This memo describes the initial results of a project to create a self-supervised algorithm for learning object segmentation from video data. Developmental psychology and computational experience have demonstrated that the motion segmentation of objects is a simpler, more primitive process than the detection of object boundaries by static image cues. Therefore, motion information provides a plausible supervision signal for learning the static boundary detection task and for evaluating performance on a test set. A video camera and previously developed background subtraction algorithms can automatically produce a large database of motion-segmented images for minimal cost. The purpose of this work is to use the information in such a database to learn how to detect the object boundaries in novel images using static information, such as color, texture, and shape. This work was funded in part by the Office of Naval Research contract #N00014-00-1-0298, in part by the Singapore-MIT Alliance agreement of 11/6/98, and in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship.

This thesis is about climate change attitudes in Alberta, Canada. It applies a bivariate logistic analysis to the data gathered from a random stratified sampling survey held in Alberta in 2008. It finds that belief in the anthropogenic climate change and Conservative political ideology factors have a high predictive probability on an individuals willingness to pay a tax that addresses the negative effects of climate change. The subjects of individual capacity and reflexivity are examined in the light of these results and suggestions for future researchers are made. It thus offers insights on how to find human potentials within society that can help to cope with the idea of climate change. / Rural Sociology

The technology exists for the migration of healthcare data from its archaic paper-based system to an electronic one and once in digital form, to be transported anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. The advent of universally accessible healthcare data benefits all participants, but one of the outstanding problems that must be addressed is how to uniquely identify and link a patient to his or her specific medical data. To date, a few solutions to this problem have been proposed that are limited in their effectiveness. We propose the use of biometric technology within our FIRD framework in solving the unique association of a patient to his or her medical data distinctively. This would allow a patient to have real time access to all of his or her recorded healthcare information electronically whenever it is necessary, securely with minimal effort, greater effectiveness, and ease.

The purpose of this study was to compare the health profiles of women seeking residential treatment for substance abuse with women in the community. These 2 data sets consisted of a total of 621 participants. An additional aim of the present study was to examine whether these health profiles differ between the monosubstance abusing and polysubstance abusing women within the treatment group. There were a total of 257 participants in this group. All analyses controlled for the effects of age, insurance, marital status, employment and race/ethnicity. Binary logistic regressions were used to compare between and within the specified groups on the following variables: asthma, dyslipidemia, diabetes, Hepatitis B vaccination, HIV testing, hypertension, Pap smear testing, mental health problems, overweight/obesity and smoking. A follow-up analyses examined whether differences in the variables could be explained by the effects of specific control variables. Results suggested that differences in four outcomes might be explained by a single or smaller number of specific control variables. The overall results revealed that age was one of the strongest predictors of differences between the treatment and community group. When we controlled for age, marital status, low socioeconomic status (insurance, employment) and ethnicity we found that only two variables were significantly different. Women in residential showed significantly more smoking and mental health symptoms than were found in the community sample. There were no significant differences in the health profiles of polysubstance substance abusing than were found in monosubstance abusing women. The findings of the present study indicate that women seeking treatment are individuals with similar health disorders and health maintaining behaviors as the general population of women. However, women seeking treatment have significant increases in mental health disorders and smoking. Older age was related to increases in the odds of having dyslipidemia, diabetes, hypertension, and decreases in the odds of being immunized for Hepatitis B, tested for HIV, and having a Pap test in the last year. Due to anticipated-age related disorders, screening for dyslipidemia, diabetes, and hypertension should be provided for older women seeking admission to treatment. Substance abuse treatment centers for women should provide for mental health services and offer smoking cessation.

Stark tro på en rättvis värld (BJW) har setts ha samband med en benägenhet att nedvärdera olycksdrabbade men även med positiva aspekter såsom stresshantering. Politiskt har BJW setts relaterad till högerorientering. Denna studie kombinerar relationen mellan BJW och politik med fokusering på attribuering av orsaker till arbetslöshet vilket tidigare förbisetts. Elever (n = 63) från gymnasium och högskola tog ställning till föreslagna orsaker till arbetslöshet och besvarade bakgrundsfrågor inklusive politisk hemvist och två olika BJW-skalor: dels en cynisk inställning till andras misslyckanden (deserved misfortune, DM), dels en förmåga att glädjas över andras framgång (deserved good fortune, DGF). DM och DM för deltagare med lågt DGF uppvisade samband med högerpolitisk orientering, vilket även korrelerade positivt med intern attribution. En tendens till korrelation mellan DM och intern attribution återfanns, men inga signifikanta samband mellan BJW och attribution. Uppdelningen av BJW samt möjligheter till och behovet av framtida forskning diskuteras utifrån resultaten.

Non-parametric belief propagation (NBP) is a well-known message passing method for cooperative localization in wireless networks. However, due to the over-counting problem in the networks with loops, NBP’s convergence is not guaranteed, and its estimates are typically less accurate. One solution for this problem is non-parametric generalized belief propagation based on junction tree. However, this method is intractable in large-scale networks due to the high-complexity of the junction tree formation, and the high-dimensionality of the particles. Therefore, in this article, we propose the non-parametric generalized belief propagation based on pseudo-junction tree (NGBP-PJT). The main difference comparing with the standard method is the formation of pseudo-junction tree, which represents the approximated junction tree based on thin graph. In addition, in order to decrease the number of high-dimensional particles, we use more informative importance density function, and reduce the dimensionality of the messages. As by-product, we also propose NBP based on thin graph (NBP-TG), a cheaper variant of NBP, which runs on the same graph as NGBP-PJT. According to our simulation and experimental results, NGBP-PJT method outperforms NBP and NBP-TG in terms of accuracy, computational, and communication cost in reasonably sized networks. / COOPLOC / FP7-ICT WHERE2

