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The term "natural" is ubiquitous in advertising and branding, but limited research has investigated how consumers respond and relate to naturalness. Some researchers have documented preferences for natural products, specifically food, but there has been scant investigation of the psychological antecedents of such preferences, especially in the critical, multi-trillion-dollar domain of healthcare. Using publicly available country-level data from 41 countries and individual-level experimental and survey data from the lab and online panels, we find converging evidence that consumers do indeed differ in their preferences for relatively natural versus artificial healthcare options. These differences are influenced by the extent to which they subscribe to the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE)—a belief system that influences judgments and behaviors across diverse domains—such that people who subscribe strongly (vs. weakly) to the PWE are more likely to prefer natural healthcare options because they are more averse to external intervention in general. Further, belief in the PWE makes consumers more sensitive to the intrusiveness of an intervention than to its extent. Theoretical and substantive implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers increasingly value eco‐friendly attributes of products. Packaging serves as a medium through which consumers perceive product attributes and products convey information. However, research on the impact of packaging visual complexity on a product's perceived eco‐friendliness has not been thoroughly examined. Four studies were conducted based on visual complexity metaphor theory to examine the impact of packaging visual complexity on the eco‐friendliness perception of products. The study also investigated the mediating role of naturalness and durability perception as well as the moderating effect of external environmental threats. The results indicate that the visual complexity of packaging directly or indirectly (through perceptions of naturalness and durability) affects the eco‐friendliness perception of products. Furthermore, under high environmental threats, consumers exhibit a stronger eco‐friendly perception and purchase intention towards products with simple packaging. Eco‐friendliness perception mediates the relationship between packaging visual complexity and purchase intentions. This study contributes to the literature on visual complexity metaphors and eco‐friendly packaging and complements our knowledge of how visual packaging characteristics influence the perception of product attributes. The results provide valuable insights for marketing managers on how to use the visual complexity of packaging design to effectively convey product information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crises of climate change and biodiversity loss have pushed the aim for increasing the resilience of forest ecosystems high on the agenda of foresters and policymakers. At the same time, synergistic opportunities for restoring forests and biodiversity are emerging to safeguard these ecosystems. Naturalness is a key characteristic of forest ecosystems, which should be considered when estimating benchmarks for resilience and biodiversity conservation. The naturalness of forest ecosystems is highly dependent on the intensity of human activity, as different levels of management intensity can change the original traits of forest ecosystems. This paper presents an archetypal typology of forest ecosystems, describing the association between management and naturalness. Both features are represented as gradients covering the full spectrum observed in European forests. The array of forest ecosystem archetypes was verified using case studies across Europe. The typology provides useful information for setting targets for resilience and restoration of forest ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a recent proposal, natural concepts are represented in an optimally designed similarity space, adhering to principles a skilled engineer would use for creatures with our perceptual and cognitive capacities. One key principle is that natural concepts should be easily learnable. While evidence exists for parts of this optimal design proposal, there has been no direct evidence linking naturalness to learning until now. This article presents results from a computational study on perceptual color space, demonstrating that naturalness indeed facilitates learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mediterranean coasts are threatened by human activities that alter habitats structure and functionality, modifying vegetation and causing the loss of typical species. The definition of the conservation status of coastal habitats is essential to preserve these fragile environments through planned policies. This study aims to assess the conservation status of the habitats of community interest (sensu EEC Directive 43/92) through the analysis of biodiversity and correlating it with urbanisation. A total of 73 vegetation relevés were carried out, so allowing 13 revealing different habitats to be identified. The total plant species diversity per habitat was measured by means of the H-index, also used to assess naturalness (N), differently considering native, alien, and disturbance species. To correlate the N index with distance from urban centres, a statistical analysis was performed. The analysis showed the highest values of H+ were found in habitats 2240, 2110, 2260, and 2230, while lowest values were observed in habitats 2270* and 2240. The habitats 2270* and 2240, the closest to urban centres, have a lower naturalness score than habitats 1420, 2120, 2250*, and 2270*, where higher naturalness scores have been found and therefore lower levels of disturbance. The criteria and methods discussed in this study can be used in coastal management in order to identify the most sensitive habitats and implement an effective conservation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that concepts from the social sciences can be as natural as those from physics and chemistry, thereby answering in the positive the question of whether social metaphysics is or can be substantive. The argument takes as a starting point Douven & Gärdenfors' (Mind & Language, 35, 313–334 2020) optimality account of natural concepts, according to which natural concepts are represented by the cells of an optimally partitioned similarity space. While the account applies straightforwardly to perceptual concepts, it does not apply as straightforwardly to more abstract concepts, such as many scientific concepts. We propose an extension of Douven and Gärdenfors' optimality account that pertains to scientific concepts as well. The proposal reuses ideas from Lewis' Best Systems Account of laws of nature, but rather than invoking natural concepts (as Lewis does) defines natural scientific concepts as those that figure in the or