Academic literature on the topic 'Non Null Soft Set'

The Rhetoric of Soft Power: Public Diplomacy in Global Contexts provides a comparative assessment of public diplomacy and strategic communication initiatives in order to portray how Joseph Nye’s notion of “soft power” has translated into context-specific strategies of international influence. The book examines four cases—Japan, Venezuela, China, and the United States—to illuminate the particular significance of culture, foreign publics, and communication technologies for the foreign policy ambitions of each country. This study explores the notion of soft power as a set of theoretical arguments about power, and as a reflection of how nation-states perceive what is an increasingly necessary perspective on international relations in an age of ubiquitous global communication flows and encroaching networks of non-state actors. Through an analysis of policy discourse, public diplomacy initiatives, and related programs of strategic influence, soft power in each case represents a localized set of assumptions about the requirements of persuasion, the relevance of foreign audiences to state goals, and the perception of what counts as a soft power resource. This timely analysis provides an unprecedented comparative investigation of the relationship between soft power and public diplomacy.

This chapter maintains that the doctrine of sources is constructed around a set of shared intuitions and accepted wisdom. One of them is that there exists no hierarchy among sources of international law and that these are, to all intents and purposes, of equal rank and status. The chapter takes a critical look at this ‘non-hierarchy’ thesis, arguing that it is descriptively problematic as it tends to conceal the fact that international legal actors (States, judges, scholars) constantly establish more or less formalized hierarchies of worth and status among law-making processes. These are, admittedly, soft and transient hierarchies that very much depend on contexts, circumstances, the identity of the legal subjects, and the projects they pursue. But these are hierarchies nonetheless inasmuch as that they involve a differentiation of sources ‘in a normative light’.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Linguistic theorizing has revised the switch metaphor of parameters as being part of Universal Grammar. Within an epigenetic approach to language (Biberauer et al., 2014; Roberts, 2019), parameters result from the interaction of innate (linguistic) knowledge and universal non-language-specific cognitive optimization strategies, which are set in relation to the child’s experience. Languages vary at different levels of granularity (Baker, 2014), which is expressed in a parameter taxonomy, more particularly in parameter hierarchies (Roberts, 2019) distinguishing macro-, meso-, micro-, and nanoparameters (Biberauer et al., 2014). In the context of multilingualism, Mac Swan (2000) has argued that some components of the architecture of the language faculty are duplicated in multilingual children, while others are not. Parameter hierarchies, defined as previously, belong to the non-duplicated components. Therefore, multilingual children set the parameters simultaneously for all their different languages at the relevant level of variation. Taken together, these assumptions can account for acceleration effects exceeding monolingual limits in multilingual French as a non-null-subject language, if (one of) the other language(s) is a null-subject language like Italian or Spanish for example. The results reported come from longitudinal studies of balanced as well as unbalanced multilingual children during early stages of language development (from 1;6 until the age of 5) and cross-sectional studies of multilingual children at similar ages.

In this chapter a new concept named Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multiset is introduced, which is an attempt to combine the two concepts: Intuitionistic Fuzzy sets and Fuzzy Multisets. The basic operations and their various properties are discussed. The authors discussed two significant applications of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multisets. Most of human reasoning involves the use of variables whose values are fuzzy sets. This is the basis for the concept of a linguistic variable. But in some situations like decision making problems, the description by a linguistic variable in terms of membership function only is not adequate. There is chance of existing a non-null complement. There are situations that each element has different membership values. In such situations Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multisets is more adequate. Here the authors present Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multisets as a tool for reasoning such a situation through a medical diagnosis problem. As the second application, accuracy of Collaborative Robots using the concept of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multiset is discussed.

This chapter devises a new concept of priority weighted neutrosophic refined soft set (PWNRSS) by combining neutrosophic refined sets and soft sets implemented with prioritized universal elements and weightage-imposed parameters. The concepts of PWNRS subset, PWNRS null set, and PWNRS universal set are defined. Based on the definitions of n-norm and n-co-norm, the theoretical operations of PWNRS sets such as union, intersection, and complement are defined. AND-product and OR-product between two priority-weighted neutrosophic refined soft sets are introduced. Furthermore, priority weights neutrosophic refined soft set is expanded to MCDM technique to handle decision-making issues. TOPSIS has been examined more thoroughly for the PWNRSS decision-making issue. This proposed method might be extremely valuable in large-scale decision-making situations. Numerical examples are also provided to demonstrate the methodologies' dependability and applicability.

