Cognition-based approaches for high-precision text mining

This research improves the precision of information extraction from free-form text via the use of cognitive-based approaches to natural language processing (NLP). Cognitive-based approaches are an important, and relatively new, area of research in NLP and search, as well as linguistics. Cognitive approaches enable significant improvements in both the breadth and depth of knowledge extracted from text. This research has made contributions in the areas of a cognitive approach to automated concept recognition in. Cognitive approaches to search, also called concept-based search, have been shown to improve search precision. Given the tremendous amount of electronic text generated in our digital and connected world, cognitive approaches enable substantial opportunities in knowledge discovery. The generation and storage of electronic text is ubiquitous, hence opportunities for improved knowledge discovery span virtually all knowledge domains. While cognition-based search offers superior approaches, challenges exist due to the need to mimic, even in the most rudimentary way, the extraordinary powers of human cognition. This research addresses these challenges in the key area of a cognition-based approach to automated concept recognition. In addition it resulted in a semantic processing system framework for use in applications in any knowledge domain. Confabulation theory was applied to the problem of automated concept recognition. This is a relatively new theory of cognition using a non-Bayesian measure, called cogency, for predicting the results of human cognition. An innovative distance measure derived from cogent confabulation and called inverse cogency, to rank order candidate concepts during the recognition process. When used with a multilayer perceptron, it improved the precision of concept recognition by 5% over published benchmarks. Additional precision improvements are anticipated. These research steps build a foundation for cognition-based, high-precision text mining. Long-term it is anticipated that this foundation enables a cognitive-based approach to automated ontology learning. Such automated ontology learning will mimic human language cognition, and will, in turn, enable the practical use of cognitive-based approaches in virtually any knowledge domain --Abstract, page iii

Efficient machine learning: models and accelerations

One of the key enablers of the recent unprecedented success of machine learning is the adoption of very large models. Modern machine learning models typically consist of multiple cascaded layers such as deep neural networks, and at least millions to hundreds of millions of parameters (i.e., weights) for the entire model. The larger-scale model tend to enable the extraction of more complex high-level features, and therefore, lead to a significant improvement of the overall accuracy. On the other side, the layered deep structure and large model sizes also demand to increase computational capability and memory requirements. In order to achieve higher scalability, performance, and energy efficiency for deep learning systems, two orthogonal research and development trends have attracted enormous interests. The first trend is the acceleration while the second is the model compression. The underlying goal of these two trends is the high quality of the models to provides accurate predictions. In this thesis, we address these two problems and utilize different computing paradigms to solve real-life deep learning problems. To explore in these two domains, this thesis first presents the cogent confabulation network for sentence completion problem. We use Chinese language as a case study to describe our exploration of the cogent confabulation based text recognition models. The exploration and optimization of the cogent confabulation based models have been conducted through various comparisons. The optimized network offered a better accuracy performance for the sentence completion. To accelerate the sentence completion problem in a multi-processing system, we propose a parallel framework for the confabulation recall algorithm. The parallel implementation reduce runtime, improve the recall accuracy by breaking the fixed evaluation order and introducing more generalization, and maintain a balanced progress in status update among all neurons. A lexicon scheduling algorithm is presented to further improve the model performance. As deep neural networks have been proven effective to solve many real-life applications, and they are deployed on low-power devices, we then investigated the acceleration for the neural network inference using a hardware-friendly computing paradigm, stochastic computing. It is an approximate computing paradigm which requires small hardware footprint and achieves high energy efficiency. Applying this stochastic computing to deep convolutional neural networks, we design the functional hardware blocks and optimize them jointly to minimize the accuracy loss due to the approximation. The synthesis results show that the proposed design achieves the remarkable low hardware cost and power/energy consumption. Modern neural networks usually imply a huge amount of parameters which cannot be fit into embedded devices. Compression of the deep learning models together with acceleration attracts our attention. We introduce the structured matrices based neural network to address this problem. Circulant matrix is one of the structured matrices, where a matrix can be represented using a single vector, so that the matrix is compressed. We further investigate a more flexible structure based on circulant matrix, called block-circulant matrix. It partitions a matrix into several smaller blocks and makes each submatrix is circulant. The compression ratio is controllable. With the help of Fourier Transform based equivalent computation, the inference of the deep neural network can be accelerated energy efficiently on the FPGAs. We also offer the optimization for the training algorithm for block circulant matrices based neural networks to obtain a high accuracy after compression

Exploring Medical Breakthroughs: A Systematic Review of ChatGPT Applications in Healthcare

ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, has emerged as a powerful tool in the field of medicine. In this systematic review, we explore the potential of ChatGPT in various medical applications by analyzing articles related to medicine and healthcare. We carefully examined the methodologies, results, and conclusions of these articles to provide a comprehensive overview of the current evidence on the use of ChatGPT in the field of medicine. Through this review, we highlight how ChatGPT has been utilized to streamline and simplify complex tasks, improve patient care, enhance clinical decision-making, and facilitate communication among healthcare professionals. We also discuss the challenges and limitations of using ChatGPT in medicine, including concerns related to privacy, ethical considerations, and potential biases. Despite these challenges, ChatGPT has shown great promise in transforming the landscape of medicine and has the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery. By synthesizing the findings from these articles, we aim to provide a critical and evidence-based evaluation of the current state of ChatGPT in medicine, and to identify areas for further research and development

Fallen by the wayside: Young people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in New Zealand's youth justice system

Young people with FASD are overrepresented in justice systems worldwide. There is an estimated 30,000 children and young people with FASD in New Zealand, many of whom will not have a formal diagnosis. The unique cognitive profile of a young person with FASD presents a challenge for the youth justice system. The brain damage caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol can lead to a series of cognitive difficulties manifested in a pattern of behaviour that can lead to criminal offending (such as impulsivity, suggestibility, and an inability to consider consequences). Compounding the difficulties faced by these young people is their vulnerability in a justice setting, and the likelihood of recidivism due to difficulties with learning and problems with memory. Currently in New Zealand there is no specific legislative or policy guidance on how to manage young people with FASD in the youth justice system. Given this absence, this thesis considered i) what are the common presentations of FASD and why do they present such a problem for the justice system; ii) why the current legislative and policy context is inadequate for young people with FASD; and iii) how can New Zealand’s youth justice system be improved for young people with FASD? This qualitative research focused on FASD as a lived experience, including family life, justice system involvement, and professional knowledge and attitudes. It included 39 participants, comprising: two young people, 12 parents, one teacher, one school principal, one education sector service manager, one psychologist, five paediatricians, four social workers, one Youth Aid Police officer, two Youth Court judges, one youth justice service provider practice manager, one director of a youth justice service provider, one youth forensic alcohol and other drug clinician, and six key stakeholders. The New Zealand Disability Strategy and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities require impairment and disability to be viewed through the lens of the social model of disability. Individuals are not to be defined or described in terms of deficits, but first and foremost by their strengths. This research found that young people with FASD are kind, creative, intelligent, and confident. It also found that for these young people and their families, the brain damage sustained by prenatal exposure to alcohol causes an extensive array of learning, behavioural, and parenting challenges. Compounding these challenges is a lack of awareness and understanding of the disability among professionals in the education, justice and health sectors in New Zealand, and a lack of formal support pathways in the justice system. The diagnostic process for FASD in New Zealand needs urgent, formal recognition through funding streams and training programmes, which would enable the early identification of FASD in children and reduce the risk of secondary disability (including criminal offending) among young people. Recommendations from this thesis include developing formal diagnostic guidelines for FASD in New Zealand; incorporating formal training for FASD into the tertiary curriculums for teachers, and for all justice professions likely to have contact with young people, implementing a mandatory, robust screening service for FASD in the Youth Court, acknowledging FASD as a mitigating factor in sentencing legislation, and extending the legislative jurisdiction of the youth justice system to all young people aged 24 or below

“When do I get to see the dog?”: The communicative environment during animal assisted speech therapy sessions for adults with acquired cognitive-communicative disorders

This is a mixed methods study of an established Therapy Dog Program in a sub-acute rehabilitation hospital that examined the communicative space created when a therapy dog is part of a Speech Therapy (ST) session for persons with acquired cognitive-communicative disorders. Grounded in the theoretical framework of distributed communication (Hengst, 2015) and supported by multi-disciplinary research on the impact of rich and complex communicative environments, this project was designed to study Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) as an activity that (while rarely used in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders) is highly reflective of the responsibilities, preferences, and personal lives of patients (i.e. pet ownership and interaction with animals). This study draws on ethnographic methods of data collection (e.g., video-taped observations, interviews, collections of artifacts) and a participatory action research (PAR) component utilized to trace the process of program development to meet individual departmental and clinician-specific goals. Ten primary participants and fourteen secondary participants were recruited across 10 total weeks of data collection, and data sources included interviews, video-recorded observations of Animal-Assisted Speech Therapy sessions and Traditional Speech Therapy sessions, and clinical program planning sessions. This study has multiple goals: 1) to explore the institutional context of the Therapy Dog Program at Carle Foundation Hospital (CFH), 2) to describe the language resources used by all participants in an Animal-Assisted ST session and to compare those patterns to a Traditional ST session, and 3) to trace the process and progress made by SLPs towards increasing their personal goals of independence, skill, and productive use of AAT to meet varied cognitive-communicative goals. Results show that AAT sessions were complex, flexible, high quality communicative spaces in which varied resource use was employed by all group members to align to others in the communicative space and to contribute through multiple participation roles. Further discussion and exploration of AAT stands to contribute to the larger discussion of environmental enrichment and language interventions provided in rich communicative environments in the field of aphasiology, rehabilitation science, and adult-neurogenic communication disorders at large