a best systematization of the totality of facts. On this proposal, there is nothing especially different between concepts from the natural sciences and those from the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does the concept of naturalness play in the development of scientific knowledge and understanding? Whether naturalness is taken to be an ontological dimension of the world or a cognitive dimension of our human perspective within it, assumptions of naturalness seem to frame both concepts and practices that inform the partitioning of parts and the kinding of kinds. Within the natural sciences, knowledge of what something is as well as how it is studied rely on conceptual commitments. These conceptual commitments shape how entities and processes are categorized as natural depending on how naturalness has been understood within that discipline. In this paper, I explore how commitments to naturalness shape different conceptualizations of what were previously and what are now considered to be fundamental parts in plant morphology. Relying on an historically informed epistemological approach, I trace the origins and development of models of plant morphology from (1) Goethe's classical LEAF-ROOT-STEM archetype model; (2) Agnes Arber's revisions to Goethe's model reconceived in her partial-shoot theory of the leaf; and (3) Rolf Sattler's proposal for a processual model of plant morphology. These influential models posit ontologically and epistemologically inconsistent conceptualizations of the natural fundamental parts of plants and how they are related to each other. To explain what this inconsistency means for the concept of naturalness and the role it plays in plant morphology, I suggest naturalness might best be conceived of as a contextually bound classificatory concept that is made and remade through its operationalized use within a model, theory, set of practices, or discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nelson Goodman observed that we use only certain 'good' (viz. projectible) predicates during reasoning, with no obvious demarcation criterion in sight to distinguish them from the bad and gruesome ones. This apparent arbitrariness undermines the justifiability of our reasoning practices. Inspired by Quine's 1969 paper on Natural Kinds, Peter Gärdenfors proposes a cognitive criterion based on his theory of Conceptual Spaces (CS). He argues the good predicates are those referring to natural concepts, and that we can capture naturalness in terms of similarity. In contrast to Quine, he does not primarily rely on logic, but geometry. He frames his account as a descriptive project, however, and it is not obvious how it addresses the normative dimension of Goodman's Riddle. This paper develops a charitable reconstruction of his argument, based on the idea that the instrumental success of our projectible concepts is grounded in their cognitive-pragmatic naturalness. It then explores three lines of reasoning against the argument: Evolutionarily motivated skepticism, the miracles argument, and the relation between instrumental and pragmatic success. I conclude that in its current form, the CS account fails to provide any justification of reasoning beyond appealing to its instrumental success, and that a metaphysically robust notion of naturalness helps to achieve the desired goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both metaphysics and cognitive science raise the question of what natural concepts or properties are. A link between the two is notoriously hard to establish. I propose to take natural concepts or properties to be those that are revealed in interaction. The concept of affordances is refined and naturalized to spell out how interacting with objects grounds concepts. I will call this account "Ecological Empiricism". I argue that the notion of naturalness within this framework turns out to be a gradable – there are more or less natural properties – and dependent on the perspective taken – metaphysically natural properties are different from cognitive natural properties. From a metaphysical point of view, perfect correlations between actions and sensory input are relevant, which are best approximated by scientific measurement. For cognition, simple or basic actions are relevant. Although metaphysical and cognitive naturalness does not coincide according to Ecological Empiricism, it presents a common framework with a uniform conception of naturalness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging technologies can have profound conceptual implications. Their emergence frequently calls for the articulation of new concepts, or for modifications and novel applications of concepts that are already entrenched in communication and thought. In this paper, we introduce the notion of "conceptual appropriation" to capture the dynamics between concepts and emerging technologies. By conceptual appropriation, we mean the novel application of a value-laden concept to lay a contestable claim on an underdetermined phenomenon. We illustrate the dynamics of conceptual appropriation by analyzing the concept NATURE and its uptake in three discourses of emerging technology: cellular agriculture, solar geo-engineering, and biomimicry. We argue that NATURE and its cognate NATURALNESS are strongly valanced concepts upon which different stakeholders lay a claim. In doing so, stakeholders advance distinct conceptions of nature, typically to suit their own interests. Our case-studies illustrate how in discourses on emerging technology, the application of value-concepts is entangled with ideological stakes and power dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural landscapes are acknowledged for their potential to restore human health due to natural characteristics. However, modern rural development has degraded these environments, thereby diminishing the restorative potential of rural landscapes. Few studies have systematically analyzed the impact of naturalness, landscape types, and landscape elements on restorativeness using both subjective and objective measurements. This study investigated the restorative effects of various rural landscapes in Guangzhou, employing electroencephalography and eye-tracking technologies to record physiological responses and using the Restorative Components Scale and the Perceived Restorativeness and Naturalness Scale to evaluate psychological responses. The results indicated the following: (1) There was a significant positive correlation between perceived naturalness and restorativeness, surpassing the impact of actual naturalness. (2) Different landscape types had varying impacts on restorativeness at the same level of perceived naturalness. Natural forest landscapes, artificial forest landscapes, and settlement landscapes exhibited the most substantial restorative effects among the natural, semi-natural, and artificial landscapes examined, respectively. (3) Restorative properties varied across landscape elements: trees and