bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Story Embedding: Learning Distributed Representations of Stories based on Character Networks (Extended Abstract)
Authors: Lee O-Joun , Jung Jason J.
Published: July 2020

This study aims to represent stories in narrative works (i.e., creative works that contain stories) with a fixed-length vector. We apply subgraph-based graph embedding models to dynamic social networks of characters that appeared in stories (character networks). We suppose that interactions between characters reflect the content of stories. We discretize the interactions by discovering the subgraphs and learn representations of stories by predicting occurrences of the subgraphs in corresponding character networks. We find subgraphs rooted in each character on each scene in multiple scales, using the WL (Weisfeiler-Lehman) relabeling process. To predict occurrences of subgraphs, we apply two approaches: (i) considering changes in subgraphs according to scenes and (ii) focusing on subgraphs on the last scene. We evaluated the proposed models by measuring the similarity between real movies with vector representations that were generated by the models.
When Pedestrian Detection Meets Nighttime Surveillance: A New Benchmark
Authors: Wang Xiao , Chen Jun , Wang Zheng , Liu Wu , Satoh Shin'ichi , Liang Chao , Lin Chia-Wen
Published: July 2020

Pedestrian detection at nighttime is a crucial and frontier problem in surveillance, but has not been well explored by the computer vision and artificial intelligence communities. Most of existing methods detect pedestrians under favorable lighting conditions (e.g. daytime) and achieve promising performances. In contrast, they often fail under unstable lighting conditions (e.g. nighttime). Night is a critical time for criminal suspects to act in the field of security. The existing nighttime pedestrian detection dataset is captured by a car camera, specially designed for autonomous driving scenarios. The dataset for nighttime surveillance scenario is still vacant. There are vast differences between autonomous driving and surveillance, including viewpoint and illumination. In this paper, we build a novel pedestrian detection dataset from the nighttime surveillance aspect: NightSurveillance1. As a benchmark dataset for pedestrian detection at nighttime, we compare the performances of state-of-the-art pedestrian detectors and the results reveal that the methods cannot solve all the challenging problems of NightSurveillance. We believe that NightSurveillance can further advance the research of pedestrian detection, especially in the field of surveillance security at nighttime.
Swarm Intelligence for Self-Organized Clustering (Extended Abstract)
Authors: Thrun Michael C. , Ultsch Alfred
Published: July 2020

The Databionic swarm (DBS) is a flexible and robust clustering framework that consists of three independent modules: swarm based projection, high-dimensional data visualization and representation guided clustering. The first module is the parameter-free projection method Pswarm, which exploits concepts of self-organization and emergence, game theory, and swarm intelligence. The second module is a parameter-free high-dimensional data visualization technique called topographic map. It uses the generalized U-matrix, which enables to estimate first, if any cluster tendency exists and second, the estimation of the number of clusters. The third module offers a clustering method which can be verified by the visualization and vice versa. Benchmarking w.r.t. conventional algorithms demonstrated that DBS can outperform them. Several applications showed that cluster structures provided by DBS are meaningful. Exemplary, a clustering of worldwide country-related data w.r.t the COVID-19 pandemic is presented here. Code and data is made available via open source.
Optimization Learning: Perspective, Method, and Applications
Authors: Liu Risheng
Published: July 2020

Numerous tasks at the core of statistics, learning, and vision areas are specific cases of ill-posed inverse problems. Recently, learning-based (e.g., deep) iterative methods have been empirically shown to be useful for these problems. Nevertheless, integrating learnable structures into iterations is still a laborious process, which can only be guided by intuitions or empirical insights. Moreover, there is a lack of rigorous analysis of the convergence behaviors of these reimplemented iterations, and thus the significance of such methods is a little bit vague. We move beyond these limits and propose a theoretically guaranteed optimization learning paradigm, a generic and provable paradigm for nonconvex inverse problems, and develop a series of convergent deep models. Our theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed optimization learning paradigm allows us to generate globally convergent trajectories for learning-based iterative methods. Thanks to the superiority of our framework, we achieve state-of-the-art performance on different real applications.
Mechanism Design with Uncertainty
Authors: Todo Taiki
Published: July 2020

My research is summarized as mechanism design with uncertainty. Traditional mechanism design focuses on static environments where all the (possibly probabilistic) information about the agents are observable by the mechanism designer. In practice, however, it is possible that the set of participating agents

and/or some of teheir actions are not observable a priori. We therefore focused on various kinds of uncertainty in mechanism design and developed/analyzed several market mechanisms that incentivise agents to behave in a sincere way.
Online Learning in Changing Environments
Authors: Zhang Lijun
Published: July 2020

The usual goal of online learning is to minimize the regret, which measures the performance of online learner against a fixed comparator. However, it is not suitable for changing environments in which the best decision may change over time. To address this limitation, new performance measures, including dynamic regret and adaptive regret have been proposed to guide the design of online algorithms. In dynamic regret, the learner is compared with a sequence of comparators, and in adaptive regret, the learner is required to minimize the regret over every interval. In this paper, we will review the recent developments in this area, and highlight our contributions. Specifically, we have proposed novel algorithms to minimize the dynamic regret and adaptive regret, and investigated the relationship between them.
GSM: Graph Similarity Model for Multi-Object Tracking
Authors: Liu Qiankun , Chu Qi , Liu Bin , Yu Nenghai
Published: July 2020

