Proceedings of the 1st Doctoral Consortium at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (DC-ECAI 2020)

1st Doctoral Consortium at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (DC-ECAI 2020), 29-30 August, 2020 Santiago de Compostela, SpainThe DC-ECAI 2020 provides a unique opportunity for PhD students, who are close to finishing their doctorate research, to interact with experienced researchers in the field. Senior members of the community are assigned as mentors for each group of students based on the student’s research or similarity of research interests. The DC-ECAI 2020, which is held virtually this year, allows students from all over the world to present their research and discuss their ongoing research and career plans with their mentor, to do networking with other participants, and to receive training and mentoring about career planning and career option

Some problems of designing for augmentative and alternative communication users: an enquiry through practical design activity

The submission is concerned with, and addresses, problems of designing for people with disabilities, with specific reference to people who are illiterate and cannot speak. People with such disabilities often depend on electronic AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices for interpersonal communication. A central theme of the thesis, however, is that such products, and products intended for people with disabilities more generally, have characteristics that inadequately attend to users' needs. Through a combination of practical product development and literature reviews, the thesis demonstrates how improvements to AAC devices 'can be made through user-participatory, usercentred and more sensitive and perceptive design. Literature reviews in the following subjects are reported: AAC; the operational knowledge base for design and disability; user participatory design; and wearable computing. At the core of the thesis is the presentation and discussion of an empirical case study, carried out by the researcher, to design and develop the Portland Communication Aid (PCA). The PCA was conceived as an AAC product that would attempt to redress the inadequacies of predecessor devices. The design activity for the PCA is traced in the thesis, from initial concepts and development models through to a working prototype. Key ideas and essential principles of the design are illustrated. Throughout the work on the PCA, many problems associated with designing for people with severe communication disabilities were encountered. These problems, as with their resolutions, comprised matters of both designing (as an activity) and design (as product specification). The thesis contains comprehensive exposure and analysis of these problems and resolutions. In particular, the value of shaping meaning, metaphor, and other product semantics into devices intended for use by people with disabilities is explored. The study provides two substantive conclusions. First, that both the activity and the outcomes of Industrial Design have a valuable role in the empowerment and rehabilitation of AAC users. And second, that key principles have been identified that will enable designers to better identify, articulate and respond to the needs of people with communication disabilities (and the needs of people with disabilities more generally

EUSN 2021 Book of Abstracts, Fifth European Conference on Social Networks

Book of abstract of the fifth European conference on Social Networks EUSN 202

Design of a Security Toolbox: A Framework To Mitigate The Risks of Cyberspace

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThis research aims to create a framework that helps SMEs mitigate the various risks of cyberspace. In this digital era, the dangers of cyberspace are increasing, which leads to the need for organizations to adopt adequate security measures capable of preventing cyberattacks. However, a large number of employees in SMEs do not know how to act to mitigate the risks already mentioned. Thus, the development of a security toolbox could be a solution to help SMEs be less exposed to the dangers of cyberspace. For this research, a theoretical overview associated with cybersecurity to understand the current state of security solutions and the different control options in the organizational environment was essential. Last but not least, a clear understanding of the SMEs needs, in the area of security, was also crucial in the development and construction of the proposed artifact. To evaluate and validate the security toolbox, focus group meetings will be scheduled. The implementation of a security toolbox that helps SMEs to identify, protect, respond and recover from potential cyberattacks, may be relevant and can provide great results for different organizational environments to mitigate the risks of cyberspace. The suggested framework would play an important role, to the users of the security Toolbox to get more know-how to protect the business environment. Also, may be seen as a vantage to the science since will help to develop the research related to improving the techniques and tools disposal to mitigate the high risks of cyberspace

Affordances of External Representations in Instructional Design: The Effect of Narrative and Imagery in Learning.

