Different Levels Of Abstraction Research Articles

Morphosyntactic underspecification affects the processing of verbal forms at different levels of abstraction in L1 and L2 German

Abstract Using a priming paradigm, we investigated the processing of overtly identical verb forms with different sets of morphosyntactic features in L1 and L2 German. We found that more specific functions of a verb (inflected verbs) were better primes for less specific verb functions (past participles) than vice versa. For L1 speakers, these priming asymmetries were observed regardless of whether the lexical verb was repeated in prime and target or not (i.e., priming also for abstract configurations). For L2 learners, a similar but not native-like asymmetric priming pattern was seen only with repetition of the lexical verb. It was absent when the verb was not repeated. We conclude that in L2, morphosyntactic information is processed more on a lexical, item-based level compared to L1. We discuss our results in the context of several accounts, e.g., Shallow Structure Hypothesis, Declarative Procedural Model and the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation.

Dutch compound constructions in additional language acquisition

Abstract Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by French-speaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis of the acquisition of Dutch compounds at different levels of abstraction (schematic and substantive compound constructions). Moreover, we investigate the impact of additional target-language input through CLIL programs (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions.

A meta‐analysis of SES framework case studies: Identifying dyad and triad archetypes

Abstract There is a need to synthesize the vast amount of empirical case study research on social‐ecological systems (SES) to advance theory. Innovative methods are needed to identify patterns of system interactions and outcomes at different levels of abstraction. Many identifiable patterns may only be relevant to small sets of cases, a sector or regional context, and some more broadly. Theory needs to match these levels while still retaining enough details to inform context‐specific governance. Archetype analysis offers concepts and methods for synthesizing and explaining patterns of interactions across cases. At the most basic level, there is a need to identify two and three independent variable groupings (i.e. dyads and triads) as a starting point for archetype identification (i.e. as theoretical building blocks). The causal explanations of dyads and triads are easier to understand than larger models, and once identified, can be used as building blocks to construct or explain larger theoretical models. We analyse the recurrence of independent variable interactions across 71 quantitative SES models generated from qualitative case study research applying Ostrom's SES framework and examine their relationships to specific outcomes (positive or negative, social or ecological). We use hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis and network analysis tools to identify the frequency and recurrence of dyads and triads across models of different sizes and outcome groups. We also measure the novelty of model composition as models get larger. We support our quantitative model findings with illustrative visual and narrative examples in four case study boxes covering deforestation in Indonesia, pollution in the Rhine River, fisheries management in Chile and renewable wind energy management in Belgium. Findings indicate which pairs of two (dyads) and three (triads) variables are most frequently linked to either positive or negative, social or ecological outcomes. We show which pairs account for most of the variation of interactions across all the models (i.e. the optimal suite). Both the most frequent and optimal suite sets are good starting points for assessing how dyads and triads can fulfil the role of explanatory archetype candidates. We further discuss challenges and opportunities for future SES modelling and synthesis research using archetype analysis. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Evaluating machine comprehension of sketch meaning at different levels of abstraction

Evaluating machine comprehension of sketch meaning at different levels of abstraction

What is co-production? Conceptualising and understanding co-production of knowledge and policy across different theoretical perspectives

Background:‘Co-production’ is one of the key concepts in evidence-informed policy and practice – in terms of both its theoretical importance and its practical applications − being consistently discussed as the most effective strategy for mobilising evidence in policy and practice contexts. The concept of co-production was developed (almost) independently across multiple disciplines and has been employed in various policy and practice fields including environment, sustainability, and health. Aims and objectives:This paper surveys the literature to identify different meanings of co-production across different disciplinary bodies of knowledge. Such exploration is aimed at identifying the key points of convergence and divergence across different disciplinary and theoretical traditions. Methods:We performed a systematic search of Web of Science via a query designed to capture literature likely focusing on co-production, and then manually examined each document for relevance. Citation network analysis was then used to ‘map’ this literature by grouping papers into clusters based on the density of citation links between papers. The top-cited papers within each cluster were thematically analysed. Findings:This research identified five meanings of co-production, understood as a science-politics relationship, as knowledge democracy, as transdisciplinarity, as boundary management, and as an evidence-use intervention. Discussion and conclusions:Even though different clusters of scholarship exploring co-production are closely connected, this concept is mobilised to capture phenomena at different levels of abstraction – from post-structuralist theories of knowledge and power to specific strategies to be employed by researchers and policymakers.