The popular tracking-by-detection paradigm for multi-object tracking (MOT) focuses on solving data association problem, of which a robust similarity model lies in the heart. Most previous works make effort to improve feature representation for individual object while leaving the relations among objects less explored, which may be problematic in some complex scenarios. In this paper, we focus on leveraging the relations among objects to improve robustness of the similarity model. To this end, we propose a novel graph representation that takes both the feature of individual object and the relations among objects into consideration. Besides, a graph matching module is specially designed for the proposed graph representation to alleviate the impact of unreliable relations. With the help of the graph representation and the graph matching module, the proposed graph similarity model, named GSM, is more robust to the occlusion and the targets sharing similar appearance. We conduct extensive experiments on challenging MOT benchmarks and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Towards an Artificial Argumentation System
Authors: Ruiz-Dolz Ramon
Published: July 2020

Computational Argumentation studies the definition of models able to either have a debate, persuade users in decision making or assist humans with argument analysis. In this work, some of our initial contributions and the foundations of this research field are presented.
Context Aware Sequence Modeling
Authors: Song Kyungwoo
Published: July 2020

Context modeling helps understand the data, such as sentence or user behavior. Contextual information captures the important underlying feature, and it enhances the relationship between data instances or hidden representations. As the importance of the sequential model grows, so does the importance of the sequential contextual modeling. Under the sequential data, we need to consider the context change over time. In this paper, we present our research works on context modeling and its dynamics modeling over time. Furthermore, we extend our research to handle the multi-granularity of sequential context modeling to consider rich context representations.
Pattern-Based Music Generation with Wasserstein Autoencoders and PRC Descriptions
Authors: Borghuis Valentijn , Angioloni Luca , Brusci Lorenzo , Frasconi Paolo
Published: July 2020

We demonstrate a pattern-based MIDI music generation

system with a generation strategy based on

Wasserstein autoencoders and a novel variant of pianoroll

descriptions of patterns which employs separate

channels for note velocities and note durations

and can be fed into classic DCGAN-style convolutional

architectures. We trained the system on two

new datasets (in the acid-jazz and high-pop genres)

composed by musicians in our team with music

generation in mind. Our demonstration shows

that moving smoothly in the latent space allows us

to generate meaningful sequences of four-bars patterns.
An Anomaly Detection and Explainability Framework using Convolutional Autoencoders for Data Storage Systems
Authors: Assaf Roy , Giurgiu Ioana , Pfefferle Jonas , Monney Serge , Pozidis Haris , Schumann Anika
Published: July 2020

Anomaly detection in data storage systems is a challenging problem due to the high dimensional sequential data involved, and lack of labels.

The state of the art for automating anomaly detection in these systems typically relies on hand crafted rules and thresholds which mainly allow to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior of each indicator in isolation.

In this work we present an end-to-end framework based on convolutional autoencoders which not only allows for anomaly detection on multivariate time series data, but also provides explainability. This is done by identifying similar historic anomalies and extracting the most influential indicators. These are then presented to relevant personnel such as system designers and architects, or to support engineers for further analysis.

We demonstrate the application of this framework along with an intuitive interactive web interface which was developed for data storage system anomaly detection. We discuss how this framework along with its explainability aspects enables support engineers to effectively tackle abnormal behaviors, all while allowing for crucial feedback.
Lifelong Zero-Shot Learning
Authors: Wei Kun , Deng Cheng , Yang Xu
Published: July 2020

Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL) handles the problem that some testing classes never appear in training set. Existing ZSL methods are designed for learning from a fixed training set, which do not have the ability to capture and accumulate the knowledge of multiple training sets, causing them infeasible to many real-world applications. In this paper, we propose a new ZSL setting, named as Lifelong Zero-Shot Learning (LZSL), which aims to accumulate the knowledge during the learning from multiple datasets and recognize unseen classes of all trained datasets. Besides, a novel method is conducted to realize LZSL, which effectively alleviates the Catastrophic Forgetting in the continuous training process. Specifically, considering those datasets containing different semantic embeddings, we utilize Variational Auto-Encoder to obtain unified semantic representations. Then, we leverage selective retraining strategy to preserve the

trained weights of previous tasks and avoid negative transfer when fine-tuning the entire model. Finally, knowledge distillation is employed to transfer knowledge from previous training stages to current stage. We also design the LZSL evaluation protocol and the challenging benchmarks. Extensive experiments on these benchmarks indicate that our method tackles LZSL problem effectively, while existing ZSL methods fail.
Characterizing Similarity of Visual Stimulus from Associated Neuronal Response
Authors: Ravindra Vikram , Grama Ananth
Published: July 2020

