Good Deal Research Articles

A Duty not to Remain Silent: Hypocrisy and the Lack of Standing not to Blame

Abstract A notable feature of our practice of blaming is that blamees can dismiss blame for their own blameworthy actions when the blamer is censuring them hypocritically and, as it is often put, lacks standing to blame them as a result. This feature has received a good deal of philosophical attention in recent years. By contrast, no attention has been given the possibility that, likewise, refraining from blaming can be hypocritical and dismissed as standingless. I argue that hypocritical refrainers have a duty to blame, if asked to do so, and possibly even if they are not asked to do so. Acknowledging this fact about hypocritical silence is crucial to an adequate understanding of our practice of blaming. Specifically, it bears on a worry that naturally arises when we consider cases where the blamee is blameworthy yet the blaming is problematic, because standingless. The worry is that, absurdly, the idea of standing justifies our being more interested in silencing preachers of virtue than making wrongdoers overcome vice. However, if one can lack standing not to blame, this concern is unwarranted. If there is such a thing as standing to blame, then sometimes one must, for reasons of standing, speak up in the face of wrongdoing, meaning, in effect, that one lacks the right not to challenge wrongdoers to improve.

Power relations in the music teaching studio

AbstractPower relations operate in any educational setting, and there may be particular vulnerabilities in a tradition conducted in the relative isolation of the music teaching studio. These vulnerabilities have been highlighted dramatically in recent years through high-profile cases of power abuse, but power is implicated in a wide range of contexts related to the studio, including cultural, gendered, pedagogical, artistic, institutional and interpersonal issues. It may be impossible to divest power of its negative connotations, but there is a good deal of theory focused on power, even if its terms are broadly political or philosophical, and subject to debate. This theoretical paper explores power relations with regard to the music studio, investigating popular conceptions and everyday usage before turning to scholarship focused on interpersonal and broader social perspectives. Some reflections are offered on the uses and abuses of power in the studio. A better understanding of its dimensions and usage can support the ongoing development of studio practices and contribute to the conversation that we need to have about power.

Development of a compact Ansatz via operator commutativity screening: Digital quantum simulation of molecular systems.

Recent advancements in quantum information and quantum technology have stimulated a good deal of interest in the development of quantum algorithms toward the determination of the energetics and properties of many-fermionic systems. While the variational quantum eigensolver is the most optimal algorithm in the noisy intermediate scale quantum era, it is imperative to develop compact Ansätze with low-depth quantum circuits that are physically realizable in quantum devices. Within the unitary coupled cluster framework, we develop a disentangled Ansatz construction protocol that can dynamically tailor an optimal Ansatz using the one- and two-body cluster operators and a selection of rank-two scatterers. The construction of the Ansatz may potentially be performed in parallel over multiple quantum processors through energy sorting and operator commutativity prescreening. With a significant reduction in the circuit depth toward the simulation of molecular strong correlation, our dynamic Ansatz construction protocol is shown to be highly accurate and resilient to the noisy circumstances of the near-term quantum hardware.

Managerial Shakespeare and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

From the 1990s a new development has taken place within the framework of ‘Shakespeare in popular culture’, and more specifically of so-called ‘Self-help Shakespeare’, namely what Douglas Lanier has termed ‘the Shakespeare corporate-management manual’. What underlies them all is the notion that, if Shakespeare is famous for portraying universal human nature, he has a good deal to teach the world of business and management. To this effect, they provide quotations and discussions of a number of plays, particularly Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. The value and usefulness of these manuals have been contested, but they could also be objected to as regards the scant attention paid to some other Shakespearean plays, such as Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida. It is our contention that, if we were to accept and follow the logic and aims of their authors, Troilus and Cressida could be at least as relevant to business and management as those other plays. This is so not only in its implications for managerial leadership and decision-making, but also on the grounds of more abstract but applicable notions of value and marketability, which are both defended —and opposed— in the play. This paper will seek to explain these notions both in an early-modern context and in their possible relevance to modern entrepreneurial activity.

