Conceptual Constraints Research Articles

Moving Up Trainees’ Motivation for Using On-job Training: Relationship between Leaders’ Support and Trainees’ Motivation for Learning

"Research Aims: This study examined the relationship between leaders’ support and trainees’ learning outcomes and the relationship between leaders’ support, trainees’ motivation for learning, and trainees’ motivation for using on-job training. Design/Methodology/Approach: A cross-sectional research design was employed to collect 226 self-report questionnaires from employees at military healthcare organisations in Peninsular Malaysia. The SmartPLS was used to assess the quality of the measurement model and test the structural model. Research Findings: This study confirmed that trainees’ motivation for learning is an essential mediating construct in the relationship between leaders’ support and trainees’ motivation for using on-job training. Theoretical Contribution/Originality: This study disclosed that trainees’ motivation for learning can indirectly affect the relationship between leaders’ support and trainee’s motivation to use on-job training. This outcome was consistent with and extended the prior studies conducted in Southeast Asia and other countries. Managerial Implication in the South East Asian context: The findings can help leaders understand the multidimensional perspectives of trainees’ motivation for learning construct and the importance of leaders and members at various hierarchical levels to maintain and enhance their organisational performance and competitiveness in 21st-century globalisation and uncertainty economy. Research Limitations & Implications: Methodological and conceptual constraints must be considered to improve future studies."

Lost in wonder: a response to Schinkel’s ‘deep’ wonder in education

Abstract In this paper, I aim to clarify the role of ‘wonder’ in education. Most of us who work in education want to provide valuable experiences for our students, and we want them to be driven by intrinsic values such as truth and recognition of the dignity of human existence. However, whilst I echo many of the sentiments espoused by advocates of the utility and ethical significance of wonder, I contend that some recent developments—and in particular, Schinkel’s argument that ‘deep’ (‘contemplative’ or ‘cosmic’) wonder has a ‘fundamental’ role in education—are misconceived. This is, I argue, because any concept deployable within educational spaces (whether formal or informal) must pay due regard to the conceptual constraints of the concept of ‘education’; that is, attention must be paid to the role of ‘learning’. Schinkel’s proposals are, I suggest, vulnerable to a critique of sentimentalism and excessive romanticism. As such, they offer little in terms of practical import for educators. As I will propose, if we are to take ‘wonder’ seriously in educational contexts, we must pay attention to the purpose of wonder as an epistemic emotion; namely, aiming for knowledge and understanding, and getting there requires sensitivity to practical know-how and conceptual competence.

Blockchain and Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods

Blockchain could be used as a mechanism to certify the provenance and movements of cultural goods and contribute to the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property. By strengthening the traceability of cultural goods, blockchain can simplify due diligence requirements and facilitate prosecution and convictions for all the relevant offences of illicit trafficking in cultural goods. However, such an impact is necessarily tempered due to the specificity of this kind of illicit trafficking, as well as the technical and conceptual constraints of the blockchain itself. Even though blockchain in its current form cannot overcome the legal obstacles which hamper the efficacy of the fight against illicit trafficking, such as the lack of harmonization of legal systems, its value in this area should not be dismissed altogether. An overview of the relevant international and European norms, highlighted using national law examples, reveals the complementary role that blockchain can have in this field, not only in terms of best practices but also in terms of an increased visibility for cultural goods and their international movement.

Triangulating Risk Profile and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of Implementing Enterprise Risk Management System

Establishing an enterprise risk management (ERM) system is widely viewed as providing firms with the tools and processes needed to build resilience and expertise, enabling them to manage the consequences of crises that have led to the collapse of major firms across different industries globally. Intended for use in advanced accounting, auditing, and finance courses, this case study (of a true event) describes the development and implementation of an ERM system for a U.S. multinational nonprofit firm during the 2015–2021 period. The case study’s main learning objectives are several-fold. First, couched within the recent economic environment, it informs students on some of the more important academic and applied research on corporate risk management. Second, students will learn to analyze the content of a questionnaire designed to capture the integrated effects of the firm’s risk culture, risk structure, risk governance, and control for establishing its risk profile. Third, they will learn to create and apply multi-dimensional risk indices to measure and prioritize the firm’s risk exposures. Finally, the last learning outcome focuses on strategies to triangulate the firm’s overall risk profile and risk prioritization results to construct mitigation strategies that build resilience and create value through risk diversification, information signaling, the exploitation of natural hedges, and enhancing the board’s governing efficiency. The nonprofit nature of the firm in this case study introduces no methodological or conceptual constraints or limitations in applying the proposed risk management methodologies to for-profit or publicly traded firms.

