Common Truth Research Articles

Improving the blend of multiple weather forecast sources by Reliability Calibration

AbstractCreating a forecast that is seamless across time yet is optimal at each forecast validity time is often achieved by blending forecasts from multiple Numerical Weather Prediction models (or using other forecast sources, such as an extrapolation nowcast). With the increasing usage of convection‐permitting ensemble models at shorter lead times, the blending of these forecasts with longer‐range ensemble models with parameterized convection can lead to a clear transition from one forecast source to another. This is particularly noticeable when visualizing the evolution of the gridded forecast. Calibrating the forecast sources with a common truth prior to blending provides a method of improving forecast skill whilst also unifying the characteristics of the forecasts to create a smoother blend throughout the evolution of the forecast. In this work, a non‐parametric method for calibrating the reliability of the forecast without degrading the forecast resolution is assessed for its usability for gridded precipitation rate and total cloud amount forecasts. Reliability is markedly improved resulting in a similar skill between forecast sources during the blending period. Further refinements to the technique removed artefacts in the gridded forecasts. Caveats, including a reduction in sharpness following calibration, are also presented.

Reanimating the Master Narrative: How They Shall Not Grow Old Curates the Perception of Common Truth through CGI Animation

In 2014, the British Imperial War Museum (IWM) contracted New Zealand-based filmmaker, Peter Jackson, to use their audio and video archives to create a media-based memorial to the men who served in World War 1. The documentary film, They Shall Not Grow Old ( TSNGO), released in 2018, was the product of this collaboration. Jackson took on the project to better understand his own grandfather’s experience as a soldier at the Battle of the Somme. Weta Digital Studios, founded by Jackson, converted the standard WWI newsreel footage into a product that aligned to a modern audience’s perceptual sense of truth. Weta Digital redrew and colored each frame, a process that is strikingly similar to CGI animation. Curiously, Jackson, a filmmaker whose career has hinged on his ability to collaborate with CGI animators, does not describe his new historical film treatment as animation. This article first argues that TSNGO is following in the footsteps of previous CGI animated films, in particular those that have re-edited historical footage, but more importantly asks: why would Jackson prefer to keep the word ‘animation’ out of the discussion about his new historical documentary? The answer to this question leads us to a critical discussion about how animation has become both the preserver and ‘re-imaginer’ of existing historical archives.

Collective patterns and stable misunderstandings in networks striving for consensus without a common value system

Collective phenomena in systems of interacting agents have helped us understand diverse social, ecological and biological observations. The corresponding explanations are challenged by incorrect information processing. In particular, the models typically assume a shared understanding of signals or a common truth or value system, i.e., an agreement of whether the measurement or perception of information is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It is an open question whether a collective consensus can emerge without these conditions. Here we introduce a model of interacting agents that strive for consensus, however, each with only a subjective perception of the world. Our communication model does not presuppose a definition of right or wrong and the actors can hence not distinguish between correct and incorrect observations. Depending on a single parameter that governs how responsive the agents are to changing their world-view we observe a transition between an unordered phase of individuals that are not able to communicate with each other and a phase of an emerging shared signalling framework. We find that there are two types of convention-aligned clusters: one, where all social actors in the cluster have the same set of conventions, and one, where neighbouring actors have different but compatible conventions (‘stable misunderstandings’).

Modern Socratic Dialogue and Resilient Democracy: Creating the Clearing for an American Bildung

Modern Socratic Dialogue and Resilient Democracy: Creating the Clearing for an American Bildung

When the Closest Targets Make the Difference: An Analysis of Data Association Errors

Multi-object data fusion – combining measurements or estimates of more than one truth object from more than one observer – requires a first “data association” step of deciding deciding which data have common truth objects. Here we focus on the case of two observers only, with the data association engine powered by a polynomially-complex list-matching algorithm such as of Jonker-Volgenant-Castanon (JVC), auction or Munkres. The paper's purpose is to develop an approximation for the probability of assignment error: How often does the data association engine tell the fuser to combine data from truth objects that do not go together? We assume data with Gaussian errors and a Poisson field of truth objects, and we focus on the low-noise case where errors are infrequent and fusion makes sense. In this article, for isotropic, independent identically distributed errors, a single scalar parameter representative of the scene complexity is identified and, exploiting that, a reasonably simple approximate expression for the association error is derived.

