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This paper examines the depiction of Jewish and Christian merchants in the medieval English Host miracle play, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. This play is a critical illustration of religious racialization, effectively demonstrating the perpetuation of anti-Jewish stereotypes and legitimizing violence. Positioned within a broader scholarly debate, particularly in relation to Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, the play portrays Jews as allegorical figures that validate Christian theological constructs. This paper delves into the representation and linguistic depiction of Jewish characters in the play, emphasizing their systematic dehumanization and instrumentalization in Christian narratives. A significant focus is placed on the coerced conversion of Jewish characters, which forces them into the archetype of the "Wandering Jew", thereby highlighting motifs of symbolic aggression and unending diaspora. This paper also confronts contemporary scholarly perspectives that view the play as challenging religious boundaries, positing that such interpretations overlook the ingrained racialization and marginalization of Jewish identity during the European Middle Ages. It argues that the play's transient disruption of power dynamics ultimately reinforces prevailing social hierarchies, thereby solidifying deep-seated anti-Jewish sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammaticalization has long been understood as a process that takes place gradually, but within it, discrete and abrupt changes take place. This tension has been reconciled by claiming that the semblance of a gradual process is given by different parts of a construction undergoing changes at different points in time. Focusing on synchronic microvariation as gradience, this article discusses cases of clitic loss in four Romance varieties (Brazilian Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, some northeastern Italo-Romance varieties, and French), and identifies common patterns in the cells of the paradigms that are most vulnerable to the process of loss. Relating the grammatical and semantic properties of these cells to established typological hierarchies, the paper explores how general cognitive principles can account for the key properties of gradualness and gradience and, ultimately, language change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España - Portugal is the property of Vervuert Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Linguistica Asiatica is the property of Acta Linguistica Asiatica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This report offers an analytical overview of the interdisciplinary conference »The ›Great White North‹? Critical Perspectives on Whiteness in the Nordics and its Neighbours«, held at the University of Helsinki in August 2019. It considers how the conference scrutinised the relational dynamic of »whiteness and otherness« in the Nordics, engaging with complex questions of identity, belonging, and linguistic/cultural difference, from a »decolonial« vantage point. The report thus examines how a decolonial interrogation of whiteness opens up an alternative subaltern scope for re-evaluating the colonial-racial hierarchies of the »Great White North« via the marginalised narratives of its indigenous, migrant and »non-white« ethnicities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary is presented for the article "Remarks on the Analytic Hierarchy Process," by James S. Dyer, published in the March 1, 1990 issue of "Management Science." The author discusses the merits of various theories of decision making. He notes one in particular, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is a theory of measurement designed to aid decision makers in deconstructing complex problems into multiple levels of subproblems that have a hierarchical structure. According to the author, as a theory, AHP exists independently of utility theory.

In this paper we present and analyze pie-menu implementation for touchscreen mobile devices which supports swipe-based navigation through deep hierarchical menu configurations. We propose a solution that synergistically encompasses important design features for a given context: radial menu visualization, semi-transparency, manual repositioning, occlusion awareness, and marking menu concept. From the menu navigation efficiency standpoint, dwell time represents one of the most influential factors in such a design. Reducing the time needed to automatically activate submenus could potentially provide faster navigation through the pie-menu hierarchy; however, short dwell times could make swipe-based interaction more error-prone, as unintentional item selections are then more probable. Therefore, we specifically investigate the effect of dwell time on navigation efficiency when using the proposed solution. A remotely administered experiment involving 36 participants was carried out in order to empirically evaluate different dwell time values. The interaction style, i.e. the way of holding a smartphone device, was also taken into account as an independent variable. We present the results of this empirical research, additionally tackling the interaction workload, usability attributes, and overall design considerations of the proposed solution. According to the obtained results, we argue that highly adaptable pie-menus could provide interaction benefits in the mobile touchscreen domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of language is usually reflected in the complexity of sentences. At