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Session types are formal specifications of communication protocols, allowing protocol implementations to be verified by typechecking. Up to now, session type disciplines have assumed that the communication medium is reliable, with no loss of messages. However, unreliable broadcast communication is common in a wide class of distributed systems such as ad-hoc and wireless sensor networks. Often such systems have structured communication patterns that should be amenable to analysis by means of session types, but the necessary theory has not previously been developed. We introduce the Unreliable Broadcast Session Calculus, a process calculus with unreliable broadcast communication, and equip it with a session type system that we show is sound. We capture two common operations, broadcast and gather, inhabiting dual session types. Message loss may lead to non-synchronised session endpoints. To further account for unreliability we provide with an autonomous recovery mechanism that does not require acknowledgements from session participants. Our type system ensures soundness, safety, and progress between the synchronised endpoints within a session. We demonstrate the expressiveness of our framework by implementing Paxos, the textbook protocol for reaching consensus in an unreliable, asynchronous network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Road traffic which results in significant time lags, increased fuel consumption, and financial losses, remains a noteworthy challenge in developed and developing countries. As a result, the Ethiopian Government and the City Administration of Addis Ababa have built extensive road networks and imposed restrictions on driving, vehicle acquisition and parking. However, despite all these efforts, drivers and passengers waste significant time on long traffic queues, resulting in unpredictable and delayed travel. The current study investigated the cost of travel time delay, vehicle operating costs, time reliability, and the factors influencing these variables. The study used questionnaires, measurements, and traffic counting techniques to collect data from nine road segments. The sample comprised 3240 participants. The cost functions of both drivers and passengers were examined using a multiple linear regression model, with estimation performed using ordinary least squares. According to the findings, the economic costs of congestion depend on the number of lanes, the length of the road segment, the volume of traffic, and the respondents’ income level. The study also revealed that travel, vehicle operation, and unreliability costs account for 74%, 6%, and 20%, respectively, of the total congestion costs.

Road traffic which results in significant time lags, increased fuel consumption, and financial losses, remains a noteworthy challenge in developed and developing countries. As a result, the Ethiopian Government and the City Administration of Addis Ababa have built extensive road networks and imposed restrictions on driving, vehicle acquisition and parking. However, despite all these efforts, drivers and passengers waste significant time on long traffic queues, resulting in unpredictable and delayed travel. The current study investigated the cost of travel time delay, vehicle operating costs, time reliability, and the factors influencing these variables. The study used questionnaires, measurements, and traffic counting techniques to collect data from nine road segments. The sample comprised 3240 participants. The cost functions of both drivers and passengers were examined using a multiple linear regression model, with estimation performed using ordinary least squares. According to the findings, the economic costs of congestion depend on the number of lanes, the length of the road segment, the volume of traffic, and the respondents' income level. The study also revealed that travel, vehicle operation, and unreliability costs account for 74%, 6%, and 20%, respectively, of the total congestion costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale: Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930) is based on flashbacks concerning Edward Driffield, a recently deceased Victorian author, who is partly based on Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Alroy Kear, a fictional representation of Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) and author of a planned account of Driffield's life, insists that everything should not be told in the biography, suggesting that some things may be better left unsaid. In a prefiguration of the self-reflexivity of postmodernism, the narrator, Ashenden - Maugham's own persona - expands on the value of the first-person narrative, raising questions of reliability. Thus, the representation of the three author-characters becomes a means to deconstruct the myth surrounding the figure of the writer. Indeed, the reader is led to question what makes the reputation and worth of an author, as Maugham proposes a critical assessment of the process of idealisation of the Victorian author figure, from the relatively brief temporal distance of some forty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Albee's stage adaptation (1981) of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is universally regarded as an unqualified failure. This contribution seeks to recover the play from critical neglect by arguing that it not just productively interprets and transforms the source text but also critically comments on its implications regarding the relationship between artist and creation, audience and art, and ethics and aesthetics. The play features an anthropomorphised equivalent to the novel's implied author in the character of 'A Certain Gentleman' (ACG), a figure uniting features of (imagined) Nabokov and Albee, who introduces himself to the audience as the creator of Humbert and guides them through the plot while commenting on the action, alternatively trying to distance himself from his creation, trying to teach him moral values, or admonishing the audience to show empathy. In the interplay of Humbert, Lolita, and ACG, the play stages an emancipatory dialogue between artist and creation, using the presentational character of (epic) theatre to level diegetic hierarchies. Just as Lolita emancipates itself from Nabokov in the act of adaptation, so Humbert emancipates himself from ACG and Lolita from Humbert. In the same way, the play encourages an emancipation on the part of the audience from a position of passive spectatorship by cultivating a critical engagement with the discordant discourses of theatrical narration, presentation, and spectatorship in a dialogic of identification and distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the unreliable narrator in fiction, characterizing narratives shaped by personal biases, mental instability, or intentional deception, has a rich history dating back to ancient Greek drama. This investigation into the historical trajectory and influence of unreliable narration focuses on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye as a case study. Published in 1951, the novel intricately explores the complexities of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, seen here as embodying the essence of an unreliable narrator. The analysis delves into Salinger's artistry as part of a broader examination of truth, perception, and storytelling reliability throughout literary history. By drawing parallels with archetypal forms of unreliable narrators, the analysis aims to uncover Holden's classification and unique role in the exploration of unreliable narration. A consideration of the literary techniques employed in the novel emphasizes their contribution to the overall impact of the work, prompting a reflection on the foundations of selfhood and the narratives that shape it within the broader context of the history of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The YOLO series of object detection algorithms, including YOLOv4 and YOLOv5, have shown superior performance in various medical diagnostic tasks, surpassing human ability in some cases. However, their black-box nature has limited their adoption in medical applications that require trust and explainability of model decisions. To address this issue, visual explanations for AI models, known as visual XAI, have been proposed in the form of heatmaps that highlight regions in the input that contributed most to a particular decision. Gradient-based approaches, such as Grad-CAM [1], and non-gradient-based approaches, such as Eigen-CAM [2], are applicable to YOLO models and do not require new layer implementation. This paper evaluates the performance of Grad-CAM and Eigen-CAM on the VinDrCXR Chest X-ray Abnormalities Detection dataset [3] and discusses the limitations of these methods for explaining model decisions to data scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the psychological affects of guilt and shame in John Boyne’s novel The Heart’s Invisible Furies and with how these influence the way in which the narrator, Cyril Avery, chooses to present his life narrative. Being both the narrator and the main character/focalizer of the events told, the question of his (un)reliability proves extremely relevant for the analysis. The guilt and shame Cyril feels in the first part of the novel —which is also the first part of his life— on account of his being a gay man is forced upon him by the Irish society of the time. Hence, it is only when he leaves his homeland that he can start to find the peace he so much longs for and which, eventually, allows him to tell his story.