The problem of characterizing brain functions such as memory, perception, and processing of stimuli has received significant attention in neuroscience literature. These experiments rely on carefully calibrated, albeit complex inputs, to record brain response to signals. A major problem in analyzing brain response to common stimuli such as audio-visual input from videos (e.g., movies) or story narration through audio books, is that observed neuronal responses are due to combinations of ``pure'' factors, many of which may be latent. In this paper, we present a novel methodological framework for deconvolving the brain's response to mixed stimuli into its constituent responses to underlying pure factors. This framework, based on archetypal analysis, is applied to the analysis of imaging data from an adult cohort watching the BBC show, Sherlock. By focusing on visual stimulus, we show strong correlation between our observed deconvolved response and third-party textual video annotations -- demonstrating the significant power of our analyses techniques. Building on these results, we show that our techniques can be used to predict neuronal responses in new subjects (how other individuals react to Sherlock), as well as to new visual content (how individuals react to other videos with known annotations). This paper reports on the first study that relates video features with neuronal responses in a rigorous algorithmic and statistical framework based on deconvolution of observed mixed imaging signals using archetypal analysis.
Generating Person Images with Appearance-aware Pose Stylizer
Authors: Huang Siyu , Xiong Haoyi , Cheng Zhi-Qi , Wang Qingzhong , Zhou Xingran , Wen Bihan , Huan Jun , Dou Dejing
Published: July 2020

Generation of high-quality person images is challenging, due to the sophisticated entanglements among image factors, e.g., appearance, pose, foreground, background, local details, global structures, etc. In this paper, we present a novel end-to-end framework to generate realistic person images based on given person poses and appearances. The core of our framework is a novel generator called Appearance-aware Pose Stylizer (APS) which generates human images by coupling the target pose with the conditioned person appearance progressively. The framework is highly flexible and controllable by effectively decoupling various complex person image factors in the encoding phase, followed by re-coupling them in the decoding phase. In addition, we present a new normalization method named adaptive patch normalization, which enables region-specific normalization and shows a good performance when adopted in person image generation model. Experiments on two benchmark datasets show that our method is capable of generating visually appealing and realistic-looking results using arbitrary image and pose inputs.
SBAT: Video Captioning with Sparse Boundary-Aware Transformer
Authors: Jin Tao , Huang Siyu , Chen Ming , Li Yingming , Zhang Zhongfei
Published: July 2020

In this paper, we focus on the problem of applying the transformer structure to video captioning effectively. The vanilla transformer is proposed for uni-modal language generation task such as machine translation. However, video captioning is a multimodal learning problem, and the video features have much redundancy between different time steps. Based on these concerns, we propose a novel method called sparse boundary-aware transformer (SBAT) to reduce the redundancy in video representation. SBAT employs boundary-aware pooling operation for scores from multihead attention and selects diverse features from different scenarios. Also, SBAT includes a local correlation scheme to compensate for the local information loss brought by sparse operation. Based on SBAT, we further propose an aligned cross-modal encoding scheme to boost the multimodal interaction. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets show that SBAT outperforms the state-of-the-art methods under most of the metrics.
Multichannel Color Image Denoising via Weighted Schatten p-norm Minimization
Authors: Huang Xinjian , Du Bo , Liu Weiwei
Published: July 2020

The R, G and B channels of a color image generally have different noise statistical properties or noise strengths. It is thus problematic to apply grayscale image denoising algorithms to color image denoising. In this paper, based on the non-local self-similarity of an image and the different noise strength across each channel, we propose a MultiChannel Weighted Schatten p-Norm Minimization (MCWSNM) model for RGB color image denoising. More specifically, considering a small local RGB patch in a noisy image, we first find its nonlocal similar cubic patches in a search window with an appropriate size. These similar cubic patches are then vectorized and grouped to construct a noisy low-rank matrix, which can be recovered using the Schatten p-norm minimization framework. Moreover, a weight matrix is introduced to balance each channel’s contribution to the final denoising results. The proposed MCWSNM can be solved via the alternating direction method of multipliers. Convergence property of the proposed method are also theoretically analyzed . Experiments conducted on both synthetic and real noisy color image datasets demonstrate highly competitive denoising performance, outperforming comparison algorithms, including several methods based on neural networks.
Formalizing Group and Propagated Trust in Multi-Agent Systems
Authors: Drawel Nagat , Bentahar Jamal , Laarej Amine , Rjoub Gaith
Published: July 2020

We present a formal framework that allows individual and group of agents to reason about their trust toward other agents. In particular, we propose a branching time temporal logic BT which includes operators that express concepts such as everyone trust, distributed trust and propagated trust. We analyze the satisfiability and model checking problems of this logic using a reduction technique.
Genetic diversity studies of cumin (Cuminun cyminum L.) genotypes in western plains of Rajasthan
Authors: Kumhar S. R. , Choudhary B. R. , Ramesh Ramesh , Mehriya M. L.
Published: July 2020

