Search Results (15)

According to Young Minds, ‘everyone gets angry sometimes’. Their website offers a number of de-escalating strategies, including staying calm, managing responses, and setting limits to help young people who most deem resistive. Yet, Young Minds are not alone because such logical advice is ubiquitous in the literature about challenging behaviour despite the fact that in our experience when faced with high states of arousal, most young people tend to act first and deal with the consequences later. It is not that they are stupid or non-caring, but they are human, capable of great feats as well as stupidity. The same is true for any claims that solution focused (SF) conversations can put right the several decades of psychological theory suggesting resistance requires logic and better cognition. By giving the correct thinking skills, young people will walk away from risk, avoid physical confrontation, handle challenging situations like logical thinkers, and generally discount that the process of growing up is part of the challenge. It is with this in mind that over recent years in our current SF practice (with staff group supervision), we have examined the concept of ‘resistance’ and how it can be put to use as a process of collaboration. To do this, we have revisited SF theory that preoccupied many of its pioneers during the 1980s and 1990s and attempted to make it useful for the early 2020s for professionals having conversations with young people, who, in traditional models, are labelled challenging. We want to introduce key differences of solution focused practice and how our research started to formulate a 6D-SF model (details, dynamics, dimensions, dispositions, dislocations, descriptions) for contemplating how groups of professionals relate to each other and are triggered by challenging behaviour. We do not claim to have proof, logic, or exactness on our side, but we are happy to suggest how our resistance mirrors what many of the staff teams feel and describe when working through their work. Full article

Many people wonder whether biology, including humans, will benefit or experience harm from new developments in information such as artificial intelligence (AI). Here, it is proposed that biological and non-biological information might be components of a unified process, ‘Panevolution’ or ‘Pan-Evo’, based on four basic operations—innovation, transmission, adaptation, and movement. Pan-Evo contains many types of variable objects, from molecules to ecosystems. Biological innovation includes mutations and behavioural changes; non-biological innovation includes naturally occurring physical innovations and innovation in software. Replication is commonplace in and outside biology, including autocatalytic chemicals and autonomous software replication. Adaptation includes biological selection, autocatalytic chemicals, and ‘evolutionary programming’, which is used in AI. The extension of biological speciation to non-biological information creates a concept called ‘Panspeciation’. Panevolution might benefit or harm biology, but the harm might be minimal if AI and humans behave intelligently because humans and the machines in which an AI resides might split into vastly different environments that suit them. That is a possible example of Panspeciation and would be the first speciation event involving humans for thousands of years. This event will not be particularly hostile to humans if humans learn to evaluate information and cooperate better to minimise both human stupidity and artificial simulated stupidity (ASS—a failure of AI). Full article

Diseases that are transmitted from vertebrate animals to humans are referred to as zoonotic diseases. Although microbial agents such as bacteria and parasites are linked to zoonotic events, viruses account for a high percentage of zoonotic diseases that have emerged. Worryingly, the 21st century has seen a drastic increase in the emergence and re-emergence of viral zoonotic disease. Even though humans and animals have coexisted for millennia, anthropogenic factors have severely increased interactions between the two populations, thereby increasing the risk of disease spill-over. While drivers such as climate shifts, land exploitation and wildlife trade can directly affect the (re-)emergence of viral zoonotic disease, globalisation, geopolitics and social perceptions can directly facilitate the spread of these (re-)emerging diseases. This opinion paper discusses the “intelligent” nature of viruses and their exploitation of the anthropogenic factors driving the (re-)emergence and spread of viral zoonotic disease in a modernised and connected world. Full article