The proposed study described the application of innovative technology to solve the issues in a supply chain model due to the players' unreliability. The unreliable manufacturer delivers a percentage of the ordered quantity to the retailer, which causes shortages. At the same time, the retailer provides wrong information regarding the amount of the sales of the product. Besides intelligent technology, a single setup multiple unequal increasing delivery transportation policy is applied in this study to reduce the holding cost of the retailer. A consumed fuel and electricity-dependent carbon emission cost are used for environmental sustainability. Since the industries face problems with smooth functioning in each of its steps for unreliable players, the study is proposed to solve the unpredictable player problem in the supply chain. The robust distribution approach is utilized to overcome the situation of unknown lead time demand. Two metaheuristic optimization techniques, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to optimize the total cost. From the numerical section, it is clear the PSO is 0.32 % more beneficial than GA to obtain the minimum total cost of the supply chain. The discussed case studies show that the applied single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing delivery policy is 0.62 % beneficial compared to the single-setup-single-delivery policy and 0.35 % beneficial compared to the single-setup-multi-delivery policy. The sensitivity analysis with graphical representation is provided to explain the result clearly.

The current study focuses on a two-echelon supply chain for a reliable retailer, an unreliable manufacturer, and selling price-dependent demand. Due to an unreliable manufacturer and transportation hazards, shortages arise, which negatively impact the reputation of the retailer. Moreover, customers are more conscious of the environment, as a result, most of the industry focuses on the production of green products. To reduce the holding cost of the retailer, a fuel consumption-based single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing-delivery policy was utilized in this current study. With this transportation policy, the number of shipments increases, which directly increases carbon emissions and transportation hazards. To protect the environment, the green level of the product is enhanced through some investments. The demand varies with the price of the product as well as with the level of the greenness of the product. Due to uncertain demand, the rate of the production is treated as controllable. A classical optimization technique and distribution-free approach have been utilized to obtain the optimum solution and the optimized system profit. To prove the applicability, the study is illustrated numerically and graphically via a well-explained analysis of sensitivity. The study proves that single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing delivery policy is 0.62% beneficial compared to single-setup-single-delivery policy and 0.35% better than the single-setup-multi-delivery policy.

The idea of sources other than the test-takers' knowledge leading to different results on high-stakes tests was the motif based on which the present investigation was initiated on the probable sources of unreliability of a test. For this purpose, the researchers went through a thorough literature review with the aim to identify the issues to be counted as sources of unreliability of a high-stakes test, i.e., the MA University Entrance Exam of English (UEEE) in Iran. First, 17 MA UEEE test-takers were asked to take part in a semi-structured interview to find out their ideas about such sources. The outcome of the thematic coding of the information from the literature and interviews was a 57-item Likert scale questionnaire which was reviewed by three assessment experts, revised accordingly, piloted with 57 MA UEEE test-takers, and revised again with 55 items remaining. The revised questionnaire was administered to 312 MA UEEE test-takers in Iran, and its reliability and construct validity were checked through Cronbach alpha (.89) and exploratory factor analysis, respectively. After checking its reliability and construct validity, 46 items remained and loaded on four factors which were named as the effect of test-takers (16 items), structure of the test and external concerns (13 items), administration conditions of the test (13 items), and role of proctors (4 items). The results of this study might familiarize test developers, test administrators, teachers, and test-takers with issues they should be aware of in developing or preparing for a high-stakes test like the MA UEEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day studies the notion of narrative unreliability through the exploration of the relationship between memories and one's sense of identity. Ishiguro employs a narrator who communicates a struggle between reality and what he can partially remember about himself, his idea of Englishness and the house he has worked in, through gaps, omissions and ambiguities that install unreliability as the key vehicle with which the narration operates. However, the unreliable narrator in the novel challenges any notion of stable identity, and the impossibility of fixating either the national or the personal identity into singular, essentialist and idealist framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a great interest has been dedicated to improving data fusion techniques for indoor occupancy detection. Indoor occupancy detection is extensively used in various applications, such as energy consumption control, surveillance systems, and disaster management. Using environmental sensors to collect data for detecting the occupancy state has the benefit of maintaining privacy. Also, it helps in improving monitoring systems and saving money due to energy consumption control. Nevertheless, sensor data is usually incomplete and noisy, which makes it uncertain and unreliable. These problems affect the detection accuracy. This paper proposes a comprehensive occupancy detection system that depends on a new fusion technique for fusing heterogeneous sensor data, which highly improves occupancy detection efficiency. Using Neutrosophy, the proposed technique handles sensor data uncertainty. Additionally, it improves reliability by fusing multiple sensors data. As it uses only one feature generated from fusing multiple sensors data, training and testing time is reduced. Consequently, the experimental results of applying the proposed fusion technique on a public benchmark dataset exhibit a significant enhancement in binary occupancy detection accuracy. The proposed technique enhanced the worst-case accuracy from 75.1 to 81.3%, 84.7 to 90.7%, 72 to 84.2%, 73.58 to 85.1%, and 65.9 to 78% using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Naive Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Random Forest (RF) classifiers, respectively. Using the other six performance metrics, the proposed technique results also outperform some state-of-the-art techniques.

The photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) system can be integrated with other energy resources and, the optimal design of such integrated PV/T systems becomes important. Also, fuel cell with hydrogen consumption is significantly useful in combination with other renewable energy systems. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of PV/T and fuel cell as a combined heat and power system on optimal design problem with considerations for PV/T unreliability. The contributions of this study are consideration unreliability of PV/T panels output heat and power and investigation the effects of PV/T and fuel cell on optimal design problem are investigated. Some limitations such as battery size, PV/T installation area, and demand unreliability are subjected to problem. As heuristic algorithm is applied in optimal design problem, it is shown that utilization of PV/T reduces cost by 1.10%. Also, with utilization of fuel cell beside other units, total cost is reduced as compared with literature. A critical sensitivity analysis is done and, it is concluded that several factors, namely, PV/T, energy storage system, conventional distributed generation, fuel cell, fuel prices, and power and heat profiles have considerable effects on optimal design. Among them, battery and fuel cell prices have the most and least effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Police-recorded crimes are used by police forces to document community differences in crime and design spatially targeted strategies. Nevertheless, crimes known to police are affected by selection biases driven by underreporting. This paper presents a simulation study to analyze if crime statistics aggregated at small spatial scales are affected by larger bias than maps produced for larger geographies. Methods: Based on parameters obtained from the UK Census, we simulate a synthetic population consistent with the characteristics of Manchester. Then, based on parameters derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, we simulate crimes suffered by individuals, and their likelihood to be known to police. This allows comparing the difference between all crimes and police-recorded incidents at different scales. Results: Measures of dispersion of the relative difference between all crimes and police-recorded crimes are larger when incidents are aggregated to small geographies. The percentage of crimes unknown to police varies widely across small areas, underestimating crime in certain places while overestimating it in others. Conclusions: Micro-level crime analysis is affected by a larger risk of bias than crimes aggregated at larger scales. These results raise awareness about an important shortcoming of micro-level mapping, and further efforts are needed to improve crime estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed study described the application of innovative technology to solve the issues in a supply chain model due to the players' unreliability. The unreliable manufacturer delivers a percentage of the ordered quantity to the retailer, which causes shortages. At the same time, the retailer provides wrong information regarding the amount of the sales of the product. Besides intelligent technology, a single setup multiple unequal increasing delivery transportation policy is applied in this study to reduce the holding cost of the retailer. A consumed fuel and electricity-dependent carbon emission cost are used for environmental sustainability. Since the industries face problems with smooth functioning in each of its steps for unreliable players, the study is proposed to solve the unpredictable player problem in the supply chain. The robust distribution approach is utilized to overcome the situation of unknown lead time demand. Two metaheuristic optimization techniques, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to optimize the total cost. From the numerical section, it is clear the PSO is 0.32 % more beneficial than GA to obtain the minimum total cost of the supply chain. The discussed case studies show that the applied single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing delivery policy is 0.62 % beneficial compared to the single-setup-single-delivery policy and 0.35 % beneficial compared to the single-setup-multi-delivery policy. The sensitivity analysis with graphical representation is provided to explain the result clearly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

