Loose Way Research Articles

Ethos and Pragmatics

Ethos, the speaker’s image in speech is one of the three means of persuasion e stablished by Aristotle’s Rhetoric and is often studied in a loose way. Many scholars develop lists of self-images (ethos of a leader, modesty ethos, etc.), but few explain how one arrives at these types of ethos. This is precisely what the inferential approach described here intends to do. Considering, like many discourse analysts, that ethos is consubstantial with speech, this paper provides an overview of various types and subtypes of ethos and highlights how these can be inferred from the discourse. Mainly, we would like to point out that what the speaker says about him or herself is only a part of what has been called “said ethos”: inferential processes triggered by what the speaker says about collectivities, opponents, or the audience also help construct an ethos. This tool will be applied to analyze a corpus of Donald Trump’s tweets of 6 January 2021, the day of the assault on the Capitol. As the notion of inference is essential in creating ethos, the paper pleads for the integration of the study of this rhetorical notion in the field of pragmatics.

‘Autoflogulation’ – a word to help students to be precise in explaining blood flow control

I wish to share with my Physiology teaching colleagues a few common observations among students on the imprecise and loose way in which they sometime use key Physiology words.
 The term ‘autoregulation’ generally means the ability of the body to respond to challenges and changing circumstances and maintain normal essential parameters. This broad meaning similar to the term homeostasis can then be used in sentences like ‘plasma osmolarity is autoregulated or ‘plasma potassium concentration is autoregulated’.

COVID-19 Vaccines as Global Common Goods: An Integrated Approach of Ethical, Economic Policy and Intellectual Property Management

Abstract The article deals with the current debate about COVID-19 Vaccines as global public/common goods. After a brief introduction on the global epidemiological and economic implication of the pandemic, the problem of the correct characterization of either vaccine or immunization/herd immunity as global public/common good, according to the necessary characteristics outlined by the pertinent economic theories, is addressed. The conclusion is that the term “global public good”/global common goods” has been extensively used in the last two years by policy makers, political leaders, academics, economists, international organizations, NGOs and others health groups, in a sort of “loose way”. Substantially, in order to underscore that equitable access to health products, including vaccines, health and biomedical technologies, medical services, medical devises, whose availability, accessibility, acceptability, affordability to the world is fundamental to tackling the pandemic. The current legal proprietary regime applied to vaccines, extensively covered by IPRs, has transformed an intrinsically non-excludable common/public good (the vaccines, due to their nature and characteristics) in something excludable and rival in consumption. Consequently, the article argues that what is needed is a swift in their legal governance. The current legal discipline of vaccines and health technologies must be changed to bring it into line with the non-excludable nature of these goods. The richest countries in the world, in pursuit of their “vaccine nationalisms”, have already collectively preordered 8.8 billion doses of vaccine, far in excess of need, thus obliging billions of people in the Global South to wait years to be vaccinated. In this respect, the article investigates the EU vaccines strategy and analyzes the Advanced Purchase Agreements signed by the European Commission with the major vaccine producers, enlightening the untenable secrecy and opacity with which the European Union’s executive has handled COVID-19 vaccine supply contracts, and how it has simply paid no more than lip-service to the concept of global common/public good by attributing a broad “private governance” to the pharmaceutical companies. Then, the various arguments, for and against, the Waiver Proposal to several sections of the WTO TRIPS agreement, introduced by India and South Africa on the TRIPS Council on October 2020, have been briefly summarized, accounting the current luck of needed consensus among the various members of the WTO. The article however describes an important number of new global and collaborative efforts already put in place by a myriad public and private actors to allow efficient development and production of vaccines in order to enhance a global access to vaccines. The article concludes by stressing the major developments in the U.S. patent’s landscape and in the Biden Administration’s attitude towards the current global health crisis, that leave hope for “extraordinary measures” to be agreed by the international community in near future. The auspice is that the time has finally arrived for the international community to develop reliable and long term solutions to tackle future global pandemic, preferably by the negotiation of a new WHO global health treaty, to secure universal fair access to essential technologies and vaccines and protecting them as global public/common goods.

