We attempted to identify the psychobiological mechanisms that mediate the process by which the sensation seeking trait culminates in behavior. We used the Sensation Seeking Scales to assess the SS trait in individuals who expressed a desire to skydive. We obtained measures of autonomic (heart rate) and endocrine (salivary cortisol) activity before, during and after skydiving. To distinguish the contribution of novelty, we compared novices (N=29) to experienced jumpers (N=15). All jumpers exhibited HPA-axis activation; novices exhibited a prolonged response and more extreme peak in cortisol compared to experienced jumpers, suggesting that novelty contributes to an intense pattern of stress responding. Both groups displayed increases in heart rate; there were no significant differences between the groups, indicating that repeated exposure to the stressor did not habituate this system. We provided evidence that the stress response systems instantiate novelty and risk to motivate and reward behavioral expressions of the SS trait.

This dissertation interrogates the generation of novel sense and meaning in the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In taking up the theme of creative transformation prominent in his work, I show how the emergence of novel sense and the advent of meaning structures are made possible through the asymmetrical relation of adversity and cliché. While the scholarship focuses primarily on expression, institution, and reversibility as the three principal forms of creative transformation within the work of Merleau-Ponty, I maintain that this asymmetrical relation provides the originary ground on which these forms operate. To this end, this project consists primarily of the elucidation of three terms within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s thought – namely, novelty, cliché, and adversity – and the latter two notion’s roles in the generation of sense and meaning manifest in several fields of experience including perception, the aesthetic, and the political. The immediate import of this project is in its contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship through a description of the relation of adversity and cliché on the generation of sense and meaning which has received little attention to date. Subsequently, this project – like the inauguration of sense and meaning – institutes a trajectory for future research. This dissertation serves to describe a fertile field of interrogation both within and in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s work on adversity, cliché, and novelty.

Mineração de fluxos contínuos de dados é uma área de pesquisa emergente que visa extrair conhecimento a partir de grandes quantidades de dados, gerados continuamente. Detecção de novidade é uma tarefa de classificação que consiste em reconhecer que um exemplo ou conjunto de exemplos em um fluxo de dados diferem significativamente dos exemplos vistos anteriormente. Essa é uma importante tarefa para fluxos contínuos de dados, principalmente porque novos conceitos podem aparecer, desaparecer ou evoluir ao longo do tempo. A maioria dos trabalhos da literatura apresentam a detecção de novidade como uma tarefa de classificação binária. Poucos trabalhos tratam essa tarefa como multiclasse, mas usam medidas de avaliação binária. Em vários problemas, o correto seria tratar a detecção de novidade em fluxos contínuos de dados como uma tarefa multiclasse, no qual o conceito conhecido do problema é formado por uma ou mais classes, e diferentes novas classes podem aparecer ao longo do tempo. Esta tese propõe um novo algoritmo MINAS para detecção de novidade em fluxos contínuos de dados. MINAS considera que a detecção de novidade é uma tarefa multiclasse. Na fase de treinamento, MINAS constrói um modelo de decisão com base em um conjunto de exemplos rotulados. Na fase de aplicação, novos exemplos são classificados usando o modelo de decisão atual, ou marcados como desconhecidos. Grupos de exemplos desconhecidos podem formar padrões-novidade válidos, que são então adicionados ao modelo de decisão. O modelo de decisão é atualizado ao longo do fluxo a fim de refletir mudanças nas classes conhecidas e permitir inserção de padrões-novidade. Esta tese também propõe uma nova metodologia para avaliação de algoritmos para detecção de novidade em fluxos contínuos de dados. Essa metodologia associa os padrões-novidade não rotulados às classes reais do problema, permitindo assim avaliar a matriz de confusão que é incremental e retangular. Além disso, a metodologia de avaliação propõe avaliar os exemplos desconhecidos separadamente e utilizar medidas de avaliação multiclasse. Por último, esta tese apresenta uma série de experimentos executados usando o MINAS e os principais algoritmos da literatura em bases de dados artificiais e reais. Além disso, o MINAS foi aplicado a um problema real, que consiste no reconhecimento de atividades humanas usando dados de acelerômetro. Os resultados experimentais mostram o potencial do algoritmo e da metodologia propostos / Data stream mining is an emergent research area that aims to extract knowledge from large amounts of continuously generated data. Novelty detection is a classification task that assesses if an example or a set of examples differ significantly from the previously seen examples. This is an important task for data streams, mainly because new concepts may appear, disappear or evolve over time. Most of the work found in the novelty detection literature presents novelty detection as a binary classification task. A few authors treat this task as multiclass, but even they use binary evaluation measures. In several real problems, novelty detection in data streams must be treated as a multiclass task, in which, the known concept about the problem is composed by one or more classes and different new classes may appear over time. This thesis proposes a new algorithm MINAS for novelty detection in data streams. MINAS deals with novelty detection as a multiclass task. In the training phase, MINAS builds a decision model based on a labeled data set. In the application phase, new examples are classified using the decision model, or marked with an unknown profile. Groups of unknown examples can be later used to create valid novelty patterns, which are added to the current decision model. The decision model is updated as new data arrives in the stream in order to reflect changes in the known classes and to allow the addition of novelty patterns. This thesis also proposes a new methodology to evaluate classifiers for novelty detection in data streams. This methodology associates the unlabeled novelty patterns to the true problem classes, allowing the evaluation of a confusion matrix that is incremental and rectangular. In addition, the proposed methodology allows the evaluation of unknown examples separately and the use multiclass evaluation measures. Additionally, this thesis presents a set of experiments carried out comparing the MINAS algorithm and the main novelty detection algorithms found in the literature, using artificial and real data sets. Finally, MINAS was applied to a human activity recognition problem using accelerometer data. The experimental results show the potential of the proposed algorithm and methodologies