Genetic diversity was studied on fifty-four genotypes of cumin, Cuminum cyminum L. at “Agricultural Research Station, Mandor, Jodhpur” during rabi season 2017-18. The mean squares were found significantly different for all the characters under study, depicting the availability of variability among the study materials. The high magnitude of phenotypic coefficient of variance (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variance (GCV) for seed yield, primary branches per plant and number of umbels per plant depicted the presence of vast amount of variation for the character along with high heritability (68-97%) combined with higher genetic advances as percentage of means for seed yield. The highest intra-cluster distance was recorded in cluster VI (11.8) along with cluster VII (11.33) and cluster VIII (8.29) depicting large genetic variability among the genotypes of these three clusters. The highest inter-cluster distance was reported among cluster III and VIII (51.97) followed by cluster III and VII (40.07) and cluster IV and cluster VIII (34.77), suggesting wide range of diversity between genotypes of the clusters. Amongst the characters, seed yield contributed the highest towards genetic divergence (47.80%) followed by number of umbel per plant (25.65%), branches per plant (8.60%) and 1000 seed weight (6.64%).
Profil Keterampilan Metakognitif Peserta Didik Pada Konsep Bakteri Kelas X MIPA Di Kota Tasikmalaya
Authors: Hidayat Syarif , Rojabi Yulanda Nur , Rahmawati Nida Audia
Published: July 2020

Metakognitif adalah suatu tingkatan dalam proses berpikir yang digunakan peserta didik untuk memecahkan suatu permasalahan, memiliki kesadaran terhadap proses berpikirnya dan mengontrol cara berpikirnya. Peserta didik yang menggunakan metagoknitifnya ketika memecahkan suatu permasalahan akan lebih berhasil dibandingkan dengan peserta didik yang tidak menggunakan metakognitifnya. Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan keterampilan metakognitif peserta didik SMA menggunakan model pembelajaran Problem Based Learning (PBL) dalam pembelajaran bakteri. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Partisipan adalah kelas X MIPA 5 di Kota Tasikmalaya sebanyak 40 peserta didik. Partisipasi ditentukan dengan menggunakan teknik purposive sampling. Teknik pengumpulan data keterampilan metakognitif dilakukan dengan wawancara. Berdasarkan hasil wawancara peserta didik yang melakukan keterampilan metakognitif pada tahap planning sebesar 43.3%, monitoring sebesar 48.5% dan evaluating� sebesar 56.9%. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa keterampilan metakognitif peserta didik SMA Terpadu di Kota Tasikmalaya pada mata pelajaran biologi sudah berkembang namun belum ditingkatkan.
Asosiasi Vegetasi Terhadap Komunitas Burung di Kampus I Universitas Kuningan
Authors: Nurdin Nurdin , Nurlaila Ai , Kosasih Dede , Herlina Nina
Published: July 2020

Interaksi ekologis antara vegetasi dan burung di Kampus I Universitas Kuningan merupakan sifat naluriah alami yang membentuk suatu asosiasi saling menguntungkan. Pembangunan dikhawatirkan berdampak terhadap penurunan tingkat keanekaragaman jenis burung sebagai bioindikator kualitas lingklungan. Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengetahui kekayaan, keanekaragaman, dominansi jenis pohon dan burung, serta menganalisis asosiasi pohon terhadap komunitas burung di Kampus I UNIKU. �Hasil analisis data terdapat 42 jenis� dan 378 pohon, tingkat kekayaan(DMg=6,9) dan keanekaragaman jenis (H�=2,9)termasuk sedang didominasi oleh Polyalthia longifolia 86 batang.� Burung tercatat 19 jenis dan 1485 ekor, tingkat kekayaan (DMg=2,47) dan keanekaragaman jenis (H�=1,67) katagori rendah didominasi oleh Passer montanus 652 ekor. Asosiasi vegetasi pohon dan burung berdasarkan Key Performance Indeks (KPI) pada penilaian terhadap fungsi ekologis pohon menunjukan bahwa persentase jumlah tertinggi dengan katagori sangat baik (SB) adalah fungsi modifikasi sebagai� pohon penaung 22 jenis. Sedangkan pada fungsi sebagai kontrol kelembaban udara dan menghadirkan burung dengan katagori baik (BA) terdapat 13 jenis. Katagori buruk (BU) terdapat 2 jenis yaitu pada fungsi sebagai kontrol kelembaban udara dan menghadirkan burung. Kesimpulan penelitian ini bahwa asosiasi vegetasi pohon dan burung berdasarkan KPI� pada� penilaian� terhadap fungsi ekologis pohon untuk memodifikasi suhu sebagai penanung, pengontrol kelembaban udara, dan� fungsi menghadirkan burung katagori baik. Semakin tinggi nilai keanekeragaman jenis tumbuhan dan burung di Kampus I UNIKU, maka semakin tinggi pula kekayaan jenisnya.�
PENGEMBANGAN MODUL BIOLOGI METODE POE (PREDICT, OBSERVE, EXPLAIN) DISERTAI NILAI KARAKTER MATERI SISTEM RESPIRASI
Authors: Dewi Ni Nyoman Ernita , Santoso Handoko , Lepiyanto Agil
Published: July 2020

