Non-compositional concepts and quantum tests

Compositionality is a frequently made assumption in linguistics, and yet many human subjects reveal highly non-compositional word associations when confronted with novel concept combinations. This article will show how a non-compositional account of concept combinations can be supplied by modelling them as interacting quantum systems. © 2012 American Institute of Physics

Towards the Discovery of Learner Metacognition from Reflective Writing

Modern society demands renewed attention on the competencies required to best equip students for a dynamic and uncertain future. We present exploratory work based on the premise that metacognitive and reflective competencies are essential for this task. Bringing the concepts of metacognition and reflection together into a conceptual model within which we conceived of them as both a set of similar features, and as a spectrum ranging from the unconscious inner-self through to the conscious, external, social self. This model was used to guide exploratory computational analysis of 6,090 instances of reflective writing authored by undergraduate students. We found the conceptual model useful in informing the computational analysis, which in turn showed potential for automating the discovery of metacognitive activity in reflective writing, an approach that holds promise for the generation of formative feedback for students as they work towards developing core 21st century competencies

Policy conformance in the corporate blog space

This paper describes part of a solution to the interpretation of human-readable policy documents into semi-automatic conformance checking. Using a socio-cognitively motivated representation of shared knowledge, and applying appropriate inference mechanisms from a normative perspective, a mechanism to automatically detect potentially non-conforming blog entries is detailed. Candidate non-conforming blog entries are flagged for a human to make a judgement on whether they should be published. Analysis of data from a public corporate blog is analysed and results suggest the methodology has merit

SPAD based imaging of Cherenkov light in radiation therapy

During radiotherapy, X-ray beams induce Cherenkov light emission in tissue as part of the dose delivery. This light can be used for dosimetry, in order to track and image the dose as it happens. The Cherenkov light levels are in the range of 10−6 to 10−9 W∕cm2, which makes it challenging to detect in a clinical environment. However, because the radiation is pulsed in 4 microsecond bursts, time-gated acquisition of the signal allows for robust detection, even in the presence of ambient room lighting. Thus, imaging sensors for this application must be highly sensitive and must be able to time gate faster than a microsecond. In this study, the use of a solid-state detector composed of 64x32 single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) was examined. The advantages of this technology were intra-chip amplification, superior X-ray noise rejection, and fast temporal gating of the acquisition. The results show that the SPAD camera was sensitive enough to detect Cherenkov radiation despite the 3% fill factor. 2D oversampling (x25) was also used to increase final image resolution to 320x160. In this work we demonstrate the SPAD camera performance in imaging Cherenkov emission from a tissue optical phantom and one patient undergoing radiotherapy. The SPAD camera sensors could be a viable alternative for Cherenkov imaging, as compared to current imaging methods that are mostly focused around image intensifier-based cameras and so have a range of non-linearities and instabilities which could be solved by an all solid-state camera sensor. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Quantum Structure in Cognition: Why and How Concepts are Entangled

One of us has recently elaborated a theory for modelling concepts that uses the state context property (SCoP) formalism, i.e. a generalization of the quantum formalism. This formalism incorporates context into the mathematical structure used to represent a concept, and thereby models how context influences the typicality of a single exemplar and the applicability of a single property of a concept, which provides a solution of the 'Pet-Fish problem' and other difficulties occurring in concept theory. Then, a quantum model has been worked out which reproduces the membership weights of several exemplars of concepts and their combinations. We show in this paper that a further relevant effect appears in a natural way whenever two or more concepts combine, namely, 'entanglement'. The presence of entanglement is explicitly revealed by considering a specific example with two concepts, constructing some Bell's inequalities for this example, testing them in a real experiment with test subjects, and finally proving that Bell's inequalities are violated in this case. We show that the intrinsic and unavoidable character of entanglement can be explained in terms of the weights of the exemplars of the combined concept with respect to the weights of the exemplars of the component concepts.Comment: 10 page

Towards a belief revision based adaptive and context sensitive information retrieval system

In an adaptive information retrieval (IR) setting, the information seekers' beliefs about which terms are relevant or nonrelevant will naturally fluctuate. This article investigates how the theory of belief revision can be used to model adaptive IR. More specifically, belief revision logic provides a rich representation scheme to formalize retrieval contexts so as to disambiguate vague user queries. In addition, belief revision theory underpins the development of an effective mechanism to revise user profiles in accordance with information seekers' changing information needs. It is argued that information retrieval contexts can be extracted by means of the information-flow text mining method so as to realize a highly autonomous adaptive IR system. The extra bonus of a belief-based IR model is that its retrieval behavior is more predictable and explanatory. Our initial experiments show that the belief-based adaptive IR system is as effective as a classical adaptive IR system. To our best knowledge, this is the first successful implementation and evaluation of a logic-based adaptive IR model which can efficiently process large IR collections

Concepts and Their Dynamics: A Quantum-Theoretic Modeling of Human Thought

We analyze different aspects of our quantum modeling approach of human concepts, and more specifically focus on the quantum effects of contextuality, interference, entanglement and emergence, illustrating how each of them makes its appearance in specific situations of the dynamics of human concepts and their combinations. We point out the relation of our approach, which is based on an ontology of a concept as an entity in a state changing under influence of a context, with the main traditional concept theories, i.e. prototype theory, exemplar theory and theory theory. We ponder about the question why quantum theory performs so well in its modeling of human concepts, and shed light on this question by analyzing the role of complex amplitudes, showing how they allow to describe interference in the statistics of measurement outcomes, while in the traditional theories statistics of outcomes originates in classical probability weights, without the possibility of interference. The relevance of complex numbers, the appearance of entanglement, and the role of Fock space in explaining contextual emergence, all as unique features of the quantum modeling, are explicitly revealed in this paper by analyzing human concepts and their dynamics.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure

Novel matrix resins for composites for aircraft primary structures, phase 1

The objective of the contract is the development of matrix resins with improved processability and properties for composites for primarily aircraft structures. To this end, several resins/systems were identified for subsonic and supersonic applications. For subsonic aircraft, a series of epoxy resins suitable for RTM and powder prepreg was shown to give composites with about 40 ksi compressive strength after impact (CAI) and 200 F/wet mechanical performance. For supersonic applications, a thermoplastic toughened cyanate prepreg system has demonstrated excellent resistance to heat aging at 360 F for 4000 hours, 40 ksi CAI and useful mechanical properties at greater than or equal to 310 F. An AB-BCB-maleimide resin was identified as a leading candidate for the HSCT. Composite panels fabricated by RTM show CAI of approximately 50 ksi, 350 F/wet performance and excellent retention of mechanical properties after aging at 400 F for 4000 hours