Faster mt decoding through pervasive laziness

Syntax-based MT systems have proven effective—the models are compelling and show good room for improvement. However, decoding involves a slow search. We present a new lazy-search method that obtains significant speedups over a strong baseline, with no loss in Bleu.

Backwards is the way forward: feedback in the cortical hierarchy predicts the expected future

Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models)

Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by failure to acquire, retrieve, and use information competently. These disorders have a multifactorial aetiology and are most common and severe in children, especially when comorbid with other chronic health conditions. This book provides current and comprehensive information about learning disorders, including information on neurobiology, assessment, clinical features, and treatment. Chapters cover such topics as historical research and hypotheses of learning disorders, neuropsychological assessment and counselling, characteristics of specific disorders such as autism and ADHD, evidence-based treatment strategies and assistive technologies, and much more

The Quest For a Transcendental Hero

This work begins by briefly exploring the historical, cultural, and economic factors springing up from the rise of scientific and economic materialism in the crux of capitalism. It is argued that the bourgeois value system strangled the possibility of heroic action in the public arena and thereby eliminated the poet’s ability to find a heroic figure in nineteenth century America. The focus is then shifted to the Transcendentalist movement (Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller), who fear the loss of the hero as the loss of inspiration for mankind and the loss of subject matter for poets. The works and ideas of Emerson are interpreted as an attempt at inspiring individuals in the public to step forth into the spotlight of Western society in the hopes of counteracting the trends and forces in modernity that render the metropolitan citizen ineffectual and complacent. Thoreau’s experiments in Walden and civil disobedience are examined in the light of early efforts to find venues of political action in the private life of the everyday man as a possibility for heroism. Fuller is sketched as the prototype for modernized vates or prophet as poet/hero. It is argued that Fuller brings to life the dual role of hero and poet via the social activism she attempted in her use of the press in order to make the public aware of the ills in society as a means of mobilization and serving as an apocryphal propaganda. The extent to which each individual succeeded and/or failed is also to be described

Les universaux linguistiques émergeants dans les réseaux de neurones communicants