Abstrak:������ Tujuan dari penelitian ini yaitu menghasilkan modul biologi metode POE (Predict, Observe, Explain) disertai nilai karakter materi sistem respirasi yang layak.� Nilai karakter yang ditampilkan pada modul ini yaitu nilai karakter jujur, disiplin, peduli lingkungan, dan rasa ingin tahu. Penambahan nilai karakter pada modul bertujuan untuk menjadikan peserta didik menjadi generasi yang memiliki karakter yang baik untuk menghadapi dinamika perubahan di masa depan. Penambahan Metode POE (Predict Observe Explain) juga memiliki kelebihan yaitu peserta didik mampu berpikir kreatif untuk mengemukaan prediksi terhadap suatu permasalahan yang muncul dan memacu peserta didik untuk membuktikan prediksinya dengan upaya penyelidikannya dan mendukung ilmu pengetahuan yang dipelajarinya. Jenis penelitian ini menggunakan metode Research and Development, dengan model pengembangan yang disarankan oleh Thiagarajan, Semmel, dan Semmel yaitu model 4-D, tetapi hanya sampai tahapan develop karena keterbatasan waktu dan biaya. Teknik analisis data menggunakan angket yang di ujicobakan ke peserta didik sebagai uji coba kelompok kecil, sebelum diujicobakan pada kelompok kecil, telah dilakukan validasi oleh para ahli dan telah revisi, dengan persentase nilai dari ahli desain 86%, ahli materi 90%, dan uji coba kelompok kecil dengan persentase 86%. Hasil presentase menunjukkan bahwa produk ini dikatagorikan sangat baik untuk kriteria kelayakan pada modul dan keterbacaan modul.
Ritual Brobosan Sebagai Penghormatan Terakhir dalam Liturgi Pemakaman Jawa-Kristiani
Authors: Wimbodo Purnomo Agustinus
Published: July 2020

The Catholic Church provides occasions for funeral rites so as to illuminate the death of the faithful within the paschal mystery of Christ. The Church administers the funeral and offers prayers for its departing members to escort them to the afterlife. Funeral ceremonies are held to comfort the bereaved family, but also to strengthen the faith of the people. Therefore, the funeral ceremony could be seen as a pastoral means to foster the faith of the believers and at the same time to evangelise the gospel. Inculturation could be seen as a process to help the faithful experience God’s saving presence in the liturgy from their respective cultures. In this article, the author views the funeral of the faithful as an entrance for inculturation, bringing Christian liturgy towards the local culture, which in this paper is the Javanese culture, and vice versa. The Javanese culture has its own philosophy in escorting the departing souls through its rituals. This article attempts to integrate what has been a ritual of death in the Javanese culture, i. e. brobosan, which shows a gesture of giving respect to the departed, in the Catholic funeral liturgy, particularly in the last part of the rite.
A New Look at Instersubjectivity and Theology: A Retrieval of Filipino Loob-Kapwa Relationality In Dialogue with Gabriel Marcel and Ludwig Binswanger
Authors: Rebustillo Rowan
Published: July 2020

Although Marcel and Binswanger are contemporaries both in terms of historical period and intellectual pursuit, it is curious that they are never discussed together. Hence, this essay will attempt to explore some areas of convergences and divergences between these two intersubjective thinkers who are considered to be indispensable interlocutors in the I-thou discourse. In this article, as another attempt to take the discourse on intersubjectivity a little bit further, Marcel and Binswanger are placed in dialogue with the Filipino concept of loob-kapwa, which the author believes provides a hospitable home, when seen against the background of Nicolescu’s “Included Middle”, for the intersubjective relation that they are proposing. The author asserts that loob-kapwa tandem, without turning a blind eye towards its negative tendencies, is a viable answer to the “problem of crossing-over” that remained to be a philosophical baggage for both Marcel and Binswanger courtesy of their Modern upbringing, because the chasm, at least conceptually, is absent in the Filipino estimation of the loob-kapwa intersubjective bond.
Karya Seni dalam Pandangan Jean-Paul Sartre
Authors: Pranowo Yogie
Published: July 2020

Jean-Paul Sartre offers a different way of looking at artworks. He offers psychological as well as phenomenological perspectives. The artworks referred to by Sartre include music, painting, literature, and theater. In his thoughts related to works of art, Sartre offers a notion of analogon, that has a key role to explain his concept of imagination. With this notion, he goes further to explain the concept of irreality in artworks, of which analogon is a medium or a material vehicle. When enjoying an artwork, one is enjoying the analogon. Music can be seen as an excess of reality, literature finds its role within its social environment, a painting provokes a viewer to rise certain images in his or her cosciousness, and an actor in theater not simply portrays the characters of a personage because he becomes ‘not real’ in playing his role on the stage. All this brings to the understanding of artwork as irreality.
Dilema Kekerasan dalam Ayat-ayat Kitab Suci
Authors: Eko Riyadi Staniselaus
Published: July 2020

Violence is a crime condemned by religions, but religions in the world are apparently involved in some kind of violence. It has been considered problematic that some scriptural texts are showing violent acts that seem to be ‘authorised’ by God, even ‘allowed’ by God, or celebrated by the people. How should we understand such problematic texts? Is there any violence authorised by God? Christianity has been dealing with the interpretation of violent acts in biblical texts from the Old Testament as well as from the New Testament. This article suggests that violence in the biblical texts must be understood within the context of defining religious identity of Israel among the other nations that have their own gods. Scriptures do not promote violence, but has recorded the historical experiences of Israel in their confrontation with other nations. Therefore, violence in the biblical texts cannot be referred to as a sort of justification for any violent acts by religions in our multireligious and multiethnic society.
Ultrassonografia esplênica, hepática, biliar e renal em caprinos. Uma revisão
Authors: Sousa Francisco Carlos de , Teixeira Dárcio Ítalo Alves
Published: July 2020