Consisting of both theoretical and empirical inquires, this study examines the primary functions of narrative and the relationship between narrative and mental imagery. The study proposes a new framework to interpret semiotic resources. Combining this with the linguistic functional theory of Halliday (1978), a functional method to empirically investigate semiotic representations was also developed. In the empirical inquiry, the study developed a latent construct method to empirically test the effects of narrative in a real learning situation. This study is the first to investigate the functional relationship between narrative and mental imagery, and among the first to suggest a theory and empirically investigate representations of a multimodal nature. The study is also among the first to use latent constructs to investigate the learning experience in a real educational setting. Data were collected from 190 library professionals who enrolled in three sections (two in narrative and one in plain text) of an online course administered through Vista 4.0 and who completed the course and responded to several instruments. Essay data (n = 82 x 2) were analyzed using content analysis based on the narrative analysis framework developed. Quantitative data analysis methods include univariate data analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling that tests the proposed model and verifies the relationships between the latent variables. Overall, the findings support the hypotheses about the functional effects of narrative identified, and narrative is found to provide a favorable and positive learning context which is tested by the proposed model of learning experience measured by several latent constructs (X2 = 31.67, df = 47, p = .9577, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .047, NNFI = 1.05, CFI = 1.00, and GFI = .94). The results indicate that participants who enrolled in the narrative sections of the course gained higher creative scores and showed better results in performance-based and attribution-based experiences. The model testing results indicate that even though more time spent during learning led to better outcome and performance in both groups, more time spent means more satisfaction for the individuals in the narrative group, but led to less satisfaction for the individuals in the non-narrative group

Content Selection for Effective Counter-Argument Generation

The information ecosystem of social media has resulted in an abundance of opinions on political topics and current events. In order to encourage better discussions, it is important to promote high-quality responses and relegate low-quality ones. We thus focus on automatically analyzing and generating counter-arguments in response to posts on social media with the goal of providing effective responses. This thesis is composed of three parts. In the first part, we conduct an analysis of arguments. Specifically, we first annotate discussions from Reddit for aspects of arguments and then analyze them for their persuasive impact. Then we present approaches to identify the argumentative structure of these discussions and predict the persuasiveness of an argument. We evaluate each component independently using automatic or manual evaluations and show significant improvement in each. In the second part, we leverage our discoveries from our analysis in the process of generating counter-arguments. We develop two approaches in the retrieve-and-edit framework, where we obtain content using methods created during our analysis of arguments, among others, and then modify the content using techniques from natural language generation. In the first approach, we develop an approach to retrieve counter-arguments by annotating a dataset for stance and building models for stance prediction. Then we use our approaches from our analysis of arguments to extract persuasive argumentative content before modifying non-content phrases for coherence. In contrast, in the second approach we create a dataset and models for modifying content -- making semantic edits to a claim to have a contrasting stance. We evaluate our approaches using intrinsic automatic evaluation of our predictive models and an overall human evaluation of our generated output. Finally, in the third part, we discuss the semantic challenges of argumentation that we need to solve in order to make progress in the understanding of arguments. To clarify, we develop new methods for identifying two types of semantic relations -- causality and veracity. For causality, we build a distant-labeled dataset of causal relations using lexical indicators and then we leverage features from those indicators to build predictive models. For veracity, we build new models to retrieve evidence given a claim and predict whether the claim is supported by that evidence. We also develop a new dataset for veracity to illuminate the areas that need progress. We evaluate these approaches using automated and manual techniques and obtain significant improvement over strong baselines. Finally, we apply these techniques to claims in the domain of household electricity consumption, mining claims using our methods for causal relations and then verifying their truthfulness

Syntax with oscillators and energy levels

This book presents a new approach to studying the syntax of human language, one which emphasizes how we think about time. Tilsen argues that many current theories are unsatisfactory because those theories conceptualize syntactic patterns with spatially arranged structures of objects. These object-structures are atemporal and do not lend well to reasoning about time. The book develops an alternative conceptual model in which oscillatory systems of various types interact with each other through coupling forces, and in which the relative energies of those systems are organized in particular ways. Tilsen emphasizes that the two primary mechanisms of the approach – oscillators and energy levels – require alternative ways of thinking about time. Furthermore, his theory leads to a new way of thinking about grammaticality and the recursive nature of language. The theory is applied to a variety of syntactic phenomena: word order, phrase structure, morphosyntax, constituency, case systems, ellipsis, anaphora, and islands. The book also presents a general program for the study of language in which the construction of linguistic theories is itself an object of theoretical analysis

The Philological-Pragmatic Approach : A Study of Language Choice and Code-Switching in Early Modern English School Performances