CrowdTeacher: Robust Co-teaching with Noisy Answers and Sample-Specific Perturbations for Tabular Data.

Samples with ground truth labels may not always be available in numerous domains. While learning from crowdsourcing labels has been explored, existing models can still fail in the presence of sparse, unreliable, or differing annotations. Co-teaching methods have shown promising improvements for computer vision problems with noisy labels by employing two classifiers trained on each others' confident samples in each batch. Inspired by the idea of separating confident and uncertain samples during the training process, we extend it for the crowdsourcing problem. Our model, CrowdTeacher, uses the idea that perturbation in the input space model can improve the robustness of the classifier for noisy labels. Treating crowdsourcing annotations as a source of noisy labeling, we perturb samples based on the certainty from the aggregated annotations. The perturbed samples are fed to a Co-teaching algorithm tuned to also accommodate smaller tabular data. We showcase the boost in predictive power attained using CrowdTeacher for both synthetic and real datasets across various label density settings. Our experiments reveal that our proposed approach beats baselines modeling individual annotations and then combining them, methods simultaneously learning a classifier and inferring truth labels, and the Co-teaching algorithm with aggregated labels through common truth inference methods.

Transcendentalism: The Anatomization of Ted Hughes’ Works

This research anatomizes Ted Hughes’s works as in Ted Hughes: Collected Poems edited by Paul Keegan, in the light of Transcendentalism. The primary aim of this research is to identify and explicate the streaks of Transcendentalism in Hughes’s work. The secondary aim is to decipher Hughes’s use of Soul Alchemy as a magical, transforming power. The objective of this research is to prove the existence of a Supreme Being. It also discusses both Transcendentalism and Hughes’s spirituality, side by side. The research shows there lies organic unity in everything and everything has divinity within it, and that there is an urge in all to explore the Self and the unknown. This also explicates the common spiritual Truth underlying all religions, the value of intuition and fourfold vision. The study fills the gap in research on Transcendentalism and its overpowering position in Hughes’s works, which makes this unique. It also expounds the occult powers of poetry. Transcendentalism, Husserl’s Phenomenology, Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy and Jung’s Alchemy and Individuation also have been critically viewed as groundwork for this research. Thematic, phenomenological and psychological approaches have been employed to analyze the Transcendentalism in Hughes’s works. The preternatural abilities of Hughes are examined in this study. Future researchers can satisfy their spiritual needs and can form their research by becoming acquainted to his work in the light of Transcendentalism as is deciphered in this study.

An Evaluation of the Relevance of Current Traditional Leases in Commercial Properties as Compared to Green Leases

Many leading organisations worldwide, have adopted their workplaces as a means to meet a range of financial drivers thereby, secure competitive advantage, through sustainability in built environment. The lack of exploitation of this concept by the commercial property market of Botswana led to the research question for this study. Could it be because the conventional leasing yield the maximum benefits or that what literature and other international policy makers are promoting is something sensational rather than statement of common truth? The purpose of this study was to provide an answer to whether traditional leases are common in Botswana property market as compared to green leases which can be adopted as an alternative sustainable management practice. In realizing the objectives, the study investigated and compared the performance of properties both under green leasing and conventional or traditional leasing by measuring the performance indicators. These performance indicators were operational cost, vacancy rates and utility cost per metre. By utilizing the green design evaluation model, sustainable measures or fixtures were used as input variable in this model whilst profit maximization or returns on investment in commercial properties were treated as variables dependent on operational expenses, vacancy rates and generally costs were the output of this model. From three office nodes of Gaborone purposely selected by the researchers, data was collected through the use of a questionnaire and was analysed using descriptive statistics and overall mean scores were utilized to present the findings. The analysis also indicated that the differences between traditional and green leases in Botswana currently are minimal and therefore, current leases are still relevant to the commercial property market. The implications of the results are that though green leases are sustainable, traditional leases are still relevant and mostly utilised in Botswana’s leasing market. The study recommends policy change if green leases are to become more prominence in the rental property market.

