Latent variables and causal inference are central to implementing empirical research and advancing substantive theory across the social sciences. Conventional latent variable frameworks such as structural equation modeling (SEM) are constrained by several simplifying assumptions (e.g., linearity, additivity, correct model specification). In this study, we relax key SEM assumptions by building data adaptive estimation methods for causal inference with latent variables. We developed a theory-driven Targeted After Generative (TAG) learning framework that integrates SEM-informed variational autoencoders (SEM VAEs) with targeted machine learning to estimate the average treatment effect. On the generative side, the SEM VAE encodes theory aligned neural networks that learn latent variable distributions through flexible joint modeling of measurement and structural parameters. On the targeted learning side, we construct an efficient influence function for the treatment effect with the SEM-VAE implied posterior distribution of the latent variables to estimate the average effect. Across simulations, the TAG learning approach outperforms alternative approaches and demonstrates low to no bias even in adverse conditions. TAG learning offers a theory-driven flexible approach with methodological promise for causally interpretable data-adaptive analysis with latent variables. More practically, the framework allows estimation of causal effects involving latent variables even in the presence of unknown functional relationships in the measurement and structural models (e.g., data adaptive effect estimation for nonlinear/nonadditive SEMs).
This archeometric study analyzed local clay deposits at the Ingels Family Farm, settled in the Early Nineteenth Century in Bourbon County Kentucky. The redware pottery made on site was bartered and sold in the region, and the clay deposits were also used to make the bricks that constructed the 1820 Ingels family residence, still extant as of May 2026. Numerous materials characterization techniques including XRD, XRF, DTA/TGA, Spectroscopy, wet chemical analysis, and SEM were used to determine the characteristics of the local clay deposit and the identifying characteristics of the redware. The study also tested the wares to determine an approximate firing range, which was consistent with the requirements of low-to-mid fired earthenware. This study was done using archaeological materials from a previous archaeological investigation of the farm, but new material was added with the assistance the USDA Soil Survey Office in Kentucky, who drilled core samples for the project in Spring 2012.
Modern industrial equipment are networked to interact with both internal and external systems, enabling automated decision-making with minimal or no human intervention. While this new environment creates efficiencies, it exposes the environment to cyber threats. This chapter explores the use of cybersecurity testbeds to study best practices in architecting and defending environments that contain industrial systems. Cybersecurity testbeds – physical, virtual, and hybrid – are used in different sectors for research and validation. Virtual testbeds hold promise as they enable design flexibility, reconfiguration, and scale to support various types of research studies. This chapter discusses the value of virtual cybersecurity testbeds and demonstrates a case study on the use of virtual testbeds using a simple industrial control system and a common attack. The concepts apply to more complex set ups and more complex attack structures. Virtual cybersecurity testbed can support researchers, practitioners, and educators interested in defending critical infrastructure environments and industrial systems.
This project will explore the artist Leonora Carrington’s Self-portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse, ca. 1937-38) and its relationship to and rejection of the male-centric, sexist ideology of psychoanalysis that governed the Surrealist movement. As outlined in Andre Breton's First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), Freudian psychoanalysis had a great influence on Breton, the movement's founder (1896-1966). He believed in Freud's tenets and theories regarding dreams and the unconscious as a liberating and radical force that could tear down society’s systems of oppression. Yet there is a willful ignorance in Breton’s philosophy on the deep-rooted misogyny of Freud’s psychology and how the institution of psychoanalysis ignores the realities of female development and existence within inherently sexist societal structures of that period. However, Leonora Carrington rejected psychoanalytic theory as it pertained to her art. She refused to be categorized within sexist ideologies and asserted herself as a creative artist with her own interpretations of her work, positing her own ideologies in the process. She demonstrated her identity through her work and found liberation by developing her own feminist consciousness. Through researching Carrington's work, I want to expand on her ability to challenge the sexist paradigms of Surrealism and to reaffirm how her rejection demonstrates that female nonconformity is not only revolutionary but also necessary for female artistic freedom today. Other scholars have delved into this driving aspect of Carrington’s work but I will be utilizing Helene Cixous’ concept of “ecritutre feminine” in order to demonstrate how Carrington developed a “pictorial language” of her own within her work Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse). I will use Cixous’ seminal work, "The Laugh of the Medusa," to expand on this idea and how Carrington developed that language, constituted of her own personal symbols, which is on full display in her self-portrait.