A utilização da ultrassonografia bidimensional é crescente na clínica de ruminantes, principalmente na avaliação abdominal destes animais. Esta é uma ferramenta segura, prática, rápida, não invasiva e sem efeito colateral conhecido tanto para o paciente quanto para o examinador. A ultrassonografia permite a avaliação de órgãos como fígado, baço, rins, abomaso, rúmen, retículo, órgãos reprodutivos e outros, fornecendo informação a respeito da localização anatômica, tamanho e características da ecotextura do parênquima, detecção de anormalidades focais ou difusamente distribuídas no parênquima, por exemplo. Estudos relacionados ao uso da ultrassonografia podem ser de grande valia no exame desses órgãos, podendo prover aos clínicos informações diagnósticas específicas, anteriormente disponíveis somente por laparotomia exploratória. Assim, este estudo teve por objetivo fornecer informações referentes à utilização da ultrassonografia para descrição da anatomia e diagnóstico de alterações morfofuncionais em órgãos como baço, fígado, vesícula biliar e rins de caprinos sadios.
Utilização terapêutica das células progenitoras adultas multipotentes alogênicas em cães acometidos pela doença renal
Authors: Santos Enrico Jardim Clemente , Winck Caroline Pinho , Braga Camila Landim
Published: July 2020

A doença renal crônica tem grande importância na medicina veterinária, pois representa grande casuística na clínica de pequenos animais, não possuindo perspectiva de cura até o momento. Esta síndrome se caracteriza pelo comprometimento do metabolismo renal, que ocorre de forma dinâmica e progressiva por períodos que variam de meses a anos, culminando na perda das funções fisiológicas dos rins. Atualmente, o tratamento inclui fluidoterapia, orientação dietética, diálise e tratamento sintomático paliativo, os quais visam prover uma melhora na qualidade de vida dos pacientes. Neste estudo, 12 cães sem distinção de raça e sexo, com idades entre 3 e 11 anos, acometidos pela doença renal crônica, estágio dois, foram tratados com células progenitoras adultas multipotentes, oriundas da gordura de animais doadores saudáveis. Foram realizadas três aplicações pela via endovenosa, com intervalo médio de 30 dias. Todos os pacientes demonstraram uma melhora significativa da função renal após as infusões das células progenitoras adultas multipotentes alogênicas de tecido adiposo de caninos, sem aparentes efeitos adversos. Foi observada uma melhora clínica, ganho de apetite e aumento da disposição em todos os pacientes já após a primeira aplicação. Conclui-se que a terapia com células progenitoras adultas multipotentes colaboraram significativamente para a melhoria da qualidade de vida dos cães acometidos pela doença renal crônica, estágio 2.
Análise espermática e testicular de touros Nelore suplementados com glicerina bruta
Authors: Strada Evani Souza de Oliveira , Silva Robério Rodrigues , Barbosa Larissa Pires , Carvalho Gleidson Giordano Pinto de , Leite Laudi Cunha , Leite Meiby Carneiro de Paula , Vieira Renan Luiz Albuquerque , Lima Júnior Dorgival Morais de
Published: July 2020

Objetivou-se avaliar os efeitos da inclusão de glicerina bruta sobre a morfologia testicular de touros Nelore. Para isso, foram utilizados 35 bovinos com peso corporal inicial de 428,0 ± 32,11 kg e aproximadamente 22 meses, distribuídos em delineamento inteiramente casualizado, com cinco tratamentos e sete repetições, suplementados durante 88 dias, com 14 dias de adaptação. Os tratamentos consistiram na inclusão de glicerina de baixa pureza nos níveis de 0, 3, 6, 9 e 12% da matéria seca total dos suplementos. Foi realizado uma coleta de sêmen no 88º dia experimental, posteriormente os animais foram pesados, abatidos e tiveram os testículos coletados, pesados e amostrados. A inclusão da glicerina bruta influenciou a motilidade e o vigor espermático (P<0,05). O peso corporal ao abate e perímetro escrotal não foram influenciados (P>0,05) pelos níveis de glicerina. Observou-se comportamento quadrático (P<0,05) para o índice Leydigossomático, com ponto de mínima de 6,66% e para a proporção volumétrica das células de Leydig (CL), com ponto de mínima de 5,41%. Não foram observadas alterações histopatológicas testiculares nos bovinos. A glicerina de baixa pureza promove modificações na motilidade e vigor espermático, no índice leydigossomático e no volume das células de Leydig. Portanto, não se recomenda a adição de glicerina bruta no suplemento de touros em atividade reprodutiva.
Contusões em carcaças bovinas: Fatores de ocorrência e influências do bem-estar animal na cadeia produtiva: revisão
Authors: Garcia Javier Alexander Bethancourt , Fernandes Tiago Albandes , Vaz Ricardo Zambarda
Published: July 2020