Materialising reform: how conservation encounters collection practises in zoos

ABSTRACT This paper examines how zoos decide which animals to keep, drawing on guidance produced by zoo membership organisations and in-depth interviews with zoo curators. Zoos make curatorial decisions within constraints posed by each zoo’s legacy of buildings and animals. Different versions of ‘conservation value’ inform decision-making alongside other criteria such as education value, visitor value and whether or not animals are available. We find that an international agenda to rationalise zoo collection planning in the name of environmental conservation has only partially reshaped existing practices. As a ‘bald object’ in the Latourian sense, ‘conservation’ presents a clean surface, which also means that it invites projections that attach to concrete practices only in loose ways. Given the ambiguity of conservation as a value, conservation presents zoos with a range of options and can be made to fit a broad range of choices, which make sense to actors for other reasons. Reform efforts gain traction where they are inserted as ‘hairy objects’ and resonate with practical problems zoos are already facing. Reforms in the name of conservation have led to networks of exchange and co-operation, which help zoos to secure new animals in the context of new regulations.

Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Environmental economic valuations of biodiversity are an increasingly active field of academic inquiry, often presented as a prominent means to rationalize decision-making on environmental issues. However, the meaning of this argument is unclear, because it uses the term “rationalize” in a loose way. This argument, as it is typically formulated in the literature, makes it look as though economic valuations do not involve any value-judgment by economists: by emphasizing rationalization, this argument silences value-judgements. This blind spot is critical, since environmental inequalities are pervasive in economic valuations and their applications, and environmental decision making hence unavoidably involves value-judgements. In this article, we identify conditions upon which environmental economic valuations can truly contribute to rationalizing decision making, despite environmental inequalities. We review the main arguments found in the literature to entrench the credentials of economic approaches to rationalize decision-making, and argue that these approaches fail, at a fundamental level. We then argue that the key for economic valuations to truly contribute to rationalization is that their usage should be embedded in the deployment of what we will call a justificatory task. We then take advantage of an analysis of the notion of rationality, when applied to decision-aiding processes, to translate this reasoning in the concrete terms of applications of environmental economic valuations. According to the argument that we articulate here, standard economic valuations, just like any other application of economic tools, can indeed play a role in rationalizing environmental decisions, in spite of the inequalities that they (re)produce. But this possibility is conditioned by the requirement that the economist implementing them should produce justifications.

Sustainability in Public Pension Funds? A Longitudinal Study of the Council on Ethics of the Swedish AP Funds

Are public pension funds taking sustainability values into serious consideration? This question is addressed by analyzing annual reports of The Council on Ethics in the Swedish public pension system, which has a clear mission from The Swedish Government to consider sustainability values. The council was established in 2007 and supports four funds with advice. This article studies empirically how the council’s expression of words connected to different values has changed over time as well as how it practically reasons in situations of value conflicts. The quantitative data shows that words indicative of “sustainability values” have considerably increased. As a contrast, the critical discourse analysis shows that the council often reasons in a general, loose way about preferable solutions, while more practical claims for action are largely lacking or are vague in relation to sustainable development. The underlying rationale is very much in line with the discourse of economic rationalism. Thus, the quantitative findings suggest an emerging sustainability discourse, while the qualitative analysis clearly indicates that an economic rationale continues to underpin the council’s practical reasoning. However, it is concluded that this is not a simple case of green washing documents but rather a slow train moving towards green institutional change.

ОСЕСИММЕТРИЧНЫЙ ИЗГИБ ЦИЛИНДРИЧЕСКОГО РЕЗЕРВУАРА

An article is available on the problem associated with the presence of a completely isolated or partially liquid part, for example, oil, gasoline or in a loose way, for example, with grain. The tank, located on a non-deformable foundation, is a thin elastic closed end shell.

Algeria in declining ottoman hierarchy: Why Algiers remained loyal to the falling patron

The shattering Ottoman order in the early nineteenth century offers an intriguing puzzle about the behaviors of subordinates within declining hierarchical orders. While Greece, Egypt, and many other provinces challenged the Porte, Algiers preferred to remain within the Ottoman order. The puzzle turns into a riddle when considering that Algeria was bounded to the center in a loose way and uprising against the Porte was less risky and less costly. Why did a geographically remote and loosely integrated subordinate remain within the Ottoman hierarchical order at a time when well-integrated and geographically close subordinates, one after another, picked the challenge option? This paper proposes three factors, which may be more generally applicable to the clients of declining patrons: the inability of the Porte to force Algeria against its interests, which decreased the costs of continued allegiance; Algeria’s need for a balancer against threats from European naval powers, which the Porte provided; and the domestic political legitimacy that allegiance to the Porte also provided to Algeria’s rulers.

