Textual Economy through Close Coupling of Syntax and Semantics

We focus on the production of efficient descriptions of objects, actions and events. We define a type of efficiency, textual economy, that exploits the hearer's recognition of inferential links to material elsewhere within a sentence. Textual economy leads to efficient descriptions because the material that supports such inferences has been included to satisfy independent communicative goals, and is therefore overloaded in Pollack's sense. We argue that achieving textual economy imposes strong requirements on the representation and reasoning used in generating sentences. The representation must support the generator's simultaneous consideration of syntax and semantics. Reasoning must enable the generator to assess quickly and reliably at any stage how the hearer will interpret the current sentence, with its (incomplete) syntax and semantics. We show that these representational and reasoning requirements are met in the SPUD system for sentence planning and realization.Comment: 10 pages, uses QobiTree.te

Visual object-oriented development of parallel applications

PhD ThesisDeveloping software for parallel architectures is a notoriously difficult task, compounded further by the range of available parallel architectures. There has been little research effort invested in how to engineer parallel applications for more general problem domains than the traditional numerically intensive domain. This thesis addresses these issues. An object-oriented paradigm for the development of general-purpose parallel applications, with full lifecycle support, is proposed and investigated, and a visual programming language to support that paradigm is developed. This thesis presents experiences and results from experiments with this new model for parallel application development.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Communication and re-use of chemical information in bioscience.

The current methods of publishing chemical information in bioscience articles are analysed. Using 3 papers as use-cases, it is shown that conventional methods using human procedures, including cut-and-paste are time-consuming and introduce errors. The meaning of chemical terms and the identity of compounds is often ambiguous. valuable experimental data such as spectra and computational results are almost always omitted. We describe an Open XML architecture at proof-of-concept which addresses these concerns. Compounds are identified through explicit connection tables or links to persistent Open resources such as PubChem. It is argued that if publishers adopt these tools and protocols, then the quality and quantity of chemical information available to bioscientists will increase and the authors, publishers and readers will find the process cost-effective.An article submitted to BiomedCentral Bioinformatics, created on request with their Publicon system. The transformed manuscript is archived as PDF. Although it has been through the publishers system this is purely automatic and the contents are those of a pre-refereed preprint. The formatting is provided by the system and tables and figures appear at the end. An accommpanying submission, http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/34580, describes the rationale and cultural aspects of publishing , abstracting and aggregating chemical information. BMC is an Open Access publisher and we emphasize that all content is re-usable under Creative Commons Licens

A hearer-oriented evaluation of referring expression generation

This work is supported by a University of Aberdeen Sixth Century Studentship, and EPSRC grant EP/E011764/1.This paper discusses the evaluation of a Generation of Referring Expressions algorithm that takes structural ambiguity into account. We describe an ongoing study with human readers.peer-reviewe

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

Inquiry in question

What follows is the transcript of an inquiry which takes itself as its object: an inquiry into its own inquiry. It opens out of a mere marking of its questioning, `?', and proceeds by questioning that mark, and the progress of its inquiry as transcription of something `open' into marks and questions - such transcription itself marked as only one thing open to the `writer'. Each successive attempt to transcribe into words the opening transition into `words', `text', `book', from some textually marked `context' in which the transition is open, simply leads into a questioning of each such attempted transcription, the bringing of its terms `into question'. The first section of the inquiry closes having marked out an internal `logical' space and time of these opening questions, coordinated around the initial question of marking a question: so many `dimensions' of lines of questioning `question' - in particular the external `physical' dimension of a `space' and `time' in which marking or transcription is (physically) open, and a `poetic' or figural dimension in which that `external' physical open-ness or space provides, like the `internal' logical space of logical, physical and poetic questions, and `image' for those three coordinate dimensions in whose textual and contextual interplay their transcription into a logical space and time of questions is open

A Language-centered Approach to support environmental modeling with Cellular Automata

