Set Of Dialogues Research Articles

The Role of Human Rights in Migration Regional Consultative Processes

States increasingly use Regional Consultative Processes (RCPs) to address and manage migration issues. RCPs purposely limit membership and eschew movement towards more binding or transparent governance. These institutions span the globe with the Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (IGC) covering Europe, North America, and Australia; the Puebla Process covering Northern and Central America; the Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA); and the Soderkoping Process in Eastern Europe. In turn, these RCPs participate in meta-RCPs, like the Berne Process, to allow information-sharing among the various regional groupings. States seem to like RCPs as they facilitate a dialogue on migration without sacrificing sovereignty, they coordinate information exchange, and they contribute to the formation and internalization of guiding principles and best practices. These informal, nonbinding institutions provide an interesting example of a lightly legalized and highly functional multilateral approach to regional problems. RCPs offer a site where states can develop and disseminate both management and human rights approaches to migration issues. RCPs facilitate communication with meetings, designated points of contact, and workshops. RCPs encourage states to coordinate agenda-setting and issue definition in the migration context. Some RCPs seem to place the promotion and integration of human rights high on the agenda; others do not. These regional groupings can also assist consensus-building and position convergence. From a human rights perspective, RCPs could help ratchet up protections through site visits, trainings, and shared understandings, but, of course, they might also facilitate the adoption of a lowest common denominator approach to human rights while harmonizing aggressive management perspectives. Lastly, and most difficult to discern, RCPs might be credited with implementation of new policies and initiatives at the state level. The possibility of human rights influences entering from nonstate actors varies across RCPs. RCPs differ in their willingness to directly engage with civil society and private actors. Some, such as MIDSA, involve outside groups like NGOs and UN actors in meetings as presenters, observers, and discussants. In a slightly different approach, the Soderkoping Process conducts sub-regional NGO networking workshops, including one focused on refugee-assisting NGOs in Ukraine. Other RCPs have institutional mechanisms and specialized meetings to engage researchers, advocacy groups, and academics to contribute. Given the generally exclusive and confidential nature of RCPs, still other RCPs have hesitated to include them at all. In turn, the increase in intra-RCP communications provides another opportunity for outsider voices. Much informal networking and information exchange occurs among RCPs. In addition, RCPs have created more regularized settings for dialogue. For instance, the Berne Initiative, which includes eighty participating governments, along with NGOs and academics, has created a common reference document for a comprehensive migration policy, a policy framework for the development of administrative structures, an evaluation tool to assist states in reviewing and developing their own policies, and opportunities for training and capacity-building for government officials. The Berne Initiative seems to accord respect to international human rights law and has commissioned an expert to conduct a study on migration and international legal norms. To take another example, RCPs have met under the Global RCP Consultation umbrella three times in the last seven years. This meta-RCP endorsed the informal and confidential nature of RCPs to build trust, create open and ongoing dialogue, and allow a safe space to share information. Importantly, it provided a broad forum to address global factors playing a role in regional migration patterns such as the global economic recession, natural and manmade disasters, and climate change. …

Policy dialogue and target setting: do current indicators of Education for All signify progress?

Governments and development agencies met at Jomtien in 1990 and Dakar in 2000 and committed themselves to achieve ‘Education for All’ (EFA). Most aid to education is now the umbrella of EFA and its associated goals, targets and indicators. This paper selects some of the indicators used for EFA and analyses their strengths and weaknesses. Gross and net enrolment rates (GERs and NERs) are widely used to assess levels of enrolment, but their changing values can provide misleading signals to policy makers. Gender Parity Indices foreground differences in participation related to children’s sex but can conceal underlying patterns of participation and imbalances in the population sex ratio. The Education Development Index is a highly aggregated composite index which is ambiguous to interpret. Devising better indicators requires a more nuanced understanding of what indicators do, and do not, measure, and an appreciation of which targets are most useful at different levels for different purposes.

