Tentative Set Research Articles

Show-and-Tell: An Interface for Delivering Rich Feedback upon Creative Media Artefacts

In this paper, we explore an approach to feedback which could allow those learning creative digital media practices in remote and asynchronous environments to receive rich, multi-modal, and interactive feedback upon their creative artefacts. We propose the show-and-tell feedback interface which couples graphical user interface changes (the show) to a text-based explanations (the tell). We describe the rationale behind the design and offer a tentative set of design criteria. We report the implementation and deployment into a real-world educational setting using a prototype interface developed to allow either traditional text-only feedback or our proposed show-and tell feedback across four sessions. The prototype was used to provide formative feedback upon music students’ coursework resulting in a total of 103 pieces of feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data obtained through interviews and focus groups with both educators and students (i.e., feedback givers and receivers). Recipients considered show-and-tell feedback to possess greater clarity and detail in comparison with the single modality text-only feedback they are used to receiving. We also report interesting emergent issues around control and artistic vision, and we discuss how these issues could be mitigated in future iterations of the interface.

From Jiří Levý’s model of translatorial decision-making to Optimality Theory: an application to legal translation

ABSTRACT Jiří Levý’s article Translation as a decision process (1967), one of the earliest contributions to the topic of decision-making in translation, anticipates a model that was proposed more than two decades later: Optimality Theory. This linguistic theory offers a framework for resolving conflicts in grammar by replacing absolute rules with violable constraints whose interaction leads to the selection of an acceptable output. The philosophy of Optimality Theory can be successfully applied to the process of translatorial decision-making, which consists in proposing a set of candidates and selecting the best one by virtue of constraints imposed by the translation strategy adopted. The article shows how such a constraint-based approach can be used in legal translation. A tentative set of constraints (Minimum equivalence, Near-equivalence, Literal, Identity, Functional, Transparent, Neutral) is used to evaluate French translation candidates for an English legal term, applying two different strategies: documentary (source-culture oriented) and instrumental (target-culture oriented). The formalism of Optimality Theory, while mimicking real-life decision-making processes, makes the selection of optimal equivalents more transparent and coherent. However, it is only one of the possible tools that legal translators and translation students have at their disposal.

Development of Service Experience Evaluation Tool for Visiting Nurses of Public Health Center in Korea

Objectives: The objective of this study is to develop an evaluation tool for clients’ experience of visiting nursing service provided by visiting nurses of public health center in Korea.Methods: This study is built upon Clark’s theory (2008) of community nurse role model and the 8-stage tool development methodology suggested by DeVellis (2012).Results: Major findings are as follows. First, a tentative list of questionnaires with forty two measurable items were derived through several rounds of focus group interviews with nursing professors, health policy experts and visiting nursing staff, and later twenty five items were determined as a preliminary test set after a series of revision and removal from the aforementioned tentative set. Second, the 25-item preliminary survey tool comprised five dimensions of service quality, which include 4 items for Tangibles, 9 items for Reliability, 3 items for Responsiveness, 7 items for Assurance, and 2 items for Empathy. Third, after factor analysis and reliability analysis, only 14 items survived, being categorized into five dimensions of the SERVPERF model: The final version of evaluation tool to measure service experience for visiting nurse of public health center is comprised of 18 items.Conclusions: This study tried to develop a valid and reliable tool for evaluating the clients’ experience of visiting nursing service provided by visiting nurses of public health center in Korea for the first time.

A meta-indexing method for fast probably approximately correct nearest neighbor searches

In this paper we present an indexing method for probably approximately correct nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces capable of improving the performance of any index whose performance degrades with the increased dimensionality of the query space. The basic idea of the method is quite simple: we use SVD to concentrate the variance of the inter-element distance in a lower dimensional space, Ξ. We do a nearest neighbor query in this space and then we “peek” forward from the nearest neighbor by gathering all the elements whose distance from the query is less than d_{Xi }(1+zeta sigma _{Xi }^{2}), where dΞ is the distance from the nearest neighbor in Ξ, sigma _{Xi }^{2} is the variance of the data in Ξ, and ζ a parameter. All the data thus collected form a tentative set T, in which we do a scan using the complete feature space to find the point closest to the query. The advantages of the method are that (1) it can be built on top of virtually any indexing method and (2) we can build a model of the distribution of the error precise enough to allow designing a compromise between error and speed. We show the improvement that we can obtain using data from the SUN data base.

