Showing papers on "Class (philosophy) published in 2013"

A Characterization Theorem for Local Operators in Factorizing Scattering Models

Abstract: In quantum field theory, the rigorous construction of local observables in the presence of nontrivial interaction is a crucial problem. In a class of integrable quantum field theories, a very abstract existence proof has recently been given by Lechner. We give an explicit characterization of these local observables in terms of the properties of the coefficient functions in an expansion by interacting creators and annihilators. Some results on the operator domains of these local observables are given. Using these, we constructed explicit examples of local observables in the quantum Ising model.

The effects of implementing the cooperative learning structure, numbered heads together, in chemistry classes at a rural, low performing high school

Abstract: ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my committee chair, Dr. E. William Wischusen, for his time, effort, and expert advice during this process. I would also like to thank my committee members Dr. Vince LiCata and Dr. Joseph Siebenaller for their time and assistance. You all were great. their time and effort during LaMSTI classes over the last few years. Each of you have been a tremendous help to me in my quest to improve as a teacher. I would also like to thank the members of my LaMSTI cohort. I enjoyed spending the last few summers with you all and I wish you the best in the future. And finally, I would like to thank my family. Your support and love mean so much to me.

The effects of the peer instruction technique Think-Pair-Share on students' performance in chemistry

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Class Algebra for Ontology Reasoning

Abstract: Class algebra provides a natural framework for sharing of ISA hierarchies between users that may be unaware of each other's definitions. This permits data from relational databases, object-oriented databases, and tagged XML documents to be unioned into one distributed ontology, sharable by all users without the need for prior negotiation or the development of a "standard" ontology for each field. Moreover, class algebra produces a functional correspondence between a class's class algebraic definition (i.e. its "intent") and the set of all instances which satisfy the expression (i.e. its "extent"). The framework thus provides assistance in quickly locating examples and counterexamples of various definitions. This kind of information is very valuable when developing models of the real world, and serves as an invaluable tool assisting in the proof of theorems concerning these class algebra expressions. Finally, the relative frequencies of objects in the ISA hierarchy can produce a useful Boolean algebra of probabilities. The probabilities can be used by traditional information-theoretic classification methodologies to obtain optimal ways of classifying objects in the database.

On the Semantics of Object-oriented Data Structures and Path Expressions (Extended Version)

Abstract: UML/OCL is perceived as the de-facto standard for specifying object-oriented models in general and data models in particular. Since recently, all data types of UML/OCL comprise two different exception elements: inlineoclinvalid ("bottom" in semantics terminology) and inlineoclnull (for "non-existing element"). This has far-reaching consequences on both the logical and algebraic properties of OCL expressions as well as the path expressions over object-oriented data structures, ie, class models.In this paper, we present a formal semantics for object-oriented data models in which all data types and, thus, all class attributes and path expressions, support inlineoclinvalid and inlineoclnull. Based on this formal semantics, we present a set of OCL test cases that can be used for evaluating the support of inlineoclnull and inlineoclinvalid in OCL tools.

Inference Patterns with Intensional Adjectives

Abstract: In this paper we report on an ongoing multiinstitution effort to encode inferential patterns associated with adjective modification in English. We focus here on a subset of intensional adjectives typically referred to as “non-subsective” predicates. This class includes adjectives such as alleged, supposed, so-called, and related modally subordinating predicates. We discuss the initial results of corpus-based investigations to discriminate the patterns of inference associated with these adjectives. Based on these studies, we have created an initial annotation specification that we are using to create a corpus of adjectiverelated inferences in English.

Programming networks with intensional destinations

Abstract: Distributed programming is a challenging task. It has tremendously gained importance with the wide development of networks, which support an exponentially increasing number of applications. Distributed systems provide functionalities that are ensured by nodes which form a network and exchange data and services possibly through messages. The provenance of the service is often not relevant, while its reliability is essential. Our aim is to provide a new communication model which allows to specify intensionally what service is needed as opposed to which nodes provide it. The intensional specification of exchanges offers a potential to facilitate distributed programming, to provide persistence of data in messages and resilience of systems, that constitute the topic of this thesis. We propose a framework that supports messages with intensional destinations, which are evaluated only on the fly while the messages are traveling. We introduce a rule-based language, Questlog, to handle the intensional destinations. In contrast to existing network rule-based languages, which like Datalog follow the push mode, Questlog allows to express complex strategies to recursively retrieve distributed data in pull mode. The language runs over a virtual machine which relies on a DBMS. We demonstrate the approach with examples taken from two domains: (i) data-centric architectures, where a class of restricted client-server applications are seamlessly distributed over peer-to-peer systems based on a DHT, and (ii) wireless sensor networks, where a virtual clustering protocol is proposed to aggregate data, in which cluster heads are elected using intensional destinations. Our simulations on the QuestMonitor platform demonstrates that this approach offers simplicity and modularity to protocols, as well as an increased reliability.

The effectiveness of computer-aided teaching on the quality of learning geometric concepts by grade 7 learners at a selected primary school in KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract: Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Technology: Management, Durban University of Technology, 2012.