One of the most prominent issues the ever-growing open-source software community faces is the abundance of buggy code. Well-established version control systems and repository hosting services such as GitHub and Maven provide a checks-and-balances structure to minimize the amount of buggy code introduced. Although these platforms are effective in mitigating the problem, it still remains. To further the efforts toward a more effective and quicker response to bugs, we must understand the factors that affect the time it takes to fix one. We apply a custom traversal algorithm to commits made for open source repositories to determine when “simple stupid bugs” were first introduced to projects and explore the factors that drive the time it takes to fix them. Using the commit history from the main development branch, we are able to identify the commit that first introduced 13 different types of simple stupid bugs in 617 of the top Java projects on GitHub. Leveraging a statistical survival model and other non-parametric statistical tests, we found that there were two main categories of categorical variables that affect a bug’s life; Time Factors and Author Factors. We find that bugs are fixed quicker if they are introduced and resolved by the same developer. Further, we discuss how the day of the week and time of day a buggy code was written and fixed affects its resolution time. These findings will provide vital insight to help the open-source community mitigate the abundance of code and can be used in future research to aid in bug-finding programs. Full article

Modern society faces major environmental problems, but there are many difficulties in studying the nature–human relationship from an integral psychosocial perspective. We propose the ecomind sponge conceptual framework, based on the mindsponge theory of information processing. We present a systematic method to examine the nature–human relationship with conceptual frameworks of system boundaries, selective exchange, and adaptive optimization. The theoretical mechanisms were constructed based on principles and new evidence in natural sciences. The core mechanism of ecomindsponge is the subjective sphere of influence, which is the limited mental representation of information received from and processed based on the objective sphere of influence–actual interactions in reality. The subjective sphere is the sum of two sub-spheres: influencing (proactive) and being influenced (reactive). Maladaptation in thinking and behavior of the mind as an information collection-cum-processor results from the deviation of the subjective sphere from reality, which includes two main types: “stupidity” and “delusion”. Using Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 urban residents, we provide consistent statistical evidence on the proposed properties of subjective spheres. The dynamic framework of ecomindsponge can be used flexibly and practically for environmental research as well as other psychosocial fields. Full article

The aim of this study is to characterize the cognitive aspect of the semantic space of hope in patients in the terminal stage of cancer. This was confirmed in the research on hope by C. R. Snyder and B. Schrank. Hope is of great importance in all the great world religions and belief systems, both as regards a personal God or impersonal deities. Hoping is a human capacity with varying affective, cognitive and behavioral dimensions. Psychological, pedagogical (particularly in the framework of special needs pedagogy and thanatological pedagogy) and theological reflection on hope can provide support for dying people. In order to conduct the research, the semantic differential research method was selected. The research technique employed was a therapeutic conversation, and the research tool was the B.L. Block’s DSN-3 test. The DSN-3 test allows one to assess hope in the semantic space in three aspects: cognitive, emotional and functional. For the purposes of this study, only the cognitive aspect was taken into account. The study was begun on 1 April 2010 and ended in the last days of December 2020. It included 110 male patients in the terminal stage of cancer. The youngest respondent was 19 years old and the oldest was 94 years old. The surveyed men most often perceived hope in the semantic space in the cognitive aspect as more true, wise, meaningful and real than false, stupid, meaningless and deceptive. Their attitude to hope was, therefore, more affirmative than negative. The research did not reveal the importance of the age of the respondents on the degree of affirmation/negation of hope in the cognitive aspect in the semantic space; however, men in the period of late maturity and professional activity expressed the lowest level of the affirmation of hope. It is worthwhile to conduct further research concerning hope in other aspects (especially emotional and functional) in the semantic space in order to use the obtained results to consider what to take into account when providing patients in the terminal stage of cancer with better personalized holistic care than before. Full article