This chapter will explore why there has been a turn to non-binding norms in international law more generally, and international humanitarian law (IHL) specifically, to see if common motivations can be found. The statements of purpose behind the adoption of the various manuals, codes of conduct, and other non-binding norms will thus be examined, to ascertain whether any common reasoning underpins the adoption of such instruments and documents. This chapter will do this by looking only to the primary documentation of the instruments themselves—i.e., only the officially released document containing the instrument. The discussion of these documents will be framed by a discussion and analysis of theories of soft law compliance, looking at why other branches of international law—such as economic law and environmental law—have embraced non-binding norms. Does the theory of why soft law norms are created match the practice of creating soft law norms? This theoretical analysis of why soft law norms are adopted, coupled with the practical examination of why particular IHL non-binding norms have been developed, will set the parameters for the discussion and analysis that will take place in the remainder of the book.

Les Quatre Premiers livres des Eneydes du treselegant poete Virgile, Traduictz de Latin en prose Francoyse, par ma dame Helisenne, A LA TRADUCTION DESQUELZ Y A PLURALITE DE PROPOS, QUI PAR MANIERE DE PHRASE Y sont adjoustez : ce que beaucoup sert à l’elucidation et decoration desdictz Livres, dirigez à tresillustre et tresauguste Prince Francois premier de ce nom invictissime Roy de France. De Crenne [Marque de l’imprimeur : des chardons dans un vase, avec le texte « Patere aut abstine. » [à gauche] – « Nul ne s’y frotte. » [à droite)] Avec Privilege. On les vend à Paris, en la Rue neufve nostre Dame à l’enseigne sainct JEHAN Baptiste, pres saincte GENEVIEFVE des Ardens, par Denys Janot

Abstract The vast preponderance of work to date on syntactic change from the perspective of formal linguistics has been couched within the Principles and Parameters framework — see Battye and Roberts (1995) and van Kemenade and Vincent (1997) for representative collections of papers. Inevitably, too, given the time at which the research reported in these volumes was conducted, both principles and parameters were construed in absolute terms. A parameter was either on or off, and once set could not be overridden; principles had to be obeyed absolutely. Put in other terms, the constraints on such a system were of the ‘hard’ variety. In the present chapter we suggest instead that a number of classic issues in the study of grammar change come into sharper focus once we (a) adopt the assumptions of a different analytical framework, namely Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), and (b) interpret the system of grammatical constraints as ‘soft’ or violable along the lines of Optimality Theory (OT).

Abstract One of the most important questions in identifying the behaviour and performance of enterprises in any economy is that of what happens when they veer towards financial insolvency. Even if few enterprises actually face this situation and even for enterprises that have never faced it, their views on the consequences of insolvency may act as powerful incentive mechanisms. So far we have said virtually nothing about this, for two reasons. On the empirical side, our basic data-set is not particularly suitable for exploring this issue. On the methodological side, it is important to try to identify and understand the economic behaviour of Chinese state-owned enterprises under what might be termed ‘normal ‘ conditions. This is not just because we need some benchmark against which we may evaluate behaviour in or near insolvency, though that is important. It is also because nearly all our estimation procedures are linear. While this traditional assumption may be acceptable for exploring behaviour under normal conditionson the grounds that the potential gains from using non-linear methods are unlikely to justify the increased complexity and loss of rigour-it is very unlikely to be acceptable for exploring behaviour in or near insolvency, because enterprises in the latter condition may well show quite significant departures from behaviour in non-solvency states. Indeed it would be surprising if it were otherwise. We have therefore preferred to conduct most of our analysis excluding enterprises that are financially very weak and so far without regard to the behaviour of the latter or the problems they pose. It is the purpose of this chapter, in contrast, to look specifically at the issue of financial weakness in Chinese state-owned enterprises and its consequences.

Microarray studies and gene expression analysis have received significant attention over the last few years and provide many promising avenues towards the understanding of fundamental questions in biology and medicine. In this chapter, the authors show that a combined GA-fuzzy classification system can be employed for effective mining of gene expression data. The applied classifier consists of a set of fuzzy if-then rules that allow for accurate non-linear classification of input patterns. A small number of fuzzy if-then rules are selected through means of a genetic algorithm, and are capable of providing a compact classifier for gene expression analysis. Experimental results on various well-known gene expression datasets confirm good classification performance of our approach.

Abstract Soft piezoelectric composites (SPCs) show great promise as next-generation energy harvesting materials, with the potential to outperform piezoelectric polymers with limited elastic stretchability (e.g., PVDF) and traditional brittle piezoelectric ceramics (e.g., PZT). Presently, however, SPCs remain an emerging class of materials, with relatively few comprehensive investigations holistically exploring their synthesis, electro-mechanical property characterization, large-strain constitutive modeling, and non-linear mechanics and dynamics. In this paper, we take first steps toward addressing this compelling research opportunity. A three-component SPC is synthesized, consisting of an ultra-stretchable Ecoflex silicone rubber matrix, micron-sized PMN-PT piezoelectric particles, and CNTs that serve as inter-particle conductive “bridges.” Mechanical, electrical, and coupled electro-mechanical properties are quantified. A thermodynamically consistent, fully non-linear, finite-strain constitutive model is presented, based on a gentle adaptation of an existing transversely isotropic non-linear electro-elastic constitutive framework. Use of the particle orientation vector as an independent variable leads to two-way coupling between mechanics and electricity not present in the isotropic counterpart of this constitutive model. A prototype free energy function with the electric field as the independent variable is proposed that captures the essential physics. This free energy leads to a compact set of non-linear, finite-strain constitutive equations whose mathematical forms have direct analogue to the linear, small-strain theory of piezoelectricity.

Abstract Determining whether an assembly can be constructed from its components at the design stage results in reduction of assembly problems downstream. One approach to determine if an assembly can be constructed is to perform a disassembly evaluation of the assembly’s geometric model. Abstractions derived from the geometric model may be used to evaluate the disassembly sequence. This paper presents two abstractions to support the disassembly analysis: 1) the Assembly Topology Graph (ATG), and 2) the set of boundary components. The first abstraction, the ATG, is a graph whose nodes represent the components in the assembly, and whose edges represent a non-null intersection of the convex hulls of component pairs. The second abstraction, the set of boundary components, represents the set of components that intersect the boundary of the assembly which is the convex hull of the assembly. The use of the abstractions in determining the validity of the assembly is discussed in the paper.

Point set registration (PSR) is a crucial problem in computer vision and pattern recognition. Existing PSR methods cannot align point sets robustly due to degradations, such as deformation, noise, occlusion, outlier, and multi-view changes. In this paper, we present a self-selected regularized Gaussian fields criterion for nonrigid point matching. Unlike most existing methods, we formulate the registration problem as a sparse approximation task with low rank constraint in reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). A self-selected mechanism is used to dynamically assign real-valued label for each point in an accuracy-aware weighting manner, which makes the model focus more on the reliable points in position. Based on the label, an equivalent matching number optimization is embedded into the non-rigid criterion to enhance the reliability of the approximation. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a better result in both registration accuracy and correct matches compared to state-of-the-art approaches.

This work analyses the post impact behavior of a mechanical system consisting of an oscillator and an unbalanced non–ideal electrical motor. The impact between the mechanical system and a rigid wall is based on the assumption that the impacting bodies undergo local deformations. The method used in the present work is similar to the Discrete Element Method for particle systems modeled with a “soft–sphere” mechanism. The contact forces are modeled using a nonlinear damped Hertzian Spring-Dashpot system. The mathematical model of the mechanical system is represented by a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The transient and steady-state responses are discussed. As the motor is considered a non ideal energy source, the Sommerfeld effect is also analyzed. The impact model is first applied for a single freely falling particle and then in the proposed mechanical system. Non-dimensional expressions for the contact force and numerical simulations of the mechanical system behavior are also presented.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) continue to revolutionize image recognition technology and are being used in non-image related fields such as cybersecurity. They are known to work as feature extractors, identifying patterns within large data sets, but when dealing with nonnatural data, what these features represent is not understood. Several class activation map (CAM) visualization tools are available that assist with understanding the CNN decisions when used with images, but they are not intuitively comprehended when dealing with nonnatural security data. Understanding what the extracted features represent should enable the data analyst and model architect tailor a model to maximize the extracted features while minimizing the computational parameters. In this paper we offer a new tool Model integrated Class Activation Maps, (MiCAM) which allows the analyst the ability to visually compare extracted feature intensities at the individual layer detail. We explore using this new tool to analyse several datasets. First the MNIST handwriting data set to gain a baseline understanding. We then analyse two security data sets: computers process metrics from cloud based application servers that are infected with malware and the CIC-IDS-2017 IP data traffic set and identify how re-ordering nonnatural security related data affects feature extraction performance and identify how reordering the data affect feature extraction performance.

Spring operated pressure relief valves (SOPRVs) are essential components of technical systems. As parts of safety systems, they protect people and the environment from technological hazards. Their ability to open at a predefined pressure is considered the most important feature. The reliability of this function depends on numerous operational and design factors. In this paper, we examine the effects of design measures on the mechanical loads in seat seals of SOPRVs. In particular, we evaluate the applicability of the principle of non-uniform system stiffness in order to systematically control the mechanical loads in seat seals for an exemplary case of a flat faced soft seated SOPRV. We systematically vary design parameters and accurately estimate the contact stresses as well as the set pressure by performing non-linear finite element analyses. We focus on the quasi-static case of a closed seal, since dynamic effects of the opening and closing processes are not within the scope of this work. In our contribution, we show that the application of these design measures can significantly influence both the initial contact stresses and the set pressure at a constant spring force. In particular, the effects of the taper angle are analyzed and discussed.

Maximum entropy deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been demonstrated on a range of challenging continuous tasks. However, existing methods either suffer from severe instability when training on large off-policy data or cannot scale to tasks with very high state and action dimensionality such as 3D humanoid locomotion. Besides, the optimality of desired Boltzmann policy set for non-optimal soft value function is not persuasive enough. In this paper, we first derive soft policy gradient based on entropy regularized expected reward objective for RL with continuous actions. Then, we present an off-policy actor-critic, model-free maximum entropy deep RL algorithm called deep soft policy gradient (DSPG) by combining soft policy gradient with soft Bellman equation. To ensure stable learning while eliminating the need of two separate critics for soft value functions, we leverage double sampling approach to making the soft Bellman equation tractable. The experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms in performance over off-policy prior methods.

The present study is concerned with the “Free Flexural (or bending) Vibrations of Orthotropic Composite Mindlin Plates with a Bonded Non-Central (or Eccentric) Lap Joint”. The Mindlin plate adherends or panels of dissimilar, orthotropic material are connected by an adhesively bonded non-central (or eccentric) single lap joint. The adhesive layer is considered to be relatively very thin and linearly elastic. The theoretical formulation is based on the combination of the full set of the dynamic plate equations and the adhesive layer stress-displacement equations. Eventually, the system of equations is reduced to a set of the first order governing ordinary differential equations in the “state vector” form. The governing system of the differential equations is numerically integrated by means of the “Modified Transfer Matrix Method (with Interpolation and/or Chebyshev Polynomials)”. The effect of the non-central (or eccentric) location of the bonded lap joint is investigated and presented in detail in terms of natural frequencies and the associated mode shapes. The significant effects of the “hard” or the “soft” adhesive layer constants on the mode shapes and the natural frequencies are also investigated. Some important parametric studies such as the influences of the “Joint Length Ratio”, the “Joint Position Ratio” and the “Bending Rigidity Ratio” on the natural frequencies are computed and presented for the “hard” and the “soft” adhesive cases.

The hypothalamic melanocortin system plays a central role in the regulation of food consumption and energy homeostasis in mammals. Accordingly, our working hypothesis in this project was that genetic editing of the mc4r gene, encoding Melanocortin Receptor 4 (MC4R), will enhance food consumption, feed efficiency and growth in fish. To test this hypothesis and to assess the utility of mc4r editing for the enhancement of feed efficiency and growth in fish, the following objectives were set: Test the effect of the mc4r-null allele on feeding behavior, growth, metabolism and survival in zebrafish. Generate mc4r-null alleles in tilapia and examine the consequences for growth and survival, feed efficiency and body composition. Generate and examine the effect of naturally-occurring mc4r alleles found in swordfish on feeding behavior, growth and survival in zebrafish. Define the MC4R-mediated and MC4R-independent effects of AgRP by crossing mc4r- null strains with fish lacking AgRP neurons or the agrpgene. Our results in zebrafish did not support our hypothesis. While knockout of the agrpgene or genetic ablation of hypothalamic AgRP neurons led to reduced food intake in zebrafish larvae, knockout (KO) of the mc4r gene not only did not increase the rate of food intake but even reduced it. Since Melanocortin Receptor 3 (MC3R) has also been proposed to be involved in hypothalamic control of food intake, we also tested the effectofmc3r gene KO. Again, contrary to our hypothesis, the rate of food intake decreased. The next step was to generate a double mutant lucking both functional MC3R and MC4R. Again, the double KO exhibited reduced food intake. Thus, the only manipulation within the melanocortin system that affected food intake in consistent with the expected role of the system was seen in zebrafish larvae upon agrpKO. Interestingly, despite the apparent reduced food intake in the larval stage, these fish grow to be of the same size as wildtype fish at the adult stage. Altogether, it seems that there is a compensatory mechanism that overrides the effect of genetic manipulations of the melanocortin system in zebrafish. Under Aim 3, we introduced the Xna1, XnB1l, and XnB2A mutations from the Xiphophorus MC4R alleles into the zebrafish MC4R gene. We hypothesized that these MC4R mutations would act as dominant negative alleles to increase growth by suppressing endogenous MC4R activity. When we examined the activity of the three mutant alleles, we were unable to document any inhibition of a co-transfected wild type MC4R allele, hence we did not introduce these alleles into zebrafish. Since teleost fish possess two agrpgenes we also tested the effect of KO of the agrp2 gene and ablation of the AgRP2 cells. We found that the AgRP2 system does not affect food consumption but may rather be involved in modulating the stress response. To try to apply genetic editing in farmed fish species we turned to tilapia. Injection of exogenous AgRP in adult tilapia induced significant changes in the expression of pituitary hormones. Genetic editing in tilapia is far more complicated than in zebrafish. Nevertheless, we managed to generate one mutant fish carrying a mutation in mc4r. That individual died before reaching sexual maturity. Thus, our attempt to generate an mc4r-mutant tilapia line was almost successful and indicate out non-obvious capability to generate mutant tilapia.