water significantly enhanced restorativeness, whereas constructed elements reduced it. Findings from this study can provide support for policymakers to make informed decisions regarding the selection and arrangement of rural landscape types and elements to enhance mental health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invoking metaphysical naturalness is “perhaps the most popular proposed solution” to the problem of grue (Hedden in Can J Philos 45:716–743, 2016). Accordingly, Bradley (Mind 129:179–203, 2020) develops a “Lewisian” method for constraining priors based on the syntactic simplicity of descriptions of possible worlds in a language whose predicates correspond to natural properties. The Lewisian method therefore requires a solution to the arguably unsolved problem of measuring syntactic simplicity. But this paper argues that given a solution to this problem, there is a better alternative to the Lewisian method: a novel “Neo-Carnapian” method for constraining priors based on the indistinguishability of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Reliable indicators of success are needed to monitor the process of reclaiming disturbed land in order to understand the achievement of reclamation objectives. The formation of coherent dynamics of vegetation and soil development is ultimately a crucial condition for the success of reclaiming territory disturbed by surface mining and the possibility of using reclaimed land in agricultural production. The study revealed a relationship between the phytoindicator of vegetation hemeroby and the physical properties of technosols to prove its application as a measure of the restoration of the disturbed ecosystem in the reclamation process. The plant communities were classified into beta-, alpha-euhemerobic, polyhemerobic and metahemerobic levels of anthropogenic transformation. The technosols varied in the proportion of hemeroby levels of plant communities. The hemeroby level was consistent with the physical properties of technosols. A decrease in hemeroby level resulted in increased soil electrical conductivity, decreased soil penetration resistance and altered soil aggregate structure. The hemeroby of plant communities is a dependable phytoindicator of ecosystem restoration during reclamation.

Grasslands differ in many types depending on the diversity of climatic conditions and substrates. Due to the great wealth of species found in semi-natural grasslands, they conserve an essential part of the biodiversity of the European Union (EEC 43/92), defined as habitats of community interest. Using the region of Calabria (southern Italy) as a case study, this study aims to evaluate how species assemblages and a set of indicators applied to them can be used to analyse and characterize the diversity, ecological features and conservation status of grassland habitats. Vegetation analysis was carried out using the phytosociological method, and habitat ecological characteristics were defined by Ellenberg's ecological indicator adapted to the Italian flora. Multivariate analysis of the surveys by means of cluster analysis and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) made it possible to define eight habitat groups according to EEC Directive 43/92: 6110 Rocky or basophilous calcareous grasslands of the Alysso-Sedion albi, 6170 Alpine and subalpine calcareous grasslands, 6220*a Pseudo-steppe with grasses and annuals of the Thero-Brachypodietea dominated by a Lygeum spartum, 6220*b Pseudo-steppe with grasses and annuals of the Thero-Brachypodietea dominated by Hyparrhenia hirta, 6210* Semi-natural dry grasslands and scrub facies on calcareous substrates (Festuco-Bromometalia) (*important orchid sites), 6230* Species-rich Nardus grasslands, on siliceous substrates in mountain areas (and submountain areas, in Continental Europe), 6410 Molinia meadows on calcareous, peaty or clayey-siltladen soils (Molinion caeruleae), 6420 Mediterranean tall humid herb grasslands of the Molinio-Holoschoenion, 6430 Hydrophilous tall herb fringe communities of plains and of the montane to alpine levels. Temperature (T) and oisture (U) are the most statistically significant ecological factors in differentiating different habitat types. Analysis of diversity, assessed through Shannon and Evenness indices, showed that it is strongly correlated with habitat diversity as soil moisture increases. The study of ecological characteristics, correlated with biodiversity indices, helps to characterize grassland habitats, providing guidance for the implementation of active conservation policies for these habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distinguishing a natural scene from artwork is a simple task for the human visual system, but a challenging one for machines due to the wide range of psychovisual features, illumination gamuts, and varied interpretations of glossiness. While state-of-the-art image quality metrics quantify overall visual quality to a remarkable degree of accuracy, quantification of 'glossiness' of a scene to represent its naturalness is still an emerging area. The rapid growth of deep learning methods and CNN-based architectures inspired us to explore the fusion of best performing CNN architectures in this paper for an image dataset specifically created to replicate unnaturalness of artwork or portrait-like images. Performance of four CNN networks was tested using transfer learning, selective retraining and optimizing initial learning rates on a dataset of about 8.5k images created to represent various degrees of glossiness. A fusion framework was then proposed using the top two architectures. In terms of eleven levels of naturalness (0 to 10), both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the fusion frameworks was conducted. The framework resulting from fusion of GoogleNet and VGG16, referred to as GoogleVGG Fusion in this paper, is found to reach accuracies comparable to individual networks but with nearly half the computational cost. The proposed GoogleVGG Fusion model achieved an accuracy of 87.86% with the labelled scores and a Spearman's Rank Correlation (SROCC) of 0.9794. As expected, the accuracy of the proposed framework with the subjective scores in comparison with non–deep learning (DL) & DL-based methods is remarkably better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A particularly influential thesis about epistemic axiology is veritism: that true belief is the only basic, or fully non-derivative, epistemic value. One recent argument against veritism claims that the naturalness or joint-carvingness of beliefs is also a basic epistemic value. The basic epistemic value of naturalness is held to explain intuitions that true, natural beliefs have greater epistemic value than similar but unnatural beliefs. I argue that epistemic significance, rather than naturalness, can best explain any variations in the value of natural versus unnatural beliefs. Against claims that significance itself undermines veritism, I