A cadeia produtiva da bovinocultura brasileira vem apresentando um constante crescimento no PIB do agronegócio nos últimos três anos, devido à modernização e organização da cadeia, sustentada pela introdução de novas tecnologias, ao avanço genético, ao manejo nutricional, bem como às pesquisas realizadas em diferentes instituições do País. Entretanto, ainda persistem os problemas de bem-estar animal, os quais são evidenciados nos frigoríficos, através do aumento de lesões nas carcaças bovinas, demostrando um reflexo negativo para a bovinocultura. Desta maneira, a presente revisão objetivou reunir e discutir informações sobre as contusões em carcaças bovinas, suas características e seus prejuízos na cadeia produtiva. Estas lesões são observadas durante a esfola na linha de abate e estão relacionadas aos erros de manejo e ao sofrimento dos animais. Devido à essa situação, a cadeia produtiva sofre um impacto direto na lucratividade. Desta forma, ocorre a necessidade da implementação de novas estratégias, aperfeiçoando os manejos utilizados atualmente, como a inclusão de programas de capacitação para a equipe de trabalho em todo o sistema produtivo, a adoção de um planejamento logístico na hora de realizar o transporte dos animais aos abatedouros frigoríficos, bem como o incremento de fiscalizações para garantir o cumprimento das leis. A correção destes fatores reduzirá a presença de contusões, proporcionando a obtenção de um produto de melhor qualidade.
Indigenous Cultural Knowledge for Therapeutic Landscape Design
Authors: McIntosh Jacqueline , Marques Bruno , Hatton William
Published: July 2020

The meanings of place and the relationship between place and health have culturally specific dimensions. This is of particular importance for indigenous people and communities as often regarding landscape as part of a circle of life, establishing a holistic perspective about health and wellbeing. The indigenous Māori of Aotearoa/New Zealand contend that their relationship with the land shapes how the cultural, spiritual, emotional, physical, and social wellbeing of people and communities are expressed. Few studies have explored the influence of the cultural beliefs and values on health, in particular the intricate link between land and health. This chapter broadens the understanding of therapeutic landscapes through the exploration of specific cultural dimensions. It contributes to the expanding body of research focusing on the role of therapeutic landscapes and their role in shaping health, through the development of new research methods.
‘Do you think it’s a crime?’ Building joint understanding of victimisation in calls for help
Authors: Tennent Emma
Published: July 2020

© The Author(s) 2019. Society has a moral obligation to help victims, but who is recognised as a victim is a contentious issue. Social interaction is a key site where shared understandings of victimisation are built. This article analyses calls to a Victim Support helpline using conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis. Callers described experiences of crimes to account for requesting help. Call-takers claimed the rights to describe and assess callers’ experiences in terms of institutional constraints. Call-takers disavowed the category crime to deny callers’ requests and ascribed the category crime to accountably offer help. Participants negotiated their respective rights to describe callers’ experiences and determine the kind of help needed. The analyses demonstrate how participants’ different understandings of victimisation were consequential for the delivery or withholding of support.

Contribution has been accepted for publication in the journal.
Nexus of Transformational Leadership and Employees’ Job Performance in Telecom Sector Pakistan
Authors: Altaf Hussain  , Muhammad Asad Khan  , Jawad Hussain  , Mohammad Hanif Khan
Published: July 2020

Transformational leadership is credited to inspire, motivate and support their employees in order to achieve organizational objectives. These leaders maintain the quality of workforce by inculcating visionary skills and abilities in their subordinates. This paper aims to examine the nexus of transformational leadership with employees’ job performance in telecom sector of Pakistan. The data is collected from the employees of PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited) head quarter, Islamabad through questionnaire. Sampling was made using purposive sampling technique. 150 questionnaires were distributed among the employees, out of which 120 were received back recording a response rate of 80 percent. It was hypothesized that transformational leadership is positively associated with employees’ job performance. Data is analyzed using correlation and regression analysis through SPSS. Results of the study indicate that majority of the PTCL employees agree that transformational leadership style has significant positive impact on employees job performance. In the light of the findings of this research it is recommended for PTCL management to adopt transformational leadership style to tackle today’s dynamic environment.
BUDGET RATCHETING IN GOVERNMENTAL BUDGETING: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION
Authors: Misra Fauzan
Published: July 2020

Previous literature has documented various aspects of behavior in the budgeting process. Behavioral problems that are often discussed include budgetary slack and opportunistic behavior that occur due to information asymmetry. However, there is little attention to behavioral problems in previous studies called ratcheting behavior. This study investigates such behavior in a governmental budgeting setting. Besides, this study extends by testing ratchet behavior when local government adopts a well-known budget control mechanism, called analysis on standardized expenditure. To accomplish this purpose, study participants role-played as the budget preparer on a government budgeting task. The experiment used a web-based instrument that involved 51 participants. Results showed that budget preparer engaged in a ratchet behavior when setting their budget. Furthermore, budget ratcheting did not occur when preparer using an analysis of standardized expenditure. However, this situation only remains for one year. In the next year, preparer engaged in a ratchet behavior, at a lower intention. These findings underscore the importance of analysis of standardized expenditure in a government budgeting process environment. As a practical contribution, these findings suggest that using and monitoring for the adoption of analysis on standardized expenditure should be maintained continuously.
Neurological examination is changing
Authors: Jasionis A. , Mameniškienė R.
Published: July 2020

