Abstract Language Research Articles

Morse set theory as a foundation for constructive mathematics

We present, in outline, a constructive development of set theory in the style of A.P. Morse's classical counterpart [10]. Since the development is carried in a very precise formal language, it readily lends itself to computer-assisted proof-checking and program extraction from proofs.

Applying Concepts from Political Science and Economics to Advance the Study of Engineering Education

<strong>Background:</strong> There are myriad social, political, and economic factors that influence decision-making processes in and around engineering education. Although the engineering education community may study those processes and their effects using a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods, a more systematic use of concepts from political science and economics could help advance the study of engineering education. <strong>Purpose:</strong> In this article, we outline concepts and tools from the study of political science and economics that can help clarify aspects of the engineering education system that many researchers may already intuit by providing precise language and analytical formalisms to describe and explain aspects of engineering education more directly. <strong>Scope:</strong> By way of introduction to the field of engineering education, we begin by outlining definitions. We then illustrate six main phenomena within engineering education where researchers can potentially apply these ideas to further understand and improve elements of how we educate engineers. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> By focusing on the political and economic factors influencing engineering education, researchers, faculty members, administrators, and/or stakeholders can have an alternative set of conceptual tools at their disposal for studying, analyzing, and changing engineering education systems.

Pendekatan Terhadap Penyampaian Ceramah Ustaz Kazim Elias Melalui Pengaplikasian Retorik Moden

Language plays a major role in a society especially in da'wah communication because every message in da'wah should be delivered using an accurate and precise language to ensure that the listener understands the meaning conveyed. Therefore, it is undeniable that some of the da'wah's message did not reach its listeners due to the preacher's failure in delivering and using language. As a result, the rhetorical approach is needed in order to improve the language used in processing or delivering the information so that it can be able to influence the listener. Although the rhetorical approach is often used in the field of education, politics and advertising, but this rhetorical theory also exists and is able to improve the quality of language in delivering the elements of da'wah. On that basis, this study focuses on the type and function of rhetoric used by speakers from neighboring countries, namely Ustaz Kazim Elias. Recordings of his talks were downloaded through the website and subsequently transcribed for research data. This study will utilize rhetorical theory as the main guide in parsing and explaining certain expressions according to the context in which they are spoken. Based on the analysis and discussion that has been done, this study found that there are all types of rhetoric used by Ustaz Kazim Elias (exposure: 31%, argument: 5%, explanation: 19%, narration: 37% and persuasion: 8%). These types can be identified through certain markers such as the use of pronouns, affirmative words, adjectives, figurative language (simile and metaphor) and verses of the Qur'an.

Pendekatan Terhadap Penyampaian Ceramah Ustaz Kazim Elias Melalui Pengaplikasian Retorik Moden

Language plays a major role in a society especially in da'wah communication because every message in da'wah should be delivered using an accurate and precise language to ensure that the listener understands the meaning conveyed. Therefore, it is undeniable that some of the da'wah's message did not reach its listeners due to the preacher's failure in delivering and using language. As a result, the rhetorical approach is needed in order to improve the language used in processing or delivering the information so that it can be able to influence the listener. Although the rhetorical approach is often used in the field of education, politics and advertising, but this rhetorical theory also exists and is able to improve the quality of language in delivering the elements of da'wah. On that basis, this study focuses on the type and function of rhetoric used by speakers from neighboring countries, namely Ustaz Kazim Elias. Recordings of his talks were downloaded through the website and subsequently transcribed for research data. This study will utilize rhetorical theory as the main guide in parsing and explaining certain expressions according to the context in which they are spoken. Based on the analysis and discussion that has been done, this study found that there are all types of rhetoric used by Ustaz Kazim Elias (exposure: 31%, argument: 5%, explanation: 19%, narration: 37% and persuasion: 8%). These types can be identified through certain markers such as the use of pronouns, affirmative words, adjectives, figurative language (simile and metaphor) and verses of the Qur'an.

