scholarly journals Quantifying Non-Stationarity with Information Theory

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 1609
Author(s):  
Carlos Granero-Belinchón ◽  
Stéphane G. Roux ◽  
Nicolas B. Garnier

We introduce an index based on information theory to quantify the stationarity of a stochastic process. The index compares on the one hand the information contained in the increment at the time scale τ of the process at time t with, on the other hand, the extra information in the variable at time t that is not present at time t−τ. By varying the scale τ, the index can explore a full range of scales. We thus obtain a multi-scale quantity that is not restricted to the first two moments of the density distribution, nor to the covariance, but that probes the complete dependences in the process. This index indeed provides a measure of the regularity of the process at a given scale. Not only is this index able to indicate whether a realization of the process is stationary, but its evolution across scales also indicates how rough and non-stationary it is. We show how the index behaves for various synthetic processes proposed to model fluid turbulence, as well as on experimental fluid turbulence measurements.

2018 ◽  
pp. 761-769
Author(s):  
Olga A. Ginatulina ◽  

The article analyzes the phenomenon of document as assessed in the study of value. To begin with, it poses a problem of contradictory axiological status of document in modern society. On the one hand, document is objectively important, as it completes certain practical tasks, and yet, on the other hand, documents and document management are receive a negative assessment in public consciousness. In order to understand this situation, the article analyzes the concept of ‘value’ and concludes that certain objects of the material world receive this status, if they are included in public practice and promote progress of society or human development. Although this abstract step towards a better understanding of values does not provide a comprehensive answer to the question of axiological nature of document, it however indicates a trend in development of thought towards analysis of the development of human nature. The document is an artifact that objectifies and reifies a certain side of human nature. Human nature is a heterogeneous phenomenon and exists on two levels. The first abstract level is represented by the human race and embodies the full range of universal features of humanity. The second level is the specific embodiment of generic universal human nature in specific historical type of individuals. Between these two levels there is a contradiction. On the one hand, man by nature tends toward universality, on the other hand, realization of his nature is limited by the frameworks of historical era and contributes to the development of only one side of the race. Accordingly, document has value only within a certain historical stage and conflicts with the trend of universal development of human nature, and thus receives a negative evaluation. However, emergence of a new type of work (general scientific work) will help to overcome this alienation between generic and limited individual human being, and therefore will make a great impact on the nature of document, making it more ‘human,’ thus increasing its value in the eyes of society.


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandhya Sundaresan

The paper focuses on an interesting form of (person) indexical shift in the Dravidian language Tamil which surfaces as 1SG agreement marking in a clause embedded under a speech predicate. I show that this agreement is an instance of indexical shift and label it "monstrous agreement". However, I demonstrate that its full range of empirical properties cannot be adequately explained by the major analyses of indexical shift in the literature. The bulk of these, I argue, in addition to being predominantly semantic in spirit, and thus ill-equipped to deal with a morphosyntactic phenomenon like agreement, also involve two core misconceptions regarding indexicality vs. logophoricity on the one hand and speech vs. attitude predicates on the other. I propose that these core assumptions be strongly re-evaluated from first principles and that syntactic and typological clues on the subject be paid more heed. I propose a new analysis of the Tamil paradigms which derives indexical shift within an enriched grammatical model involving contextual features instantiated in a structurally articulated cartographic left periphery.


Entropy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olimpia Lombardi ◽  
Cristian López

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) intends to provide a principled theoretical approach able to characterize consciousness both quantitatively and qualitatively. By starting off identifying the fundamental properties of experience itself, IIT develops a formal framework that relates those properties to the physical substratum of consciousness. One of the central features of ITT is the role that information plays in the theory. On the one hand, one of the self-evident truths about consciousness is that it is informative. On the other hand, mechanisms and systems of mechanics can contribute to consciousness only if they specify systems’ intrinsic information. In this paper, we will conceptually analyze the notion of information underlying ITT. Following previous work on the matter, we will particularly argue that information within ITT should be understood in the light of a causal-manipulabilist view of information (López and Lombardi 2018), conforming to which information is an entity that must be involved in causal links in order to be precisely defined. Those causal links are brought to light by means of interventionist procedures following Woodward’s and Pearl’s version of the manipulability theories of causation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Forker