I defend a version of cognitivist motivational internalism which I call belief internalism. The constitutive claim of any version of cognitivist motivational internalism is that moral belief entails motivation. But, while this internalist thesis captures the practical nature of morality, it is in tension with the dominantly held Humean theory of motivation. The constitutive claim of the Humean thesis is that no belief could entail motivation. In defence of this internalist it is tempting to argue either that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus. But, while succumbing to the first temptation places one under an ultimately insurmountable burden to justify the motivational exceptionality of moral beliefs, succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practical nature of morality. I avoid the temptation to defend this thesis in either of these flawed ways by defending a more radical departure from the Humean theory of motivation. I avoid the first temptation by arguing for a motivationally efficacious conception of belief. I start the defence by demonstrating that it is conceptually coherent for belief to entail motivation. I then argue that all beliefs have behavioural dispositional properties that are not predicated on desire; in particular, all beliefs can motivate assent without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. I then develop a unified and inclusive account of cognitive motivation, according to which unqualified normative cognition—which includes moral cognition—motivates normative actions without the assistance of such a desire. Beliefs of the form ‘I ought to ф’, in other words, motivate the believer to ф. I avoid the second temptation by arguing that moral belief motivates simpliciter as opposed to ceteris paribus. There are, however, both commonsense and scientifically informed counterexamples which prima facie demonstrate that it is possible to both fully believe and fully understand one’s first person cognitive moral judgement and yet not motivated by that judgement. I argue that the commonsense prima facie counterexamples are not decisive; and I argue that the scientifically informed prima facie counterexamples misinterpret the empirical research on salient psychological conditions.

Modern societies are for the most part pluralistic in their compositions and world views. As such, we are given a variety of possibilities to embrace in our everyday lives and social interactions. The plethora of religious choice is a prime example of societal pluralism. John Hick is an eminent proponent of religious pluralism. His adoption of the religious pluralist stance arises from his experience and observations of various religions and their practices wherein he has noted similarities in the development of moral individuals in spite of vastly different and exclusive truth claims made by their religious systems. Hick, in a huge leap of faith, believes these similarities among such great differences must indicate a unitary source of revelation from a Transcendent Ultimate Reality to humankind sometime during the great Axial Age of human development more than two thousand years ago.<p> Religious pluralism, in its Hickean formulation, is a call for individuals to not only abandon their religions claims to exclusive truth about the Transcendent Ultimate Reality but also to reduce religious dogmas to their essential elements and modify them in order to preclude contradictory assertions that would exclude other religious systems. The benefits would be to reduce or eliminate religious intolerance and claims to superiority; incidents of religious violence should also be expected to decrease.<p> This thesis critically examines Hicks thesis and finds that religion has a greater role to play in individual lives than Hick acknowledges. For those with weakly held religious beliefs, the call to religious pluralism may find appeal. However, for those with strongly held religious views, operating within religious structures that serve their needs and eschatological hopes, the adoption of religious pluralism of the Hickean variety may cause them to abandon something that is working well for them without replacing it with something of equal benefit. In the final analysis, I find Hicks call to embrace religious pluralism to be unpersuasive since it is not in itself a religious system; it is, rather, a philosophical system which attempts to address the epistemological challenges associated with the myriad systems of faith and belief found within the great world religions.

This thesis examines the effects of linguistic input on the development of children’s epistemic concepts. It draws upon two fundamental questions in the field of cognitive development: (a) whether distinctions between automatic and controlled forms of cognitive processing are indicative of underlying conceptual differences, and (b) whether language is critical to the process of concept development. To establish the background of the current research, a summary of how these theoretical questions have been addressed in other fields of cognitive psychology is first provided (Chapter 1). These questions are then re- examined within the specific domain of epistemic concept development (Chapter 2). Changes in false-belief processing that occur between infancy and the early preschool years are discussed in relation to two competing theories of false-belief development. A framework to explain how language promotes children’s transition between automatic and controlled forms of processing is then provided. It is suggested that language facilitates change by both reducing the cognitive demands associated with controlled response tasks as well as assisting with the formation of robust epistemic representations. An empirical study that was designed to examine the effects of epistemic language (i.e., verbs and syntax) on children’s automatic and controlled processing of belief is then described (Chapters 3 to 5). Eighty-four children (Mage = 3;5 years), who initially failed elicited measures of false-belief, were trained with visual contexts of true- and false-belief. The critical manipulation across three conditions was the linguistic input presented in conjunction with these contexts. Children heard narrations that contained either (a) the description of an agent’s actions without an epistemic verb, (b) a familiar epistemic verb (thinks) across both contexts, or (c) the familiar epistemic verb in contexts of true-belief and a novel epistemic verb (gorps) in contexts of false-belief. Results demonstrated a significant advantage for children who were trained with epistemic verbs on spontaneous measures of false-belief (i.e., anticipatory gaze). Significant effects of epistemic verb exposure were also demonstrated in novel contexts of belief induction. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theories that make distinct predictions about the role of language in epistemic concept development (Chapter 6).

Wide-band spectrum sensing is an approach for finding spectrum holes within a wideband signal with less complexity/delay than the conventional approaches. In this thesis, we propose four different algorithms for detecting the holes in a wide-band spectrum and finding the sparsity level of compressive signals. The first algorithm estimates the spectrum in an efficient manner and uses this estimation to find the holes. The second algorithm detects the spectrum holes by reconstructing channel energies instead of reconstructing the spectrum itself. In this method, the signal is fed into a number of filters. The energies of the filter outputs are used as the compressed measurement to reconstruct the signal energy. The third algorithm employs two information theoretic algorithms to find the sparsity level of a compressive signal and the last algorithm employs belief propagation for detecting the sparsity level.