G-Deformations of maps into projective space

$G$-deformability of maps into projective space is characterised by the existence of certain Lie algebra valued 1-forms. This characterisation gives a unified way to obtain well known results regarding deformability in different geometries.Comment: 16 page

Electronic evidence and the meaning of "original"

Article based on a paper given at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Ookayama-campus, Tokyo.Article by Stephen Mason published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

The problem of misrepresentation meets connectionist representations : a thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy

Page 162 is missing from the original copyTheories of semantics try to explain the relationship between a mental representation and the thing it represents; to explain, for instance, how my coffee representation represents coffee. (Here and in the rest of this thesis, I use the convention of writing the label for a representation in bold type.) In many traditional theories of semantics, the relationship between my coffee representation and coffee is usually explained by recourse to causal relations between coffee and this representation. But attempts at explanations along these lines have many problems, among them the problem that it is difficult to find a plausible way of accounting for the fact that representations are able to misrepresent-or have false content. Sometimes I can think "that's coffee" when what's actually in the cup being handed to me is tea. Getting this fact to sit happily with accounts of the relation between my coffee representation and coffee hasn't been an easy task. Traditional approaches to this problem haven't had a lot of success so far in explaining how a representation can misrepresent. In this thesis I aim to avoid the problems with these traditional approaches, and find a causally-based, biologically realistic way to explain semantic relations between mental representations and objects in the world, which is also capable of explaining misrepresentation. The best place to start such an endeavour is to examine what the problem of representation and misrepresentation is, and the general tactics used in traditional attempts to solve this problem. This will illustrate why misrepresentation appears to be so intractable. Through such an examination we can get a close look at the traditional approaches, and their assumptions about what representations are, what sorts of things they represent, and how they can represent what they represent. We can also get a good view of the unquestioned assumptions these traditional theories are based on. This will give us a good place to start. I'm going to argue that if we want to achieve our aim of a biologically realistic theory of semantics which shows how representations can misrepresent, we'll need an approach to the problem which does not take these assumptions as foundations. In this thesis I aim to construct an account which isn't based on these assumptions.[FROM INTRODUCTION

Quasi-Conscious Multivariate Systems

Conscious experience is awash with underlying relationships. Moreover, for various brain regions such as the visual cortex, the system is biased toward some states. Representing this bias using a probability distribution shows that the system can define expected quantities. The mathematical theory in the present paper links these facts by using expected float entropy (efe), which is a measure of the expected amount of information needed, to specify the state of the system, beyond what is already known about the system from relationships that appear as parameters. Under the requirement that the relationship parameters minimise efe, the brain defines relationships. It is proposed that when a brain state is interpreted in the context of these relationships the brain state acquires meaning in the form of the relational content of the associated experience. For a given set, the theory represents relationships using weighted relations which assign continuous weights, from 0 to 1, to the elements of the Cartesian product of that set. The relationship parameters include weighted relations on the nodes of the system and on their set of states. Examples obtained using Monte-Carlo methods (where relationship parameters are chosen uniformly at random) suggest that efe distributions with long left tails are most important.Comment: 33 pages (double spacing), 11 figures, 15 Table

Delegating Up: State Conformity with the Federal Tax Base

Congress uses the income tax to achieve policy goals. States import federal tax policies into their own tax systems when they incorporate by reference the federal income tax base as the starting point for assessment of state income taxes. But federal tax policies reflect national, not state, political choices. This Article calls attention to the practice of tax-base conformity and to its advantages and disadvantages. Conformity conserves legislative, administrative, and judicial resources, and it reduces taxpayers\u27 compliance burdens. At the same time, however, conforming states cede tax autonomy to the federal government, thereby jeopardizing federalism values, such as regulatory diversity and diffusion of power. Conforming states also expose themselves to revenue volatility stemming from the ever-changing federal tax law. Despite these concerns, the administrative and compliance advantages of federal-state tax-base conformity are so significant that states are unlikely to abandon it. Thus, this Article makes only limited recommendations for reducing the adverse impacts of tax-base conformity

Keynote address: Is there a distinctive Māori psychology?

Many of the theoretical paradigms that underpin the study of psychology pay marginal attention to culture as a determinant of psychology. While there are some aspects of human experience that are universal, patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are by no means divorced from specific cultural influence. A challenge for Māori psychologists is to re-examine psychological theory from a Māori perspective. In attempting to identify the psychological distinctiveness underlying a Māori perspective, this paper has introduced marae encounters as a rich source of information within which distinctive psychological characteristics can be identified

Cultural transmission modes of music sampling traditions remain stable despite delocalization in the digital age

Music sampling is a common practice among hip-hop and electronic producers that has played a critical role in the development of particular subgenres. Artists preferentially sample drum breaks, and previous studies have suggested that these may be culturally transmitted. With the advent of digital sampling technologies and social media the modes of cultural transmission may have shifted, and music communities may have become decoupled from geography. The aim of the current study was to determine whether drum breaks are culturally transmitted through musical collaboration networks, and to identify the factors driving the evolution of these networks. Using network-based diffusion analysis we found strong evidence for the cultural transmission of drum breaks via collaboration between artists, and identified several demographic variables that bias transmission. Additionally, using network evolution methods we found evidence that the structure of the collaboration network is no longer biased by geographic proximity after the year 2000, and that gender disparity has relaxed over the same period. Despite the delocalization of communities by the internet, collaboration remains a key transmission mode of music sampling traditions. The results of this study provide valuable insight into how demographic biases shape cultural transmission in complex networks, and how the evolution of these networks has shifted in the digital age