Set Of First Principles Research Articles

Infrastructure first principles for the Anthropocene

Abstract There appears to be a growing decoupling between the conditions that infrastructures were designed for and today’s rapidly changing environments. Infrastructures today are largely predicated on the technologies, goals, and governance structures from a century ago. While infrastructures continue to deliver untold value, there is growing evidence that these critical, basic, and lifeline systems appear ill-equipped to confront the volatility, uncertainty, accelerating conditions, and complexity that define them and their changing environments. Innovative and disruptive first principles are needed to guide infrastructures in the Anthropocene. Drawing from emerging infrastructure research and disciplines that appear better able to confront disruption and change, a novel set of first principles are identified: (1) Plan for complex conditions and surprise; (2) Recouple with agility and flexibility; (3) Govern for exploration and instability; (4) Build consensus as control decentralizes; (5) Restructure to engage with porous boundaries; and, (6) Cyberthreat planning is now mission critical. These principles should guide infrastructure planning recognizing the changing nature and increasingly obsolete boundaries that have defined engineered systems in the modern era.

A Primer on EEG Spectrograms.

As continuous brain monitoring becomes a routine part of clinical care, continuous EEG has allowed better detection and characterization of nonconvulsive seizures, and patterns along the ictal-interictal continuum in critically ill patients. However, this increased workload has led many to turn to quantitative EEG whose central tool is the "spectrogram." Although in relatively wide use, many clinicians lack a detailed understanding of how spectrograms relate to the underlying "raw" EEG signal. This article provides an approachable set of first principles to help clinicians understand how spectrograms encode information about the raw EEG and how to interpret spectrograms to efficiently infer underlying EEG patterns.

On the Promise and Limits of Prosocial Neoclassical Economic Approaches to Shareholder Primacy

Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales (Hart 2020; Hart and Zingales 2017a,b,c; Zingales 2017, 2018a,b, 2019a,b, 2020) have proposed to amend the influential view about the nature and function of the firm typically associated with Milton Friedman (1962, 1970). The core of their proposal is that ethical and social values should be given a more central role in an account of the objective function of the firm. The caliber of the authors and the growing concern with the ethical flaws in the traditional model of shareholder primacy, helps to explain why their recent contributions have received much attention. The paper utilizes Hart and Zingales’ account to examine whether neo-classical economics can offer an account of the objective function of the firm that is ethically sound. To assess this, we formulate two set of principles. The first highlights that the investigation into the objective function of the firm is normative. It requires thinking in normative terms of both managers and shareholders. Moral norms filter the desires that managers should promote on shareholders’ behalf. The second set of principles highlights the conceptual diversity of our normative language; any appropriate account of the objective function of the firm needs to have a rich normative conceptual vocabulary to reflect such diversity. The paper shows that while neoclassical economics may often meet the first set of principles, it lacks the resources to meet the second. It also shows that any account of the nature firm that is descriptively and prescriptively adequate needs economics to work hand in hand with legal scholarship and moral philosophy.

Observers, observations and referencing in physics theories

Is it possible to encompass the full extent of the universe within a theory based on a finite set of first principles and inference rules?The r^ole of observers and observations in physics theories is considered here in the light of G¨odel’s incompleteness theorem. Physics theories are the sum-total that we – humans, scientists, physicists – can make in interpreting our observations of the universe. We are integral part of the universe, together with our observations, therefore acts of observation are also observables and should become part of the phenomena considered by the theory, especially in view of the fact that arbitrarily chosen modes of observations may essentially determine empirical results.Incompleteness arises in G¨odel’s theorem with self-referential propositions. Observations and interpretations are acts of referencing, and self-referencing occurs in physics whenever the observer is recognized as being part of the observed system. If self-reference appears in physics in simile to G¨odel’s theorem, then incompleteness seems unavoidable in physics.The article discusses observers and observations as referencing in physics, culminating with the understanding that they are hierarchically inter-related so that a universal physics theory cannot be complete.