This paper is concerned with the relationship between complexity and variation. The main goal is to lay out the conceptual foundations and to develop and systematize reasonable hypotheses such as to set out concrete research questions for future investigations. I first compare how complexity and variation have synchronically been studied and what kinds of questions have been asked in those studies. Departing from earlier surveys of different definitions of complexity, here I classify the majority of complexity studies into two broad types based on two ways of defining this concept. The first type determines and measures linguistic complexity by counting numbers of items (e.g., linguistic forms or rules and interactions between forms). The second type makes use of transparency and the principle of One-Meaning–One-Form. In addition, linguistic complexity has been defined by means of concepts from information theory, namely in terms of description length or information content, but those studies are in the minority. Then I define linguistic variation as a situation when two or more linguistic forms have identical or largely identical meaning and it is possible to use either the one or the other variant. Variation can be free or linguistically or socially conditioned. I argue that there is an implicational relationship between complexity of the first type that is defined in terms of numbers of items and variation. Variation is a type of complexity because it implies the existence of more than one linguistic form per meaning. But not every type of complexity involves variation because complexity defined on the basis of transparency does not necessarily imply the existence of more than one form. In the following I discuss extralinguistic factors that (possibly) have an impact on socially conditioned variation and/or complexity and can lead to an increase or decrease of complexity and/or variation. I conclude with suggestions of how to further examine the relationship between complexity and variation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (07) ◽  
pp. 12757-12764
Author(s):  
Xianfang Zeng ◽  
Yusu Pan ◽  
Mengmeng Wang ◽  
Jiangning Zhang ◽  
Yong Liu

Recent works have shown how realistic talking face images can be obtained under the supervision of geometry guidance, e.g., facial landmark or boundary. To alleviate the demand for manual annotations, in this paper, we propose a novel self-supervised hybrid model (DAE-GAN) that learns how to reenact face naturally given large amounts of unlabeled videos. Our approach combines two deforming autoencoders with the latest advances in the conditional generation. On the one hand, we adopt the deforming autoencoder to disentangle identity and pose representations. A strong prior in talking face videos is that each frame can be encoded as two parts: one for video-specific identity and the other for various poses. Inspired by that, we utilize a multi-frame deforming autoencoder to learn a pose-invariant embedded face for each video. Meanwhile, a multi-scale deforming autoencoder is proposed to extract pose-related information for each frame. On the other hand, the conditional generator allows for enhancing fine details and overall reality. It leverages the disentangled features to generate photo-realistic and pose-alike face images. We evaluate our model on VoxCeleb1 and RaFD dataset. Experiment results demonstrate the superior quality of reenacted images and the flexibility of transferring facial movements between identities.


1997 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Sarina Uilenberg

The present investigation was carried out in Holambra, a community of Dutch origin in Brazil. The goal was to analyze the codeswitching between Dutch and Portuguese practised by the immigrants in their everyday speech, taking into account both grammatical and functional aspects. Moreover, the codeswitching of the first and second generations were compared, focusing on the different motives, the size of switched constituents, and the type of codeswitching. Previous theories suggested a relationship between grammatical characteristics on the one hand, and functions of individual switches, attitudes towards the languages and communities involved, and language ability on the other hand. In this article, results of the three analyses are presented and the language use and codeswitching of the different generations in this community are described. The results show an intermediate generation consisting of the most balanced bilinguals, who codeswitch often and without difficulties, using the full range of both languages. The first and second generations, however, show less diversity in their codeswitching, mainly switching nouns. Finally, suggestions for future investigation are presented.


1999 ◽  
Vol 157 ◽  
pp. 115-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Le-Yin Zhang