Two ectomycorrhizal truffles, Tuber melanosporum and T.aestivum, endophytically colonise roots of non-ectomycorrhizal plants in natural environments.

Serendipitous findings and studies on Tuber species suggest that some ectomycorrhizal fungi, beyond their complex interaction with ectomycorrhizal hosts, also colonise roots of nonectomycorrhizal plants in a loose way called endophytism. Here, we investigate endophytism of T.melanosporum and T.aestivum. We visualised endophytic T.melanosporum hyphae by fluorescent in situ hybridisation on nonectomycorrhizal plants. For the two Tuber species, microsatellite genotyping investigated the endophytic presence of the individuals whose mating produced nearby ascocarps. We quantified the expression of four T.aestivum genes in roots of endophyted, non-ectomycorrhizal plants. Tuber melanosporum hyphae colonised the apoplast of healthy roots, confirming endophytism. Endophytic Tuber melanosporum and T.aestivum contributed to nearby ascocarps, but only as maternal parents (forming the flesh). Paternal individuals (giving only genes found in meiotic spores of ascocarps) were not detected. Gene expression of T.aestivum in non-ectomycorrhizal plants confirmed a living status. Tuber species, and likely other ectomycorrhizal fungi found in nonectomycorrhizal plant roots in this study, can be root endophytes. This is relevant for the ecology (brûlé formation) and commercial production of truffles. Evolutionarily speaking, endophytism may be an ancestral trait in some ectomycorrhizal fungi that evolved from root endophytes.

Hierarchically controlling quantum teleportations

Controlling execution of certain quantum tasks in a quantum manner is necessary to ensure correctness of the final decision in case some doubts or/and wrong things might happen at the last-minute situation. As the importance of different tasks in practice may differ, controlling such tasks must be properly hierarchized: A lesser important task can be controlled in a looser way while a more important task must be put under a more severe control. Here, for concreteness, we deal with teleportations of three unknown quantum states containing information of different levels of importance. We design a scheme such that teleportation of the state of the lowest level of importance is allowed only by one agent, the general supervisor, but teleportation of the state of the middle level of importance is controlled by two agents, the general supervisor plus one more agent, and teleportation of the state of the highest level of importance requires permissions from three agents, the general supervisor plus two more agents. For that purpose, we construct quantum circuits to produce a genuine multipartite entangled state to be shared among all the authorized agents and show its relevance for the hierarchical control mentioned above.

Estimation of volatility in a high-frequency setting: a short review

Our aim is to give an overview of the topic of estimation of volatility, in a high-frequency setting. We emphasize the various possible situations, relative to the underlying process (continuous, or with jumps having finite, or infinite, activity) and to the observation scheme (with microstructure noise or not, under a regular sampling scheme or not). We try to explain a variety of methods, including the most recent ones. Each method is quickly sketched, with comments on its range of applicability. Most results are given in the form of a theorem, with a precise description of the assumptions needed, but of course without proof, and some results are simply mentioned in a somewhat loose way. We consider only the one-dimensional case, although occasional comments are made about the multivariate case. We totally omit the nowadays hot topic when the number of assets is very large, meaning that this number increases as the frequency increases: this is unfortunately not compatible with a “short” review as this one.

The lack of structure of knowledge

For a long time philosophers have struggled to reach a definition of knowledge that is fully satisfactory from an intuitive standard. However, what could be so fuzzy about the concept of knowledge that it makes our intuitions to not obviously support a single analysis? One particular approach from a naturalistic perspective treats this question from the point of view of the psychology of concepts. According to it, this failure is explained by the structure of our folk concept of knowledge, which organizes its constitutive information in a much looser way than we assume when we rely on intuitive knowledge ascriptions. I will adopt the same starting point here, but argue against the proposed answer and defend the view that this difficulty is explained not by something related to the specific structure of our concept of knowledge but, on the contrary, by its lack of structure. I claim that our folk concept of knowledge should be understood as a primitive mental state concept.

