Exploring Technical Phrase Frames from Research Paper Titles

This paper proposes a method for exploring technical phrase frames by extracting word n-grams that match our information needs and interests from research paper titles. Technical phrase frames, the outcome of our method, are phrases with wildcards that may be substituted for any technical term. Our method, first of all, extracts word trigrams from research paper titles and constructs a co-occurrence graph of the trigrams. Even by simply applying Page Rank algorithm to the co-occurrence graph, we obtain the trigrams that can be regarded as technical key phrases at the higher ranks in terms of Page Rank score. In contrast, our method assigns weights to the edges of the co-occurrence graph based on Jaccard similarity between trigrams and then apply weighted Page Rank algorithm. Consequently, we obtain widely different but more interesting results. While the top-ranked trigrams obtained by unweighted Page Rank have just a self-contained meaning, those obtained by our method are technical phrase frames, i.e., A word sequence that forms a complete technical phrase only after putting a technical word (or words) before or/and after it. We claim that our method is a useful tool for discovering important phrase logical patterns, which can expand query keywords for improving information retrieval performance and can also work as candidate phrasings in technical writing to make our research papers attractive.29th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops, WAINA 2015; Gwangju; South Korea; 25 March 2015 through 27 March 201

“Software agents and haunted media : the twitter bot as political actor"

This report examines the rhetorical construction of Twitter bots as nonhuman political agents in press coverage of the 2016 U.S. election. It takes the rhetorical framing of “the Twitter bot” as a case study to argue that Twitter bots are a contemporary example of what media historian Jeffrey Sconce calls “haunted media” -- a communication technology that has been culturally ascribed an “uncanny” “agency.” First, this report provides a comparative close reading of two pieces from The Atlantic and The New York Times as examples of mainstream press coverage of bots shortly before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Second, drawing on Sconce’s analysis of nineteenth and twentieth century media ecologies, it argues that “the Twitter bot” has been rhetorically constructed as haunted media through discourses that are inseparable from larger political narratives. The third and final section speculates on possible theoretical frameworks to expand this project in further inquiries. This report aims to demonstrate that haunted media narratives predate and persist beyond a specific election cycle or medium, and to argue that the construction of “haunted media” occurs alongside constructed concepts of democracy in our technologically mediated society. In doing so, this report contributes to the field of rhetoric of digital technology by bringing it further into conversation with political rhetoric.Englis

A Framing Analysis of the Treatment of Creativity as a Topic or Goal in German Books on Research Writing

Many students in Germany undertaking academic writing tasks consult one of the numerous German-language books on research writing. Curiously, these works tend to downplay or ignore creativity, compared to their American counterparts. A hermeneutic and rhetorical study that examines the structure, content, and style of 21 German books on research writing with the help of framing theory reveals that, firstly, the rationale given to readers for learning how to do a research project is usually that it enables them to complete difficult tasks and thus to graduate successfully – the potentially fascinating aspects, such as learning through writing, and the possibility of advancing the field are rarely mentioned. Secondly, when defining good academic research, US books stress exploration and invention based on wrestling with questions, while the German ones mostly emphasize rules, correctness within a fixed system, and the mastery of techniques. Finally, in the 21 works, academic work primarily comes across as a solitary, linear process neatly divided into separate phases, not as a holistic, discursive practice that takes place within the research community. The likely reasons for this phenomenon highlight several crucial challenges German writing teachers and consultants are facing: as the rhetoric/composition and writing consultancy scene in Germany is vibrant but somewhat marginalized at universities and relatively new, there is no tradition of mandatory composition courses influenced by writing studies with a creative component, and most guidebooks on research are not by writing experts but by professors in other fields. Moreover, there is still widespread belief that creativity cannot be taught, and that students’ fascination with their chosen field of study should be taken for granted, so that neither need to be mentioned in primers. Terminology might also play a role; the German term for ‘research (writing)’, ‘Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten’ or ‘academic practice’, already appears to emphasize correctness over discovery

A systematic review of protocol studies on conceptual design cognition: design as search and exploration

This paper reports findings from the first systematic review of protocol studies focusing specifically on conceptual design cognition, aiming to answer the following research question: What is our current understanding of the cognitive processes involved in conceptual design tasks carried out by individual designers? We reviewed 47 studies on architectural design, engineering design and product design engineering. This paper reports 24 cognitive processes investigated in a subset of 33 studies aligning with two viewpoints on the nature of designing: (V1) design as search (10 processes, 41.7%); and (V2) design as exploration (14 processes, 58.3%). Studies on search focused on solution search and problem structuring, involving: long-term memory retrieval; working memory; operators and reasoning processes. Studies on exploration investigated: co-evolutionary design; visual reasoning; cognitive actions; and unexpected discovery and situated requirements invention. Overall, considerable conceptual and terminological differences were observed among the studies. Nonetheless, a common focus on memory, semantic, associative, visual perceptual and mental imagery processes was observed to an extent. We suggest three challenges for future research to advance the field: (i) developing general models/theories; (ii) testing protocol study findings using objective methods conducive to larger samples and (iii) developing a shared ontology of cognitive processes in design

Machine translation of TV subtitles for large scale production

This paper describes our work on building and employing Statistical Machine Translation systems for TV subtitles in Scandinavia. We have built translation systems for Danish, English, Norwegian and Swedish. They are used in daily subtitle production and translate large volumes. As an example we report on our evaluation results for three TV genres. We discuss our lessons learned in the system development process which shed interesting light on the practical use of Machine Translation technology