In this study I set out to account for certain central aspects of language choice and code-switching. My purpose is twofold: to explain why people use multiple languages within a single discourse or choose to use a particular language in a particular setting, and to demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of combining philosophical and empirical research. Towards these ends, I develop a philological-pragmatic approach and apply it to a collection of multilingual texts. The material consists of the Orationes manuscript (Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. MS E41), containing speeches and plays in English, Latin, and Greek performed by students at the King’s School, Canterbury, in 1665–1684. I conduct a philosophical and methodological analysis of the philological-pragmatic approach, construct a framework on the basis of that analysis, and apply it in the empirical analyses to understand and explain actions. The philosophical and methodological analyses indicate that a basis for the philological-pragmatic approach can be constructed by reinterpreting philology and pragmatics from the perspective of action analysis and theory of action: philology as the study of concrete action-tokens (interpretation), pragmatics as the study of abstract action-types (explication and classification). The empirical analyses indicate that multilingual language use is an important and characteristic strategy in the Orationes texts. Three explanatory entities were central in accounting for multilingual language use: consequences of actions, causal antecedents, and further actions/forms. Consequences were classified into five basic categories: face-related, textual, argumentative, stylistic, and capacitative. These taxonomies sufficiently accounted for the patterns of language use observed in the dataset. The study constitutes the first book-length investigation of the Orationes texts. In addition to advancing our understanding of the roots of multilingual language use in the Early Modern English period, the patterns identified have several parallels both in different periods and in different cultures. Detecting such patterns has the potential to contribute to an integrated account of the phenomenon. Finally, the study offers other researchers a model for combining philology and pragmatics.Käsittelen väitöskirjassani kielen valintaa ja koodinvaihtoa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on yhtäältä selittää, miksi yhden diskurssin sisällä käytetään useita kieliä tai tietyissä tilanteissa valitaan tietty kieli, ja toisaalta tuoda esiin hyötyjä, joita saadaan yhdistämällä filosofinen ja empiirinen tutkimus. Kehitän tutkimuksessani ns. filologis-pragmaattisen lähestymistavan ja sovellan sitä monikielisen tekstikokoelman analyysiin. Aineistoni koostuu Orationes-käsikirjoituksesta (Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. MS E41), joka sisältää Canterburyn King’s Schoolin oppilaiden vuosina 1665–1684 esittämiä puheita ja näytelmiä. Teksteissä käytettävät kielet ovat englanti, latina ja kreikka. Laadin filosofisen ja menetelmäopillisen kuvauksen filologis-pragmaattisesta lähestymistavasta, kehitän analyysin pohjalta viitekehyksen ja sovellan tätä viitekehystä tutkimuksen empiirisessä osassa tekojen ymmärtämiseen ja selittämiseen. Filosofisten ja menetelmäopillisten analyysien perusteella filologis-pragmaattinen lähestymistapa voidaan rakentaa määrittelemällä filologia ja pragmatiikka tekojen tutkimisen näkökulmasta: filologia tutkii konkreettisia tekoesiintymiä (menetelmänä tulkinta), pragmatiikka abstrakteja tekotyyppejä (menetelminä eksplikaatio ja luokittelu). Empiirisen analyysin perusteella monikielinen kielenkäyttö on keskeinen osa Orationes-tekstejä. Selityksissä viittasin erityisesti tekojen seurauksiin, kausaalisiin tekijöihin sekä muihin tekoihin/rakenteisiin. Luokittelin tekojen seuraukset edelleen kasvoihin liittyviin, tekstuaalisiin, argumentatiivisiin, stilistisiin ja mahdollistaviin. Näiden taksonomioiden avulla pystyin selittämään tutkittavat ilmiöt aineistossani. Väitöstutkimukseni on ensimmäinen laaja tutkimus Orationes-teksteistä. Tutkimuksen tulokset auttavat ymmärtämään monikielisen kielenkäytön juuria 1600-luvun Britanniassa. Vertaamalla tuloksia aiempiin tutkimuksiin löydetään yhtymäkohtia eri aikakausilta ja eri kulttuureista. Näitä yhtymäkohtia tarkastelemalla saavutetaan entistä kattavampi käsitys monikielisen kielenkäytön luonteesta. Tutkimukseni tarjoaa myös yleisen mallin filologian ja pragmatiikan yhdistämiseen

Smart Industry - Better Management

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Smart industry requires better management. As industrial and production systems are future-proofed, becoming smart and interconnected through use of new manufacturing and product technologies, work is advancing on improving product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency, and cost, optimally using supply chains. Presenting innovative, evidence-based, and cutting-edge case studies, with new conceptualizations and viewpoints on management, Smart Industry, Better Management explores concepts in product systems, use of cyber physical systems, digitization, interconnectivity, and new manufacturing and product technologies. Contributions to this volume highlight the high degree of flexibility in people management, production, including product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency and cost in being able to finely adjust to customer needs and make full use of supply chains for value creation. Smart Industry, Better Management illustrates how industry can enabled by a more network-centric approach, making use of the value of information and the latest available proven manufacturing techniques