What Counts as a Collective Gift? Culture and Value in Du Bois’ The Gift of Black Folk

AbstractIn The Conservation of Races, Du Bois advocates that African Americans hold on to their distinctiveness as members of the black race because this enables them to participate in a cosmopolitan process of cultural exchange in which different races collectively advance human civilization by means of different contributions. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Tommie Shelby have criticized the position that Du Bois expresses in that essay as a problematic form of racial essentialism. This article investigates how Du Bois’ 1924 book The Gift of Black Folk escapes or fails to escape that criticism. It is easy to worry that the diversity of what Du Bois in this book is willing to treat as a black contribution to the development of America pushes us from the problem of essentialism to the other extreme: a lack of any conceptual constraints whatsoever on what can count as a black gift. I will argue that recognizing the cultivation of historical memory as a form of cultural activity is key to understanding the concept's unity.

Perspective: How to overcome dynamical density functional theory

We argue in favour of developing a comprehensive dynamical theory for rationalizing, predicting, designing, and machine learning nonequilibrium phenomena that occur in soft matter. To give guidance for navigating the theoretical and practical challenges that lie ahead, we discuss and exemplify the limitations of dynamical density functional theory (DDFT). Instead of the implied adiabatic sequence of equilibrium states that this approach provides as a makeshift for the true time evolution, we posit that the pending theoretical tasks lie in developing a systematic understanding of the dynamical functional relationships that govern the genuine nonequilibrium physics. While static density functional theory gives a comprehensive account of the equilibrium properties of many-body systems, we argue that power functional theory is the only present contender to shed similar insights into nonequilibrium dynamics, including the recognition and implementation of exact sum rules that result from the Noether theorem. As a demonstration of the power functional point of view, we consider an idealized steady sedimentation flow of the three-dimensional Lennard-Jones fluid and machine-learn the kinematic map from the mean motion to the internal force field. The trained model is capable of both predicting and designing the steady state dynamics universally for various target density modulations. This demonstrates the significant potential of using such techniques in nonequilibrium many-body physics and overcomes both the conceptual constraints of DDFT as well as the limited availability of its analytical functional approximations.

Global ocean governance in the Anthropocene: From extractive imaginaries to planetary boundaries?

AbstractAs with other fields of international law addressing human‐nature relations, the Anthropocene invites the reappraisal and reimagining of the law of the sea, the primary normative framework through which states regulate access to, and the use of, the global ocean. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) effected a major shift in global ocean governance towards a public order of the seas. However, the law of the sea remains substantially tethered to a Holocene conception of the ocean as a stable environmental domain of extractive exploitation and jurisdictional demarcation. This is illustrated by the confined scope of negotiations on a new implementing agreement under UNCLOS on the conservation and use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. Additionally, there has been limited acknowledgment of the multiple sites at which ocean governance in the Anthropocene takes place, in particular the central role of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It is contended that one way forward for addressing both these conceptual constraints and the UNCLOS and UNFCCC regime coordination challenges is the adoption of global ocean governance goals informed by the ‘Planetary Boundaries’ framework.

Sustainable Energy Management and Control for Variable Load Conditions Using Improved Mayfly Optimization

In recent trends, renewable energies are infinite, safe, and are becoming a reliable source for electricity requirements. However, they have certain variations in their results because of climate change, which is its major issue. To solve this challenge, a hybrid renewable energy system was created by combining various energy sources. Energy management strategies must be employed to determine the best possible performance of renewable energy-based hybrid systems, as well as to fulfil demand and improve system efficiency. This work describes an Energy Management System (EMS) for a Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) called Improved Mayfly Optimization-based Modified Perturb and Observe (IMO-MP&O). The developed EMS is based on basic conceptual constraints and has the goal of meeting the energy demand of connected load, ensuring energy flow stabilization, and optimizing battery utilization. In addition, the suggested IMO-MP&O can identify the condition and operating state of every HRES sub-system and assure the network stability of frequency and voltage changes. Numerical simulations in the MATLAB/Simulink environment were used to evaluate the proposed EMS. The simulated results show that the proposed IMO-MP&O achieves the harmonic error of 0.77%, which is less than the existing Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control and Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based Z-Source Converter methods.