The Chinese central-provincial fiscal relationship of the reform era has been at the centre of academic attention in the last few years. It is rapidly becoming one of the most researched areas regarding China. Despite numerous publications, however, there are still some crucial issues that have not been sufficiently elucidated. First, the emphasis of discussions so far has been on formal budgetary relations, particularly the distributive pattern of revenue collection. In reality, the scope and impact of the Chinese budget are very much smaller than those elsewhere and the pattern of revenue collection is only one aspect of the multi-faceted central-provincial fiscal relationship. An appreciation of these aspects and their implications requires a better understanding of the full range of arenas in which the Chinese central government interacts with the provinces over public finance than is currently available. Secondly, it is generally accepted that the Chinese central-provincial fiscal relationship has been decentralized during the reform era, and that this change has underpinned the growing strength of the provinces and the decline in central power. However, the change in the relationship is actually more complex than one-dimensional decentralization would suggest, and the link between fiscal decentralization and political decentralization is less straightforward from a comparative perspective. Thirdly, it is widely accepted that there has been a fiscal decline in China and that the revenue-sharing system – implemented up to 1993 – was the cause of this decline. From this understanding, erroneous conclusions have been drawn. On the one hand, some scholars suggest that this decline signifies a limit on the Chinese state in its relation to the economy, and it is this factor that has underpinned the success of the Chinese economy during the reform. On the other, this decline is considered to epitomize the emergence of a “weak centre, strong localities” situation in China that may eventually lead to the disintegration of the Chinese political system. But it is far from established that there has indeed been a fiscal decline in the true sense of the term. The same can be said on the question of this decline, if it exists, representing the limiting of the Chinese state in relation to the economy or the decline of the central power relative to that of the provinces. Fourthly, in 1994 the Chinese government launched important reforms to the central-provincial fiscal relationship, aiming to replace the previous revenue-sharing system with a tax-sharing system (TSS, or fenshuizhi), and ultimately to stem so-called fiscal decline. Despite earlier reported problems, recent official reports have claimed substantial success of this reform in terms of improvement in the so-called “two ratios” – the ratio of budgetary revenue to GDP, and the ratio of central budgetary revenue to total budgetary revenue. What do these two ratios signify? How should we interpret such success? Does the success on the one hand confirm the allegation that the revenue-sharing system was the cause of the Chinese fiscal decline? And does it on the other hand indicate a strengthening in the centre's power relative to the provinces'?


Episteme ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford C. Goldberg

ABSTRACTElsewhere I and others have argued that evidence one should have had can bear on the justification of one's belief, in the form of defeating one's justification. In this paper, I am interested in knowing how evidence one should have had (on the one hand) and one's higher-order evidence (on the other) interact in determinations of the justification of belief. In doing so I aim to address two types of scenario that previous discussions have left open. In one type of scenario, there is a clash between a subject's higher-order evidence and the evidence she should have had: S's higher-order evidence is misleading as to the existence or likely epistemic bearing of further evidence she should have. In the other, while there is further evidence S should have had, this evidence would only have offered additional support for S's belief that p. The picture I offer derives from two “epistemic ceiling” principles linking evidence to justification: one's justification for the belief that p can be no higher than it is on one's total evidence, nor can it be higher than what it would have been had one had all of the evidence one should have had. Together, these two principles entail what I call the doctrine of Epistemic Strict Liability: insofar as one fails to have evidence one should have had, one is epistemically answerable to that evidence whatever reasons one happened to have regarding the likely epistemic bearing of that evidence. I suggest that such a position can account for the battery of intuitions elicited in the full range of cases I will be considering.


2015 ◽  
pp. 674
Author(s):  
Sandhya Sundaresan

The paper focuses on an interesting form of (person) indexical shift in the Dravidian language Tamil which surfaces as 1SG agreement marking in a clause embedded under a speech predicate. I show that this agreement is an instance of indexical shift and label it "monstrous agreement". However, I demonstrate that its full range of empirical properties cannot be adequately explained by the major analyses of indexical shift in the literature. The bulk of these, I argue, in addition to being predominantly semantic in spirit, and thus ill-equipped to deal with a morphosyntactic phenomenon like agreement, also involve two core misconceptions regarding indexicality vs. logophoricity on the one hand and speech vs. attitude predicates on the other. I propose that these core assumptions be strongly re-evaluated from first principles and that syntactic and typological clues on the subject be paid more heed. I propose a new analysis of the Tamil paradigms which derives indexical shift within an enriched grammatical model involving contextual features instantiated in a structurally articulated cartographic left periphery.


Etyka ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 127-134
Author(s):  
Joanna Górnicka

To evaluate non-acting involves more theoretical problems than to estimate actions. There is a full range of possible solutions of this question. The extreme ones are presented, on the one hand, by consequentialism that denies the difference between action and non-acting if their results are the same; and, on the other, by negative utilitarianism, that is based on the literal interpretation of the rule “Do not do the evil” that says nothing about non-acting. There is, of course, intermediary proposition held by moderated versions of absolutistic ethics and utilitarianism which, both, assert the responsibility for non-acting but differentiate it from the responsibility for actions.


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