Native Peoples, Politics, and Society in Contemporary Paraguay: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Native Peoples, Politics, and Society in Contemporary Paraguay: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Application of structural topic modeling to aviation safety data

Data-driven frameworks for analyzing aviation safety data have recently gained traction. Text-based machine learning techniques often rely purely on word frequency analysis to eliminate the innate subjectivity of human language, but more refined techniques like structural topic modeling (STM) attempt to simulate text generation to identify the thematic undertones of text corpora. This paper presents an application of STM to two text-based sets of aviation safety data, the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) and accident and incident reports published by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). A framework for cleaning and pre-processing the datasets is discussed, including a brief discussion of bag-of-words and TF–IDF representations of narratives. The methodology behind STM is described, including techniques for selecting the optimal number of topics. The results of the STM analysis on the ASRS and NTSB datasets are presented, with a focus on the clarity and specificity based on most common words associated with topics. A brief exploration of the correlation between pairs of topic labels is also undertaken, including a visualization of narratives in 2-dimensional space. STM is found to show promise in identifying themes within technical datasets, with model performance increasing for more specific corpora that use precise and unique language.

Respectful Terminology in Archaeological Compliance

AbstractArchaeological compliance is defined by state and federal legislation and the constrained, precise language in which it is written. Rules and policies operationalize the law but provide some flexibility in its interpretation and implementation. The pronounced use of “legal” and “scientific” language in archaeological compliance can be considered insensitive or offensive to some tribal members when discussing the disposition and care of the remains and belongings of their ancestors. The language we use constructs our reality and defines how we interpret our interactions of the lived experience. It is therefore necessary to revise the language employed in archaeological compliance to ensure that it reflects the values of the communities that these laws define to determine treatment and ultimate disposition of their ancestral remains and belongings. This article describes and encourages the use of a respectful terminology, developed in conjunction with compliance professionals and tribal representatives, to restructure the language we use and redefine our interactions as more considerate of tribal concerns for repatriation.

Improving Search-Based Automatic Program Repair With Neural Machine Translation

The challenge of automatically repairing bugs in programs to reduce debugging expenses and increase program quality is known as automated program repair. To overcome this issue, test-suite-based repair techniques use a specified test suite as an oracle and alter the input faulty program to pass the full test suite. GenProg is a well-known example of this kind of repair, in which genetic programming is used to reorder the statements already present in the faulty program. However, recent practical experiments suggest that GenProg’s performance, notably for Java, is not sufficient. Improved program dependability necessitates the use of automatic program repair techniques. Template-based program repair techniques have recently been combined with search-based techniques to solve program issues automatically. Although intriguing, it has two fundamental drawbacks: Its search space often lacks the correct solution, and the technique disregards program expertise, such as precise code language. Compared with the template-based program repair approach, existing neural-machine-translation-based approaches are not limited by these constraints due to their ability to learn and generate new solutions. We propose an approach that combines a search-based automatic program repair technique with a neural-machine-translation-based approach. More specifically, we use both redundancy assumption and sequence-to-sequence learning of correct patches as the source for potential fix statements that feed into a multiobjective evolutionary search algorithm to find test-suite-adequate patches. In this work, a novel framework called ARJANMT is introduced for automatically repairing Java programs. Two sets of controlled experiments are conducted on 410 bugs from two benchmarks to investigate the repairability and correctness of our proposed framework. A comparison between state-of-the-art automatic program repair frameworks is made. The experimental results indicate that combining those two types of repair techniques (search-based and neural-machine-translation-based) produces better results or fixes bugs that they previously were unable to fix individually.

Gestures Controlled Home Automation using Deep Learning: A Review

This paper presents the review of the studies carried out on the application using computer vision for hand gesture recognition. Hand gestures can be used to operate the electronic devices. Therefore, it is very much essential to review on the scientific studies whose aim is to develop a technique to achieve more precise and faster sign language recognition system for plain and cluttered backgrounds with different humans to help speech and hearing impaired in their life, robot control, human–computer interaction (HCI), home automation and medical fields. The objective of this paper is to give an overall literature review of the work done related to identify the current technology and methodology used in hand gesture recognition as well as home automation system. This paper mainly describes various images or vision based sign language recognition system comprising pre-processing, feature extraction and classification. The system conversion of sign language to text. The recognized text can be sent to the control model. The gesture based automation communicates directly with control model to control home appliances.