Optimizing Cycle Time of Industrial Robotic Tasks with Multiple Feasible Configurations at the Working Points

Industrial robot applications should be designed to allow the robot to provide the best performance for increasing throughput. In this regard, both trajectory and task order optimization are crucial, since they can heavily impact cycle time. Moreover, it is very common for a robotic application to be kinematically or functionally redundant so that multiple arm configurations may fulfill the same task at the working points. In this context, even if the working cycle is composed of a small number of points, the number of possible sequences can be very high, so that the robot programmer usually cannot evaluate them all to obtain the shortest possible cycle time. One of the most well-known problems used to define the optimal task order is the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), but in its original formulation, it does not allow to consider different robot configurations at the same working point. This paper aims at overcoming TSP limitations by adding some mathematical and conceptual constraints to the problem. With such improvements, TSP can be used successfully to optimize the cycle time of industrial robotic tasks where multiple configurations are allowed at the working points. Simulation and experimental results are presented to assess how cost (cycle time) and computational time are influenced by the proposed implementation.

Darwin meets dr. Frankenstein: Using the Drake equation to calculate the probability of volcanic lightning's impact on chemical evolution

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has been a paramount mechanism of interest in recent literature addressing the origins of biological evolution. However, research on lightning-triggered electroporation represents the innovative and still insufficiently grasped approach to HGT (Kotnik, 2013). On the other hand, prebiotic synthesis is a fundamental process for chemical evolution. Recently, the effects of volcanic lightning on nitrogen fixation and phosphate reduction have also been considered (Navarro-González and Segura, 2004). This paper aims to present a top-down approach to the question of the origin of life on early Earth. By considering the conditions necessary for the emergence of biological and chemical evolution, emphasizing electrostatic discharges, we will attempt to link previous theoretical and experimental research. Furthermore, we will present a recent endeavor at applying the Drake equation to calculating the probability of volcanic lightning impact on the prebiotic synthesis and derive a similar use in estimating the contribution of lightning to HGT (Weaver, 2013). We will also display that choosing a type of probability appropriate for the context of life sciences is not necessarily a quantitative issue. Finally, we will show that significant conceptual constraints, like determining the relevant factors and sources of uncertainty when considering the origin of life on early Earth, are fundamentally philosophical issues. We hope that the results of our research - deriving Drake's equation in the domain of chemical evolution and considering Bayesian and counterfactual types as potentially more suitable candidates for calculating probabilities in the evolutionary framework - will contribute to developing new discussions in life sciences.

Challenging International Relations’ Conceptual Constraints: The International and Everyday Life across Borders in Southern Africa

One of the critiques of International Relations (IR) is that the discipline’s discursive boundaries are particularly rigid and continue to be shaped and maintained by dominant Western-centric concepts and discourses. This paper explores the apparent dichotomy between how concepts like ‘the international’ are interpreted by IR scholars and the experiences of ordinary people on which these concepts are imposed. How people engage with borders will be used as an illustration, with borders being regarded by IR scholars as constituting important boundaries that are essential to the field’s understanding of the world as consisting of neatly separated sovereign, territorial states. Two examples that highlight the arbitrary nature of national borders in Africa draw these assumptions into question and suggest that defining what does or does not constitute the international is, in reality, much more complex than suggested by the theoretical abstractions found in standard IR texts.

