3,830 research outputs found

    A Graph Reasoning Network for Multi-turn Response Selection via Customized Pre-training

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    We investigate response selection for multi-turn conversation in retrieval-based chatbots. Existing studies pay more attention to the matching between utterances and responses by calculating the matching score based on learned features, leading to insufficient model reasoning ability. In this paper, we propose a graph-reasoning network (GRN) to address the problem. GRN first conducts pre-training based on ALBERT using next utterance prediction and utterance order prediction tasks specifically devised for response selection. These two customized pre-training tasks can endow our model with the ability of capturing semantical and chronological dependency between utterances. We then fine-tune the model on an integrated network with sequence reasoning and graph reasoning structures. The sequence reasoning module conducts inference based on the highly summarized context vector of utterance-response pairs from the global perspective. The graph reasoning module conducts the reasoning on the utterance-level graph neural network from the local perspective. Experiments on two conversational reasoning datasets show that our model can dramatically outperform the strong baseline methods and can achieve performance which is close to human-level.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 2021;10 pages,6 figure

    Being cosmopolitan: the consumption practices and behaviors of consumers betwixt and between marketplaces

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    Contemporary global nomadism is an emerging phenomenon enabled by the far-reaching forces of globalization, whereby people voluntarily chose to embrace lifestyles of continuous mobility be- tween different countries and cultures. This research examines how do nomadic cosmopolitan consumers navigate through diverse constellations of sociocultural environments, marketplace offerings, possessions, experiences and brands while transitioning from one location to another. Following the theoretical paradigms of practice theory, this study advances the notion that cosmo- politan nomadism is a complex social practice – consisting of material artifacts, skills, routines, teleoaffective structures, and cultural understandings – which attracts and “recruits” individuals, and which becomes a foundational building block of their social life. Based on insight from a series of phenomenological interviews with nomadic cosmopolitans, it is suggested that consumption emerges through and for the sake of migrants’ participation as practitioners in the nomadic cos- mopolitan practice. Within this operational context, meanings, doings and material artifacts are orchestrated through three primary dispersed practices of anchoring, immersion and divestment. Consumption varies within each of those practices as they influence the kinds of brands, products and possessions consumers orient themselves towards, or detach from, throughout the temporal phases that segment the length of time one spends in a certain location – namely, phases of arri- val, settling in and departure. The perspective offered by this study illuminates a new theoretical angle through which we can begin to better understand the trajectory of possessions, brands, experiences and beliefs in condi- tions of continuous transnational mobility. It shows that nomadic cosmopolitanism is dynamic and individually differentiated – hence, it is the fact of one’s unique way of engagement in the practice that explains individuated processes of consumption. This research suggests that percep- tions of value and utility, as well as symbolic meaning of objects and activities, pivot around com- plex cognitive structures and subject positions, and evolve continuously as one changes as a practi- tioner, not only in the grander scheme of his/her life, but also within the temporal frame of a single residency

    Early Sydney punk : methods in visual ethnography

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    This thesis explores the recollections of participants who were part of a cohort associated with a small punk venue known as the Grand Hotel, which operated at Railway Square, Sydney, between 1977 and 1979. While Australia’s first-wave moment has been increasingly recognised within a growing body of literature on punk, it has been considered almost exclusively in a music context. This study emphasises the sociality of punk subculture which has been largely absent from the record. The thesis comprises a creative component based on a series of video-recorded interviews, and a written exegesis. The video production, titled Distorted: Reflections on early Sydney punk, was developed through methods drawn from ethnography and other qualitative methodologies. The work presents discussion on a range of social, personal and political concerns of late 1970s Sydney through the reflections of participants. As such, it is a visual ethnography with a research focus on the past and on memory as articulated in a present setting. The written component of the thesis discusses aspects of cultural studies and subcultural theory in relation to punk as experienced in a post-colonial space, which is framed within an analysis of anthropologically-oriented ethnography. The text then discusses in detail the methodological underpinnings of the research. It is here that I advance an approach to audiovisual production which utilises computer assisted data analysis software within an analytical and conceptual framework drawn from grounded theory and narrative analysis

    A Pattern Approach to Examine the Design Space of Spatiotemporal Visualization

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    Pattern language has been widely used in the development of visualization systems. This dissertation applies a pattern language approach to explore the design space of spatiotemporal visualization. The study provides a framework for both designers and novices to communicate, develop, evaluate, and share spatiotemporal visualization design on an abstract level. The touchstone of the work is a pattern language consisting of fifteen design patterns and four categories. In order to validate the design patterns, the researcher created two visualization systems with this framework in mind. The first system displayed the daily routine of human beings via a polygon-based visualization. The second system showed the spatiotemporal patterns of co-occurring hashtags with a spiral map, sunburst diagram, and small multiples. The evaluation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed design patterns to guide design thinking and create novel visualization practices

