Freight Fleet Management Problem: Evaluation of a Truck Utilization Rate Based on Agent Modeling

The article deals with the problem of estimating the rational number and utilization rate of the vehicles' fleet. According to the analysis results of the state-of-the-art literature it has been revealed that the issue of substantiating the rational fleet size and the rate of its utilization were not fully solved. The purpose of the study was to increase the efficiency of servicing transportation orders by determining the required number of vehicles. The goal of the research was the influence of the transportation process parameters on the truck utilization rate. Originating from the probabilistic nature of the transportation process, it has been proposed to use the AnyLogic software product to develop a simulation model for vehicle orders' servicing. From the processing of the experimental results by the regression analysis methods, it has been found that the dependence of changes in the vehicle utilization rate is of a linear form.

The Slippery Slope Argument in the Context of Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

This article analyzes the slippery slope argument and its application to the problem of legalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The argument is often referred to in discussions of abortion, in vitro fertilization, etc., but it has been little developed in the Russian-language literature. This explains the relevance and novelty of this article. The focus is on the ways of representation of the argument in research. It distinguishes its main types: logical (disintegrating into no-principle distinction argument and the soritical argument), empirical (or psychological argument), and non-logical (metaphorical). Each of these types of argument is constructed according to a certain principle and has a number of features and critiques. A common place for criticism of an argument is its focus on the future so that it makes reasoning probabilistic. The logical type of argument is centered around denoting the transition between the original event and its adverse consequences and denotes the action of social factors to accelerate the transition. The no-principal distinction argument implies that there is no moral distinction between the events at the beginning and the end of the slope. The soritical argument involves intermediate steps between questionable and unacceptable practices. The conceptual slope is another variant of the logical kind of argument. The empirical argument illustrates a situation of changing societal values which results in an easier acceptance of morally disapproved practices. The metaphorical argument is used to illustrate the metaphor of slope and the situation of the accumulation of small problems that lead to serious undesirable results. The non-logical kind of argument centers around the routinization of practice, desensitization, and exploitation of unprotected groups in society. Exploitation can be called the victims' slope. It grounds its consideration on the abuse of the practice being administered. Application of the ethical methodology (theoretical-logical and empirical-historical) to the types of arguments and ways of their application allows us to highlight the value component of the argument, to determine its dilemma nature and to correlate it with bioethical principles. The application of bioethical principles to suppress the transition to undesirable consequences is critiqued on the basis of particularly difficult cases in which one is unable to articulate one's decision. The criticism of the argument is built on the probabilistic nature of the reasoning, the lack of reflection on the underlying premise and the lack of empirical evidence. It concludes that the slippery slope argument is incapable of being the only valid justification for rejecting the practices of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

New Computational Methods and the Study of the Romance Languages

Nowadays, computer models of human language are instrumental to millions of people, who use them every day with little if any awareness of their existence and role. Their exponential development has had a huge impact on daily life through practical applications like machine translation or automated dialogue systems. It has also deeply affected the way we think about language as an object of scientific inquiry. Computer modeling of Romance languages has helped scholars develop new theoretical frameworks and new ways of looking at traditional approaches. In particular, computer modeling of lexical phenomena has had a profound influence on some fundamental issues in human language processing, such as the purported dichotomy between rules and exceptions, or grammar and lexicon, the inherently probabilistic nature of speakers’ perception of analogy and word internal structure, and their ability to generalize to novel items from attested evidence. Although it is probably premature to anticipate and assess the prospects of these models, their current impact on language research can hardly be overestimated. In a few years, data-driven assessment of theoretical models is expected to play an irreplaceable role in pacing progress in all branches of language sciences, from typological and pragmatic approaches to cognitive and formal ones.

