Assessing Disagreement and Tolerance of Misclassification of Satellite-derived Land Cover Products Used in WRF Model Applications

As more satellite-derived land cover products used in the study of global change, especially climate modeling, assessing their quality has become vitally important. In this study, we developed a distance metric based on the parameters used in weather research and forecasting （WRF） to characterize the degree of disagreement among land cover products and to identify the tolerance for misclassification within the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme （IGBP） classification scheme. We determined the spatial degree of disagreement and then created maps of misclassification of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer （MODIS） products, and we calculated overall and class-specific accuracy and fuzzy agreement in a WRF model. Our results show a high level of agreement and high tolerance of misclassification in the WRF model between large-scale homogeneous landscapes, while a low level of agreement and tolerance of misclassification appeared in heterogeneous landscapes. The degree of disagreement varied significantly among seven regions of China. The class-specific accuracy and fuzzy agreement in MODIS Collection 4 and 5 products varied significantly. High accuracy and fuzzy agreement occurred in the following classes： water, grassland, cropland, and barren or sparsely vegetated. Misclassification mainly occurred among specific classes with similar plant functional types and low discriminative spectro-temporal signals. Some classes need to be improved further; the quality of MODIS land cover products across China still does not meet the common requirements of climate modeling. Our findings may have important implications for improving land surface parameterization for simulating climate and for better understanding the influence of the land cover change on climate.

Disagreement and Antagonism in Signed Networks: A Survey

Signed networks refer to a class of network systems including not only cooperative but also antagonistic interactions among nodes.Due to the existence of antagonistic interactions in signed networks,the agreement of nodes may not be established,instead of which disagreement behaviors generally emerge.This paper reviews several different disagreement behaviors in signed networks under the single-integrator linear dynamics,where two classes of topologies,namely,the static topology and the dynamic topology,are considered.For the static signed networks with the adjacency weights as(time-varying)scalars,we investigate the convergence behaviors and the fluctuation behaviors with respect to fixed topologies and switching topologies,respectively,and give some brief introductions on the disagreement behaviors of general time-varying signed networks.Correspondingly,several classes of behavior analysis approaches are also provided.For the dynamic signed networks with the adjacency weights as transfer functions or linear time-invariant systems,we show the specific descriptions and characteristics of them such that the disagreement behaviors can be obtained by resorting to the derived static signed graphs.Furthermore,we give their applications to the behavior analysis of static signed networks in the presence of high-order dynamics or communication delays.

A Possible Solution to the Disagreement about the Hubble Constant

The current disagreement about the Hubble constant H0 was described as a “Crisis in Cosmology”, at the April (2018) Meeting of the American Physical Society, and hence its resolution is of utmost importance. This work proposes that the solution to the disagreement between the Planck Collaboration cosmic microwave background (CMB) value of H0, together with the very close BOSS Collaboration baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) value, and the significantly higher value of H0 found by the SHOES Collaboration cosmic distance ladder (CDL) work, is due to the fact that the CMB and BAO values of H0 are not for an accelerating universe, as generally believed, but are actually the values for a decelerating universe. In contrast, the CDL value of H0 is indeed that for an accelerating universe. It is shown that by replacing the negative deceleration parameter in the expression for logH0 in the CDL work by a positive deceleration parameter, the value of H0 can be brought down to agree with the CMB and BAO lower values. There is a brief review of the author’s decelerating model based on the Einstein de Sitter universe, augmented by a model of dark energy that does not have a negative pressure, but instead has a non-dispersive index of refraction n, causing the speed of light through the dark energy of intergalactic space to be reduced to c/n. As reported earlier, this assumption is sufficient to accommodate the increase in apparent magnitude of the Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). Additional support for the model is presented, together with a proposal for astronomical falsification.