True crime narratives come in various medial forms. They all share the same subject crime - especially murder - but differ with respect to their self-understanding and the medial presentrulebook they rely on. While seemingly non-fictional, they oscillate between various selfattributions - journalistic or belletristic, truth-driven or mainly entertaining - or an amalgam reof these features, which is defined by the troubled relationship of fact and fiction. It is the challenging interplay of contexts which makes distinctrue crime narratives a highly interesting field charof investigation for transmedial working narratologists. This paper discusses the genre and its distinctive attributes by debating its status between factual-informing and fictional-enter-Estaining narrations, and taking its storytelling methods into focus, where true crime's troubled relationship of fact and fiction primarily evokes questions of (un-)reliability and trust-worthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of research. The issue of reliability (unreliability) of information (data) included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities has increased after the amendments made to the Russian Civil Code in 2013 and to the Russian legislation on state registration of legal entities in 2015. The legislation, introducing the principle of public reliability of information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities does not clearly define what is meant by such reliability. Accordingly, the question arises about what is meant by “unreliability” of information. Although legal norms contain the concept of “error”; the legislation does not contain a single legal regime of “error”. This is expressed in the presence of several independent cases described in the legislation, including, among other things, an independent procedure for correcting an error. It is also not clear how the presence of an “error” correlates with the requirements for the reliability of the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The author shows the evolution of the concepts of “error” and “technical error” in the legislation on state registration of legal entities, as well as ways to eliminate it for the first time in the Russian doctrine.The purpose of the article is to: (a) analyze the current regulation and qualify various cases of “errors” in the information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities; (b) specify the objectives of regulation in each identified case of “errors”; (c) identify the main contradictions in the regulation; (d) form a new model of the reliability of the information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and specific legal decisions based on the goals of the legislator to “whitewash” the Russian economy, strengthen the principle of good faith, and ensure the certainty of legal norms. The scientific hypothesis is that the “error” in the information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, whatever its cause, is a special case of unreliability of information. Accordingly, all cases of “error” should be settled within the framework of the general model of reliability of information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The current regulation does not provide real public reliability of the information; in fact, such public reliability today is nothing more than an illusion. Approaches to determining the reliability (unreliability) of information included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities do not provide such reliability.Description of research methods and methodology. The research is based on a systematic and teleological interpretation of normative material (legal norms, explanations of a normative nature, judicial legal positions). Information about the main scientific results. Conclusions. The conducted research fully confirmed the correctness of the proposed scientific hypothesis. Systematic proposals for changing existing approaches to regulation and specific legal solutions are formulated. Conclusions. It is noted that the current regulation regarding the criteria for the reliability/unreliability of information (data) of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities is confusing and creates uncertainty in the legal regulation. The necessity of changing the norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and other federal laws, the abolition of the most odious explanations of a regulatory nature, the foundations of a new regulatory model and proposals for reforming the existing regulatory framework are formulated.

Inconsistency in real‐world judgments can cause random unfairness, injustice and misallocation of resources. In their recent monograph Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein (2021) analyse judgment inconsistency or "Noise," examine its sources and propose remedies. In this commentary on Kahneman et al., we reflect on the major concepts (such as "judgment," "noise," "error," and "bias") used in analysing inconsistency. We place this work in the broader context of applied cognitive psychology, relating it to error typologies and to dual‐systems views of thinking. We also compare Kahneman et al.'s heuristics based approach to the linear combination of attributes based approach of Social Judgment Theory (SJT), with particular reference to judgment noise. We conclude that the main contributions of Kahneman et al.'s book are (a) to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of judgment noise across a range of important real‐world areas, (b) to provide a taxonomy of types of noise in terms of system noise versus occasion noise, and level noise versus pattern noise, and (c) to outline useful ways of reducing noise, and thus overall levels of error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While conflict event data sets are increasingly used in contemporary conflict research, important concerns persist regarding the quality of the collected data. Such concerns are not necessarily new. Yet, because the methodological debate and evidence on potential errors remains scattered across different subdisciplines of social sciences, there is little consensus concerning proper reporting practices in codebooks, how best to deal with the different types of errors, and which types of errors should be prioritised. In this article, we introduce a new analytical framework—that is, the Total Event Error (TEE) framework—which aims to elucidate the methodological challenges and errors that may affect whether and how events are entered into conflict event data sets, drawing on different fields of study. Potential errors are diverse and may range from errors arising from the rationale of the media source (e.g., selection of certain types of events into the news) to errors occurring during the data collection process or the analysis phase. Based on the TEE framework, we propose a set of strategies to mitigate errors associated with the construction and use of conflict event data sets. We also identify a number of important avenues for future research concerning the methodology of creating conflict event data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study focuses on a two-echelon supply chain for a reliable retailer, an unreliable manufacturer, and selling price-dependent demand. Due to an unreliable manufacturer and transportation hazards, shortages arise, which negatively impact the reputation of the retailer. Moreover, customers are more conscious of the environment, as a result, most of the industry focuses on the production of green products. To reduce the holding cost of the retailer, a fuel consumption-based single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing-delivery policy was utilized in this current study. With this transportation policy, the number of shipments increases, which directly increases carbon emissions and transportation hazards. To protect the environment, the green level of the product is enhanced through some investments. The demand varies with the price of the product as well as with the level of the greenness of the product. Due to uncertain demand, the rate of the production is treated as controllable. A classical optimization technique and distribution-free approach have been utilized to obtain the optimum solution and the optimized system profit. To prove the applicability, the study is illustrated numerically and graphically via a well-explained analysis of sensitivity. The study proves that single-setup-multi-unequal-increasing delivery policy is 0:62% beneficial compared to single-setup-single-delivery policy and 0:35% better than the single-setup-multi-delivery policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation has become critical for market survival for many companies in the era of digital transformation. However, the organisational perspective to constantly stay up-to-date with technological innovations can become strenuous on an individual level due to the need to constantly adapt to the demands of a permanently changing technological environment. Based on a large-scale online survey of employees in Germany (N = 1,115), we investigated the positive and negative effects of an organisational climate of innovation from a digital stress perspective. Our results indicate that an organisational climate of innovation creates uncertainty in individuals as it supports technological change but can also help to reduce the perception of technological unreliability as it fosters an environment of mutual support. This research, therefore, adds to the idea of a pronounced innovation climate as a double-edged sword and shows that permanently pushing technological innovation should also be viewed in the light of its potential side effects. It follows that innovation initiatives should balance organisational and individual requirements to stay, or become, more competitive, thereby explicitly considering the side effects that too much and/or too fast innovation may have on users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Hideous Kinky” presents the story of an English mother travelling in Morocco with her two daughters. As expected, this exotic journey is about the woman’s pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Less expected, the story is narrated by her youngest daughter who constantly denies the story to the reader. Starting from the issue of unreliable homodiegetic narration, this paper proposes to analyse the effects of missing information in the text, and the reader’s subsequent responsibility for filling the gaps and disambiguating the story. As a method, the essay establishes connections between its theoretical investigations and Esther Freud’s novel.

