Original Object Research Articles

Should the IAHR seek a 'science' peculiar to its community of scholars?

I have two objectives in this paper. The first is to show that the Executive Committee (EC) of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) was intent on nothing less than a wholesale transformation of the Association at the special meeting on the future of the IAHR held in Delphi in 2019. The framing documents for these deliberations focused on the rejection of the strictly scientific study of religion as described in the basic minimum presuppositions for the field that the IAHR had adopted at its World Congress in Marburg in 1960. The EC in Delphi decided to recommend a change of name of the IAHR to the generic and amorphous "International Association for the Study of Religion" with an inclusive mandate open to theological, normative, and applied studies of religion. The cancellation of the 2020 World Congress prevented this from being approved by the General Assembly. In response to subsequent opposition to the proposal, the EC has announced that it will not take the change-of-name proposal forward to the International Committee in 2025. But they have clearly not abandoned their objective of re-creating the IAHR. Hence my second objective: to raise concern about the EC's decision to hold a special adjunct study conference in conjunction with the 2023 meeting of the International Committee. Their search for a "science" peculiar to the IAHR community appears suspiciously like an alternative route to their original Delphi objective.

Fireplaces in public interiors: typological and stylistic features

The article raises the problem of the need to study fireplaces as artistic and applied objects in modern interiors from the point of view of design design. A range of issues related to the design projects of original fireplace objects in public interiors is outlined. The subject of the study is the development of a typological approach to the study and classification of these interior objects. The object of the study is fireplaces in public interiors. Particular attention is paid in the article to the analysis of the stylistic unity of interiors and fireplaces, in connection with which the location of fireplaces in the interiors of executive class, sanatorium facilities, museum environment, libraries, hotels, restaurants and gaming establishments is shown. The main conclusions of the study are the following: the dominant functions of fireplaces in public interiors are revealed. These are primarily those that serve interior decoration as a means of aestheticization and as a means of creating solemnity and grandeur. The creation of fireplace halls in modern public interiors are designed for receptions, recreation or cultural leisure as they create a relaxed and comfortable area. The main stylistic preferences include styles that have signs of grandeur, solemnity, such as Baroque, classicism, Petrovsky style. But in any case, the stylistic characteristics are determined by the features of the interior and are interconnected with it.

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control for Heterogeneous Platoons with Actuator Delay

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is a control method that enables close vehicle following with string stable behavior, i.e., disturbances are not amplified through the vehicle string. Consequently, the technique contributes to increased road throughput and safety. General practice in CACC design is to describe the longitudinal vehicle dynamics by a simple first order model. For certain vehicles, however, this model has to be extended by an input delay to better represent the longitudinal behavior. In this paper, we show that the performance of a class of heterogeneous CACC controllers greatly deteriorates when the ego vehicle has a delay in the driveline. The minimum required string stable timegap increases to such a degree, that the controller is no longer suitable for close vehicle following. By implementing a Smith predictor in the control scheme, the delay is compensated, restoring the string stability properties. However, the original vehicle following objective is no longer fulfilled with the inclusion of the Smith predictor. By adopting an alternative timegap, the original control objective is restored for steady state situations, enabling CACC for heterogeneous platoons with actuator delays.

Реализация учебного интегративного модуля в проектной деятельности будущих дизайнеров

Various areas of design activity are so specific to the design object that even, at first glance, the general methods and principles of the organization of the subject-spatial environment have their own specifics and a large number of “professional subtleties”. The technological and conceptual features of each type of design objects are assimilated by students not only at an informative level, but also require hard work on mastering professional competencies related to the organization and structuring of design, spatial, compositional, color and other types of thinking and artistic vision. Modern educational programs for training future designers should ensure the speed of students’ inclusion in professional activities already at the initial stage of the educational process. The training materials have not only informational content, but are aimed at finding a high aesthetic and technological level of author’s projects with the activation of creative potential at all stages of project activity. The question arises about the constant modernization of the educational process, first of all, the propaedeutic training of students in identifying the essential role of formal composition in solving project tasks. This requires the development of practice-oriented approaches to teaching design students the author's plastic, compositional interpretation of the morphology of existing objects as an integral part of designing new objects. Such an interpretation can be formed as a result of the implementation of an integrative training module based on a step-by-step implementation of complex tasks (exercises) when one introduces a systematic approach to teaching project activities: analytical analysis of the original object — interpretation in formal composition — development of a new object.