present, the research of sentence complexity mainly focuses on the analysis of syntactic complexity. In this paper, from the perspective of Leech's theory of sentence semantic structure, the predication structure is taken as the semantic unit to explore the sentence semantic complexity. The predication structures are extracted based on the result of sentence-based syntactic analysis, and then the linear expression sequence of a sentence is converted into a semantic hierarchy based on predicate semantic frameworks; the universality of predicate semantic frameworks is obtained by using the spectral clustering algorithm; and the sentence semantic complexity depends on the universality of predicate semantic frameworks at various layers. The experimental results show that the measurement method of sentence sematic complexity based on predicate semantic frameworks is more effective by comparing with the method that only considers the semantic categories of words in the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In heterogeneous wireless networks (HWNs), various wireless networks have signal ranges that overlap and cover each other. Enabling mobile users to access the most suitable network is one of the research topics on HWNs. This paper designs a multiattribute access selection algorithm supporting service characteristics and user preferences in HWNs, which includes five calculation modules: network attribute utility value, network attribute weight, network attribute score, user preference value, and candidate network comprehensive score. In addition, the algorithm proposed in this paper integrates the utility theory, fuzzy analysis hierarchy process (FAHP), fuzzy logic, and multiattribute decision-making (MADM) methods for a complete access selection scheme that considers different network performances, service characteristics, and user preferences. The simulation results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper can allow users to select the most suitable network while obtaining higher gains and reducing user handover between different networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The financial crisis of 2007–2008 has brought critical attention to those financial institutions whose high destabilizing effects can have an impact on the financial system. Basel Committee (BIS) has introduced a set of regulations to identify such banks, defined global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the robustness of the BIS's methodology. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, a multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) approach is considered, specifically HSMAA (hierarchy stochastic multiobjective acceptability analysis), which can take into account uncertainty on BIS's criteria weights as standard SMAA, but also uncertainty with respect to the subcriteria of the considered criteria. The results are analyzed to provide insights into the robustness of the BIS's methodology. Findings: The obtained results indicate that overall the BIS's methodology does not appear robust. Within the two uncertainty scenarios considered, the results show a great variability in identifying the G-SIBs' systemic risk. Originality/value: The paper proposes an analytical way to assess the robustness of the BIS's methodology. Moreover, the authors' analysis reveals a great variability on the results, which highlight different issues for banks, regulators and enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a constraint-based account of surface tone variation in perfect (affirmative and negative) verb stems in the Akuapem, Asante, and Fante dialects of Akan. The paper argues that once we know the underlying tones of verb roots, surface tone difference in perfect verb stems in these dialects -- i.e. surface tones of verb roots and their affixes -- are all predictable from dialect-specific tone constraint hierarchy. This paper identifies dialect-specific ranking of the constraints: Polar, *σ1, *σ2, and RT[Tone] as responsible for variation in perfect verb stem surface tones in the three dialects. Polar and RT[Tone] are morpheme-based constraints, with *σ1 and *σ2 as syllable-based constraints. They reflect the need to respect both phonological and morphological well-formedness in perfect verb-stem surface-tone construction in the Akan language -- which is the need to minimize the unmarked tone and to derive a high tone in a perfect verb stem simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preference ordering structures are useful and popular tools to represent experts' preferences in the decision making process. In the existing preference orderings, they lack the research on the precise relationship between any two adjacent alternatives in the preference orderings, and the decision making methods are unreasonable. To overcome these issues, this paper establishes a novel concept of linguistic preference ordering (LPO) in which the ordering of alternatives and the relationships between two adjacent alternatives should be fused well, and develops two transformation models to transform each LPO into the corresponding double hierarchy linguistic preference relation with complete consistency. Additionally, to fully respect the experts' expression habits and provide more refined solutions to experts, this paper establishes a multi-stage consensus optimization model by considering the suggested preferences represented in both the continuous scale and the discrete scale, and develops a multi-stage interactive consensus reaching algorithm to deal with multi-expert decision making problem with