abstract: Human-inhabited or -disturbed areas pose many unique challenges for wildlife, including increased human exposure, novel challenges, such as finding food or nesting sites in novel structures, anthropogenic noises, and novel predators. Animals inhabiting these environments must adapt to such changes by learning to exploit new resources and avoid danger. To my knowledge no study has comprehensively assessed behavioral reactions of urban and rural populations to numerous novel environmental stimuli. I tested behavioral responses of urban, suburban, and rural house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) to novel stimuli (e.g. objects, noises, food), to presentation of a native predator model (Accipiter striatus) and a human, and to two problem-solving challenges (escaping confinement and food-finding). Although I found few population-level differences in behavioral responses to novel objects, environment, and food, I found compelling differences in how finches from different sites responded to novel noise. When played a novel sound (whale call or ship horn), urban and suburban house finches approached their food source more quickly and spent more time on it than rural birds, and urban and suburban birds were more active during the whale-noise presentation. In addition, while there were no differences in response to the native predator, rural birds showed higher levels of stress behaviors when presented with a human. When I replicated this study in juveniles, I found that exposure to humans during development more accurately predicted behavioral differences than capture site. Finally, I found that urban birds were better at solving an escape problem, whereas rural birds were better at solving a food-finding challenge. These results indicate that not all anthropogenic changes affect animal populations equally and that determining the aversive natural-history conditions and challenges of taxa may help urban ecologists better understand the direction and degree to which animals respond to human-induced rapid environmental alterations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2018

In order to learn a new word, a young child must extricate the correct object from multiple possible items in front of them, make an initial association between the specific word-form and the particular referent, robustly link the new word and referent and integrate the new word into their lexicon. Recent research suggests processes that focus attention on the most novel objects in a complex environment, as well as the child's own developing vocabulary play critical roles in this process. This thesis aims to understand the influence of novelty and prior vocabulary knowledge on referent selection and how the interaction of novelty and knowledge can lead to word learning. A series of empirical studies first probed the use of children's endogenous novelty bias in a referent selection task, and then explored how the use of novelty was related to retention of newly mapped word-referent pairs. A second set of studies explored children's use of vocabulary knowledge in ambiguous learning situations by varying the strength of knowledge for competing items present during novel word learning. Finally, a Hebbian Normalized Recurrent Network model was used to explore the underlying associative process of referent selection and retention in novelty- or knowledge-based word learning tasks. Counter to prior work, results here suggest that novelty can override knowledge and in fact, be a detriment to word learning. Children demonstrate a novelty bias across multiple contexts and tasks, but the dominant use of novelty does not translate to retention and does not appear to implicate the use of the child's lexicon. As novelty diminishes and vocabulary knowledge increases, some children can overcome this bias and demonstrate retention for new word-referent pairs. Moreover, the results also suggest that when disambiguation requires the use of weak prior knowledge, more cognitive processing is necessary. The increases in processing subsequently translate to retention for new word-referent pairs. The empirical and computational results together suggest potential limitations of these findings to word learning and suggest future directions exploring variability in object and word representations during learning.

La réflexion sur la création, aussi féconde soit-elle, porte le plus souvent soit sur les oeuvres, soit sur l'attitude créatrice, mais la passerelle est rarement établie entre ces deux axes de questionnement. Notre tâche consiste précisément à réfléchir au lieu qui unit un créateur à son oeuvre. Nous souhaitons montrer que créer une oeuvre peut avoir une incidence existentielle. Nous nous demanderons à quelles conditions la création permet précisément à un sujet de se construire et nous dirons en quoi peut consister cette construction du sujet.