Several philosophers and psychologists have argued that evidence of moral framing effects shows that many of our moral judgments are unreliable. However, all previous empirical work on moral framing effects has used between-subject experimental designs. We argue that between-subject designs alone do not allow us to accurately estimate the extent of moral framing effects or to properly evaluate the case from framing effects against the reliability of our moral judgments. To do better, we report results of our new within-subject study on four types of moral framing effects, and we discuss the implications of our findings for the reliability of moral judgments. Overall, our results strengthen the evidence from moral framing effects against the reliability of some of our moral judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trying to find the roots of the current post-truth era, one possible path of origin presents itself when it comes to the literary tradition: the unreliable narrator. How does this phenomenon project itself in such a particular place between fact and fiction, occupied solely by literary autobiographies? Eudora Welty and Tom Robbins, two prominent 20th century literary personas, provide a detailed account of their journey towards self-realization in two connected, yet very different ways. Their memoir and autobiography provides a detailed map of this journey. We can hence speak of positive trauma when it comes to recollection of successful literary careers. Imagination, memory and choice all play an important part in this unique narratives’ creative process. Understanding the relationships between these elements provides even more understanding when it comes to unreliability and our own perception of reality. What are the specific details of memory the authors put down on paper in order to make sense of their creative lives? How do we spot their importance? What role does memory play in the creative process of these authors? How do they approach imagination? What is their relationship with their own narrators and protagonists, a.k.a. themselves? Can we trust it? Dare we trust it? And if so, how do we do it as readers? All these questions are to be addressed and discussed in the following article.

Without considering either velocity or acceleration effects, the current conventional method presented in literature applies the vertical deflection of a wheel centre caused by a flat defect to the Hertzian contact theory. This method has been numerically and theoretically proved to be inappropriate and can incorrectly predict a higher wheel-rail impact force for a low speed than a high speed. Therefore, under a hypothesis of no wheel bouncing and sliding, two new methods, the velocity-based and the acceleration-based have been proposed. The former method takes the wheel centre deflection change in each computational increment from the Hertzian contact theory while the latter applies the wheel centre acceleration caused by the flat in revolutions to the wheel as a force in dynamic simulation, which interprets the speed effects on impacts precisely. A sensitivity study proves that the velocity-based method is unreliable as opposed to the acceleration-based method. A beam/rigid FE model has also been developed to inspect the wheel-track interaction by performing dynamic analysis in the time domain. It has been found out that the impact responses predicted by the FE analysis and the velocity method are similar and the FE results heavily depend on the compute increment, which implies the FE modelling in ABAQUS may be unreliable for this issue with current applied increments. Finally, the results calculated using the acceleration method have been employed to study the suspension/damper torsional stress caused by a wheel flat. This indicates that a wheel flat may lead to potential fatigue damage if without proper maintenance management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anne Enright's The Gathering poses difficult questions about the nature of reliability in terms of citizenship and in terms of narrative discourse. Although not an unreliable narrator according to classic theoretical models, Veronica Hegarty frequently comments on the fallibility of her memory and raises questions about her narrative reliability. Over the course of the novel, Veronica sifts through three distinct narrative levels, each with a different discursive characteristic, in order to comprehend the molestation of her brother that she witnessed as a child. At first, Veronica views her fallible memory as possibly indicating unreliability when it comes to her narration of the past; by the end of the novel she embraces uncertainty as a reflection of the failure of the Irish nation and state to protect its citizens and not an expression of her unreliability. Through Veronica's shift in perspective, Enright depicts a larger struggle in 1990s and early-2000s Ireland when the public confronted decades of systemic abuse in the homes and institutions of the nation. Enright raises questions of narrative reliability in order to critique the status quo of silence that for so long dictated reliable citizenship in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maximum likelihood estimation of multilevel structural equation model (MLSEM) parameters is a preferred approach to probe theories involving latent variables in multilevel settings. Although maximum likelihood has many desirable properties, a major limitation is that it often fails to converge and can incur significant bias when implemented in studies with a small to moderate multilevel sample (e.g., fewer than 100 organizations with 10 or less individuals/organization). To address similar limitations in single-level SEM, literature has developed Croon's bias-corrected factor score path analysis estimator that converges more regularly than maximum likelihood and delivers less biased parameter estimates with small to moderate sample sizes. We derive extensions to this framework for MLSEMs and probe the degree to which the estimator retains these advantages with small to moderate multilevel samples. The estimator emerges as a useful alternative or complement to maximum likelihood because it often outperforms maximum likelihood in small to moderate multilevel samples in terms of convergence, bias, error variance, and power. The proposed estimator is implemented as a function in R using lavaan and is illustrated using a multilevel mediation example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents partial results of laboratory research into physical and mechanical characteristics of materials most commonly used as walling units in masonry structures of historic and heritage buildings. Core boreholes and specimens for the laboratory research of selected characteristics were sampled from accessible places of historic buildings, which had not been restored or reconstructed. The results of the research brought new knowledge about the unreliability (variance) of the properties of historical, mainly natural building materials, and, at the same time, pointed out the need for further research and extension of knowledge necessary for the assessment of residual physical and mechanical characteristics of historic masonry structures.