The ability to acquire and produce a language is a key component of intelligence. If communication is widespread among animals, human language is unique in its productivity and complexity. By better understanding the source of natural language, one can use this knowledge to build better interactive AI models that can acquire human languages as rapidly and efficiently as children. In this manuscript, we build up on the emergent communication field to investigate the well-standing question of the source of natural language. In particular, we use communicating neural networks that can develop a language to solve a collaborative task. Comparing the emergent language properties with human cross-linguistic regularities can provide answers to the crucial questions of the origin and evolution of natural language. Indeed, if neural networks develop a crosslinguistic regularity spontaneously, then the latter would not depend on specific biological constraints. From the cognitive perspective, looking at neural networks as another expressive species can shed light on the source of cross-linguistic regularities -- a fundamental research interest in cognitive science and linguistics. From the machine learning perspective, endowing artificial models with human constraints necessary to evolve communicative protocols as productive and robust as natural language would encourage the development of better interactive AI models. In this manuscript, we focus on studying four cross-linguistic regularities related to word length, word order, semantic categorization, and compositionality. Across the different studies, we find that some of these regularities arise spontaneously while others are missing in neural networks' languages. We connect the former case to the presence of shared communicative constraints such as the discrete nature of the communication channel. On the latter, we relate the absence of human-like regularities to the lack of constraints either on the learners' side (e.g., the least-effort constraints) or language functionality (e.g., transmission of information). In sum, this manuscript provides several case studies demonstrating how we can use successful neural network models to tackle crucial questions about the origin and evolution of our language. It also stresses the importance of mimicking the way humans learn their language in artificial agents' training to induce better learning procedures for neural networks, so that they can evolve an efficient and open-ended communication protocol.La capacité d'acquérir et de produire un langage est un élément clé de l'intelligence humaine. En effet, même si de nombreuses espèces partagent un système de communication, le langage humain reste unique par sa productivité, sa récursivité ainsi que le nombre de symboles utilisés. En comprenant mieux les origines de l'apparition du langage, il sera possible de créer des modèles plus performants capable d'interagir et d’acquérir notre langage aussi rapidement et efficacement que nous le faisons en tant que bébé. Dans ce manuscrit, nous utilisons des réseaux de neurones communicants qui peuvent développer et faire évoluer un langage pour nous éclairer sur la question de l'origine du langage naturel. Nous comparons ensuite les propriétés de leur langage émergeant avec les propriétés universelles du langage naturel. Si les réseaux de neurones produisent spontanément une propriété linguistique, celle-ci ne dépendrait pas alors des contraintes biologiques. Autrement, dans le cas où le langage artificiel dévie du langage humain pour une régularité donnée, cette dernière ne peut être considérée comme une conséquence des simples contraintes de communication. D'un point de vue cognitif, considérer les réseaux de neurones comme une autre espèce expressive peut nous éclairer sur la source des propriétés universelles. Du point de vue de l'apprentissage automatique, doter les modèles artificiels de contraintes humaines nécessaires pour faire évoluer des protocoles de communication aussi productifs et robustes que le langage naturel encouragerait le développement de meilleurs modèles d'IA interactifs. Ce manuscrit traite de l'étude de quatre régularités linguistiques qui ont à voir avec la longueur des mots, l'ordre des mots, la catégorisation sémantique et la compositionnalité. Certains chapitres exemplifient des cas où les régularités apparaissent spontanément dans le langage émergeant, tandis que d'autres montrent des cas où les réseaux de neurones développent un langage qui dévie du langage naturel. Nous avons relié le premier cas à la présence de contraintes de communication telles que la nature discrète du canal de communication. Quant à l'absence de régularités naturelles, nous l'avons lié au manque de contraintes soit au niveau de l'apprenant (par exemple, la contrainte biologique de brièveté) soit au niveau de l'environnement (par exemple, la richesse d’environnement). Ainsi, cet ensemble de travaux fournit plusieurs études de cas démontrant l'intérêt d'utiliser des modèles de réseaux de neurones performants dans des tâches de traitement de texte pour aborder des questions cruciales sur l'origine et l'évolution de notre langage. Il souligne également l'importance d'entraîner les réseaux de neurones sous contraintes naturelles pour voir l'émergence d'un protocole de communication aussi efficace et productif que le langage naturel

Occupy: A People Yet To Come

The term Occupy represents a belief in the transformation of the capitalist system through a new heterogenic world of protest and activism that cannot be conceived in terms of liberal democracy, parliamentary systems, class war or vanguard politics. These conceptualisations do not articulate where power is held, nor from where transformation may issue. This collection of essays by world-leading scholars of Deleuze and Guattari examines how capitalism can be understood as a global abstract machine whose effects pervade all of life and how Occupy can be framed as a response to this as a heterogenic movement based on new tactics, revitalised democratic processes and nomadic systems of organisation. Seeing the question as a political tactic aimed at delegitimizing their protest, Occupiers refused to answer the question ‘what do you want?’, produce manifestos, elect leaders or act as a vanguard. Occupy: A People Yet to Come goes some considerable way towards providing the terms upon which this refusal can be understood within a changed landscape of political activism and the rewriting of the conventions of political protest. Including essays by Claire Colebrook, Giuseppina Mecchia, John Protevi, Rodrigo Nunes, Verena Andermatt Conley, Nicholas Thoburn, Ian Buchanan, David Burrows, Eugene Holland and Andrew Conio, the volume examines the economic predicates of capitalist economics: liberal democracy and its alternatives, the conjugation of protest and aesthetics, how occupy experiments with different types of leadership and how power, hierarchies and resistance might be understood using Deleuze and Guattari’s radical conceptualizations of debt; subjectivity, the minor and the molecular, occupation, dispersed leadership, territory, smooth space and the war machine

The emergence of 'piecemeal pedagogy': a case study of selected South African grade 4-7 English and Social studies teachers' positions and practices toward learning and teaching support materials