Linguistic changes in the transition from summaries to abstracts: The case of the Journal of Experimental Medicine

Linguistic changes in the transition from summaries to abstracts: The case of the <scp> <i>Journal of Experimental Medicine</i> </scp>

What's Stopping Knowledge Synthesis? A Systematic Review of Recent Practices in Research on Smallholder Diversity

A systematic review of recent publications was conducted to assess the extent to which contemporary micro-level research on smallholders facilitates data re-use and knowledge synthesis. Following PRISMA standards for systematic review, 1,182 articles were identified (published between 2018 and 2020), and 261 articles were selected for review in full. The themes investigated were: (i) data management, including data source, variables collected, granularity, and availability of the data; (ii) the statistical methods used, including analytical approach and reproducibility; and (iii) the interpretation of results, including the scope and objectives of the study, development issues addressed, scale of recommendations made relative to the scale of the sample, and the audience for recommendations. It was observed that household surveys were the most common data source and tended to be representative at the local (community) level. There was little harmonization of the variables collected between studies. Over three quarters of the studies (77%) drew on data which was not in the public domain, 14% published newly open data, and 9% drew on datasets which were already open. Other than descriptive statistics, linear and logistic regression methods were the most common analytical method used (64% of articles). In the vast majority of those articles, regression was used as an explanatory tool, as opposed to a predictive tool. More than half of the articles (59%) made claims or recommendations which extended beyond the coverage of their datasets. In combination these two common practices may lead to erroneous understanding: the tendency to rely upon simple regressions to explain context-specific and complex associations; and the tendency to generalize beyond the remit of the data collected. We make four key recommendations: (1) increased data sharing and variable harmonization would enable data to be re-used between studies; (2) providing detailed meta-data on sampling frames and study-context would enable more powerful meta-analyses; (3) methodological openness and predictive modeling could help test the transferability of approaches; (4) more precise language in study conclusions could help decision makers understand the relevance of findings for policy planning. Following these practices could leverage greater benefits from the substantial investment already made in data collection on smallholder farms.

Worst-case Execution Time Calculation for Query-based Monitors by Witness Generation

Runtime monitoring plays a key role in the assurance of modern intelligent cyber-physical systems, which are frequently data-intensive and safety-critical. While graph queries can serve as an expressive yet formally precise specification language to capture the safety properties of interest, there are no timeliness guarantees for such auto-generated runtime monitoring programs, which prevents their use in a real-time setting. While worst-case execution time (WCET) bounds derived by existing static WCET estimation techniques are safe, they may not be tight as they are unable to exploit domain-specific (semantic) information about the input models. This article presents a semantic-aware WCET analysis method for data-driven monitoring programs derived from graph queries. The method incorporates results obtained from low-level timing analysis into the objective function of a modern graph solver. This allows the systematic generation of input graph models up to a specified size (referred to as witness models ) for which the monitor is expected to take the most time to complete. Hence, the estimated execution time of the monitors on these graphs can be considered as safe and tight WCET. Additionally, we perform a set of experiments with query-based programs running on a real-time platform over a set of generated models to investigate the relationship between execution times and their estimates, and we compare WCET estimates produced by our approach with results from two well-known timing analyzers, aiT and OTAWA.

The genetically modified organism shall not be refused? Talking back to the technosciences