Unbreakable Resolutions as an Effective Tactic for Self-Control: Lessons From Mahatma Gandhi and a 19th-Century Prussian Prince.

Despite the relative consensus in the self-management literature that personal resolutions are not an effective stand-alone tactic for self-control, some individuals seem capable of using them to exert a remarkable level of control over their behavior. One such individual was Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Indian statesman. Gandhi often used personal resolutions—or “vows”—to commit himself to a range of challenging behaviors, such as extreme diets, sexual abstinence, and fasting. Similarly, Prince Pückler-Muskau, a celebrated 19th-Century adventurer, landscape designer and travel author, described using personal resolutions to unfailingly accomplish numerous tasks in his everyday life. In this article, we examine the historical writings of Gandhi and Pückler-Muskau concerning their use of resolutions. We describe three defining characteristics of their resolutions, which we will refer to as unbreakable resolutions, and outline Gandhi’s advice for making and keeping such resolutions. Our analysis suggests that the effectiveness of unbreakable resolutions may be primarily due to the temporally extended contingencies of reinforcement associated with their use, and can be usefully interpreted from the perspective of delay-discounting and say-do correspondence models of self-control. The implications of this examination for understanding the concept of willpower and for enhancing modern research into self-control training are also discussed. Based on this analysis, we additionally offer a tentative set of guidelines on how to make and keep unbreakable resolutions.

SETTLER FRAGILITY: Four Paradoxes of Decolonizing Research

This dialogic autoethnography, in which the authors reflect on their experiences as settlers who have researched with Indigenous communities, maps four paradoxes settler researchers need to negotiate in decolonizing research. The term settler fragility signals a settler positioning of innocence in colonization, which simultaneously recenters colonial power to secure settler futures. In research, settler fragility must be confronted through four paradoxes: (1) the paradox of learning Indigenous worldviews in a profound way but without appropriation; (2) the paradox of unsettling research by undoing colonial epistemologies in which settlers problematically aim to feel settled; (3) the paradox of reconciling research to improve relationships with Indigenous communities which can lead to reconciling settlers with their place in colonialism, rather than with Indigenous research partners; and (4) the paradox of decolonizing research in which settler research in colonial universities is recognized as incommensurate with decolonization and yet must be undertaken to decolonize the university. Contributing a tentative set of settler research practices, this paper aims to expand dialogues about how settlers can overcome settler fragility through negotiating the four paradoxes of decolonizing research to develop authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, researchers, and research partners.

Deceased donors as nondirected donors in kidney paired donation.

As proof of concept, we simulate a revised kidney allocation system that includes deceased donor (DD) kidneys as chain-initiating kidneys (DD-CIK) in a kidney paired donation pool (KPDP), and estimate potential increases in number of transplants. We consider chains of length 2 in which the DD-CIK gives to a candidate in the KPDP, and that candidate's incompatible donor donates to theDD waitlist. In simulations, we vary initial pool size, arrival rates of candidate/donor pairs and (living) nondirected donors (NDDs), and delay time from entry to the KPDP until a candidate is eligible to receive a DD-CIK. Using data on candidate/donor pairs and NDDs from the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, and the actual DDs from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) data, simulations extend over 2years. With an initial pool of 400, respective candidate and NDD arrival rates of 2 per day and 3 per month, and delay times for access to DD-CIK of 6months or less, including DD-CIKs increases the number of transplants by at least 447 over 2years, and greatly reduces waiting times of KPDP candidates. Potential effects on waitlist candidates are discussed as are policy and ethical issues.