A thesis submitted to the Wits School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg 2017This thesis is located in the area of the enactment of learning materials. It examined examines the thinking and practices related to Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM) of a small sample of South African teachers in Gauteng, across different school sectors, who worked in the Intermediate Phase and taught English and/or Social Sciences. Most international research, conducted in relatively homogeneous environments showed how teachers’ enactment with of learning materials always varied (from teacher to teacher) and was variable (within the practices of a single teacher). The A gap in international research exists in the narrow interpretation of LTSM and assumptions that learners in a class had similar language facility and backgrounds. In this thesis, learning materials were of necessity interpreted more widely than textbooks, and the research also spanned diverse social, linguistic and economic teaching environments for comparative purposes. The policy context of South Africa comprises multiple curriculum changes and a socio-political context of vast inequalities between schools. In a conceptual framework, devised for this research, the intersections in the teacher-learner-LTSM classroom triad were examined. This framework targets three central areas:hones in on how the affordances of materials were used, how coherence was achieved in lessons and across the curriculum, and how each of the triad’s elements participated contributed to in the overall impact of LTSM delivery and reception. The main findings from 26 classroom observation sessions, 18 interviews and an analysis of textual artefacts (LTSM) are that textbooks were rarely used and that teachers' discourses about LTSM are of two kinds: a classroom management discourse (using a variety of materials can combat boredom / arouse interest)and a teacher professional identity discourse (teachers as materials developers). After doing 26 classroom observations, conducting 18 interviews with teachers, as well as textbook and worksheet analysis, main findings were that textbooks were rarely used in classrooms across all teaching sectors, based on two separate discourses. In the first discourse, teachers used a variety of materials to combat learners’ boredom and distraction, as a means to achieve classroom management. In the second discourse, teachers felt that professionalism and the production of their own materials were linked. The result was that learners in all schools received a piecemeal exposure to the curriculum, through visual media and teachers’ handouts in the form of worksheets. There were differences in how the teachers enacted these LTSM, indicating differences in teaching philosophies: Differences in how the teachers enacted these LTSM indicated teaching philosophies: some teachers aimed at making learners participants in the learning process, whereas others wanted to control the transmission process. Worksheets were mainly limited in content and made few demands on the learners and teachers. In this small-scale research study, the limited exposure that learners received to reading texts and related writing opportunities were linked to the kind of LTSM that were used and the teachers’ enactment of these materials. Many of the teachers acknowledged that this situation has had a pronounced impact on learners’ abilities to interpret texts and to express themselves adequately in class and during assessments. However, according to the teachers interviewed, the limited English proficiency of some learners, the density of the curriculum, the lack of confidence of some teachers and their sometimes difficult working conditions, all militate against changes to their practices.However, according to teachers, language constraints, the curriculum’s density, the lack of teachers’ confidence and sometimes difficult working conditions militated against any change in practiceMT 201

Brain Waves, A Cultural History: Oscillations of Neuroscience, Technology, Telepathy, and Transcendence

This project proceeds from a narrow question: What, if anything, is a brain wave? Beguiling in its simplicity, this question prompts a cultural-historical investigation that spans over 150 years of science, technology, and society. Proposed in 1869, the original theory of brain waves cites etheric undulations to explain reports of apparent thought transference. Though most modern thinkers no longer believe in outright telepathy, I argue that dreams of thought transmission and other mental miracles subtly persist—not in obscure and occult circles, but at the forefront of technoscience. A hybrid of science and fiction, brain waves represent an ideal subject through which to explore the ways in which technical language shrouds spiritual dreams. Today, the phrase “brain waves” often function as shorthand for electrical changes in the brain, particularly in the context of technologies that purport to “read” some aspect of mental function, or to transmit neural data to a digital device. While such technologies appear uniquely modern, the history of brain waves reveals that they are merely the millennial incarnation of a much older hope—a hope for transmission and transcendence via the brain’s emanations