Disentangling Causal Pluralism

Causal pluralism is increasingly gaining interest as a promising alternative for monistic approaches toward causation. However, although the debate is scarcely out of the egg, the term ‘causal pluralism’ already covers diverse meanings. This creates confusion, and to remedy that confusion, it is necessary to discern different kinds of pluralistic approaches to causation and different possible positions within them. In this paper, I argue for a general distinction between conceptual causal pluralism, metaphysical causal pluralism and epistemological-methodological causal pluralism. I mainly focus on metaphysical approaches to causation and discern herein four possible positions: metaphysical causal constructivism, metaphysical causal monism, weak metaphysical causal pluralism, and strong metaphysical causal pluralism. Each of these positions are further related to their most obvious conceptual counterpart, specifically conceptual causal monism or conceptual causal pluralism

Levelable Sets and the Algebraic Structure of Parameterizations

Asking which sets are fixed-parameter tractable for a given parameterization constitutes much of the current research in parameterized complexity theory. This approach faces some of the core difficulties in complexity theory. By focussing instead on the parameterizations that make a given set fixed-parameter tractable, we circumvent these difficulties. We isolate parameterizations as independent measures of complexity and study their underlying algebraic structure. Thus we are able to compare parameterizations, which establishes a hierarchy of complexity that is much stronger than that present in typical parameterized algorithms races. Among other results, we find that no practically fixed-parameter tractable sets have optimal parameterizations

Remembering Edith and Gabrielle: picture postcards of monuments as portable lieux de mémoire

Picture postcards quickly gained popularity in Western Europe around 1900. The photographs on these postcards represent a wide variety of topics. From the start, the monument was one of the most popular themes. In this article we would like to focus on picture postcards of three Brussels monuments erected in the late 1910s and early 1920s to commemorate two Great War heroines, namely the British-born nurse Edith Cavell (1865-1915) and the Belgian spy Gabrielle Petit (1893-1916). After briefly discussing the monuments and picture postcards in their specific commemorative context, we will argue that these picture postcards, thanks to the use of specific photographic strategies, can be read as what the French cultural historian Pierre Nora coined ‘portable realms of memory’

A simple mechanism for higher-order correlations in integrate-and-fire neurons

The collective dynamics of neural populations are often characterized in terms of correlations in the spike activity of different neurons. Open questions surround the basic nature of these correlations. In particular, what leads to higher-order correlations -- correlations in the population activity that extend beyond those expected from cell pairs? Here, we examine this question for a simple, but ubiquitous, circuit feature: common fluctuating input arriving to spiking neurons of integrate-and-fire type. We show that leads to strong higher-order correlations, as for earlier work with discrete threshold crossing models. Moreover, we find that the same is true for another widely used, doubly-stochastic model of neural spiking, the linear-nonlinear cascade. We explain the surprisingly strong connection between the collective dynamics produced by these models, and conclude that higher-order correlations are both broadly expected and possible to capture with surprising accuracy by simplified (and tractable) descriptions of neural spiking

Thermal comfort in residential buildings with water based heating systems: a tool for selecting appropriate heat emitters when using µ-cogeneration

As a consequence of people becoming more aware of their impact on the environment, there is an increasing demand for low energy buildings. Forced by regulation, building envelopes are improving and heating and cooling systems with higher efficiencies are being installed. The public are willing to embrace these new technologies, as long as they do not affect the quality of their indoor environment. In this paper, an introduction to research on the realisation of the indoor thermal comfort in residential buildings with water based, low-energy heating systems is given. The basis for this work is a more realistic definition of comfort temperatures for residential buildings. Subsequently, appropriate heat emitters to realise that thermal comfort in an efficient way are identified, taking into account the limitations of the production system under consideration. An example of a µ-cogeneration system is presented as a case study

The Bumpy Road from Paris to Brussels: The European Commission Governance Incentive Tranche

The EC recently launched a new aid instrument for the ACP-community: the “governance incentive tranche”, a modality designed to incentivise ACP-governments to carry out governance reforms. In this paper we analyse whether this new initiative incorporates the principles spurred by the aid effectiveness debate and adopted by the Paris declaration (2005). Evidence suggests that in design and practice, the incentive tranche is surprisingly similar to some of the unsuccessful aid modalities of the past. The paper argues that in order to fully grasp the complexity of donor behaviour, the donor’s domestic issues and political arrangements have to be brought into the analysis. The incentive tranche illustrates how the complexity of the European construction makes formulation of a coherent policy exceptionally difficult.