Domain-sensitive topic management in a modular conversational agent framework

Flexible nontask-oriented conversational agents require content for generating responses and mechanisms that serve them for choosing appropriate topics to drive interactions with users. Structured knowledge resources such as ontologies are a useful mechanism to represent conversational topics. In order to develop the topic-management mechanism, we addressed a number of research issues related to the development of the required infrastructure. First, we address the issue of heavy human involvement in the construction of knowledge resources by proposing a four-stage automatic process for building domain-specific ontologies. These ontologies are comprised of a set of subtaxonomies obtained from WordNet, an electronic dictionary that arranges concepts in a hierarchical structure. The roots of these subtaxonomies are obtained from Wikipedia’s article links or wikilinks; this under the hypothesis that wikilinks provide a sense of relatedness from the article consulted to their destinations. With the knowledge structures defined, we explore the possibility of using semantic relatedness over these domain-specific ontologies as a mean to propose conversational topics in a coherent manner. For this, we examine different automatic measures of semantic relatedness to determine which correlates with human judgements obtained from an automatically constructed dataset. We then examine the question of whether domain information influences the human perception of semantic relatedness in a way that automatic measures do not replicate. This study requires us to design and implement a process to build datasets with pairs of concepts as those used in the literature to evaluate automatic measures of semantic relatedness, but with domain information associated. This study shows, to statistical significance, that existing measures of semantic relatedness do not take domain into consideration, and that including domain as a factor in this calculation can enhance the agreement of automatic measures with human assessments. Finally, this artificially constructed measure is integrated into the Toy’s dialogue manager, in order to help in the real-time selection of conversational topics. This supplements our result that the use of semantic relatedness seems to produce more coherent and interesting topic transitions than existing mechanisms

Neural Computations Underpinning Anxiety in Health and Disease

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. February 2021. Major: Neuroscience. Advisor: David Redish. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 210 pages.Motivational conflict is thought to take one of three possible forms: approach-approach conflict,avoid-approach conflict, and avoid-avoid conflict. While approach-approach conflict paradigms have primarily been used to study the neural basis of reward-based decision-making, avoid-approach conflict paradigms are typically used to model anxiety because they capture the complex, bivalent nature of most naturalistic environments. Research suggests that approach-approach conflict initiates a distinct neural algorithm: a hippocampally-mediated mental simulation of the future that is paired with evaluations of anticipated outcomes. However, it is unknown whether a similar form of episodic future thinking also occurs during avoid-approach conflict. Here I present research I have conducted to address this gap in the literature. First, I used apharmacological approach in tandem with a semi-naturalistic avoid-approach predator-inhabited foraging arena task to show that anxiety-like hesitation behaviors are attenuated by anxiolytic drugs. I then modeled these hesitation behaviors as a belief-state updating loop using a partially observable Markov decision process that involves fictive representations of potential future outcomes. Next, I explored the neural representations underpinning these anxiety-like behaviors, aiming to determine whether non-local representations occur during periods of anxious conflict. To do this, I recorded from ensembles of neurons in dorsal hippocampal layer CA1 of rats as they freely behaved in the predator-inhabited foraging arena task. I identified distinct hippocampal fictive representations that co-occurred with two anxiety-like behaviors: (1) forward sequences during choice-point hesitation that shifted from representing reward in a safe environment to representing reward and threat in a dangerous environment, and (2) discrete representations of threat during a change-of-mind behavior. Altogether, these results support the view that anxiety resulting from avoid-approach conflictinvolves representations of hypothetical scenarios and that these fictive representations are, at least in part, neurally encoded in the hippocampus. These data highlight hippocampal fictive representations as a potential target for the treatment of anxiety disorders

Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans

Birch and colleagues have developed an important and useful framework for evaluating the evidence for sentience – namely, the capacity to experience pain, distress and suffering, in cephalopod molluscs (cuttlefish, octopods and squid) and decapod crustaceans (including crabs, crayfish, lobsters, prawns, shrimps). Birch and colleagues develop eight criteria in their evaluation framework which are used to weigh the evidence from over 300 scientific publications. The report also investigates the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices on these species. The report concludes that cephalopods and decapod crustaceans are probably sentient

Review of the evidence of sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we have evaluated the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We have also evaluated the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals

The Bee\u27s Knees or Spines of a Spider: What Makes an \u27Insect\u27 Interesting?