Coyote Optimization Based on a Fuzzy Logic Algorithm for Energy-Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks

Internet of Things (IoT) is an important technique in the modern wireless telecommunications field. It is based on a collection of sensor nodes connected through wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The lifetime of this network is affected by the battery power of the connected sensor nodes. Network clustering techniques are used to improve energy consumption and extend the lifetime of the WSN. These techniques divide the sensor nodes into clusters and every cluster has a unique cluster head (CH) node. Recently, clustering-based metaheuristic techniques are used to solve this problem and find the optimal CH nodes under certain considerations such as less energy consumption and high reliability. This paper proposes a new clustering scheme for heterogeneous WSN using Coyote Optimization based on a Fuzzy Logic (COFL) algorithm. It uses the coyote optimization algorithm (COA) in conjunction with fuzzy logic (FL) system to reinforce and balance the clustering process for increasing the wireless network lifetime and reducing energy consumption. FL based clustering is adapted to determine a tentative set of CHs. The output of the FL is added as a solution within the initial solutions of the COA. Furthermore, a new fitness function has been adapted to minimize the total intra-cluster distance between each CH node and its cluster members and minimize the inter-cluster distance between the CHs nodes and the base station. An extensive simulation with three different scenarios is performed. The performance of the proposed COFL algorithm is compared with the well-known algorithms; namely low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol (LEACH) and stable election protocol (SEP) as traditional protocols and also coyote optimization algorithm (COA), grey wolf optimization (GWO), and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The COFL algorithm outperforms other algorithms in terms of alive node analysis, energy consumption, throughput, and central tendency measurements for alive nodes and normalized energy.

Time-Resolved Radiation-Induced Conductivity of Polyimide and Its Description Using the Multiple Trapping Formalism.

Polymer dielectrics subjected to intense radiation fluxes exhibit a radiation-induced conductivity (RIC). Polyimide is a good dielectric with excellent mechanical and thermal properties featuring high radiation resistance currently widely used in the spacecraft industry. Its RIC has been extensively studied in several laboratories. The purpose of the present study is to make a direct measurement of the RIC for both pulsed and continuous irradiation using a current sensing technique, which is contrary to the indirect method employing a surface-potential decay technique that is now preferred by spacecraft charging engineers. Our experiments are done in a small-signal regime excluding any recombination and dose effects. In combination with existing computer codes, we managed to develop further the conventional multiple trapping formalism and the RIC theory based on it. The main idea is to supplement an exponential trap distribution responsible for a dominant dispersive carrier transport in polymers with a small concentration of inherent deep traps which may or may not have an energy distribution. In line with this reasoning, we propose a tentative set of RIC model parameters for polyimide that accounts for the observed experimental data. The findings and their implications are discussed in a broad context of previous studies.

Presidential Term Limits and the African Union

AbstractA growing number of states have modified constitutionally determined presidential term limits or adopted a flexible interpretation of relevant constitutional provisions to allow incumbent leaders additional terms in the highest office. This article investigates African Union (AU) responses to attempts to overturn or weaken term limits on executive power, one of the most tenacious constitutional trends in Africa. Inspired by the AU's well-established discourse on “unconstitutional changes of government” under the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, the article frames the manipulation of presidential term limits as “undemocratic changes of the constitution”. From this perspective it argues for a more active role for the AU in monitoring and enforcing constitutionalism and respect for democratic standards by member states when they amend their constitution. It concludes with a tentative set of principles to guide processes of constitutional change in Africa.

Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Development by Derek P. McCormack

Reviewed by: Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Developmentby Derek P. McCormack Mi Gyung Kim (bio) Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Development. By Derek P. McCormack. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 304. Paperback $26.95. In the author's design, this book is about the processual relation between "atmospheres and envelopment mapped by a deceptively simple thing—the balloon." Atmospheresmean "elemental spacetimes that are simultaneously affective and methodological," while envelopmentrefers to the condition of being immersed, which allows for "a shaping of things in relation to an atmospheric milieu." The balloon is less an object of scholarly inquiry than a "speculative" probe that charts the "material continuity between entities and the elemental conditions" (pp. 4–5). It is construed as a "particularly useful and alluring" device for "doing" atmospheric things—"objects, processes, or events that in some ways disclose, generate, or intensify the condition of being enveloped" while in other ways remain "beyond cognition or tangibility," evanescent and vague (p. 10). The adjective "elemental" is used throughout the book to indicate the material and affective forces being woven into atmospheric things. This self-consciously experimental endeavor to configure the "affective materiality of the elemental spacetimes" (p. 7) can be seen as an exercise in cultural epistemology/ontology which, if successful, would fundamentally undermine the existing mode of doing material history as a biography of the object—one that depends on the steely analytic gaze to stabilize the object of inquiry and to discern a set of causes for its genesis, development, and metamorphosis. "Thinking with the balloon" (p. 12) as an epistemological device and asking "how atmospheres are sensed" (p. 8) allow the author to claim a "semi-random" (p. 13) access to the elemental (admittedly Western) spacetime configurations and to scramble philosophical, social, or historical epistemology/ontology. The "allure of elemental development" (title) promises an epistemological experiment by lending agency or "sensing" capacity to non-human subjects without binding them to the metaphysically prescribed role as subjects or objects—non-relational entities withdrawn from us. Their inevitably "partial" (p. 4) sensing configures dynamic things that transgress the existing ontological and space-time frameworks. Nine chapters in the body—each titled envelopment, sensing, allure, release, volume, sounding, tensions, hail, and elements—invite readers to think with various cultural theorists on a range of atmospheric things, be it a literary construct, a political event, a cultural phenomenon, etc. How we grasp the "sensory capacities" (p. 35) of various devices and bodies is a central, yet difficult issue that remains speculative. If the balloon enhances our affective engagement by placing our vision within aerostatic sensing, exactly how the balloon expands, ascends, and senses depends ultimately [End Page 332]on our interpretive strategies in dealing with the contemporary and literary examples that shape our real or imagined environments. Our sensory and affective capacities become an inseparable part of their envelopment to constitute an atmospheric thing. In other words, the author's atmospheric things in their framework-engendering capacity differ from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's "epistemic things" which, despite their "characteristic, irreducible vagueness," are defined as "material entities or processes … that constitute the objects of inquiry" ( Toward a History of Epistemic Things, p. 28). Subject to scientists' steady analytic gaze, they generate research questions within the given framework. More than a speculative experiment, the deliberate epistemic experience emerging in the contemporary cultural environment is meant to encourage atmospheric politics—not a naïve advocacy of solidarity but an experiment in "producing infrastructures for generating values" (p. 9). Although these values remain as ambiguous as the atmospheric things in flux, the call for a scholarship that is politically engaged at the point of knowledge production (rather than insisting on the neutrality of knowledge production whatever its political use) makes the book a compelling critique of the postmodern scholarship that is often hyper-analytic without critical purpose. Except for the insistence on things as processual units (rather than analyzable assemblages), the author's project shares a concern with Bruno Latour's Dingpolitik—"a risky and tentative set of experiments in probing just what it could mean for political thought"—to take things seriously ( Making Things Public, p...

Entropy-Based Scheduling Policy for Cross Aggregate Ranking Workloads

Many data exploration applications require the ability to identify the top- $k$ results according to a scoring function. We study a class of top- $k$ ranking problems where top- $k$ candidates in a dataset are scored with the assistance of another set. We call this class of workloads cross aggregate ranking . Example computation problems include evaluating the Hausdorff distance between two datasets, finding the medoid or radius within one dataset, and finding the closest or farthest pair between two datasets. In this paper, we propose a parallel and distributed solution to process cross aggregate ranking workloads. Our solution subdivides the aggregate score computation of each candidate into tasks while constantly maintains the tentative top- $k$ results as an uncertain top- $k$ result set. The crux of our proposed approach lies in our entropy-based scheduling technique to determine result-yielding tasks based on their abilities to reduce the uncertainty of the tentative result set. Experimental results show that our proposed approach consistently outperforms the best existing one in two different types of cross aggregate rank workloads using real datasets.

