10,745 research outputs found
Imsejhin ghall-qadi tal-komunita` Nisranija permezz tal-ministeru sacerdotali
No full textThe article focuses upon the call to service through the exercise of the priestly ministry. The point of departure of the study is the Johannine pericope which describes the washing of the disciples' feet by Jesus (Jn 13:1-20). The article describes how the celebration of the liturgy is a fount of vocations to the ordained ministry. The author then studies three documents of the Second Vatican Council -- Optatam Totius, Presbyterorum Ordinis and Christus Dominus -- in order to depict the centrality of service to priestly ministry. A number of evocative texts are referred to, as well as formation documents from the local Church of Malta. Furthermore, the respective contributions of Bishop Tonino Bello, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis are also given pride of place, as more light is thrown on the theme of the article.peer-reviewe
Self-supervised Natural Image Reconstruction and Large-scale Semantic Classification from Brain Activity
No full textReconstructing natural images and decoding their semantic category from fMRI brain recordings is challenging. Acquiring sufficient pairs of images and their corresponding fMRI responses, which span the huge space of natural images, is prohibitive. We present a novel self-supervised approach that goes well beyond the scarce paired data, for achieving both: (i) state-of-the art fMRI-to-image reconstruction, and (ii) first-ever large-scale semantic classification from fMRI responses. By imposing cycle consistency between a pair of deep neural networks (from image-to-fMRI & from fMRI-to-image), we train our image reconstruction network on a large number of “unpaired” natural images (images without fMRI recordings) from many novel semantic categories. This enables to adapt our reconstruction network to a very rich semantic coverage without requiring any explicit semantic supervision. Specifically, we find that combining our self-supervised training with high-level perceptual losses, gives rise to new reconstruction & classification capabilities. In particular, this perceptual training enables to classify well fMRIs of never-before-seen semantic classes, without requiring any class labels during training. This gives rise to: (i) Unprecedented image-reconstruction from fMRI of never-before-seen images (evaluated by image metrics and human testing), and (ii) Large-scale semantic classification of categories that were never-before-seen during network training. Such large-scale (1000-way) semantic classification from fMRI recordings has never been demonstrated before. Finally, we provide evidence for the biological consistency of our learned model
Grajjiet is-Santwarju tal-Madonna tal-Grazzji
No full textContents: Xewqa mitmuma - Mit-tempji pagani ghas-Santwarju tal-lum - Santwarju li jfakkar fil-grajja tal-ordni u ta' missirijietna - Strangieri devoti tal-Madonna - Mir-registru tal-offertiThe Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Grace is without doubt the most prominent building in Zabbar. The author gives a detailed description of the history of the Zabbar Sanctuary and illustrates important facts on the history of Zabbar.
Is-Santwarju tal-Madonna tal Grazzji huwa bla dubju l-aktar bini prominenti fiż-Żabbar. L-awtur jagħti deskrizzjoni dettaljata tal-istorja tas-Santwarju u jaghti fatti importanti dwar l-istorja ta’ Zabbar.
Contents: Xewqa mitmuma - Mit-tempji pagani ghas-Santwarju tal-lum - Santwarju li jfakkar fil-grajja tal-ordni u ta' missirijietna - Strangieri devoti tal-Madonna - Mir-registru tal-offertipeer-reviewe
Analysis of the absenteeism problem among employees at Georgia Mental Health Institute, 1987
No full textThe primary purposes of this paper are to analyze the problem of absenteeism among the employees at Georgia Men-tal Health Institute, and to identify the factors and major variables contributing to this problem. The methods and procedures used in gathering the data consisted of: (1) staff and management questionnaires, (2) participatory observations, (3) review of personnel records, (4) various newspaper articles, books and magazines. Findings from this research indicate that a number of the employees are not satisfied with their job, and absen-teeism is a form of protest against this dissatisfaction. Other findings indicate that male and female employees with child care problems tend to show higher absenteeism rate. Transportation is another major reason for absenteeism. This research also indicates that a number of employees are not satisfied with their work schedules, and the adaptation of work schedule such as flex-time may help to improve this problem and other related problems such as chronic lateness and high turnover. Finally, this research revealed that absenteeism due to the need to conduct 'personal business' is the most prevalent reason given for absenteeism problem. 'Child care' was also the second most frequent reason for absen-teeism among employees at Georgia Mental Health Institute. Reduction of employees job dissatisfaction, tardiness, and turnover may be accomplished if the absenteeism problem is somehow reduced
Sharing a laugh: sitcoms and the production of post-imperial Britain, 1945-1980
