Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eddie Murphy and the Dangers of Counterfactual Causal Thinking About Detecting Racial Discrimination

The model of discrimination animating some of the most common approaches to detecting discrimination in both law and social science—the counterfactual causal model—is wrong. In that model, racial discrimination is detected by measuring the “treatment effect of race,” where the treatment is conceptualized as manipulating the raced status of otherwise identical units (e.g., a person, a neighborhood, a school). Most objections to talking about race as a cause in the counterfactual model have been raised in terms of manipulability. If we cannot manipulate a person’s race at the moment of a police stop, traffic encounter, or prosecutorial charging decision, then it is impossible to detect if the person’s race was the sole cause of an unfavorable outcome. But this debate has proceeded on the wrong terms. The counterfactual causal model of discrimination is not wrong because we can’t work around the practical limits of manipulation, as evidenced by both Eddie Murphy’s comic genius in the Saturday Night Live skit “White Like Me” and the entire genre of audit and correspondence studies. It is wrong because to fit the rigor of the counterfactual model of a clearly defined treatment on otherwise identical units, we must reduce race to only the signs of the category, meaning we must think race is skin color, or phenotype, or other ways we identify group status. And that is a concept mistake if one subscribes to a constructivist, as opposed to a biological or genetic, conception of race. The counterfactual causal model of discrimination is based on a flawed theory of what the category of race references, how it produces effects in the world, and what is meant when we say it is wrong to make decisions of import because of race. I argue that DISCRIMINATION is a thick ethical concept that at once describes and evaluates the actions to which it is applied, and therefore, we cannot detect actions as discriminatory by identifying a relation of counterfactual causality; we can only do so by reasoning about the action’s distinctive wrongfulness by referencing what constitutes the very categories that are the objects of concern. An adequate theory of discrimination must rest upon (1) an account of the system of social meanings or practices that constitute the categories at issue and (2) a moral theory of what is fair and just in various state and private arenas given what the categories are.
Racial Insult and Repair

How does the experience of racial insult as actualized in everyday automatic stereotypes affect the experience of being desired and desirable? Using a psychoanalytic frame informed by research in the social sciences, this paper examines the way in which racial stereotypes infuse cultural, social, and psychic experience. Love is an “open system” inclined to an appreciation of particularity. Race in our contemporary world is usually constructed as a “closed system. ” The implications of love and race as open and closed are considered in the context of a clinical vignette.
Thirty years of abdominal pain

In this paper, the author describes a brief psychotherapy with a man who has struggled with abdominal symptoms for most of his adult life. After an unhappy childhood, the patient (Mr A) married and then was witness to the birth of his stillborn child, in a foreign country. Soon after his abdominal symptoms started, and plagued him for the following 30 years. In the therapy, Mr A began to explore areas of guilt, hostility, and shame, together with previously unknown-about unconscious phantasies. By the end of the therapy, he reported a substantial diminution in his symptoms, as well as changes to his relationships, and mode of thinking and feeling. Some aspects of working psychoanalytically with patients with somatic symptoms, especially those pertaining to the gastrointestinal tract, are discussed.
What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?

Since the late 1990s, there has been a flood of research on natural resources and civil war. This article reviews 14 recent cross-national econometric studies, and many qualitative studies, that cast light on the relationship between natural resources and civil war. It suggests that collectively they imply four underlying regularities: first, oil increases the likelihood of conflict, particularly separatist conflict; second, ‘lootable’ commodities like gemstones and drugs do not make conflict more likely to begin, but they tend to lengthen existing conflicts; third, there is no apparent link between legal agricultural commodities and civil war; and finally, the association between primary commodities - a broad category that includes both oil and agricultural goods - and the onset of civil war is not robust. The first section discusses the evidence for these four regularities and examines some theoretical arguments that could explain them. The second section suggests that some of the remaining inconsistencies among the econometric studies may be caused by differences in the ways they code civil wars and cope with missing data. The third section highlights some further aspects of the resource-civil war relationship that remain poorly understood.
Machine Learning Based Analysis of XENON 1 T Data

In the XENON1T experiment, both scintillation and ionization signals are measured directly and indirectly by PMTs through the light they produce. Classification of peaks in aggregated PMT signals as S1s or S2s is done through low-dimensional cuts; however, small S2s, on the order of a single electron, can easily fall under size cuts and be counted as S1s. To create a better classifier in this region of confusion, Monte Carlo data were created and used to train a machine learning based classifier. Additionally, there is currently no way to determine the depth of an S2 without picking an S1 and calculating drift time. This can present an issue when an S2 is detected without an S1 to pair it with. Since electron dispersion occurs due to drifting through the detector, it is expected that S2 depth can be reconstructed from the waveform shape, for use in the rejection of events outside of the fiduciary region of the TPC. To accomplish this, a convolutional recurrent neural network has been trained on simulated data.
Passive Dynamic Object Locomotion by Rocking and Walking Manipulation