defend an account of significance that explains why the epistemic value of significance derives entirely from the value of truth. The account also shows how significance can be grounded in multiple features, while still deriving all its value from that of truth. As a result, the epistemic value of natural beliefs offers little reason to abandon veritism, in the absence of stronger arguments favoring the basic epistemic value of naturalness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractPurposeMethodResultConclusionWe examined perceptual changes in the domains of ease of understanding, naturalness, and speech severity, as well as changes in self-perceptions of voice disability, following an online group speech treatment program for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.Seven speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria associated with PD participated in a university and community-based online group speech program for 10 weeks. Speech recordings occurred remotely 1 week before and 1 week after the online program. Thirty naïve listeners rated ease of understanding, naturalness, and speech severity based on the speech recordings. Speakers’ self-perceptions of voice disability were also obtained at both time points.Individual analysis of the speech data showed that for most speakers with dysarthria, ease of understanding and perceptions of severity were rated the same or better pre- to post-treatment. Naturalness, however, was only perceived to be the same or better post-treatment in three out of seven speakers. Over half of the speakers reported improvements in their self-perception of voice disability.This pilot study highlighted the individual variability among speakers with dysarthria and the potential of online group speech treatment to maintain and/or improve speech function in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with color vision deficiency (CVD) have difficulty in distinguishing differences between colors. To compensate for the loss of color contrast experienced by CVD individuals, a lot of image recoloring approaches have been proposed. However, the state-of-the-art methods suffer from the failures of simultaneously enhancing color contrast and preserving naturalness of colors [without reducing the Quality of Vision (QOV)], high computational cost, etc. In this paper, we propose an image recoloring method using deep neural network, whose loss function takes into consideration the naturalness and contrast, and the network is trained in an unsupervised manner. Moreover, Swin transformer layer, which has long-range dependency mechanism, is adopted in the proposed method. At the same time, a dataset, which contains confusing color pairs to CVD individuals, is newly collected in this study. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, quantitative and subjective experiments have been conducted. The experimental results showed that the proposed method is competitive to the state-of-the-art methods in contrast enhancement and naturalness preservation and has a real-time advantage. The code and model will be made available at https://github.com/Ligeng-c/CVD_swin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not without contradiction, the poetry of Alberto Caeiro, of Greco-Pagan aesthetics, which defends the sensitive world as the only reality and insists on the use of the five senses as the only possible way of acquiring knowledge, can only be better understood when read against the backdrop of a Christian worldview. Based on a reading of the Christian myth of the Fall of man, the article analyses the fundamental contradictions of Caeiro's poetic project, categorically contesting his "bucolic naivety". Through reflections on human self-consciousness and the naturalness or artificiality of "(not) to think", together with a look at the ontology of language, we argue that, according to Caeiro, the human condition is essentially a contradiction, and that the apology of the "sensations" in his poetry does not stem from a naïve hedonism, but can be considered an alternative way to rescue man from the prosaic world, restoring him to an Edenic vision.

Abstract Background Socio-emotional impairments are among the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the actual knowledge has substantiated both altered and intact emotional prosodies recognition. Here, a Bayesian framework of perception is considered suggesting that the oversampling of sensory evidence would impair perception within highly variable environments. However, reliable hierarchical structures for spectral and temporal cues would foster emotion discrimination by autistics. Methods Event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) extracted from electroencephalographic (EEG) data indexed the perception of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, and sadness prosodies while listening to speech uttered by (a) human or (b) synthesized voices characterized by reduced volatility and variability of acoustic environments. The assessment of mechanisms for perception was extended to the visual domain by analyzing the behavioral accuracy within a non-social task in which dynamics of precision weighting between bottom-up evidence and top-down inferences were emphasized. Eighty children (mean 9.7 years old; standard deviation 1.8) volunteered including 40 autistics. The symptomatology was assessed at the time of the study via the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition, and parents’ responses on the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales. A mixed within-between analysis of variance was conducted to assess the effects of group (autism versus typical development), voice, emotions, and interaction between factors. A Bayesian analysis was implemented to quantify the evidence in favor of the null hypothesis in case of non-significance. Post hoc comparisons were corrected for multiple testing. Results Autistic children presented impaired emotion differentiation while listening to speech uttered by human voices, which was improved when the acoustic volatility and variability of voices were reduced. Divergent neural patterns were observed from neurotypicals to autistics, emphasizing different mechanisms for perception. Accordingly, behavioral measurements on the visual task were consistent with the over-precision ascribed to the environmental variability (sensory processing) that weakened performance. Unlike autistic children, neurotypicals could differentiate emotions induced by all voices. Conclusions This study outlines behavioral and neurophysiological mechanisms that underpin responses to sensory variability. Neurobiological insights into the processing of emotional prosodies emphasized the potential of acoustically modified emotional prosodies to improve emotion differentiation by autistics. Trial registration BioMed Central ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN18117434. Registered on September 20, 2020.