LPOs. Furthermore, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the developed methods and models. Finally, some comparative analyses between the proposed methods and models and some existing methods have been made to show the advantages of the proposed methods and models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the efficiency rationale for democratic governance in economic organization. In addition to markets, hierarchies, and clans (the standard repertoire), democracy should be added as a viable and efficient form of organization, particularly for the modern knowledge-intensive economy. In fact, even using established organization theory and organizational economics, democratic governance would constitute a superior structural alternative under such conditions. Based on this theoretical argument and more than a decade of empirical research on the organization of new knowledge-based firms, as well as the governance of innovative activities in established firms, this paper advances a set of propositions articulating the efficient mix of governance mechanisms defining such democratic structural alternative; they include "partnership" rather than "exchange" employment contracts, "democratic" allocation of decision and control rights, negotiated rent-sharing, and open boundaries. The potential and due applications of these practices to situations where knowledge contributions are present but not prominent are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) as an efficient mode to provide public services through the government and social capital's cooperation has been in China for more than 30 years. In this paper, we propose an approach to evaluate PPP's advancement in different areas based on the subjective and objective information fusion. At first, we establish an index system from the perspective of the stakeholder. Then, considering that double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (DHHFLTS) that has two hierarchies of linguistic term sets can describe the subjective linguistic information more accurately, it is applied in the paper to depict the subjective information. By applying the entropy of the DHHFLTS, a programming model is proposed to derive the attribute weight through combining subjective evaluation with objective data. In addition, we develop the double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic PROMETHEE combining the subjective and objective information (DHHFL-PROMETHEE-S&O) method. At last, we illustrate the index system and the method with the PPP's advancement evaluation problem, and we can find the best choice based on the ranking result. Meanwhile, we also find that the objective information and the subjective information are complementary in the evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the second in a series of papers on conformal tilings. The overriding themes here are local isomorphisms, hierarchical structures, and the conformal "type" problem. Conformal tilings were introduced by the authors in 1997 with a conformally regular pentagonal tiling of the plane. This and even more intricate hierarchical patterns arise when tilings are repeatedly subdivided. Deploying a notion of expansion complexes, we build two-way infinite combinatorial hierarchies and then study the associated conformal tilings. For certain subdivision rules the combinatorial hierarchical properties are faithfully mirrored in their concrete conformal realizations. Examples illustrate the theory throughout the paper. In particular, we study parabolic conformal hierarchies that display periodicities realized by Mobius transformations, motivating higher level hierarchies that will emerge in the next paper of this series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (DHHFLTS) is a newly developed complex linguistic expression model, and has been well applied to multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. However, the determination of criteria weights and the innovation of decision-making methods are still two issues that worth exploring in this field. At present, conventional weight-determination methods sometimes have the disadvantages of complicated calculation and low consistency of the obtained results. On the other hand, the existing methods for linguistic information sometimes cannot consider the uncertainty of information caused by ignorance. Considering that the best-worst method (BWM) is a weight-determination method, which can not only greatly simplify the calculation process, but also improve the consistency degree of the results. Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (DSET) can better deal with information uncertainty caused by ignorance. Therefore, this paper extends the BWM and DSET to double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic environment to solve the above two problems respectively, and the DHHFL-BWM-DSET method is proposed. First, the weight of each criterion is derived based on the BWM-based weight-determination method. Then, inspired by DSET, we propose a DSET-based MCDM method which can not only obtain the decision results of a single decision maker, but also integrate the decision information of multiple decision makers to obtain more rational results. Therefore, decision makers can choose the method based on the specific situation. Finally, taking the selection of financial products as an example, it shows that the method proposed in this paper has some breakthroughs and advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Summarization networks are compact summaries of ontologies. The "Big Picture" view offered by summarization