Efficient Evaluation and Learning in Multilevel Parallel Constraint Grammars

In multilevel parallel Optimality Theory grammars, the number of candidates (possible paths from the input to the output level) increases exponentially with the number of levels of representation. The problem with this is that with the customary strategy of listing all candidates in a tableau, the computation time for evaluation (i.e., choosing the winning candidate) and learning (i.e., reranking the constraints on the basis of language data) increases exponentially with the number of levels as well. This article proposes instead to collect the candidates in a graph in which the number of nodes and the number of connections increase only linearly with the number of levels of representation. As a result, there exist procedures for evaluation and learning that increase only linearly with the number of levels. These efficient procedures help to make multilevel parallel constraint grammars more feasible as models of human language processing. We illustrate visualization, evaluation, and learning with a toy grammar for a traditional case that has already previously been analyzed in terms of parallel evaluation, namely, French liaison

Pre-Figurative Structures for Social Connection

The world has many structures that foster social connection. Especially in the age of the internet, there are many off and online worlds that do so. Alternative festivals, temporary communities and electoral guerrilla theater organized online and practiced offline are all potential ways to prefigure the world we want to live in. Together, the FEAST team created physically and socially intelligent structures that facilitate cooperation, emotional release and transcend the expectations of architecture and infrastructure as fixed, emboldening viewers to become participants.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169558/1/Honors_Capstone_Socially_Connected_Structures.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169558/2/Honors_Capstone_Socially_Connected_Structures.ppt

Shaping Societal Impact: between control and cooperation

In our modern society, the impact of large-scale safety and security incidents can be large and diverse. Yet, this societal impact is makeable and controllable to a limited extent. At best, the effect of concrete response actions is that the direct damage is somewhat reduced and that the recovery is accelerated. Proper crisis communication can make the biggest difference with respect to overall societal impact. We argue that crisis communication must strike a balance between a directive approach of chaos, command and control and a more empathic approach of continuity, coordination and cooperation. On the basis of a concrete case we analyze how crisis communication reflects the incident response approach and how societal impact is affected

Just Care: Healthcare on the Margins

Inequality is one of the most significant issues facing contemporary society. This is evident upon a close examination of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Data report “U.S. Health Care System from an International Perspective”. This report documents a number of critical deficits with respect to accessibility and quality of health care in the United States compared to the other 33 member nations in the OECD study. The U.S. spends over two and a half times more than the majority of developed countries while providing significantly fewer physicians, hospital beds, and a slower increase in life-expectancy per person than most other OECD countries. The findings of the OECD report raise normative claims regarding public health policy and the delivery of medical care in the U.S. We maintain that nations have the moral responsibility to provide just care for the marginalized, poor, indigent, and undocumented persons. Such care follows from a number of basic claims about the nature of health care, the dignity of persons, and the moral/social fabric of a nation. These claims are undermined by the pursuit of profit leading to the disparity in health care. The existence of health care organizations that succeed in providing “just care” demonstrates that such care is both achievable and represents a positive alternative to the dominant for-profit model of health care delivery. In fact, such work begs the question of equity and justice. A nation that spends $8,233 per capita per year on health care owes its citizens and non-documented workers greater accessibility and a higher quality of care than is currently provided

Quasi-Spherical Light Cones of the Kerr Geometry

Quasi-spherical light cones are lightlike hypersurfaces of the Kerr geometry that are asymptotic to Minkowski light cones at infinity. We develop the equations of these surfaces and examine their properties. In particular, we show that they are free of caustics for all positive values of the Kerr radial coordinate r. Useful applications include the propagation of high-frequency waves, the definition of Kruskal-like coordinates for a spinning black hole and the characteristic initial-value problem.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, 2 figure

Rhythm and Vowel Quality in Accents of English

In a sample of 27 speakers of Scottish Standard English two notoriously variable consonantal features are investigated: the contrast of /m/ and /w/ and non-prevocalic /r/, the latter both in terms of its presence or absence and the phonetic form it takes, if present. The pattern of realisation of non-prevocalic /r/ largely confirms previously reported findings. But there are a number of surprising results regarding the merger of /m/ and /w/ and the loss of non-prevocalic /r/: While the former is more likely to happen in younger speakers and females, the latter seems more likely in older speakers and males. This is suggestive of change in progress leading to a loss of the /m/ - /w/ contrast, while the variation found in non-prevocalic /r/ follows an almost inverse sociolinguistic pattern that does not suggest any such change and is additionally largely explicable in language-internal terms. One phenomenon requiring further investigation is the curious effect direct contact with Southern English accents seems to have on non-prevocalic /r/: innovation on the structural level (i.e. loss) and conservatism on the realisational level (i.e. increased incidence of [r] and [r]) appear to be conditioned by the same sociolinguistic factors