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the public were still unaware of the disease and its transmission, and information on susceptibility and severity was not well understood. During this time, stigma of COVID-19 patients had led to some people dying in their homes because they did not want to be seen seeking treatment and getting stigmatized in the process. The study examined stigma-marking of COVID-19 patients in Facebook and Twitter messages written by youth in Malaysia. A total of 100 messages were collected from the posts of young people in Twitter (n = 66) and Facebook (n = 34) from March 2020 to April 2021 during the early phase of the pandemic. The social media postings, mostly written in Malay, were analyzed for stigma-markers. The results showed that COVID-19 stigma words were mostly related to health (57%), ethnicity (29%), social class (13%), and work (1%). The frequencies of the types of stigma-marker in Facebook comments and tweets are similar. COVID-19 patients were referred to as stupid, irresponsible, and criminals. Racist remarks were also evident in the social media messages. The findings indicate that people who are already victims of the disease are victimized further due to the stigmatization by strangers and people in their social and work circles. Full article

Green hydrogen has been known in the UK since Robert Boyle described flammable air in 1671. This paper describes how green hydrogen has become a new priority for the UK in 2021, beginning to replace fossil hydrogen production exceeding 1 Mte in 2021 when the British Government started to inject significant funding into green hydrogen sources, though much less than the USA, Germany, Japan and China. Recent progress in the UK was initiated in 2008 when the first UK green hydrogen station opened in Birmingham University, refuelling 5 hydrogen fuel cell battery electric vehicles (HFCBEVs) for the 50 PhD chemical engineering students that arrived in 2009. Only 10 kg/day were required, in contrast to the first large, green ITM power station delivering almost 600 kg/day of green hydrogen that opened in the UK, in Tyseley, in July 2021. The first question asked in this paper is: ‘What do you mean, Green?’. Then, the Clean Air Zone (CAZ) in Birmingham is described, with the key innovations defined. Progress in UK green hydrogen and fuel cell introduction is then recounted. The remarks of Elon Musk about this ‘Fool Cell; Mind bogglingly stupid’ technology are analysed to show that he is incorrect. The immediate deployment of green hydrogen stations around the UK has been planned. Another century may be needed to make green hydrogen dominant across the country, yet we will be on the correct path, once a profitable supply chain is established in 2022. Full article

Carlo Cipolla’s stupidity quadrant and his five laws of stupidity were proposed for the first time in 1976. Exposed in a humorous mood by the author, these concepts describe the interactions among human beings in terms of a semiquantitative model based on the gains and losses of the agents engaged in a process. Here, we propose a new interpretation of Cipolla’s ideas in a biophysical framework, using the well known “predator–prey”, or “Lotka–Volterra”, model. We find that there is indeed a correspondence between Cipolla’s approach, based on economics and biophysical economics. We propose a “sixth law of stupidity”, additional to the five proposed by Cipolla, stating that “humans are the stupidest species in the whole ecosystem” because of their tendency of overexploiting natural resources. Full article

The construction industry faces a challenging situation in attaining sustainable development goals. The carbon footprint of the production and use of construction materials such as the use of ordinary Portland cement in concrete products is still on the rise despite of many alternatives and technologies. In this paper, the local cross-organizational learning approach (COLA) and a systematic review of academic and professional literatures were applied in analyzing the use of fly ash as a geopolymer in the Philippine construction industry. Three primary stakeholders were considered: academe, professional organizations, and industry. Documents from each stakeholder were collected, with keywords including sustainability, fly ash, and geopolymer. These documents included published materials, newsletters, department orders, codes, and policies. Text analytics throughout the documents were applied using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model, which uses a hierarchal Bayesian-modelling process that groups set of items into topics to determine the maturity level of the organizational learning. An adoption framework is proposed aligning COLA with the awareness, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) funnel model. Results show that the organizational maturity until optimization of academe is sufficient towards interest and desire, while industry is highly encouraged to increase organizational maturity from managed to optimization towards desire and action. Factors such as organizational intelligence (OI) and organizational stupidity (OS) are to be considered in balancing critical thinking across organizations. Further studies are recommended by considering the use of COLA with ASEAN organizations in the development of sustainable construction materials. Full article

