Old French and new money: Jews and the aesthetics of the Old Regime in transnational perspective,c.1860–1910

ABSTRACT

At the dawn of the twentieth century, styles synonymous with the French Old Regime were hailed as the epitome of good taste. French fashions from the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI were an international luxury brand, the proliferation of which seemed to announce the rise of “new money” and transatlantic alliances. This was a defiantly cosmopolitan and opulent mode of building and decorating, which was often dissonant with its immediate surroundings. Taking the example of Oldway Mansion in Devon – created by the American entrepreneur Isaac Merritt Singer in the 1870s and transformed by his son Paris Eugène Singer in the 1890s into a the “Versailles of the West Country” – this article reflects on the elusive but pervasive contribution of Jews to the popularity of French revivalism in the fin-de-siècle. It argues for the entanglement of Jewishness with other national and class identities and insists on considering not just the identity of the patron or the architect, but the wider network of artists, decorators and art dealers who specialized in recreating the elegance of the Old Regime. It explores what role Jewish patrons and art professionals played in disseminating French historicist styles among a dynamic, global elite.     

Self-referenced interpersonal similarity phenomena: Theoretical specification and assessment at the individual,dyadic and group levels

A basic interpersonal task is assessing if another is similar to oneself, and is even observed among prelinguistic infants. In 450 highly acquainted dyads (150 from family, friend, co-worker groups), participants judged others' similarity to themselves, and predicted others' similarity ratings of them. Assumed reciprocity and reciprocity of similarity judgments were observed; the former was much stronger than the latter. Specific others were judged as uniquely similar; in families these judgments were reciprocated. People inaccurately predicted others', and specific others', similarity judgments. Common members of these groups (key person) judged others as similar to themselves, and predicted others' reciprocated similarity judgments, although they did not. Social relations modeling showed that interpersonal similarity assessments in different groups are multiple phenomena at multiple levels of analysis and should not be treated as a single, unitary phenomenon.     

Modeling the emergence of informational content by adaptive networks for temporal factorisation and criterial causation

Propagated activation of neurons through their network is an important process in the brain. Another crucial part of neural processing concerns adaptation over time of characteristics of this network such as connection strengths or excitability thresholds. This adaptation can be slow, as in learning from a multiple experiences, or it can be fast, as in memory formation. These adaptive network characteristics can be considered informational criteria for activation of a neuron. This then is viewed as a form of emergent information formation. Activation of neurons is determined by such information via a process termed criterial causation. In the current paper, the relationship of criterial causation with the principle of temporal factorisation for the dynamics of the world in general is explored. Temporal factorisation describes how the world represents information about its past in its present state, which then in turn determines the world’s future. In the paper, it is shown how these processes are analysed in more detail and modeled by (adaptive) network models.     

五论以用户为中心的设计:从自动化到智能时代的自主化以及自动驾驶车

综述人因学在人-自动化交互、人-自主化(autonomy)交互以及人机组队(human-machine teaming)方面的研究,梳理了自动化与自主化的人因学特征和问题,通过建立一个自主化、自动化与人工干预三者之间关系的概念模型来表征自主化人因学的问题空间。总结了智能自主化技术所带来的新型人机合作关系,促使采用新的人因学研究和应用范式,重新评估现有的人因学理论、方法以及今后的研究。针对自主化技术的应用,分析当前自动驾驶车设计中的人因学问题。呼吁在自动驾驶车研发中要重视人因学问题,人因学要提供学科支持和完整的人因学解决方案。     

Providing an analytic structure for key system design choices

The design of a system, especially a system architecture, requires the balancing of multiple performance parameters with the system cost and other implementation issues. Multi-attribute utility theory provides a structured, coherent framework for conducting an analysis in which system designs are evaluated on multiple performance parameters. This paper describes the application of multi-attribute utility analysis to the design of the Worldwide Digital Signal Systems Architecture (WWDSA), a telecommunications system, by the United States' Defense Communications Agency (now called the Defense Information Systems Agency). The advantages of using multi-attribute utility theory during the system design are highlighted. In addition, we discuss several key analytical issues that led to this application being a success in the eyes of the decision makers.