Teaching language systems

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cheshire Cat. (Lewis Carroll: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”) Without preliminary planning and its precise fulfillment, without continuous professional development, the journey to achieve the goal for a teacher may actually become a long one, and the final destination may be “somewhere” that he did not expect at all. Hence, lesson planning is an important and integral part of the teaching process. From this perspective, the authors of the given paper give great importance to sound understanding of different lesson structures, strictly differentiating skills (receptive, productive) lesson frameworks from systems (grammar, vocabulary, functional language) lesson shapes. The article is focused on a detailed study of systems lesson diagrams; more precisely the TTT (Test -Teach -Test) and TBL (Text - based lesson) approaches are presented. The categories of clarification or presentation are especially noteworthy, as clarification of the target language (Meaning, Form and Pronunciation) is considered one of the main stages of the lesson plan. To help students to learn the target language, the method of Guided Discovery is presented and clarified based on the example of a grammatical unit. Finally, the means to check student’s understanding of what you have just explained to him have not been left unaddressed either. The authors give special priority to the application of CCQs (concept checking questions) for checking or guiding the student’s understanding of the meaning of the target language. Based on Cambridge CELTA course (the most widely recognized English teaching qualification in the world) Lesson Plan template, the authors present detailed analysis of grammatical, lexical and functional units.

Fundamental theorem of asset pricing with acceptable risk in markets with frictions

We study the range of prices at which a rational agent should contemplate transacting a financial contract outside a given market. Trading is subject to nonproportional transaction costs and portfolio constraints, and full replication by way of market instruments is not always possible. Rationality is defined in terms of consistency with market prices and acceptable risk thresholds. We obtain a direct and a dual description of market-consistent prices with acceptable risk. The dual characterisation requires an appropriate extension of the classical fundamental theorem of asset pricing where the role of arbitrage opportunities is played by good deals, i.e., costless investment opportunities with acceptable risk–reward tradeoff. In particular, we highlight the importance of scalable good deals, i.e., investment opportunities that are good deals regardless of their volume.

Professional skills training in developing digital materials through augmented and virtual reality applications

AbstractA good deal of research has stressed that teaching staff are expected to continuously improve their profession. However, we observed that there is a need for more practical‐based research investigating the practices being adopted by teaching staff. Therefore, the present research aimed to explore the effect of a 9‐day practical‐based training on faculty members' and teachers' levels of professional competence in developing digital materials through augmented and virtual reality applications. The study group consisted of 15 faculty members and 15 teachers. “Digital Material Development Competence Scale” was applied as pre‐ and posttests, and semi‐structured interview questions were employed to collect data. As a result, both the quantitative and qualitative data evidenced that the training increased both faculty members' and teachers' levels of supposed professional development significantly. Subsequently, the participants' views revealed that the following contributed to the development of their skills in developing digital materials, technology use, integrating their pedagogical knowledge into technological knowledge, and lifelong learning. They are (a) receiving training on the use of augmented and virtual reality applications; (b) practicing sample applications with these tools; (c) experiencing mutually collaborative, hands‐on, and interactive learning; (d) with the help of highly motivated and expert trainers; and (e) with efficient collaboration between faculty members and teachers. In closing, not only did we report and discuss the results in line with relevant professional development and lifelong learning theories, but we also presented research activities and results as concrete examples in the context of efficient learning for the professional development of teaching staff as adults.

Percutaneous Electrical Nerve Field Stimulation for Drug-Refractory Pediatric Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome.

Cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS) is a disabling condition frequently refractory to pharmacologic therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of non-invasive, auricular percutaneous electrical nerve field stimulation (PENFS) as prophylactic therapy for pediatric CVS. Children 8-18 years with drug-refractory CVS were prospectively enrolled from a tertiary care CVS clinic. Subjects received 6 consecutive weeks of PENFS. CVS severity was quantified by episode frequency and duration score (range 0-25) at baseline and at extended follow-up (4-6 months after end of therapy). Response was classified as ≥50% improvement in either frequency or duration of attacks at extended follow-up. Subjects also completed validated surveys of nausea, disability and global response. 30 subjects completed the study. Median (IQR) age was 10.5 (8.5,15.5) years; 60% were female. At follow-up, 80% met criteria for treatment response with a median (IQR) response duration of 113 (61, 182) days. The frequency-duration score improved from baseline median (IQR) 12.0 (9.0, 16.0) to 3.0 (1.0, 6.0) at follow-up, p<0.0001. Median (IQR) nausea and disability scores decreased from baseline to week 6: 2.1 (1.3, 2.7) to 0.9 (0, 1.6), p=0.003 and 47.5 (41.0, 53.0) to 38.0 (16.0, 51.0), p=0.001 respectively. At end of therapy, 66% and 55% patients reported global response of at least "moderately better" and "a good deal better" respectively. There were no serious side effects. This study suggests long-term benefits of PENFS for children with CVS. PENFS improves several disabling aspects of CVS, including episode frequency, duration and functional disability.

'Maternal Request' Caesarean Sections and Medical Necessity.