Anisotropic magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic semiconductor CrSbSe3

Single crystals of CrSbSe$_3$, a structurally pseudo-one-dimensional ferromagnetic semiconductor, were grown using a high-temperature solution growth technique and were characterized by x-ray diffraction, anisotropic, temperature- and field-dependent magnetization, temperature-dependent resistivity and optical absorption measurements. A band gap of 0.7 eV was determined from both resistivity and optical measurements. At high temperatures, CrSbSe$_3$ is paramagnetic and isotropic with a Curie-Weiss temperature of $\sim$145 K and an effective moment of $\sim$4.1 $\mu_B$/Cr. A ferromagnetic transition occurs at $T_c$ = 71 K. The $a$-axis, perpendicular to the chains in the structure, is the magnetic easy axis, while the chain axis direction, along $b$, is the hard axis. Magnetic isotherms measured around $T_c$ do not follow the behavior predicted by simple mean field critical exponents for a second order phase transition. A tentative set of critical exponents is estimated based on a modified Arrott plot analysis, giving $\beta\sim$0.25, $\gamma\sim$1.38 and $\delta\sim$6.6.

Early growth of rubber in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka: an investigation in Vavuniya District

In view of supporting the rubber product manufacturing sector in Sri Lanka and providing stable income for the peasant community, rubber cultivation is in the process of expanding to the drier regions of the country. Under this programme, rubber was introduced to the Northern region (Dry Zone) in 2010 with a tentative set of agronomic protocols. The present study showed that rubber cultivated in this region under smallholder conditions together with irrigated short term crops, has shown reasonable growth with an average annual girth expansion rate of 8.6cm. A growth curve for the immature phase of rubber was established for the first time for the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Despite some adverse effects of dry weather on photosynthesis and associated physiological parameters, no evidence of permanent damages to photosynthetic apparatus was recorded. Further actions to be taken in the expansion process of rubber cultivation in this region are also discussed.

A Robust Point-Matching Algorithm Based on Integrated Spatial Structure Constraint for Remote Sensing Image Registration

Feature matching, which refers to finding the correct correspondences from two sets of features, is an important step in feature-based image registration. In this letter, an accurate and highly robust point-matching algorithm, which is called the integrated spatial structure constraint, is proposed. We establish a set of tentative correspondences using the scale-invariant feature transform algorithm and then focus on increasing the number of correct correspondences (inliers) and removing incorrect correspondences (outliers). First, a global structure constraint, i.e., the shape context, is constructed for each correspondence out of the tentative set to increase the number of inliers and raise the correct rate simultaneously. Then, a local structure constraint based on the triangle area representation is utilized on the neighboring points of each correspondence to remove outliers. Experimental results compared with four state-of-the-art methods demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is robust and can achieve preferable results in terms of both matching accuracy and quantity of inliers.

Using quantitative techniques to evaluate and explain the sustainability of forest plantations

We present an approach based on several quantitative techniques to derive a ranking of sustainable Eucalyptus plantations. A list of indicators was defined and applied to a set of heterogeneous Eucalyptus globulus plantations located in the northwest of Spain. These indicators were aggregated into a synthetic index with the help of a binary goal programming model. This model has been fed with the responses of 45 stakeholders to find out the preferential weights and targets attached to each indicator. In addition, we have analyzed the causes behind the level of sustainability achieved by each plantation. This task was carried out by taking the composite sustainability indexes as endogenous variables and a tentative set of economic, environmental, and social variables as explanatory variables. The link between endogenous and exogenous variables was made with the help of a statistical analysis. The results show how some variables such as altitude or distance to pulp mills are statistically significant, whereas others such as certification are not statistically significant.

