In this article we revisit a dividing issue as regards the corpus of one of the most famous nineteenth-century philosophers: John Stuart Mill. He was the author of two iconic texts in the history of political philosophy: On Liberty and The Subjection of Women . However, Mill attributed the first to collaboration with Harriet Taylor Mill, his wife, and characterized the second as a work of three minds: his own, his wife’s and her daughter, Helen Taylor. Experts disagree on this issue. Most think Mill was too generous sharing authorship credit. We use a training set consisted in manuscripts of the three above mentioned authors, to train a four-class problem (three authors and joint productions). For every manuscript in the training set we extract a set of features that are widely used in text analytics and classification. Then, we apply some pre-processing techniques to normalize the data and to reduce the number of features. Finally, we train three classifiers, namely k-nearest neighbours (k-NNs) with k = 1 and k = 2, support vector machines (SVMs), and decision trees (DTs) to attribute the texts of “disputed” authorship to one of the four potential authors. We routinely run the experiments using different feature sets every time, in order to identify the optimal combination of features that yield the best results on the test set. The best results are achieved with the SVMs, having as input the bigrams features and their principal components. The mean detection rate for all four classes is 100%. Similar results are achieved with the models built with the k-NNs (k = 1) and the DTs. The only classifier that consistently is returning significantly lower results is the k-NN with k = 2. All of the instances in the test set are attributed to John Stuart Mill.

Extreme bursts of radiation from space result in rapid increases in the concentration of radiocarbon in the atmosphere. Such rises, known as Miyake Events, can be detected through the measurement of radiocarbon in dendrochronological archives. The identification of Miyake Events is important because radiation impacts of this magnitude pose an existential threat to satellite communications and aeronautical avionics and may even be detrimental to human health. However, at present, radiocarbon measurements on tree-ring archives are generally only available at decadal resolution, which smooths out the effect of a possible radiation burst. The Miyake Events discovered so far, in tree-rings from the years 3372-3371 BCE, 774-775 CE, and 993-994 CE, have essentially been found by chance, but there may be more. In this paper, we use signal processing techniques, in particular COSFIRE, to train filters with data on annual changes in radiocarbon (Δ ¹⁴ C) around those dates. Then, we evaluate the trained filters and attempt to detect similar Miyake Events in the past. The method that we propose is promising, since it identifies the known Miyake Events at a relatively low false positive rate. Using the findings of this paper, we propose a list of 26 calendar years that our system persistently indicates are Miyake Event-like. We are currently examining a short-list of five of the newly identified dates and intend to perform single-year radiocarbon measurements over them. Signal processing techniques, such as COSFIRE filters, can be used as guidance tools since they are able to identify similar patterns of interest, even if they vary in time or in amplitude.

During his final years, John Stuart Mill reportedly attempted to update the argument of On Liberty (1859). Published posthumously in 1907, ‘On Social Freedom’ represents the initial, unrefined draft of his reworked ideas. This article argues that John Stuart Mill was not the author of ‘On Social Freedom’. First, we revisit the question of the essay’s authorship traditionally: the emphasis is on the essay’s content and the historical context of the mid-twentieth-century debate on Mill as its author. We trace the disagreement to two broad reactions to Mill’s thought. Ultimately, the question of whether the manuscript’s substantial divergence from J. S. Mill’s renowned works is enough to refute his authorship depends on one’s interpretation of Mill as a systematic philosopher. Second, we tackle this task non-traditionally: the focus shifts to the tools of computer-assisted authorship identification and the use of machine learning (ML) techniques. Once we establish some key ideas, methods, and limitations of this field of studies, we present our attempts at a computer-assisted solution to the puzzle. The results of our experiments, using ML techniques, corroborate the conclusions reached via the traditional route.

This paper presents a comprehensive mobile eHealth application that integrates teleconsultation functionality to deliver high-quality healthcare and telemedicine services. Patients can have virtual consultations with healthcare professionals from the convenience of their own homes providing real time telemedicine services. The application supports the patient medical history, schedule teleconsultations module based on the doctors’ time plan availability, but also the secure environment to exchange medical data such as, laboratory reports, and imaging results. The platform supports end-to-end encryption, and the secure data storage are key characteristics of the teleconsultation function protecting patient privacy and confidentiality. Moreover, the application has tools for managing electronic prescriptions, dispensation actions and patient summary information. For the patients who might find it challenging to get conventional in-person visits, such as those with mobility challenges or those who live in distant and remote places, the teleconsultation option has the potential to increase access to high quality healthcare services. Overall, the application offers a user-friendly platform for patient-centric teleconsultation, boosting patient-provider communication and healthcare service delivery, yet further evaluation of its effectiveness, usability, and security measures is necessary before widespread deployment can be recommended.