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A premier distinction of liberal democracy is its praise of novelty and change, in the form of technological innovations and new expressions of personal liberty. To understand and critique our dedication to innovation, I study classical, medieval and early modern views on what the most important changes are for human beings—the changes of political regime and the changes of the soul. The philosophers from Plato to Machiavelli studied the desirability and possibility of political preservation, the effects of conversion and its relationship to notions of divine providence, and the changes brought by new religious institutions of a quasi-political character. The classical philosophers emphasize the importance and the difficulty of political preservation. In the Republic, Plato shows that a defensive conservatism results in political change. In the Symposium, while making human desire a major cause of change, he shows the human longing for preservation, as well. The attempt to make a lasting city is an effort to resist the tide of change which overtakes all things. In the fifth book of his Politics, Aristotle shows his expectation that political change will always occur, and that its many different causes make it difficult to master. The Christian revelation praises newness as the quality of conversion, whose difficult political consequences emerge at the beginning of Augustine’s City of God. His initial deprecation of political preservation in favor of conversion gives way to an insistence on preservation’s importance once conversion is widespread. Because the agent of conversion is the Church, a quasi-political institution, Marsilius in his Defender of the Peace revises Aristotle’s account of political change. Machiavelli challenges the possibility of genuine political endurance through a critique of its basis in dubious stories about the past. His praise of the innovating prince considers men’s ambivalent attitudes toward novelty in a way that our casual embrace of innovation does not. By appearing everywhere, innovation has now gone into eclipse. The praise of newness obscures the changes human beings once thought were the most important. / Government

The purpose of the study was to provide a comprehensive framework that explains how consumer experiences within new, innovative media affect advertising effectiveness. Several concerns about previous advertising models motivated this study. For instance, advertising models traditionally have focused on message recipients’ characteristics and information processes, ignoring the significant role of media in understanding advertising effectiveness. In addition, recently developed advertising models dealing with the impact of media have been narrowly applied to a specific medium, the Internet, and have focused largely on interactivity. The proposed model and our findings highlighted the prominent roles of media novelty and presence in enhancing advertising effectiveness in an innovative, new medium that emphasizes vividness, stereoscopic 3-D. The novelty effect, created by the newness of the medium, had the power to attract viewers’ attention and the increased attention enhanced their sense of presence, the experience of being plunged into a new virtual world that advertisers constructed. The findings demonstrated that these sequential relationships can result in positive measures of advertising effectiveness, such as improved product knowledge and increased enjoyment, and ultimately more favorable attitudes toward the ad. Also our findings revealed that an irritation, such as cybersickness resulting from the stereoscopic 3-D, can hinder ad viewers’ communication processes and reduce their attention to the ad and their enjoyment of it. The model predicted that user characteristics, such as innovativeness, curiosity, and previous experience with the medium, would affect the process, but no effects were found. The current research provided advertising practitioners and researchers with opportunities to consider the significant role of media, especially innovative media, in assessing overall advertising effectiveness. For managers, it highlighted the potential of stereoscopic 3-D technology as an emerging advertising vehicle. Given the rapid changes in the media environment, it is increasingly important to understand the important roles that media play in advertising effectiveness. / text

Στη συγκεριμένη διπλωματική εργασία γίνεται μια σχοινοτενής μελέτη των τεχνικών αναγνώρισης νέων γεγονότων (ανωμαλιών ή outliers) σε ευρεία σετ δεδομένων. Το απαράιτητο θεωρητικό background που απαιτείται για την κατανόηση των τεχνικών παρέχεται ξεχωριστά προκειμένου να εξασφαλιστεί η συνοχή του κειμένου. Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο γίνεται εισαγωγή στην έννοια και στις εφαρμογές του novelty detection, ενώ παρέχεται μια πρώτη κατηγοριοποίηση των τεχνικών αυτών. Στο Κεφάλαιο 2 αναλύονται οι στατιστικές προσεγγίσεις που έχουν προταθεί, τόσο οι παραμετρικές όσο και οι μη-παραμετρικές. Στα κεφάλαια 3 και 4 γίνεται μια εισαγωγή στα νευρωνικά δίκτυα και στα SVM προκείμένου να εξηγηθεί η χρήση τους στις εφαρμογές αναγνώρισης νέων γεγονότων ή ανωμαλιών (Κεφάλαιο 5). Ολοκληρώνοντας στη συγκεκριμένη διπλωματική εργασία στατιστικές προσεγγίσεις καθώς επίσης και τεχνικές βασιζόμενες σε νευρωνικά δίκτυα και SVM παρουσιάζονται με σαφήνεια, για την ανίχνευση νέων γεγονότων, ενώ η συγκριτική μελέτη τους παρέχει έναν συνοπτικό οδηγό-εργαλέιο που συνοψίζει τα πλεονεκτήματα και τα μειονεκτήματα των παρουσιαθέντων τεχνικών. / -