Symbolic Sentences Research Articles

A Generalized Earley Parser for Human Activity Parsing and Prediction.

Detection, parsing, and future predictions on sequence data (e.g., videos) require the algorithms to capture non-Markovian and compositional properties of high-level semantics. Context-free grammars are natural choices to capture such properties, but traditional grammar parsers (e.g., Earley parser) only take symbolic sentences as inputs. In this paper, we generalize the Earley parser to parse sequence data which is neither segmented nor labeled. Given the output of an arbitrary probabilistic classifier, this generalized Earley parser finds the optimal segmentation and labels in the language defined by the input grammar. Based on the parsing results, it makes top-down future predictions. The proposed method is generic, principled, and widely applicable. Experiment results clearly show the benefit of our method for both human activity parsing and prediction on three video datasets.

A Trajectory Classification Model Using Grammar Parsing

Trajectory classification is a hot topic in the field of spatiotemporal data mining. Existing models exert spatial or temporal computation on trajectory data, which require huge efforts and are often time consuming and lack of efficiency. This article proposes a model to classify unknown ship trajectories through a syntax recognition approach. By using the background semantic information in the rasterized sea chart, the model transforms the ship trajectories into symbolic sentences containing both spatiotemporal and semantic information, and reduces their scale. The class feature is expressed as a context-free grammar and the data classification is implemented through syntax parsing. The parsing requires less computation and is more efficient. Experiments are carried out to verify the model’s practicability, and the results show that it is valid and effective.

Historia trzech zdań. Przemiany wewnętrzne w prozie Antoniego Czechowa

In the article, the main focus is put on the notion of evolution, in other words, on the internal transformations in Anton Chekhov’s prose. By means of cognitive methodology, it is shown which processes of thinking perform a vital role in the formulation and development of the writer’s work. For this reason, three symbolic sentences were chosen along with the cognitive mechanisms connected to them. The first mechanism, which is the conceptual metaphor, illustrates variants of the development of the same thought in various Chekhov’s literary works. Narrative universals and stereotypes serve as the second and third mechanism. Resignation from these mechanisms lets the writer create an entirely original image of the world presented in the mature phase of his writing. As a result, the reader is provided with a specific task. When no traditional images and techniques are found in the stories composed late in the writer’s life, the readers are meant to determine on their own the whole cognitive-emotional attitude to phenomena around them.

Equivalences in Euler-based diagram systems through normal forms

AbstractThe form of information presented can influence its utility for the conveying of knowledge by affecting an interpreter’s ability to reason with the information. There are distinct types of representational systems (for example, symbolic versus diagrammatic logics), various sub-systems (for example, propositional versus predicate logics), and even within a single representational system there may be different means of expressing the same piece of information content. Thus, to display information, choices must be made between its different representations, depending upon many factors such as: the context, the reasoning tasks to be considered, user preferences or desires (for example, for short symbolic sentences or minimal clutter within diagrammatic systems). The identification of all equivalent representations with the same information content is a sensible precursor to attempts to minimise a metric over this class. We posit that defining notions of semantic redundancy and identifying the syntactic properties that encapsulate redundancy can help in achieving the goal of completely identifying equivalences within a single notational system or across multiple systems, but that care must be taken when extending systems, since refinements of redundancy conditions may be necessary even for conservative system extensions. We demonstrate this theory within two diagrammatic systems, which are Euler-diagram-based notations. Such notations can be used to represent logical information and have applications including visualisation of database queries, social network visualisation, statistical data visualisation, and as the basis of more expressive diagrammatic logics such as constraint languages used in software specification and reasoning. The development of the new associated machinery and concepts required is important in its own right since it increases the growing body of knowledge on diagrammatic logics. In particular, we consider Euler diagrams with shading, and then we conservatively extend the system to include projections, which allow for a much greater degree of flexibility of representation. We give syntactic properties that encapsulate semantic equivalence in both systems, whilst observing that the same semantic concept of redundancy is significantly more difficult to realise as syntactic properties in the extended system with projections.

Learning to Reason from Lewis Carroll

I have posed this question to many classes; invari ably, students come up with several different responses. The dilemma becomes, Which responses are, in fact, logical conclusions of all the premises and which are not? How can we decide? Mathematical logic to the rescue! We use a powerful technique commonly applied to empirical problems. We translate the problem into a mathematical one, solve the mathematical problem, and then translate our answer back into the context of the original problem. Of course, our answer is only as good as the fit between our math ematical model and the problem. In particular, we translate each of the foregoing four premises into symbolic sentences. Then we manipulate these symbolic sentences using rules of inference, which are discussed later. After deriv ing a symbolically expressed answer, we translate this answer back into ordinary English (see fig. 1).

Do not go slowly into that dark night: Mercy killing in Holland

From the Department of Philosphy, School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Gregory E. Pence, Department of Philosophy, School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, HB 420, Birmingham, Alabama 35294. Manuscript submitted September 10, 1987, and accepted November 11, 1987. The Dutch are known for practicality, fierce independence, moral integrity, free-thought, and defense of civil liberties. Under Nazi occupation, Dutch physicians successfully resisted Hitler’s programs [I]. Holland is nominally Catholic but 27 percent of Dutch citizens claim no religious affiliation, and Dutch Catholicism is very democratic and aggressively anti-Vatican. Moreover, the Dutch seem to distrust elaborate technology and wish to die at home more than Americans, 80 percent of whom die in hospitals [2]. Seventy-five percent of Dutch citizens now endorse mercy killing by physicians after requests by terminal patients [3]. These attitudes have changed Dutch medical practices. It is estimated that Dutch physicians have now killed between 5,000 and 8,000 terminal patients. This new development in the history of medicine needs to be carefully studied. The Dutch national movement for decriminalization began in 1971 when a female physician accepted her mother’s repeated requests for death. Geertruida Postma’s mother had had a cerebral hemorrage that left her partially paralyzed, deaf, and mute. After the stroke, Postma’s mother lived in a nursing home, where she was tied to a chair for support. Dr. Postma said, “When I watched my mother, a human wreck, hanging in that chair, I couldn’t stand it anymore” [4]. So she injected her mother with morphine and killed her. Postma then told the director of the nursing home, who called police. Postma was found guilty of murder, but was given only a symbolic sentence. Postma’s lawyer argued that “rational suicide” assisted by a physician should be a legal defense. The judge rejected this defense but nevertheless specified some guidelines. The 1973 case of physician Piet Schoonheim also concerned mercy killing, but of patients who were not immediately terminal [5]. Schoonheim was eventually cleared. Two Dutch euthanasia societies grew after such cases. One group sought legislative reform, like the American Society for the Right to Die, and the other helped terminal patients to die, like the American Hemlock Society. In 1973, the Dutch Medical Association softened its condemnation of mercy killing by physicians. While stating that euthanasia by request should still be a crime, it urged that courts should decide whether physicians could be justified in particular cases. Public support for euthanasia dramatically increased over the next decade, and in 1984 the Dutch Medical Association advocated new guidelines stating that: (1) only a physician may implement requests for euthanasia, (2) requests must be made by competent patients, (3) patients’ decisions must be free of doubt, well documented, and repeated, (4) the physician must consult