Standard accounts hold that regularities of behavior must be arbitrary to constitute a convention. Yet, there is growing consensus that conventionality is a graded phenomenon, and that conventions can be more or less natural. I develop an account of natural conventions that distinguishes two basic dimensions of conventional naturalness: a probabilistic dimension and an inherent one. A convention is probabilistically natural if it is likely to emerge in a population of agents, and inherently natural if its content is a regularity that scores high on relevant measures for naturalness. I motivate the proposal on conceptual grounds and then showcase its descriptive benefits by discussing two case studies in language: the tendency towards word-length optimality and the prevalence of shape opacity in spoken language vocabularies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study investigated users' subjective evaluation of three highly automated driving styles, in terms of comfort and naturalness, when negotiating a UK road in a high-fidelity, motion-based, driving simulator. Background: Comfort and naturalness play an important role in contributing to users' acceptance and trust of automated vehicles (AVs), although not much is understood about the types of driving style which are considered comfortable or natural. Method: A driving simulator study, simulating roads with different road geometries and speed limits, was conducted. Twenty-four participants experienced three highly automated driving styles, two of which were recordings from human drivers, and the other was based on a machine learning (ML) algorithm, termed Defensive, Aggressive, and Turner, respectively. Participants evaluated comfort or naturalness of each driving style, for each road segment, and completed a Sensation Seeking questionnaire, which assessed their risk-taking propensity. Results: Participants regarded both human-like driving styles as more comfortable and natural, compared with the less human-like, ML-based, driving controller. Particularly, between the two human-like controllers, the Defensive style was considered more comfortable, especially for the more challenging road environments. Differences in preference for controller by driver trait were also observed, with the Aggressive driving style evaluated as more natural by the high sensation seekers. Conclusion: Participants were able to distinguish between human- and machine-like AV controllers. A range of psychological concepts must be considered for the subjective evaluation of controllers. Application: Insights into how different driver groups evaluate automated vehicle controllers are important in designing more acceptable systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article, David Ludwig proposed to reorient the debate on natural kinds away from inquiring into the naturalness of kinds and toward elucidating the materiality of kinds. This article responds to Ludwig's critique of a recently proposed account of kinds and classification, the Grounded Functionality Account, against which Ludwig offsets his own account, and criticizes Ludwig's proposal to shift focus from naturalness to materiality in the philosophy of kinds and classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Egyptian novelist Najīb Maḥfūẓ has proved himself to be a genius author at incorporating a variety of academic and intercultural sources in his works. He uses many forms of Islam-related references, such as the Qur'anic and Prophetic ones, to convey his intended meanings. In the present study, we attempt to assess the translation of Qur'anic and prophetic intertextuality in Maḥfūẓ's "Cairo Trilogy" using the criteria proposed by Larson's Model(1984). This study follows a qualitative approach to analysis, i.e., the data is not in the form of numbers but in the form of texts. This study aims to discover the tactics utilized in translating Arabic Qur'anic and prophetic intertextuality into English, as well as to identify the obstacles faced by the subject translators and the reasons behind such challenges. The study concludes that irrespective of what method the translators adopt to translate Qur'anic and prophetic intertextuality, their religious and cultural background seriously influences the output of the translation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread demand for animal-sourced foods poses challenges in addressing climate change due to their significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative proteins like cultured meat show promise with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but have faced public resistance, posing substantial barriers to their broad development and adoption. This paper reports a survey that examined the perceived naturalness of protein sources as an important factor that predicts perceived risks, benefits, and support for consumption. A diverse sample from the United States considered six different protein technologies, including three newer alternative proteins such as cultured meat and three more conventional proteins. Newer alternative proteins were perceived as less natural and were less supported than conventional proteins. Additionally, the more participants perceived protein sources as natural, the less risky and more beneficial they perceived them to be, contributing to their support. These results suggest that perceived naturalness, and associated risks and benefits, could be an important factor in shaping public support for or opposition to new proteins. These findings have theoretical and broader implications for the development and adoption of sustainability technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate on how seriously one should take the naturalness puzzles as the guidelines to new physics. In this debate gravity is often put aside, as an insignificant spectator force. However, this attitude misses the entire essence of the story. Through its S -matrix formulation, gravity promotes certain puzzles, such as the cosmological constant and strong- CP problems, into the consistency issues. The respective consistency requirements make the theory highly predictive. In particular, the cosmological vacuum energy must be zero. This has fundamental implications both for strong- CP and for dark energy puzzles. QCD must include an axion as an intrinsic part of the gauge redundancy, without the need of any global symmetry. This gives ϑ¯=0 to all orders in operator expansion. Applied to cosmology, the S -matrix implies that the energy budget of the Universe cannot come from a constant. Correspondingly, the dark energy is an unambiguous signal of new physics around the Hubble scale. This article is part of the theme issue 'The particle-gravity frontier'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a 'virtuously anthropocentric' environmental ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) can provide key ecosystem services (ES) for human well-being. For this purpose, it is critical to ascertain which characteristics regulate the provision of ES by UGI. In this