From Word Types to Tokens and Back: A Survey of Approaches to Word Meaning Representation and Interpretation

Abstract Vector-based word representation paradigms situate lexical meaning at different levels of abstraction. Distributional and static embedding models generate a single vector per word type, which is an aggregate across the instances of the word in a corpus. Contextual language models, on the contrary, directly capture the meaning of individual word instances. The goal of this survey is to provide an overview of word meaning representation methods, and of the strategies that have been proposed for improving the quality of the generated vectors. These often involve injecting external knowledge about lexical semantic relationships, or refining the vectors to describe different senses. The survey also covers recent approaches for obtaining word type-level representations from token-level ones, and for combining static and contextualized representations. Special focus is given to probing and interpretation studies aimed at discovering the lexical semantic knowledge that is encoded in contextualized representations. The challenges posed by this exploration have motivated the interest towards static embedding derivation from contextualized embeddings, and for methods aimed at improving the similarity estimates that can be drawn from the space of contextual language models.

Semantics Foundation for Cyber-physical Systems Using Higher-order UTP

Model-based design has become the predominant approach to the design of hybrid and cyber-physical systems (CPSs). It advocates the use of mathematically founded models to capture heterogeneous digital and analog behaviours from domain-specific formalisms, allowing all engineering tasks of verification, code synthesis, and validation to be performed within a single semantic body. Guaranteeing the consistency among the different views and heterogeneous models of a system at different levels of abstraction, however, poses significant challenges. To address these issues, Hoare and He’s Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP) proposes a calculus to capture domain-specific programming and modelling paradigms into a unified semantic framework. Our goal is to extend UTP to form a semantic foundation for CPS design. Higher-order UTP (HUTP) is a conservative extension to Hoare and He’s theory that supports the specification of discrete, real-time, and continuous dynamics, concurrency and communication, and higher-order quantification. Within HUTP, we define a calculus of normal hybrid designs to model, analyse, compose, refine, and verify heterogeneous hybrid system models. In addition, we define respective formal semantics for Hybrid Communicating Sequential Processes and Simulink using HUTP.

Abstraction in storytelling

Abstract Discussions of storytelling and narrative have encompassed abstraction in different ways including master narratives (Bamberg, 1997) and storylines (Harré & van Lagenhove, 1998). These discussions, however, have often viewed storytelling and abstraction as a binary distinction, rather than a spectrum where speakers move between different levels of abstraction when recounting experiences. This article argues for a nuanced approach to abstraction in storytelling that considers how specific details of stories – namely, actors, actions, contexts, and time – are excluded or abstracted in the recounting of experience, with a link between increased abstraction and implied moral judgement. The article first outlines the theoretical basis for this argument, and then shows specific examples of abstraction taken from stories about religious experience. Finally, the productive implications of a nuanced view of abstraction are outlined, including for narrative and discourse analysis, for understanding of storytelling and cognition, and for critical analysis of racist language.

Neither Fish, Nor Fowl

Abstract International lawyers ascribe to the lex specialis principle three distinctly different meanings. Thus, lex specialis is referred to, first, as a norm designed to resolve conflicts between entire categories of norms; secondly, as a norm designed to resolve conflicts on a case-by-case basis; and, thirdly, as a rule of interpretation designed to avoid the occurrence of normative conflicts, rather than to resolve them. Scholars have attempted to explain this divergent use of legal language. In so doing, they have consistently had their focus on the different mind-sets or inclinations of lawyers active in different branches of international law. Symptomatic is Marko Milanović, who pictured the divergent use of lex specialis as a reflection of a debate waged between “human rights enthusiasts” and “human rights sceptics”. This article approaches the issue at a different level of abstraction. As it argues, the divergent use of lex specialis is the result of users’ different conceptions of an international legal system. Thus, lawyers conceive differently of the lex specialis principle, depending on whether they take the position of a legal positivist, a legal idealist or a legal realist. In no case are lawyers equipped to conceive of this principle in all of its three senses.

Grasping and retrieving unknown hazardous objects with a mobile manipulator

Abstract Robots show impressive flexibility and reliability in various applications. This makes them suitable to help and support humans in hazardous environments. They can handle dangerous, unknown objects with no risk for the operator’s health. In this work we present a shared operation approach for the identification and localization of unknown hazardous objects as well as a 3D mapping approach for mobile robots in challenging environments. A shared control force-based grasping approach complete these two components and makes it easy for a human operator to grasp and retrieve unknown hazardous objects. Including the human expertise in the operation and control is additionally supported by providing intuitive visualization on different levels of abstraction. The presented approach was successfully evaluated with two different mobile robots within a field test.

Posing Creative Reduction Tasks

Reduction is a fundamental computer science (CS) notion (Schwill, 1994). In solving reduction tasks one must think at the problem level, in order to recognize suitable correlations between problems. Thinking at the problem level involves recognition of declarative features of problems. This requires a high level of abstraction. Reduction is well apparent in the more advanced stages of CS studies, but it is also relevant at earlier stages. It may serve as an important means for practice and awareness of abstraction. We designed reduction tasks for the earlier tutoring and training of algorithms students. Our designs are illustrated with three creative tasks of different characteristics. Student solutions for each task are presented and discussed. The students demonstrated different levels of abstraction, insight and flexibility in solving the tasks.