DocGenealogy – Visualizing the doctoral advisors and mentors genealogic tree

DocGenealogy is a data mining project that allows the visualization and exploration of the doctoral advisement/mentoring relationship through an interactive graph chart. Wikipedia is known for its informal collaborative nature, based on a somewhat loose and non-structural way of producing information, and one of its strengths is, in fact, the openness to all sorts of collaborations. DocGenealogy uses the Wikipedia available data on doctoral advisement and mentoring to find out and track the existing relationships between advisors or mentors and their students. The data mining process starting point is always some well-known scientist. This process continues until finding all the ultimate reputed co-related advisors and mentors, and builds iteratively the relationship graph. Besides this, DocGenealogy also visually shows how people are distributed by alma mater and field of knowledge. The main objective of the work is to evaluate the effectiveness of the graph-oriented techniques in the interpretation of data from Wilipedia infoboxes.

Constructing Low-Weight $d$ th-Order Correlation-Immune Boolean Functions Through the Fourier-Hadamard Transform

The correlation immunity of Boolean functions is a property related to cryptography, to error correcting codes, to orthogonal arrays (in combinatorics), and in a slightly looser way to sequences. Correlation-immune Boolean functions (in short, CI functions) have the property of keeping the same output distribution when some input variables are fixed. They have been widely used as combiners in stream ciphers to allow resistance to the Siegenthaler correlation attack. Very recently, a new use of CI functions has appeared in the framework of side channel attacks (SCA). To reduce the cost overhead of counter-measures to SCA, CI functions need to have low Hamming weights. This actually poses new challenges since the known constructions which are based on properties of the Walsh-Hadamard transform, do not allow to build unbalanced CI functions. In this paper, we propose constructions of low-weight d th-order CI functions based on the Fourier-Hadamard transform, while the known constructions of resilient functions are based on the Walsh-Hadamard transform. These two transforms are closely related but the resulting constructions are very different. We first prove a simple but powerful result, which makes that one only need to consider the case where d is odd in further research. Then, we investigate how constructing low Hamming weight CI functions through the Fourier-Hadamard transform (which behaves well with respect to the multiplication of Boolean functions). We use the characterization of CI functions by the Fourier-Hadamard transform and introduce a related general construction of CI functions by multiplication. By using the Kronecker product of vectors, we obtain more constructions of low-weight d-CI Boolean functions. Furthermore, we present a method to construct low-weight d-CI Boolean functions by making additional restrictions on the supports built from the Kronecker product.

A Variable Collection Regarding the Storage Space Moment of Packaged Food in Fuzzy Association Rule Mining Structure

The development in the packaged food industry has made weight on the packaged food distribution center to upgrade the request picking proficiency. The choice decision supportive network (DSN) for stock keeping units (SKUs) allotment along these lines needs to settle on quality choices for shortening the request picking time. Keeping in mind the end goal to enhance the basic leadership capacity of the DSN, the determinant components of the significant info variable-the capacity time of SKUs, must be distinguished. Given the loose way of the potential determinant considersfuzzy association rule mining (FARM) structure is proposed in this review. It applies the FARM strategy to recognize and assess the components and examples concerning the capacity time of SKUs in bundled sustenance distribution centers. The system was tried through a contextual investigation, and the outcomes demonstrated that the structure can distinguish the most applicable information factors with respect to the capacity time and can portray the connections between them particularly.

Enhancing data delivery with density controlled clustering in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are primarily used for sensing and collecting the information from environment. This information is sent to base station (BS), where, it is processed and analyzed by the underlying application. Functioning of WSN highly depend on the deployment strategy and the coordination among the sensor nodes. Preserving the energy is an important goal that must be considered when developing a routing protocol for WSNs. Radio communication in sensor nodes is highly expensive operation in terms of energy usage. Energy can be conserved in an efficient way with specifically customized routing techniques. Data aggregation methods when applied to sensor nodes, clusters are created where data generated from cluster members is aggregated. This kind of data collection strategy results into energy efficient communication. Integration of data aggregation and clustering approach is enabled through customized hierarchical routing strategies. Clustering technique is key to apply and exploit, the advantages in-network data processing offers. This paper compares various clustering protocols like LEACHC, K-means and its variants. The protocols are compared with respect to network lifetime, data delivery and energy consumption. These protocols only consider intra cluster distance of members while doing clustering, due to this non-uniform clusters are created. These kind of clusters do not deliver data periodically and uniformly from every corner of the field. A density control based approach is proposed which does balancing of cluster members assignment in a loose way. A loose density control (LDC) based approach is integrated with K-means clustering method. LDC based approach exhibits improved average data delivery per node, ensuring regular data availability from every corner of the deployment area as long as the nodes are alive. Not only it improves the amount of data delivered, it also improves the network lifetime considerably. This performance improvement is achieved with almost similar energy expenditure compared to other protocols.

