A different perspective on canonicity

One of the most interesting aspects of Conceptual Structures Theory is the notion of canonicity. It is also one of the most neglected: Sowa seems to have abandoned it in the new version of the theory, and most of what has been written on canonicity focuses on the generalization hierarchy of conceptual graphs induced by the canonical formation rules. Although there is a common intuition that a graph is canonical if it is "meaningful'', the original theory is somewhat unclear about what that actually means, in particular how canonicity is related to logic. This paper argues that canonicity should be kept a first-class notion of Conceptual Structures Theory, provides a detailed analysis of work done so far, and proposes new definitions of the conformity relation and the canonical formation rules that allow a clear separation between canonicity and truth

Empirical studies of open source evolution

Copyright @ 2008 Springer-VerlagThis chapter presents a sample of empirical studies of Open Source Software (OSS) evolution. According to these studies, the classical results from the studies of proprietary software evoltion, such as Lehman’s laws of software evolution, might need to be revised, if not fully, at least in part, to account for the OSS observations. The book chapter also summarises what appears to be the empirical status of each of Lehman’s laws with respect to OSS and highlights the threads to validity that frequently emerge in these empirical studies. The chapter also discusses related topics for further research

Basic conceptual structures theory

Although the theory of Conceptual Structures is over 10 years old, basic notions (like canonical graphs) are far from settled and are subject to constant extensions and reformulations. However, most of these are done in an informal way, which doesn't help in clarifying the issues involved. It is our hope that this paper will provide a first step towards the complete and rigorous account of Conceptual Structures (CS) Theory, which is needed for ongoing standardization and implementation efforts. Towards that goal, we present formal definitions of some of the central notions of CS theory (type, referent, concept, relation, conceptual graph, canonical formation rules, canon, and canonical graph) in its simplest form, i.e. no contexts nor coreference links are allowed and referents must be individuals. We thereby introduce higher-order types in order to enable the use of conceptual graphs at the metalevel, the restriction operation of the canonical formation rules is extended to make use of the relation hierarchy, we show the relationship between denotation and conformity relation, and we give a rigorous meaning to the canonical basis, among other things

Towards a chemical model for software architecture reconfiguration

The chemical abstract machine is a general-purpose, simple, and intuitive programming model. Among other domains, it has been used for the specification and analysis of the computational behaviour of software architectures. In this paper we explore the ability of the formalism to express the dynamics of the architecture itself and to unify different approaches to reconfiguration within a single framework

Higher-order architectural connectors

We develop a notion of higher-order connector towards supporting the systematic construction of architectural connectors for software design. A higher-order connector takes connectors as parameters and allows for services such as security protocols and fault-tolerance mechanisms to be superposed over the interactions that are handled by the connectors passed as actual arguments. The notion is first illustrated over CommUnity, a parallel program design language that we have been using for formalizing aspects of architectural design. A formal, algebraic semantics is then presented which is independent of any Architectural Description Language. Finally, we discuss how our results can impact software design methods and tools

Efficient extraction of data from intra-operative evoked potentials: 1.-Theory and simulations.

UNLABELLED Quickly and efficiently extracting evoked potential information from noise is critical to the clinical practice of intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring (IONM). Currently this is primarily done using trained professionals to interpret averaged waveforms. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare multiple means of electronically extracting simple to understand evoked potential characteristics with minimum averaging. A number of evoked potential models are studied and their performance evaluated as a function of the signal to noise level in simulations. METHODS which extract the least number of parameters from the data are least sensitive to the effects of noise and are easiest to interpret. The simplest model uses the baseline evoked potential and the correlation receiver to provide an amplitude measure. Amplitude measures extracted using the correlation receiver show superior performance to those based on peak to peak amplitude measures. In addition, measures of change in latency or shape of the evoked potential can be extracted using the derivative of the baseline evoked response or other methods. This methodology allows real-time access to amplitude measures that can be understood by the entire OR staff as they are small, dimensionless numbers of order unity which are simple to interpret. The IONM team can then adjust averaging and other parameters to allow for visual interpretation of waveforms as appropriate