The Working Public’s Perceptions of Service Dogs: A Phenomenological Investigation of Gatekeepers’ Experiences

The purpose of this study was to capture the essence of the working public’s experiences with, and perceptions of service dogs. The population for the study was the working public of Kentucky, who through their employment, have experienced first-hand the phenomenon. A phenomenological framework informed the research design. In-depth, unstructured interviews were conducted to obtain data. Interview transcriptions were analyzed according to suggestions from Moustakas (1994) and Hycner (1985) regarding phenomenological research. The results of this research study naturally formed into five themes. Findings showed prevalent misunderstandings, confusion and lack of knowledge regarding service dogs, including how to identify a service dog, how to differentiate service dogs from other dogs, uniform and certification or registration expectations, legislation, and the labels used to describe different assistance dogs. Additionally, findings showed exposure to dogs in general, and training procedures, could impact one’s perceptions of, and level of comfort around service dogs. Furthermore, participants identified misrepresentation of a service dog as a primary issue around this topic. Participants placed value in standardization of service dog uniforms and identification processes, as well as the need for increased educational programs across social groups. Based on these findings, recommendations for future research were made to further establish an understanding of the public’s perceptions of assistance animals and assistance dog legislation. Recommendations were also made for adaptations and educational opportunities for various social groups. Increased research and education are necessary catalysts for change and further understanding of how to successfully incorporate service dogs into our communities

Remembering dreams

This thesis concludes that our commonplace conviction that dreams are dreamt during sleep and remembered or forgotten upon waking is, at best, a speculative hypothesis open to a very reasonable scepticism. The conclusion follows from a defence of the Dispositional Analysis, that to remember or forget a dream is to retain or lose an ability acquired during sleep to tell without invention or inference a fictitious story as if of events witnessed and deeds done. According to the Dispositional Analysis everyday talk about dreams being dream during sleep stands open to contradiction by empirical evidence supporting Globot's Hypothesis that the content of our awakening narratives is explained by peculiarities in the manner of awakening. According to the Dispositional Analysis, our ordinary assumption that 'telling a dream' is an exercise of memory can only be tested within a theory enabling us to predict whilst a person is asleep what, if any, dream he would tell, if awoken in a normal manner, prompted to say what appeal's to have happened (no matter how incredible or unimaginable), and not distracted. Chapter One ("Events Witnessed and Deeds Done") argues that sober reflection on what we already know shows that, in 'telling a dream', a person usually does not remember perceptions and actions from sleep. In Chapter Two ("The Unimagined and Unimaginable") argues that the ability to tell a dream cannot be reduced to memory of thoughts and intentions directed towards images. The conclusion drawn from Part One (What Appeals To Be Remembered) is not merely that there is no general account of what beaming consist in, as if the fact that we do not remember illusory perceptions, thoughts or images shows that we do remember something else, some irreducible mental activity. The conclusion is that when we 'remember dreams' we generally remember nothing of what happened during sleep. Chapter Three ("'Actions' During Sleep") argues that the scientific study of sleepwalking, sleeptalking, night terrors, prearranged 'signalling' during sleep fail to support die hypothesis that a person remembers thoughts and intentions from sleep. Chapter Four ('"Perceptions During Sleep"), it is argued that neither evidence of physiological activity peripheral to the central nervous system (e.g. eye movements, muscular twitches, penes erections, etc.) interpreted as 'covert behaviour' during sleep, nor evidence of neurological activity of the forebrain interpreted as critical responses to internally generated 'stimuli' supports the Received Opinion that dreams are episodes remembered from sleep. Part Two ("Scientific Studies of Sleep and Dreaming"), concludes that experimental sleep research is consistent with the conclusion that a person telling a dream is typically not remembering mental acts, events, states or processes from sleep. Part Three ("The Dispositional Analysis") questions the implications of the conclusion that the Received Opinion is false. Chapter Five ("Dreaming Without Experience") argues that our conviction that dreams are dreamt or 'occur' during sleep is an empirical hypothesis which survives the falsification of die Received Opinion. The conclusion drawn here departs both from that of Malcolm's (1959) argument that the concept of dreaming is not a theoretical concept and from that of Squires' (1973) argument that dreaming is a bad theoretical concept. Chapter Six, argues that assumptions about the causal explanation of telling a dream whilst central to our talk about dreams being dreamt or occurring during sleep cannot not explain our commonplace conviction that dreams are remembered from sleep. In particular, it is argued against Dennett (1976) that a causal-cum-representational analysis of remembering dreams does not escape the need to distinguish between the everyday notion of memory appropriate to retaining an ability to tell a dream and a technical notion of storage in short-term 'memory'. The Conclusion ("A Truth of Underwhelming Importance?") reflects upon the gap forced by the thesis between the unreasoning confidence of our awakening conviction that dreams are remembered from sleep and the speculative justification accorded to it by the Dispositional Analysis. It recommends an uneasy resignation to die conclusion that our undoubting faith that something is remembered reduces to nothing more substantial than the hypothesis that 'telling a dream' is the exercise of an unconsciously acquired and retained disposition to awake with a merely apparent memory of episodes occurring during sleep