Testing the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction

AbstractThis corpus-based study tests the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction by examining the syntactic realizations of subject extraposition (e.g.,it is important to, it seems that), and by investigating at which level(s) of formal description a difference in form also entails a difference in function. The results show that distinct pairs of form and function, i.e. constructions, can be found at different levels of abstraction, but that these constructions also subsume formal realization patterns that do not encode a difference in function. This suggests that the Principle of No Synonymy largely breaks down at low levels of formal description. The study also offers a constructional account of subject extraposition by identifying a number of subject extraposition constructions, thereby showing that this is a syntactic phenomenon that is best analyzed as a family of constructions.

Visual Communication of Object Concepts at Different Levels of Abstraction

People can produce drawings of specific entities (e.g., Garfield), as well as general categories (e.g., "cat"). What explains this ability to produce such varied drawings of even highly familiar object concepts? We hypothesized that drawing objects at different levels of abstraction depends on both sensory information and representational goals, such that drawings intended to portray a recently seen object preserve more detail than those intended to represent a category. Participants drew objects cued either with a photo or a category label. For each cue type, half the participants aimed to draw a specific exemplar; the other half aimed to draw the category. We found that label-cued category drawings were the most recognizable at the basic level, whereas photo-cued exemplar drawings were the least recognizable. Together, these findings highlight the importance of task context for explaining how people use drawings to communicate visual concepts in different ways.

Ratatoskr: An Open-Source Framework for In-Depth Power, Performance, and Area Analysis and Optimization in 3D NoCs

We introduce Ratatoskr , an open-source framework for in-depth power, performance, and area (PPA) analysis in Networks-on-Chips (NoCs) for 3D-integrated and heterogeneous System-on-Chips (SoCs). It covers all layers of abstraction by providing an NoC hardware implementation on Register Transfer Level (RTL), an NoC simulator on cycle-accurate level and an application model on transaction level. By this comprehensive approach, Ratatoskr can provide the following specific PPA analyses: Dynamic power of links can be measured within 2.4% accuracy of bit-level simulations while maintaining cycle-accurate simulation speed. Router power is determined from RTL-to-gate-level synthesis combined with cycle-accurate simulations. The performance of the whole NoC can be measured both via cycle-accurate and RTL simulations. The performance (i.e., timing) of individual routers and the NoC area are obtained from RTL synthesis results. Despite these manifold features, Ratatoskr offers easy two-step user interaction: (1) A single point-of-entry allows setting design parameters. (2) PPA reports are generated automatically. For both the input and the output, different levels of abstraction can be chosen for high-level rapid network analysis or low-level improvement of architectural details. The synthesizable NoC-RTL model shows improved total router power and area in comparison to a conventional standard router. As a forward-thinking and unique feature not found in other NoC PPA-measurement tools, Ratatoskr supports heterogeneous 3D integration that is one of the most promising integration paradigms for upcoming SoCs. Thereby, Ratatoskr lays the groundwork to design their communication architectures. The framework is publicly available at https://github.com/ratatoskr-project .

An update on passive transport in and out of plant cells.

Transport across membranes is critical for plant survival. Membranes are the interfaces at which plants interact with their environment. The transmission of energy and molecules into cells provides plants with the source material and power to grow, develop, defend, and move. An appreciation of the physical forces that drive transport processes is thus important for understanding the plant growth and development. We focus on the passive transport of molecules, describing the fundamental concepts and demonstrating how different levels of abstraction can lead to different interpretations of the driving forces. We summarize recent developments on quantitative frameworks for describing diffusive and bulk flow transport processes in and out of cells, with a more detailed focus on plasmodesmata, and outline open questions and challenges.

FORUM: building a Knowledge Graph from public databases and scientific literature to extract associations between chemicals and diseases.

MotivationMetabolomics studies aim at reporting a metabolic signature (list of metabolites) related to a particular experimental condition. These signatures are instrumental in the identification of biomarkers or classification of individuals, however their biological and physiological interpretation remains a challenge. To support this task, we introduce FORUM: a Knowledge Graph (KG) providing a semantic representation of relations between chemicals and biomedical concepts, built from a federation of life science databases and scientific literature repositories.ResultsThe use of a Semantic Web framework on biological data allows us to apply ontological-based reasoning to infer new relations between entities. We show that these new relations provide different levels of abstraction and could open the path to new hypotheses. We estimate the statistical relevance of each extracted relation, explicit or inferred, using an enrichment analysis, and instantiate them as new knowledge in the KG to support results interpretation/further inquiries.Availability and implementationA web interface to browse and download the extracted relations, as well as a SPARQL endpoint to directly probe the whole FORUM KG, are available at https://forum-webapp.semantic-metabolomics.fr. The code needed to reproduce the triplestore is available at https://github.com/eMetaboHUB/Forum-DiseasesChem.Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Flexibility of emerging face categorization at different levels of abstraction

