Visibility reasoning for concurrent snapshot algorithms

Visibility relations have been proposed by Henzinger et al. as an abstraction for proving linearizability of concurrent algorithms that obtains modular and reusable proofs. This is in contrast to the customary approach based on exhibiting the algorithm's linearization points. In this paper we apply visibility relations to develop modular proofs for three elegant concurrent snapshot algorithms of Jayanti. The proofs are divided by signatures into components of increasing level of abstraction; the components at higher abstraction levels are shared, i.e., they apply to all three algorithms simultaneously. Importantly, the interface properties mathematically capture Jayanti's original intuitions that have previously been given only informally.

The Pattern of Capital Reproduction in Dependent and Financialized Capitalism

Financialization is the result of the development of social forces and relations of production translated into legal and institutional changes including the increasing importance of the financial sphere of capital and international financial circuits compared with the rest of the economy. An analysis from a lower level of abstraction, as proposed by the Marxist theory of dependency and Jaime Osorio’s work on the pattern of capital reproduction, must consider the differentiated incorporation of the periphery into financialized capitalism and its effects. A proposal that encompasses the cycles of capital and its reproduction in specific geo-historical contexts and establishes a dialogue between the pattern of capital reproduction and the changes in contemporary capitalism serves to extend Osorio’s ideas, including the identification of financialization as a new coil of the spiral of dependency. A financeirização é o resultado do desenvolvimento das forças sociais e das relações de produção traduzidas em mudanças jurídicas e institucionais, incluindo a crescente importância da esfera financeira do capital e dos circuitos financeiros internacionais em comparação com o resto da economia. Uma análise de um nível inferior de abstração, como proposto pela teoria marxista da dependência e o trabalho de Jaime Osorio sobre o padrão de reprodução do capital, deve considerar a incorporação diferenciada da periferia no capitalismo financeirizado e seus efeitos. Uma proposta que englobe os ciclos do capital e sua reprodução em contextos geo-históricos específicos e que estabeleça um diálogo entre o padrão de reprodução do capital e as mudanças no capitalismo contemporâneo serve para estender as ideias de Osório, incluindo a identificação da financeirização como uma nova bobina do espiral de dependência.

Contributions of Abstract Extratextual Talk and Interactive Style to Preschoolers’ Vocabulary Development

Caregiver abstract talk during shared reading predicts preschool-age children’s vocabulary development. However, previous research has focused on level of abstraction with less consideration of the style of extratextual talk. Here, we investigated the relation between these two dimensions of extratextual talk, and their contributions to variance in children’s vocabulary skills. Caregiver level of abstraction was associated with an interactive reading style. Controlling for socioeconomic status and child age, high interactivity predicted children’s concurrent vocabulary skills whereas abstraction did not. Controlling for earlier vocabulary skills, neither dimension of the extratextual talk predicted later vocabulary. Theoretical and practical relevance are discussed.

Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking

In this paper we tentatively propose that one of the feral cognitive bases for modern symbolic thinking may be numerosity, that is, the ability to appreciate and understand numbers. We proffer that numerosity appears to be an inherently abstractive process, which is supported by numerous human infant and monkey studies. We also review studies that demonstrate that the neurological substrate for numerosity is primarily the intraparietal sulcus of the parietal lobes, the angular and supramarginal gyri in the inferior parietal lobes, and areas of the prefrontal cortex. We also speculate that the lower level of abstraction involved in numerosity may serve as a basis for higher-level symbolic thinking, such as number and letter symbolism and sequencing. We further speculate that these two levels of abstraction may give rise to highly sophisticated characteristics of modern human language, such as analogizing and metaphorizing.