Saying “that” in dialogue: The influence of accessibility and social factors on syntactic production

Previous evidence suggests that when speakers produce sentences from memory or as picture descriptions, their choices of sentence structure are influenced by how easy it is to retrieve sentence material (accessibility). Three experiments assessed whether this pattern holds in naturalistic, interactive dialogue. Pairs of speakers took turns asking each other questions, the responses to which allowed mention of an optional “that” before either repeated (accessible) or unrepeated (inaccessible) material. Speakers’ “that” mention was not sensitive to the repetition (accessibility) manipulation. Instead, “that” mention was sensitive to social factors: speakers said “that” more when adopting another's perspective rather than one's own, and tended to say “that” more when attributing emotions to oneself rather than another. A fourth experiment confirmed that in a memory task, the original pattern is observed. These results suggest that “that” mention is sensitive to the cognitive forces that operate within a production task; in dialogue settings, social factors were especially influential.

Objects and Observers: Telecommunications, the Nineteenth-Century International Exhibition and the Public

This article takes for its reference the displays of telegraphy and telephony at the international exhibitions across the nineteenth century. By considering the underlying material culture and embodied practices connected to the displays the article depicts the public exhibition as an important influencing force on the trajectories of these telecommunication technologies. It submits that the public exhibition represented a setting for a formative dialogue — involving contestation and attempts of reconciliation — between exhibitor and observer, through the object. Beginning with an account of examples that pre-date the international exhibitions, the discourses that surface changed as the century progresses but centre first on the promotion of innovation, on proof making, and then later the protection of invention from piracy. As new domestic markets emerged, this expanded to include concerns over privacy and authenticity.

Bharath Sriraman and Lyn English: Theories of mathematics education: seeking new frontiers. (Springer series: advances in mathematics education)

Many years ago, I had the good fortune to board an air-plane flight across the USA and find both Jim Greeno andDavid Clarke on the plane. The three of us quickly retiredto the back of the airplane, where we had a wide-rangingconversation for more than 5 h. We talked about our dif-ferent theoretical orientations to looking at classrooms.Clarke was involved in the study of student understanding;I was trying to model teaching; Greeno was focusing on theclassroom community. As we discussed each other’s work,we pursued points of commonality and difference, and thestrengths and limitations of the approaches we had taken.(None was adequate to explain everything; each explainedsomething that the others did not.) As always, a few peoplestood around the back of the plane, some stretching orotherwise occupied.At the end of the flight, the seat belt sign came on, andthe three of us shook hands and prepared to go on our way.At that point, one of the bystanders came up to us and said,‘‘Thank you so much. That was an absolutely wonderfulseminar. I learned a great deal from your exchanges.’’I had precisely that kind of feeling when I finishedreading Theories of Mathematics Education: Seeking NewFrontiers. This rather substantial volume is organized into19 parts, each of which, after the initial overview (‘‘Sur-veying theories and philosophies of mathematics educa-tion,’’ by the editors), typically contains a brief preface, asubstantial essay, and from one to three commentaries onthe essay. Thus, the book can be seen as a series of dialogsamong some of the top professionals in the field, to whichreaders have the privilege of ‘‘listening in.’’ This is anexcellent format, one that is extremely well suited fordiscussions of theory. When issues are ‘‘settled,’’ a set ofdefinitive, handbook-like chapters may be appropriate. Butwhen ideas are being sorted out, a set of dialogs helps toreveal more of the unsettled (as well as the settled) terrain.That is a good thing.To begin at the beginning, Jeremy Kilpatrick notes in hispreface to Part I (the survey by the editors mentionedabove) that Europeans have, in general, been more explicitand reflective about issues of theory than have those in theUSA. Thus, the international authorship of the book bringsvalue added to the American context. Kilpatrick mentions,among other things, the need for greater clarity about therelationship between theories and models, a point to whichI shall return: as a reviewer I cannot resist the temptation toenter into the dialogs begun by the authors.The volume itself offers a tapestry of theory-relatedissues in mathematics education: some closely related,some parallel, and some orthogonal. Although there are noformal section breaks in the book, there is a tacit organi-zation in the order of the chapters, with the more broadlytheoretical and metatheoretical chapters coming in Parts Ithrough V, and a broad range of issues-oriented theoreticalchapters in the sequel.The volume begins with various perspectives on the‘‘big picture.’’ Sriraman and English, citing Lincoln andGuba (1994), reference some of the themes mathematicseducation should address:1. What is reality? Or what is the nature of the worldaround us?…2. How do we about knowing the world around us?…3. How can we be certain in the ‘‘truth’’ of what weknow? (p. 7)

