Book Review on Pavel Štěpánek, ed. Ondřej Jakubec, Trajectories of Spanish Art and Culture in Bohemia. Studies and Essays about Spanish and Ibero-American Art, Olomouc: Palacký University Olomouc, 2021, 263 pp. ISBN 978-80-244-5866-3
History of Spain, French literature - Italian literature - Spanish literature - Portuguese literature
Abstract This article offers a detailed analysis of Winston Churchill's relationship with Spain over the course of his long and eventful political and personal life. The article focuses on three key episodes: Churchill's ambivalent stance during the Spanish Civil War; his leadership and policy towards Spain during the crucial years of the Second World War; and the memory and legacy of Churchill in Spain, particularly in relation to his wartime role. The article argues that Churchill's engagement with Spain reveals a recurring tension between a quixotic impulse – rooted in his aristocratic and monarchist sensibilities, and in a sentimental view of Spanish history – and a more pragmatic, Sancho Panza‐like realism, which became especially prominent during the Second World War.
Daniel H. Chitwood, Luis Delaye, Cristina Domínguez‐Castro
et al.
Societal Impact Statement The cultural significance of the grapevine is undeniable. However, we fail to acknowledge how the grapevine has and continues to influence the most pressing political questions of our time. From the beginning of the Conquest, Indigenous peoples were forced to plant the vine, Spain burned the vines Miguel Hidalgo used to teach the poor, and César Chávez and the Delano grape strike demanded justice for agricultural laborers. From the Grito de Dolores to Sí se puede, we demonstrate how the continuing relationship between Mexico and the grapevine influences debates surrounding labor, immigration, and human rights in the United States and throughout the world. To enhance the reach of this work, a Spanish language version of the paper is available in the Supporting Information (see Translation_ES). Summary The wild grapevine species (Vitis spp.) that comprise the pedigrees of rootstocks, the Americas as the source (and solution) to the Phylloxera crisis that decimated European vineyards, and California as a premier wine‐growing region are the topics that usually frame the history of grapes in North America. This Anglo‐American perspective ignores that domesticated grape varieties were first introduced to North America in what is now Mexico and the singular contributions of Mexican labor to the California wine economy that continue to influence politics. Here, we highlight the neglected history of grapevines in Mexico and argue that the politics of labor that played out during the Conquest never ceased and still shape debates surrounding immigration. Beginning with Hernán Cortés, Indigenous peoples were forced to plant grapevines and when they were successful, they were abruptly forbidden by Spain to grow grapes. This interference influenced Miguel Hidalgo, who taught the poor viticulture as a trade and who would lead the Mexican War of Independence and pay with his life. The grapevine continued its journey north to California, where Franciscans established the missions and cultivated the Mission grapes, which had lasting impacts on the genetics of grapevine varieties. Finally, it was the Delano grape strike that coalesced César Chávez and the United Farm Workers to demand justice for agricultural laborers that is the foundation of the California wine economy and still shapes the current political debate of immigration, labor, and human rights between the United States and Mexico.
Shahidul Islam, Ashik Aowal, Md Sharif Uddin
et al.
Reconstructing a method's change history efficiently and accurately is critical for many software engineering tasks, including maintenance, refactoring, and comprehension. Despite the availability of method history generation tools such as CodeShovel and CodeTracker, existing evaluations of their effectiveness are limited by inaccuracies in the ground truth oracles used. In this study, we systematically construct two new oracles -- the corrected CodeShovel oracle and a newly developed HistoryFinder oracle -- by combining automated analysis with expert-guided manual validation. We also introduce HistoryFinder, a new method history generation tool designed to improve not only the accuracy and completeness of method change histories but also to offer competitive runtime performance. Through extensive evaluation across 400 methods from 40 open-source repositories, we show that HistoryFinder consistently outperforms CodeShovel, CodeTracker, IntelliJ, and Git-based baselines in terms of precision, recall, and F1 score. Moreover, HistoryFinder achieves competitive runtime performance, offering the lowest mean and median execution times among all the research-based tools. While Git-based tools exhibit the fastest runtimes, this efficiency comes at the cost of significantly lower precision and recall -- leaving HistoryFinder as the best overall choice when both accuracy and efficiency are important. To facilitate adoption, we provide a web interface, CLI, and Java library for flexible usage.
David Munoz-Rodriguez, Manuel J. Gonzalez-Ortega, Maria-Jesus Aguilera-Urena
et al.