No full textSharing a Laugh examines the social and cultural roles of television situation comedy in Britain between 1945 and 1980. It argues that an exploration of sitcoms reveals the mindset of postwar Britons and highlights how television developed both as an industry and as a public institution. This research demonstrates how Britain metamorphosed in this period from a welfare state with an implicit promise to establish a meritocratic and expert-based society, into a multiracial, consumer society ruled by the market. It illustrates how this turnabout of British society was formulated, debated, and shaped in British sitcoms. This dissertation argues that both democratization (resulting from the expansion of the franchise after World War I) and decolonization in the post-World War II era, established culture as a prominent political space in which interaction and interconnection between state and society took place. Therefore, this work focuses on culture and on previously less noticed parties to the negotiation over power in society such as, media institutions, media practitioners, and their audiences. It demonstrates how British sitcom writers turned a form which was seen as frivolous entertainment into an inquiry that questioned the most fundamental structures of their society. Sitcoms thus addressed and engaged with the critical issues of British life: postwar consumer aspirations and shortage of housing, fears of Americanization, racism and the end of empire. Sitcoms’ incredible outreach extended these debates across the nation, and enabled a conversation that took place in the privacy of the home to resonant in the public sphere. The dissertation looks both at institutions and at trailblazing individuals who shaped the genre. It considers the role of audiences and of technological innovation in turning a staple of broadcasting into a site of public debate, education, and memory. It maintains that vintage sitcoms still shape contemporary audiences, and their understanding of the past through sitcoms’ repeated transmission on television, their availability on DVD, and via services such as YouTube.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Tal Zalmanovic
Constitutive activation of ABA receptors in Arabidopsis reveals unique regulatory circuitries
No full textSummary Abscisic acid (ABA) is best known for regulating the responses to abiotic stressors. Thus, applications of ABA signaling pathways are considered promising targets for securing yield under stress. ABA levels rise in response to abiotic stress, mounting physiological and metabolic responses that promote plant survival under unfavorable conditions. ABA elicits its effects by binding to a family of soluble receptors found in monomeric and dimeric states, differing in their affinity to ABA and co‐receptors. However, the in vivo significance of the biochemical differences between these receptors remains unclear. We took a gain‐of‐function approach to study receptor‐specific functionality. First, we introduced activating mutations that enforce active ABA‐bound receptor conformation. We then transformed Arabidopsis ABA‐deficient mutants with the constitutive receptors and monitored suppression of the ABA deficiency phenotype. Our findings suggest that PYL4 and PYL5, monomeric ABA receptors, have differential activity in regulating transpiration and transcription of ABA biosynthesis and stress response genes. Through genetic and metabolic data, we demonstrate that PYR1, but not PYL5, is sufficient to activate the ABA positive feedback mechanism. We propose that ABA signaling – from perception to response – flows differently when triggered by different PYLs, due to tissue and transcription barriers, thus resulting in distinct circuitries.European Research Council https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000781Israel Science Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/50110000397
Are independent regulatory agencies necessarily better for efficient regulation? The case of communications regulation in Israel
No full textDelegation of communications regulation to independent authorities seems to be a well-accepted norm these days; the ‘best way to go’. In this post, Tal Sokol reflects on different regulatory models and offers an assement based on the case of Israel. Afetr all, the author suggests, the general dislike that undelegated regulators seem to have received in the literature may be overrated
Qigong Sensory Training for Autism: Promising Effects on Sensory Processing, Self-Regulation, and Parenting Stress
No full textAbstract
Date Presented 4/1/2017
Preliminary results of an evidence-based pilot project with young children with or at risk for autism demonstrated that Qigong Sensory Training promoted participation in everyday occupations by improving sensory processing and self-regulation by 18% and decreasing parenting stress by 30%.
Primary Author and Speaker: Orit Tal-Atzili</jats:p
Unbiased Gradient Estimation for Differentiable Surface Splatting via Poisson Sampling
No full textWe propose an efficient and GPU-accelerated sampling framework which enables unbiased gradient approximation for differentiable point cloud rendering based on surface splatting. Our framework models the contribution of a point to the rendered image as a probability distribution. We derive an unbiased approximative gradient for the rendering function within this model. To efficiently evaluate the proposed sample estimate, we introduce a tree-based data-structure which employs multipole methods to draw samples in near linear time. Our gradient estimator allows us to avoid regularization required by previous methods, leading to a more faithful shape recovery from images. Furthermore, we validate that these improvements are applicable to real-world applications by refining the camera poses and point cloud obtained from a real-time SLAM system. Finally, employing our framework in a neural rendering setting optimizes both the point cloud and network parameters, highlighting the framework’s ability to enhance data driven approaches.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Computer Graphics and Visualisatio
Spectroscopic localization by simultaneous acquisition of the double‐spin and stimulated echoes
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