As I have previously shown, Alexandre Brongniart established a coherent science of ceramics. By the mid-nineteenth century, Brongniart had popularised the term "la céramique" as a widely-applicable name for the field of pottery and porcelain making, and other related arts. In the Twentieth Century, ceramic manufacturing became increasingly technical. The inclusive field of artisans and industrialists that Brongniart had once envisioned was fracturing. Voices called for the separation of pottery making from experimental, industrial ceramics and the meaning of the term “ceramics” was hotly debated. Numerous etymologies were traced, but, as the predominant language of science transferred from French to English, none of the twentieth-century authors recognized Brongniart’s key role in the invention of the term. Critically, this language debate coincided with and reflected the global politics, nationalism, and warfare of the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Taking on the task of ordering the sciences related to pottery and clay-based objects, natural historian and porcelainier Alexandre Brongniart sought a new way of describing the ancient practice. Early in his forty-seven-year career as director of the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Brongniart developed a research center for the advanced study of pottery and porcelain making. Brongniart recognized that an inclusive and distinct term for the field was necessary, but it had to be introduced carefully, so that it was welcomed rather than rejected as presumptuous. Through close reading of Brongniart’s writings, as well as contemporary periodicals and the texts of other authors, the development of the word “ceramic” – originally introduced by Brongniart and his associates in French as “la céramique” – can be traced closely. I show that this was a deliberate, methodical, and years-long effort to create a durable, comprehensive term.
Histopathology image analysis plays a pivotal role in disease diagnosis and treatment planning, relying heavily on accurate nuclei segmentation for extracting vital cellular information. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) and in particular deep learning models have been applied successfully in solving computational pathology image analysis tasks. The You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection framework, which is based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture has gained traction across various domains for its real-time processing capabilities. This systematic review aims to comprehensively explore and evaluate the advancements, challenges, and applications of YOLO-based methodologies in nuclei segmentation within the domain of histopathological images. The review encompasses a structured analysis of recent literature, focusing on the utilization of YOLO variants for nuclei segmentation. Key methodologies, training strategies, dataset specifics, and performance metrics are evaluated to elucidate the strengths and limitations of YOLO in this context. Additionally, the review highlights the unique characteristics of YOLO that enable efficient object detection and delineation of nuclei structures, offering a comparative analysis against traditional segmentation approaches. This systematic review underscores the promising outcomes achieved through YOLO-based architectures, emphasizing their potential for accurate and rapid nuclei segmentation. Furthermore, it identifies persistent challenges such as handling variances in nuclei appearances, optimizing model architectures for histopathological images, and improving generalization across diverse datasets. Insights derived from this review can provide a foundation for future research directions and enhancements in nuclei segmentation methodologies using YOLO within histopathology, fostering advancements in disease diagnosis and biomedical research.
The young boy in Francisco de Zurbarán’s (1598-1664) Saint Peter Nolasco Recovering the Image of the Virgin of El Puig (1630) has been suggested to be either Zurbarán’s son, Juan de Zurbarán (1620–1649), or the son of James I of Aragon, Alfonso of Castile (1229–1260). Despite visual dominance, most scholars do not address the boy, and those who do offer conflicting identifications. This paper bridges the gap between these varying opinions, and concretely identifies the most formally important figure in this commission that defined Zurbarán’s career. The argument is built on the writings of Zurbarán scholar Martin S. Soria, as well as a comparison to Zurbarán’s body of work at large, primarily his tendency to create from life, and his suspected self-portrait, The Crucified Christ with a Painter (1650). I conclude that the child in the piece is likely a culmination of Juan and Alfonso and explore the implication of Zurbarán depicting his child in the noble and pious role of James the Conqueror’s son, paying witness to the rediscovery of the Virgin of El Puig. The combined figure of Juan and Alfonso gains significance through an exploration of historical context surrounding the legend of the Virgin of El Puig and its key figures. By drawing parallels between 17th-century Spanish colonialism contemporary to Zurbarán’s time and 13th-century Reconquista depicted in the painting, Zurbarán uses this composite figure to assert a vision of his lineage as triumphant and divinely favoured. Ultimately, this paper continues and expands upon Soria’s writings on the subject, and places Zurbarán within a Baroque tradition of artists, such as Velázquez, who used painting to assert their profession as divinely-inspired, nobel, and distinct from craftsmen.