Water utilities are increasingly concerned about losses, leaks, and illegal connections in their distribution networks. Pressure control is typically managed through pressure reducing valves with electrically controlled actuators based on predefined tables according to the pressure at the critical point control. This openloop control method lacks direct feedback between the PRV and CPC, making it challenging to distinguish whether pressure variations originate from normal head losses or abnormal network conditions. Unlike traditional applications of ARIMA focused on water demand forecasting, this study explores its novel use in pressure management within distribution networks, aiming to predict P3 pressure based on head losses across a defined hydraulic sector. To achieve this objective, a predictive model based on the Box-Jenkins methodology and its variations is implemented to analyse time series data. An action path is established to determine the optimal model ARIMA, ARMA, ARMAX, etc. which is subsequently validated using real operational data from Noja, a coastal town in northern Spain characterized by significant seasonal population fluctuations. By accurately forecasting CPC pressure, this system enhances the detection of anomalous patterns, enabling more efficient network pressure management. The study demonstrates the potential of advanced modelling techniques in optimizing water distribution networks, providing valuable insights to improve system efficiency, reliability, and sustainability in urban environments.
Emily K. Roberts, Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, Mairi W. O'Brien
et al.
We compare three methods of deriving the local Galactic star formation history, using as a benchmark the Gaia-defined 40 pc white dwarf sample, currently the largest volume complete sample of stellar remnants with medium-resolution spectroscopy. We create a population synthesis model to 1) reproduce the observed white dwarf luminosity function, 2) reproduce the observed absolute Gaia G magnitude distribution, and 3) directly calculate the ages of all individual white dwarfs in the 40 pc volume. We then compare the star formation histories determined from each method. Previous studies using these methods were based on different white dwarf samples and as such were difficult to compare. Uncertainties in each method such as the initial mass function, initial-final mass relation, main sequence lifetimes, stellar metallicity, white dwarf cooling ages and binary evolution are accounted for to estimate the precision and accuracy of each method. We conclude that no method is quantitatively better at determining the star formation history and all three produce star formation histories that agree within uncertainties of current external astrophysical relations.
Non-Markovian stochastic processes are ubiquitous in biology. Nevertheless, we lack a general framework for quantifying historical dependencies. In this Letter, we propose an information-theoretic approach to decompose history dependence in systems with non-Markovian dynamics, quantifying the information encoded in dependencies of each order. In minimal models of non-Markovian dynamics, we show that this framework correctly captures the underlying historical dependencies, even when autocorrelations do not. In prolonged recordings of fly behavior, we find that the scaling of non-Markovian dependencies is invariant across timescales from fractions of a second to minutes. Despite this invariance, the overall amount of non-Markovian information is non-monotonic, suggesting a unique timescale on which historical dependencies are strongest.
This short paper describes the first steps in a project to construct a knowledge graph for Brazilian history based on the Brazilian Dictionary of Historical Biographies (DHBB) and Wikipedia/Wikidata. We contend that large repositories of Brazilian-named entities (people, places, organizations, and political events and movements) would be beneficial for extracting information from Portuguese texts. We show that many of the terms/entities described in the DHBB do not have corresponding concepts (or Q items) in Wikidata, the largest structured database of entities associated with Wikipedia. We describe previous work on extracting information from the DHBB and outline the steps to construct a Wikidata-based historical knowledge graph.
Connor Basinger, Marc Pinsonneault, Sandra T. Bastelberger
et al.
Stellar evolution theory predicts that the Sun was fainter in the past, which can pose difficulties for understanding Earth's climate history. One proposed solution to this Faint Young Sun problem is a more luminous Sun in the past. In this paper, we address the robustness of the solar luminosity history using the YREC code to compute solar models including rotation, magnetized winds, and the associated mass loss. We present detailed solar models, including their evolutionary history, which are in excellent agreement with solar observables. Consistent with prior standard models, we infer a high solar metal content. We provide predicted X-ray luminosities and rotation histories for usage in climate reconstructions and activity studies. We find that the Sun's luminosity deviates from the standard solar model trajectory by at most 0.5% during the Archean (corresponding to a radiative forcing of 0.849 W m$^{-2}$). The total mass loss experienced by solar models is modest because of strong feedback between mass and angular momentum loss. We find a maximum mass loss of $1.35 \times 10^{-3} M_\odot$ since birth, at or below the level predicted by empirical estimates. The associated maximum luminosity increase falls well short of the level necessary to solve the FYS problem. We present compilations of paleotemperature and CO$_2$ reconstructions. 1-D "inverse" climate models demonstrate a mismatch between the solar constant needed to reach high temperatures (e.g. 60-80 $^{\circ}$C) and the narrow range of plausible solar luminosities determined in this study. Maintaining a temperate Earth, however, is plausible given these conditions.
