental treatments on OS might be less pronounced compared to auxiliary outcomes such as RT. We develop a Bayesian decision-theoretic framework that uses both primary and auxiliary outcomes for interim and final decision-making. The framework allows investigators to control standard frequentist operating characteristics, such as the type I error rate and can be used with auxiliary outcomes from emerging technologies, such as circulating tumor assays. False positive rates and other frequentist operating characteristics are rigorously controlled without any assumption about the concordance between primary and auxiliary outcomes. We discuss algorithms to implement this decision-theoretic approach and show that incorporating auxiliary information into interim and final decision-making can lead to relevant efficiency gains according to established and interpretable metrics.
Symbols play a crucial role in various domains, serving as conveyors of meaning through concrete signs with abstract significance. In some periods, it is seen that certain symbols stand out uniquely to that period and some symbols are used repeatedly or transformed throughout history. It is very difficult to reach definite conclusions about the origin of symbols in the history of art. However, the external and internal factors that influence the art, of course, shape the symbols that the work contains, as well as the work. A work of art, which is the product of a collective process is affected by many conditions such as the social environment, economy, material supply, geographical variables, the government, the wishes of the administrator and the artist, the understanding and style of art of the period, religion and sacred elements, the artist’s experience and inner world. The work, which is formed by selection among all these variables is a cornerstone of the general art style. Anatolian Medieval art can be interpreted as the art of societies, not the art of individuals like modern art. In this respect, in Turkish art and symbolism, where the state, religion and social powers come to the fore, these mentioned elements appear as the dominant and guiding power. Should the idea of “abstract symbolic style” be mentioned in Turkish art? Which factors influenced art and style? What is the place of stamps in the transformation of ancient symbols into art? In this study, answers to these questions and problems are sought.
Véronique Brunet, Ginette Auxiette, Laura Berrio
et al.
The preventive archaeological excavation of Saint-Julien-lès-Metz took place some twenty years ago, and the artefacts were completely restudied following the publication of this relatively well-preserved site. The site as a whole illustrates three Neolithic periods from sometimes unprecedented angles, and represents a major contribution to our understanding of village communities in Lorraine. The three recognised settlements span the 5th to 3rd millennia and are separated by chronological gaps. The first documented occupation dates back to the first part of the Middle Neolithic. The main features of this period are two buildings and a succession of polylobed pits, typical of sites from the Grossgartach culture. They provide an unprecedented vision of a structured plateau settlement. The second is dated to the second half of the Middle Neolithic. A sequence of polylobed pits is the only remaining feature of a Bischheim settlement. These structures are recurrent features on contemporaneous Lorraine sites. The last occupation dates from the Final Neolithic. A combustion structure and a silo are the only remaining elements of a probable Bell Beaker settlement.
Covariance matrix estimation is an important task in the analysis of multivariate data in disparate scientific fields. However, modern scientific data are often incomplete due to factors beyond the control of researchers, and traditional methods may only yield incomplete covariance matrix estimates. For example, it is impossible to obtain a complete sample covariance matrix if some variable pairs have no joint observations. We propose a novel approach, AuxCov, which exploits auxiliary variables to produce complete covariance matrix estimates from structurally incomplete data. In neuroscience, an example of an auxiliary variable is the distance between neurons, which is typically inversely related to the strength of the neuronal correlation. AuxCov estimates the relationship between the observed correlations and the auxiliary variables via regression, and uses it to predict the missing correlation estimates and to regularize the observed ones. We implement AuxCov using parametric and nonparametric regression methods, and propose procedures for tuning parameter selection and uncertainty quantification. We evaluate the performance of AuxCov through simulations and in the analysis of large-scale neuroscience data.
