Human-Machine Interface for Tele-Robotic Operation: Mapping of Tongue Movements Based on Aural Flow Monitoring

2004 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October, 2004 (Awarded “Best Paper in Conference”

‘Other’ Posts in ‘Other’ Places: Poland through a Postcolonial Lens?

Postcolonial theory has tended to focus on those spaces where European colonialism has had a territorial and political history. This is unsurprising, as much of the world is in this sense ‘postcolonial’. But not all of it. This article focuses on Poland, often theorised as peripheral to ‘old Europe’, and explores the application of postcolonial analyses to this ‘other’ place. The article draws upon reflections arising from a study of responses to ethnic diversity in Warsaw, Poland. In doing so we conclude that postcolonialism does indeed offer some important insights into understanding Polish attitudes to other nationalities, and yet more work also needs to be done to make the theoretical bridge. In the case of Poland we propose the ‘triple relation’ be the starting point for such work

Governance capacity and regionalist dynamics

The debate on the effects of regionalism and European integration on European nation states has been prominent for more than a decade. Regionalization of EU states has not brought with it genuine regional autonomy and regionalism has not emerged as a bottom-up public demand in European regions. It is contended here that to determine the future of regional devolution, whether as a result of bottom-up or top-down processes, the factors at play must be contextualized. This paper examines some determinants of regional political capacity, as identified in the policy literature, in tandem with a number of determinants of economic prospects and the existence of an economic milieu. This is done in a comparative context across 12 regions of the EU. It is suggested that the potential for regionalist pressures to emerge is dependent on regional governance capacity and the relative economic weight of a region. © Taylor & Francis

Redundancy and relevance in cartographic communication from pragmatic perspective

Autor omawia znaczenie pojęć redundancji i relewancji z punktu widzenia pragmatycznej analizy procesu komunikacji kartograficznej. W dalszej części artykułu zostały określone warunki skuteczności map z punktu widzenia maksym konwersacyjnych H.P.Grice'a.The first part of the article deals with a contextual, therefore pragmatic understanding of the concept of redundancy, which is well known in cartography. The author reminds, that in certain cases redundancy can be beneficial rather than harmful. Further, redundancy is defined in the context of cartographic object and its new and known features. The author points at the notion of 'information significance' in evaluating the redundancy level of object's features. The following section deals with relevance. The author discusses differences between relevance and redundancy, especially in the context of cartographic communication. As in the case of redundancy, a certain amount of irrelevant information can be useful. The author critically discusses typologies of redundancy up to the present moment. The article points out, that redundancy and relevance is qualified differently in various map types (in the understandind of typology basing on the degree of dependence on the context). On maps, which are strongly dependent on the context, relevance and redundancy should be considered from the perspective of particular objects. On universal maps, mainly classes of objects are used. The article's final section deals with the application of H.P.Grice's 'conversational maxims' in the analysis of the process of cartographic communication. The requirements imposed by the maxims are translated into the language of objects and features. A notion of 'indirect cartographic acts' is introduced after the speech acts theory. The author points out, that some apparent mistakes on maps (e.g. redundancy or irrelevance) can result not from the author's carelessness, but from an intentional attempt to convey indirect information

The dependence of the map from the context

W artykule rozważono użyteczność pojęcia kontekstu w rozumieniu pragmatyki językoznawczej z punktu widzenia teorii komunikacji kartograficznej. Na podstawie zależności map od kontekstu proponowana jest typologia map.The author presents the meaning of the notion of context in the contemporary linguistic pragmatics. He also stresses the fact, that the context can be an important theoretical device anables us to fully understand the interdependence between the map and its users. It is often difficult to define the context in the process of cartographic communication, as a single map can be used in many situations. Therefore, we propose to incorporate the term of the "series of possible contexts" into cartography. The paper also includes the considerations on the optimum way of defining the context. Then, the differentiation between the inner and outer context is introduced. The next part of the paper presents an attempt to the classification of maps based on the degree of their dependence on the context. THis dependence also defines the possibility of selecting the new information from the known, and as a result, the possibility of projecting the process of map reading. The suggested classificationincludes the following four categories: "maps-signs", "single-purpose maps", "thematic maps" and "multipurpose maps". The first two categories are often to be the maps sensu stricto. This includes the category of "maps-signs" which include new information only in a wider context, and "maps-instructions" often considered to be simple diagrams not meeting the criteria of "real maps". The autor is of the opinion that those maps should not be excludedfrom the scope of interest of theoretical cartography. Besides the above classification, the author also proposes a more general division into "standalone" and "supplementary" maps

Map structure in pragmatic approach

Autor rozwija wcześniej zarysowaną próbę reinterpretacji teorii przekazu kartograficznego z punktu widzenia pragmatyki językoznawczej. Porównanie mapy z językiem naturalnym rozszerzone zostaje na obszar wewnętrznej struktury obu form komunikacji.The article develops a previously outlined attempt to reinterpret the theory of cartographic presentation from the point of view of linguistic pragmatism. A comparison of a map and natural language in deep sense, which corresponds to pragmatic analysis ie extended to include the inner structure of both forms of communication. For this purpose the term of Macrostructure is adapted which describes representations of texts on higher levels of abstraction. Macrostructure is in other words a hierarchy of more and more generalized summaries of the text. Summarizing is compared to map generalization. Macro-operations described by T. van Dijk's theory: deletions, generalizations and constructions used for generating the macrostructure of the text are referred to the process of creation of a generalized map, which represents the macrostructure of the map proper, Reading a map always implies generalization, similar as reading a text implies its summary. Considerations of map macrostructure are also related to a cartographic term of "levels of map reading", and especially S. Bonin's division into "maps to be read" and "maps to be perceived". In the final section of the article it is suggested , that from a theoretical point of view the macrostructure of a map and text can both be subjective in similar way. Their creation can also have an aspect of "acting through maps", i.e. changing social reality rather than only describing it. If so, they would resemble pragmatically described "speech acts"

Influence of Family Involvement in Management and Ownership on Firm Performance Evidence from Poland

This article investigates the influence of family involvement on firm performance in an emerging market economy. Using a panel of 217 Polish companies from 1997 to 2005, the authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of family ownership and firm performance. The data also reveal that firms with family CEOs are likely to outperform their counterparts that have nonfamily CEOs. The results take into account the endogeneity of family ownership and are robust to a number of specification checks