Work capacity and anticipation in A.A. Ukhtomsky’s concept of dominance

This paper presents the results of theoretical and experimental investigations of human activity and anticipation based on A.A. Ukhtomsky’s concept of brain dominance – a non-equilibrium system-forming factor in living systems. Facts on the stages of dominance formation are presented in relation to the creative abilities of the human brain and the role of fatigue as a “lever” for increasing systems’ work capacity on the basis of “trace exaltation”. Individually, specific features of dominantogenesis are compared with variations in behavioural types. On the basis of chronotopic EEG analysis, we delineate cortical dominants that underlie individual specifics of cognitive processes. The relation is shown between anticipation and the “expansion of dominants” – the broadening of “distal perception” in time and space, as framed by A.A. Ukhtomsky.     

From Symbol to ‘Symbol’, to Abstract Symbol: Response to Copeland and Shagrir on Turing-Machine Realism Versus Turing-Machine Purism

In their recent paper “Do Accelerating Turing Machines Compute the Uncomputable?” Copeland and Shagrir (Minds Mach 21:221–239, 2011) draw a distinction between a purist conception of Turing machines, according to which these machines are purely abstract, and Turing machine realism according to which Turing machines are spatio-temporal and causal “notional" machines. In the present response to that paper we concede the realistic aspects of Turing’s own presentation of his machines, pointed out by Copeland and Shagrir, but argue that Turing's treatment of symbols in the course of that presentation opens the door for later purist conceptions. Also, we argue that a purist conception of Turing machines (as well as other computational models) plays an important role not only in the analysis of the computational properties of Turing machines, but also in the philosophical debates over the nature of their realization.     

A novel approach to exploring company’s financial soundness: Investor’s perspective

Prediction of company’s life cycle stage change; creation of an ordered 2D map allowing to explore company’s financial soundness from a rating agency perspective; and prediction of trends of main valuation attributes usually used by investors are the main objectives of this article. The developed algorithms are based on a random forest (RF) and a nonlinear data mapping technique “t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding”.Information from five different perspectives, namely balance, income, cash flow, stock price, and risk indicators was aggregated via proximity matrices of RF to enable exploration of company’s financial soundness from a rating agency perspective. The proposed use of information not only from companies’ financial statements but also from the stock price and risk indicators perspectives has proved useful in creating ordered 2D maps of rated companies. The companies were well ordered according to the credit risk rating assigned by the Moody’s rating agency.Results of experimental investigations substantiate that the developed models are capable of predicting short term trends of the main valuation attributes, providing valuable information for investors, with low error. The models reflect financial soundness of actions taken by company’s management team. It was also found that company’s life cycle stage change can be determined with the average accuracy of 72.7%. Bearing in mind fuzziness of the transition moment, the obtained prediction accuracy is rather encouraging.     

Culture in cycles: considering H.T. Odum’s ‘information cycle’

‘Culture’ remains a conundrum in anthropology. When recast in the mold of ‘information cycles,’ culture is transformed. New fault lines appear. Information is splintered into parallel or nested forms. Dynamics becomes cycling. Energy is essential. And culture has function in a directional universe. The ‘information cycle’ is the crowning component of H.T. Odum’s theory of general systems. What follows is an application of the information cycle to the cultural domains of discourse, social media, ritual, education, journalism, technology, academia, and law, which were never attempted by Odum. In information cycles, cultural information is perpetuated – maintained against Second Law depreciation. Conclusions are that culture is in fact a nested hierarchy of cultural forms. Each scale of information production is semi-autonomous, with its own evolutionary dynamics of production and selection in an information cycle. Simultaneously, each information cycle is channeled or entrained by its larger scale of information and ultimately human-ecosystem structuring.     

With a View to the Side: YouTube’s Sidebar and YouTuber’s Linguistic Style as Hints for Trust-Related Evaluations

Based on a heuristic approach to information processing, thematic reference of YouTube’s sidebars and YouTuber’s linguistic style are viewed as cues that should impact viewers’ evaluation of videos. In this study, a 2 × 2 online experiment was conducted wherein these factors were varied systematically for a video about nutrition myths. 147 participants assessed the credibility of information, YouTuber’s trustworthiness, and the self-reported learning gain. Results showed that a sidebar referring to similar (vs. unrelated) videos increased participants’ perceived trustworthiness of a YouTuber who used a YouTube-typical (vs. formal) language. Moreover, participants judged the learning gain to be higher when YouTube’s sidebar referred to similar videos. However, thematic reference of sidebar and linguistic style did not impact participants’ credibility judgments. Since people seem to recognize YouTube’s sidebars when evaluating videos, YouTube’s recommendation criteria might not only mediate videos, but also influence people’s judgments of YouTubers and videos.     

Response to comment on ‘Persistent inputs and the standard H2 multivariable control problem’ by K. Park and J.J. Bongiorno Jr

Layered networks are used in a nonlinear adaptive control problem. The plant is an unknown feedback-linearizable discrete-time system, represented by an input-output model. A state space model of the plant is obtained to define the zero dynamics, which are assumed to be stable. A linearizing feedback control is derived in terms of some unknown nonlinear functions. To identify these functions, it is assumed that they can be modelled by layered neural networks. The weights of the networks are updated and used to generate the control. A local convergence result is given. Computer simulations verify the theoretical result.     

Correction to ‘A note on the discrete Lyapunov and Riccati matrix equations’

In Tran and Sawan (1984), we derived a lower bound for the determinant of the discrete algebraic Riccati equation where A, B, P, Q are n x n matrices, Q = Q ^T > 0 and Rank (B) = n. We assumed that BB ^T>Q and the matrix A is stable. The purpose of this note is to include an additional assumption about the above equation in order for the result of Theorem 1 given in Tran and Sawan (1984) to be valid. Without the additional assumption, this theorem would be invalid as has been pointed out by Kwon and Youn (1985). The additional assumption is given below with the same notation as in Tran and Sawan (1984).     