Distributed Inertial Continuous and Discrete time Algorithms for Solving Resource Allocation Problem

In this paper, we investigate several distributed inertial algorithms in continuous and discrete time for solving resource allocation problem (RAP), where its objective function is convex or strongly convex. First, the original RAP is equivalently transformed into a distributed unconstrained optimization problem by introducing an auxiliary variable. Then, two distributed inertial continuous time algorithms and two discrete time algorithms are proposed and the rates of their convergence based on the gap between the objective function and their optimal function are determined. Our first distributed damped inertial continuous time algorithm is designed for RAP with a convex function, it achieves convergence rate at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O( \frac{1}{ t^{2}})$</tex-math></inline-formula> based on Lyapunov analysis method, and then we design a rate-matching distributed damped inertial discrete time algorithm by exploiting implicit and Nesterov's discretization scheme. Our second distributed fixed inertial discrete time algorithm is designed to deal with the RAP with a strongly convex objective function. Noteworthy, the transformed distributed problem is no longer strongly convex even though the original objective function is strongly convex, but it satisfies the Polyak-Ł jasiewicz ( <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PL</b> ) and quadratic growth ( <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">QG</b> ) conditions. Inspired by the Heavy-Ball method, a distributed fixed inertial continuous time algorithm is proposed, it has an explicit and accelerated exponential convergence rate. Later, a rate-matching accelerated distributed fixed inertial discrete time algorithm is also obtained by applying explicit, semi-implicit Euler discretization and sufficient decrease update schemes. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed distributed inertial algorithms is verified by simulation.

An Underwater Target Wake Detection in Multi-Source Images Based on Improved YOLOv5

In the marine environment, underwater targets improve “stealth” performance through innovation in technology, so traditional target tracking methods are difficult to use for tracking underwater targets stably and accurately. This paper proposes an improved YOLOv5 (You Look Only Once) based method to detect wake of underwater target accurately in multi-source images. We obtain optical images and thermal images through model simulation and scaled experiment. Improve the generalization ability of the detection network through data augmentation. The proposed method introduces linear features detection to enhance feature propagation, and promote feature reuse. The result shows that the proposed method is better than the original object detection algorithms. The improved algorithm can detect underwater targets status (underwater or surface) and image types (optical wake or thermal wake).

Majorization-Minimization Method for Elliptic Localization in the Absence of Transmitter Position

This paper investigates the problem of elliptic localization in the absence of transmitter position. An efficient iterative method is developed to jointly evaluate the target and transmitter positions. Using the measurement information from the indirect paths reflected from the target and the direct paths between the transmitter and receivers, a non-convex maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) problem is formulated. Owing to the non-convex nature of the issue, we apply the majorization-minimization (MM) principle to address the MLE problem, which iteratively minimizes a convex surrogate function instead of the original objective function. Moreover, the proposed MM method is further extended to tackle a general scenario where both multiple unknown transmitters and receiver position errors are considered. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed MM method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

Constructivist Paradoxes Part 2: Latin American STS, between Centers and Peripheries

There is a certain ‘failure’ in what we could call the modern development of the STS field over the past decade, i.e. a large number of studies—particularly empirical—that were deployed from the 1970s onwards. Indeed, one of their original and crucial objectives was to emphasize the local, situated, contingent character of the processes of production and negotiation of knowledge. However, these studies mostly concentrate on one part of the world, i.e. the most developed countries, precisely where modern science, commonly referred to as “Western Science,” developed. This limitation—surely intuitive or “natural”—has several consequences analyzed in this article. In summary, these limitations can be analyzed in terms of the objects of research (the various forms of knowledge) but also in terms of the theories and methods used to account for them. The aim is to discuss the construction of a double (or even triple) peripheral situation, which calls into question the old principles of symmetry and impartiality (Bloor 1976; Collins 1981): on the one hand, the peripheral character of the objects analyzed (i.e. science and scientific development outside Euro-America) and, in parallel, the peripheral situation of the communities of specialists who dedicate themselves to studying them. Connected to this, an additional question emerges: What are the theoretical frameworks and methodologies best suited to account for these objects in their respective contexts? Is it suitable to simply apply to these objects of study the same theoretical frameworks and methods commonly used to analyze hegemonic science? And last but not least, how to approach the (scientific, cultural, political) relationships between different contexts in a highly globalized world? This is the second of two parts: while in the first one I discuss the “failures” of the hegemonic paradigm in STS and its consequences in relation to non-hegemonic contexts, in this second part I focus on the problems raised by post-colonial approaches, on the “peripheral techno-science” as an object for STS scholars and, as a specific case, the development of STS research in Latin America and the dynamics of its specific agendas.