Currently, many women who are expecting to give birth have no option but to attempt vaginal delivery, since access to elective planned caesarean sections (PCS) in the absence of what is deemed to constitute ‘clinical need’ is variable. In this paper, we argue that PCS should be routinely offered to women who are expecting to give birth, and that the risks and benefits of PCS as compared with planned vaginal delivery should be discussed with them. Currently, discussions of elective PCS arise in the context of what are called ‘Maternal Request Caesarean Sections’ (MRCS) and there is a good deal of support for the position that women who request PCS without clinical indication should be provided with them. Our argument goes further than support for acceding to requests for MRCS: we submit that healthcare practitioners caring for women with uncomplicated pregnancies have a positive duty to inform them of the option of PCS as opposed to assuming vaginal delivery as a default, and to provide (or arrange for the provision of) PCS if that is the woman's preferred manner of delivery.

Synchronously Enhanced Removal Ability and Stability of MXene through Biomimetic Modification.

Increasing environmental problems intensify the demand for high-performance environmental purification materials. MXene is a typical transition-metal carbide/nitride material with a two-dimensional geometric feature and a good deal of functional groups, and it is considered as an efficient adsorbent for removing pollutants from wastewater. However, the easy oxidation and relatively low adsorption capacity greatly restrict its application. In this study, the MXene/polydopamine (PDA) composite particles were fabricated through the biomimetic modification method of inducing the self-polymerization of dopamine in an MXene aqueous solution. Microstructure characterizations demonstrate that PDA facilitates the exfoliation of MXene. Adsorption measurements show that MXene and PDA exhibit an apparent synergistic effect in removing chromium hexavalent Cr(VI) from aqueous solution, and more PDA content leads to a larger synergistic effect. Consequently, the composite particles exhibit an ultrahigh adsorption capacity (862.3 mg/g). Specifically, even if the composite particles were stored in aqueous solution for 2 months, they still exhibit high adsorption ability with only a 3.3% loss in adsorption capacity, indirectly confirming the enhanced stability of MXene induced by PDA. Furthermore, the composite particles also show reduction ability to Cr(VI) and about 54.3% Cr(VI) can be reduced to harmless chromium trivalent Cr(III). This study provides a new method for the preparation of MXene-based adsorbents with excellent adsorption capacity and high stability, which has broad application prospects in the field of wastewater treatment.

E-commerce Price Comparison Website using Web Scraping

Price comparison sites are designed to compare the price of goods and services from a range of providers, which will help consumers in making decision to choose products that will save their money through online. Considering the customers’ busy lifestyle especially those who are living in the city area, most of the consumers prefer to buy their needs through the internet because it saves their time. Besides, consumers always go for the cheaper price in purchasing products therefore by using price comparison website, customers do not have to travel from shop to shop only to survey the price offered by different shops for the same product. They can just check it from the price comparison website itself and decide where they should buy the products they need. This project, named as Price comparison website using web scrapping is the place where shoppers could find the great deals on the products. The best deals will be clearly highlighted. To obtain best deals from Price comparison websites web scrapping techniques are used to fetch detailed information. This way, paper aims to provide solution for online customers to buy products at good deal and save their valuable time, effort, and money.

An Analysis of Master 2 Students’ Exam Copies in Research Methodology and Written Expression: The Case of Department of English at Batna 2 University

Experts in writing, most notably in writing research reports, papers, and theses, emphasize both the utility and the complexity of writing in the academic context. The development of an ability to write effectively needs time and practice. It was observed that Second Year EFL Master’s students at Banta 2 University face difficulties in respecting academic writing features despite a good deal of instruction in written expression. Hence, the paper analyzes Master Two students’ exam copies in two subjects, written expression, and research methodology. This study seems appealing because its primary purpose is to investigate the natural causes behind students’ failure in academic writing. It aims to identify students’ lacunas in writing research reports, papers, and theses. To address these objectives, the current study inquires: “Why do so many students fail to write correctly?” To consider the research query as mentioned earlier, an explanation is attempted through content analysis of 196 students’ exam excerpts of research methodology and 191 copies in the exam of written expression. Besides, the research proposal is looked at in a step-by-step chronological order. The combination of good writing and good thinking is presented as the key to academic success. Results indicated that students failed to demonstrate a good command of academic writing norms.

Health Insurance Cost Prediction Using Deep Neural Network

Artificial intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) are strategies for making human being’s lives simpler in the healthcare enterprise through predicting and identifying ailments more fast than the general public of scientific specialists. There may be an immediate connection between the insurance organization and the policyholder while technology reduces the distance between them to zero in particular with digital medical insurance. In preference to commonplace protection, simulated intelligence and profound mastering have meaningfully impacted the way in which guarantors build health care coverage designs and empowered customers to hastily get benefits greater. With a view to provide clients with accurate, spark off, and effective medical health insurance, insurance companies use DL. Medical health insurance quotes have been expected the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) and a deep neural network (DNN) algorithm on this take a look at. Based on the traits of the individuals, the author envisioned how a good deal medical insurance might price. Age, gender, body mass index, the range of kids, smoking behavior, and place had been all used to train and examine an artificial neural network model.