The Course Council: An Example of Student-Centered Learning

To promote student-centered learning, a course council was established in a beginning undergraduate nursing course. A student representative was selected by peers to attend a monthly course council meeting with faculty. Representatives were asked to query classmates in their section of eight students regarding opinions, questions, and concerns about the course and then bring those views to the council. In this monthly, small group, open dialogue setting, students spoke freely about experiences in the classroom, laboratory, and clinical settings. The stage was set for reflection, problem solving, and decision making involving students and faculty. Student input led to meaningful course changes, provided opportunities for students to learn from one another, and fostered critical thinking and professional responsibility. The course council approach was successful and has been expanded to include other nursing courses.

原子力技術に関する「対話場」の設計に関する研究

Toward resolving nuclear conflict, deep dialogue sessions among stakeholders having different opinions concerning nuclear technology are strongly required. In order to realize a fair and constructive dialogue session, it is necessary to pay attention to the design of the dialogue session, e.g., participant selection, agenda setting, facilitation, and rules of dialogue. The basic requirements for a dialogue session have been proposed in this study based on theoretical and empirical analyses of previous dialogue sessions on nuclear issues. The theoretical analysis has been performed based on various aspects concerning defects in nuclear communication mentioned in science and technology studies. The empirical analysis has been performed by analyzing participants' responses and by systematizing practical findings of previous dialogues. The proposed requirements for a dialogue session were utilized for the design and operation of a preliminary attempt of a dialogue session named “Open Forum for Nuclear Communication.” Through the analysis of data, such as minutes and recorded conversations collected after the session, it has been confirmed that the prespecified requirements have been satisfied. In addition, the participants' responses have shown a high acceptance for an open forum. According to these results, the basic validity and effectiveness of the proposed requirements in the design of a dialogue session have been successfully demonstrated.

Awareness of Language use in Conceptualization: A Study of Children's Understanding of Movement and Gravity

In this article the role of children's awareness of the function of language use is examined in an empirical, qualitative investigation. Forty children of six and 10 years old were asked to make sense of a science problem in special dialogue setting where they were encouraged to reflect on their own language use. The article concerns the interplay between language use and meaning-making. Dialogue excerpts where the children expressed awareness of their own language and understanding were selected, and qualities of awareness were delimited in these excerpts and grouped in four descriptive categories. A widened definition of language awareness is proposed and discussed, in which awareness of the close relationship between language use and meaning-making is taken into consideration.

Feasibility of telemonitoring for active surveillance of influenza vaccine safety in the primary care setting in the Netherlands

We examined the feasibility of a commercial home telemonitoring system for monitoring adverse events related to vaccination and influenza-like illness (ILI) signs and outcomes in the primary care setting in The Netherlands. A prospective cohort of people eligible for influenza vaccination was monitored daily between mid-October 2007 and mid-March 2008. Adults from five primary care centres were invited to participate. A total of 245 people participated (response rate 75%). Their mean age was 61 years (SD = 15), 50% were female and 60% had a chronic disease. Most (73%) had no problems with installation of the system and 67% finished all sets of monitoring dialogues. The reported incidence of adverse events in the first week after vaccination was 8-38%. The reported incidence rates of ILI symptoms varied and were higher than reference data. A total of 39% of individuals consulted their general practitioner, 7% the hospital emergency department, 6% were hospitalized and 27% used medication. Of those in paid work, one-third reported absence of work due to ILI. Home telemonitoring appears to be feasible for monitoring vaccine adverse events and ILI symptoms and outcomes.

Moby-Dick

This study builds upon my previous treatment of Melville’s Moby-Dick first published as ‘Moby-Dick: Encountering the Leviathan of God’ in my The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow (1994). The study continues the three-way dialogue set up within that book, with the biblical text, Melville’s novel and cinematic treatments of Moby-Dick being compared and contrasted. In particular, it offers a careful discussion of the most recent full-bodied cinematic adaptation of Melville’s classic tale, namely the film by the British director Franc Roddam. This film was released in 1998 and starred Patrick Stewart in the role of Captain Ahab. The article discusses some of the theological emphases within the film, particularly in the fields of biblical hermeneutics and inter textuality. Comparisons are also made between Roddam’s film and John Huston’s 1956 effort which starred Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab.