Die Anwendung von Methodiken und Technologien aus dem Bereich der Softwaretechnik auf den Bereich der Umweltmodellierung ist eine gemeinhin akzeptierte Vorgehensweise. Im Rahmen der "modellgetriebenen Entwicklung"(MDE, model-driven engineering) werden Technologien entwickelt, die darauf abzielen, Softwaresysteme vorwiegend auf Basis von im Vergleich zu Programmquelltexten relativ abstrakten Modellen zu entwickeln. Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil von MDE sind Techniken zur effizienten Entwicklung von "domänenspezifischen Sprachen"( DSL, domain-specific language), die auf Sprachmetamodellen beruhen. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt, wie modellgetriebene Entwicklung, und insbesondere die metamodellbasierte Beschreibung von DSLs, darüber hinaus Aspekte der Pragmatik unterstützen kann, deren Relevanz im erkenntnistheoretischen und kognitiven Hintergrund wissenschaftlichen Forschens begründet wird. Hierzu wird vor dem Hintergrund der Erkenntnisse des "modellbasierten Forschens"(model-based science und model-based reasoning) gezeigt, wie insbesondere durch Metamodelle beschriebene DSLs Möglichkeiten bieten, entsprechende pragmatische Aspekte besonders zu berücksichtigen, indem sie als Werkzeug zur Erkenntnisgewinnung aufgefasst werden. Dies ist v.a. im Kontext großer Unsicherheiten, wie sie für weite Teile der Umweltmodellierung charakterisierend sind, von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung. Die Formulierung eines sprachzentrierten Ansatzes (LCA, language-centered approach) für die Werkzeugunterstützung konkretisiert die genannten Aspekte und bildet die Basis für eine beispielhafte Implementierung eines Werkzeuges mit einer DSL für die Beschreibung von Zellulären Automaten (ZA) für die Umweltmodellierung. Anwendungsfälle belegen die Verwendbarkeit von ECAL und der entsprechenden metamodellbasierten Werkzeugimplementierung.The application of methods and technologies of software engineering to environmental modeling and simulation (EMS) is common, since both areas share basic issues of software development and digital simulation. Recent developments within the context of "Model-driven Engineering" (MDE) aim at supporting the development of software systems at the base of relatively abstract models as opposed to programming language code. A basic ingredient of MDE is the development of methods that allow the efficient development of "domain-specific languages" (DSL), in particular at the base of language metamodels. This thesis shows how MDE and language metamodeling in particular, may support pragmatic aspects that reflect epistemic and cognitive aspects of scientific investigations. For this, DSLs and language metamodeling in particular are set into the context of "model-based science" and "model-based reasoning". It is shown that the specific properties of metamodel-based DSLs may be used to support those properties, in particular transparency, which are of particular relevance against the background of uncertainty, that is a characterizing property of EMS. The findings are the base for the formulation of an corresponding specific metamodel- based approach for the provision of modeling tools for EMS (Language-centered Approach, LCA), which has been implemented (modeling tool ECA-EMS), including a new DSL for CA modeling for EMS (ECAL). At the base of this implementation, the applicability of this approach is shown

Extensibility of Enterprise Modelling Languages

Die Arbeit adressiert insgesamt drei Forschungsschwerpunkte. Der erste Schwerpunkt setzt sich mit zu entwickelnden BPMN-Erweiterungen auseinander und stellt deren methodische Implikationen im Rahmen der bestehenden Sprachstandards dar. Dies umfasst zum einen ganz konkrete Spracherweiterungen wie z. B. BPMN4CP, eine BPMN-Erweiterung zur multi-perspektivischen Modellierung von klinischen Behandlungspfaden. Zum anderen betrifft dieser Teil auch modellierungsmethodische Konsequenzen, um parallel sowohl die zugrunde liegende Sprache (d. h. das BPMN-Metamodell) als auch die Methode zur Erweiterungsentwicklung zu verbessern und somit den festgestellten Unzulänglichkeiten zu begegnen. Der zweite Schwerpunkt adressiert die Untersuchung von sprachunabhängigen Fragen der Erweiterbarkeit, welche sich entweder während der Bearbeitung des ersten Teils ergeben haben oder aus dessen Ergebnissen induktiv geschlossen wurden. Der Forschungsschwerpunkt fokussiert dabei insbesondere eine Konsolidierung bestehender Terminologien, die Beschreibung generisch anwendbarer Erweiterungsmechanismen sowie die nutzerorientierte Analyse eines potentiellen Erweiterungsbedarfs. Dieser Teil bereitet somit die Entwicklung einer generischen Erweiterungsmethode grundlegend vor. Hierzu zählt auch die fundamentale Auseinandersetzung mit Unternehmensmodellierungssprachen generell, da nur eine ganzheitliche, widerspruchsfreie und integrierte Sprachdefinition Erweiterungen überhaupt ermöglichen und gelingen lassen kann. Dies betrifft beispielsweise die Spezifikation der intendierten Semantik einer Sprache