In this study the relationship between tax avoidance and tax risk was investigated by measuring tax risk based on uncertainty approach using data collected from 114 companies during the years 2009 to 2015. For this purpose, the lower effective tax rate (ETR) and non-steady tax situation over time is considered as tax avoidance and tax risk, respectively. The results show that a significant negative relationship exists between the effective tax rate and tax risk. It means that companies with lower ETR cannot continuously preserve their low level of taxes, and therefore their tax risk would be high. Hence, the policy of decrease in taxes due to its uncertainty is risky tax avoidance. This finding provides new evidence about the impact of tax policy on the overall company performance. The results also show that income fluctuation increases tax risk and tax risk of small companies is higher than the big ones. Moreover, the financial leverage can reduce tax risk due to consequential regulatory mechanisms. It is noteworthy to mention that the findings of this study can be used in risk assessment of the corporate tax policies.

The "Mr. Big Operation" (MBO) is a noncustodial investigative technique wherein covert officers, posing as members of a fictitious criminal organization, seek to lure targeted suspects by offering fulltime membership in the organization in exchange for incriminating information. The deceptive technique is known to enhance the risk of unreliable and prejudicial evidence, two factors which have been stated by the Supreme Court of Canada as being traceable to wrongful convictions. Thus, a comprehensive and robust approach to governing the admissibility of Mr. Big confessions is essential to protect targets against the inherent risks associated with the use of the technique. This article delves into the origins of MBOs in Canada and details its importation to New Zealand and Australia. Further, through a comparative analysis of relevant case law and legislation in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, this article identifies the similarities and distinctions as well as the flaws and strengths of each nation. Proposed solutions are discussed in order to strengthen protection for Mr. Big targets and provide greater consistency in those countries where MBOs are most prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trying to find the roots of the current post-truth era, one possible path of origin presents itself when it comes to the literary tradition: the unreliable narrator. How does this phenomenon project itself in such a particular place between fact and fiction, occupied solely by literary autobiographies? Eudora Welty and Tom Robbins, two prominent 20th century literary personas, provide a detailed account of their journey towards self-realization in two connected, yet very different ways. Their memoir and autobiography provides a detailed map of this journey. We can hence speak of positive trauma when it comes to recollection of successful literary careers. Imagination, memory and choice all play an important part in this unique narratives' creative process. Understanding the relationships between these elements provides even more understanding when it comes to unreliability and our own perception of reality. What are the specific details of memory the authors put down on paper in order to make sense of their creative lives? How do we spot their importance? What role does memory play in the creative process of these authors? How do they approach imagination? What is their relationship with their own narrators and protagonists, a.k.a. themselves? Can we trust it? Dare we trust it? And if so, how do we do it as readers? All these questions are to be addressed and discussed in the following article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evaluation studies frequently draw on fallible outcomes that contain significant measurement error. Ignoring outcome measurement error in the planning stages can undermine the sufficiency and efficiency of an otherwise well-designed study and can further constrain the evidence studies bring to bear on the effectiveness of programs. Objectives: We develop simple formulas to adjust statistical power, minimum detectable effect (MDE), and optimal sample allocation formulas for two-level cluster- and multisite-randomized designs when the outcome is subject to measurement error. Results: The resulting adjusted formulas suggest that outcome measurement error typically amplifies treatment effect uncertainty, reduces power, increases the MDE, and undermines the efficiency of conventional optimal sampling schemes. Therefore, achieving adequate power for a given effect size will typically demand increased sample sizes when considering fallible outcomes, while maintaining design efficiency will require increasing portions of a budget be applied toward sampling a larger number of individuals within clusters. We illustrate evaluation planning with the new formulas while comparing them to conventional formulas using hypothetical examples based on recent empirical studies. To encourage adoption of the new formulas, we implement them in the R package PowerUpR and in the PowerUp software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mimicking translational practice, pseudotranslations—original texts that present themselves as translations—hold the potential of laying bare some literary conventions that shaped the literary context in which they appear. This is also illustrated by the ambivalent nature of pseudotranslations—seen as translation by some, and as original by others—which challenges the idea of authorship in relation to modes of textual transfer. This article proposes to investigate the depiction of authorship in eighteenth‐century French pseudotranslations. The analysis will illustrate how their paratextual staging of both imaginary author and (pseudo‐)translator conveys a (meta)fictional commentary, based on a playful oscillation between construction and dismantlement. This hypothesis will be addressed through close‐readings of Mylord Stanley, ou le criminel vertueux (1747), Histoire de Miss Honora (1766) and Le philosophe anglois, ou histoire de Mr. Cleveland (1731). These novels, all part of the 'Anglomania' movement, critically engage with images of authorship and translatorship. A comparative reading of their paratexts will bring out the interplay between the imaginary author as an embodiment of the cultural authority of the source text and the creative impetus drawn from his alleged unreliability as an author (and narrator), as well as that of the translator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2-1-1 multilevel models for mediation, the effect of the mediator on the outcome is often decomposed into a between-cluster and a within-cluster effect. This can be achieved by either a manifest or a latent decomposition. In a first step, we study the impact of unreliability of the cluster means on estimators for between and within indirect effects obtained by the manifest approach. While the within effect can be unbiasedly estimated, this is not the case for the estimator of the between effect. In a second step, we focus on the impact of additive unit- and cluster-level unmeasured mediator-outcome confounding. For both the manifest and the latent approach, the estimator of the between indirect effect suffers from bias under either type of confounding, while the within effect only suffers from bias under unit-level confounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory is one of Kazuo Ishiguro's favourite themes. In all his novels, Ishiguro creates characters who struggle with their past and conscience, who constantly revisit their past, oftentimes a traumatic one, in an effort to come to terms with it. All his writings deal, in one way or another, with memory and forgetting, both at an individual and societal level. Ishiguro takes a special interest in the psychological effects of trauma, persisting in memory from childhood into middle and old age. He shows how his first-person narrators maintain human dignity and self-esteem, by resorting to specific psychic defence mechanisms and the related behaviours, characteristic of narcissism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the quantitative assessment of the unreliability of migration between habitat patches in terms of ecological corridor unreliabilities that are known only with uncertainty. The corridor unreliabilities are treated herein as log-normally distributed random variables, and hence the assessment becomes a doublystochastic one. The paper utilizes the multi-affine nature of the reliability function in deriving exact formulas for the mean and variance of the system unreliability, as well as accurate formulas for its third and fourth central moments. These formulas involve the nominal values of certain partial derivatives. The multi-affine nature is also beneficial in the development of an alternative method that involves powers rather than derivatives. These two analytical methods of moments agree reasonably with one another and with the results of Monte Carlo simulations. Several test cases are considered for typical ecology problems with corridor unreliabilities that have a significant variation in their error (range) factor. Numerical plots obtained yield plausible observations and useful insights.