Categorization of visual stimuli at different levels of abstraction relies on the encoding of relevant diagnostic features present at different spatial scales. We used the Eidolon Factory, an image-manipulation algorithm that introduces random disarray fields across spatial scales, to study how such a process flexibly combines perceptual information to perform successful categorization depending on task demands. Images of animal faces, human faces, and everyday objects were disarrayed coherently (random fields correlated) or incoherently (random fields randomized) to create a family of 50 eidolons per stimulus image with increasing disarray. Participants (N = 243) viewed each family of eidolons in a smooth sequence from maximum disarray to no disarray and performed a category verification task either at the superordinate (any face type) or basic (human face only) levels at two levels of uncertainty: participants in one group used their gut feeling to respond, whereas another group had to be sure of their decision. When participants used their gut feeling to respond, we observed a superordinate-level advantage. When they were sure of their response, we observed a basic-level advantage. Coherently disarrayed sequences impaired target detection compared to incoherently disarrayed sequences for both levels of response certainty. Furthermore, participants’ sensitivity in the Any Face condition increased when they observed coherently disarrayed sequences and had to be sure of their response. These results suggest that the visual system does not strictly adhere to feedforward processing but flexibly adjusts to the relevant perceptual information depending on task context.

Exploring the influence of goals at different levels of abstraction on self-reported and electronically measured exercise frequency: an experimental field study

ABSTRACT Although regular physical activity is associated with numerous health benefits, many people are not sufficiently active. Interventions that aim to increase physical activity rely mainly on concrete, “subordinate” goals. Based on a goal-theoretical perspective, we argue that combining goals at different levels of abstraction may foster successful goal pursuit, particularly in the long run. In the present study, all participants committed to the subordinate goal of exercising three times per week for three weeks. We used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design to assign participants to an additional superordinate goal, concrete action steps, or both; a control group focused solely on the subordinate goal. The main outcome was exercise frequency, which was measured (a) in the short term, i.e., during the three-week intervention period, using self-reports and electronic data; and (b) in the long term, i.e., during a six-month follow-up period, using electronic data. For the self-reported frequency in the short term, the results show an interaction between a superordinate goal and action steps: In the absence of action steps, a superordinate goal had a negative effect, but this negative effect dissolved when action steps were present. Similarly, action steps exerted a positive effect in the presence of a superordinate goal, but this effect dissolved in the absence of a superordinate goal. Goal manipulation had no significant influence either in the short or long term for electronically measured exercise frequency. Possible explanations for the observed effects and the differences between self-reported and electronically measured exercise frequencies are discussed.

A Review of the Different Levels of Abstraction for Systems-on-Chip (SoC)

Simulating systems on a chip (SoC) even before starting its productivity makes it possible to validate the correct functioning of the systems, also avoiding the manufacture of defective chips. However, low-level design and system complexity makes verification and simulation more complicated and time consuming. The classification of the different levels of abstraction from lowest to highest generally depends on the estimation accuracy of the system performance and the speed of simulation. The RTL (Register Transfer Level) abstraction level allows efficient description at gate level with good precision. Therefore, RTL program are slowly simulated. Simulation speed usually depends on the size of the platform used, which is not the case for transaction level modeling (TLM) to achieve simulation speed based on the exchange of transactions between system modules. This work aims to give a detailed description of the different levels of abstraction with the main advantages, and disadvantages on the performances estimation side such as, energy consumption, precision, and speed. Furthermore, an overview of the most adequate memory architectures and interconnection networks, to aim the most suitable virtual platforms of simulation for SoC.

Interpreting Frequently Amended Constitutions: Singapore’s Dual Approach

Abstract In a time where many constitutions are as frequently amended as ordinary statutes, purposive constitutional interpretation is both commonplace and normatively justifiable. However, as recent Singaporean decisions demonstrate, a common purpose-related problem arising in statutory interpretation—the existence of conflicting purposes at different levels of abstraction—takes on an additional dimension of complexity in constitutional interpretation. While courts prefer specific over general purposes in statutory interpretation, on grounds that this upholds Parliament’s most precise intent, they hesitate to consistently do the same in constitutional interpretation. This article rationalizes this difference between statutory and constitutional interpretation, taking as its point of departure a unique dual function that all constitutions, even oft-amended constitutions, must discharge: the creation of efficient government and the legitimation of political systems. It develops a dual approach to constitutional interpretation in response to this dual function, which requires courts to prefer specific over general constitutional purposes in the event of conflict, except when those general purposes reflect norms which legitimate the constitution in society’s eyes. In doing so, this article develops an understanding of purposive constitutional interpretation that preserves a constitution’s essence, while accommodating the reality of frequent amendments.