Sougata Bose, Thomas A. Henzinger, Karoliina Lehtinen
et al.
We explore the notion of history-determinism in the context of timed automata (TA) over infinite timed words. History-deterministic (HD) automata are those in which nondeterminism can be resolved on the fly, based on the run constructed thus far. History-determinism is a robust property that admits different game-based characterisations, and HD specifications allow for game-based verification without an expensive determinization step. We show that the class of timed $ω$-languages recognized by HD timed automata strictly extends that of deterministic ones, and is strictly included in those recognised by fully non-deterministic TA. For non-deterministic timed automata it is known that universality is already undecidable for safety/reachability TA. For history-deterministic TA with arbitrary parity acceptance, we show that timed universality, inclusion, and synthesis all remain decidable and are EXPTIME-complete. For the subclass of TA with safety or reachability acceptance, one can decide (in EXPTIME) whether such an automaton is history-deterministic. If so, it can effectively determinized without introducing new automaton states.
Explainability of machine learning models is mandatory when researchers introduce these commonly believed black boxes to real-world tasks, especially high-stakes ones. In this paper, we build a machine learning system to automatically generate explanations of happened events from history by \gls{ca} based on the \acrfull{tpp}. Specifically, we propose a new task called \acrfull{ehd}. This task requires a model to distill as few events as possible from observed history. The target is that the event distribution conditioned on left events predicts the observed future noticeably worse. We then regard distilled events as the explanation for the future. To efficiently solve \acrshort{ehd}, we rewrite the task into a \gls{01ip} and directly estimate the solution to the program by a model called \acrfull{model}. This work fills the gap between our task and existing works, which only spot the difference between factual and counterfactual worlds after applying a predefined modification to the environment. Experiment results on Retweet and StackOverflow datasets prove that \acrshort{model} significantly outperforms other \acrshort{ehd} baselines and can reveal the rationale underpinning real-world processes.
Michael Gref, Nike Matthiesen, Sreenivasa Hikkal Venugopala
et al.
For research in audiovisual interview archives often it is not only of interest what is said but also how. Sentiment analysis and emotion recognition can help capture, categorize and make these different facets searchable. In particular, for oral history archives, such indexing technologies can be of great interest. These technologies can help understand the role of emotions in historical remembering. However, humans often perceive sentiments and emotions ambiguously and subjectively. Moreover, oral history interviews have multi-layered levels of complex, sometimes contradictory, sometimes very subtle facets of emotions. Therefore, the question arises of the chance machines and humans have capturing and assigning these into predefined categories. This paper investigates the ambiguity in human perception of emotions and sentiment in German oral history interviews and the impact on machine learning systems. Our experiments reveal substantial differences in human perception for different emotions. Furthermore, we report from ongoing machine learning experiments with different modalities. We show that the human perceptual ambiguity and other challenges, such as class imbalance and lack of training data, currently limit the opportunities of these technologies for oral history archives. Nonetheless, our work uncovers promising observations and possibilities for further research.
Yuto Nishimura, Yuki Saito, Shinnosuke Takamichi
et al.
We propose an end-to-end empathetic dialogue speech synthesis (DSS) model that considers both the linguistic and prosodic contexts of dialogue history. Empathy is the active attempt by humans to get inside the interlocutor in dialogue, and empathetic DSS is a technology to implement this act in spoken dialogue systems. Our model is conditioned by the history of linguistic and prosody features for predicting appropriate dialogue context. As such, it can be regarded as an extension of the conventional linguistic-feature-based dialogue history modeling. To train the empathetic DSS model effectively, we investigate 1) a self-supervised learning model pretrained with large speech corpora, 2) a style-guided training using a prosody embedding of the current utterance to be predicted by the dialogue context embedding, 3) a cross-modal attention to combine text and speech modalities, and 4) a sentence-wise embedding to achieve fine-grained prosody modeling rather than utterance-wise modeling. The evaluation results demonstrate that 1) simply considering prosodic contexts of the dialogue history does not improve the quality of speech in empathetic DSS and 2) introducing style-guided training and sentence-wise embedding modeling achieves higher speech quality than that by the conventional method.