Adapting to Loiterly Reading: Agatha Christie’s Original Adaptation of “The Witness for the Prosecution”

Adapting to Loiterly Reading: Agatha Christie’s Original Adaptation of “The Witness for the Prosecution”

THE STRATEGIES OF HUMOR MATERIAL CREATION: TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS (STRATEGI PENCIPTAAN MATERI HUMOR: ANALISIS TRANSITIVITAS)

The purpose of this research was to find out strategies in creating Indonesian humour materials. This research is a descriptive-qualitative research. In collecting the data, the researcher used listening technique by taping and writing. In analyzing data, this research applied equalizing reference method by comparing technique to support codification, reduction, presentation, and interpretation such as work design of qualitative research. As the result of this research, it has been found 8 strategies in creating Indonesian humour materials, namely: (1) exploiting the common truth that people already know, (2) changing constituents with his language experience, (3) putting false pronouns deliberately, (4) conveying something incomplete, (5) diverting different languages, (6) providing an unrelated response at all, (7) exploiting the language gap to distort its meaning, and (8) conveying something unnatural, absurd, even impressed controversy.

장후이원의 단편소설 ｢달 둥근 밤｣ 속의 ‘내면의 낯설음’ 연구

The character “I” in A Night With the Full Moon became ‘an invisible person’ to his family members ‘inside’ the family after his delinquency just one time in a certain game room in his adolescence. He caused external injury to other person, but, thereby he got incurable, internal injury to himself for good. He became ‘a person who hid himself’ like an invisible man as a fake-cigarette delivery man in the society as well. The unfamiliarity of ‘non-existence’ both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ of ‘I’ only became expanded and deepened rather than becoming reduced or extinct, as his identity had changed from an inflictor to an offender, to a murderer, to a fugitive, to a runaway after seizing weapon, and to an inmate. The reason why the character ‘I’ became ‘a non-existing being’ imprisoned in himself and became ‘an erased being’ even outside, was originated by a lack of love. Love is begun from love and understanding, consideration and forgiveness in the family, and then it is expanded infinitely to those of others and in the society. This is a very common truth, but people often forget it.

A Middle-range Theory of Legislation in a Globalizing World

It is a common truth that legislation, despite being the source of most of modern law, has never been the subject of deeper reflection on the part of the legal world. In particular, one of the central phases of law-making, namely the transformation of political directives into the legal discourse within legislative law-making processes (i.e. the transformation of politics into statutory provisions), has garnered little attention in the legal debate. Several reasons for such “dis-interest” can be mentioned: the dominance of (a distorted version of) legal positivist paradigms in legal thinking; or a vision of democracy (also distorted) as the builder of a massive wall between the making of the law. In recent decades, many such institutional conditions have changed. However, legislative studies have come up against another significant barrier that is becoming a central topic for legal scholarship and practices: the globalization of the law. The circulation of legal models around the world, applied as valid law (regardless of whether these are formally inserted in the various legal systems), has widened the gap between the process of creation of laws and their concrete implementation by the legal actors. Nowadays, the legal models valid in a certain legal system are often produced in legislative (and law-making) processes taking place in foreign and distant countries and/or supranational entities. Secondly, the globalization of the law has contributed to the fading of the nation state as primary regulator and thus a weakening of the nation state’s major regulatory tool, legislative law-making. Finally, due to the progressive specialization of law and (even more importantly) the globalization of law (and the consequent weakening of the traditional dogmas of “democratic” and national parliament-based law-making), there has been a process of increasing the distance between actors operating at the macro-level (e.g. political actors and political thinkers) and actors working at the micro-level (e.g. legislative drafters and legislative studies scholars). The purpose of this work is to offer a way to establish a link between these two levels (macro/politics and micro/drafters): a middle-range theory of legislation. The goal of this theory is to offer a structure capable of channeling the messages coming from the political world (e.g. as expressed in national and/or international assemblies) into viable and concrete legislative products (e.g. functioning legislative provisions).

Challenges of European Integration – to What Extent Should the Common Agricultural Policy Stay Common?