Quantum Computing for Dealing with Inaccurate Knowledge using the Certainty Factors Model

In this paper we try to demonstrate that the classical model of certainty factos for dealing with innacurate knowledge can be efficiently implemented in a quantum environment. For this, we assume that certainty factors are strongly correlated with the quantum probability. We first explore the certainty factors approach for inexact reasoning from a classical point of view. Next, we introduce some basic aspects of quantum computing, and we pay special attention to quantum rule-based systems. We then build a use case: an inferential network to be implemented in both, the classical approach and the corresponding quantum circuit. Both implementations have been used to compare the behavior of the classical and the quantum approaches when confronted with the same hypothetical case. We analyze three different situations: (1) Only Imprecision (which refers to inaccuracy in declarative knowledge or facts) is present in the use case, (2) Only Uncertainty (which refers to inaccuracy in procedural knowledge or rules) is present in the use case, and (3) Both Imprecision and Uncertainty are present in the use case. Finally, we analyze the results to reach a conclusion about the eventually intrinsic probabilistic nature of the certainty factors model and to pave the way for future quantum implementations of this method for handling inaccurate knowledge.

Past, Present and Future of Quantum Computing: A Systematic Study

Quantum Computing is relatively new and it's kind of a special type of computing that uses the laws of quantum physics. In classical computing, we have some limitations and we can overcome those with the help of Quantum Computing as it uses qubits, but we need to keep those qubits at low temperature. Quantum Computing uses the probabilistic nature of electrons. The power of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the number of qubits linked tougher. Quantum computers are very difficult to make but there are a huge number of calculations that can be done easily with the use of a quantum computer. Quantum computers are way better and faster than classical computers. So, we can say that quantum computers rather than quantum computing will be used in the near future to replace classical computing.

Clone-advisor: recommending code tokens and clone methods with deep learning and information retrieval

Software developers frequently reuse source code from repositories as it saves development time and effort. Code clones (similar code fragments) accumulated in these repositories represent often repeated functionalities and are candidates for reuse in an exploratory or rapid development. To facilitate code clone reuse, we previously presented DeepClone, a novel deep learning approach for modeling code clones along with non-cloned code to predict the next set of tokens (possibly a complete clone method body) based on the code written so far. The probabilistic nature of language modeling, however, can lead to code output with minor syntax or logic errors. To resolve this, we propose a novel approach called Clone-Advisor. We apply an information retrieval technique on top of DeepClone output to recommend real clone methods closely matching the predicted clone method, thus improving the original output by DeepClone. In this paper we have discussed and refined our previous work on DeepClone in much more detail. Moreover, we have quantitatively evaluated the performance and effectiveness of Clone-Advisor in clone method recommendation.

Risk and the Midwife: a Descriptive and Interpretive Examination of the Referral for Obstetric Consultation Practices and Attitudes of New Zealand Midwives

<p><b>Risk is a dominant discourse in current formations of Western society. This thesisexamines how risk is expressed in New Zealand midwifery by investigating bothmidwives’ actions and midwives’ attitudes. Risk is a complex concept and theoreticalapproaches to it come from a variety of perspectives. The techno rational approachstresses the quantifiable and probabilistic nature of risk; the social and culturalapproaches are varied and stress the cultural embeddedness and valueladennature ofrisk and its expression. Midwives must deal with risk from multiple and sometimesconflicting perspectives.</b></p> <p>The philosophical approach of critical realism, which proposes that knowledge shouldbe explored through multiple lenses and that knowledge is both fallible andemancipatory, provides the ontological and methodological support for the study. Anational survey of midwives’ practices and attitudes was undertaken in 2001,followed by six focus group discussions with midwives in a variety of settings.</p> <p>The findings of the research reveal that midwives are both constrained by and act inresistance to risk. A model of midwifery is developed which illustrates the findings.</p> <p>The model is a threeleggedbirth stool, a birth stool for the midwife to sit on, ratherthan for the mother. The seat of the stool is called ‘being with women’. This conceptis central for New Zealand midwives, as they do not exclude women with risk factorsfrom their care. They continue to provide care when risk is identified and whenobstetricians need to be involved. The relationship they have with women is pivotal.</p> <p>The legs of the birth stool, which help give support to ‘being with women’, are:‘being a professional’, ‘working the system’ and ‘working with complexity’. Thestruts of the stool are ‘storytelling’, which help to keep the stool secure and stable.</p> <p>Midwives can use the stool as a tool to reflect on practice and to keep them connectedto women. The stool can assist them in putting risk and its management into actionand into perspective. Educators can use the stool to develop integrated and competentnew midwives; managers can use it to provide systems that support the midwife;researchers can attend to areas of the birth stool that are less well understood.</p>

