Achieving Intercoder Reliability with a Taxonomy of Speech Acts

ion In choosing a set of speech acts, there are two important issues to consider: The speech acts selected must be specific enough to represent the many different intentions that people generally use in dialogue, and the distinctions between the speech acts must be clear enough that human taggers can agree on how to assign speech acts to utterances. There is a tradeoff between these two qualities. For, if the speech act set is restricted to include only those speech acts that are most distinguishable, then the speech acts will be very general, each covering a wide range of utterances, such as ASK and TELL. On the other hand, if many specific speech acts are added to the set, then several of them will have very similar interpretations, with subtle distinctions, like BEG and PLEAD. The taxonomy provides a means of dealing with this tradeoff. At the lowest levels of the tree, the speech acts are very specific and informative, but not distinguishable. At the highest levels of the tree, ..

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report summarizes the findings of the chemical and microbiological analysis of: 1. paper fibre biosolids generated by the Whitby paper recycling mill owned by Atlantic Packaging Ltd. and 2. Sound-Sorb, a product, comprised of an approximate 70:30 mixture of paper fibre biosolids to screened mineral soil. Paper fibre biosolids have been spread on agricultural land since 1991 under a Certificate of Approval issued to Atlantic Packaging Ltd. and Courtice Auto Wreckers Ltd. for an organic waste management system. Sound-Sorb is produced by Courtice Auto Wreckers Ltd. and is currently being used to construct sound and bullet attenuation berms at gun clubs in Ontario. Through the mixing of paper fibre biosolids with mineral soil, Sound-Sorb is exempt from the Ministry of Environment and Energy's waste management regulations and the Environmental Protection Act. Considerable concern has been raised by the public regarding the possible environmental effects of the land application of paper fibre biosolids and the use of Sound-Sorb. In response, the ministry is currently reviewing both the land application of paper fibre biosolids and the management of Sound-Sorb. The data provided in this report will contribute to the information used for deciding on the next steps in this review. Samples were taken from the Whitby mill of Atlantic Packaging and from the Sound-Sorb berm at the Oshawa Skeet and Gun Club in the Regional Municipality of Durham. Samples were analyzed for a large variety of inorganic and organic elements and compounds. Results for fresh Atlantic Packaging Ltd. paper fibre biosolids were compared to the Guidelines for the Utilization of Biosolids and Other Wastes on Agricultural Land. For parameters for which there are no biosolids standards, results were compare..

Automated system administration with feedback regulation. Software practice and experience

The automation of system administration tasks requires a notion of convergence towards a stable state. Some simple models for such convergence with feedback, utilizing the system administration robot cfengine, are examined. Statistical analysis of computer systems can provide information which may be used to regulate the way in which they are used in the future without the need for excessive human intervention. @ 1998 John Wiley & Sous, Ltd. KEY WORDS: feedback regulation automatic system administratio

Implementation Of The Algres Testbed (year-2 Version)

attribute grammars decoupled the compiler from the object-oriented library. Algres confirmed its central role for rapid prototyping of data-intensive algorithms. Compiler generating tools have reduced the effort to revise compilers after language changes and helped in maintaining consistency. Some extensions to the tools have been implemented, for allowing multi-sweep evaluation of semantic attributes. Looking at the man-power involved, our organization successfully integrated the work of some twenty individuals, including staff, graduate students and consultants. As compilers were regenerated several times (about ten), some inconvenience was caused by the machine time (a few hours) for the rather complex TF module. Ongoing improvements to Grammatica-ATELIER should alleviate this trouble. To conclude, the orderly structure of the Algres prototype places the project in the position to face without fear the future extensions and revisions that a large innovative language always requires...