    Wine communication in a global market: a study of metaphor through the genre of Australian wine reviews

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    This thesis is a report on wine communication focused on metaphoric language identified in the genre of wine reviews. Specifically, the research centred on Australian wine reviews written by Australian wine critics about Australian wines currently exported to the greater China region. In the genre of wine reviews, metaphoric expressions are frequently used to talk about wine (Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2008). The thesis developed understanding of the influence of metaphoric language and its potential to constrain or motivate people’s sensory and affective responses to wine and highlighted the need to consider congruency of metaphoric language in terms of wine communication and education. The research was theoretically framed by the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and took a cognitive linguistic perspective to metaphor analysis (Croft & Cruse, 2004). Wine appreciation was argued to be a social event in contrast to an observational event. From this perspective, wine appreciation is concerned with influencing audience perceptions in contrast to a spontaneous commentary of an event. The thesis presents the findings of two qualitative studies that used a corpus approach to metaphor use and understanding in the genre of wine reviews. The investigation identified metaphoric expressions in Australian wine reviews and went on to explore their understanding and transfer by wine educators in Australia and China. Metaphor identification used the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (Steen et al., 2010) and the UCREL Semantic Annotation System (Archer et al., 2004) for semantic and conceptual analysis. Results indicated six underpinning metaphoric themes (i.e., AN OBJECT, A THREE DIMENSIONAL ARTEFACT, AN INSTITUTIONAL ARTEFACT, A TEXTILE, A LIVING ORGANISM, and A PERSON) of which spatial and temporal properties were often integrated. A comparison of wine educator responses to interpretation and transmission tasks showed that anthropomorphic metaphor (i.e., WINE IS A PERSON) tended to be conceptualized similarly by participants more often than other metaphoric themes. In conclusion, the cultural artefact of language used in the genre of wine reviews and the metaphoric potential of linguistic choices on sensory and affective perceptions indicates a need for the consideration of congruency when wine communication crosses cultural and linguistic borders

    Mapping poverty at multiple geographical scales

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    Poverty mapping is a powerful tool to study the geography of poverty. The choice of the spatial resolution is central as poverty measures defined at a coarser level may mask their heterogeneity at finer levels. We introduce a small area multi-scale approach integrating survey and remote sensing data that leverages information at different spatial resolutions and accounts for hierarchical dependencies, preserving estimates coherence. We map poverty rates by proposing a Bayesian Beta-based model equipped with a new benchmarking algorithm that accounts for the double-bounded support. A simulation study shows the effectiveness of our proposal and an application on Bangladesh is discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

    Eventful gender: an ethnographic exploration of gender knowledge production at international academic conferences

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    The concept of gender is both celebrated and maligned in academic discourse; gender is credited with opening up or closing down debates, including or excluding concepts and the groups they designate. But how does gender come to mean what it means? This thesis is a deconstructive study of gender, which explores the conceptual negotiations that establish ‘what counts’ as gender. I argue that conceptual work on gender is bound up in political contestations which affect how social identities and processes entailed in thinking about gender are expressed and understood. The study is located in the embodied ‘context’ of international academic knowledge production, where conceptual negotiations cannot rely on familiar understandings of gender. Three national women’s studies association conferences were researched, in the United Kingdom, United States and India. The study used an ethnographic approach which included pre- and post-conference interviews with c.10 participants per conference, and a group meeting; materials collected from the conferences; autoethnographic research on the conferences and my doctoral trajectory. The thesis moves through a cumulative theorisation, which involves four stages of deconstructive analysis derived from Derrida’s oeuvre. The first stage establishes gender as ‘critical concept’; I analyse participants’ conceptual negotiations around what gender is and does. The second stage entails ‘surrounding’ the concept of gender; I use autoethnographic research to explore participants’ and conference delegates’ performative ‘surrounding’ of gender with intersectionality. Thirdly, ‘marking out’ focuses on conference conventions, which are understood in the study as bearing their own performative and citational qualities for the conceptualisation of gender. Finally, in seeking the ‘chink/crevice’ in the concept of gender, I ask if something unexpected can ‘happen’ to gender: an event. The study as a whole theorises ‘eventful gender’ as conceptual work that is inextricable from embodied, situated and mobile analyses of academic practice and knowledge construction and production
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