Learning narrative structure from annotated folktales

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-100).Narrative structure is an ubiquitous and intriguing phenomenon. By virtue of structure we recognize the presence of Villainy or Revenge in a story, even if that word is not actually present in the text. Narrative structure is an anvil for forging new artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, and is a window into abstraction and conceptual learning as well as into culture and its in influence on cognition. I advance our understanding of narrative structure by describing Analogical Story Merging (ASM), a new machine learning algorithm that can extract culturally-relevant plot patterns from sets of folktales. I demonstrate that ASM can learn a substantive portion of Vladimir Propp's in influential theory of the structure of folktale plots. The challenge was to take descriptions at one semantic level, namely, an event timeline as described in folktales, and abstract to the next higher level: structures such as Villainy, Stuggle- Victory, and Reward. ASM is based on Bayesian Model Merging, a technique for learning regular grammars. I demonstrate that, despite ASM's large search space, a carefully-tuned prior allows the algorithm to converge, and furthermore it reproduces Propp's categories with a chance-adjusted Rand index of 0.511 to 0.714. Three important categories are identied with F-measures above 0.8. The data are 15 Russian folktales, comprising 18,862 words, a subset of Propp's original tales. This subset was annotated for 18 aspects of meaning by 12 annotators using the Story Workbench, a general text-annotation tool I developed for this work. Each aspect was doubly-annotated and adjudicated at inter-annotator F-measures that cluster around 0.7 to 0.8. It is the largest, most deeply-annotated narrative corpus assembled to date. The work has significance far beyond folktales. First, it points the way toward important applications in many domains, including information retrieval, persuasion and negotiation, natural language understanding and generation, and computational creativity. Second, abstraction from natural language semantics is a skill that underlies many cognitive tasks, and so this work provides insight into those processes. Finally, the work opens the door to a computational understanding of cultural in influences on cognition and understanding cultural differences as captured in stories.by Mark Alan Finlayson.Ph.D

Digital inclusion - the vision, the challenges and the way forward

This paper considers the vision and aspiration of digital inclusion, and then examines the current reality. It looks beyond the rhetoric to provide an analysis of the status quo, a consideration of some facilitators and challenges to progress and some suggestions for moving forward with renewed energy and commitment. The far-reaching benefits of digital inclusion and the crucial role it plays in enabling full participation in our digital society are considered. At the heart of the vision of universal digital inclusion is the deceptively simple goal to ensure that everyone is able to access and experience the wide-ranging benefits and transformational opportunities and impacts it offers. The reality is a long way from the vision: inequality of access still exists despite many national campaigns and initiatives to reduce it. The benefits and beneficiaries of a digital society are not just the individual but all stakeholders in the wider society. Research evidence has shown that the critical success factors for successful digital participation are (i) appropriate design and (ii) readily available and on-going ICT (Information and Communication Technology) support in the community. Challenges and proven solutions are presented. The proposition of community hubs in local venues to provide user-centred ICT support and learning for older and disabled people is presented. While the challenges to achieve digital inclusion are very considerable, the knowledge of how to achieve it and the technologies which enable it already exist. Harnessing of political will is necessary to make digital inclusion a reality rather than a vision. With the cooperation and commitment of all stakeholders actualisation of the vision of a digitally inclusive society, while challenging, can be achieved and will yield opportunities and rewards that eclipse the cost of implementation

Selecting Cloud Service Providers - Towards a Framework of Assessment Criteria and Requirements

The on-demand usage of enterprise software services from the cloud rapidly evolves towards a viable IT outsourcing option. Although the successful use of software services considerably depends on the ability of the consumers to assess the various offerings and select the ones best suited, literature provides little support for the evaluation of software services and their providers. In this manuscript, we address the question of how to support the evaluation of software service providers. Building upon a design science research approach and a literature survey, we propose an assessment framework that assembles relevant criteria for the evaluation of software service providers. We examine the practical relevance of the assembled criteria using the results of an empirical study, in which we surveyed 28 experts on the subject matter. The results indicate that the framework is effective in supporting the assessment of service providers