Food sharing and time budgeting in predator-prey interaction

A time-dependent predator-prey system is introduced where food sharing among predators leads to a dynamically stable endemic. The predator population is split into the adult and juvenile sub-population. Food sharing refers to the process in which food is delivered from adults to juveniles. The populations differ in their ability to procure food and reproduce as young predators are assumed to lack the skills required to hunt and are not mature enough to reproduce. Aggregation of predators facilitates the disbursement of captured prey. A set of first principles formalize the behavioral activities of aggregation and food sharing. The effects of these activities are related to population level actions by behavioral response maps. Particularly, the absence of food sharing is modeled as to inflict juveniles faster decease along with hampered regeneration, as a consequence. Analysis of the model without considering adults’ stinginess presents forward bifurcations in the direction of increasing search rate and assimilation efficiency as well as of decreasing handling and sleeping time. Perturbation of assimilation efficiency also leads to a discontinuity-induced Hopf bifurcation, where the predator and prey population oscillate around the activation-deactivation of additional deaths in the juvenile population due to a certain proportion of sharing actuator. The disparate time scales from the prey and predator dynamics also bring forward a slow-fast system with two distinct critical manifolds. The prey-extinction critical manifold repels biologically relevant trajectories, yet any trajectory transferred to it by means of a disease or eradication will converge to the total extinction. The prey-persistence critical manifold attracts and leads trajectories to a stable endemic. This indicates that food abundance and food sharing increase the chance of having a stable endemic irrespective to the variation of the prey-predator lifespan ratio.

A modeling study of predator–prey interaction propounding honest signals and cues

Honest signals and cues have been observed as part of interspecific and intraspecific communication among animals. Recent theories suggest that existing signaling systems have evolved through natural selection imposed by predators. Honest signaling in the interspecific communication can provide insight into the evolution of anti-predation techniques. In this work, we introduce a deterministic three-stage, two-species predator–prey model, which modulates the impact of honest signals and cues on the interacting populations. The model is built from a set of first principles originated from signaling and social learning theory in which the response of predators to transmitted honest signals or cues is determined. The predators then use the signals to decide whether to pursue the attack or save their energy for an easier catch. Other members from the prey population that are not familiar with signaling their fitness observe and learn the technique. Our numerical bifurcation analysis indicates that increasing the predator’s search rate and the corresponding assimilation efficiency gives a journey from predator–prey abundance and scarcity, a stable transient cycle between persistence and near-extinction, a homoclinic orbit pointing towards extinction, and ultimately, a quasi-periodic orbit. A similar discovery is met under the increment of the prey’s intrinsic birth rate and carrying capacity. When both parameters are of sufficiently large magnitudes, the separator between honest signal and cue takes the similar journey from a stable equilibrium to a quasi-periodic orbit as it increases. In the context of modeling, we conclude that under prey abundance, transmitting error-free honest signals leads to not only a stable but also more predictable predator–prey dynamics.

‘Courses for Horses’: designing, adapting and implementing self practice/self-reflection programmes

AbstractSelf-Practice/Self-Reflection (SP/SR) has been proposed both as an adjunct to therapy training programmes, and also as a means for therapist development among experienced therapists. Research suggests it develops aspects of knowledge and skill that may not be addressed through other training methods. With increasing interest in SP/SR, a growing evidence base regarding both participant benefits and potential risks from SP/SR, and the development of SP/SR programmes across a range of therapeutic modalities, we argue it is timely to identify a set of principles that can guide the design, adaptation and implementation of SP/SR programmes. At this stage, there is little empirical evidence to guide trainers wishing to implement SP/SR in different contexts. Accordingly, these principles have been derived from reflection on developing, testing and implementing SP/SR programmes as well as on other training and supervisory experience. The first set of principles detailed in Section 1 draw on various theories of learning and development and frame the processes involved, the next principles speak to the content of SP/SR programmes, and the final principles address structure. Within Section 2, the principles are then considered for their practical implications. In Section 3, the sharing of what are initially private self-reflections is then considered together with some implications for SP/SR programmes, especially when there is assessment involved. We argue that SP/SR will continue to progress with well-designed standard programmes, careful implementation, thoughtful adaptation, ongoing innovation, and especially more evaluation.Key learning aims(1)To understand the principles for designing, adapting and implementing SP/SR programmes that are drawn from theory and from the authors’ experience of developing and implementing SP/SR programmes over the last 20 years.(2)To understand the possible factors that guide the processes, content and structure of SP/SR programmes.(3)To understand how best to maximize effective engagement and learning (and limit harm) when planning or implementing an SP/SR programme.