Starting from Marcel Mauss’ observation that “one has no right to refuse a gift”, this paper explores the politics of refusal in the context of field trials with genetically modified organisms in Flanders (Belgium). Based on a decade of activist research, and focusing on the genetically modified organism field trials of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology, we show that the business model of this strategic research center – with its triple mission of carrying biotechnology research, technology transfer, and the promotion of biotechnology through communication and lobby activities – fosters a climate in which innovations in the technosciences have to “be accepted”. The future is laid out without including the possibility of refusal. Consternation is great when this is exactly what happens. Irrational fears and lack of understanding or lack of familiarity are invoked to explain refusal. Language of precision, innovation, safety, and control are deployed to re-assure the public. Refusal is not considered a legitimate option. Yet, if farmers and grassroots initiatives would accept the gift of genetically modified organisms, it would mean the acceptance of their dispossession and the impossibility of diverse food sovereignties. Starting from theoretical work on “the gift” and “the politics of refusal”, we argue that recognizing innovation as the intrinsically plural and divergent process it is, entails including options to refuse particular pathways as a first step to open up others. As we will argue, saying no to genetically modified organisms is part of saying yes to peasant autonomy, agrobiodiversity, and peoples’ food sovereignties.

Visual perceptual deficit screening in stroke survivors: evaluation of current practice in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

Purpose Visual perceptual deficits are frequently underdiagnosed in stroke survivors compared to sensory vision deficits or visual neglect. To better understand this imparity, we evaluated current practice for screening post-stroke visual perceptual deficits. Methods We conducted a survey targeted at professionals working with stroke survivors involved in screening visual perceptual deficits across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Results Forty orthoptists and 174 occupational therapists responded to the survey. Visual perceptual deficit screening was primarily conducted by occupational therapists (94%), with 75∼100% of stroke survivors screened per month. Respondents lacked consensus on whether several common post-stroke visual deficits were perceptual or not. During the screening, respondents primarily relied on self-reports and observation (94%), while assessment batteries (58%) and screening tools were underutilised (56%) and selected inappropriately (66%). Respondents reported lack of training in visual perception screening (20%) and physical/cognitive condition of stroke survivors (19%) as extremely challenging during screening. Conclusions Visual perceptual deficits are screened post-stroke at a similar rate to sensory vision or visual neglect. Underdiagnosis of visual perceptual deficits may stem from both reliance on subjective and non-standardised screening approaches, and conflicting definitions of visual perception held among clinicians. We recommend increased training provision and use of brief performance-based screening tools. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Lack of agreement among clinicians on what constitutes as visual perceptual or sensory vision deficits may prove problematic, as precise and exact language is often required for clinical decision-making (e.g., referrals). Biases for more familiar visual (perceptual) deficits held among clinicians during the screening process may lead to other visual deficits being missed. To avoid problems being missed, clinicians should aim to use standardised assessments rather than stroke survivor self-report and observations of function when screening for visual perceptual difficulties.

​Study on Housing Management Practices Followed by Dairy Farmers in Northern Telangana State of India

Background: Adequate housing is essential for wellbeing and welfare of any kind of livestock, which keeps them comfort and healthy thereby increases production and reproduction performance by exploiting their fullest genetic potential. As scanty information available on farmers practices on animal housing, the present study was undertaken to assess housing management practices followed by dairy farmers in Northern Telangana state of India. Methods: Data were collected from randomly selected 240 dairy farmers from 24 villages of 8 mandals from 4 districts. A pretested semi-structured questionnaire in precise language was employed for collecting data through interview and face to face discussion with the dairy farmers duly avoiding ambiguous, dichotomous and non-variant items for proper interpretation. Result: Majority (59.58%) respondents kept animals in kutcha houses and 74.58% sheds located to nearby their dwellings. Majority (50.42%) of the sheds were in east-west direction and 82.08% of the respondents followed single line system of housing. Majority 91.25, 95.42, 84.16, 67.92 and 69.58% of the respondents protected animals against extreme weather conditions, maintained cleanliness, had earthen floor, backward slope in the floor and wooden pillars, respectively. Majority of animal houses had thatched roof (50.42%) and without walls (82.08%) and majority of them (89.58%) provided mangers but only 11.25% had pucca type mangers. Only a few respondents (14.58%) provided pucca drainage system and most of the farmers (58.75%) had manure pit adjacent to their animal houses. The study concludes that, the dairy farmers of the study area are well aware of advantages of keeping animals in hygienic animal houses under adverse tropical climatic conditions of the study area and providing them periodical trainings and visits to modern organised dairy farms helps them to optimize productivity from dairy animals.