Insects and their kin (bugs) are among the most detested and despised creatures on earth. Irrational fears of these mostly harmless organisms often restrict and prevent opportunities for outdoor recreation and leisure. Alternatively, Shipley and Bixler (2016) theorize that direct and positive experiences with bugs during middle childhood may result in fascination with insects leading to comfort in wildland settings. The objective of this research was to examine and identify the novel and unfamiliar bug types that people are more likely to find interesting and visually attend to when spontaneously presented with their images. This research examined these questions through four integrated exploratory studies. The first study (n = 216) found that a majority of adults are unfamiliar with a majority of bugs, despite the abundance of many common but ˜unfamiliar\u27 bugs. The second (n = 15) and third (n = 308) study examined participant\u27s first impressions of unfamiliar bugs. The second study consisted of in-depth interviews, while the third study had participants report their perceptions of bugs across multiple emotional dimensions. Together, both studies suggest there are many unfamiliar bugs that are perceptually novel and perceived as interesting when encountered. The fourth study (n = 48) collected metrics of visual attention using eye-tracking by measuring visual fixations while participants viewed different bugs identified through previous studies as either being interesting or disinteresting. The findings of the fourth study suggest that interesting bugs can capture more visual attention than uninteresting bugs. Results from all four studies provide a heuristic for interpretive naturalists, magazine editors, marketers, public relation advisors, filmmakers, and any other visual communication professional that can be used in the choice of images of unfamiliar images of insects and other small invertebrates to evoke situational interest and motivate subsequent behavior

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Forms of List-Making: Epistemic, Literary, and Visual Enumeration

This open access book attempts to show that an examination of the list’s formal features has the potential to produce genuine insights into the production of knowledge, the poetics of literature and the composition of visual art. Following a conceptual introduction, the twelve single-authored chapters place the list in a variety of well-researched contexts, including ancient Roman historiography, medieval painting, Enlightenment periodicals, nineteenth-century botanical geography, American Beat poetry and contemporary photobooks. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book is a unique contribution to an emerging field dedicated to the study of lists