Accurately estimating the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of a speech source using a compact microphone array (CMA) is often complicated by background noise and reverberation. A commonly used DOA estimation method is the steered response power with phase transform (SRP-PHAT) function, which has been shown to work reliably in moderate levels of noise and reverberation. Since for closely spaced microphones the spatial coherence of noise and reverberation may be high over an extended frequency range, this may negatively affect the SRP-PHAT spectra, resulting in DOA estimation errors. Assuming the availability of an auxiliary microphone at an unknown position which is spatially separated from the CMA, in this paper we propose to compute the SRP-PHAT spectra between the microphones of the CMA based on the SRP-PHAT spectra between the auxiliary microphone and the microphones of the CMA. For different levels of noise and reverberation, we show how far the auxiliary microphone needs to be spatially separated from the CMA for the auxiliary microphone-based SRP-PHAT spectra to be more reliable than the SRP-PHAT spectra without the auxiliary microphone. These findings are validated based on simulated microphone signals for several auxiliary microphone positions and two different noise and reverberation conditions.
Water is a very abundant molecule in star-forming regions. Its deuterium fractionation is an important tool for understanding its formation and evolution during the star and planet formation processes. While the HDO/H$_2$O ratio has been determined toward several Class 0 protostars and comets, the number of studies toward Class I protostars is limited. We aim to study the water deuteration toward the Class I binary protostar L1551 IRS5 and to investigate the effect of evolutionary stage and environment on variations in the water D/H ratio. Observations were made using the NOEMA interferometer. The HDO 3$_{1,2}$-2$_{2,1}$ transition at 225.9 GHz and the H$_2^{18}$O 3$_{1,3}$-2$_{2,0}$ transition at 203.4 GHz were covered with a spatial resolution of 0.5'' $\times$ 0.8'', while the HDO 4$_{2,2}$-4$_{2,3}$ transition at 143.7 GHz was observed with a resolution of 2.0'' $\times$ 2.5''. We used both LTE and non-LTE models. The three transitions are detected. The line profiles display two peaks, one at $\sim$6 km s$^{-1}$ and one at $\sim$9 km s$^{-1}$. We derive an HDO/H$_2$O ratio of (2.1 $\pm$ 0.8) $\times$ 10$^{-3}$ for the redshifted component and a lower limit of $>$ 0.3 $\times$ 10$^{-3}$ for the blueshifted component due to the blending with the redshifted CH$_3$OCH$_3$ emission. The HDO/H$_2$O in L1551 IRS5 is similar to the ratios in isolated Class 0 sources and to the Class I V883 Ori, while it is significantly higher than in the clustered Class 0 sources and the comets. This suggests that the chemistry of protostars in low source densities clouds share more similarities with the isolated sources than the protostars of very dense clusters. If Class 0 protostars with few sources around and isolated Class 0 objects are comparable in the HDO/H$_2$O ratio, it would mean that there is little water reprocessing from the Class 0 to Class I protostellar stage.
Malte B. Holtershinken, Pia Lange, Tim Erdbrugger
et al.
EDIT: A revised version of this article has been published in the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, see https://epubs.siam.org/doi/full/10.1137/23M1582874. In the revised version, the name of the approach was changed from"localized subtraction"to"local subtraction". In FEM-based EEG and MEG source analysis, the subtraction approach has been proposed to simulate sensor measurements generated by neural activity. While this approach possesses a rigorous foundation and produces accurate results, its major downside is that it is computationally prohibitively expensive in practical applications. To overcome this, we developed a new approach, called the local subtraction approach. This approach is designed to preserve the mathematical foundation of the subtraction approach, while also leading to sparse right-hand sides in the FEM formulation, making it efficiently computable. We achieve this by introducing a cut-off into the subtraction, restricting its influence to the immediate neighborhood of the source. In this work, this approach will be presented, analyzed, and compared to other state-of-the-art FEM right-hand side approaches. We perform validation in multi-layer sphere models where analytical solutions exist. There, we demonstrate that the local subtraction approach is vastly more efficient than the subtraction approach. Moreover, we find that for the EEG forward problem, the local subtraction approach is less dependent on the global structure of the FEM mesh when compared to the subtraction approach. Additionally, we show the local subtraction approach to rival, and in many cases even surpass, the other investigated approaches in terms of accuracy. For the MEG forward problem, we show the local subtraction approach and the subtraction approach to produce highly accurate approximations of the volume currents close to the source.
