Representing parallelism in a control language designed for young children

Actor-lab was intended to make control problems comprehensible to young children experiencing programming for the first time, and to provide an interface around which they could have learning conversations. The design goal was to create an expressive high-level control language that could incorporate the WHEN DEMON metaphor within the intrinsically parallel actor programming paradigm. Information about the static relationship between the objects in the system, the external dynamic events and the internal message passing is provided by the visualisation. The learner-centered evolution of actor-lab is detailed in terms of how successfully it both reflects the curriculum model of control and also engenders a sense of agency within the system

A Taxonomy of Workflow Management Systems for Grid Computing

With the advent of Grid and application technologies, scientists and engineers are building more and more complex applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Such application scenarios require means for composing and executing complex workflows. Therefore, many efforts have been made towards the development of workflow management systems for Grid computing. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that characterizes and classifies various approaches for building and executing workflows on Grids. We also survey several representative Grid workflow systems developed by various projects world-wide to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the taxonomy. The taxonomy not only highlights the design and engineering similarities and differences of state-of-the-art in Grid workflow systems, but also identifies the areas that need further research.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis.

Peer reviewedPostprin

An examination of errors of coherence in adolescent sentence combining

Young adolescents should be able to write organized multi-paragraph compositions that develop a central idea and unfold in logical and sequential order, unified through the use of transitional words and phrases. In other words, the compositions should not just consist of a string of related sentences, but represent a dynamic text that has coherence. It is important that speech-language pathologists develop quick and reliable methods for assessing coherence to aid in making data driven decisions and progress monitoring consistent with principles of Responsiveness to Intervention. Yet, the holistic quality of coherence makes it difficult to assess, both within a composition and developmentally. The purpose of this study was to determine a) the ability of students to produce sentences that maintain coherence across the continuum of grade levels, and b) whether or not adolescents would produce fewer errors of coherence on sentence combining exercises following six weeks of Embedded Language Lessons (ELL) instruction as compared to Discrete Language Lessons (DLL) instruction. First, 115 students in grades 4-7 completed the Sentence Combining subtest of the Test of Written Language, Third Edition (Hammill & Larsen, 1996). Four of the test items required adherence to three different coherence relations using Kehler’s (2002) classifications. Those subtest items were examined to assess the students’ ability to create sentences that maintain coherence across the continuum of grade levels. Second, the two grade levels for which posttest data was returned were then examined for changes in coherence following a six-week classroom-based intervention designed to increase meta-awareness of coherence in text structure. Results of this study revealed evidence of a developmental progression in the ability to represent these coherence relations in written language, with the youngest students indicating the correct coherence relation in 25 to 45% of their responses and the oldest students in 41 to 79% of their responses. Only one significant group difference was found at posttest when the individual relations were considered. A significant improvement in contiguity was observed for the fifth-graders in the ELL group. No group differences were observed with respect to the cause-effect relation or with parallel structure

Big data and the SP theory of intelligence

This article is about how the "SP theory of intelligence" and its realisation in the "SP machine" may, with advantage, be applied to the management and analysis of big data. The SP system -- introduced in the article and fully described elsewhere -- may help to overcome the problem of variety in big data: it has potential as "a universal framework for the representation and processing of diverse kinds of knowledge" (UFK), helping to reduce the diversity of formalisms and formats for knowledge and the different ways in which they are processed. It has strengths in the unsupervised learning or discovery of structure in data, in pattern recognition, in the parsing and production of natural language, in several kinds of reasoning, and more. It lends itself to the analysis of streaming data, helping to overcome the problem of velocity in big data. Central in the workings of the system is lossless compression of information: making big data smaller and reducing problems of storage and management. There is potential for substantial economies in the transmission of data, for big cuts in the use of energy in computing, for faster processing, and for smaller and lighter computers. The system provides a handle on the problem of veracity in big data, with potential to assist in the management of errors and uncertainties in data. It lends itself to the visualisation of knowledge structures and inferential processes. A high-parallel, open-source version of the SP machine would provide a means for researchers everywhere to explore what can be done with the system and to create new versions of it.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Acces

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo