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Effective Scaffolding: Factors and Mechanisms Underlying (Detrimental) Scaffolds
No full textSituated affectivity is concerned with the way humans make use of environmental structures, so-called ›scaffolds,‹ in order to shape or in some other way affect their own affective processing, or, as discussed more recently, in order to invade the minds of others. While ever more examples of such scaffolds are brought to light, effectively broadening our understanding of the scope they can take on, one crucial question has mostly been left aside: What needs to be taken into account in order to understand why certain scaffolds are effective while others are not. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an explanatory framework that carves out some of the most prominent factors contributing to the effectiveness of scaffolds. In the end, the paper attempts to shed some light on the risks of technological resources as being fertile grounds for effective cases of mind invading scaffolds
AI Geopolitics – Algorithms as Weapons
No full textArtificial Intelligence (AI) is commonly understood as the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence and is a key area of advanced computing. Analyses of US military experts indicate that an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), i.e., an AI fully reaching human cognitive level, will be available in a few years. The US and China are currently developing new war concepts with a primary focus on the key vulnerabilities of the military system of the adversary instead of widespread destruction. In US, this is e.g. discussed as non-kinetic or cognitive warfare and in China as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare MDPW. In line with the concept of a non-kinetic cognitive warfare, AI is now projected as a new weapon type where an advanced Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) uses superior tactics and a rapid takeover of computer systems to overwhelm an adversary. While this is not yet official an official doctrine, all sides are aware that the nation who will achieve an AGI first will already have a unique technological, economic, and military advantage. The security dimension of algorithms is acknowledged: In June 2024, the leading AI firm OpenAI has hired the retired US General Paul Nakasone, the former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the military Cyber Command (CyberCom) and a few days later, it was decided to block the access to ChatGPT for China from 01 July 2024 on. The design of computer chips is already dependent on computer support with specialized software systems. The involvement of AGIs could accelerate this process to develop an ASI which is far beyond human intelligence and other computer systems. Most authors expect AGI in this decade and ASI in the first half of the 2030ies. An important finding of the ongoing ASI debate is that an ASI will need sophisticated algorithms to beat the adversary with a cycle of data input, analysis, conclusions, and actions, but does not necessarily need ‘consciousness’ which is seen as the most difficult if not even impossible part of AI development. An ASI will amplify the challenges of current AI systems: AI systems lack context knowledge and may decide too quickly. The opacity of the systems leads to explainability or interpretability issues; further problems may result from manipulated input (data poisoning) and errors (hallucinations). As a software system, AI is vulnerable to cyberattacks, although it can also detect and classify cyber threats more quickly through data analysis and pattern recognition. Wargame simulations with current generative AI Large language models (LLMs) showed that the systems tend to escalation up to nuclear strikes, because if the analysis of the communication shows that there is no progress, the AI decides to escalate. Furthermore, currently used generative AI programs use AI deception to achieve their goals as quickly as possible. The expected development of computers by other computers (machine evolution) will hand over control from humans to machines without knowing how the machine works. Already the AGI may lead to an AI explosion which can massively change daily life. Politicians and society are not prepared for the coming changes
On early sensory experience in humans and machines
No full textHuman perceptual development typically evolves in a temporally structured manner. As newborns, we start out with limited perceptual abilities and acquire greater and greater proficiencies over the subsequent months or years. In the visual modality, for instance, a newborn experiences the world with poor color sensitivity, resolution acuity, and contrast sensitivity initially. Then, over time, greater visual capabilities are being acquired. While these developmental progressions are well-established, their potential functional significance is not yet determined.
In this thesis, I report computational tests of the hypothesis that initial sensory degradations characteristic of normal human development actively support the acquisition of perceptual proficiencies. In a first study, inspired by the low-frequency prenatal auditory experience of a fetus in the intrauterine environment, I studied the consequences of commencing auditory development with initially low-pass-filtered sounds. In a second study, I examined the impact of beginning visual experience with initially color-degraded inputs. In both cases, simulations with deep neural networks revealed that training with a developmentally inspired progression of inputs, evolving from poor to rich, led to superior generalization performance and the emergence of spatially or temporally extended receptive fields. As part of a third study, I conducted computational explorations of the consequences of the joint temporal progression of visual acuity and color sensitivity during early visual development. Specifically, I tested whether this joint progression may help account for the origin of an important organizational principle of the early visual system: the division into the magnocellular and the parvocellular pathway. My computational results provide support for this hypothesis.
In addition, some of the computational studies are complemented by experiments with children who were born blind and treated for their blindness late in life, as part of the joint humanitarian and scientific initiative Project Prakash. In addition to providing important insights into cortical plasticity late in life, some of these results provide additional support in favor of the hypothesis that initial sensory degradations may be adaptive. Together, this work sheds new light on the functional significance of normal developmental trajectories, helps account for some perceptual deficits reported in individuals whose perceptual experience differs from normal development, and inspires new computational training procedures for deep neural networks
Process Management in Virtual Worlds - Virtual Reality as Innovation Driver in Organizations
No full textDue to growing price pressure, advancing digitalization and shorter product life cycles, organizations are increasingly required to continuously improve their business processes. However, the responsible process management faces barriers such as low motivation to involve of employees, complex process models and a lack of contextualization of business processes. To overcome these barriers, this cumulative dissertation takes a novel approach that explores the use of virtual reality (VR) in the management of business processes in a work context using a design science research framework. After a potential analysis, the requirements assessment, development and evaluation of a VR artifact for interactive and collaborative process modeling and analysis are presented. In addition, the economic effects of an interactive VR artifact for workplace and process design are simulated and tools for the implementation of immersive technologies in the workplace are generated. Overall, this contribution provides valuable design knowledge for highly immersive systems, insights on contextualization capabilities in business process management and approaches to determine the long-term economic impact of VR in organizations
The Geopolitics of Greenland and The Arctic
No full textThe paper analyzes the geopolitics of the Arctic which is dominated by military and security aspects, the climate change with new shipping routes, significant resources, and by Greenland with its independence debate. Eight Arctic States have territory in the Arctic Circle: United States (Alaska), Russia, Canada, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) is the world’s largest island with 2,186,000 square kilometers and approximately 56,000 inhabitants. Greenland is geologically a part of North America, but belongs politically to Europe. It is the largest Arctic landmass (as the North Pole consists of ice only) and its location between Canada and Russia explains its geostrategic importance. After the end of the cold war, an institutional framework was established for the Arctic Region; the Arctic Council is the most important with the eight Arctic States, observer states and non-governmental organizations, in particular Inuit organizations like the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). In addition, security fora were established, but all organizations are affected or even paralyzed after the suspension of Russia since 2022. The melting of ice due to the global warming opens three potential shipping routes in the North, the Northern Sea Route (NSR, Northeast Passage) around northern Russia, the Northwest Passage (NWP) through the Canadian Arctic Islands and the Central Sea Route (Transpolar Sea Route TSR). Meanwhile, Russia and China are more engaged and advancing in the Arctic region which is a major challenge for the United States of America. Various Arctic States made territorial claims in the Arctic Region based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In February 2023, the responsible Nations Commission on the Limit of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) recommended to accept Russia’s claims for a total of 1.7 million km² including the North Pole area, despite competing claims of Canda and Denmark (Greenland) which is a major strategic gain for Russia. Since World War 2, the United States are present in Greenland with a large military base which is halfway between New York and Moscow. A new security challenge for the Arctic geopolitics is China which has defined itself as a Near Arctic State in 2018 and which has built several research and satellite stations in Scandinavia. China is massively engaged in Greenlandic economy. Greenland’s independence debate has reached a critical stage where Denmark and the European Union at risk to lose their status as Arctic actors. Currently, the Greenlandic economy is heavily dependent from fishing and from Danish subsidies which cover around 20% of the state income. The utilization of its rich resources could bring Greenland the necessary income to become independent or at least to diversify its economy. On the other hand, the Greenlanders fear an uncontrolled influx of foreign workers and the destruction of their environment and of the fishery. Denmark could be replaced by another actor who would be willing to do the necessary investments. In particular, the United States could take over Denmark’s subsidies and make a major strategic gain in North America. In Greenland, a Free Association is discussed as possible solution, something which was successfully implemented by several Pacific Island States already. For these reasons, the European Union must generally show a much stronger engagement in Greenland and the Arctic to maintain its presence
Classifying Stand Compositions in Clover Grass Based on High-Resolution Multispectral UAV Images
Get PDFIn organic farming, clover is an important basis for green manure in crop rotation systems due to its nitrogen-fixing effect. However, clover is often sown in mixtures with grass to achieve a yield-increasing effect. In order to determine the quantity and distribution of clover and its influence on the subsequent crops, clover plants must be identified at the individual plant level and spatially differentiated from grass plants. In practice, this is usually done by visual estimation or extensive field sampling. High-resolution unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a more efficient alternative. In the present study, clover and grass plants were classified based on spectral information from high-resolution UAV multispectral images and texture features using a random forest classifier. Three different timestamps were observed in order to depict the phenological development of clover and grass distributions. To reduce data redundancy and processing time, relevant texture features were selected based on a wrapper analysis and combined with the original bands. Including these texture features, a significant improvement in classification accuracy of up to 8% was achieved compared to a classification based on the original bands only. Depending on the phenological stage observed, this resulted in overall accuracies between 86% and 91%. Subsequently, high-resolution UAV imagery data allow for precise management recommendations for precision agriculture with site-specific fertilization measures
Love beyond gluten: self-esteem, illness identity, and social support in romantic rejection concerns among adolescents with celiac disease
Get PDFIntroduction: Fear of stigmatization, high perceived partner burden, or refraining from self-disclosure may manifest in romantic rejection concerns among adolescents with celiac disease (CD), potentially impacting their health-related quality of life (HRQOL). This study examined the prevalence, predictors, and consequences of romantic rejection concerns among adolescents and young adults with CD.
Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 165 German adolescents and young adults (aged 14–22) with self-reported CD. Participants completed measures of romantic rejection concerns, illness identity, self-esteem, peer support, and CD-specific HRQOL.
Results: Participants reported moderate levels of concerns about the impact of CD on their romantic relationships, with no significant gender differences. Participants involved in romantic relationships expressed lower concerns of rejection, but similar preference for a “gluten-free partner.” Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that higher illness acceptance and peer support predicted lower rejection concerns. Significant interactions emerged between self-esteem and illness acceptance, and between self-esteem and peer support. Higher illness acceptance predicted fewer rejection worries only among those with high self-esteem, while peer support played a mitigating role only for those with low self-esteem. Romantic rejection concerns significantly predicted lower CD-specific HRQOL across all domains.
Discussion: Anxieties about CD's impact on romantic relationships are prevalent among adolescents and may hinder their HRQOL. The findings highlight the complex interplay between self-esteem, illness identity, and social support in shaping romantic concerns. Targeted interventions focusing on peer support and fostering positive illness identity are recommended to alleviate rejection fears and improve HRQOL among youth with CD
تحسين أداء الحصادة: نظام توصيات قائم على البيانات لتحسين الإعدادات الاولية للماكينة بناءً على السياق التشغيلي
Get PDFIn agriculture, optimizing machinery is crucial; therefore, modern combine harvesters provide an onboard system with a closed-loop to optimize performance, increasing efficiency and profitability. The harvesters begin with initial settings recommended by the manufacturers as factory defaults. These settings are refined and optimized as the harvesting progresses according to the harvesting conditions, which constitute the operational context. Diverse sectors, including e-commerce, utilize big data to develop recommendation systems from historical data. Modern combines also gather big data, allowing advancements through utilizing the optimized settings that likely exist within this data. This work aims to develop a recommendation system to propose suitable initial settings for the combine harvester using data mining techniques. There are several generic process models to guide through the standard activities of performing data mining; however, each industrial domain has its own characteristics and traits. This research develops supplementary materials to extend a standard data mining process model to cover the essential characteristics of the agricultural machinery domain. These materials are utilized to develop several recommendation models using machine learning and analytics approaches. An influencing factors schema has been defined based on the combine operational context. The research has analyzed and identified correlations between combine settings and various factors such as harvest strategy, weather, climate regions, and more. Various recommendation models are developed, utilizing data from thousands of machines. The models are evaluated using three approaches; all have favored these models over the traditional system. The models have enhanced combine performance by reducing losses and, broken grain and increasing cleanliness. This is achieved by adjusting the settings to align with harvest conditions rather than using generic conditions
Turn-taking in mother-infant interactions across development in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild
Get PDFIn his “interaction engine hypothesis” Levinson postulates that the capability of ancient
humans to socially interact paved the way for language to evolve (Levinson, 2006; 2016).
This ‘interaction engine’ consists of multiple components which have different
evolutionary origins and might be shared across the primate lineage. In this thesis I
investigated one crucial component of the interaction engine: turn-taking organisation,
which refers to the infrastructure of human interaction and can be subdivided in four
elements: flexibility, participation frameworks, temporal relationships and adjacency
pairs (Sacks et al., 1974; Pika et al., 2018). Studying turn-taking organisation across the
primate lineage might help shed light on how ancient humans interacted before the
evolution of language. This thesis takes a developmental and holistic approach focusing
on the crucial platform of mother-infant interactions in one of our closest living
relatives’ chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). In chapter 3 I explored the understudied
aspect of embodied action within interactions using conversation analytic tools. The
study introduced the concepts of “bodily affordance” and “intercorporeality” from the
field of interaction analysis and applied these to investigate how chimpanzees use their
bodies to organise playing interactions. In chapter 4 I investigated the underlying
infrastructure of mother-infant interactions focussing on the relative use of signals and
actions as well as the two turn-taking elements of temporal relationships and
participation frameworks. The results showed that the infrastructure of mother-infant
interactions can be characterized by an equal use of signals and actions, a three-second
response threshold, and high frequencies of directed gaze and body direction. These
characteristics remained remarkably consistent across factors, except for context, in
which interactions in the “urgent” context of joint-travel led to relative higher
frequencies of actions, quicker response times and lower frequencies of directed gaze
and body direction. In chapter 5, I focused on the other two elements of turn-taking:
flexibility and adjacency pairs. The results showed the occurrence of many adjacency
pair-like sequences as well as the existence of flexible clusters of interchangeable units
within mother-infant interactions. Last, in chapter 6 I employed multiple
methodologies to investigate a novel potentially idiosyncratic movement used by one
mother-infant dyad. The results argue that the movement qualifies as an idiosyncratic
gesture. This thesis provides evidence that mother-infant interactions exhibit
turn-taking organisation. This finding strengthens the hypothesis that this organisation
was likely present in the interactions of our last common ancestor before the evolution
of language, bridging the gap between human and animal communication
Bibliographie Synodality
Get PDFDie vorliegende Bibliogaphie zum Thema Synodalität umfasst über 1600 Titel, die schwerpunktmäßig in den Jahren zwischen 2013 und August 2024 veröffentlich worden sind. Sie baut auf vorhandene Bibliographien auf, erweitert diese aber. Die Datenbasis wurde sowohl durch systematische Methoden (einschlägige Datenbank-Recherche zu den Stichwörtern synodal/Synodalität/Synodality und sinodal, Vergleich der vorhandenen Biographien), als auch durch unsystematische Methoden (Schneeball-Methode) erhoben. Sie umfasst die Sprachen Deutsch, Englisch, Spanisch, Portugiesisch, Italienisch und Französisch. Es wird in die Bibliographie eingeführt