In the last years, artificial intelligence (AI) safety gained international recognition in the light of heterogeneous safety-critical and ethical issues that risk overshadowing the broad beneficial impacts of AI. In this context, the implementation of AI observatory endeavors represents one key research direction. This paper motivates the need for an inherently transdisciplinary AI observatory approach integrating diverse retrospective and counterfactual views. We delineate aims and limitations while providing hands-on-advice utilizing concrete practical examples. Distinguishing between unintentionally and intentionally triggered AI risks with diverse socio-psycho-technological impacts, we exemplify a retrospective descriptive analysis followed by a retrospective counterfactual risk analysis. Building on these AI observatory tools, we present near-term transdisciplinary guidelines for AI safety. As further contribution, we discuss differentiated and tailored long-term directions through the lens of two disparate modern AI safety paradigms. For simplicity, we refer to these two different paradigms with the terms artificial stupidity (AS) and eternal creativity (EC) respectively. While both AS and EC acknowledge the need for a hybrid cognitive-affective approach to AI safety and overlap with regard to many short-term considerations, they differ fundamentally in the nature of multiple envisaged long-term solution patterns. By compiling relevant underlying contradistinctions, we aim to provide future-oriented incentives for constructive dialectics in practical and theoretical AI safety research. Full article

Word segmentation is an essential task in automatic language processing for languages where there are no explicit word boundary markers, or where space-delimited orthographic words are too coarse-grained. In this paper we introduce the MiNgMatch Segmenter—a fast word segmentation algorithm, which reduces the problem of identifying word boundaries to finding the shortest sequence of lexical n-grams matching the input text. In order to validate our method in a low-resource scenario involving extremely sparse data, we tested it with a small corpus of text in the critically endangered language of the Ainu people living in northern parts of Japan. Furthermore, we performed a series of experiments comparing our algorithm with systems utilizing state-of-the-art lexical n-gram-based language modelling techniques (namely, Stupid Backoff model and a model with modified Kneser-Ney smoothing), as well as a neural model performing word segmentation as character sequence labelling. The experimental results we obtained demonstrate the high performance of our algorithm, comparable with the other best-performing models. Given its low computational cost and competitive results, we believe that the proposed approach could be extended to other languages, and possibly also to other Natural Language Processing tasks, such as speech recognition. Full article

This review paper presents a framework to evaluate the artificial intelligence (AI) readiness for the healthcare sector in developing countries: a combination of adequate technical or technological expertise, financial sustainability, and socio-political commitment embedded in a healthy psycho-cultural context could bring about the smooth transitioning toward an AI-powered healthcare sector. Taking the Vietnamese healthcare sector as a case study, this paper attempts to clarify the negative and positive influencers. With only about 1500 publications about AI from 1998 to 2017 according to the latest Elsevier AI report, Vietnamese physicians are still capable of applying the state-of-the-art AI techniques in their research. However, a deeper look at the funding sources suggests a lack of socio-political commitment, hence the financial sustainability, to advance the field. The AI readiness in Vietnam’s healthcare also suffers from the unprepared information infrastructure—using text mining for the official annual reports from 2012 to 2016 of the Ministry of Health, the paper found that the frequency of the word “database” actually decreases from 2012 to 2016, and the word has a high probability to accompany words such as “lacking”, “standardizing”, “inefficient”, and “inaccurate.” Finally, manifestations of psycho-cultural elements such as the public’s mistaken views on AI or the non-transparent, inflexible and redundant of Vietnamese organizational structures can impede the transition to an AI-powered healthcare sector. Full article

Research policies ensuing from the Convention on Biological Diversity made huge funds available to study biodiversity. These were mostly dedicated to projects aimed at providing services to taxonomy via information and technology, or to develop “modern”, i.e., molecular, approaches to taxonomy. Traditional taxonomy was overly neglected and is in serious distress all over the world. It is argued that both novel and traditional ways to study biodiversity are essential and that the demise of traditional taxonomy (based on phenotypes) in the era of biodiversity is the result of an unwise policy, mainly fostered by portions of the scientific community that aim at taking total advantage of the funds dedicated to the study of biodiversity. Full article