How to stop thinking : a massively modular response to the frame problem

We commonly turn to the metaphor of the mind as a sort of computer, yet we are incapable of programming a computer to perform even the simplest cognitive tasks that humanity is capable of, and this stark failure speaks to the centrality of the problem of framing. This 'frame problem' is one of determining relevance--of limiting thought regarding an impending action to that (and only that) which falls within the context at hand--in such a way that computationally tractable thought processing can take place. The simple fact is that we do, in fact, do this in day to day cognition, ubiquitously and quite efficiently. Yet it is not at all clear how we manage to do it without entailing a constant and nearly infinite revision of the entire epistemic background, resulting in combinatorial explosion. It is a question of how to stop thinking. This thesis endeavours to obviate the frame problem with a massively modular model of cognition based largely on the work of Peter Carruthers in his 2006 book The Architecture of the Mind. Where Carruthers' argument is vulnerable, other recent work in psycholinguistics is offered in defense and, ultimately, an account is presented explaining how we frame cognitive tasks in such as way as to adequately account for the inferential and holistic reasoning abilities we take for granted while still maintaining a materialist model that is neither strained by computational intractability, nor necessitates a central executive control mechanism, or 'ghost in the machine.

Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors

Promocijas darbs

Elektroniskā versija nesatur pielikumusPromocijas darba “Nacionālās identitātes veidošana un atspoguļojums Baltijas valstu prezidentu runās – korpusā balstīta kritiskā diskursa analīze” mērķis ir izpētīt, kā Baltijas valstu prezidentu runās atspoguļojas nacionālās identitātes diskursīvās konstrukcijas, proti, kādi valodas un diskursa makro- un mikrostruk-tūru elementi ir lietoti prezidentu retorikā, kādas ir to funkcijas un potenciālā ietekme uz runas mērķauditoriju. Izmantojot kvalitatīvo un kvantitatīvo metožu sinerģiju jeb korpusu pieeju un kritiskās diskursa analīzes vēsturisko pieeju, pētījumā veikta ne vien detalizēta runu satura, tematisko lauku, diskursīvo stratēģiju un lingvistisko paņēmienu analīze, bet arī analizēti korpusos balstītie statistiskie dati, kas palīdz detalizētāk izprast katra prezidenta lingvistisko pro-filu un lingvistisko paņēmienu izvēli. Veiktā komponentu analīze apliecina katra prezidenta multiplo identitāšu lingvistiskās iezīmes. Papildus veikta teorētisko avotu izpēte par pētījumā iekļautajiem aktuālajiem tematiem, kas veido prezi-dentu runu sociālpolitisko un vēsturisko kontekstu; pētījumā ir veiktas intervijas ar prezidentiem un prezidentu padomniekiem; savukārt, lai noskaidrotu pre-zidentu runu eksplicītos un implicītos mērķus un arī to potenciālo ietekmi uz klausītāju nacionālās identitātes veidošanu, darbā veiktas un apkopotas Latvijas iedzīvotāju viedokļu aptaujas.Atslēgvārdi: prezidentu runas, Baltijas valstis, nacionālā identitāte, kritiskās diskursa studijas, korpuslingvistikaThe goal of the dissertation ‘Construction and Representation of National Identity in the Speeches of the Presidents of the Baltic States: Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis’ is to investigate the discursive construction of national identities in the presidential speeches of the Baltic States as well as their functions and potential impact on the target audience. By applying the synergy of qualitative and quantitative methods – corpus approach and the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, the study not only analyses the content of the speeches, including their thematic areas, discursive strategies, and linguistic means of realisation of these strategies but also provides statistical data and presents the analysis of the corpus data offering a detailed and objective insight into the individual linguistic profiles of the Presidents, their lexical choices, which point to the linguistic features of multiple identities constructed in the speeches. Additionally, the theoretical sources that pertain to understanding the socio-political and historical context influencing the content of the selected speeches have also been analysed, and interviews with the Presidents and their advisors, as well as opinion surveys with the target audience have been conducted to investigate the explicit and implicit goals of the speeches as well as their potential effect.Key words: presidential speeches, Baltic States, national identity, Critical Discourse Studies, Corpus Linguistic