The Soul You Lose May Be Your Own: Historical Considerations on Theology and Culture

The Soul You Lose May Be Your OwnHistorical Considerations on Theology and Culture1 Fr. Augustine Thompson OP (bio) Keywords theologian, role, historical, culture, magisterium, apologetics, Cano, catechesis I. Introductory Remarks About twenty years ago when I was living in Bologna, Italy, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger came to speak at one of the “Evenings of St. Dominic,” as they were called. You may remember that at that time he had become famous for the series of interviews published as the Ratzinger Report, which amounted to a fairly critical evaluation of the trajectory of Catholic life in the post-Vatican II period. The subject of his lecture, given in the grandiose Renaissance salon called the Sala del Cinquecento, was “The Office of the Theologian.” In the talk, he described the theologian as mediating between the lived experience of Christians and the Church’s ongoing tradition. It was very much a reprise of the visions of the theologians who influenced the documents and spirit of the Council Fathers: De Lubac, Congar, Chenu, and others. There was little evidence that the cardinal was influenced by Karl Rahner, or had appropriated much modern philosophy in the mode of Edward Schillebeeckx or Bernard Lonergan. There was certainly no hint of liberation theology or “deconstruction” of a postmodern sort. It seemed to me a [End Page 69] somewhat old-fashioned talk, and I do not mean that as negative, nor even faint praise. I do not think it would be a caricature to summarize the cardinal’s understanding of the theologian’s office this way: the theologian’s task is to interpret and articulate the Christian experience of God’s action in the world, in the light of the Scriptures and the Church’s tradition, under the corrective guidance of the magisterium. I would have supposed that the prominent role of Scripture and tradition in this formula, as well as the explicit inclusion of Vatican oversight in it, should have played well in the Bologna environment, where the Ratzinger Report was the current refectory reading. But I was wrong. The next morning, after Lauds, when I found my way into the little nook where the friars usually stood around breakfasting on stale bread in bowls of caffe latte, I found a sizeable group of the Dominican faculty, perhaps the majority, and including the academic dean, Padre Alberto Galli, denouncing the cardinal’s heresies of the night before. The consensus was that his understanding of the theological project simultaneously denuded it of objectivity by founding it on the shifting sands of personal experience, while rendering it authoritarian and fideistic through the institutionalization of what amounted to an oracular magisterium. I would not say that the cardinal was the object of the proverbial odium theologicum, but to say the friar professors were unhappy would be putting it mildly. It seems I had chanced on what was perhaps the last sizeable group of neo-scholastics in charge of theological formation—at least it was the only one I can remember encountering. For Padre Galli and theologians like him, the objectivity of theology was founded on the objectivity of its first principles. Again, I do not think that it would be a parody to describe their understanding of the theologian’s office this way: the theologian is responsible for defending and elaborating the “Deposit of the Faith,” a series of propositions about God, Christ, and the Church, found in Scripture and tradition, and defined by the councils and popes as normative. This elaboration takes place by a logical method, whereby, through syllogistic arguments, [End Page 70] new propositions are propounded, and then offered to the magisterium for canonization as articles of the Faith. The magisterium does not exist without the theologians. Indeed, in the words of one Bolognese friar, the magisterium would have nothing to declare de fide if the theologians did not propound new propositions from old. Not only was this enterprise “objective,” a nonbeliever could probably pursue it, fashioning new propositions, logically consistent with a set of first principles that he might very well reject. No shifting sand here. And frankly, whatever one might think of this kind of theology, the cardinal’s version did look...

From Concept to Commerce: Developing a Successful Fungal Endophyte Inoculant for Agricultural Crops.

The development of endophyte inoculants for agricultural crops has been bedevilled by the twin problems of a lack of reliability and consistency, with a consequent lack of belief among end users in the efficacy of such treatments. We have developed a successful research pipeline for the production of a reliable, consistent and environmentally targeted fungal endophyte seed-delivered inoculant for barley cultivars. Our approach was developed de novo from an initial concept to source candidate endophyte inoculants from a wild relative of barley, Hordeum murinum (wall barley). A careful screening and selection procedure and extensive controlled environment testing of fungal endophyte strains, followed by multi-year field trials has resulted in the validation of an endophyte consortium suitable for barley crops grown on relatively dry sites. Our approach can be adapted for any crop or environment, provided that the set of first principles we have developed is followed. Here, we report how we developed the successful pipeline for the production of an economically viable fungal endophyte inoculant for barley cultivars.