Among the famous Ukrainian scientists, prominent teachers, educators, public figures of the first half of the twentieth century a worthy place is occupied by Gryhoriy Gryhorovych Vashchenko (1878–1967), an outstanding representative of Ukrainian culture, statesman and public figure, writer, scientist-educator with his own understanding of ways to reform national education and school, teacher-practitioner, whose pedagogical heritage is more than 100 works and deserves in-depth study.Generalization and systematization of scientific research of historical and pedagogical direction of the late XX - early XXI centuries allow us to say that the figure, activity and scientific and theoretical heritage of Gryhoriy Vashchenko have become the subject of in-depth analysis, have caused discussion among scientists and the public. The aim of the article is to single out the main directions of elaboration of the researched problem of the pedagogical figure on the example of the outstanding Ukrainian teacher of the XX century Gryhoriy Vashchenko.To understand the origins of the formation of worldviews of the teacher, sound, consistent study of the chosen topic, we turn to sources: 1) which cover the history of formation and development of pedagogical thought, which influenced the formation of his original pedagogical position, ideas, beliefs; 2) which reflect socio-political, socio-economic changes in the history of Ukraine; 3) which contain methodological approaches, criteria for studying the problem; 4) which reflect the activities of the scientist, full of promising innovative searches, achievements in the development of non-standard approaches to upbringing, personal education, aimed at improving methods of teaching and educating young people; 5) historical and pedagogical researches of the times of independence of Ukraine, the authors of which fragmentarily investigated separate directions of activity of the scientist. The available source base allowed us to identify nine areas of elaboration of the researched problem: philosophical-methodological, historical-narrative, scientific-personalistic, historical-pedagogical, general-didactic, spiritual-conceptual, axiological-generalizing, archival-integrative, auxiliary-integration.In the course of the research it was established that G. Vashchenko first of all addressed the world history of pedagogical systems, understood the process of building the national education system as an extremely difficult and responsible task, called to take into account the experience of Ukraine’s education system during “the tsarist period”, and “bilshovyk rule”, and during the short and bright period of the “renaissance of Ukrainian education and schooling”, which fell, according to the teacher himself, in 1917–1923. G. Vashchenko was also convinced that it is necessary to use in a building of a national education system better achievements of Western Europe and America. Such a well-founded approach to the education of the scientist-statesman, which the historian of pedagogy and a contemporary of the reflected events left a rich and valuable factual material, was dictated by the care and love for his people. G. Vashchenko, based on research in the field of pedagogy and psychology of domestic and foreign scientists (V. Vakhterov, J. Dewey, P. Kapterev, V. Lay, P. Lesgaft, M. Montessori, G. Skovoroda, K. Ushinsky, etc.), enriched the domestic pedagogical science. His scientific proposals on ways to form a creative personality, the introduction of subject-subject relations in education, the processes of humanization, nationalization and democratization of education, the development of education are especially important today - during the development of the national school, revision of education, introduction of new forms and learning technologies.The concept of spiritual and moral education of youth, created by G. Vashchenko, now needs its awareness for the events of the early XXI century. The research does not cover all aspects of the problem and requires further study of the pedagogical heritage of G. Vashchenko.
The modern scientific revolution has imposed on the researcher to broaden his view by referring to more than one science in addressing his research issues, and in the light of the contemporary ideological debate that the unspoken and the accepted are recognized to without the slightest prestige, it is necessary to discuss what these debates erupt with objectivity and impartiality. The issue of the historical existence of the Qur’anic events, which was taken - according to Arab modernists - from the school of archaeological criticism of the Bible as an example, and since the prevailing belief among Muslims is the infallibility of the Holy Qur’an from distortion and falsification through recurrent and because it contained - equivalent to a third - on Historical events, including stories, and previous facts, it is not possible “beliefly” and “realistically” that the divine news contradict the achieved historical reality, and since the main purpose of the Holy Qur’an - including the verses of the stories - is guidance , the Qur’an has transmitted history To achieve this purpose without being a book of history that delves into the details and identifies the dates and respects the chronologies with precision and detail, it is not possible “methodologically” and “realistically” to require the archaeological evidence for each Qur’anic event, especially since the nature of the archaeological research itself He suffers from technical and epistemological gaps that make his discoveries and reading of him between the hypothesis of the results of the auxiliary sciences and the self-interpretation of the archaeologist, and the process of archaeological documentation of historical events in Holy Qur’an remains - if it is achieved - as a matter of concerted evidence - despite its suspicion - that raises the believer's faith - and faith in degrees. - It also obliges the non-believer in the Qur’an as a divine source to conform to the material evidence of the divine revelation or what is termed in Islamic thought with the « scientific miracles of the Holy Qur’an ».