Up-Sampling Method for Low-Resolution LiDAR Point Cloud to Enhance 3D Object Detection in an Autonomous Driving Environment.

Automobile datasets for 3D object detection are typically obtained using expensive high-resolution rotating LiDAR with 64 or more channels (Chs). However, the research budget may be limited such that only a low-resolution LiDAR of 32-Ch or lower can be used. The lower the resolution of the point cloud, the lower the detection accuracy. This study proposes a simple and effective method to up-sample low-resolution point cloud input that enhances the 3D object detection output by reconstructing objects in the sparse point cloud data to produce more dense data. First, the 3D point cloud dataset is converted into a 2D range image with four channels: x, y, z, and intensity. The interpolation on the empty space is calculated based on both the pixel distance and range values of six neighbor points to conserve the shapes of the original object during the reconstruction process. This method solves the over-smoothing problem faced by the conventional interpolation methods, and improves the operational speed and object detection performance when compared to the recent deep-learning-based super-resolution methods. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the up-sampling method on the 3D detection was validated by applying it to baseline 32-Ch point cloud data, which were then selected as the input to a point-pillar detection model. The 3D object detection result on the KITTI dataset demonstrates that the proposed method could increase the mAP (mean average precision) of pedestrians, cyclists, and cars by 9.2%p, 6.3%p, and 5.9%p, respectively, when compared to the baseline of the low-resolution 32-Ch LiDAR input. In future works, various dataset environments apart from autonomous driving will be analyzed.

Views and Experiences of Health Service Users in Greece During 2012-2018.

During the period of 2012-2018, a series of reforms took place in the Greek health care system. These reforms focused on both the health expenditure and the efficiency and quality of health services provided. In this qualitative study, we examined whether these improvements were visible to health service users based on their personal experiences with the health care system, using thematic content analysis to evaluate the research data. The results indicated that the reforms did not meet the original objectives in several fields such as primary health care, health expenditure streamlining, health service affordability, and confidence in the health care system and professionals. Further interventions are required to improve the status of the Greek health care system.

Integrating a Video Game Recording Into a Qualitative Research Methods Course to Overcome COVID-19 Barriers to Teaching: Qualitative Analysis.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a doctoral-level public health qualitative research methods course was moved to a web-based format. One module originally required students to conduct in-person observations within the community, but the curriculum was adapted using a web-based video game exercise. This study sought to evaluate students' perceptions of this adaptation and determine whether the new pilot format successfully met the module's original learning objectives. Recorded footage of a video game session was used for students to observe, take field notes, and compare the results. Qualitative methods were used to evaluate student feedback on the curriculum and determine whether the original learning objectives were met. Data were analyzed using a directed content analysis. The findings demonstrate that all the learning objectives of this adapted qualitative observational research assignment using a web-based video game exercise were successfully met; namely, the students learned how to compare and contrast the observational notes of peers and to evaluate how personal bias and environmental factors can affect qualitative data collection. The assignment was also positively received by the students. The results align with the constructivist learning theory and other successful COVID-19 implementations. Our study demonstrates that the learning objectives of a qualitative observational assignment can be addressed given that there are proper forethought and delivery when the assignment is adapted to a web-based context using a video game exercise.

Revitalizing Dissent: Imperatives for Critical Surveillance Inquiry

In this introduction to Surveillance &amp; Society’s twentieth anniversary issue, we reflect on the journal’s role in the formation and maturation of the field and on some of the many areas in need of further study and intervention. In keeping with one of the journal’s original objectives of “encouraging debate and dissent,” we argue that it is imperative that the field reaffirm this dissenting posture. Such dissent would be primarily critical and decolonial, and it would concentrate its energies on correcting social and environmental problems. Some of the areas in need of more intensive critical inquiry are 1) surveillance / platform / data capitalism, 2) war and conflict, 3) disinformation and media manipulation, 4) racial injustice and carcerality, 5) intersectional violence and oppression, and 6) environmental crises and climate collapse. Fortunately, as many of the recent publications in the journal affirm, scholars are already moving in these directions, and we, as editors, are doing everything we can to support such critical work and the academics producing it.

