Autonomous Entities Research Articles

Saussure on the odd and unconscious nature of language

As Starobinski explicitly showed, Ferdinand de Saussure discovered that language has its own semantic power which largely exceeds those of speakers; that is, Saussure discovered that language exists as an (almost) autonomous entity. According to this discovery language is not mainly a means of communication at the service of human beings, it is quite the contrary: human communication is a sort of collateral effect of language, because language does not exist only with the aim of allowing humans to communicate. Saussure discovered the existence of a somewhat mysterious semiotic life under the surface of natural languages, a “life” that is completely independent in respect to conscious human communicative needs. The psychoanalytical consequences of such a discovery will be explored through the Lacanian notion of lalangue.

Toward cognitive digital twins using a BIM-GIS asset management system for a diffused university

The integrated use of building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) is promising for the development of asset management systems (AMSs) for operation and maintenance (O&M) in smart university campuses. The combination of BIM-GIS with cognitive digital twins (CDTs) can further facilitate the management of complex systems such as university building stock. CDTs enable buildings to behave as autonomous entities, dynamically reacting to environmental changes. Timely decisions based on the actual conditions of buildings and surroundings can be provided, both in emergency scenarios or when optimized and adaptive performances are required. The research aims to develop a BIM-GIS-based AMS for improving user experience and enabling the optimal use of resources in the O&M phase of an Italian university. Campuses are complex assets, mainly diffused with buildings spread across the territory, managed with still document-based and fragmented databases handled by several subjects. This results in incomplete and asymmetrical information, often leading to ineffective and untimely decisions. The paper presents a methodology for the development of a BIM-GIS web-based platform (i.e., AMS-app) providing the real-time visualization of the asset in an interactive 3D map connected to analytical dashboards for management support. Two buildings of the University of Turin are adopted as demonstrators, illustrating the development of an easily accessible, centralized database by integrating spatial and functional data, useful also to develop future CDTs. As a first attempt to show the AMS app potential, crowd simulations have been conducted to understand the buildings’ actual level of safety in case of fire emergency and demonstrate how CDTs could improve it. The identification of data needed, also gathered through the future implementation of suitable sensors and Internet of Things networks, is the core issue together with the definition of effective asset visualization and monitoring methods. Future developments will explore the integration of artificial intelligence and immersive technologies to enable space use optimization and real-time wayfinding during evacuation, exploiting digital tools to alert and drive users or authorities for safety improvement. The ability to easily optimize the paths with respect to the actual occupancy and conditions of both the asset and surroundings will be enabled.

Modelado de un sistema multi-agente para monitorear indicadores de eficiencia de una Institución de Educación basado en la metodología INGENIAS

The verification and follow-up of the indicators of terminal efficiency and degree in Higher Education Institutions, on certain occasions is usually a complex task; however, these indicators turn out to be relevant factors to meet the quality standards of educational programs and improve the school efficiency of an educational institution. Due to the above, and in order to meet these objectives, a multi-agent system has been modeled to facilitate the planning, monitoring and follow-up of these indicators, contributing to the strategic decision-making process. The agents turn out to be software that fulfills a specific function, so that other agents can achieve their goals; By virtue of this, agents have proven to be an efficient solution by interacting as a set of autonomous entities that collaborate and benefit from each other, to solve problems by performing tasks collaboratively. According to the above, this article presents a proposal based on multi-agents to model a system that allows permanent monitoring of the efficiency indicators indicated to support managers, based on the principles of the INGENIAS methodology.

전기철도 배전망을 활용한 팬터그래프 방식 충전시스템에 관한 연구

In the industrial fields have being accelerated the development of alternative energy resources because of restriction of environment pollution and increasing oil price at the world. Most of conventional vehicles are reason of environment pollutions. For these reason, interest in electric vehicles are increasing because of which is solution of reducing the environment pollution issues. Although a local autonomous entity had tried to replaced CNG buses for operating electrical buses, electrical buses have intrinsic problems such as charging/discharging sequences, connector issues and charging time. For these reason pantograph-type automatic charging technology is being developed for mating the environment of bus garages in nation. However, that has some problems such as initial price, room of charging infrastructure and electric power supply. In this paper, therefore, proposes methodology of using railway power supply system. It has been verified under suitability and balidity of charging and discharging scenario using electric bus charging system simulation model based on MATLAB Simulink and PSIM.