About fifty years after the work that astronomer Tycho Brahe carried out while living on the island of Hven had made him world famous, King Christian IV of Denmark built the Trinity Buildings in Copenhagen. The Tower observatory was opened in 1642, and it housed the astronomers from the University of Copenhagen until 1861 when a new, modern observatory was built at Østervold in the eastern part of the city. In 1996, all the University astronomers from the observatories at Østervold and the small town of Brorfelde were relocated to the Rockefeller Buildings at Østerbro, and the two observatories were closed. In this paper we focus on the library at the observatory in Østervold, and its subsequent fate following the close-down of that observatory.
Auxiliary tasks have been argued to be useful for representation learning in reinforcement learning. Although many auxiliary tasks have been empirically shown to be effective for accelerating learning on the main task, it is not yet clear what makes useful auxiliary tasks. Some of the most promising results are on the pixel control, reward prediction, and the next state prediction auxiliary tasks; however, the empirical results are mixed, showing substantial improvements in some cases and marginal improvements in others. Careful investigations of how auxiliary tasks help the learning of the main task is necessary. In this paper, we take a step studying the effect of the target policies on the usefulness of the auxiliary tasks formulated as general value functions. General value functions consist of three core elements: 1) policy 2) cumulant 3) continuation function. Our focus on the role of the target policy of the auxiliary tasks is motivated by the fact that the target policy determines the behavior about which the agent wants to make a prediction and the state-action distribution that the agent is trained on, which further affects the main task learning. Our study provides insights about questions such as: Does a greedy policy result in bigger improvement gains compared to other policies? Is it best to set the auxiliary task policy to be the same as the main task policy? Does the choice of the target policy have a substantial effect on the achieved performance gain or simple strategies for setting the policy, such as using a uniformly random policy, work as well? Our empirical results suggest that: 1) Auxiliary tasks with the greedy policy tend to be useful. 2) Most policies, including a uniformly random policy, tend to improve over the baseline. 3) Surprisingly, the main task policy tends to be less useful compared to other policies.
Anna Rita Di Fazio, Chiara Risi, Mario Russo
et al.
This paper addresses the problem of optimizing the voltage profile of radially-operated distribution systems by acting on the active and reactive powers provided by distributed energy resources (DERs). A novel voltage optimization procedure is proposed by adopting a decentralized control strategy. To this aim, a centralized voltage optimization problem (VOP), minimizing the distance of all the nodal voltages from their reference values, is firstly formulated as a strictly-convex quadratic program. Then, the centralized VOP is rewritten by partitioning the network into voltage control zones (VCZs) with pilot nodes. To overcome the lack of strictly convexity determined by the reduction to the pilot nodes, the dual centralized VOP working on the augmented Lagrangian function is reformulated and iteratively solved by the method of multipliers. Finally, a fully-distributed VOP solution is obtained by applying a distributed algorithm based on the auxiliary problem principle, which allows for solving in each VCZ a quadratic programming problem of small dimension and to drive the VCZ solutions toward the overall optimum by an iterative coordination process that requires to exchange among the VCZs only scalar values. The effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method have been demonstrated via numerical tests on the IEEE 123-bus system.