networks enables to identify sets of concepts that are more likely to have errors than control concepts. For ontologies that have outgoing lateral relationships, we have developed the "partial-area taxonomy" summarization network. Prior research has identified one kind of outlier concepts, concepts of small partials-areas within partial-area taxonomies. Previously we have shown that the small partial-area technique works successfully for four ontologies (or their hierarchies).Methods: To improve the Quality Assurance (QA) scalability, a family-based QA framework, where one QA technique is potentially applicable to a whole family of ontologies with similar structural features, was developed. The 373 ontologies hosted at the NCBO BioPortal in 2015 were classified into a collection of families based on structural features. A meta-ontology represents this family collection, including one family of ontologies having outgoing lateral relationships. The process of updating the current meta-ontology is described. To conclude that one QA technique is applicable for at least half of the members for a family F, this technique should be demonstrated as successful for six out of six ontologies in F. We describe a hypothesis setting the condition required for a technique to be successful for a given ontology. The process of a study to demonstrate such success is described. This paper intends to prove the scalability of the small partial-area technique.Results: We first updated the meta-ontology classifying 566 BioPortal ontologies. There were 371 ontologies in the family with outgoing lateral relationships. We demonstrated the success of the small partial-area technique for two ontology hierarchies which belong to this family, SNOMED CT's Specimen hierarchy and NCIt's Gene hierarchy. Together with the four previous ontologies from the same family, we fulfilled the "six out of six" condition required to show the scalability for the whole family.Conclusions: We have shown that the small partial-area technique can be potentially successful for the family of ontologies with outgoing lateral relationships in BioPortal, thus improve the scalability of this QA technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quarterly of the History of Material Culture / Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej is the property of Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper describes the use of semantic similarity measures based on distributed representations of words, sentences, and paragraphs (so-called "embeddings") to assess the impact of supra-lexical factors on eye-movement data from early readers of Chinese. In addition, we used a corpus-based measure of surprisal to assess the impact of local word predictability. Eye movement data from 56 Chinese students were collected (a) in the students' 4th grade and (b) one year later while they were in 5th grade. Results indicated that surprisal and some text similarity measures have a significant impact on the moment-to-moment processing of words in reading. The paper presents an easy-to-use set of tools for linking the low-level aspects of fixation durations to a hierarchy of sentence-level and paragraph-level features that can be computed automatically. The study is the first attempt, as far as we are aware, to track the developmental trajectory of these influences in developing readers across a range of reading abilities. The similarity-based measures described here can be used (a) to provide a measure of reader sensitivity to sentence and paragraph cohesion and (b) to assess specific texts for their suitability for readers of different reading ability levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several factors like returns, undelivered and damaged goods, exchange, and environmental concern make reverse logistics (RL) inevitable in an E-commerce supply chain. In spite of understanding the importance of RL in current business scenario, most of the companies concentrate on forward logistics, while reverse flow from customer to upstream business is not receiving much interest. Considering this less focused aspect of reverse logistics, the objective of this research is to identify and propose a model to rank the inhibiting variables i.e. the barriers so the logistician can solve them as per the priority. The extensive literature survey and experts' opinion helped in identifying 16 barriers for the study. But the availability of a number of barriers makes evaluating and selecting the most important RL barrier a challenging task and thus it can be dealt with as a multi-criteria decision-making problem. In this paper, a methodology based on analytic hierarchy process has been used to prioritize the barriers of RL. Findings of this paper show that the lack of investment in reverse logistics, lack of understanding about best practices and uncertain return and demand are the three topmost barriers for RL of E-commerce companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Politico is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper discusses a one-parameter generalization of individual relative deprivation measures to a two-period setting that differs from earlier approaches. The parameter is, by definition, independent of the income distributions under consideration—it is to be chosen by a social planner. Its value has an intuitive interpretation: it represents the additional weight assigned to the income shortfalls associated with agents who passed the individual in question when moving from yesterday's income distribution to today's. Therefore, the choice of this parameter represents an important value judgment on the part of a social planner regarding the relative impact of being left behind. As a special case, it is illustrated how the well-known Yitzhaki index can be extended to this environment. Journal of Economic Literature Classification No.: D63. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on organizational power has become overly fragmented; a multitude of different sources of power have been identified. Consequently, an overall picture of intraorganizational power relations is difficult to obtain. In this paper, three structural sources of power-hierarchical authority, resource control, and network centrality-are integrated in a theoretical synthesis. The complex nature of intraorganizational power is revealed in the interactions, tensions, and conflicts among the three sources of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines institutional economics with aspects of contract law and organization theory to identify and explicate the key differences that distinguish three generic forms of economic organization--market, hybrid, and hierarchy. The analysis shows that the three generic forms are distinguished by different coordinating and control mechanisms and by different abilities to adapt to disturbances. Also, each generic form is supported and defined by a distinctive type of contract law. The cost-effective choice of organization form is shown to vary systematically with the attributes of transactions. The paper unifies two hitherto disjunct areas of institutional economics--the institutional environment and the institutions of governance--by treating the institutional environment as a locus of parameters, changes in which parameters bring about shifts in the comparative costs of governance. Changes in property rights, contract law, reputation effects, and uncertainty are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes data describing jobs in 100 establishments in order to test hypotheses about the characteristics of jobs and organizations associated with the structure of internal promotion ladders. The diversity of labor market arrangements found within the organizations indicates only weak support for hypotheses linking internal labor markets to organizational or sectoral imperatives. At the job level, however, there is support for hypotheses linking job ladders to firm-specific skills, organizational structure, gender distinctions, technology, occupational differentiation, the institutional environment, and the interests of unions. The paper concludes with an examination of how promotion ladders are formed from clusters of jobs associated with each other by occupation, skill, or gender composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) made an epoch-making contribution to systems research. This paper researches Interests-coordination SSM (ISSM), an approach of applying SSM to deal with the problem of interests conflict. We think there is a hierarchy of the systems methodologies for problem solving. ISSM is at the level lower than the level of Checkland's SSM in the hierarchy and is specially designed for dealing with the soft problem of interests conflict. The soft problem of interests conflict and the Interest Man assumption are ISSM's theoretical foundation. Therefore this paper first, on the basis of phenomenology, researches the implications of interests conflict, soft problem of interests conflict and Interests Man assumption, then presents the ideas that in the soft problem of interests conflict the man is an Interests Man, the interests of Interests Man include not only egotistic but also altruistic aspects and that the game behaviour is the fundamental behaviour of the Interests Man. Afterwards this paper, studies the practical logic stages of ISSM on the basis of these ideas. The key point of ISSM is how to make the accommodations between conflicting interests via the process of interests coordination and game. At the end a case is introduced in that we successfully used the ISSM to direct the implementation of a Knowledge Management (KM) project in an enterprise of China. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Topoi: Revista de História is the property of TOPOI: Revista de Historia, Programa de Pos-graduacao em Historia Social da UFRJ and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores various factors that account for the power of secretaries, hospital attendants, prison inmates, and other lower participants within organizations. Power is seen as resulting from access to and control over persons, information, and instrumentalities. Among the variables discussed affecting power are normative definitions, perception of legitimacy, exchange, and coalitions. Personal attributes related to power include commitment, effort, interest, willingness to use power, skills, and attractiveneses. Finally, various attributes of social structure are discussed which also help to account for the power of lower participants: time spent in the organization, centrality of position, duality of power structures, and replaceability of persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some of the implications of technological modifications and improvements on industrial management in two types of advanced manufacturing systems displaying flow-like characteristics and designated "process" and "quasi-process" systems. Technological advances often result in the structuring of functional relationships and responsibilities, and affect development of an organizational control system which includes human, procedural and mechanical elements. This analysis is based on