Patient examination during the COVID-19 pandemic should be short and fruitful, physicians should avoid unnecessary actions of direct contact. In certain situations, remote consultations are preferred. This commentary proposes several modifications to the neurological exam to make it shorter and to avoid potential actions of higher epidemiological risk. Three situations are discussed: examination of the patient with COVID-19, urgent neurological examination, and teleneurological examination.
COVID-19 infection, quarantine, and sleep disorders: literature review
Authors: Sakalauskaitė-Juodeikienė E.
Published: July 2020

It has been known since ancient times that rest and sleep are vital, as are breathing, eating, and other bodily functions. Over the last 30 years, a clear link has been established between adequate sleep and the proper functioning of the immune system. In this article, the author reviews sleep changes caused by viral infection and provides evidence that sleep deprivation acts as a significant factor in functional immunosuppression. The author reviews recent scientific literature suggesting that the administration of melatonin and melatonin receptor agonists for patients with COVID-19 infection treated in the intensive care unit can reduce prevalence of delirium and improve sleep quality, protect patients from “cytokine storm” and improve acute lung injury. Finally, it will be explained how adequate sleep and adherence to sleep hygiene recommendations in this difficult situation can be one of the most important factors regulating our behaviour and emotions and guaranteeing the proper functions of the immune system.
Myasthenia gravis and Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome: treatment options and guidance for management during COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Klimašauskienė A. , Bunevičiūtė R.
Published: July 2020

Myasthenia gravis (MG) and Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) are immune-mediated neurologic disorders characterized by muscle weakness and fatigue. MG is the most common neuromuscular junction disorder while LEMS is an extraordinary rare disease. The symptomatic treatment of MG and LEMS includes acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Amifampridine (3,4-diaminopyridine) is effective in reducing symptoms of the LEMS. Long term immunosuppressive treatment involves corticosteroids, azathioprine, and mycophenolate mofetil. Thymectomy is an essential component of treatment for thymomatous MG patients. Thymectomy also has a therapeutic role for selected non-thymomatous MG patients. The treatment of severe exacerbations and myasthenic crises includes intravenous immunoglobulins and plasma exchange.During the COVID-19 pandemic, MG/LEMS patients should continue ongoing treatment and are advised not to stop any immunosuppressive agents used. Altering or stopping an immunosuppressive agent may increase disease activity and/or MG exacerbation or crisis. Immune depleting agents should not be given if symptoms and signs of serious infections appear.
Inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathies and patient management during the COVID-19 pandemic. Literature review
Authors: Bunevičiūtė R. , Klimašauskienė A.
Published: July 2020

Inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathies are rare but potentially treatable disorders. They can cause a lot of difficulties in daily practice due to their clinical heterogeneity and long term immunosuppressive treatment. Environmental and epidemiological changes may increase the incidence of the demyelinating polyneuropathies. This article considers the main clinical features, basics of diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathies with a special attention to the management of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Urgent neurosonological examinations during COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Valaikienė J.
Published: July 2020

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 forced to create urgent medical safety diagnostic protocols to limit the spread of this deadly infection. The article presents the indications, safety requirements, techniques, and clinical examples of neurological point-of-care ultrasonography or neuro-POCUS. The importance and limitations of the neuro-POCUS are discussed.
Medicinal products used for the treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19
Authors: Vaitkevičius A.
Published: July 2020

Currently, the most relevant public and personal health problem is the new coronavirus-induced COVID-19 disease. In view of the pandemic emergency situation, the rapid spread of the infection, the severe condition of some patients, and the high mortality rate, there is an urgent need to treat patients with both symptomatic measures and specific agents. However, to date, no medicinal products have been authorized specifically for the treatment of COVID-19. New information on the efficacy of certain medicines appears almost daily yet it is often contradictory, and reliable data from large-scale clinical trials are still lacking. The article summarizes the known data on the efficacy and safety of antiviral agents and medicines used to control immune responses, precautions and possible adverse effects on the nervous system, which could be beneficial to the physicians in clinical practice. Data on newly initiated clinical trials on medicinal products for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19 are also provided.
THE PORTRAYAL OF ECONOMIC ORIGINAL PICTURE FROM THE NOVELS OF MR LAHARY: SIGNIFICANT REVIEW OF BODOS, DWELERS OF ASSAM
Authors: Baro Dwipen
Published: July 2020

Bodo literature is a developing literature after the Assamese literature in Assam. Monoranjan Lahary is a popular and prominent writer. In the mentioned topic, it will be criticized concerning some economic earning methods and systems inherently followed by the Bodos, portrayed by Monoranjan Lahary in his novels. He has used different kind of original habits of the Bodos, which are not alike to the contemporary dwellers of Assam. In his novel, he reflects the genuine technique or habits of the Bodo people to earn the money. He uses concrete idea in his novels having used the genuine picture. The readers can enjoy and earn knowledge so much, as they have required from the novel of Lahary, about the Bodos. The works and the habits always influenced to other communities to follow the same. This paper attempts to show the nature of living of the Bodos, that the Bodos do physical hard labor, where there was no impact of modernism. In the discussion, the dialogues and the quotations are given in the same language i.e. Bodo, as used in the novels by the novelist Monoranjan Lahary.