First Principles System Level Modelling of TCP-100 Facility for Simulation of Operation Modes

This paper presents a set of first principles based models for system level simulation of the complete new TCP-100 research facility at Plataforma Solar de Almería (CIEMAT). This new research facility replaced the 32 years old ACUREX facility with which so many advances in Automatic Control were reached by the research community The presented models will be validated with experimental data and the presented simulations are based in the parameter selection from providers’ data sheets and the engineering design project. Results of several simulation experiments for a typical operation day are presented in which the system is operated passing through different operating modes.

Qualitative modelling of functional relationships in marine benthic communities

In order to better understand and predict the dynamics of benthic macroinvertebrate communities, we need to first define the functional components of benthic biodiversity and then provide a mechanistic description of how they interact with their abiotic environment, their basic resources and each other. These interactions should be largely controlled by readily available biological traits, making trait-based modelling an ideal framework for the synthesis of relevant hypotheses from ecological theory and expert knowledge. With the help of benthic species traits, we derived a set of first principles regarding the role of organisms in processes of environmental filtering, consumption of algae/detritus, predation, use of space, biogenic habitat modification and trade-offs in the utilization and allocation of resources. These principles were incorporated into qualitative models in the form of functional relationships linking groups of benthic organisms in the Rance estuary (Brittany, France). The general stability of these models illustrates their potential to persist in time and to constitute a plausible representation of the natural world. Their structure provides insight into the role of various community assembly mechanisms and the direction that the system might take in response to perturbations. The results are expected to inform the development of quantitative models reproducing the spatial and temporal dynamics of marine benthic biodiversity in the Rance estuary.

Single cell proteomics in biomedicine: High-dimensional data acquisition, visualization, and analysis.

New insights on cellular heterogeneity in the last decade provoke the development of a variety of single cell omics tools at a lightning pace. The resultant high-dimensional single cell data generated by these tools require new theoretical approaches and analytical algorithms for effective visualization and interpretation. In this review, we briefly survey the state-of-the-art single cell proteomic tools with a particular focus on data acquisition and quantification, followed by an elaboration of a number of statistical and computational approaches developed to date for dissecting the high-dimensional single cell data. The underlying assumptions, unique features, and limitations of the analytical methods with the designated biological questions they seek to answer will be discussed. Particular attention will be given to those information theoretical approaches that are anchored in a set of first principles of physics and can yield detailed (and often surprising) predictions.

Statistical internationalism: From Quetelet's census uniformity to Kish's cross-national sample survey comparability

Cross-national comparability of census data as uniformity was intensely debated from the First International Statistical Congress (ISC), held in Brussels at Quetelet's initiative in 1853, until an agreement was reached at the Eighth ISC, in St. Petersburg, in 1872. However, not much progress was made until the last half of the twentieth century, when the Statistical Commission of the United Nations issued the first set of principles and recommendations for the national population censuses in 1958. In this paper, the progress of statistical internationalism is investigated from Quetelet's vision of census data uniformity and the first international decision to conduct decennial censuses directed at the actual population to Kish's definition of cross- national sample survey comparability. The presentation is based on the detailed documentation of the Integrated Public Use Mictodata Series (IPUMS)-International. As this database is comprised of samples drawn from censuses, it relates to this first international decision on census data comparability.