Issues in Manufacture and Qualification of Specialty Brazed Joints for Nuclear Applications

Nuclear experimental instrumentation frequently includes the usage of thin-walled (metallic sheathed) thermocouples passing through the boundaries of pressure vessels. This is accomplished by sealing the thermocouples by brazing through special design fittings (passages) which are later sealed / welded to the body of the vessel.Two are the challenges to face : (a) the manufacture of the instrumented passage (b) its mandatory qualification, according to relevant standards. Even the brazing qualification standards are more flexible than for welding, the peculiar situation of nuclear instrumentation still needs special consideration and it is not properly covered by the regular standards.The paper describes the experience of the authors in manufacture of the instrumented passages with steel or Inconel sheathed thermocouples, along with some other known projects, in conjunction with applicability of relevant standards: ASME code, AWS standards, national standards. Since it is about pressure vessels, ASME prescriptions are mandatory in Romania; other standards may serve as valuable sources for the “engineering judgment” allowed and recommended by ASME code.The main problem in such specialty brazing qualification is that for some combinations of base metals and filler (imposed by application), one cannot avoid the significant fragilization due to a tremendous increase of hardness in the brazing area. Base material erosion is added and the effect is catastrophic : sectioning the thermocouples at the slightest movement. For example, brazing Inconel thin-walled tubes with BNi-7 is very hard to control – experimental data and images are included in the paper to illustrate this.Therefore, special means must be applied both in fabrication and in qualification, in order to ensure the product is functional and safe, even being fragile. This approach can be found in French design of irradiation devices, being also considered in the French code for design and construction of experimental reactors and irradiation devices. Being known that French experience in this field is vast, their approach makes us confident that our brazing technique is not wrong but the problem is to be solved through ‘smart’ design and specific procedures. Consequently a tentative set of domestic rules for work and qualification is proposed for discussion and further improvement.

What constitutes good production flow in construction?

The notion of production flow is not well understood in the context of construction. A coherent, consistent theoretical model of flow would have practical value as it would support development of better approaches to managing production within and across projects and of measures of flow quality needed to implement them. A literature review and analysis of existing conceptualizations of flow in manufacturing and in construction lead to formulation of a model of construction flow that has three interrelated but distinct axes: project portfolio, process and operations flows. A tentative set of ideal conditions for good flow was formulated with regard to each of these three primary flows. The review, the summary model and the set of conditions provide a basis for further research and development of a comprehensive model of flow in construction and a definition of what constitutes good flow.

Characterizing teaching effectiveness in the Joint Action Theory in Didactics: an exploratory study in primary school

This paper presents an exploratory study of two consecutive reading sessions conducted in primary school by two different teachers. Our purpose is twofold. From a theoretical viewpoint, we propose a tentative set of conditions of teaching effectiveness by relying on the Joint Action Theory in Didactics. From a methodological viewpoint, drawing on a conjectural paradigm, we attempt to articulate various types of analysis (didactic analyses, speech analyses, statistic analyses), in order to test the putative conditions. We consider two generic factors in teachers’ effectiveness: how they manage to expose students to the core meanings of the relevant content; and how they maintain a relevant dialectic between uncertainty and certainty in the argumentation process in order to increase the deliberative quality of the constructed certainty.

BLACK THEOLOGY: FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS OR A QUANTUM LEAP TOWARDS RESUSCITATION

Black theology traditionally presented itself, implicitly or explicitly, as an instrument for black liberation. Its proverbial silence since 1994 in South Africa raises the question whether Black Theology should be left to die a natural death, or be resuscitated. This article proposes to measure the functionality of Black Theology within the context and culture of the �new� South Africa. By so doing it will try to rescue Black Theology from its perceived dormant state as well as unravelling its current status as a theological and academic conundrum. It wishes to look at reformulating a tentative set of interpretive principles, which would serve as guidelines for validating Black Theology once again as a functional theological discipline among other credible theological disciplines. The appraisal of Black Theology will be done against its own historical strengths and weaknesses; against its own criteria as a �hands on� theology embedded within the Christian tradition. It will ascertain whether its raison d��tre can be rekindled to a renewed appropriateness.