Islamic Sharia has established a rule named "gharar" in order to back up and guarantee transactions and prevent loss or conflicts among those involved. This rule helps each trader or investor feel secure when entering into the transaction. The survey of religious books shows that there are different views about gharar criteria. Since financial markets face growing risks and uncertainty, providing clear criteria for gharar can prevent people from entering into transactions with unacceptable risks or the ones considered to be void. The concept of gharar is a challenging one due to its various definitions and criteria presented by jurists. Some of these have pointed out ignorance in a contract and others have focused on the ignorance which leads to danger or risk. This study used descriptive and analytical methods to offer both the literal and technical definition of gharar together with its criteria in new transactions. It has also categorized the opinions of jurists and planned an interview with contemporary jurisprudents. The aim is to provide a clear benchmark for distinguishing between gharar in new transactions and those with high risks.

Empathetic perspective-taking is one of the main psychological mechanisms behind audiences’ engagement with narrative (Coplan 2004; Eder 2006). What happens, however, when a story confronts with a character whose emotions, motivations, and beliefs we fail to understand? This paper examines the phenomenon of “unreadable minds” (Abbott 2008) from a transmedial perspective: how do audiences relate to a character who defies all attempts at making sense of his or her identity despite being the main focus of a narrative? My case studies - the novel American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis and the video game Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games 2012) - foreground two such characters: by calling attention to the opaqueness of their protagonists, they heighten the audiences’ interest in - and puzzlement at - their identity. In my comparative analysis I explore two dimensions that contribute to audiences’ sense of unknowability of the protagonists: the hallucinations and delusions experienced by both characters (an instance of what Bernaerts [2009] calls “narrative delirium”); and their extreme violence, which raises unanswered ethical questions. While bringing out the continuities between American Psycho and Hotline Miami, I also highlight how the interactivity of Hotline Miami makes the central paradox of relating to an unknowable character even more salient for the audience. In this way, I show that the video game medium has reached a level of interpretive complexity that can stand the comparison with literary fiction.