Retrospectives: What Did the Ancient Greeks Mean by Oikonomia?

Nearly every economist has at some point in the standard coursework been exposed to a brief explanation that the origin of the word “economy” can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomia, which in turn is composed of two words: oikos, which is usually translated as “household”; and nemein, which is best translated as “management and dispensation.” Thus, the cursory story usually goes, the term oikonomia referred to “household management” and while this was in some loose way linked to the idea of budgeting, it has little or no relevance to contemporary economics. This article introduces in more detail what the ancient Greek philosophers meant by “oikonomia.” It begins with a short history of the word. It then explores some of the key elements of oikonomia, while offering some comparisons and contrasts with modern economic thought. For example, both Ancient Greek oikonomia and contemporary economics study human behavior as a relationship between ends and means which have alternative uses. However, while both approaches hold that the rationality of any economic action is dependent on the frugal use of means, contemporary economics is largely neutral between ends, while in ancient economic theory, an action is considered economically rational only when taken towards a praiseworthy end. Moreover, the ancient philosophers had a distinct view of what constituted such an end—specifically, acting as a philosopher or as an active participant in the life of the city-state.

An Interactive Possibilistic Programming Approach for Blood Bank Locations with Emergency Referral

Regionalisation of Local Blood Banks (LBBs) is so vital for blood supply to facilitate the clinics in the obligated regions to go along with the requests in typical conditions and the moments of crisis. Determination of location of LBBs is a key factor in the selection of alternatives in the blood store networks. In this paper, we first develop a new multi-objective possibility mixed integer linear programming model (MOPMILP) for blood bank location problem considering distinctive contradictive goals at the same time and additionally the loose way of some basic parameters, for example, requirements of hospitals and number of emergency referrals for clinics or hospitals. At that point, in the wake of applying legitimate procedures for changing over this possibilistic model into a precise novel multi-objective linear model (MOLP), we propose a novel intelligent fuzzy method to understand this MOLP and find a proper trade off arrangement. Eventually, we propose a careful analysis and will see the performance of the proposed model.

The ESB dynamic routing strategy in the low bandwidth network environment

The ESB is a SOA infrastructure, and provides a loose coupling way of system integration for the Enterprise. The message routing is the core function point of the ESB. This paper firstly introduces the basic concept of SOA and ESB, then introduces the main way of dynamic routing, putting forward the dynamic routing strategy of the ESB which is suitable in the low bandwidth network environment. Finally it is tested in the theory and reality, analyzing the efficiency and reliability of the strategy.

Developing an Organizational Perspective to Management Accounting

B eing asked to make a short speech as part of accepting the award inevitably leads to some introspection and reflection on major factors that have influenced one’s career, be they events or individuals. Past recipients of the award have been very influential in putting management accounting on the map. Some have been instrumental in developing the way we think about management accounting and teach the subject; some have developed important perspectives such as information economics, combining economics with psychology, the importance of national culture, activity-based cost management, and balanced scorecards. The way these recipients developed their thoughts is well told in their acceptance speeches and collectively provides a wealth of ideas and a historical perspective on the development of our discipline. I commenced my studies in economics, and I maintain a keen interest in economic approaches to management accounting. However, early in my academic career, I was pressed into considering an organizational approach to management accounting, not because it was an easier option; rather it addressed the world of management accounting within which I found myself. In this address, I will share with you some personal reflections on the process of my discoveries in the area of organizational approaches to management accounting from the mid-1960s. The backdrop to this address is that research is something of a growth model. Stage 1: starting from a baseline of skills and knowledge gained at undergraduate studies; stage 2: progressing through refinement of skills with more graduate study; and stage 3: consolidating through work toward publications and other academic outputs. Stages 1 and 2 are somewhat planned and incremental, while stage 3 is more often associated with less ordered processes, often stumbling across potential research areas by way of reading and personal interactions. Research projects can be focused around existing ideas, sometimes being somewhat formulaic, sometimes highly innovative. Often ideas can be serendipitous and develop in unpredictable ways. The key is to recognize when there is a management accounting angle that will relate to an important organizational or social issue.