Merger and acquisition purposes and external communication strategy

We study under what conditions an acquirer actively conveys information about its deal via a conference call. Drawing upon literatures on communication and competition, we theorize about how the intent of an acquisition is associated with (a) whether a conference call is held and (b) how vague the communication is. If a firm seeks unique synergy through an acquisition, we predict that it will seek to preserve confidentiality and avoid informing rivals, and thus the acquirer will communicate less. Conversely, if a firm seeks to initiate greater industry concentration, it will communicate more extensively by holding a conference call and using more precise language to encourage rivals to follow suit. Empirically, we examine the conference call decisions and transcript contents for domestic acquisitions made by U.S. listed firms (2003-2018), finding support for most of the predictions. The paper thereby opens new research avenues on the strategic use of corporate communication.

Social workers’ risk assessment in child protection: the problem of disagreement and a lack of a precise language about risk

ABSTRACT Social workers make risk assessments in accordance with their obligation to safeguard and protect children against neglect and abuse. To prevent serious problems, it is necessary to make assessments about the likelihood that social problems emerge in the first place. We investigated 57 Danish social workers’ risk assessments. We used the vignette methodology, setting up a fictitious case and asking respondents to assess two children’s risk of suffering problems in connection with the suicide of their father. We focused on the respondents’ assessments of the magnitude of risk and on how they referred, in their own words, to the protective and risk factors they particularly noticed. There were three results of note. (1) The social workers’ assessments of risk were very divergent. This was the case whether they expressed the magnitude of risk in words or as a percentage. (2) There was no close correspondence between risk assessments expressed in words and as a percentage. Social workers lacked words to communicate the magnitude of risk adequately. (3) There were no significant differences in approach to the assessment of children’s risk between social workers who rated the risk as high, medium or low. All were attentive to both protective and risk factors.

Social workers’ risk assessment in child protection: the problem of disagreement and a lack of a precise language about risk

Social workers make risk assessments in accordance with their obligation to safeguard and protect children against neglect and abuse. To prevent serious problems, it is necessary to make assessment...

A Data-Driven Functional Mapping of the Anterior Temporal Lobes.

Although the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) comprises several anatomic and functional subdivisions, it is often reduced to a homogeneous theoretical entity, such as a domain-general convergence zone, or "hub," for semantic information. Methodological limitations are largely to blame for the imprecise mapping of function to structure in the ATL. There are two major obstacles to using fMRI to identify the precise functional organization of the ATL: the difficult choice of stimuli and tasks to activate, and dissociate, specific regions within the ATL; and poor signal quality because of magnetic field distortions near the sinuses. To circumvent these difficulties, we developed a data-driven parcellation routine using resting-state fMRI data (24 females, 64 males) acquired using a sequence that was optimized to enhance signal in the ATL. Focusing on patterns of functional connectivity between each ATL voxel and the rest of the brain, we found that the ATL comprises at least 34 distinct functional parcels that are arranged into bands along the lateral and ventral cortical surfaces, extending from the posterior temporal lobes into the temporal poles. In addition, the anterior region of the fusiform gyrus, most often cited as the location of the semantic hub, was found to be part of a domain-specific network associated with face and social processing, rather than a domain-general semantic hub. These findings offer a fine-grained functional map of the ATL and offer an initial step toward using more precise language to describe the locations of functional responses in this heterogeneous region of human cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The functional role of the anterior aspects of the temporal lobes (ATL) is a contentious issue. While it is likely that different regions within the ATL subserve unique cognitive functions, most studies revert to vaguely referring to particular functional regions as "the ATL," and, thus, the mapping of function to anatomy remains unclear. We used resting-state fMRI connectivity patterns between the ATL and the rest of the brain to reveal that the ATL comprises at least 34 distinct functional parcels that are organized into a three-level functional hierarchy. These results provide a detailed functional map of the anterior temporal lobes that can guide future research on how distinct regions within the ATL support diverse cognitive functions.

Rethinking the use of ‘vulnerable’

Rethinking the use of ‘vulnerable’