Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"Modern political conflict characteristically reflects and represents deep-seated but also unacknowledged and un-analyzed disagreements about what it means to be 'objective'. In defending this proposition, Peter Steinberger seeks to reaffirm the idea of rationalism in politics by examining important problems of public life explicitly in the light of established philosophical doctrine. The Politics of Objectivity invokes, thereby, an age-old, though now widely ignored, tradition of western thought according to which all political thinking is inevitably embedded in and underwritten by larger structures of metaphysical inquiry. Building on earlier studies of the idea of the state, and focusing on highly contested practices of objectivity in judgement, this book suggests that political conflict is an essentially discursive enterprise deeply implicated in the rational pursuit of theories about how things in the world really are\"-- Provided by publisher.

The last decade witnessed a growing interest in Bayesian learning. Yet, the technicality of the topic and the multitude of ingredients involved therein, besides the complexity of turning theory into practical implementations, limit the use of the Bayesian learning paradigm, preventing its widespread adoption across different fields and applications. This self-contained survey engages and introduces readers to the principles and algorithms of Bayesian Learning for Neural Networks. It provides an introduction to the topic from an accessible, practical-algorithmic perspective. Upon providing a general introduction to Bayesian Neural Networks, we discuss and present both standard and recent approaches for Bayesian inference, with an emphasis on solutions relying on Variational Inference and the use of Natural gradients. We also discuss the use of manifold optimization as a state-of-the-art approach to Bayesian learning. We examine the characteristic properties of all the discussed methods, and provide pseudo-codes for their implementation, paying attention to practical aspects, such as the computation of the gradients.

The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) has published terminology and classification manuals since 1921. Their goals over the last 100 years have been consistent: To fulfill the Association's continued responsibility to be the primary repository of intellectual disability-related research and best practices; to publish a scientific definition of intellectual disability (ID) and its assumptions based on research and one that provides a long, stable definitional history; to provide a singular focus on ID and the lives of people with ID and their families; and to communicate professional standards, ethics, and best practices regarding diagnosis, classification, and planning supports. Consistent with these historical goals, the goals of the 12th edition of the AAIDD manual (Schalock et al. 2021) are to: (a) integrate material published in the 11th edition (Schalock et al., 2010) of the AAIDD manual with post-2010 developments and historical markers; (b) develop a user-friendly manual that combines the theoretical and conceptual thoroughness of a manual with the practical aspects of a user's guide; (c) describe a systematic approach to the diagnosis, optional subgroup classification, and planning of supports for people with intellectual disability based on conceptual models, a clear rationale and purpose, and evidence-based practices; (d) combine current empirical knowledge and best practices into an integrative approach to intellectual disability; and (e) provide practice guidelines that frame best practices, increase understanding, and facilitate precise, valid, and effective decisions, recommendations, and actions. The content of the 12th edition reflects the transformation that is occurring in the field of ID. This transformation, which is occurring to various degrees internationally, is characterized by using precise terminology, incorporating a functional and holistic approach to ID, embracing the supports model and evidence-based practices, implementing outcome evaluation, empowering individuals and families, understanding better the multidimensional properties of context, and incorporating an explicit notion of professional responsibility (Schalock et al., in press). As a result of this transformation, the manual contains both modifications of previous concepts and terminology, and the addition of new terms and concepts. These modifications and additions are reflected in the definition of intellectual disability, the evidence-based approach to diagnosis and optional postdiagnosis subgroup classification, the operationalization of systems of supports, and the incorporation of an integrative approach to ID. Throughout the manual, human functioning is viewed from a systems perspective towards understanding human functioning, which includes human functioning dimensions, interactive systems of supports, and human functioning outcomes.

In old Russia, patron/client relations, \"clan\" politics, and a variety of other informal practices spanned the centuries. Government was understood to be patrimonial and personal rather than legal, and office holding was far less important than proximity to patrons. Working from heretofore unused documents from the Communist archives, J. Arch Getty shows how these political practices and traditions from old Russia have persisted throughout the twentieth-century Soviet Union and down to the present day. Getty examines a number of case studies of political practices in the Stalin era and after. These include cults of personality, the transformation of Old Bolsheviks into noble grandees, the Communist Party's personnel selection system, and the rise of political clans (\"family circles\") after the 1917 Revolutions. Stalin's conflicts with these clans, and his eventual destruction of them, were key elements of the Great Purges of the 1930s. But although Stalin could destroy the competing clans, he could not destroy the historically embedded patron-client relationship, as a final chapter on political practice under Putin shows.

In Sweden, people living independently and requiring daily living support can access ‘housing support’, a form of practical, educational, and social support provided by the municipalities. About two-thirds of those receiving this support have neurodevelopmental conditions, primarily autism or ADHD. Many are young adults in the process of adapting to new roles and expectations in different life domains, including education, work, and accommodation. This study aimed to provide a qualitative description of support workers’ views on current practice in housing support for young adults (aged 18 to 29) with neurodevelopmental conditions. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 34 housing support workers across 19 Swedish regions. An inductive qualitative content analysis approach was used. The interviews depicted a complex service, subject to organizational aspects (roles, responsibilities, availability, and allocation), the joint effort of key players (young adults, relatives, and support workers), and practical aspects of service provision (finding common ground for the work, and delivery of support). Some elements of the service were poorly designed for the target group. The support workers expressed a need for more knowledge about neurodevelopmental conditions, but also described new insights related to remote delivery of support. The results raise important questions about how housing support should be organized and delivered to strike the right balance between support and autonomy, meet specific needs, and ensure equal services across municipalities. Future research should adopt multiple perspectives and approaches, to help translate best practice and available evidence into a flexible and sustainable service.

With the marvelous increase in video and image database there is an incredible need of automatic understanding and examination of information by the intelligent systems as manually it is getting to be plainly distant. Face plays a major role in social intercourse for conveying identity and feelings of a person. Human beings have not tremendous ability to identify different faces than machines. So, automatic face detection system plays an important role in face recognition, facial expression recognition, head-pose estimation, human–computer interaction etc. Face detection is a computer technology that determines the location and size of a human face in a digital image. Face detection has been a standout amongst topics in the computer vision literature. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of various techniques explored for face detection in digital images. Different challenges and applications of face detection are also presented in this paper. At the end, different standard databases for face detection are also given with their features. Furthermore, we organize special discussions on the practical aspects towards the development of a robust face detection system and conclude this paper with several promising directions for future research.