The objectives of this project were to develop nondestructive methods for detection of internal properties and firmness of fruits and vegetables. One method was based on a soft piezoelectric film transducer developed in the Technion, for analysis of fruit response to low-energy excitation. The second method was a dot-matrix piezoelectric transducer of North Carolina State University, developed for contact-pressure analysis of fruit during impact. Two research teams, one in Israel and the other in North Carolina, coordinated their research effort according to the specific objectives of the project, to develop and apply the two complementary methods for quality control of agricultural commodities. In Israel: An improved firmness testing system was developed and tested with tropical fruits. The new system included an instrumented fruit-bed of three flexible piezoelectric sensors and miniature electromagnetic hammers, which served as fruit support and low-energy excitation device, respectively. Resonant frequencies were detected for determination of firmness index. Two new acoustic parameters were developed for evaluation of fruit firmness and maturity: a dumping-ratio and a centeroid of the frequency response. Experiments were performed with avocado and mango fruits. The internal damping ratio, which may indicate fruit ripeness, increased monotonically with time, while resonant frequencies and firmness indices decreased with time. Fruit samples were tested daily by destructive penetration test. A fairy high correlation was found in tropical fruits between the penetration force and the new acoustic parameters; a lower correlation was found between this parameter and the conventional firmness index. Improved table-top firmness testing units, Firmalon, with data-logging system and on-line data analysis capacity have been built. The new device was used for the full-scale experiments in the next two years, ahead of the original program and BARD timetable. Close cooperation was initiated with local industry for development of both off-line and on-line sorting and quality control of more agricultural commodities. Firmalon units were produced and operated in major packaging houses in Israel, Belgium and Washington State, on mango and avocado, apples, pears, tomatoes, melons and some other fruits, to gain field experience with the new method. The accumulated experimental data from all these activities is still analyzed, to improve firmness sorting criteria and shelf-life predicting curves for the different fruits. The test program in commercial CA storage facilities in Washington State included seven apple varieties: Fuji, Braeburn, Gala, Granny Smith, Jonagold, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and D'Anjou pear variety. FI master-curves could be developed for the Braeburn, Gala, Granny Smith and Jonagold apples. These fruits showed a steady ripening process during the test period. Yet, more work should be conducted to reduce scattering of the data and to determine the confidence limits of the method. Nearly constant FI in Red Delicious and the fluctuations of FI in the Fuji apples should be re-examined. Three sets of experiment were performed with Flandria tomatoes. Despite the complex structure of the tomatoes, the acoustic method could be used for firmness evaluation and to follow the ripening evolution with time. Close agreement was achieved between the auction expert evaluation and that of the nondestructive acoustic test, where firmness index of 4.0 and more indicated grade-A tomatoes. More work is performed to refine the sorting algorithm and to develop a general ripening scale for automatic grading of tomatoes for the fresh fruit market. Galia melons were tested in Israel, in simulated export conditions. It was concluded that the Firmalon is capable of detecting the ripening of melons nondestructively, and sorted out the defective fruits from the export shipment. The cooperation with local industry resulted in development of automatic on-line prototype of the acoustic sensor, that may be incorporated with the export quality control system for melons. More interesting is the development of the remote firmness sensing method for sealed CA cool-rooms, where most of the full-year fruit yield in stored for off-season consumption. Hundreds of ripening monitor systems have been installed in major fruit storage facilities, and being evaluated now by the consumers. If successful, the new method may cause a major change in long-term fruit storage technology. More uses of the acoustic test method have been considered, for monitoring fruit maturity and harvest time, testing fruit samples or each individual fruit when entering the storage facilities, packaging house and auction, and in the supermarket. This approach may result in a full line of equipment for nondestructive quality control of fruits and vegetables, from the orchard or the greenhouse, through the entire sorting, grading and storage process, up to the consumer table. The developed technology offers a tool to determine the maturity of the fruits nondestructively by monitoring their acoustic response to mechanical impulse on the tree. A special device was built and preliminary tested in mango fruit. More development is needed to develop a portable, hand operated sensing method for this purpose. In North Carolina: Analysis method based on an Auto-Regressive (AR) model was developed for detecting the first resonance of fruit from their response to mechanical impulse. The algorithm included a routine that detects the first resonant frequency from as many sensors as possible. Experiments on Red Delicious apples were performed and their firmness was determined. The AR method allowed the detection of the first resonance. The method could be fast enough to be utilized in a real time sorting machine. Yet, further study is needed to look for improvement of the search algorithm of the methods. An impact contact-pressure measurement system and Neural Network (NN) identification method were developed to investigate the relationships between surface pressure distributions on selected fruits and their respective internal textural qualities. A piezoelectric dot-matrix pressure transducer was developed for the purpose of acquiring time-sampled pressure profiles during impact. The acquired data was transferred into a personal computer and accurate visualization of animated data were presented. Preliminary test with 10 apples has been performed. Measurement were made by the contact-pressure transducer in two different positions. Complementary measurements were made on the same apples by using the Firmalon and Magness Taylor (MT) testers. Three-layer neural network was designed. 2/3 of the contact-pressure data were used as training input data and corresponding MT data as training target data. The remaining data were used as NN checking data. Six samples randomly chosen from the ten measured samples and their corresponding Firmalon values were used as the NN training and target data, respectively. The remaining four samples' data were input to the NN. The NN results consistent with the Firmness Tester values. So, if more training data would be obtained, the output should be more accurate. In addition, the Firmness Tester values do not consistent with MT firmness tester values. The NN method developed in this study appears to be a useful tool to emulate the MT Firmness test results without destroying the apple samples. To get more accurate estimation of MT firmness a much larger training data set is required. When the larger sensitive area of the pressure sensor being developed in this project becomes available, the entire contact 'shape' will provide additional information and the neural network results would be more accurate. It has been shown that the impact information can be utilized in the determination of internal quality factors of fruit. Until now,