For an echology of microbe-artworks : thinking in between art and science

Une entité scientifique, tout en ayant son propre devenir dans le domaine scientifique, s’étend aussi souvent à d’autres domaines d’activité. Parallèlement à la diffusion des découvertes scientifiques, elle peut susciter un intérêt artistique ou conceptuel. Les études sur le microbiome humain ont nourri un tel intérêt pour les microbes et ont encouragé de nombreux artistes à entrer dans un laboratoire de biologie et à produire des oeuvres artistiques avec et à travers les microbes. Ces oeuvres d’art établissent une relation étroite avec les découvertes scientifiques récentes, les procédures et les protocoles, et posent des questions philosophiques sur la vie et la mort, la nature, l’humanité, et les relations entre les êtres vivants. Cette thèse vise à examiner les processus sociaux, techniques, politiques et économiques qui traversent les sciences des microbes et à déterminer comment ils aboutissent dans les oeuvres d’Elaine Whittaker, Tarsh Bates, François-Joseph Lapointe, Günes-Helen Isitan, le collectif Interspecifics, Victoria Shennan, Saša Spačal, Sonja Bäumel, Raphael Kim et Kathy High. Lorsque nous trouvons un microbe dans un contexte particulier, que trouvons-nous d’autre avec lui ? Dans quelles conditions apparaît-il dans une oeuvre d’art et avec quels éléments l’oeuvre compose-t-elle pour produire des effets esthétiques ? Dans cette thèse, l’histoire des microbes considérée du point de vue des formes d’art les mobilisant (ou « microbe-oeuvres d’art » pour microbe-artworks) commence en fait avec des animalcules qui n’étaient pas encore des entités scientifiques à part entière, mais qui présentaient virtuellement les forces qui seraient réunies plus tard sous le terme scientifique de « microbe ». Dans un premier temps, les animalcules, nommés après des observations d’Antonie von Leeuwenhoek, ont suscité l’intérêt de philosophes comme Leibniz et Spinoza et intensifié la curiosité de peintres comme Johannes Vermeer pour les éléments microscopiques de la vision, initiant ainsi des voyages entre les champs scientifiques et artistiques. Cette étude propose de problématiser ces voyages à l’aide du concept d’« échologie », un terme oublié d’une thèse écrite dans les années 1970 par Jean Milet sur la sociologie de Gabriel Tarde. Mais les théories d’autres philosophes tels que Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Marie-José Mondzain, et Gilbert Simondon, et des penseurs contemporains tels que Thierry Bardini et Brian Massumi sont également mobilisées pour donner à ce terme toute sa cohérence. Selon l’échologie, les entités sont constituées des motifs (patterns) d’interférence et de résonance avec d’autres choses, qui précèdent leur représentation. Ainsi, une 5 entité donnée est un complexe de forces, et son apparition, le résultat de certaines techniques qui la mettent en relation avec d’autres complexes ne peut s’expliquer comme un effet associé à une seule cause, mais se donne comme un effet supplémentaire, un extra-effet ou un surplus qui laisse toujours une trace ou un résidu. D’un point de vue échologique, une microbe-oeuvre d’art s’opère comme une interface qui intègre des potentiels qui se rendent visibles à travers les traces en vertu de multiples processus recoupant les activités scientifiques et les stratégies artistiques. Chaque chapitre de la thèse est ainsi une étape dans un voyage conceptuel expérimental, révélant les dimensions des oeuvres d’art considérées au regard de l’analyse de ces traces. Au cours de ce voyage, les éléments des théories scientifiques concernées, des entretiens avec des artistes, des sorties sur des sites de pratique des arts biologiques, lors d’ateliers, de conférence et d’écoles d’été sont mobilisés comme facteurs contribuant à la construction des champs problématiques dans chaque chapitre. Les microbes considérés comme des objets de beauté apparaissent comme le résultat d’une transformation discursive des sciences biologiques. D’une conception pathogène des microbes aux approches écologiques, l’iconicité des microbes associés aux microbe-images, l’échologie des microbe-sons, le devenir-milieu de certaines microbe-oeuvres d’art, et enfin la question de l’individuation de la pensée, et l’éthique corrélée compris comme le problème de la valorisation des microbes dans des microbe-oeuvres d’art, le devenir-microbe découle de cette transformation discursive à travers le champ artistique.A scientific entity, while having its own becoming in the scientific field, often also spreads to other fields of activity, such as art and philosophy. Microbiome studies fed such an interest towards microbes and encouraged many artists to enter a biology laboratory and produce a work of art with and through microbes. These artworks establish a close relationship with recent scientific findings, procedures and protocols, and ask philosophical questions about life and death, nature, humanness, and the relationships between living beings. This thesis aims to examine the social, technical, political, and economic processes that go through the microbe sciences and determine how they come together in the artworks of Elaine Whittaker, Tarsh Bates, François-Joseph Lapointe, Günes-Helen Isitan, the collective Interspecifics, Victoria Shennan, Saša Spačal, Sonja Bäumel, Raphael Kim, and Kathy High. When we find a microbe in a particular context, what else do we find with it? Under which conditions does it appear in an artwork and which elements does the artwork compose with to produce aesthetic effects? In this thesis, the story of microbes is recounted from the perspective of microbe-artworks and starts with animalcules, the not yet full-fledged scientific entity which virtually present the forces that would be brought together under the scientific term “microbe”. At first, animalcules––named after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s observations, attracted the interest of philosophers such as Leibniz and Spinoza and intensified the curiosity of painters such as Johannes Vermeer towards the microscopic elements of seeing, hereby initiating journeys between scientific and artistic fields. This study proposes to problematize these journeys as an “echology”. Echology is a forgotten term first introduced in the ‘70s by Jean Milet in his thesis about the sociology of Gabriel Tarde. Here, the theories of other philosophers such as Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Marie-José Mondzain, Gilbert Simondon, and contemporary thinkers such as Thierry Bardini and Brian Massumi are mobilized in order to give this term its full consistency. According to echology, entities consist of patterns of interference and resonance with other things, which arise before their representation. Thus, a given entity is a complex of forces and its apparition the result of certain techniques which put it into relation with other complexes cannot be explained as an effect associated with a single cause but gives itself as an extra-effect or surplus that always leaves a remainder. From an echological perspective, a microbe- 7 artwork operates as an interface that incorporates potentials that make themselves visible through the remainders by virtue of multiple processes cutting across scientific activities and artistic strategies. Each chapter of the thesis is thus a way station in a conceptual journey of experimentation, revealing the dimensions of the artworks under consideration with respect to the analysis of these remainders. During this journey, elements of scientific theories, interviews with artists, field trips to sites of practice of the biological arts, related workshops and summer schools are mobilized as contributory factors of the construction of the problematic fields in each chapter. Microbes considered as objects of beauty hence appear as the result of discursive transformation of biological sciences. From earlier pathogenic conceptions of microbes to contemporary ecological approaches, the iconicity of microbes associated with microbe-images, echology of microbe-sounds, becoming-milieu of certain microbe-artworks, and finally, the question of individuation of thought and the correlated ethics understood as the problem of valuation of microbe-artworks, the becoming-microbe stems from this discursive transformation through the art field

Investigating the parallels between disciplinary/bio-power and cyber-corporate empire

Strong parallels exist between the formation of subjectivity through the disciplinary/bio-power technologies of the 18th/19th centuries – which Michel Foucault identified in his books Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and The History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge – and the 20th/21st century formation of subjectivity effected through Apple. Inc and Google. Inc operating systems and products. These systems and products similarly serve to canalize and ‗discipline‘ the pursuit and exchange of information, in a way that is constitutive of a new cyber-variant of disciplinary/bio-power subjectivity