This paper presents a novel robotic manipulation technique for transporting objects on the ground in a passive dynamic, nonprehensile manner. The object is manipulated to rock from side to side repeatedly; in the meantime, the force of gravity enables the object to roll along a zigzag path that is eventually heading forward. We call it rock-and-walk object locomotion. First, we examine the kinematics and dynamics of the rocking motion to understand how the states of the object evolve. We then discuss how to control the robot to connect individual rocking motions into a stable gait of the object. Our rock-and-walk object transportation technique is implemented using a conventional manipulator arm and a simple endeffector, interacting with the object in a nonprehensile manner in favor of the passive dynamics of the object. A set of experiments demonstrates successful object locomotion.
REP(AIR): An Olfactory Interface For Bike Maintenance and Care

: In this paper we present Rep(AIR), a research-through-design olfactory interface for communicating moments of wear and tear on a bicycle. Rep(AIR) was designed as a probe in an autobiographical design inquiry to uncover qualities of the relationship between humans and objects as they relate to breakage and repair. Key used Rep(AIR), along with a personal probe notebook, on a 12 day international cycling trip to reflect on and document repairs and maintenance. We share findings from our analysis which extend the discourse on repair to include moments of wear, maintenance, and care as a part of the ongoing process of everyday use; recen-ter functionality to the human-object team, rather than the object alone; and highlight teamwork and collaboration as a way to challenge the hierarchical human-object narrative. We conclude by noting the role of Rep(AIR) as a tool which gave the bicycle a voice—revealing the often uncommunicated experience of wear and tear on an object.
CiteULike

multidisciplinary. For help there is an EndNote X3 manual as well as a Getting Started Guide available in the software installation. There are also online help files with a full table of contents that can be accessed by choosing the Help menu. An EndNote Discussion Forum and technical support tips are available on the Web site. There is also a number to contact if technical support or training is needed. In Short: With set up, practice, and the available help, most of the features of EndNote are reasonably easy to use. Some of the more sophisticated features may be more suitable for faculty and graduate students rather than undergraduates. If planning to use with undergrads, hands-on training would be advisable. EndNote X3 can also be synchronized to use with a Palm OS handheld device. Recommended.
Into The Dark

We examine how firms alter their nonmarket strategies in the wake of a reputational threat, given the legal and regulatory context that governs nonmarket strategy. Using a unique database on social movement boycotts of corporations, we exploit public protests as a shock to the reputations of targeted firms and examine how these shocks affect corporate political activity. We show that boycotts lead to significant reductions in the amount of targets’ political action committee campaign contributions and simultaneous increases in targets’ CEOs’ personal campaign contributions, as well as targets’ lobbying expenditures. We argue that these findings represent a shift toward darker—that is, more indirect or covert—forms of political engagement that present new problems for activists and shareholders seeking to monitor corporate political activity.
Waste management in the Spanish municipalities: is commitment to Local Agenda 21 more than good intentions?

espanolEspana es uno de los paises europeos con mas municipios adheridos a la Agenda 21 Local (AL21). El gasto medioambiental ejerce una gran influencia en la implementacion de la AL21. No obstante, algunos autores han planteado dudas sobre la existencia de un compromiso real por parte de los gobiernos locales con los objetivos de la AL21. Asi pues, el principal objetivo de este trabajo es verificar la autenticidad del compromiso politico hacia el cumplimiento de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible por parte de las autoridades locales, reflejando dicho compromiso en el apoyo presupuestario a las politicas de gestion de residuos. Para llevar a cabo tal verificacion aplicaremos la tecnica conocida como Diferencia en diferencias sobre los datos presupuestarios de los municipios espanoles durante el periodo 2002-2012. Los resultados inicialmente obtenidos confirmaron que los gobiernos locales adheridos a la AL21 estan realmente comprometidos con al menos un objetivo de la AL21, el relativo a la gestion de residuos, y dicho compromiso se ve reflejado en un mayor apoyo presupuestario. No obstante, el analisis de sensibilidad puso de manifiesto la existencia de una inesperada y ambigua evidencia respecto a la pregunta de investigacion. Se observa una notable volatilidad de los resultados dependiendo de la muestra y la variable dependiente elegida. EnglishSpain is one of the European countries with more municipalities adhering to the Local Agenda 21 (LA21). Environmental spending exerts a great influence on implementing LA21. But some authors raise doubts about the firm commitment of local governments to LA21 objectives. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to verify whether political commitment is backed up with action towards meeting the objectives of sustainable development by means of budgetary support for waste management policies. To accomplish this, we applied the Difference in Differences technique for the period 2002-2012 in the Spanish municipalities. Our initial results confirmed the original hypotheses and showed that local governments that adhered to LA21 were genuinely committed to achieving at least one LA21 goal and offering greater budgetary support for waste management. However, the sensitivity analysis revealed unexpectedly ambiguous evidence about the research question, in that we observed a great volatility of results depending on the sample and dependent variables chosen.
Simulating Agent Clusters Resembling Human Conversational Groups