field research studies as well as studies reported in the literature. Theoretical considerations and empirical findings are set forth to account for organizational developments such as the simplification or complication of organizational structure. Finally, the managerial-supervisory job functions emerging in these advanced systems provide a basis for clarifying the role of supporting groups and added considerations for a key executive function such as managerial manpower planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, 18 systems taxonomies/hierarchies are presented and commented upon, from Boulding's ‘system of systems’ (1956) to Glasl and Lievegoed's ‘seven essential elements of any organization’ (1993). A 19th is proposed, which aims at displaying a number of clear-cut levels sufficient to correspond to the succeeding levels of an enterprise problematique, each new type of interactions defining a new level. The 19 schemes are classified into two groups, ‘General’ and ‘Managerial’, mainly according to their immediate applicability to management. Each group was split into two subgroups, respectively stressing complexity, system–milieu interactions, decision levels and, finally, intrasystem and system environment interactions. A comparative analysis of the whole set is summarized, converging towards three hierarchies seen as more adequate: Beer's, Jantsch's and the one proposed in this paper. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Varia História is the property of Varia Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents the author's reaction to the response of researcher S.L. Obert to the author's article "Archetypal Social Systems Analysis: On the Deeper Structure of Human Systems." The way in which Obert initially read the author and the way in which he in turn reacted to him is evidence of one of the primary laws by which the psyche operates. One of Obert's most serious criticisms is that the author's paper exhibits a vision of a unidimensional, hierarchical model. The author's difficulties with Obert's response are summarized.

Top-down hierarchical organisations have become the norm to the point where we rarely consider alternative ways of organising ourselves even though they divide people against each other and impose power differentials. A group operating in the South Island of New Zealand called Convergence is exploring alternatives. It is an acephalous group, in that it has no structured leadership, and yet, over 300 people have been able to gather together as a co-creative community for 5 days every year for almost 30 years. Convergence has developed a distributed, transient, self-selected leadership style that has proved to be robust. Acephalous structures and Convergence in particular are explored in this paper using systems concepts to increase our understanding of acephalous dynamics and uncover the strengths and weaknesses of Convergence and its generalisability to other groups. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labeling in diffusion measurements by pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR is based on the observation of the phase of nuclear spins acquired in a constant magnetic field with purposefully superimposed field gradients. This labeling does in no way affect microdynamics and provides information about the probability distribution of molecular displacements as a function of time. An introduction of the measuring principle is followed by a detailed description of the ranges of measurements and their limitation. Particular emphasis is given to an explanation of possible pitfalls in the measurements and the ways to circumvent them. Showcases presented for illustrating the wealth of information provided by PFG NMR include a survey on the various patterns of concentration dependence of intra-particle diffusion and examples of transport inhibition by additional transport resistances within the nanoporous particles and on their external surface. The latter information is attained by combination with the outcome of tracer exchange experiments, which are shown to become possible via a special formalism of PFG NMR data analysis. Further evidence provided by PFG NMR concerns diffusion enhancement in pore hierarchies, diffusion anisotropy and the impact of diffusion on chemical conversion in porous catalysts. A compilation of the specifics of PFG NMR and of the parallels with other measurement techniques concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their article, "Learning From Ancient Athens: Demarchy and Corporate Governance" (this issue), Zeitoun, Osterloh, and Frey contribute a useful summary of the debates about corporate governance and suggest a novel way to involve stakeholders in governance. Picking up from their discussion on corporate governance, this paper raises four issues. First, different kinds of corporations should have different kinds of governance policies. In particular, large global corporations are so important and so distinctive that they deserve special thought. Second, humanity must set priorities among goals. Governance policies that enable an individual corporation to operate effectively right now may cause long-term harm to humanity and the earth, and policies that benefit humanity and the earth may harm individual corporations. It is not clear who should set such priorities. Third, ideas about governance should consider technological and social changes that are propelling corporations toward entirely new forms. Much of the debate about corporate governance has focused on issues relating to 20th-century organizations and 20th-century