Quantification of groundwater storage heterogeneity in weathered/fractured basement rock aquifers using electrical resistivity tomography: Sensitivity and uncertainty associated with petrophysical modelling

Quantifying groundwater storage in weathered/fractured basement rock aquifers can be challenging owing to both their high degree of heterogeneity and their overall low storage capacity. Therefore, in these aquifers, the use of direct borehole hydraulic data is usually insufficient. Here we assessed the popular method of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), combined with borehole data and including associated uncertainties, to resolve the spatial variability of groundwater storage properties at high resolution within a fractured mica schist aquifer in Ireland. Porosity distributions across both the saturated and unsaturated zones were calculated from two-dimensional (2D) ERT resistivities using two standard petrophysical models, Archie and Waxman & Smits (WS), the latter accounting for the influence of clay minerals on resistivity data. Our results demonstrated the importance of the hydrogeological conceptual constraints provided by ERT when parametrizing the 2D petrophysical models from borehole point data. They also confirmed the importance of accounting for clay minerals (the products of bedrock weathering processes) in the WS model, whereas predictions from Archie’s model produced unrealistically high porosity values of over an order of magnitude higher than the WS model. The WS model predicted porosities decreasing exponentially with depth, with values ranging from a few % in the shallowest, most-weathered part of the bedrock (upper 5 m on average) and deep fractured zones (to about 20 m deep), to <1% in the underlying fissured aquifer, and possibly down another order of magnitude in the deep massive bedrock. WS-derived porosities were in agreement with independent vertical water content profiles derived from magnetic resonance sounding (MRS), as well as point storativity values estimated from borehole hydraulic testing at the study site, with particularly good matches in the upper weathered/fractured bedrock and deeply weathered/fractured zones associated with regional faults. Detailed comparison suggested that WS provides an upper-bound estimate of groundwater storage in this environment. In the deep massive, un-weathered, and poorly fractured bedrock, however, discrepancies between groundwater storage estimate obtained from the three methods (ERT, MRS, and hydraulic) prevented reliable storage quantification, owing to the methods’ inherent technical limitations in such low porosity rocks. Our results demonstrated the suitability of resistivity tomography to quantify groundwater storage heterogeneity in weathered/fractured basement rock aquifers at high resolution and with reasonable overall uncertainty given the relative high uncertainties in petrophysical parameters at the kilometric scale. The results are promising for better characterization of groundwater storage variations in these hydrogeological systems, which are crucial to predict their response to climate variability and human exploitation.

Machine-learning strategies for testing patterns of morphological variation in small samples: sexual dimorphism in gray wolf (Canis lupus) crania

BackgroundStudies of mammalian sexual dimorphism have traditionally involved the measurement of selected dimensions of particular skeletal elements and use of single data-analysis procedures. Consequently, such studies have been limited by a variety of both practical and conceptual constraints. To compare and contrast what might be gained from a more exploratory, multifactorial approach to the quantitative assessment of form-variation, images of a small sample of modern Israeli gray wolf (Canis lupus) crania were analyzed via elliptical Fourier analysis of cranial outlines, a Naïve Bayes machine-learning approach to the analysis of these same outline data, and a deep-learning analysis of whole images in which all aspects of these cranial morphologies were represented. The statistical significance and stability of each discriminant result were tested using bootstrap and jackknife procedures.ResultsOur results reveal no evidence for statistically significant sexual size dimorphism, but significant sex-mediated shape dimorphism. These are consistent with the findings of prior wolf sexual dimorphism studies and extend these studies by identifying new aspects of dimorphic variation. Additionally, our results suggest that shape-based sexual dimorphism in the C. lupus cranial complex may be more widespread morphologically than had been appreciated by previous researchers.ConclusionOur results suggest that size and shape dimorphism can be detected in small samples and may be dissociated in mammalian morphologies. This result is particularly noteworthy in that it implies there may be a need to refine allometric hypothesis tests that seek to account for phenotypic sexual dimorphism. The methods we employed in this investigation are fully generalizable and can be applied to a wide range of biological materials and could facilitate the rapid evaluation of a diverse array of morphological/phenomic hypotheses.