This paper attempts to simulate agent clusters resembling people talking in groups. The proposed approach is a formalization of theories concerning human social spatial behaviour. Visuals generated by the simulations vouch for the approach. CR Categories: I.2. 0 [Artificial Intelligence]: Cognitive simulation— [I.2. 11]: Artificial Intelligence—Distributed Artificial IntelligenceMultiagent systems;
Biological Systems Engineering 1-2019 Modeled and Measured Ecosystem Respiration in Maize – Soybean Systems Over 10 Years

Crop residue is an abundant resource for the potential production of biofuels, but a better understanding of its use on net carbon emissions must be developed to mitigate climate change. This analysis combines two established crop growth models (Hybrid-Maize and SoySim) with a simple soil and crop residue respiration model to estimate daily ecosystem respiration (ERe) from maize and soybean; ERe was estimated to be the sum of CO2 emissions from the oxidation of the growing crop, crop residue, and soil organic carbon (SOC). Model-estimated CO2 fluxes from irrigated continuous maize and irrigated maize– soybean cropping systems in eastern Nebraska were compared with tower eddy covariance measurements of CO2 fluxes from 2001 to 2010 from those fields. Modeled C emissions closely estimated measured seasonal patterns of CO2 dynamics and measured daily ERe (R 2: 0.87, 0.84). Measured and modeled annual ERe values were also compared and better agreement was found in maize compared to soybean. As there are limited comparisons of modeled soil emissions with eddy covariance measured CO2 fluxes, this study is important for the validation of these types of models and to support their potential use in quantifying emissions from crop residue for biofuels. digitalcommons.unl. edu Zhan et al . in Agronomy Journal 110 (2018 ) 2
Balancing Image Privacy and Usability with Thumbnail-Preserving Encryption

In this paper, we motivate the need for image encryption techniques that preserve certain visual features in images and hide all other information, to balance privacy and usability in the context of cloud-based image storage services. In particular, we introduce the concept of ideal or exact ThumbnailPreserving Encryption (TPE), a special case of format-preserving encryption, and present a concrete construction. In TPE, a ciphertext is itself an image that has the same thumbnail as the plaintext (unecrypted) image, but that provably leaks nothing about the plaintext beyond its thumbnail. We provide a formal security analysis for the construction, and a prototype implementation to demonstrate compatibility with existing services. We also study the ability of users to distinguish between thumbnail images preserved by TPE. Our findings indicate that TPE is an efficient and promising approach to balance usability and privacy concerns for images. Our code and a demo are available at: http://photoencryption.org.
Optomechanics and Quantum Measurement

After a quick review of the basic theory of quantum optomechanical systems, based largely on linearized Heisenberg–Langevin equations, this chapter focuses on selected topics related to quantum measurement and quantum optomechanics. Included are: a comprehensive discussion of the quantum limit on the added noise of a continuous position detector, following the quantum linear response approach; a detailed discussion of the role of noise correlations, and how these can be achieved in an optomechanical cavity (by using squeezed input light, or by modifying the choice of measured output quadrature); and a discussion of back-action evading measurements of a mechanical quadrature, discussing how this can be achieved in a two-tone driven cavity system. The chapter ends with a quick introduction to the theory of conditional continuous quantum measurement, and a discussion on how a back-action evading measurement can be used to produce conditional mechanical squeezed states.
What determines the strength and the slowdown rate of bars

Isolated barred galaxies evolve by redistributing their angular momentum, which, emitted by material in the inner disc at resonance with the bar, can be absorbed by resonant material in the outer disc, or in the halo. The amount of angular momentum that can be emitted/absorbed at a given resonance depends on the distribution function of the emitting/absorbing material. It thus depends not only on the amount of material on resonant orbits, but also on the velocity dispersion of that material. As it loses angular momentum, the bar becomes stronger and it also rotates slower. Thus the strength of the bar and the decrease of its pattern speed with time are set by the amount of angular momentum exchanged within the galaxy, which, in turn, is regulated by the mass distribution and the velocity dispersion of the material in the disc and spheroidal components. Correlations between the pattern speed of the bar, its strength and the angular momentum absorbed by the spheroid (halo plus bulge) argue strongly that it is the amount of angular momentum exchanged that determines the strength and the slowdown rate of the bar. The decrease of the bar pattern speed with time should not be used to set constraints on the halo-to-disc mass ratio, since it depends also on the velocity dispersion of the halo and disc material.
LowPSec : An End-to-End Security Protocol for 6 LoWPAN