How EFL Learners from China and ASEAN Countries Politely Express Disagreement in an English Context:A Comparative Study

This paper aims to make a comparative study of cross-cultural communication upon a special speech act-"disagreement".38 undergraduates from China and 30 undergraduates from ASEAN countries were involved.They responded to the DCT(discourse completion test).Five contexts were selected and detailed descriptions of the scenarios were given.Social distance and gender were selected as the main variants in this study.From the results,we found that both groups of undergraduates generally ten d to use the same politeness strategies according to the same social distance,but gender was a more significant factor in politeness strategies adoption among EFL learners from ASEAN countries.Females tend to use negative strategies more than males do.We can conclude from the results that EFL learners from China and ASEAN countries incline to adopt the same politeness strategies in English context,but females from ASEAN countries are less likely to say“no”directly to express their disagreement compared to their counterpart.Those findings may offer reference to both sides during the pragmatic occasions of communicating.

A Possible Solution to the Disagreement about the Hubble Constant II

This work continues the previous study (2018) Journal of Modern Physics. 9, 1827-1837, that proposes that the disagreement arises because the cosmic microwave background (CMB) value for the Hubble constant H0 is actually for a universe which is decelerating rather than accelerating. It is shown that when H0 of Freedman et al. (2019) Astrophysical Journal, 882: 34 (24 pp.) is re-determined for redshift z = 0.07, by replacing q0 = −0.53 with q0 = −0.5, the new lower value is in excellent agreement (0.1%) with the CMB H0. The model is modified to include the clustering of galaxies, and the recognition that there are clusters that do not experience the Hubble expansion, such as the Local Group, and hence, in accordance with the model, within the Local Group the speed of light is c. The bearing of this result on the neutrino and light time delay from SN1987a is discussed. It is suggested that the possible emission of a neutrino from the blazar TXS-0506+56, that was flaring at the time, as well as possible neutrino emission earlier, may arise instead from a more distant source that happens to be, angle-wise, near the blazar, and hence the correlation is accidental. The model is further modified to allow for a variable index of refraction, and a comparison with the ΛCDM model is given. The age of the universe for different values of H0 is studied, and comparison with the ages of the oldest stars in the Milky Way is discussed. Also, gravitational wave determination of H0 is briefly discussed.

An Exploration of the Influences of a Third Party on Chinese College Students’Speech Act of Disagreement

Face is a concept much cared about and delicately disposed among Chinese people,especially with the presence of a third party.Unfortunately so far substantial studies on patterns and politeness strategies utilized to diminish the threat to the inter-locutor's face in expressing disagreement have been carried out in English-as-the-first-language settings with lttle effort in ex-ploring disageement in Chinese culture.Therefore,this paper seeks to explore what disagreement strategies Chinese college stu-dents will use to mitigate the face-threatening act with absence or presence of a third party for an attempt to shed some light on the speech act theory in Chinese settings.

Robust Correlation Clustering Problem with Locally Bounded Disagreements

Min-max disagreements are an important generalization of the correlation clustering problem(CorCP).It can be defined as follows.Given a marked complete graph G=(V,E),each edge in the graph is marked by a positive label"+"or a negative label"_"based on the similarity of the connected vertices.The goal is to find a clustering C of vertices V,so as to minimize the number of disagreements at the vertex with the most disagreements.Here,the disagreements are the positive cut edges and the negative non-cut edges produced by clustering C.This paper considers two robust min-max disagreements:min-max disagreements with outliers and min-max disagreements with penalties.Given parameter δ∈(0,1/14),we first provide a threshold-based iterative clustering algorithm based on LP-rounding technique,which is a(1/δ,7/(1-14δ))-bi-criteria approximation algorithm for both the min-max disagreements with outliers and the min-max disagreements with outliers on one-sided complete bipartite graphs.Next,we verify that the above algorithm can achieve an approximation ratio of 21 for min-max disagreements with penalties when we set parameter δ=1/21.