Concepciones del cuerpo en contextos multi e interculturales

Este artículo, producto asociado al proyecto “Cuerpo territorio de paz: escenas educativas posibles para la interculturalidad y las diferencias” repasa los condicionamientos conceptuales que pesan sobre el multiculturalismo y la interculturalidad, en general, como formas del pluralismo que se manifiestan desde la diversidad cultural observada en los procesos culturales de realidad contemporánea. Se analiza, entonces, la interculturalidad a partir de la diversidad, entendida ésta como un escenario cognitivo por donde se arbitran los conflictos interculturales. Se parte del enfoque del multiculturalismo para entender cómo se dinamizan las diversidades desde sus connotaciones sociales y políticas, para después alcanzar la interculturalidad, como otro enfoque pero ahora de interacción cultural y diálogo que intenta superar la mirada esquemática de la condición múltiple de las sociedades, para pasar a una situación de construcción de procesos interculturales como formas de encuentros y de disputas por la inclusión. Para analizar dichos procesos, se indican tres grandes campos de reflexión intercultural: el filosófico, el modélico y el dialógico, que sitúa al concepto como parte de una perspectiva transversal que puede atender distintas problemáticas culturales y, al mismo tiempo, propone a la interculturalidad como un campo de estudio de tal importancia para la comprensión de las realidades actuales desde ese punto de vista. Finalmente, se intenta conceptualizar al cuerpo para apuntar su apuesta como proceso cultural emergente, que se construye en el conflicto y coliga la diferencia en la convivencia entre culturas. Se profundiza la importancia que reporta la multiculturalidad y la interculturalidad en el análisis de la diversidad cultural, la inclusión social, las identidades colectivas, para visibilizarlos en el cuerpo como auténtico artífice material y simbólico intercultural, el lugar de la intersección de flujos, tensiones y contradicciones del proceso intercultural, siempre precario.

Abstract Constraints for Safe and Robust Robot Learning from Demonstration

My thesis research incorporates high-level abstract behavioral requirements, called ‘conceptual constraints’, into the modeling processes of robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD) techniques. My most recent work introduces an LfD algorithm called Concept Constrained Learning from Demonstration. This algorithm encodes motion planning constraints as temporal Boolean operators that enforce high-level constraints over portions of the robot's motion plan during learned skill execution. This results in more easily trained, more robust, and safer learned skills. Future work will incorporate conceptual constraints into human-aware motion planning algorithms. Additionally, my research will investigate how these concept constrained algorithms and models are best incorporated into effective interfaces for end-users.

Imaginary Friends and Made-Up Stories: How to Explore (Non)Religious Imaginaries Without Asking Belief-Centred Questions

Abby Day transformed research into nonreligion by demonstrating how to talk about belief without asking religious questions. This article aims to go a step further by demonstrating a way of exploring (non)religious imaginaries without asking belief-centred questions. It does so by suggesting that researchers 1) ask what people are willing to commit their precious time to doing and subsequently 2) pay attention to the myths they tell in sustaining these actions and the way that the imagination brings these to life. I suggest that asking people what they believe may force them into a response that forecloses the complexity of their imagination. Focusing on the belief-based distinctions between purportedly ‘religious’ and ‘nonreligious’ people as has proved particularly popular in the psychology of religion reproduces a (post)Protestant understanding of religion as deeply held belief. Recent developments in sociology and anthropology suggest that this is an inaccurate understanding of many religious people. I suggest that it also places conceptual constraints on explorations of nonreligious imaginaries. Perhaps it does not matter whether people believe that a literary figure really existed or whether or not people believe in life after death. Instead what matters is the agentive force the characters they are imagining have over their lives.

“Mathematical Paradise”: The Parallel Social Infrastructure of Post-war Soviet Mathematics

This article examines the response of the Soviet mathematical community to the geographical restrictions, physical barriers, political and administrative pressures, and conceptual constraints that they faced from the 1950s through the 1980s. Many talented mathematicians with “undesirable” ethnic or political backgrounds encountered discrimination in admission to universities, employment, travel to conferences abroad, etc. The mathematical community in response created a parallel social infrastructure, which attracted young talent and provided support and motivation for researchers excluded from official institutions. That infrastructure included a network of study groups (“math circles”), correspondence courses, math competitions, specialized mathematical schools, free evening courses for students barred from top universities, pure math departments within applied mathematics institutions, and a network of open research seminars. A community emerged in which mathematics became a way of life, work and leisure converged, and research activity migrated from restrictive official institutions to the private spaces of family apartments or dachas. In the informal community of Soviet mathematicians, a specific “moral economy” operated, which relied on a network of friendly connections and on an exchange of favors. The various external constraints further strengthened personal ties, encouraged mutual help, and fostered close friendships in the community. Although excluded from elite privileges, the “parallel world” of Soviet mathematics cultivated an ethos of noble rejection of career ambitions, material rewards and official recognition in order to pursue the highest ideals of mathematical truth. This way of life, which opposed the bureaucratic spirit of official institutions, was often perceived by its participants as a “mathematical paradise.”