Nuove osservazioni per lo studio del rescritto di Adriano sui Cristiani

The interpretation of Hadrian's legislation concerning the Christians is here brought into focus. On the basis of already discussed evidence and of new attestations, especially from the apologist Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the suggested interpretation of Hadrian's normative text to Minucius Fundanus is that the Christians were to be condemned only if guilty of specific crimes, not simply for their nomen Christianum. Beside, the apologies of Quadratus and Aristides are to be dated under Hadrian, before AD 125, and their probable location in Athens (just as the setting of Justin's Dialogue is in Greece in Hadrian's days) seems to be significant in relation to a philhellenic emperor. If they were written at the beginning of his reign, they probably influenced Hadrian in his attitude toward the Christians.

Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France by David Cowling

MLR, I02.2, 2007 507 Given this approach, the analysis of individual texts tends to be underdeveloped. Even when a given dialogue or set of dialogues is singled out for special attention, themethodology adopted isoften a longway from close reading: thehelpfulness of a discussion of dialogue form in theCymbalum mundi, which does not contain a single citation from thework which is thepurported object of study, is curtailed from the outset. This is a shame, because more focused discussions of Pontus de Tyrard's dialogues, and of the role ofRonsard as a character within dialogues, contain insights towhich all specialists would wish to refer. Moreover, albeit that thedefinition ofboth genre and corpus is central tomuch of Eva Kushner's work, the result isnot always convincing. There is not a strong case for devoting two chapters to dialogue in an author who neverwrote one, namelyMontaigne, especially when amajor author who does incorporate dialogues intohis fiction,namely Rabelais, isvirtually ignored.This impression is compounded by the extraordinary claim thatPanurge's consultations in the Tiers Livre are all 'in the formof indirect discourse' (p. 25I), despite several being in dialogue form.There are also surprising omissions: there is littlemention of dialogues in the banquet tradition, and none at all ofGuillaume Bouchet's Les Serees, Cholieres's Matinees and Apresdisnees, nor,more seriously still, of Beroalde de Verville's Le Moyen de parvenir. Given these reservations, the usefulness of Le Dialogue a' la Renaissance is limited. Specialists will need to refer to it,but many aspects of analysis of thephenomenon could be more fullydeveloped. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER HUGH ROBERTS Conceptions ofEurope inRenaissance France. Ed. by DAVID COWLING. (Faux Titre, 28i) Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2006. 204 pp. ?40. ISBN 978-90-420-2006-I. The ten articles in thisFestschrift forKeith Cameron predominantly constitute the kind of scrupulous scholarship with a strong historical focuswith which he is readily associated. Most of the contributors range beyond the chosen theme, presumably because, as Jean Balsamo argues in the excellent essay which opens the volume, the concept ofEurope was not yet fullyformed during theRenaissance. He maintains that theprehistory of thenotion emerges both in theRepublic ofLetters, which was itself formed during theRenaissance, and in amilitary and aristocratic ideal. IanMorri son's reading of Rabelais follows a similar line: doubtless the strongest Rabelaisian conception ofEurope is found in theprologue to the Tiers Livre, which refers to the Franco-Imperial hostilities as a tragicomedy affecting the entire continent, revealing it to be an emergent political and cultural construct, as well as a geographical one. Terence Cave's work on 'pre-histoires' (in Pre-histoires: textes troublesau seuil de la modernite (Geneva: Droz, I999) and inPre-histoires, II:Langues etrangereset troubles economiques au XVIe siecle (Geneva: Droz, 2001)) would have provided a powerful method to accompany these analyses of theprehistory of the concept ofEurope. In deed, Yvonne Bellenger's highly detailed contribution on thehistory ofDu Bartas's La Lepanthe is letdown somewhat by a conclusion which projects our conception of Europe back onto theRenaissance. Similarly, Francoise Charpentier's analysis ofhow the themes of discovery and curiosity in theQuart Livre and the Cinquiesme Livre are constantly linked to a return to the familiar could have made the tension between these two trends, and its implication for the difficultyof a conception of Europe, more explicit. Furthermore, none of the contributors countenances the possibility of a notion of Europe founded on shared popular culture, which would be aworthy object of study.The European theme is implicit in theother contributions, although Frank Lestringant's analysis of 'livres de contrarietes' reveals that a conception of Europe inopposition to the supposedly barbaric ways of the Syrians was obvious to a 5o8 Reviews mid-seventeenth-century Jesuitmissionary. The contrast between differentcultures, and thedefinition in relation to the 'other'which ensues, isalso the theme ofMichael Heath's highly entertaining reading of French representations ofTurkish views of the French. Marie-Madeleine Fragonard's contribution concerns a fascinating case study ofAgrippa d'Aubigne's diplomatic relationswith England, revealing a failed attempt at a unified Protestant Europe. David Trotter's piece engages in similarly thorough historical scholarship, in this case ofmixed-language documents in thePyrenees. In differentways, these contributions show that national identitywas not itself fully...