Are bundles good deals for first-order modal logic?

Bundled products are often offered as good deals to customers. In first-order modal logic (FOML), when we bundle quantifiers and modalities together (as in ∃x□, ◇∀x, etc.), we get new logical operators whose combinations produce interesting fragments of FOML without any restriction on the arity of predicates, the number of variables, or the modal scope. It is well-known that finding decidable fragments of FOML is hard, so we may ask: do bundled fragments that exploit the distinct expressivity of FOML constitute good deals in balancing the expressivity and complexity? There are a few positive earlier results towards identifying the decidable ones. In this paper, we map the terrain of bundled fragments of FOML in (un)decidability, and in the cases without a definite answer yet, we show that they lack the finite model property. Moreover, whether the class of models considered has constant domains (across states/worlds) or increasing domains presents another layer of complexity. We also present the loosely bundled fragment, which generalizes the bundles and yet retains decidability (over increasing domain models).

Kierkegaard, Music, and Its Relation to the Performing Arts

Kierkegaard's conceptualization of his aesthetic stage of existence is lacking even with a very unstinted acknowledgment of his undeniably profound and brilliant insights. For Kierkegaard the aesthetic stage is based only on the immediacy of feeling, thus a transitoriness that ultimately leads to boredom and despair. This presentation agrees with Adorno's triadic understanding of what the aesthetic means in Kierkegaard's aesthetic writings as opposed to his religious ones. It is argued in this presentation that Kierkegaard's aesthetic stage or sphere of existence is a good deal more than passion at the sensuous level. There are too many great artists who struggled and made their lives ethically, spiritually, or religiously meaningful in blatant contradiction of Kierkegaard's demeaning of the aesthetic stage of existence. Many artists would not accept Kierkegaard's a priori assumption that sensual immediacy is the basic state of the aesthetic individual. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard's profound insights into the aesthetic sense of live music performance are an invaluable result of his informed intuition and other aesthetic writings; i.e., he asserts in some writings that the aesthetic derives only from immediacy, yet there are other writings (e.g., on music and acting) from which one can infer a broader sense of the aesthetic. It is also possible to formulate a practical realization of Kierkegaard's aesthetic philosophy by way of his profound observations on dramatic acting and applying these uncannily insightful concepts to music performance.

Viewing dual-subtitled videos under different learning conditions: effects on learners’ behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement

The design of tasks to induce learning from audiovisual input is vital for second/foreign language teachers and has attracted a good deal of attention in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) research. This study presents a new contribution to research in this area by investigating learner engagement in the context of vocabulary learning through dual-subtitled video viewing and examining the correlations between different types of learner engagement and vocabulary gains across different learning conditions. This study investigates 72 university EFL learners’ behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement in four different learning conditions, which feature the presence/absence of vocabulary preview and/or postviewing interventions. Both between-group and within-group ANOVA results revealed significant differences in the level and type of engagement across the four learning conditions. Behavioural and cognitive engagement were the strongest in learning conditions requiring vocabulary preview and postviewing L2 production in the learner-generated content (LGC) condition, while the strongest emotional engagement was exhibited in learning conditions involving vocabulary preview and postviewing L2 production in the teacher-generated content (TGC) condition. Learner engagement at all three levels was moderately low in learning conditions where only vocabulary preview was included and was even lower in learning conditions when both previewing and postviewing interventions were absent. The article ends with discussions on how understanding learner engagement manifested in viewing dual-subtitled video conditions under different learning conditions may guide pedagogical decisions in the context of L2 learning through such audiovisual materials.

IIR Cascaded-Resonator-Based Complex Filter Banks

The use of a filter bank of IIR filters for the spectral decomposition and analysis of signals has been popular for many years. As such, a new filter-bank resonator-based structure, representing an extremely hardware-efficient structure, has received a good deal of attention. Recently, multiple-resonator (MR)-based and general cascaded-resonator (CR)-based filters have been proposed. In comparison to single-resonator-based analyzers, analyzers with a higher multiplicity of resonators in the cascade provide lower side lobes and a higher attenuation in stopbands. In previous works, it was shown that the CR-based filter bank with infinite impulse response (IIR) filters, which is numerically more efficient than one with finite impulse response (FIR) filters, is suitable for dynamic harmonic analysis. This paper uses the same approach to design complex digital filter banks. In the previous case, the optimization task referred to the frequency responses of harmonic filters. In this work, the harmonic filters of the mother filter bank are reshaped so that the frequency response of the sum (or difference, depending on the parity of the number of resonators in the cascade) of two adjacent harmonic filters is optimized. This way, an online adaptive filter base can be obtained. The bandwidth of the filters in the designed filter bank can be simply changed online by adding or omitting the output signals of the corresponding harmonics of the mother filter.