The common agricultural policy (CAP) is considered to be the oldest EU policy and one that covers such a vast range of issues that it leaves almost no room for Member States’ policy in this field. Yet the recent consecutive reforms which base their rationale on the common truth that “one-size-does-not-fit all” give more and more room for Member States to make their own choices. Thus, both a theoretical and an empirical question can be posed: what is the optimal solution for the EU and its citizens (acting both as consumers and taxpayers) when it comes to shaping agricultural policy? Should it be an EU policy or should it be left to Member States or even to their regions? This paper presents an answer to the question posed in the title. The answer is based on the theory of fiscal federalism and environmental federalism as well as practical issues relating to the functioning of EU agriculture based on a literature review. The results show that there is room for activity by both the EU and the Member States when it comes to agricultural policy. The optimal division of tasks between the EU and Member States, based on the subsidiarity principle, shows that EU policy should focus on safeguarding the competitiveness of EU agriculture and fair competition on the EU common market, while Member States should concentrate on fine-tuning EU policy instruments to the specific needs of their agriculture.

Writing a review article - Are you making these mistakes?

An explosion of scientific publications over the last decades has increased the need for review articles: Carefully crafted scientific review articles can provide the novice reader with an overview of a new subject and provide the expert with a synthesis of scientific evidence, proof of reproducibility of published data and pooled estimates of common truth through meta-analyses. Unfortunately, while there are ample presentations and published guidelines for the preparation of scientific articles available, detailed information about how to properly prepare scientific review articles is relatively scarce. This perspective summarizes possible mistakes that can lead to misinformation in scientific review articles with the goal to help authors to improve the scientific contribution of their review article and thereby, increase the respective value of these articles for the scientific community.

Learning Together Slowly: Bayesian Learning about Political Facts

Although many studies suggest that voters learn about political facts with prejudice toward their preexisting beliefs, none have fully characterized all inputs to Bayes’ Rule, leaving uncertainty about the magnitude of bias. This paper evaluates political learning by first highlighting the importance of careful measures of each input and then presenting a statistical model and experiment that measure the magnitude of departure from Bayesian learning. Subjects learn as cautious Bayesians, updating their beliefs at about 73% of perfect application of Bayes’ Rule. They are also modestly biased. For information consistent with prior beliefs, subject learning is not statistically distinguishable from perfect Bayesian. Inconsistent information, however, corresponds to learning less than perfect. Despite bias, beliefs do not polarize. With small monetary incentives for accuracy, aggregate beliefs converge toward common truth. Cautious Bayesian learning appears to be a reasonable model of how citizens process pol...

O fundamentalnych relacjach między prawdą, wolnością, dialogiem i budowaniem tożsamości – z perspektywy teorii mowy

The article discusses the problem of relations between freedom, truth and the dialogue, and tries to establish what makes the presence of the dialogue to be a symptom of social health. Here speech is being considered in its cognitive function taken as an elementary one. Ordinary functioning of speech and the essence of the dialogue is being seen, first, in the possibility of denial, that is connected with necessary existence of ontic diversity of beings and with the trait of the speaking being as mastering over alternatives. All this conditions are at the base of freedom in its most primary meaning. The second factor that must be considered while trying to understand what constitutes the dialogue in its essence is the need for truth and the necessity of some realisations of truth. These two elements, taken jointly – the possibility of denial and the need for truth – show that the final warrantor of truth is the speaker herself/himself, and the warranty that she/he is giving as speaking is the obligation to act in accordance with her/his statement(-s). This moment of the personal, free reference to always common truth shows how personal identity is being built in the dialogue. Additionally it becomes clear how a new sense can arise with any new statement.

Forming Opinions via Trusted Friends: Time-Evolving Rating Prediction Using Fluid Dynamics

Trust-based recommendation systems study how people form opinions via trusted friends, so as to predict unknown ratings based on the ratings expressed by trusted friends. Most of the existing work only considers the ratings at the current time slot. In real life, a user's opinion evolves over time, since he receives the influence of different opinions sequentially. In addition, existing work usually targets a single user at a time; there is a need to predict multiple ratings for multiple connected users. To reach these ends, we propose a novel multiple-rating prediction scheme, FluidRating , which uses fluid dynamics theory to reveal the time-evolving formulation process of human opinions. In this scheme, each user corresponds to a container, and several containers are connected through single directional pipes, corresponding to influence relations. We identify three features of human personality in the opinion formulation and propagation process: “persistency” represents how much one insists on his opinion, “persuasiveness” represents the ability to impact others, and “forgetting” reflects the common truth that people have limited memory. The recommendation (or influence) is modeled as fluid with two dimensions: its temperature is taken as the “opinion/rating,” and its height is deemed as the persistency. When new opinions emerge, each person refines his opinion through a round of fluid exchange with neighbors. Opinions of multiple rounds are aggregated to gain a final prediction. Experimental evaluation in a real data set validates the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed model.