The implementation of Boolean functions by non-branching programs with a conditional stop operator is considered in an arbitrary complete finite basis. We assume that conditional stop operators of the program are absolutely reliable while all computational operators are prone to the output one-type constant faults of either type 0 or type 1. An upper bound for unreliability of the programs was found in different bases. It was proved that in some cases any Boolean function can be implemented by the non-branching program of arbitrarily high preassigned reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reads Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince (1973) as a retelling of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1603), paying special attention to the changes that the original play has gone through in order to render it more apt for a contemporary audience. Even if Murdoch also adapts the male hero, the most interesting changes she introduces are related to gender, since the female figures resembling Ophelia and Gertrude bear little resemblance to their Shakespearean counterparts. Gender is also linked to how the novel is written, especially regarding the narrator and his unreliability. Murdoch's views on women will thus be juxtaposed to those of her (male) narrator. The rest of Murdoch's characters are also crafted in Shakespearean fashion, given that almost all of them have a counterpart in the original play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, critics have theorized ethically unproblematic versions of sympathy or empathy, ones that avoid cultural appropriation or the dismissal of crucial differences between witness and sufferer. Despite the admirable impulse of this project, this article claims that these sanitized versions cannot do justice to the complex ways that sympathy works in narrative communication, especially the varied ethical ends to which readers's sympathetic reactions can be put. This article focuses on a subset of narrative communication: unreliable narratives, which, despite their original conceptualization as building a relationship of distance between narrator and reader, often engage the reader's sympathy. This article uses three cases of unreliable narration, drawing on both fiction and film, to demonstrate both their different ethical effects and how frequently "feeling with" (sympathy) and "feeling for" (empathy) are conflated. This article shows sympathy not only to be ethically complex but powerful because of its ethical complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been several retellings of the Frankenstein narrative since its publication. Peter Ackroyd's rendition of the same was published in 2008 under the title, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. The text attempts to look at Mary Shelley's narrative from a different perspective, rather than simply reiterating the events in a familiar way. It employs the historical fictional mode of storytelling. This paper attempts to study the role of Ackroyd as a reader, author and manipulator of history. It will also strive to understand the politics behind Ackroyd's attempted resurrection of Shelley, Byron, Polidori and Mary Shelley as his characters. The goal is to comprehend, how Ackroyd's voice functions within this cacophony of voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In viewing the common unreliability problem in wireless communications, the CWQ calculus (a Calculus for Wireless sensor networks from Quality perspective) was recently proposed for modeling and reasoning about WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) and their applications from a quality perspective. The CWQ calculus ensures that sensor nodes, even though in an unreliable communication network, can still behave in a reasonable manner using default values. Nevertheless, the topological structure in CWQ calculus is considered at the network level and it is tightly coupled with the processes and other configurations; this may limit its flexibility. In this paper, we extend our previous CWQ calculus to be a parametric framework to make it more flexible to be able to model and reason about networks of different topological structures. In the parametric framework, we extract the topological structure of a network and make it to be a configuration so that all topological structure changes can be captured by this framework. Besides, under the guide of program analysis, in this paper, we propose two analysis approaches for the extended CWQ calculus: 1) We develop a SAT-based analysis to check whether default values can always be available, so that some error configurations (e.g., deadlock processes), caused by unreliable communications in WSNs, will not be reached; 2) We also propose a data-driven probabilistic trust analysis to decouple the probability of receiving the expected input data from the probability of the trustworthiness of the data, so that the overall trustworthiness of the system decision is determined by performing a relational analysis to combine these two probability distributions. Finally, we give a real-world case study with the scenario of refueling a car to demonstrate the applicability of the extended calculus and these two analysis approaches on the extended calculus for WSNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) modelling of safety equipment has long been a topic of major concern. Some RAM models have focused on explicitly addressing the effect of component degradation and surveillance and maintenance policies, searching for an optimum level of the safety component RAM by adjusting surveillance and maintenance related parameters. As regards the reliability contribution, these components normally have two main types of failure mode that contribute to the probability of failure on demand (PFD): (1) by demand-caused and (2) standby-related failures. The former is normally associated with a demand failure probability, which is affected by the degradation caused by demand-related stress. Surveillance testing therefore not only introduces a positive effect, but also an adverse one, which it compensates by performing maintenance activities to eliminate or reduce the accumulated degradation. This paper proposes a new model for the demand failure probability that explicitly addresses all aspects of the effect of demand-induced stress (mostly test-induced stress), maintenance effectiveness (PAS or PAR model) and test efficiency. A case study is included on an application to a typical motor-operated valve in a nuclear power plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study by measuring tax risk based on uncertainty approach, the relationship between tax avoidance and tax risk was investigated by applying data collected from 114 companies during the years 2009 to 2015. For this purpose, the lower effective tax rate (ETR) and non-steady tax situation over time is considered as tax avoidance and tax risk, respectively. The results show that a significant negative relationship exists between the effective tax rate and tax risk. It means that companies with lower ETR cannot continuously preserve their low pay taxes, and therefore their tax risk would be high. Hence, the policy of tax decrease due to its uncertainty is a risky tax avoidance. This finding provides new evidence about the impact of tax policy on the overall company performance. The results also show that income fluctuation increases tax risk and tax risk of small companies is higher than big ones. Moreover, the financial leverage can reduce tax risk due to consequential regulatory mechanisms. It is noteworthy to mention that the findings of this study can be used in risk assessment of the corporate tax policies.

Recognition and select appropriate strategies to improve the condition of organizations in the eve of the crisis is important. Due to proper planning horizons in strategy-focused organizations, risk and decision making under uncertainty is greatly reduced. Therefore, it's necessary to specification and characterization the relationship between strategic management and risk management and select the best strategy of it. Accordingly, in this paper to demonstrate a direct correlation between the results of managerial strategic decision making and environmental analysis of organizations to find its strategic condition is used compilation model that both of them in order to inappropriate condition of organization are for selection the best option. The strategic areas identified by analyzing the internal and external environment of the organization, which includes the recognition of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with the help of SWOT Matrix. Finally, based on the criteria and methods of Wald classical approaches, Hurwicz, Maximax, Savage, Laplace, mean-variance decisions are based on expectations, the most likely conditions, Expected Opportunity Loss (EOL), the cost of uncertainty, the coefficient of variation and limits of responsibility, two strategies are determined by the choice of strategies. Also research has been conducted in Epic Arya Carton and the results are presented.