Today's industrial equipment is connected over a network to communicate with external systems and make decisions without human intervention, making it vulnerable to cyberattacks and showing the importance of research. This study explored the implementation of a cloud-based virtual testbed for a smart factory for cybersecurity testing and research. As a first step, this paper reports on developing an environment with one programmable logic controller (PLC) simulating a conveyor belt setup. The study examined different virtualization platforms and network designs. In addition, it executed a denial-of-service attack and identified its signature indicators. The study found that VMware Workstation Pro is the most suitable virtualization platform and that network input and output are the DoS attack's signature indicators.
While most like to consider college and university campuses safe from discrimination, research demonstrates this is unfortunately not true. We know students with minority group status experience discrimination on campus at an alarming rate. Years of research has demonstrated the negative effects of experiencing discrimination on students’ well-being, sense of belonging, and future aspirations. However, research has also shown positive impacts that faculty relationships can have on students’ motivation, academic achievement, persistence, and aspirations. Faculty serve as institutional agents within the university, so they have considerable influence over students’ satisfaction with their university experience and overall wellness. Thus, this study investigates the extent to which college students’ trust in faculty acts as a buffer against the negative impacts of discrimination. Results of this research indicate a strong relationship between experiencing discrimination and feelings of stress and decreased sense of belonging, and that increased stress and decreased belonging negatively affect students’ future aspirations. However, our findings demonstrate that trust in faculty mitigates the negative effects of discrimination and can reduce feelings of stress and increase feelings of belonging, thereby increasing students’ future aspirations. Our findings demonstrate the important role faculty play in creating an affirming climate for students on college campuses.
Until recently, nationally representative survey data has been the primary source of information on the energy performance of buildings in the U.S., relative to their year of construction. The emergence of municipal energy benchmarking ordinances and public availability of benchmarking datasets now makes it possible to explore these relationships at the local level, and to link this data with information about a building’s historic designation status. This paper presents results from an initial statistical analysis examining the relationships between building energy use, year of construction, and historic designation status. First, municipal benchmarking data from six U.S. cities is used to examine local trends in the relationship between building age and energy performance. Second, an exploratory analysis of the energy performance of designated historic compared to non-historic buildings in New York City is presented. The methods described in this paper could be applied more widely to benchmarking datasets from other cities.
Prior work on black hole (BH) thermodynamics suggests the entropy depends not on the volume, but rather the surface area of the event horizon. Such findings highlight the intriguing nature of BHs and give rise to the idea that information may be entirely encoded on the surface. We study the case of a superficial Schwarzschild BH, and calculate the net force (Fnet) exerted on the surface of its spherical shell from the self-gravitational pull. We demonstrate that the Fnet is exactly c^4/4G, 3.025•10^43 Newtons, a force that is constant and independent of the size and the mass of the BH, meaning all such Schwarzschild BHs share the same Fnet. Surprisingly, the Fnet matches Fmax, the limit of the maximum force conjecture. This establishes a new potential connection between the formation of BHs and the Fmax. We demonstrate that under the validity of this Fmax, the mass of the superficial BH is contained at precisely the Schwarzschild radius. Finally, we provide further evidence to reject the concept of a point mass singularity and we theorize on the creation of a BH given the findings.