Le Dialogue à la Renaissance: Histoire et poétique by Eva Kushner

506 Reviews instance, Lefevre scrutinizes the dedicatory page, fromwhich she decodes a series of signs that indicate both Antoine's lineage and his future: she examines a coat of arms of thede La Sale family,she compares the signature on thepage with other signatures known to be byAntoine, and she evaluates Antoine's personal devise: 'il convient'. Lefevre also writes in detail about Antoine's La Salade, arguing that this text is richer than other critics have allowed. In fact, shemaintains that it is the very eccen tricitiesand anomalies of the work that make itunique andworth examining. She notes that theconceit ofLa Salade-a text thatcomprises various styles-demonstrates An toine's ability tomove across genres. La Salade also exemplifies Antoine's authorial dexterity-at times he makes his presence apparent, and at times he masks it-a capability thatmakes La Salade amore impressive work than others have conceded. The second part of the book is a detailed case study ofAntoine's short textLe Traite des anciens et des nouveaux tournois.The majority of this section is devoted to a discussion of themanuscript, a short textual analysis, and a very detailed discus sion of the house of Luxembourg, in particular Jacques de Luxembourg-the man towhom Antoine's text isdedicated. Also included is a discussion ofRene d'Anjou's Livre de tournois.By examining the relationship between thehouses ofLuxembourg and Anjou, aswell as details common toboth texts,Lefevre convincingly argues that Rene d'Anjou was inspired byAntoine's text.This section ends with Lefevre's own edition of the Traite, which isaccompanied by a useful glossary. Although the detail in this book is impressive, themeticulousness with which Lefevre treats each family's history and genealogy does not always seem essential to the point at hand. Furthermore, because there are numerous tables which chart the genealogies of themain families and nobilities in question, attention to such de tail seems excessive and detracts from themain thread of the author's argument. At the same time,while many tables and charts are provided, they are not always adequately exploited: placing the genealogies, the timeline ofAntoine's life,and the table ofmanuscripts at the beginning of the textwould have been more useful. But notwithstanding these details, through her careful examination of texts and manu scripts Lefevre provides compelling evidence that until now, Antoine de La Sale's artistic skill has been seriously undervalued and understudied. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SANDRABIALYSTOK Le Dialogue a laRenaissance: histoire etpoetique. By EVA KUSHNER. (Cahiers d'Hu manisme etRenaissance, 67) Geneva: Droz. 2004.3 I2 pp. SwF 48. ISBN 978 2-600-oo9o6-5. This volume brings together a collection of articles written over a period of thirty years, focusing on dialogue in the Renaissance principally, but not exclusively, in France. They are sensibly divided into different sections on themes of periodiza tion and poetics, as well as on specific authors, including Bonaventure des Periers, Montaigne, Erasmus, and Pontus de Tyard. The book as awhole has the advantage ofmaking many of the individual pieces more readily available than theywould be otherwise. However, it is regrettable that the separate articles (sixteen inFrench, three inEnglish) were not brought together inmore of a synthesis.Admittedly, in reading them together some key questions and features of Renaissance dialogue become ap parent, including the issue of theirdegree of dialogicity or openness toanother's point of view, their use ofmimesis, and their imitation of three principal ancient models (namely Plato, Cicero, and Lucian). Nevertheless, lack of synthesismeans that these lines of argument are not as developed as theymight have been in amonograph, and there is a good deal of repetition of both argument and examples between articles. MLR, I02.2, 2007 507 Given this approach, the analysis of individual texts tends to be underdeveloped. Even when a given dialogue or set of dialogues is singled out for special attention, themethodology adopted isoften a longway from close reading: thehelpfulness of a discussion of dialogue form in theCymbalum mundi, which does not contain a single citation from thework which is thepurported object of study, is curtailed from the outset. This is a shame, because more focused discussions of Pontus de Tyrard's dialogues, and of the role ofRonsard...

