So far we have explored classifiers with decision boundaries that are linear, or, in the case of the multiclass logistic regression, a combination of linear segments. In this chapter, we will expand what we have learned so far to classifiers that are capable of learning nonlinear decision boundaries. The classifiers that we will discuss here are called feed-forward neural networks, and are a generalization of both logistic regression and the perceptron. Despite the more complicated structures presented, we show that the key building blocks remain the same: the network is trained by minimizing a cost function. This minimization is implemented with backpropagation, which adapts the gradient descent algorithm introduced in the previous chapter to multilayer neural networks.

Chapter 4 looks at the concepts of iconicity and image schemas. Iconicity refers to a phenomenon that illustrates natural resemblance between language and concepts and demonstrates direct correspondence between the linguistic form and the meaning to be conveyed. For instance, we tend to state events based on the temporal sequence of their actual occurrence. And linguistic distance often corresponds to conceptual distance. We use longer utterances iconic of “distance” to show politeness when talking to new acquaintances. Image schemas, as the bridge between sensorimotor experience and concepts, are the preconceptual structures derived from our sensorimotor experiences, through which we can structure abstract concepts and carry out inferences. This chapter discusses through a variety of examples how iconicity and image schemas can be useful in facilitating language learning.

In the modern world, migration and immigrants are shaping cities. Human mobility transfers human and material capital as well as knowledge. Hence, increasing diversity within cities is not only a feature of modern day trends in migration and urban growth, it is also an important matter in mental health. Various scholars have suggested considering environmental and sociocultural contexts as additional factors in the understanding of psychopathology and mental disorders [1–3]. While research on mental disorders in Western countries often favors individualistic explanations, with little attention being paid to the role of social structure [4–6], psychosocial and sociocultural factors have often been neglected [7,8].

In Chapter 4, I discuss the idea of Weltliteratur and argue that it was one of the most successful tools through which Europe negotiated with and made sense of the colonial history of the literary sovereign. Though mostly associated with Goethe, its clearest outlines were available through a combination of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). Weltliteratur, I argue, is the culmination of a set of ideas Kant introduced to account for the peculiar nature of the power of judgment or taste – that such judgments cannot have any a priori or universal principles and yet claim universality. Whether framed as the beautiful or the sublime, he suggested, such claims remained contingent, relying on a communal consensus that could have been established only according to anthropological principles. Kantian aesthetics is “impure” as it always and already relies on something external to it, that cannot be made sense of within the borders set by aesthetic judgment itself. Similarly, Weltliteratur was a combination of aesthetic and anthropological principles, advocating a form of comparative judgment replicating the Kantian model.

In this chapter, we bring together motives (issues), means (gubernatorial powers), and opportunities (interest group compositions) using qualitative case studies of four states across several years: two with strong governors (New York and West Virginia) and two with weak governors (North Carolina and Vermont). The size of the budgets in these states varies, but they entail three subcategories that correspond with capture [corrections], instability [hospitals], and deadlock [welfare]. An investigation of twelve policy stories provide evidence for the mechanisms connecting governors and interest groups in periods of budgetary change. The policy stories cover similar temporal periods (2002–2004 and 2008–2010) controlling for national political context. We show that – large or small states – governors attempt to use their powers in all policy domains, but are met with much greater resistance in capture and deadlock categories.

Chapter 4treats the fundamentals of radio propagation path loss, also known as large-scale fading. A wide range of practical radio propagation models are presented, and the fundamental theories of reflection, scattering, and diffraction are presented with many examples. These propagation mechanisms give rise to level of coverage and interference experienced in any wireless network, and, in urban environments, it is shown how the radar cross-section and ray tracing models can give accurate prediction of large-scale path loss in a mobile communication system. Shadowing is also considered, and the log-normal distribution is found to describe the shadowing about the distance-dependent mean signal level. Statistical approaches to quantifying outage are provided.