A Contrastive Pragmatic Study of Politeness Strategies in Disagreement between Native Speakers of English and Chinese EFL Learners

This paper attempts to make a contrastive cross-cultural study of a special speech act-- ＂disagreement.＂ Participants are 35 American undergraduates and 42 Chinese undergraduates respectively with the data eliciting technique--DCT （discourse completion test）. Findings show that Chinese undergraduates tend to use different politeness strategies according to different social distance and social power while American undergraduates prefer to use positive politeness strategy most followed by negative politeness strategy, regardless of social distance and social power. The results of the study reveal cultural differences between the U.S. and China that lead to the distribution of diverse politeness strategies and also offer insights into what Chinese EFL learners are struggling with during their development of interlanguage pragmatic competence.

A STUDY OF STRATEGY USE IN SHOWING AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT TO OTHERS' OPINIONS

Showing agreement and disagreement to others' opinions is an important speech act. Brown and Levinson (1978) think that expressing disagreement is a face threatening act (FTA) that threats the hearers' positive face. This study investigated how Chinese EFL learners (sophomore and senior English majors) employed politeness strategies in responding to others' opinions.

Justice in the Organizational Context： How Does Rating Disagreement Matter？

Since managers and employees play unequal roles in organizations, they have different perceptions regarding managerial practices. Understanding such differences and investigating the underlying causes help improve business administration and motivate organizational members. Employing data obtained from a sample of large SOEs （state owned enterprises）, this study evaluates disagreement between managers and employees in terms of their perception of organizational justice. Plausible causes of the disagreement and managerial implications are offered.

We Are One:On the Idea of the Moral Postulate

The moral postulate is the key concept of ethical pragmatism that suggests that whatever is genuinely beneficial,an individual must be genuinely good for the group.Dewey suggests that the moral postulate implies the solutions to moral disagreements.This paper examines pragmatists’ethics and proposes that people are justified to hold this belief.Moreover,that people hold the belief makes the realization of the moral postulate and solutions of moral disagreements possible.This paper provides a unique approach to solving moral disagreements and avoids the dichotomy between Kantianism and Utilitarianism.

Phylogeny of SARS-CoV as inferred from complete genome comparison

SARS-CoV, as the pathogeny of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), is a mystery that the origin of the virus is still unknown even a few isolates of the virus were completely sequenced. To explore the genesis of SARS-CoV, the FDOD method previously developed by us was applied to comparing complete genomes from 12 SARS-CoV isolates to those from 12 previously identified coronaviruses and an unrooted phylogenetic tree was constructed. Our results show that all SARS-CoV isolates were clustered into a clique and previously identified coronaviruses formed the other clique. Meanwhile, the three groups of coronaviruses depart from each other clearly in our tree that is consistent with the results of prevenient papers. Differently, from the topology of the phylogenetic tree we found that SARS-CoV is more close to group 1 within genus coronavirus. The topology map also shows that the 12 SARS-CoV isolates may be divided into two groups determined by the association with the SARS-CoV from the Hotel M in Hong Kong that may give some information about the infectious relationship of the SARS.

“Overlapping Consensus” on “Overlapping Consensus”

Diversity or pluralism in values has been widely recognized as a major feature of our times both intemationally and domestically, and China is no exception, where this phenomenon is regarded as a major reason for the country＇s efforts to pursue the goal of a “harmonious society” at home and the goal of a “harmonious world” abroad. Against this background, many people show great interest in the idea of “overlapping consensus” proposed by John gawls. On the basis of a careful reading of different interpretations of this idea, or the “overlapping consensus” on the idea of“ overlapping consensus,” we can say that there are three levels of “overlapping consensus. ”At the first level, people with different positions treat each other with the same reasonable attitude. At the second level, people holding different values support the same norms on the basis of their respective values or by taking each other＇s perspectives into the moral discourse. At the third level, people who currently hold different “moral sources”of the shared norms are nonetheless ready to engage in a common leaming process that aims for a “fusion of horizons＂”in the future. Overlapping consensuses at all these levels should not only be discussed in political philosophy, or discovered in political culture, but also constructed in political practice. This means that we should try our best to provide actual conditions for overlapping consensuses in social and institutional reality, and at the same time avoid reducing the validity of any type of overlapping consensus to its facticity.