The God of Eth and the God of Earth

Stephen Law has recently argued (Think 9), using a dialogue set on the fictional planet Eth, that traditional belief in God is ‘silly’. Bergmann and Brower argue that theists on Earth should not be convinced.

Automatic induction of language model data for a spoken dialogue system

In this paper, we address the issue of generating in-domain language model training data when little or no real user data are available. The two-stage approach taken begins with a data induction phase whereby linguistic constructs from out-of-domain sentences are harvested and integrated with artificially constructed in-domain phrases. After some syntactic and semantic filtering, a large corpus of synthetically assembled user utterances is induced. In the second stage, two sampling methods are explored to filter the synthetic corpus to achieve a desired probability distribution of the semantic content, both on the sentence level and on the class level. The first method utilizes user simulation technology, which obtains the probability model via an interplay between a probabilistic user model and the dialogue system. The second method synthesizes novel dialogue interactions from the raw data by modelling after a small set of dialogues produced by the developers during the course of system refinement. Evaluation is conducted on recognition performance in a restaurant information domain. We show that a partial match to usage-appropriate semantic content distribution can be achieved via user simulations. Furthermore, word error rate can be reduced when limited amounts of in-domain training data are augmented with synthetic data derived by our methods.

Abductive Reasoning (review)

Reviewed by: Abductive Reasoning David Hitchcock (bio) Douglas Walton . Abductive Reasoning University of Alabama Press. xvi, 304. US $40.00 Abductive reasoning is reasoning from observed data to a hypothesis that would explain them. A famous example is Kepler's inference from a mass of data about the positions of the planets at various times to the hypothesis that they travel in elliptical orbits about the sun. As philosophers of science have only recently begun to appreciate, such reasoning to a possible explanatory hypothesis is common in scientific research. It is also common in legal contexts, for example in determining what caused a particular accident, as well as in medical diagnosis. Researchers in artificial intelligence have incorporated models of it in various expert systems for use in law and medicine. In this study, Douglas Walton summarizes and synthesizes for the non-specialist the scholarly literature on abductive reasoning, and presents his own theory of how one should evaluate abductive reasoning as strong or weak. Abductive reasoning generates a possible explanation. According to Walton, explanation is the transmission of understanding: an explanation communicates information that enables its recipient to infer the thing explained. Thus Walton implicitly equates understanding something with being able to infer it from information at one's disposal. For an explanation to be successful, the recipient must understand its language and must have the background information needed to make the inferences to the thing explained. These requirements, he holds, can be met by a procedural model of rationality according to which the person requesting an explanation asks a series of questions until completely satisfied. The inferences involved in the understanding that is acquired through this process are often defeasible, meaning that they can be defeated (shown to be illegitimate) by further information; for example, from the fact that a moving car goes into a skid one can infer that it will leave tire marks on the pavement, but this inference can be defeated by further information that the pavement was wet or icy or snow-covered. On the basis of these considerations, Walton proposes what he calls a 'query-driven' model of abductive reasoning. He recognizes two forms of abductive reasoning, whose strength is proportional to the extent to which its associated 'critical questions' receive satisfactory answers in an ongoing dialogue. One form reasons from the fact that some account E explains given data d better than its identified competitors to its being the most plausible account. Its critical questions are: How successful is E as an explanation of D? How much more successful is E than its identified competitors? How thorough has the search for alternative explanations been? Would it be better to investigate further before making a commitment for or against E? The other form reasons in a corresponding way from the comparative superiority of an argument from D to E, and has analogous [End Page 155] critical questions. The components of either form emerge in a dialogue with four phases: the dialogue setting, explanation attempts, evaluation of explanations, closure. Walton's dialogue model captures the open-endedness of the search for explanations. It highlights the defeasibility of abductive reasoning, the practical impossibility of absolute proof that our favoured explanation is correct. But it needs to be amplified and qualified. More criteria are needed for what makes an explanation successful. We need to distinguish the sort of explanation that transmits already acquired understanding - e.g., of how to get a photocopier to make double-sided copies - from the sort that expresses newly acquired understanding - e.g., of what caused a particular accident or why a cloudless sky is blue. And the model needs to take account of the fact that ability to infer the occurrence of a phenomenon is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding it; for example, one can understand why an atom of a radioactive isotope decays without being able to infer it from the data, and one can infer from hearing thunder that lightning just struck without understanding why the lightning struck. But the model, as Walton himself points out, provides a framework for investigating outstanding problems about abductive reasoning. And his book is a useful discussion of a wide range of scholarship...