Algorithm and Optimization Model for Energy Storage Using Vertically Stacked Blocks

With increasing adoption of supply-dependent energy sources like renewables, Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are needed to remove the gap between energy demand and supply at different time periods. During daylight there is an excess of energy supply and during the night, it drops considerably. This paper focuses on the possibility of energy storage in vertically stacked blocks as suggested by recent startups. An algorithm is proposed based on conceptual constraints, to allow for removal and storage of excess electrical energy in the form of gravitational potential energy. To improve these results further, the concepts of wasted energy and unmet demand are used to develop a new mathematical model which aims to minimize the maximum unmet demand in all time periods using lowering and stacking of blocks at specific locations. Simulation results show that for time periods up to a week long, this storage system is able to shift blocks stored in a tower of vertically stacked blocks to reduce unmet demand significantly. This is augmented by storing extra energy from a photovoltaic system, taking account of stochasticity and temporal variability. The authors therefore conclude based on a sensitivity analysis that this system and its associated mathematical optimization can be feasible when scaled up to meet ancillary-level grid storage applications.

Povezanost slikovnih i pojmovnih svojstava ugla i kocke u geometrijskom rezonovanju budućih učitelja

Drawing upon Fischbein's theory of figural concepts, the starting point of the paper is the use and value of the history of geometry in mathematics education - first point that we make historical reference are theorems of Eudemus of Rhodes and Thales of Miletus and the second one is elaboration of these theorems in work of Serbian mathematicians Mihailo Petrovic Alas. Fischbein's theory is mainly based on a hypothesis that geometry deals with mental entities, the so-called geometric figures, which simultaneously possess conceptual and figural properties. Fischbein called the geometric figures figural concepts because of their nature. We have analyzed the internal tensions of the concepts of angle and cube, which may appear in figural concepts because of their double nature, developmental aspects and didactical implications. The goal of the research was to examine the pre-service primary school teachers' geometric reasoning regarding the correlation between figural (pictoral) and conceptual properties of geometric objects (angle and cube) in order to obtain a framework for creating didactic situations that reduce the gap between figure and concept. The results of this study show that the figural (pictoral) structure of an angle (and cube) dominates in the geometric reasoning of the pre-service primary school teachers over its formal conceptual constraints. There were some differences in situations when an image is helpful in solving tasks involving the concepts of the net of the cube and the cube itself.

Searching for specific sentence meaning in context: the conceptual relation between participants

abstractWe argue that the interpretation of transitive aspectual-verb sentences like “Sue finishes the book” results from an evaluation of the degree of asymmetry in control power between the participants in the sentence.Control asymmetryis proposed as one conceptual constraint on sentence meaning precisification. An evaluation of ‘high control asymmetry’ for the relation between “Sue” and “book” yields an agentive/actor-undergoer interpretation (Sue is doing something involving the book). An evaluation of ‘low control asymmetry’ yields a constitutive/part–whole interpretation (Sue’s story is the last one in the book). Which reading emerges depends on the comprehender’s control-asymmetry evaluation based on contextual cues or, in the absence of explicit context, based on conventionalized control asymmetry expectations given the participants’ denotations. Results show that semantically under-specified aspectual-verb sentences such as “Sue finishes/begins/continues the book” (i) receive multiple readings in a control-asymmetry neutral context, (ii) are judged as less acceptable than their control asymmetry-biased counterparts, and (iii) clearly evidence theconstitutivereading as part of their core reading. These findings are consistent with a real-time linguistic meaning composition system that systematically draws from context guided by lexically driven semantic demands and that presents the structure of these demands as a cognitively viable metric of complexity.