How to Measure the Meanings of Words? Amour in Corneille’s Work

We present a new method to describe the contextual meaning of a key word in a corpus. The vocabulary of the sentences containing this word is compared to that of the entire corpus in order to highlight the words which are significantly overutilized in the neighbourhood of this key word (they are associated in the author’s mind) and the ones which are significantly underutilized (they are mutually exclusive). This method provides an interesting tool for lexicography and literary studies as is shown by applying it to the word amour (love) in the work of Pierre Corneille, the most famous French playwright of the 17th century.     

Enterprise social media and cyber-slacking: A Kahn’s model perspective

This study investigates the associations between enterprise social media (ESM) use, psychological conditions, and cyber-slacking in the workplace and examines the mediating role of psychological conditions between ESM use and cyber-slacking. The study utilizes Kahn’s framework to develop a research model and investigate various associations, and it employs a cross-sectional design, testing the developed research model with 277 ESM users from Chinese enterprises. The study results suggest that ESM use stimulates various psychological conditions that discourage cyber-slacking behaviors and significantly mediate the associations between ESM use and cyber-slacking.     

How to block Tor’s hidden bridges: detecting methods and countermeasures

Tor network has been widely used for protecting the privacy of users while accessing various online services. Since Tor can be easily blocked by blacklisting the publicly published Tor relays, the hidden bridges-based blocking-resistance mechanism is designed and implemented in the current Tor network. Any user can subscribe a tuple of three bridges via email, https, twitter etc. However, we have found that there exist high correlations among those published tuples, which can be exploited to effectively detect hidden bridges by monitoring the outbound traffic from a controlled network. When Tor clients try to connect chosen hidden bridges, multiple SYN packets with consecutive source ports will be sent almost simultaneously, destining for different hosts. If any destination IP contained among such packets belongs to a known bridge, all others can then be inferred to be of bridges too. By recording and analyzing a series of traffic segments satisfying the above packet features, the hidden bridges used in a controlled network can be detected and further blocked. According to different available computing and storage resources, we proposed both online and offline detecting methods. Both analytical and simulation results verify the high correlation among published bridge tuples, validating the feasibility of our methods. By configuring optimized detecting parameters in the real-world experiments, we can achieve a detection rate of 86.7 % with a 0.85 % false-positive rate for online detection, and a 98.4 % detection rate with a 0.62 % false-positive rate for offline detection. To make up the flaws in Tor’s current blocking-resistance mechanism, we also provide some countermeasures from the perspective of Tor network and users, respectively.     

Automating and informating: roles to examine technology’s impact on performance

Previous studies on the impact of technology on performance (usefulness) have looked at the Information System (IS) in its role as supplier of information (informating role) and thus they have studied the influence of information quality and system quality on usefulness. However, an IS also has a role in the automation of tasks (automating role), which these studies do not take into account. Accordingly, this paper proposes a factor model that (1) includes explicitly both roles; (2) considers that informating and automating roles mediate the relation between these technological factors (information quality and system quality) and usefulness and (3) includes a system’s level of intervention (i.e. the degree to which technology participates in carrying out the tasks) as an additional factor that determines usefulness. Using a questionnaire, data were gathered on 229 Enterprise Resource Planning system users from different organisations and functional areas and structural equations model was used for analysis. Results show that information quality explains usefulness through both roles. System’s level of intervention explains usefulness through the automating role and system quality explains usefulness through the informating role. The factors’ differentiated effects through each role may help managers to establish more effective criteria and priorities in the various stages of an IS’s life cycle.     

Correction to ‘Robustness of Adaptive Control of Robots’ by F. Ghorbel and M.W. Spong

In paper Robustness of Adaptive Control of Robots by Ghorbel and Spong, the adaptive control of flexible joint robots is investigated using a singular perturbation approach and composite Lyapunov theory. In this note, we correct a missing term from the boundary-layer system of that paper and then show that the stability analysis presented remains valid.     

From Dubins’ car to Reeds and Shepp’s mobile robot

In the paper, a control system with intermediate dynamics between Dubins’ car and Reeds and Shepp’s mobile robot is investigated. Time-limited reachable sets and reachable sets at given time are computed. Families of semipermeable curves that are useful for the detection of jumps of the value function of time-optimal control problem are constructed. Research is partly supported by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research under Grants 06-01-00414 and 07-01-96085.     

Of ‘knowing science’ and of ‘doing science’: A reaffirmation of the tacit and the affective in science and science education

Abstract:

Most of school science concentrates on helping students gain a knowledge and understanding of explicit science, which may subsequently be tested in examinations. It presents a picture of science as a secure body of knowledge, gained by scientists working according to the standard procedures of science. In this paper I stress a different model of science: the looseness of the knowledge held, the idiosyncratic methods by which it is obtained, and the personal way in which it is used to solve problems. I also stress the importance of tacit knowledge and the affective driving force, which describe the personal knowledge that scientists both hold and utilize; I analyse the nature of authentic science in terms of the type of knowledge that scientists know and the way in which scientists work. The arguments for and against such authentic science in schools are considered, together with the factors limiting its practicality. Influenced by the writing of Polanyi, Hodgkin, and Claxton and by experience of, and researches into, students doing problem‐solving projects in schools, I argue that it is desirable, and possible, to incorporate some such authentic science into the school science curriculum. In spite of many unsympathetic pressures acting on current schooling, I believe that there is a vital need to reaffirm the importance of the tacit and the affective in school science.