6LoWPAN has radically changed the IoT (Internet of Things) landscape by seeking to extend the use of IPv6 to smart and tiny objects. Enabling efficient IPv6 communication over IEEE 802.15. 4 LoWPAN radio links requires high end-to-end security rules. The IEEE 802.15. 4 MAC layer implements several security features offering hardware hop-by-hop protection for exchanged frames. In order to provide end-to-end security, researchers focus on lightweighting variants of existing security solutions such as IPSec that operates on the network layer. In this paper, we introduce a new security protocol referred to as ”6LowPSec”, providing a propitious end-to-end security solution but functioning at the adaptation layer. 6LowPSec employs existing hardware security features specified by the MAC security sublayer. A detailed campaign is presented that evaluates the performances of 6LowPSec compared with the lightweight IPSec. Results prove the feasibility of an end-to-end hardware security solution for IoT, that operates at the adaptation layer, without incurring much overhead.
A method for the determination of the hydraulic properties of soil from MODIS surface temperature for use in land‐surface models

Soil hydraulic properties (SHPs) play an important role in land‐surface models, but their spatial distribution is poorly known, and it is not feasible to make field measurements of SHPs everywhere they are needed. In addition, the scale SHPs are measured on (10 cm) is substantially smaller than the scale at which land‐surface models are run (>1 km). As a result, land‐surface models need landscape hydraulic properties (LHPs), not SHPs. We present a method for identifying LHPs from MODIS surface temperatures. We calibrated LHPs in the Noah land‐surface model using MODIS surface temperatures in 2005 at 14 sites from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) using locally observed forcing data from 2005. We then used observed flux data during this same time period for model verification. Next, we determined LHPs from MODIS surface temperature at five sites using High Resolution Land Data Assimilation forcing data from 2002. We then used these LHPS to run Noah with 2005 ARM forcing data and compared the output to the same observed 2005 fluxes. Fitting LHPs to MODIS data decreases the error in modeled latent heat flux from 98 W/m2 to 67 W/m2. Fitting LHPs to these same latent heat flux measurements decreases the error to 50 W/m2. Therefore, two thirds of the parameter estimation improvement from calibration to in situ flux data can be achieved using remotely sensed surface temperature. These results are insensitive to errors in other parameters. For example, changing albedo by 0.1 changes the saturated conductivity (Ks) by 10% and the van Genuchten “m” parameter by 1%. However, changing minimum canopy resistance by 40 s/m produced a significant but mutually compensating change in both Ks and “m. ”
Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy

An important measurement for any new material, for either science or engineering applications, is the determination of the elastic constants. Some exotic new materials, particularly in the crystalline form, may at first be available only in very small samples, and it is challenging to measure such small samples. Recently a new technique, resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy (RUS) has been developed for measuring the elastic constants of very small, as well as large, solid materials. The RUS technique involves lightly contacting a sample with two transducers and using a swept continuous wave excitation to determine a set of resonance frequencies for the sample. A computer calculation is then sued to determine all of the elastic constants from the resonance frequencies. In the past, the technique was hindered by the time required for the computer calculation, but now common desk-top computers can perform the calculation in minutes. For small or large samples, the technique has an advantage in that it is not necessary to bond transducers to the sample; the sample may simply be placed in a holder, and the elastic constants determined in a matter of minutes.
The Marketing Effects of Recommender Systems in a B2C E-commerce Context: A Review and Future Directions

As a kind of digital marketing technology, recommender systems (RSs) have already been widely applied for online retailers. Empirical studies have proved that RSs can increase the number of items sold, sell more diverse items, increase the user satisfaction and user fidelity and so on. However, our understanding of the marketing effects of RSs is still fragmented. Few comprehensive literature reviews has been published. This paper mainly reviews and synthesizes extant related literature in the last five years on the marketing effects of RSs, specifically focuses on how RSs influence consumers’ decision quality ,product demand and retailer profits in e-commerce market and e-commerce companies. From the angles of consumer behavior and marketing strategies, this study aims to discuss the positive and negative impacts which RSs bring to consumer and its providers, and presents some suggestions and potential directions for future research on RSs.
A note on strictly positive Radon measures

(i) there exists a strictly positive Radon measure on X; (ii) for every open subset U of X one can choose a compact set K(U) ⊆ U such that for every sequence (Un)n∈ω with int( ⋂ n∈ω Un) 6= ∅ there is a set A ⊆ ω of non-zero density such that ⋂ n∈A K(Un) 6= ∅. Here and below every topological space is assumed to be Hausdorff. By a Radon measure on a space X we mean a finite compact-regular measure defined on the Borel σ-algebra of X. A measure is said to be strictly positive if it is non-zero on every non-empty open set. Thus a Radon measure μ on a space X is strictly positive if and only the support of μ is the whole space. A subset A of the set ω of natural numbers is said to be of non-zero density if