study, eight ES (water supply, water regulation, waste regulation, nutrient regulation, soil formation, carbon sequestration, air temperature regulation and air humidity regulation) of thirty UGI sites of Zaragoza (Spain), were evaluated using proxy indicators derived from analyzed soil samples, and in-situ measured air temperature and humidity. A principal component analysis was performed to group different ES, and to study the dispersion of different types of UGI along the distinct ES. Additionally, relationships, between the evaluated ES and predictors; flatness, imperviousness, regularity, naturalness and functioning of the UGI sites were studied through linear and quadratic regressions. Large UGI sites such as riparian zones, meanders and natural forests showed relatively high values of ES in contrast with more artificial sites. Moreover, the study showed that water supply, water regulation, soil formation, carbon sequestration and air temperature regulation were significantly and positively related to ecological naturalness and functioning, while imperviousness was the main predictor explaining the reduction of five ES. Our findings provide evidence for the existence of important interactions between predictor variables and ES in UGI. It also showed that the provision of urban ES can be improved expanding the variety and type of green infrastructure sites, decreasing impervious area, and increasing the naturalness and functioning of UGI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the game field, computer programs have surpassed top human players in many games. A well-known example is AlphaZero. These strong programs provide human players with opportunities to improve their skills. However, human players may not enjoy such strong opponents. To make middle-level players learn from playing good-quality games with strong programs, we have proposed to combine programs with distinct roles in our previous research. One role is a superhuman program that proposes and accurately evaluates candidate moves. The other role is a naturalness (or human likeness) evaluator. Candidate moves are evaluated by combining the two roles using a function, and the moves with the highest scores are played. This study builds upon our earlier work to further improve the naturalness of moves. First, we propose a search mechanism inspired by the sequential halving algorithm to decide candidate moves and the moves to play. Second, we propose a new score function to address several issues of the previous approach. We conduct experiments to compare the proposed approaches with several existing approaches. The results show that the move naturalness of he proposed approaches is greatly improved and that performance in other aspects is at least as good as existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphysicians often distinguish between joints and basic ways. Joints are the unified and joint-carving properties that trace the structure of the world. They are theorized under the ideology of structural, perfectly natural, or sparse properties. Basic ways are the ultimate and independent properties that give rise to all others. They are theorized under the ideology of grounding, where the ungrounded properties are the basic ways. While these notions are often seen as rivals, I argue that we need both, because the joints and the basic ways crosscut. For the sake being exhaustive and ecumenical, I distinguish between natural and normative sorts of joints and basic ways. I argue that, for either sort, if there is such a sort of joint and basic way, then there are joints that are not basic ways and there are basic ways that are not joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success or failure of food technologies in society depends to a large extent on the public interest, concerns, images, and expectations surrounding them. This paper delves into the landscape of public attitudes towards gene-edited foods in Japan, exploring the reasons behind the acceptance or rejection of these products. A literature review and preliminary findings from a survey conducted in Japan in 2022, aim to identify key issues crucial for evaluating societal acceptance of gene-edited foods. The study showed that the public view gene-edited foods as somewhat unnatural, but upon closer examination, significant variation in attitudes was observed among respondents. Some respondents expressed a favorable perception towards gene-edited foods, particularly those that benefit consumers, while others expressed concerns about its perceived artificiality. Moreover, a significant number of respondents displayed indifference or lack of clear perspective regarding gene-edited foods. These findings reflect the complex relationship between public attitudes, naturalness, and social acceptance of gene-edited foods. Furthermore, the study indicates the importance of paying close attention to those who refrain from expressing their viewpoints in the survey. This nuanced landscape warrants further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Packaging and labelling have become essential to how food manufacturers generate and deliver value to customers. The information displayed on the packaging can be used to communicate to customers the properties and unique characteristics of a food product (e.g. nutrients, calories and country of origin). To achieve communication goals effectively, manufacturers need to understand how consumers evaluate products based on their attributes. In particular, companies should be aware of which specific product attributes affect consumer buying behaviour and which product attributes are more critical during food assessment. So, the paper aims to investigate consumer's behaviuor linked to typical product attributes indicated on the packaging. Design/methodology/approach: The present study examines consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for a cherry jam with different attributes (brand, type of production method and price) on a sample of 2,166 Italian respondents through a choice experiment using a random parameter logit-error component model. Findings: The results showed that WTP for jams can be affected by attributes such as brand, price and production methods; precisely, they indicated that the level of naturalness in the production process constitutes the main element for the consumer's choice; however, the considerable weight that price and brand have in influencing the purchasing behaviour of the food consumer was still confirmed: in fact, a p-value of less than 0.05 was found in all cases. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that assesses the effect of different types of production on WTP for food products. In addition, this study also reflects on the importance of the level of education for consumer choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supersymmetry (SUSY) has long been considered an exceptionally promising theory. A central role for the promise has been played by naturalness arguments. Yet, given the absence of experimental findings it is questionable whether the promise will ever be fulfilled. Here, I provide an analysis of the promises associated with SUSY, employing a concept of pursuitworthiness. A research program like SUSY is pursuitworthy if (1) it has the plausible potential to provide high epistemic gain and (2) that gain can be achieved with manageable research efforts. Naturalness arguments have been employed to support both conditions (1) and (2). First, SUSY has been motivated by way of analogy: the proposed symmetry between fermions and bosons is supposed to ‘protect’ the small Higgs mass from large quantum corrections just as the electron mass is protected through the chiral symmetry. Thus, SUSY held the promise of solving a major problem of the Standard Model of particle physics. Second, naturalness arguments have been employed to indicate that such gain is achievable at relatively low cost: SUSY discoveries seemed to be well in reach of upcoming high-energy experiments. While the first part of the naturalness argument may have the right form to facilitate considerations of pursuitworthiness, the second part of the argument has been problematically overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we describe the construction of a particle physics model where chiral symmetry, broken at the UV scale by “irrelevant” d > 4 operators, is recovered at low energy. In the critical, chiral symmetric theory, masses of elementary degrees of freedom are generated by a peculiar nonperturbative field-theoretical mechanism and not as in the Higgs scenario. Consistency of mass formulae with phenomenology requires the existence of a new sector of superstrongly interacting particles (denoted by Tera-particles), gauge invariantly coupled to Standard Model matter, living at an energy scale, ΛT, of the order of a few TeVs. We give the expression of the full Lagrangian of a model encompassing quarks, Tera-quarks and W, as well as leptons, Tera-leptons, and B gauge bosons when, besides strong, there are Tera-strong and weak interactions, and also hypercharge is included.We prove that, upon integrating out the (heavy) Tera-DoFs, the resulting low-energy effective Lagrangian of the critical model essentially coincides with the Standard Model Lagrangian. This implies that the present model passes all the precision tests that the Standard Model is able to pass. There are a number of good reasons for considering speculative and unorthodox theories of this kind. First of all, unlike the Standard Model, in this scenario masses are not free parameters but are determined by the dynamics of the theory. Secondly, we have a physical understanding of the origin of the electroweak scale as the scale of a new interaction. Thirdly, we envisage a solution to the strong CP problem, and last but not least, the Higgs mass tuning problem does not even arise because there is no fundamental Higgs.

A research about translation is highly observed because people nowadays are interested in the meaning of the foreign language. In this research, the researcher wants to find out naturalness form in the translation and how much the translation sounds natural to the target reader. The researcher uses English and Indonesian version of Guardians of Ga’Hoole: The Capture novel by Kathryn Lasky to obtain the data. The researcher limits the data into the first 3 chapters of the novel. The method that the researcher uses to analyze the data is a qualitative descriptive method which covers the analysis of the source text and the target text. The researcher hopes this research can be useful for people who study translation, especially in the field of naturalness and people who conduct research about naturalness as their additional reference. There are 20 data of naturalness found in the novel and the most data found are sentences amounted to 13 data, then phrase amounted to 4, word 2 data, and the last is clause 1 data. The quality of the naturalness found in the novel is highly natural, 11 data of highly natural and 9 of natural.

The riparian zone along the Tamiang River, Aceh Province, is an important habitat for the survival of the tuntong laut (Batagur borneoensis) which is already threatened with extinction. This study aims to evaluate the quality and role of the riparian zone as a habitat for B. borneoensis along the Tamiang River, which can then be used as a reference in conservation. Riparian habitat quality was assessed by calculating the Qualitat del Bosc de Ribera (QBR) index, which was determined based on the total riparian cover, cover structure, cover quality, and channel alteration. In addition, observations of water quality (salinity, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen (DO)) and the number of riparian vegetation species were also carried out. Monitoring was carried out at five stations: Iyu River, Kampung Baru, Batang Lawang, Pusong Kapal Dermaga, and Pusong Kapal. The results showed variations in water quality between locations with DO and turbidity levels exceeding the quality standards set by the government. The richness of the types of riparian vegetation found ranged from 0-8 species (seedlings), 2-7 species (saplings), and 1-4 species (poles). The quality of riparian habitats in all study locations experienced significant degradation, including the euhemerobic and polyhemerobic (Hemeroby) categories, Cultural assisted system and Semi-transformed system (Naturalness), and Extreme degradation to poor-fair quality (QBR). The presence of B. borneoensis in the research location can adapt to the poor quality of riparian habitat. However, the density decreases significantly at higher salinity.

The Mediterranean coasts are threatened by human activities that alter habitats structure and functionality, modifying vegetation and causing the loss of typical species. The definition of the conservation status of coastal habitats is essential to preserve these fragile environments through planned policies. This study aims to assess the conservation status of the habitats of community interest (sensu EEC Directive 43/92) through the analysis of biodiversity and correlating it with urbanisation. A total of 73 vegetation relevés were carried out, so allowing 13 revealing different habitats to be identified. The total plant species diversity per habitat was measured by means of the H-index, also used to assess naturalness (N), differently considering native, alien, and disturbance species. To correlate the N index with distance from urban centres, a statistical analysis was performed. The analysis showed the highest values of H+ were found in habitats 2240, 2110, 2260, and 2230, while lowest values were observed in habitats 2270* and 2240. The habitats 2270* and 2240, the closest to urban centres, have a lower naturalness score than habitats 1420, 2120, 2250*, and 2270*, where higher naturalness scores have been found and therefore lower levels of disturbance. The criteria and methods discussed in this study can be used in coastal management in order to identify the most sensitive habitats and implement an effective conservation strategy.