Helping operationalise Article 2: A transdisciplinary methodological tool for evaluating when climate change is dangerous

Although a global climate regime has been developed, decisions regarding a definition of dangerous climate change have been postponed in the political arena and have only been marginally addressed by the IPCC. This paper presents a participatory integrated assessment method, consisting of an iterative set of science-policy dialogues within and between countries, as well as a focus on indicators of dangerous climate impacts, short-listing and clustering these indicators, identifying threshold levels of unacceptable impacts, and then back-calculating to greenhouse gas concentration levels. This method, applied in the Netherlands, yielded some interesting results and some consensus knowledge among the stakeholders who participated.

How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

Edited by BjA¸rn Lomborg, this abridged version of the highly acclaimed Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious yet accessible springboard for debate and discussion on the world's most serious problems, and what we can do to solve them. In a world fraught with problems and challenges, we need to gauge how to achieve the greatest good with our money. This unique book provides a rich set of dialogs examining ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: climate change, the spread of communicable diseases, conflicts and arms proliferation, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert who defines the scale of the issue and examines a range of policy options.

Alignment of “Phrase Accent” Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions: Theoretical and Methodological Implications

In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is present. This is consistent with the findings and analyses of Grice, Ladd, & Arvaniti, 2000 (Phonology 17, 143-185), suggesting that the low turning points are the phonetic reflex of a "phrase accent." In the second part of this study, we measured the low turning points in falling-rising questions produced in a task-oriented dialog setting and found that their alignment is affected in the same way as in the read speech data. This suggests that read speech experiments are a valid means of investigating the phonetic details of intonation contours.

DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND PLAN RECOGNITION BY PROBABILISTIC REASONING

This paper introduces a statistical framework for extracting medical domain knowledge from heterogeneous corpora. The acquired information is incorporated into a natural language understanding agent and applied to DIKTIS, an existing web-based educational dialogue system for the chemotherapy of nosocomial and community acquired pneumonia, aiming at providing a more intelligent natural language interaction. Unlike the majority of existing dialogue understanding engines, the presented system automatically encodes semantic representation of a user's query using Bayesian networks. The structure of the networks is determined from annotated dialogue corpora using the Bayesian scoring method, thus eliminating the tedious and costly process of manually coding domain knowledge. The conditional probability distributions are estimated during a training phase using data obtained from the same set of dialogue acts. In order to cope with words absent from our restricted dialogue corpus, a separate offline module was incorporated, which estimates their semantic role from both medical and general raw text corpora, correlating them with known lexical-semantically similar words or predefined topics. Lexical similarity is identified on the basis of both contextual similarity and co-occurrence in conjunctive expressions. The evaluation of the platform was performed against the existing language natural understanding module of DIKTIS, the architecture of which is based on manually embedded domain knowledge.