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Jorge Luis Borges confessed, on more than one occasion, that his modest blindness was not the dramatic darkness that common sense believes but rather a refuge that, in his case, was built in a slow twilight. At the end of his speech to receive the Honoris Causa degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Chile, the Argentine writer spoke about the gradual parting of his sight and the pleasant sensation of entering a new, richer, deeper, and more creative living space. Relying on blindness as an introspective landscape, as a habitable space where fantasy meets realism, it is in this context that the essay proposes to inhabit, with thought, a weightless and infinite domestic space. Other artists achieved it - Groussac, Monet, Homer, Joyce, Herzog, Pallasmaa, and Italo Calvino - turning this kind of induced blindness into an intimate and creative room in which to settle at the end of their lives. Professor Yeager introduces this story, making us ascend to the heavens in search of an inspiring, black, and profound space. The house dreamed by Manuel Parra and Danilo Veras leads us away from the light to discover ourselves in a unique sensory experience. From the hand of the master Lewerentz, this essay will bring together some architectural experimentations with a singular dark box, an asphalt and black environment: black box in Lund. Living in blindness suggests a revision of our perceptual field, imaginatively inhabiting these introspective places where laws seem to have disappeared. Blindness, as Borges mentioned in that speech, makes the body join the space to dream of a new, more poetic, and creative dwelling. (Figure 1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live as refugees in concentric worlds that we invent without know it, by their natural shadows; and when nature isn't enough, we correct it with architecture which is the art and technique of those casting shadows, a place in which we undoubtedly belong to. Light is given to us, shadow is not. The world that surrounds us is divided into two unrecognizable halves, light and darkness, as an innocent expression of two opposing spaces: sky and earth. We are born giving ourselves to light, but we live sheltered in the darkness to which we belong, in their black shadows. Humanity search obsessively to encounter these hidden shadows, to let us the observation of life from the other side. This small sevillian baroque chapel preserves, hidden its inner mass, a mysterious secret. Through the eyes of these young architecture students, we enter a fascinating and unknown world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Supervised classification in remote sensing is a very complex problem and involves steps of different nature, including a serious data preprocessing. The final objective can be stated in terms of a classification of isolated pixels between classes, which can be either previously known or not (for example, different land uses), but with no particular shape nither well defined borders. Hence, a fuzzy approach seems natural in order to capture the structure of the image. In this paper we stress that some useful tools for a fuzzy classification can be derived from fuzzy coloring procedures, to be extended in a second stage to the complete non visible spectrum. In fact, the image is considered here as a fuzzy graph defined on the set of pixels, taking advantage of fuzzy numbers in order to summarize information. A fuzzy model is then presented, to be considered as a decision making aid tool. In this way we generalize the classical definition of fuzzy partition due to Ruspini, allowing in addition a first evaluation of the quality of the classification in this way obtained, in terms of three basic indexes (measuring covering, relevance and overlapping of our family of classes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Since Arrow’s main theorem showed the impossibility of a rational procedure in group decision making, many variations in restrictions and objectives have been introduced in order to find out the limits of such a negative result. But so far all those results are often presented as a proof of the great expected difficulties we always shall find pursuing a joint group decision from different individual opinions, if we pursue rational and ethical procedures. In this paper we shall review some of the alternative approaches fuzzy sets theory allows, showing among other things that the main assumption of Arrow’s model, not being made explicit in his famous theorem, was its underlying binary logic (a crisp definition is implied in preferences, consistency, liberty, equality, consensus and every concept or piece of information). Moreover, we shall also point out that focusing the problem on the choice issue can be also misleading, at least when dealing with human behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the variability in subthreshold laser treatment plans for patients with diabetic macular edema or central serous chorioretinopathy. Diagnostic images from 20 patients were utilized, and 25 retina specialists generated subthreshold treatment plans along with a self-rated experience level. Evaluation comprised of i) Area Variability (AV): quantifies the consensus regarding the covered area and is the difference between the areas planned by 75% and 25% of the participants ii) mean Centroid Distance (CD): level of agreement on the localization of a treatment. Subgroup analysis investigated the impact of participants’ experience levels, utilizing the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test. The predominant plan style is a targeted treatment approach (92%) and avoidance of subfoveal region (89%). Mean CD is 71.0 ± 37.5 pixels (≈half disc diameter) and mean AV is 9.8%±8.9%. A slight difference is observed between the 50-75% areas, but a notable distinction exists between the 25-50% areas. Subgroup analysis revealed CD and AV value of 75.9 pixels and 24% in the lower experience level group as opposed to 55.9 pixels and 8.6% in the higher experience level group. There is significant variability in treatment planning which reduces with increased experience of retina specialists. While consensus is observed around focal points, differences in the surrounding extents persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether the participation in intermediate contact sports affects the opinions about the behaviors and attitudes of fair play in the sports context and whether these effects are influenced by ego orientation. The participants were high level sportsmen from university and professional basketball and football players (N = 131). They filled in questionnaires to assess their participation in sports, their goal orientations, and their fair play attitudes and behaviors. The analyses of the structural equation model indicated that participation in intermediate contact sports predicted ego orientation; these analyses consecutively predicted low levels of fair play. The direct effects of sports participation in fair play decreased significantly in the presence of ego orientation, indicating that the last construct partially mediates the relation between the first two variables. These discoveries help us to better understand the processes that operate in contact sports. Finally, their implications for eliminating unsportsmanlike behaviors are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]