Abstract Vaccinations are instances of Human Enhancement (HE) because, as biotechnologies, they are capable of augmenting the human body’s capacities. We hypothesized that vaccination refusal, as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicates a belief system that also determines attitudes toward HE. Rejection of both may be linked to well-known motives: invasiveness and alleged unnaturalness. We tested the relationship between these two phenomena by conducting two online surveys (N = 314 and N = 300; 81.5%/85.7% vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 and 18.5%/14.33% not). We also examined if getting enhanced (vaccinated) can induce a relational change toward the environment. Study 1 suggested that greater willingness to use methods to enhance cognitive abilities was more likely when methods must be infrequently used and were deemed natural and non-invasive. An affirmative attitude toward naturalness correlated negatively with the willingness to use. Interaction effects suggested increased importance of naturalness and invasiveness associated variables for unvaccinated participants. Interacting with vaccination status, affirmative attitudes toward naturalness were negatively associated with attitudes toward vaccinations and HE. Qualifying vaccination as HE did not reliably predict attitude toward vaccination or HE. Getting vaccinated led to psychological relief. We explored predictors of vaccination intention. Study 2 showed that unvaccinated perceived the vaccine as less natural but as invasive as vaccinated participants. Perceived naturalness and invasiveness were decisive for vaccination refusal. Findings suggest that rejecting vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 may indicate motives associated with rejecting other HE means and may be a valuable behavioral sample to assess a person’s broader belief system.

Federal Educational Institutes (Bundeserziehungsanstalt) represented the avant-garde of state school reform after WWI in Austria. How does the school cinema of the Bundeserziehungsanstalt Vienna-Breitensee inscribe itself in the reform-pedagogy complex of “wholeness” and “naturalness”? And: What does this mean for teaching practice or the pedagogical dispositif of educational films? As the author will argue, the concept of holistic education puts a wrench into the concept of an educational performance dispositif as narrowed by Frank Kessler to the space and time of educational media performance.

American and European adults prefer natural products and often pay premiums to purchase natural products. They may do this because they believe natural products are better, either functionally or inherently. We present a measure that assesses belief in the ‘benevolence of nature’ across a range of products and a range of situations, including safety, sensory appeal, and effectiveness. American adults show a substantial belief in the benevolence of nature. This belief is sometimes erroneous, with participants attributing higher quality to some natural products that are in fact inferior to their artificial counterparts. In support of the belief that natural products are inherently better, many participants express a preference for a natural as opposed to an artificial product when both are stipulated to be chemically identical or to have identical effects. An original set of 24 items to measure belief in the benevolence of nature is refined into a more useful 10-item scale, and correlations with related scales are assessed. Belief in the benevolence of nature is not lower in participants who have experienced at least one natural disaster.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers apply clean-eating criteria to a range of food characteristics, and the extent to which individuals are consistent in how they apply clean-eating criteria across products. Further, this study investigates how the clean-eating approach relates to underlying food choice motives. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected in a consumer survey (n = 666) in Sweden, where participants were prompted about the importance of a set of intrinsic food attributes of the "free-from" and "added" types, for three different food product types (bread, processed meat, ready meals). Data were analyzed using latent class cluster analysis, to explore segments of consumers that place similar importance to the food characteristics and hold similar food choice motives. Findings: Clean eating can be described by two distinctly different attainment strategies: avoiding undesirable characteristics or by simultaneously approaching desirable characteristics. Notably, individuals who apply clean-eating criteria in their food choices strive for healthy, natural and environmentally friendly food, but the clean-by-approach strategy implies a stronger focus on personal health in the form of weight control. Originality/value: While claims and labels on food packages concerning clean eating are implemented by food manufacturers, it remains unregulated. This study provides information for future regulations on how consumers apply clean-eating criteria, and their motives thereof. Further, the results provide insights food manufacturers regarding motives for clean eating in different consumer segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the learnability of natural concepts in the context of the conceptual spaces framework. Previous work proposed that natural concepts are represented by the cells of optimally partitioned similarity spaces, where optimality was defined in terms of a number of constraints. Among these is the constraint that optimally partitioned similarity spaces result in easily learnable concepts. While there is evidence that systems of concepts generally regarded as natural satisfy a number of the proposed optimality constraints, the connection between naturalness and learnability has been less well studied. To fill this gap, we conduct a computational study employing two standard models of concept learning. Applying these models to the learning of color concepts, we examine whether natural color concepts are more readily learned than nonnatural ones. Our findings warrant a positive answer to this question for both models employed, thus lending empirical support to the notion that learnability is a distinctive characteristic of natural concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]