societies, and significant changes in governance will take decades to take effect. Last, boards of directors exercise rather weak governance in comparison with governance by managerial hierarchies. Thus, it is more important to improve managerial governance. As commercially and politically neutral institutions that emphasize open, fact-based discussion, universities could usefully enhance the quality of governance by senior executives as well as outside stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer architecture simulation tools are essential for implementing and evaluating new ideas in the domain and can be useful for understanding the behavior of programs and finding microarchitectural bottlenecks. One particularly important part of almost any processor is the cache hierarchy. While some simulators support simulating a whole processor, including the cache hierarchy, cores, and on-chip interconnect, others may only support simulating the cache hierarchy. This survey provides a detailed discussion on 28 CPU cache simulators, including popular or recent simulators. We compare between all of these simulators in four different ways: major design characteristics, support for specific cache design features, support for specific cache-related metrics, and validation methods and efforts. The strengths and shortcomings of each simulator and major issues that are common to all simulators are highlighted. The information presented in this survey was collected from many different sources, including research papers, documentations, source code bases, and others. This survey is potentially useful for both users and developers of cache simulators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey on cache simulation tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hierarchical approach for autotuning linear algebra routines on heterogeneous platforms is presented. Hierarchy helps to alleviate the difficulties of tuning parallel routines for high-performance computing systems. This paper analyzes the application of the hierarchical approach at both the hardware and software levels, using the basic matrix multiplication and the Strassen multiplication as proof of concept on multicore+coprocessor nodes. In this way, the hierarchical approach allows partial delegation of the efficient exploitation of the computing units in the node to the underlying direct autotuned matrix multiplication used in the base case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports evidence to support the insight that the impaired financing problem is highly likely connected to low staff efficiency in MENA country Islamic banks. Several macro and micro factors widely used in banking research are used along the measure of staff efficiency as the intervening factor to identify banking performance under impaired financing conditions. It is reasonable to assume that if staff do not work efficiently (for example for lack of skill), bank performance ought to be seriously affected; hence, staff efficiency would have a moderating effect when this factor is added to eight bank-specific factors. Impaired financing to total financing, as a ratio, is a proxy for impaired financing condition. Financial data are accessed for 22 banks from MENA countries covering the recent nine years to 2013. Applying a random effect model, we identify seven factors as significant contributors to performance. Next, by applying a hierarchical regression model, our tests reveal staff efficiency is a significant moderating factor. The result provides statistical support for the Resource-Based Theory, which suggests banks could reduce their impaired financing significantly by increasing staff efficiency. This is a new and significant finding on the linkage of finance with staff efficiency as a factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Region-based hierarchical image representation is crucial in many computer vision applications. However, in practice, an image hierarchy is usually dense, and contains many less informative branches. It is expected that a hierarchy should be accurate and simplified, which is not only desirable for different applications, but also saves considerable computational load for the further analysis. To achieve this target, this paper proposes a novel approach for unsupervised simplification of region-based image hierarchies, which employs the global and local evolution analyses of a hierarchy. First, we introduce a global evolution analysis in the scale-sets framework, which provides clues for eliminating less informative branches. Moreover, a hybrid unsupervised simplification method is designed, utilizing the information from global and local evolution functions. A number of experiments on various images have shown that the proposed approach is effective and efficient in removing less informative nodes (averagely about 90% of the whole nodes), while preserving salient image details and retaining the accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Lasserre/Sum-of-Squares (SoS) hierarchy is a systematic procedure for constructing a sequence of increasingly tight semidefinite relaxations. It is known that the hierarchy converges to the 0/1 polytope in n levels and captures the convex relaxations used in the best available approximation algorithms for a wide variety of optimization problems. In this paper we characterize the set of 0/1 integer linear problems and unconstrained 0/1 polynomial optimization problems that can still have an integrality gap at level n − 1. These problems are the hardest for the Lasserre hierarchy in this sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a class of lattice-based algebraic structures describing the semantics of type hierarchies in an object-oriented program system. Several properties of such structures (namely, completeness, equivalent transformations, and logical reduction) are studied. The suggested methodology serves the purpose of verification and upgrading of type hierarchies; an important direction concerns automatic elimination of code redundancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the usefulness of the compositional hierarchy model in understanding the information flows involved in group behaviors in animals. I propose that short-term memory can function to transduce information across scale, thereby connecting different modes of information and mediating coherent group motions. This transduction I propose to be mediated by the "sign" as understood in Peircean semiotics, generating the meaning of the information for the social animal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the depiction of Jewish and Christian merchants in the medieval English Host miracle play, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. This play is a critical illustration of religious racialization, effectively demonstrating the perpetuation of anti-Jewish stereotypes and legitimizing violence. Positioned within a broader scholarly debate, particularly in relation to Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness, the play portrays Jews as allegorical figures that validate Christian theological constructs. This paper delves into the representation and linguistic depiction of Jewish characters in the play, emphasizing their systematic dehumanization and instrumentalization in Christian narratives. A significant focus is placed on the coerced conversion of Jewish characters, which forces them into the archetype of the “Wandering Jew”, thereby highlighting motifs of symbolic aggression and unending diaspora. This paper also confronts contemporary scholarly perspectives that view the play as challenging religious boundaries, positing that such interpretations overlook the ingrained racialization and marginalization of Jewish identity during the European Middle Ages. It argues that the play’s transient disruption of power dynamics ultimately reinforces prevailing social hierarchies, thereby solidifying deep-seated anti-Jewish sentiments.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extant literature on positional power in hierarchies is mainly restricted to the analysis of power in terms of the authority structure. This is based upon the bare positions of actors and ignores the existence of decision-making mechanisms. The few studies, which also take into account decision-making mechanisms, are 'membership-based'. In an earlier paper we demonstrated that such an approach is, in general, inappropriate. As a solution we suggested an 'action-based' approach and developed a power score and measure ascribing positional power to actors in hierarchies. In this paper we axiomatize this power score and measure and illustrate their applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2006 paper, Professor Gregory Hayden argued that system dynamics is an inadequate tool for explaining the institutional systems principles of hierarchy, feedback and openness. The purpose of this paper is to show that many of Professor Hayden's claims are either misguided or incorrect. The paper also reinforces the argument that system dynamics modeling can add significant value to traditional institutional economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss the viability of the claim that at least some forms of moral theory are harmful for sound moral thought and practice. This claim was put forward by e.g. Elisabeth Anscombe (()) and by Annette Baier, Peter Winch, D.Z Phillips and Bernard Williams in the 1970’s–1980’s. To this day aspects of it have found resonance in both post-Wittgensteinian and virtue ethical quarters. The criticism has on one hand contributed to a substantial change and broadening of the scope of analytic moral philosophy. On the other hand it is, at least in its most strongly anti-theoretical formulations, now broadly considered outdated and—to the extent that it is still defended—insensitive to the changes that have occurred within the field in the last 20–30 years. The task of this paper is to relocate the anti-theoretical critique into the field of analytic ethics today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on discrete dynamic optimization on train rescheduling on single-track railway with the consideration of train punctuality and station satisfaction degree. A discrete dynamic system is firstly described to mimic train rescheduling, and a state transition function is specially designed according to the train departure event. The purpose of this function is to improve simulation efficiency by directly confirming the next discrete time. After the construction and analysis of optimization models to discrete dynamic system, a two-stage heuristic search strategy is developed, by using clustering hierarchy theory and stochastic search strategy, to obtain train departure time and arrival time before each state transition of the system. Finally, a numerical experiment is conducted to verify the proposed system, models, and the heuristic search strategy. The result shows that the discrete dynamic system, together with the state transition function and heuristic search strategy, shows better performance in simulation efficiency and solution quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]