How Reliable Are Neuromarketers' Measures of Advertising Effectiveness?

ABSTRACT Buyers in search of new neuromarketing methods that potentially can predict advertising effectiveness face a daunting process. Vendors in this evolving industry offer a confusing range of often proprietary differences in methodology. The authors of the current article analyzed results from “Neuro 1”—the Advertising Research Foundation9s first neuro-standards trial—and revealed that there is no common truth, no single scientific reality exposed as a result of these new methods. Addressing what they believe is a need for greater transparency—even after “Neuro 2”—which used publicly available methods, the authors demonstrated how a buyer can compare the validity of different vendors9 measures.

Transnational Union Cooperation in the European Metal Sector: Reinforcing and Obstructing Factors

The literature on unionized oligopoly has demonstrated that unions will generally benefit from cooperation. Despite these benefits, most initiatives towards Europeanization of collective bargaining have been unsuccessful. Some notable exceptions can be found in the European metal industry. The European Metalworkers Federation can claim several path-breaking precedents of cross-border coordination, and is being monitored closely by scholars of European industrial relations. Despite this abundant attention, the reasons for success or failure have not been analyzed analytically.In this paper, we present a model that takes specific characteristics of the metal industry into account, such as product differentiation, imports from low-wage countries and differences in reservation wages. We predict that cooperation will be easier when reservation wages are similar and when imports are imperfect substitutes. In contrast to the common truth that an external threat encourages cooperation, we find that under specific circumstances unions will be less eager to cooperate when faced with a foreign competitor. Our predictions are in line with the various levels of transnational cooperation in the automobile, electrical equipment and steel industries. Furthermore, our results indicate that the opposition of firms and the reluctancy of the European Commission to support transnational bargaining are generally justified by predicted changes in profits and overall welfare.

Getting access in PNL - eyes wide shut.

Perforation of the gallbladder during percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PNL) has been described only a few times. Even if underreported, it belongs to the group of complications that happen to urologists once in their life or never, and usually at the beginning of their career. Lacerations of the liver, spleen, renal vein, inferior vena cava, and more frequent perforations of the intestines are among them as well. Despite decades of experience it seems that we still have not learned how to prevent these events. Morbidity rates are similar in large case series from the 1990s [1] and in contemporary studies [2]. The type of guidance used for a puncture does not make a difference. Although under fluoroscopy it is difficult to assess depth and localization of adjacent organs, ultrasound does not give us much advantage. For beginners, it is also easy to get lost while handling a needle and an ultrasound probe at the same time [3]. Evaluation of risk factors proved that in order to prevent adverse events we should address two areas: create centers of excellence (stone centers) and improve teaching techniques. High volume centers provide faster, more efficient, and safer surgery [2]. This is common truth. However, decision–makers in countries such as Poland apparently are not aware of this. Here, a single national health insurance provider not only allows but requires that everyone do everything. In such a reality, the role of training becomes of utmost importance. Residents usually make their first steps in endourology by placing nephrostomy tubes. Then they start their experience with PNL. All of this is done under supervision, but is that enough? Their lack of expertise increases complication rates of departments and exposes patients to hazard. There are no formalized, validated methods of training in endourology. Simulators available on the market have limited number of training configurations and their role in preventing complications has not been proven so far. Emerging technologies of virtual reality give us a chance for a step forward. I can find at least two applications developed for decreasing complication rates related to accessing the kidney. Rassweiler et al. advocate the use of the iPad for visualization of the pelvicalyceal system, adjacent organs, and their interaction with a needle [4]. This is still a beta version but more teams are working on similar solutions [5]. The same technology could be used in future generations of simulators. Based on GPS technology, they should be able to create any kind of virtual renal unit seen on a monitor imitating real time fluoroscopy and combining the virtual organ with real instruments. The case presented in the current issue of Central European Journal of Urology is an invitation for the discussion about these issues [6]. It also demonstrates that bile in the needle does not necessarily mean that laparotomy has to be performed right away. A conservative approach is a valid option although an operating theatre has to be available at all times.