Nikolett Eisenbeck, Nikolett Eisenbeck, David F. Carreno
et al.
The COVID-19 pandemic has subjected most of the world’s population to unprecedented situations, like national lockdowns, health hazards, social isolation and economic harm. Such a scenario calls for urgent measures not only to palliate it but also, to better cope with it. According to existential positive psychology, well-being does not simply represent a lack of stress and negative emotions but highlights their importance by incorporating an adaptive relationship with them. Thus, suffering can be mitigated (and transformed into growth) by, among other factors, adopting an attitude of positive reframing, maintaining hope, existential courage, life appreciation, engagement in meaningful activities, and prosociality. The conglomerate of these elements has been recently denominated as meaning-centered coping. In this study, we evaluated the protective role of this type of coping on mental health. A sample of 12,243 participants from 30 countries across all continents completed measures of Meaning-Centered Coping Scale (MCCS), depression, stress, anxiety and stressful COVID-19 related conditions they experienced. Results indicated that meaning-centered coping was strongly associated with diminished symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. Moreover, it moderated various relationships between vulnerability factors and markers of psychological distress, especially in the case of depression. These findings call for attention to meaning-centered coping approaches in the context of hardship, such as the current COVID-19 health crisis. In these difficult times, decision-makers and health organizations may integrate these approaches into their guidelines.
Computers are used for various purposes, so frequent context switching is inevitable. In this setting, retrieving the documents, files, and web pages that have been used for a task can be a challenge. While modern applications provide a history of recent documents for users to resume work, this is not sufficient to retrieve all the digital resources relevant to a given primary document. The histories currently available do not take into account the complex dependencies among resources across applications. To address this problem, we tested the idea of using a visual history of a computer screen to retrieve digital resources within a few days of their use through the development of ScreenTrack. ScreenTrack is software that captures screenshots of a computer at regular intervals. It then generates a time-lapse video from the captured screenshots and lets users retrieve a recently opened document or web page from a screenshot after recognizing the resource by its appearance. A controlled user study found that participants were able to retrieve requested information more quickly with ScreenTrack than under the baseline condition with existing tools. A follow-up study showed that the participants used ScreenTrack to retrieve previously used resources and to recover the context for task resumption.
Apart from the discussion about the existence of the genre “rhymed chronicles”, a doubt already pointed out by previous scholars, our purpose will be to demonstrate that the Poema de Alfonso Onceno, catalogued by some critics as one of the first expressions of this alleged genre, is but an epic poem, that repeats features of this genre and, like every literary work, includes novel elements that account for its originality, which by themselves would not be enough to postulate the existence of a new genre linked to historiography. With this objective we will discuss the concept of genre, the inherent characteristics of this new genre and some others that it shares with the epic, in order to evaluate the place that belongs to the Poema de Alfonso Onceno.
En dépit du caractère incertain et imprévisible du résultat des élections pontificales, l’ambassadeur de la monarchie espagnole près le Saint-Siège recevait des directives précises quant à l’action à mener en cas de vacance du siège et les instructions à fournir aux cardinaux de la faction espagnole.Les juntes réunies par Philippe III afin de préparer cet événement majeur qui avait lieu à Rome n’avaient pas pour vocation à trouver une solution à un problème spécifique, mais à mettre en œuvre les bases d’une stratégie d’ordre politique et diplomatique visant non pas à garantir, mais du moins à favoriser, l’élection d’un pontife qui servirait les intérêts de la monarchie. Il s’agissait paradoxalement de saisir et de contrôler une réalité intrinsèquement mouvante et incertaine, tout en mobilisant des savoirs à la fois théoriques et empiriques.Le travail mené par la junte chargée, dès la fin de l’année 1618, de préparer le conclave qui se tiendrait après la mort du pape Paul V et d’instruire l’ambassadeur à Rome, permet d’appréhender les enjeux politiques et les modalités de l’expertise mise en œuvre pour faire face à la contingence, au secret et aux rivalités politiques qu’impliquait l’élection pontificale.
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Spain
This article aims to analyse the path of the German foreign cultural policy in relation
to cinema in Brazil –which began in the 1920s and was interrupted in the early years of the Second World War–, linking the development of political and diplomatic relations and the activities of the agents of this cultural policy, such as the Ufa (Universum Film AG) and German government agencies.