How experience shapes infants' communicative behaviour: Comparing gaze following in infants with and without pandemic experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has been influencing people's social life substantially. Everybody, including infants and children needed to adapt to changes in social interactions (e.g., social distancing) and to seeing other people wearing facial masks. In this study, we investigated whether these pandemic-related changes influenced 12- to 15-months-old infants' reactions to observed gaze shifts (i.e., their gaze following). In two eye-tracking tasks, we measured infants' gaze-following behavior during the pandemic (with-COVID-19-experience sample) and compared it to data of infants tested before the pandemic (no-COVID-19-experience sample). Overall, the results indicated no significant differences between the two samples. However, in one sub-task infants in the with-COVID-19-experience sample looked longer at the eyes of a model compared to the no-COVID-19-experience sample. Within the with-COVID-19-experience sample, the amount of mask exposure and the number of contacts without mask were not related to infants' gaze-following behavior. We speculate that even though infants encounter fewer different people during the pandemic and are increasingly exposed to people wearing facial masks, they still also see non-covered faces. These contacts might be sufficient to provide infants with the social input they need to develop social and emotional competencies such as gaze following

Influence of the twospotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, on the gas exchange of Pinot noir grapevine leaves

The effect of feeding damage by the twospotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae KOCH; Acari: Tetranychidae) on the gas exchange of grapevine leaves (Vitis vinifera L.; cv. Pinot noir) was investigated. In addition, the influence of some pesticides was studied. A significant reduction of the net CO2 assimilation, transpiration as well as stomatal and mesophyll conductance with increasing mite feeding damage were observed. At 6000 mite-days per leaf the 3rd and 9th main leaves (from the base) showed an average reduction in net CO2 assimilation of 52.2 % and 48.4 %, respectively, while the 6th leaf showed a reduction of only 21.3 %. The response of grapevine photosynthesis to mite feeding seems to depend not only on mite density and duration of feeding, but also on the phenological stage of the plant. In fact, at veraison the vines showed increased tolerance to mite feeding compared with other phenological stages. At mite infestation levels of 6000 mite-days, leaves infested with T. urticae showed, as compared to uninjured leaves, an average reduction in transpiration rate of 14.4 % to 40.8 %, depending on the leaf position. The acaricides Tetradifon and Fenbutatin-oxide and the fungicide Folpet combined with Penconazol showed no effect on the gas exchange parameters

Exploring the role of COVID-19 pandemic-related changes in social interactions on preschoolers' emotion labeling

During the COVID-19 pandemic people were increasingly obliged to wear facial masks and to reduce the number of people they met in person. In this study, we asked how these changes in social interactions are associated with young children's emotional development, specifically their emotion recognition via the labeling of emotions. Preschoolers labeled emotional facial expressions of adults (Adult Faces Task) and children (Child Faces Task) in fully visible faces. In addition, we assessed children's COVID-19-related experiences (i.e., time spent with people wearing masks, number of contacts without masks) and recorded children's gaze behavior during emotion labeling. We compared different samples of preschoolers (4.00–5.75 years): The data for the no-COVID-19-experience sample were taken from studies conducted before the pandemic (Adult Faces Task: N = 40; Child Faces Task: N = 30). The data for the with-COVID-19-experience sample (N = 99) were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland between June and November 2021. The results did not indicate differences in children's labeling behavior between the two samples except for fearful adult faces. Children with COVID-19-experience more often labeled fearful faces correctly compared to children with no COVID-19 experience. Furthermore, we found no relations between children's labeling behavior, their individual COVID-19-related experiences, and their gaze behavior. These results suggest that, even though the children had experienced differences in the amount and variability of facial input due to the pandemic, they still received enough input from visible faces to be able to recognize and label different emotions

A novel therapeutic option in Cogan diseases? TNF-α blockers

Cogan's syndrome is characterized by non-infectious, interstitial keratitis combined with a vestibulo-auditory deficit. Despite therapy with corticosteroids in combination with immunosuppressive agents, relapses occurred in two subjects and the clinical course suggested a progression of the disease. Treatment with anti-TNF-α was started leading to a rapid and sustained clinical remission for over 2 respectively 3year