A Pluralist Account of Deference and Legitimate Expectations

Critics doubt the existence of any coherent doctrine of legitimate expectations in the common law. Legitimate expectation is said to be a vague concept which permits judges to trespass into the legislative and executive domains and distribute palm-tree justice. In my view, however, coherence can be attained. That the doctrine may not map clearly onto the various justifications offered for it from time to time is not a great surprise. The doctrine is of recent provenance and, as is the case with the common law, its development has not followed inexorably from an agreed set of first principles. Some underlying theory is needed to assist in answering difficult doctrinal questions. I propose a pluralist approach to the doctrine of legitimate expectations. Several values -- the rule of law, good administration, democracy and separation of powers -- can be found in the decided cases. Faced with values found in the cases that are individually appealing but which may be in tension, coherence can be achieved by adopting a pluralist approach that does not assign priority to any one value but seeks instead to reconcile them.Three controversial doctrinal questions form a crucible within which the appropriate interaction of the rule of law, good administration, democracy and separation of powers can be observed and the advantages of a pluralist approach appreciated. These are, first, the role of knowledge and reliance, second, substantive legitimate expectations and third, expectations based on ultra vires representations. I argue that neither knowledge nor reliance should be a pre-requisite to the enforcement of legitimate expectations. On substantive legitimate expectations, I take the side of the Court of Appeal in Coughlan, arguing in the teeth of strong criticism of that decision that there are indeed good reasons for courts to enforce substantive legitimate expectations, though I also observe that the Court of Appeal probably went too far in one important respect. And as to ultra vires representations, I ally myself with those who have advocated a balancing approach that would permit courts to enforce them in some circumstances.

Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity by John Behr (review)

Reviewed by: Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity by John Behr Jonathan J. Armstrong John Behr Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity Christian Theology in Context Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 Pp. 236. £63.00. This marvelous volume is the yield of years of sustained research into second-century Christian theology. In his new study, Behr sets out to trace what many long deemed untraceable—the historical genesis and unfolding of Irenaeus’s thought as a discrete theological system. However, Behr’s project is not merely descriptive but also corrective as he argues that, although Irenaeus unquestionably had a significant role in shaping Christian identity in the second century and subsequent definitions of orthodoxy, it would be an error to imagine him as a doctrinaire ideologue, issuing demands “that ‘heretical’ books be burnt or that false teachers be excommunicated” (3). Ecclesiastical power such as required for these actions in fact did not exist during Irenaeus’s lifetime but grew out of the consensus that he helped to forge. The portrait of Irenaeus that emerges from Behr’s research is that of a resolute believer in the unique truthfulness of the apostolic witness and yet “an advocate of toleration and diversity in contrast to those who lacked this irenic quality” (16). The volume is divided into three spacious chapters. Chapter One is a superbly crafted analysis of the “cultural situatedness” of Irenaeus’s writings. After an expeditious description of earliest Christianity in Gaul, Behr explores the Shepherd of Hermas and the extant literature by or concerning Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, Justin Martyr, and the Carpocratians in the attempt to assess the exactness and rigidity of the theological standards of Roman Christianity in the second century. While Roman Christianity in the second century was certainly not as defined in terms of dogmatic or institutional commitments as it would be in the fourth century, a clear consciousness of the unity of the church is evidenced even by the date of Marcion’s departure from Rome. Behr surveys Irenaeus’s exchanges with Florinus, Eleutherus, Victor, and Polycarp, and concludes: “By the time of his death, Irenaeus had done more than anyone else to expose those who had departed from the Church for what they were and to refute their teachings, to expound the Christian faith with a comprehensiveness, coherence, and a remarkable degree of hermeneutical awareness, and to promote peace and toleration within the Church” (70). [End Page 481] Chapter Two is a structural and theological analysis of Adversus Haereses. Perhaps the most valuable part of this section is Behr’s dissection of the argument of each book of Irenaeus’s opus and the outline that Behr assembles for each book. Behr also discusses Irenaeus’s understanding of the rule of faith as a set of first principles for the demonstration of Christian doctrine: “The ‘tradition’ appealed to by Irenaeus is not just some customary teaching or practice, but that which the apostles ‘handed down’ as the matrix and the means for encountering the Christ they proclaimed, a particular approach and practice, pivoted upon the Passion of Christ, understood through the Scriptures, and enacted in the Eucharist” (115). For Behr, this is the heart of Irenaeus’s theology: Christ recapitulates all things in himself, and therefore Christian faith is not merely a set of propositions to be confessed but a divine word to be embraced in the sacraments. Chapter Three focuses on the theological themes of books three through five of Adversus Haereses. Behr commences with an exposition of Irenaeus’s hermeneutics and affirms: “Irenaeus’s account of how Scripture is to be read assumes that the divinely inspired content of Scripture is not known until the books are opened by the Cross of Christ, and so their ‘inspiration’ cannot be separated from the act of opening nor, for that matter, from the inspired reading: the ‘inspired’ writing of Scripture cannot be separated from the ‘inspired’ reading, and both, together, turn upon the act of opening the Scriptures by the one of whom they speak, or, in reverse, the one who speaks in them” (129–30). Continuing to demonstrate how recapitulation serves as the overarching theme of Irenaeus’s theology, Behr next addresses the economy of God...