Interactive product prototyping has been widely taught in industrial design studio courses to prepare design students in dealing with dynamic interactions of using digital products. While it requires the integration of design and technology, the lack of systematic approaches of the studio curricula creates a great challenge for students who are not familiar with technology in creating interactive prototypes successfully. A theoretical framework is developed from the human-machine interaction model and the sequential flow of task analysis methods. Based on this framework, a human-machine interaction (HMI) flow diagram is proposed with which interaction elements, relationships, and flows are specified and categorized. The flow diagram is utilized to create a storyboard and an allocation flowchart subsequently. A structured design process based on these methods was applied to an interactive product design studio course in an undergraduate industrial design program. Students created working prototypes of interactive products, following the structured design process consisting of an HMI flow diagram, a storyboard, and an allocation flowchart. 104 students (87.4%) among 119 succeeded in translating their ideas to functioning circuits. 74 students (62.2%) successfully integrated electronics components into working physical prototypes while 30 students (25.2%) just made the circuits work. The structured design process makes a transition from initial ideation to programming smooth and incremental. This helps students without previous programming experience to understand the logic flow and to develop algorithms. The HMI flow diagram is useful for analysis, concept development, and the specification of interactions, and helps students to grasp the effect of interactive features on user experience.
Robotic animal-like companions for older adults are promising technologies that have shown to have health benefits, especially for individuals with dementia, and good adoption rates in some previous studies. Our project, Affordable Robotic Intelligence for Elderly Support, aims to design new capabilities for companionship and smart care, but at high affordability. In a 6-month longitudinal study of baseline acceptance and well-being, we assessed the impact of an Ageless Innovation Joy for All™ robotic pet on user acceptance and emotional well-being (depression, loneliness, positive emotions). Nineteen participants from independent and assisted living facilities completed three standardized in-person surveys, each 3 months apart, including the CES-D, measures of Loneliness, Emotions, Attitude towards Technology (ATI), and various measures of evaluation of and engagement with robotic technology. The measures showed modest to very good reliability and meaningful construct validity. Participants in this sample showed little depression or loneliness, and these levels did not further decrease over the six months. People welcomed the pet and expressed positive evaluations of it, and these sentiments were stable over time. Attitudes toward technology varied but were unrelated to well-being measures and to robot evaluations. Our current conclusion, on the basis of a small sample, is that the selected robotic pet companion is appreciated and seen as beneficial, and for adults who are already low in depression and loneliness, the robot companion helps maintain the adult’s emotional well-being but does not further increase it.
An expanded version of "The Future of Conflict: Neurowarfare", both of which discuss emerging neurotechnology, neuroscience, and their implications for war, politics, medicine, ethics, and society.
An overview of Walter A. McDougall's 1997 book "Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776" with some concluding thoughts.
Leo Marx, in his famous 1964 book, “The Machine in the Garden,” proposed that a central conflict in the American psyche resulted from the industrialization of the unspoiled, Eden-like landscapes of the new world. Wright’s Organic Modernism perhaps allowed 20th-century Americans to unconsciously feel that they could “resolve" that conflict by living in harmony with nature, while International Style Modernism and its machine-like buildings perhaps pointed too directly to the tragedy of industrial capitalism’s despoiling of the environment.
This is part one of a mini-series attempting to grapple with US grand strategy and the potential need for its re-assessment. The goal of this series is to introduce readers to grand strategy, ideally prompting more to grapple with US grand strategy and grand strategy more broadly. The author is fleshing out their own ideas, so don’t take the work as gospel, but rather as a starting point for your own journey.
In part one, an overview of the current state of US grand strategy is given. In part two, grand strategy is defined as a concept, a more detailed argument for the need of reassessment is put forth, and resources on grand strategy are listed for interested readers. In part three, four typologies of US grand strategic thought are summarized and contrasted with what US grand strategy has arguably been since the end of WWII. In part four, some general thoughts on the means and ends of reassessing US grand strategy will be described. Additional articles on grand strategy may appear over time.
What if the universe has a limit on the amount of energy that a certain mass can have? This article explores this possibility and suggests a theory for the creation and nature of black holes based on an energetic limit.
This is the first comment/addition to the theory published with the title "A First Note to the Short Theory on the Creation and Nature of Black Holes".
In the 1960"s and 1970', when most of these unfinished essays were written, I was a free thinking architecture student who perceived a fundamental disconnect within diverse institutions, including Architecture and Education and Money - Banking. I had an intuitive feeling that architecture is more than a visual aesthetic, rather a holistic social experience. The everyday objects with which we interact are an integral part of our social disposition and social wellbeing. The attempt is to develop a method for understanding some previously largely ignored aspects of environmental design – the role of Common Objects as a communication facilitator.- Eric M. Lee