The Centrality of Prosocial Values in Work Motivation among Public and Private Sector Employees

Purpose: The paper proposes an alternative measure of the importance of prosocial values in the work motivation of public and private sector employees. Hitherto research measures the importance of values by taking them as autonomous entities or using a factorial design, asking employees whether they adhere to a certain value or not. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a psychological theory on values and motivation, the paper argues that it might be preferred to measure the centrality of prosocial values amidst other job motivators in the value system as a whole to assess the degree of prosocial values’ dominance.Findings: The application of such a measure in a longitudinal and international comparative analysis shows that differences in the centrality of prosocial values make the difference between employees in the public and private sectors much more pronounced than usually found in the relevant literature. This finding does not disappear when the research model includes the nature of the job, individual characteristics, and societal features, such as the GDP per capita and the dominance of individualism over collectivism in society.Significance: This research also shows that differences between employees adhering to intrinsic, extrinsic, and prosocial motivations are relative, as almost all employees – irrespective of where they work – assess values of job security and having an interesting job to be the most important work motivators.

Kontribusi Theologia Yohanes Calvin tentang Hubungan Gereja dan Negara sebagai Pola Misi

Abstract: How is the christian’s opinion? Should we obey more to the state or to the church? Of course, we must always obey to God, but this does not mean that we neglect our obedience to the social-human institutions, such as a state. Calvin said “the State institution it self is actually a manifestation of our human social nature established by God. In their respective areas, the state and the church are two autonomous entities. However, as public institutions they are related to each other, thus to a certain extent they are not opposed to each other.” In this case, the church has the obligation to support and assist the state, that means, the church cooperates with the state (i.e. the government) to realize the society welfare. Therefore, relation between the church with the state can be applied as the pattern of mission in the church ministry. It’s similar with Calvin’s statement in his theology about the practice of church ministry in the society community.

Sztuczna inteligencja a tworzenie prawa – refleksje na kanwie artykułu Mirko Pečariča “Lex Ex Machina: Reasons for Algorithmic Regulation” (“Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology” 2021, vol. 15(1), s. 85–117, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5817/MUJLT2021-1-4)

Artificial intelligence has a stable position in the legal system. We speak about “electronic persons”, “autonomous entities”, the impact of artificial intelligence on labor law, and liability for autonomous vehicles. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence in the legislative process should not raise any doubts. In an interesting article, Mirko Pečarič presented the legal and philosophical context of using algorithms to create regulatory impact assessments. Artificial intelligence can help sketch scenarios for the development of law and thus be helpful in the creation of legal policy.

Decentralized Systems

The articles in this special section focuses on decentralized systems. Our world is filled with decentralized systems, human society and organizations being the most familiar examples. In such systems, we see multiple loci of ownership or control, representing different parties or administrative domains. That is, the members of a decentralized system are, belong to, or represent different people or organizations. We use the term decentralized system to mean any system formed of autonomous entities, with a special interest in cases where the entities are heterogeneous. Autonomy here refers to the decision-making capacity of an entity, meaning that it decides for itself. In other words, autonomy reflects the freedom to act. Heterogeneity here refers to the design, construction, and configuration of an entity, meaning that it is potentially built on distinct grounds from any other entity. In other words, heterogeneity reflects the freedom of a designer to apply any reasoning method on any available information.