Exploring the Dynamics and Mutational Landscape of Riboregulation with a Minimal Synthetic Circuit in Living Cells

The regulation of gene expression, triggered by conformational changes in RNA molecules, is widely observed in cellular systems. Here, we examine this mode of control by means of a model-based design and construction of a fully synthetic riboregulatory device. We present a theoretical framework that rests on a simple energy model to predict the dynamic response of such a system. Following an equilibrium description, our framework integrates thermodynamic properties—anticipated with an RNA physicochemical model—with a detailed description of the intermolecular interaction. The theoretical calculations are confirmed with an experimental characterization of the action of the riboregulatory device within living cells. This illustrates, more broadly, the predictability of genetic robustness on synthetic systems, and the faculty to engineer gene expression programs from a minimal set of first principles.

Conformal geometrodynamics regained: Gravity from duality

There exist several ways of constructing general relativity from ‘first principles’: Einstein’s original derivation, Lovelock’s results concerning the exceptional nature of the Einstein tensor from a mathematical perspective, and Hojman–Kuchař-Teitelboim’s derivation of the Hamiltonian form of the theory from the symmetries of space–time, to name a few. Here I propose a different set of first principles to obtain general relativity in the canonical Hamiltonian framework without presupposing space–time in any way. I first require consistent propagation of scalar spatially covariant constraints (in the Dirac picture of constrained systems). I find that up to a certain order in derivatives (four spatial and two temporal), there are large families of such consistently propagated constraints. Then I look for pairs of such constraints that can gauge-fix each other and form a theory with two dynamical degrees of freedom per space point. This demand singles out the ADM Hamiltonian either in (i) CMC gauge, with arbitrary (finite, non-zero) speed of light, and an extra term linear in York time, or (ii) a gauge where the Hubble parameter is conformally harmonic.

Educational neuroscience, constructivism, and the mediation of learning and creativity in the 21st century.

Educational neuroscience, constructivism, and the mediation of learning and creativity in the 21st century.

Debating ICT policy first principles for the Global South: The case of South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article builds on the work of Robin Mansell and civil society inputs to the World Summit on the Information Society, to propose a set of first principles for ICT policy-making for the global South. It draws on the case of South Africa, which has experienced a troubled path towards convergence of its media and telecommunications sectors into one ICT sector. Shying away from the realities of convergence will not help countries in the global South, such as South Africa, to confront challenges of ICT adoption and usage, such as the very real and present danger of ICTs reproducing or even reinforcing existing informational and communications inequalities. In fact, this article argues that policy is needed to ensure that the benefits of ICTs are generalised across society. However, in the absence of radical approaches to ICT policy-making, these developments risk becoming under-regulated or even unregulated, leaving them to the vagaries of the market. If policies are developed, they may be laundered from other contexts that do not speak to the informational and communications challenges of countries like South Africa. This article argues for democratic alternatives to the information society narrative that underpins so much ICT policy-making in the global South, and that promotes market-led, modernist, deterministic approaches to ICT development.

Consensus for using an arts-based response in art therapy

This article sets out to describe provisional guidelines for the art therapist using an in-session art response. Art therapists are known to use art materials to respond to patients as part of their clinical work in health care settings. Using several survey and knowledge acquisition techniques, the author elucidates what techniques are being used and then establishes a first set of guidelines for art therapists working within Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL). The guidelines are not prescriptive, but offer a range of methods based on current practice. The guidelines pull together different ideas and methods and seek clinical consensus on the validity and reliability of each statement based on clinician and service user opinions. The resulting guidelines are in keeping with the ethos of NHS clinical governance to demonstrate clearly what interventions are being applied and to what effect. These guidelines are intended as a first set of principles to support innovation in clinical practice through recognition of standards to be developed.