Modern historical science does not fully cover the issues related to the history of the domestic military industry. One of these issues is the history of the organization of quality control and acceptance of military products at the enterprises of the defense industry. The object of this study is the product quality control system. The subject of the study is the organization of quality control and acceptance of military products at weapons factories of the Russian Empire (Tula, Izhevsk and Sestroretsk factories) in the first half of the XIX century. As a source base it was used specialized archival funds of some federal, regional and departmental archives of Russia, as well as published legislative acts. Problem-chronological and historical-comparative methods were used in the preparation of the publication. Thanks to them the author was able to consistently study the issues under consideration in the specified chronological framework as well as to identify general and specific organizational aspects of quality control and acceptance of military products at three different weapons enterprises in Russia. As the main auxiliary method of research, the method of schematization was used, and this made possible to show the evolution in the subject of this study more clearly. In this article the author consistently examines the procedure for quality control and acceptance of military products at Russian arms factories in the first half of the XIX century. The problems of produced small arms quality which the domestic military industry faced with during the period under review has been characterized in the article. State measures aimed at elimination the problems as well as the application of these measures at the local production level have been analyzed and evaluated. The author comes to the conclusion that as a result of the industrial revolution there was a qualitative leap in the creation and production of means of armed struggle. This factor came into conflict with the views of the state and military leadership of Russia of that time on the organization of quality control and acceptance of military products. The undertaken measures were insufficient foraccomplishing the tasks challenged withthe military industry.
Introductions to interdisciplinary studies and programmatic papers usually stress the foundational requirement for all interdisciplinary work: an adequate knowledge about more than one academic discipline. Unless scholars are actually trained in two disciplines, the decision to engage in interdisciplinary research includes the necessity to access or acquire a sufficient understanding about the methods, epistemologies and paradigms of at least one more academic field. Of course, it cannot be expected that scholars who engage in interdisciplinary studies must be able to conduct research in each discipline. But a basic literacy in the respective area of inquiry is de rigueur. In disciplines that are close to home, that does not present a major problem, and every student or scholar of literature and culture has to be able to access the required knowledge in history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, or the arts, even though the paradigms and methods may differ considerably from those of our own academic environment. Interdisciplinary research between literature and the sciences, however, poses quite different demands, and even a very basic understanding of the respective concepts may require intensive work and a willingness to engage with unfamiliar and recalcitrant theories and practices. There are two ways in which sufficient knowledge in various disciplines can be achieved and provided. The first is cooperation. Once a question has been raised or a problem has been recognised, scholars from the different disciplines can put their heads and methodologies together to work on a solution. This, of course, requires that the problem is regarded as relevant in both disciplines and/or that the cooperation seems to be promising. Occasionally, the research will be asymmetric, with one dominant discipline in charge of the project while the other acts as an auxiliary discipline, providing necessary data, know-how, or technologies – such asymmetries should not be regarded as diminishing, and an auxiliary discipline of one project may well be dominant in a different context. Alternatively, the scholars will have to acquire interdisciplinary knowledge by an immersion into the specific theories and methods of the other discipline, which can be a very challenging and time-consuming process and, if conducted in splendid isolation without interdisciplinary interaction and some monitoring by scholars from the other discipline, it may easily lead to misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions. In literary and cultural studies, another phenomenon can occasionally be observed: Interdisciplinary studies may take place chiefly within the context of previous
Conditional generative models aim to learn the underlying joint distribution of data and labels to achieve conditional data generation. Among them, the auxiliary classifier generative adversarial network (AC-GAN) has been widely used, but suffers from the problem of low intra-class diversity of the generated samples. The fundamental reason pointed out in this paper is that the classifier of AC-GAN is generator-agnostic, which therefore cannot provide informative guidance for the generator to approach the joint distribution, resulting in a minimization of the conditional entropy that decreases the intra-class diversity. Motivated by this understanding, we propose a novel conditional GAN with an auxiliary discriminative classifier (ADC-GAN) to resolve the above problem. Specifically, the proposed auxiliary discriminative classifier becomes generator-aware by recognizing the class-labels of the real data and the generated data discriminatively. Our theoretical analysis reveals that the generator can faithfully learn the joint distribution even without the original discriminator, making the proposed ADC-GAN robust to the value of the coefficient hyperparameter and the selection of the GAN loss, and stable during training. Extensive experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of ADC-GAN in conditional generative modeling compared to state-of-the-art classifier-based and projection-based conditional GANs.