EFFECTUATING LOCAL GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES IN THE PROMOTION OF PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE AMONG LIBERIANS IN THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND

In recent years, and even to date, disenchanted local politicians and inhabitants in rural Liberia are advocating the partitioning of their counties into two separate and autonomous entities to ensure equitable distribution of political, economic, and social benefits. It follows that such discontent usually stems from the “neglect” by senior county officials and politicians to let the affinity of national government impact the local inhabitants adequately. Consequently, there are public outcries among local politicians and their constituents. History presents on numerous instances that power-seeking individuals or leaders pursue their agenda and goals by engaging the support of organizations other than political parties (Tremblay et al., 004).

Biochemical and functional characterization of an exonuclease from Chaetomium thermophilum

Exonucleases are often found associated with polymerase or helicase domains in the same enzyme or can function as autonomous entities to maintain genome stability. Here, we uncovered Chaetomium thermophilum RecQ family proteins that also have exonuclease activity in addition to their main helicase function. The novel exonuclease activity is separate from the helical core domain and coexists with the latter two enzymatic activities on the same polypeptide. The CtRecQ121-366 exonuclease region performs independently as an exonuclease. We describe its catalytic mechanism and biological characteristics. We demonstrate unequivocally that CtRecQ121-366 exclusively displays exonuclease activity and that this activity has a 3′–5′ polarity that can both hydrolyze ssDNA and cleave dsDNA substrates. The hydrolytic activity of majority exonuclease is driven by bimetal ions, and this appears to be the case for the CtRecQ121-366 exonuclease as well. Additionally, the maximum activity of CtRecQ121-366 was observed at pH 8.0–9.0, low salt with Mg2+. The two helices in the structure, a6 and a7, play significant roles in the execution by anticipating their shape and changing essential amino acids.

Renal involvement as a unique manifestation of hemophagocytic syndrome.

Renal-limited hemophagocytic syndrome (HPS) is a rare clinical setting characterized by abnormal activation of the immune system. Fever associated with pancytopenia, hepatosplenomegaly with liver dysfunction, and hypofibrinogenemia are usually observed in HPS. From a histological level, the presence of non-malignant macrophages infiltrating bone marrow and organs represents the hallmark of this condition. Non-malignant macrophages are associated with phagocytizing activities involving other blood cells. While primary HPS is usually associated with inherited dysregulation of the immune system, secondary HPS usually occurs in the context of infection or is linked to a neoplastic process. Clinical presentation varies and can potentially lead to life-threatening settings. While renal involvement has frequently been reported, however, detailed descriptions of the kidney manifestations of HPS are lacking. More critically, the diagnosis of HPS is rarely supported by renal biopsy specimens. We report four rare cases of biopsy-proven renal-limited HPS in patients presenting with acute kidney injury (AKI). The available evidence on this topic is critically discussed in light of the possible emergence of an autonomous entity characterized by an isolated kidney involvement.

Bir Heterotopya Mekânı Olarak Metaverse Gerçekliğinde Kendilik Anlayışının Dönüşümü

This paper conceptually discusses how Metaverse world exists as a space through Michael Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and how within this space the understanding of self is reshaped with the concepts of sociality, partnership, immortality, being a part of a whole and the disappearance of free will. Foucault’s heterotopian mirror example defines theater and cinema as a “surreal, virtual place” and sees it as an illusion. Metaverse can be added to these examples. Metaverse has the potential of bringing people with different thoughts and lifestyles together at the same time and same place. This potential is relevant to heterogeneous spaces which will not come together normally coming together in this medium. In addition to that, a single space can contain multiple spaces and times and this heterochronicity allows the abstraction of spaces while being lived at a certain time and allows travel to other times different from the time lived. But this potential is bound to some rules as stated in the fifth rule of heterotopias and these rules are preset. Considering all the similarities, the Metaverse world was assumed as a heterotopia and the paper tries to understand the embodiment of perception of self from general to specific, from public to individual, from a part of a society to an autonomous entity with free will within this world. This study uses hermeneutic method to discover the framework of how the concept of self and the perception of human will be transformed and changed in Metaverse world.