Attrition and social vulnerability during 2-year-long structured care in type 2 diabetes, the ERMIES randomized controlled trial

BackgroundDiabetes self-management education is exposed to attrition from services and structured ambulatory care. However, knowledge about factors related to attrition in educational programs remains limited. The context of social vulnerability due to low income may interfere. The aim of this study was to identify the sociodemographic, clinical, psychometric, and lifestyle factors associated with attrition from the ERMIES multicentre randomized parallel controlled trial (RCT) that was interrupted due to the combination of both slow inclusion and high attrition.MethodsThe ERMIES trial was performed from 2011 to 2016 on Reunion Island, which is characterized by a multicultural population and high social vulnerability. The original objective of the RCT was to test the efficacy of a2-year structured group self-management education in improving blood glucose in adult patients with nonrecent, insufficiently controlled type 2 diabetes. One hundred participants were randomized to intensive educational intervention maintained over two years (n = 51) versus only initial education (n = 49). Randomization was stratified on two factors: centres (five strata) and antidiabetic treatment (two strata: insulin-treated or not). Sociodemographic, clinical, health-care access and pathway, psychometric and lifestyle characteristics data were collected at baseline and used to assess determinants of attrition in a particular social context and vulnerability. Attrition and retention rates were measured at each visit during the study. Multiple correspondence analysis and Cox regression were performed to identify variables associated with attrition.ResultsThe global attrition rate was 26% during the study, with no significant difference between the two arms of randomization (9 dropouts out of 51 patients in the intervention group and 17 out of 49 in the control group). Male gender, multiperson household, low household incomes (< 800 euros), probable depression and history of hospitalization or medical leave at inclusion were associated with a higher risk of attrition from the study in multivariate regression.ConclusionsSocial context, vulnerability, and health care history were related to attrition in this 2-year longitudinal comparative study of structured care. Considering these potential determinants and biases is of importance in scaling up interventions aimed at the optimization of long-term care in type 2 diabetes mellitus.Trial registrationID_RCB number: 2011-A00046-35, Clinicaltrials.gov number: NCT01425866 (Registration date: 30/08/2011).Source of funding: Ministry of Health, France.

Optical image encryption based on two-channel detection and deep learning

Aside from its application to the vulnerability analysis of optical cryptosystems, deep learning (DL) technique can also be used as a potential basis for optical cryptography itself. Here, we report a new optical image encryption scheme based on two-channel detection and DL. The encryption process consists of two-channel signal detection within the optical encryption system where three random binary masks are involved, and the training of a neural network to derive an approximate model. The two optically encoded patterns collected with a pair of CCD cameras are recombined into a single speckle image by using two independent sparse matrices. In the training section, the neural network is trained to find the mapping relationship between the speckle images and their corresponding original objects. Besides the model parameters, the decryption requires the use of the matrix keys, which avoids a situation where the DL-based cryptosystem is designed such that security relies entirely on the trained network itself. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report using a single-wavelength, dual-channel system for diffuse optical encryption. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and good performance of the proposed scheme.

‘Oumuamua Is Not a Probe Sent to Our Solar System by an Alien Civilization

'Oumuamua, the first known object of extrasolar origin seen to enter our Solar System, has multiple unusual characteristics that, taken together, are very difficult to explain with conventional astronomical entities like asteroids and comets. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that 'Oumuamua is an interstellar probe that was constructed by an alien civilization. We demonstrate that the accomplishments that can be achieved with large space telescopes/interferometers in the alien's planetary system will completely quench any motivation for construction and launch of an 'Oumuamua-like probe. The absence of any such motivation attests that 'Oumuamua is not an alien creation. The existence of large space telescopes has important implications for a range of topics that include interstellar space travel, the Zoo Hypothesis, METI, and UFOs.

OIL PRICES, EXCHANGE RATES, AND THE TRADE BALANCE: EVIDENCE FROM KAZAKHSTAN AND RUSSIA

The original objective of this paper is to study the impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance for Kazakhstan and Russia. Baseline empirical results indicate that an exchange rate depreciation actually decreases exports and deteriorates the trade balance for these countries; this is the opposite of the traditional theory of the J-curve and Marshall–Lerner condition. The paper then explores why these major oil exporters do not conform to the theory. It argues that it is the oil price that affects both the exchange rate and the trade balance, thereby masking the true impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance. More formally, the paper augments the traditional theory to take into account the behavior of oil prices in the export and trade balance equations. The augmented theory posits that a decrease in the oil price leads to a real exchange rate depreciation and a decline in exports, thereby creating the positive correlation seen in the baseline results. In accordance with the augmented theory, the regression results suffer from omitted variable bias; when the oil price is taken into account, the results again support the theory.