Risk and the Midwife: a Descriptive and Interpretive Examination of the Referral for Obstetric Consultation Practices and Attitudes of New Zealand Midwives

<p><b>Risk is a dominant discourse in current formations of Western society. This thesisexamines how risk is expressed in New Zealand midwifery by investigating bothmidwives’ actions and midwives’ attitudes. Risk is a complex concept and theoreticalapproaches to it come from a variety of perspectives. The techno rational approachstresses the quantifiable and probabilistic nature of risk; the social and culturalapproaches are varied and stress the cultural embeddedness and valueladennature ofrisk and its expression. Midwives must deal with risk from multiple and sometimesconflicting perspectives.</b></p> <p>The philosophical approach of critical realism, which proposes that knowledge shouldbe explored through multiple lenses and that knowledge is both fallible andemancipatory, provides the ontological and methodological support for the study. Anational survey of midwives’ practices and attitudes was undertaken in 2001,followed by six focus group discussions with midwives in a variety of settings.</p> <p>The findings of the research reveal that midwives are both constrained by and act inresistance to risk. A model of midwifery is developed which illustrates the findings.</p> <p>The model is a threeleggedbirth stool, a birth stool for the midwife to sit on, ratherthan for the mother. The seat of the stool is called ‘being with women’. This conceptis central for New Zealand midwives, as they do not exclude women with risk factorsfrom their care. They continue to provide care when risk is identified and whenobstetricians need to be involved. The relationship they have with women is pivotal.</p> <p>The legs of the birth stool, which help give support to ‘being with women’, are:‘being a professional’, ‘working the system’ and ‘working with complexity’. Thestruts of the stool are ‘storytelling’, which help to keep the stool secure and stable.</p> <p>Midwives can use the stool as a tool to reflect on practice and to keep them connectedto women. The stool can assist them in putting risk and its management into actionand into perspective. Educators can use the stool to develop integrated and competentnew midwives; managers can use it to provide systems that support the midwife;researchers can attend to areas of the birth stool that are less well understood.</p>

Probabilistic nature of water and environmental standards

Determination of permissible concentrations of pollutants in relation to water bodies and water quality is the basis for further measures to form technological approaches to water treatment and wastewater treatment, to determine the standards of permissible exposure and technological indicators. The main standard, which is the basis for such calculations - the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of pollutants or the approximate safe level of exposure (S), are threshold (deterministic) values. It is assumed that the establishment, for example, of the MPC for fisheries water bodies is based on the analysis of toxicological indicators. However, in fact, rationing is carried out on the basis of selective toxicological studies [1], which do not provide such determinism. The obtained data characterize only the influence of the selected levels of toxicant concentration on the studied organisms.

An Improved Methodology for Gas-Condensate Cluster Evaluations under Uncertainty

A decision to buy oil and gas assets requires a project evaluation (PE) aimed at integrated calculation of numerous possible scenarios of asset development, based on the uncertain resource values, variety of geological exploration program events, the most preferable decisions about the oil field development in the current economic conditions. The vast amount of calculations determined by the probabilistic nature of the PE and specific timeframes require optimization of the current approaches based on the balance between accuracy and time. This issue is particularly relevant for the evaluation and analysis of gas or gas-condensate field cluster as the profitability of the project can be concentrated in the asset integration into one production cluster. Such option as well as proposal to gather separate fields to the common infrastructure, sequence of fields development with different geological and physical characteristics, calculations of a large number of synergy options, etc. require the multi-disciplinary team to think outside the box while searching for a business case. Thus, this paper is aimed to improve current approaches and the current tools adaptation which will be used to drastically automate cross-functional probability estimate of gas field cluster with technical and economic justification of sustainable integrated solutions. The results were successfully validated within PE of several perspective gas condensate projects focused on the possibility of integration of the fields into a single cluster that creates additional value from the optimization of the project solutions (exploration, development strategy, gathering and transportation of hydrocarbons, monetization of the products) equal to tens of billions of rubles in a limited period of time.