A Design Space for Visualization Onboarding in Data-Driven Stories

Data-Driven Stories (DDS) are stories that combine text and data portrayed as visualization in a narrative format. They are among the popular ways of communicating information by online medias nowadays. For DDS authors and designers, it's important to minimize the risk of misinterpreting visualizations by their readers. Visualization onboarding, embedding knowledge and guidance have been meant to provide adequate support for readers to understand visualizations as they progress through DDS. Onboarding is a continuous mechanism which involves various DDS elements and interactions on each step. Several previous studies attempted to identify and classify storytelling techniques in DDS. While these techniques prospect a satisfactory communication, it's not clear how they can be applied to facilitate the visualization understanding throughout the story. They rather conceptualized different aspects of storytelling individually, and as such, the chronology of onboarding steps has been missed. Although their techniques and design spaces represent a tangible level of abstraction, they will not benefit authors in the story design process. Authors either rely on their guess work or mimic previous DDS to accommodate support in their DDS scenarios. In this project, our overall goal is to propose a multidimensional design space for onboarding techniques in DDS that can benefit to authors during their design process.

Reactionary radicalism and the analysis of worker subjectivity in Marx’s critique of political economy

This analysis starts off from the contemporary relevance of the theory of ‘the radicalism of tradition’, arguing that it presents a challenge to Marxism because Marxist work has not sufficiently attended to elements of a theory of worker subjectivity scattered in the critique of political economy. This theory is located on a lower level of abstraction than is commonly assumed and can be applied to subjective dynamics in labour militancy. However, this requires that some basic categories in Marx’s critique are reconsidered, especially those that do not seem immanent to the capitalist social formation, categories that appear, and have mostly been read, as the ahistorical ground on which properly social forms arise. Therefore, apparently ahistorical categories pertaining to use value and concrete labour’s use value for capital are explored to reconstruct a theory relating capital’s positing of labour to contemporary militancies that appropriate tradition. In contrast to the view of tradition as external to capital, the view advanced is that ‘reactionary radicalism’ relates to how capital, as totalizing social form, abstracts tradition. Furthermore, tradition is radicalized through a negative subjectivity inherent to the commodification of labour power and the real subsumption of labour; proletarian experience is a precondition of radicalized tradition.

PEDAGOGIA DECOLONIAL PSICODRAMÁTICA

Pedagogical practice focused on the exclusive cognitive assimilation of concepts has been limited in the effect of improving the understanding of Decolonial Critical Theories. Even though these theories represent facts of a structural scale, and thus of a high level of abstraction, we presuppose that it is necessary to bring them closer to the students’ experiences so that they can be better decoded. This allows students to improve their critical assimilation and their personal and citizen position taking. There are several pedagogical possibilities with this assumption, but in this research, we problematize: can J.L. Moreno’s psychodramatic method help to develop decolonial pedagogical practices? The basis of this article was the development of a university extension project, with the participation of students and teachers at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2018–2019), from which this article lists reflections on: (1) potentials of the method; (2) role of the teacher; (3) students’ perceptions; (4) challenges of the method.

A Theory of Social Agency for Human-Robot Interaction

Motivated by inconsistent, underspecified, or otherwise problematic theories and usages of social agency in the HRI literature, and leveraging philosophical work on moral agency, we present a theory of social agency wherein a social agent (a thing with social agency) is any agent capable of social action at some level of abstraction. Like previous theorists, we conceptualize agency as determined by the criteria of interactivity, autonomy, and adaptability. We use the concept of face from politeness theory to define social action as any action that threatens or affirms the face of a social patient. With these definitions in mind, we specify and examine the levels of abstraction most relevant to HRI research, compare notions of social agency and the surrounding concepts at each, and suggest new conventions for discussing social agency in our field.

Substantive Review

This chapter addresses three particular areas of substantive review: jurisdictional issues (including review for error of law); irrationality and the doctrines of relevant considerations and proper purposes. First, the chapter argues that administrative law values are useful in distinguishing jurisdictional from non-jurisdictional issues and in understanding debates about ‘deference’. Second, it argues that administrative law values are useful in understanding rationality review—in particular, in calibrating the range of reasonable responses, a key concept in the contemporary approach to irrationality. Third, the chapter argues that the structure of relevancy and propriety can be understood as being influenced by administrative law values. Given that in these areas there are significant divergences—certainly at the level of detail—between Commonwealth jurisdictions, the analysis in this chapter will be conducted at a higher level of abstraction than the analysis in the other chapters. Nonetheless, individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy can be understood to influence the contemporary law of substantive review.