Implications of fisheries allocation policy on anticipated climate change impacts

Rights-based fisheries management – a management system that apportions harvesting rights of fisheries resources to individuals or groups of individuals based on pre-determined allocation criteria – has become more common in the past three decades due to its potential to achieve resource sustainability while improving economic efficiency. Policies that determine access and allocation of fishing opportunities are often complex as they are designed to achieve multiple management objectives. Climate change alters distribution and productivity of fishery resources, reducing the ability of many of the existing history-dependent allocation policies to achieve the original management objectives. This paper aims to develop an empirically grounded typology of allocation policies, synthesizing practical and academic understanding of fisheries allocation. We examined allocation policies of 54 randomly selected fisheries managed by rights-based management instruments. We use this typology to examine possible climate change impacts and responses on harvester-level allocations. Examining the 54 cases, we find that 89 % of these fisheries allocate fishing opportunities at least partly based on historical catch or access, and only 5 % use socio-economic criteria such as ethnicity or an equal share principle. We find 87 % of the systems are managed by catch quotas, and their ability to meet biological, social, and economic objectives depends on stock assessment quality. Yet, climate-informed stock assessments are critically lacking assessment and quota updates can take multiple years, creating a mismatch in sustainable and realized fishing opportunities. The developed typology and discussions provide useful terminology and lessons for managers and practitioners to prepare for climate challenge impacts.

Secondary Material Casting of Al-Si for Making Handle Brake in Variation of Duct

This study aims to determine the effect of the mold casting duct variations on shrinkage, porosity defects, density, hardness, and chemical composition of materials. The primary raw material uses melting secondary aluminium through a small-scale smelting furnace. Research study about three kinds of ducts: triangular duct, rectangular duct, and circular duct. The testing chemical composition uses an emission spectrometer. Research founds defects by comparing the dimensions of the original object with the specimen results of each duct variation. The density value calculates porosity defects. ASTM E10 standard Brinell test measures the hardness. Besides, ASTM E3 standard test quantifies the microstructure of the product. The highest average shrinkage is the triangular ducts at 3.68%. The least significant numbers of porosity were in rectangular ducts of 2.964 gr/ml. Higher the density value, the denser the material, and the more negligible the porosity. The density of the material affects the hardness material obtained from the results of the Brinell test. The hardness of the Brinell test brought that the rectangular duct with 102.5 BHN was the most enormous. In addition, the results showed that the chemical composition mainly contained mostly chemical elements (Al) 87.1% as the main chemical ingredient and (Si) 9.51%.

Materialographic sample preparation of ancient copper materials

Abstract The metallographic preparation of samples from classical antiquity requires the use of very gentle preparation techniques. On the one hand, this is necessary since the samples provided are often very small and on the other hand, because the remaining sample material can be inserted back into the original object. Both sample preparation and microstructural evaluation may offer insights into the manufacture of the objects, for example whether casting, heat treatment or reshaping had taken place. In addition, corrosion products on the sample surfaces can be characterized. The results of the metallographic preparation of three different ancient copper objects are presented: 1. A bronze vessel from Gordion. 2. Bronze roof tiles from Caligula’s Nemi ships. 3. Roman copper nails from Carnuntum.

Computational adaptive holographic fluorescence microscopy based on the stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm.

Optical aberrations introduced by sample or system elements usually degrade the image quality of a microscopic imaging system. Computational adaptive optics has unique advantages for 3D biological imaging since neither bulky wavefront sensors nor complicated indirect wavefront sensing procedures are required. In this paper, a stochastic parallel gradient descent computational adaptive optics method is proposed for high-efficiency aberration correction in the fluorescent incoherent digital holographic microscope. The proposed algorithm possesses the advantage of parallelly estimating various aberrations with fast convergence during the iteration; thus, the wavefront aberration is corrected quickly, and the original object image is retrieved accurately. Owing to its high-efficiency adaptive optimization, the proposed method exhibits better performances for a 3D sample with complex and anisotropic optical aberration. The proposed method can be a powerful tool for the visualization of dynamic events that happen inside cells or thick tissues.