Synthesis, characterization and application of BR@Ag nanocomposite material for high degree reduction of p-nitro phenol under a suitable condition

ABSTRACT One of the most essential chemical processes that is utilized in the manufacturing of a great deal of contemporary goods is called heterogeneously catalyzed reactions, and it is also one of the most fascinating. Metallic nanostructures are heterogeneous catalysts for range reactions due to their huge surface area, large assembly of active surface sites, and quantum confinement effects. Unprotected metal nanoparticles suffer from irreversible agglomeration, catalyst poisoning, and limited life cycle. To circumvent these technical disadvantages, catalysts are frequently spread on chemically inert materials like as mesoporous Al2O3, ZrO2, and different types of ceramic material. In this research, plentiful bauxite residue is used to create a low-cost alternative catalytic material. We have hydrogenated p-Nitrophenol to p-Aminophenol on bauxite residue (BR) supported silver nanocomposites (Ag NCs). The phase and crystal structure, bond structure and morphological analysis of the developed material will be done XRD, FTIR, and SEM-EDX respectively. The ideal conditions were 150 ppm of catalyst, 0.1 mM of p-NP, and 10 minutes overall up-to 99% conversion of p-NP to p-AP. A multi-variable predictive model created using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and a data-based Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model were found to be the best ways to predict the maximum conversion efficiency. ANN models predicted efficiency more accurately than RSM models, and the strong agreement between model predictions and experimental data was indicated by their low relative error (RE0.10), high regression coefficient (R2>0.97), and Willmott-d index (dwill-index > 0.95) values.

A factored regression model for composite scores with item-level missing data.

Composite scores are an exceptionally important psychometric tool for behavioral science research applications. A prototypical example occurs with self-report data, where researchers routinely use questionnaires with multiple items that tap into different features of a target construct. Item-level missing data are endemic to composite score applications. Many studies have investigated this issue, and the near-universal theme is that item-level missing data treatment is superior because it maximizes precision and power. However, item-level missing data handling can be challenging because missing data models become very complex and suffer from the same "curse of dimensionality" problem that plagues the estimation of psychometric models. A good deal of recent missing data literature has focused on advancing factored regression specifications that use a sequence of regression models to represent the multivariate distribution of a set of incomplete variables. The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate a factored specification for composite scores with incomplete item responses. We used a series of computer simulations to compare the proposed approach to gold standard multiple imputation and latent variable modeling approaches. Overall, the simulation results suggest that this new approach can be very effective, even under extreme conditions where the number of items is very large (or even exceeds) the sample size. A real data analysis illustrates the application of the method using software available on the internet. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Attending to Emotions, as both Caregivers and Historians.

It has been fascinating to read this collection of articles on the history of healthcare practitioners’ emotions, and to reflect on my own career as both a primary care physician and medical historian, and on caregiving and medical history more generally. Beginning medical school in 1993, I absorbed from the hidden curriculum William Osler’s ethos of “Aequanimitas” and imperturbability – “coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness” – well before I read his iconic essay.1 Indeed, many members of my generation (myself included) were more likely to first encounter the transmogrification of Osler’s ethos into the House of God’s (itself ably dissected in this volume) third “law”: “At a cardiac arrest the first procedure is to take your own pulse.”2 Emotions were to be modulated and tempered in the service of the patient. As I sought a dual career as a clinician and historian, the dynamics of the hospital and clinic often inspired the issues I attempted to historically examine and contextualize. I focused a good deal on the history of evidence-based medicine and the aspirations to a “rational” therapeutics amidst the hopes and biases of clinicians and patients alike. As I worked on the history of antibiotic prescribing, and the concerns of would-be reformers regarding seemingly “irrational” prescribing in the 1970s, I noted that in the eyes of such reformers, “science and reason, once juxtaposed to magic or religion, could be set against emotion and the unconscious, with physicians seemingly at the mercy of advertisers, the pleading of their patients, wishful thinking, the frenzied pace of medical practice, and fears regarding missed opportunities to treat serious (or soon to be serious) illness.”3 In many ways, I had again black-boxed such emotions in focusing on the history of attempts to sideline them more generally.