Competencies For Managing Unstructured Information In The Knowledge Evolution: A Rocky Mountain Regional Study Of CEO Perspectives

For modern managers to remain competitive in the information age, they must capture and leverage knowledge. An Integrative Model of Knowledge Management can provide a way of visualizing the interrelated elements for an effective knowledge-management system. This original model builds on a Rhetorical Process Model of Communication, which considers both objective and subjective elements within human communication. In addition, it clarifies the purpose and method elements at the center for any effective knowledge system.  Knowledge builds relationships among people who are willing to share what they know for the good of the organization. Organizations that fully develop the human potential of their people grow in economic value.  Within the theoretical dimensions of the Model, this study incorporates the preliminary findings from interviews with 429 executives in the Rocky Mountain region

Explore and develop methods for the economic evaluation of school-based interventions to prevent childhood obesity in low and middle income countries

Childhood obesity is a major global public health challenge with associated health, social, and emotional consequences, leading to long term direct and indirect costs. However, there are few published economic evaluations of interventions and only one from a Chinese setting. This thesis aims to explore and develop methods for the economic evaluation of school-based interventions to prevent obesity in children in low and middle income countries, thus making a methodological contribution to the literature. The methods for the economic evaluation were derived from a combination of published literature and guidelines for conducting economic evaluation. The systematic review undertaken within this thesis discovered heterogeneity regarding methods applied. The evaluation, conducted alongside the CHIRPY DRAGON trial, reported the intervention to be highly cost-effective. A number of methodological issues were explored: measuring household cost and outcome data and the construct validity of the CHU-9D in a Chinese sample. Including societal costs and effects increased the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, however the intervention remained cost-effective using conventional decision making rules and throughout a series of sensitivity analyses. Furthermore, the thesis findings provide support for the construct validity of the CHU-9D within this population

Posthuman Literacy Practices in a Reggio-inspired South African school

Through a posthuman approach to literacy education, I explore the Reggio Emilia pedagogy adopted by an independent South African primary school. Unlike the current emphasis in literacy pedagogy on language, standardised and individualised testing and universal curriculum approaches, Reggio Emilia pedagogy views child, learning and knowing not as separate from each other and from the world, but as entangled and always on the move. Moreover, Reggio Emilia-inspired schools celebrate the ‘hundred languages' of children, not just the spoken or written word, and involve children in an emergent curriculum through pedagogical documentation. In my study, pedagogical documentation (including photos and videos) also serves as research ‘instrument' to co-create data and is analysed diffractively – drawing on feminist philosophers and scientists Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. The new theorypractice produced reconfigures literacy as an assemblage which includes human and nonhuman in an entangled, intra-acting becoming-together. This includes children, no longer understood as individual entities in the world, but as phenomena. My enquiry produces a rich entanglement of unexpected actors, including digital and non-digital technologies, discourses about literacy, questions of ethics and response-abilities, and many more. The ethics of a posthumanist orientation to literacy education urges us to think about what is made to matter in a classroom and what is excluded from mattering. My research shows that children, rather than having agency as singular entities, are part of distributed agency in learning and as such are rendered capable as part of a complex, living system always in motion

Deciphering the Chinese Economic Miracle: Lessons for the Developing World

Despite enormous historical, demographic, geographical, and geopolitical adversities, China has enjoyed unprecedented economic success in world history. This article aims to decipher the formula behind China's historic economic success and distill policy lessons for developing countries in their endeavors to reach an advanced stage of economic development. Based on descriptive case study and statistics, the article suggests that the Chinese economic miracle can be explained by a four-fold formula: a) devising an autocentric economic model aspiring to improve national autonomy and cushion the impact of foreign interference, b) insisting on socialism and the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which allows for strategic coherence and long-term planning to overcome free-market anarchy, c) creating a state-driven industrial base fueled by national science and technology policies, and d) adopting a balanced approach to development centered on attaining a higher sociocultural and ecological quality of life. The findings also help to debunk the myths surrounding the Chinese miracle, particularly the "cheap labor thesis", the "technology theft thesis", the "foreign investment and capitalist integration theses", the "imperialism thesis", and the "Mao-the-monster thesis"