Nadzór i sądowa kontrola działalności uchwałodawczej organów samorządu zawodów medycznych

Substantive decentralization is the entrusting of public authority to autonomous entities based on a criterion other than territorial affiliation. Thebasic form of substantive decentralization is the self-government of the professions of public trust. Such self-governments include, among others, self-governments of medical professions – the self-government of pharmacists, doctors,nurses and midwives, laboratory diagnosticians, physiotherapists, and psychologists.The self-governing bodies of the medical professions perform their tasksthrough the organs which, within the framework of the powers granted tothem by the law, conduct the legislative activity. The resolutions of the self-government bodies are passed with a simple majority of votes in the presence ofat least half the members of the body. Resolutions are subject to the supervisionof the Minister of Health, except for the self-government of psychologists, forwhich the legislator has not provided for supervisory interference. The onlymeans of supervision available to the Minister of Health is to appeal a reso lution of a self-government body to the Supreme Court. As part of the judicialreview of the resolution-making activity of the self-governing bodies of themedical professions, the Supreme Court may uphold a resolution if it followsthe law or repeals it if it is contrary to the law. If a resolution is overturned,the Supreme Court, except for the apothecaries’ and laboratory diagnosticians’self-governments, refers the case for reconsideration, indicating guidelines tothe self-government body as to how the case should be resolved. The SupremeCourt acts in a non-procedural mode. The Supreme Court does not reviewresolutions adopted in individual cases of corporate members.The subject of this study is focused on the analysis of the scope of supervisory interference and judicial control of the normative activity of the self-government of the medical profession. Thus, with the exclusion of those resolutionsof self-governing bodies which resolve individual cases of members of the corporation.

OpenPubSub: Supporting Large Semantic Content Spaces in Peer-to-Peer Publish/Subscribe Systems for the Internet of Multimedia Things

The decentralized and highly scalable nature of structured peer-to-peer networks, based on distributed hash tables (DHTs), makes them a great fit for facilitating the interaction and exchange of information between dynamic and geographically dispersed autonomous entities. The recent emergence of multimedia-based services and applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a noticeable shift in the type of data traffic generated by sensing devices from structured textual and numerical content to unstructured and bulky multimedia content. The wide semantic spectrum of human recognizable concepts that can be stemmed from multimedia data, e.g., video and audio, introduces a very large semantic content space. The scale of the content space poses a semantic boundary between data consumers and producers in large-scale peer-to-peer publish/subscribe systems. The exact-match query model of DHTs falls short when participants use different terms to describe the same semantic concepts. In this work, we present OpenPubSub, a peer-to-peer content-based approximate semantic publish/subscribe system. We propose a hybrid event routing model that combines rendezvous routing and gossiping over a structured peer-to-peer network. The network is built on the basis of a high-dimensional semantic vector space as opposed to conventional logical key spaces. We propose methods to partition the space, construct a semantic DHT via bootstrapping, perform approximate semantic lookup operations, and cluster nodes based on their shared interests. Results show that for an approximate event matching upper bound recall of 56.7%, rendezvous-based routing achieves up to 54% recall while decreasing the messaging overhead by 44%, whereas, the hybrid routing approach achieves up to 43.8% recall while decreasing the messaging overhead by 59%.

Decentralisation or Recentralisation in Bolivia? Autonomous Territorial Entities and Intergovernmental Relations in a Decentralised State

The demand for regional autonomy, which crystallised in the 1990s during municipal decentralisation, has profoundly marked Bolivia’s political history. This article examines the reorientation of the autonomic model since the 2009 Constitution. This “recentralisation” is explained by: (a) the political hegemony achieved by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and its consequences for local politics; (b) regulatory centralism, especially in the Ley Marco de Autonomías y Descentralización (Autonomy and Decentralisation Law); (c) fiscal inequality in the financing of the different Autonomous Territorial Entities; and (d) the malfunctioning of the model of intergovernmental relations.

Cinco Rimas Fantasmales de Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Observing how a specific theme emerges within the work of a poet leads to greater appreciation of stylistic technique and to a better understanding of human experience. In this paper we study the poetry of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer to perceive how a lover’s passion transforms itself into an autonomous entity that travels through space. Relevant connections between poems must be carefully traced. We start by examining the nostalgia evoked by remembrance of past love in Rhyme LIII. We then see in Rhyme LXXV the lament over absence of the beloved develop into an intimation of whether in sleep we may penetrate a dimension where other spirits dwell. The wonderment grows in the related Rhyme LXXI as it expresses the amazing premonition of a friend’s death. In order to comprehend this memorable lyric we next explore the transformation of romantic desire into the wandering phantom lover of the beguilingly repetitive and intricate Rhymes XVI and XXVIII.

THE USE OF BALANCED SCORECARD IN ASSESSING PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

Performance evaluation plays an important role in any organization as an autonomous legal entity with material and human resources, which are needed to achieve its objectives. Since it is a management tool, in order to understand the process of performance evaluation, it is necessary to understand the methodological activities based on the stages, cases, principles, methods, techniques, procedures, and processes, and which are impacted by the behaviour of each member of that organization in order to ensure the achievement of the indicators set by managers, i.e. to guarantee performance. Implementing the Balance Scorecard in public services is important and must start from the challenge related to the performance level, posed to public service managers from the perspective of public service beneficiaries. Evidence has shown inefficient and even lack of transparency concerning the development strategy of a public service related to its beneficiaries. Therefore, the main focus of managers, regardless of their position in the organization, must be on the indicators which assess the degree of satisfaction of public service beneficiaries, employees, the range of procedures, processes, and the dynamics of results.

Interactive Situated Autonomic Multi-Agents System-Comprehensive Survey

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are made up of autonomous entities called agents. Agents collaborate to complete tasks, but their intrinsic capacity to learn and make independent judgments allows them to be more flexible. Agents learn new contexts and behaviors through their interactions with other agents as well as the environment. Agents then exploit their knowledge to determine and carry out an action on the environment in order to accomplish their assigned objective. Because of its versatility, MAS is well suited to solving issues in a wide range of areas, including computer science, civil engineering, electrical engineering, etc. Developing cooperative MAS necessitates tackling a variety of issues, especially coordination among agents. Consequently, this paper discusses several interaction ways among agents in many disciplines. Index Terms—multi-agent system(MAS), Robotic Process Automation, situated agents, interaction.

Books, Broadcasters and the BBC: The Conversations Among British Modern Literature, Media and the Law

Abstract I argue that the BBC, rather than exacerbating the sensationalism so prevalent in the British press at the turn of the century, worked steadfastly to curtail the rampant affronts to character that became commonplace in media representations of celebrity. The BBC’s efforts to “enculturate” its listeners became an incubator for the literary and legal culture of the age. As such, it blurred boundaries between elites and lower-class cultures. The BBC, founded in 1922, combated loose and sensational reporting, while it struggled with financing and legal identity. In 1927, the company was wound-up and the government established a new entity, under Royal Charter. This was crucial to the legal autonomy of the corporation, and differentiated it from those established under parliamentary statute. It also gave the BBC a monopoly over broadcasting. I will focus on these differences as I argue that while the voice of the new BBC was, by legal mandate, to be “unbiased,” the effects of John Reith’s management curtailed any hope of this goal in program content. I argue that while, pursuant to further government mandate, the BBC “may neither editorialize nor carry advertising,” Reith’s control and attempts to educate became points of contention to the legal mandate of the BBC. In effect, the BBC suffered an identity crisis at its inception, on one hand an unbiased instrument of government, reporting the proceedings of Parliament, for example, and on the other, a protected and autonomous legal entity under Charter. Alongside the Royal Charter and legal precedent surrounding the BBC’s inception and operation, my examination touches on the following primary texts: Ezra Pound’s The Testament of François Villon (1931), The BBC Talks of E.M. Forster, 1929 – 1960 (2008), Shaw’s Radio Plays, and some of the interviews conducted by the BBC with T.S. Eliot.

Michel Bornens (1938–2022), a visionary scientist

Michel Bornens (1938–2022), a visionary scientist