A dichotomy in the intensional expressive power of nested relational calculi augmented with aggregate functions and a powerset operator

Abstract: The extensional aspect of expressive power---i.e., what queries can or cannot be expressed---has been the subject of many studies of query languages. Paradoxically, although efficiency is of primary concern in computer science, the intensional aspect of expressive power---i.e., what queries can or cannot be implemented efficiently---has been much neglected. Here, we discuss the intensional expressive power of NRC(Q, +, ·, ‏, ÷, Σ, powerset), a nested relational calculus augmented with aggregate functions and a powerset operation. We show that queries on structures such as long chains, deep trees, etc. have a dichotomous behaviour: Either they are already expressible in the calculus without using the powerset operation or they require at least exponential space. This result generalizes in three significant ways several old dichotomy-like results, such as that of Suciu and Paredaens that the complex object algebra of Abiteboul and Beeri needs exponential space to implement the transitive closure of a long chain. Firstly, a more expressive query language---in particular, one that captures SQL---is considered here. Secondly, queries on a more general class of structures than a long chain are considered here. Lastly, our proof is more general and holds for all query languages exhibiting a certain normal form and possessing a locality property.

A cognitive approach to prototypical cases of between-class zero derivation in macedonian

Abstract: Zero Derivation is a type of word formation whereby from a lexeme that belongs to one lexical category or subcategory a new element is derived that has the same form (in the case with isolating languages) or similar form (with inflecting languages), similar or expanded meaning, and, what is most importantly, it is a member of a different word class or subclass. This process relies on cognition – the ability to understand things by connecting the new, unknown and inexperienced with the old, known and already experienced. The prototypical cases of zero derivation in Macedonian which illustrate formal overlapping between the starting and the resulting lexeme, and, in addition, their subgroup - between-class types will be analysed by showing that the direction of the process is between two classes at a time, that is, the process moves from a lexeme from one class to a lexeme in another class.

The Generalized Intensional Transformation for Implementing Lazy Functional Languages

Abstract: The intensional transformation is a promising technique for implementing lazy functional languages based on a demand-driven execution model. Despite its theoretical elegance and its simple and efficient execution model, the intensional transformation suffered, until now, from two main drawbacks: it could only be applied to programs that manipulate primitive data-types and it could only compile a simple and rather restricted class of higher-order functions. In this paper we remedy the above two deficiencies, obtaining a transformation algorithm that is applicable to mainstream lazy functional languages. The proposed transformation initially uses defunctionalization in order to eliminate higher-order functions from the source program. The original intensional transformation is then extended in order to apply to the target first-order language with user-defined data types that resulted from the defunctionalization. It is demonstrated that the proposed technique can be used to compile a relatively large subset of Haskell into portable C code whose performance is comparable to existing mainstream implementations.

Problem based learning in a middle school science class : effect on student retention of concepts in plate tectonics and rocks

Abstract: ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank God for being the Creator of all things. Without His direction and influence in my life, I would not be the woman that I am today. I would also like to thank my family for their continued support throughout my educational career. Without their love and guidance, I would not have continued with my advanced degree. I sincerely appreciate the support and guidance that I received from the members of my committee, Dr. Throughout the thesis process, these individuals provided feedback and direction. Dr. Wischusen, thank you for being diligent in challenging me to strive to achieve the best possible results for this document.

Geometric Optimization for Classification Problems.

Abstract: Data Mining is a relevant discipline in Computer Science, the main goal of which is to explore data and extract information that is potentially useful and previously unknown, By using mathematical tools, such as Operation Research, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence and more recently Computational Geometry, Data Mining solves problems in many areas where there are big databases. Within Computational Geometry, the techniques of Geometric Optimization can be applied to solve many problems in this field. Typically, problems in Data Mining concern data belonging to two classes, say red and blue, and mainly appear in important subareas such as the classification of new data and the recognition of patterns. This thesis focuses on the study of optimization problems with application in data classification and pattern recognition. In all of them, we are given a two-class data set represented as red and blue points in the plane, and the objective is to find simple geometric shapes meeting some requirements for classification. The problems are approached from the Computational Geometry point of view, and efficient algorithms that use the inherent geometry of the problems are proposed. A crucial problem in Data Mining is the so-called "Maximum Box Problem", where the geometric shape to be found is a maximum box, that is, an axis-aligned rectangle containing the maximum number of elements of only one class in the given data set. This thesis solves some natural variants of this basic problem by considering: two boxes (one per class), the minimum number of boxes to cover a class, or the maximum box in kinetic scenarios. Commonly, classification methods suppose a "good" data distribution, so a clustering procedure can be applied. However, if the classes are "well mixed", a clustering for selecting prototypes that represent a class is not possible. In that sense, this thesis studies a new parameter to measure, a priori, if a given two-class data set is suitable or not for classification.

Termination and cost analysis: Complexity and precision issues

Abstract: The research in this thesis is related to static cost and termination analysis.Cost analysis aims at estimating the amount of resources that a given programconsumes during the execution, and termin ...

Epsilon-complexity of continuous functions

Abstract: A formal definition of epsilon-complexity of an individual continuous function defined on a unit cube is proposed. This definition is consistent with the Kolmogorov's idea of the complexity of an object. A definition of epsilon-complexity for a class of continuous functions with a given modulus of continuity is also proposed. Additionally, an explicit formula for the epsilon-complexity of a functional class is obtained. As a consequence, the paper finds that the epsilon-complexity for the Holder class of functions can be characterized by a pair of real numbers. Based on these results the papers formulates a conjecture concerning the epsilon-complexity of an individual function from the Holder class. We also propose a conjecture about characterization of epsilon-complexity of a function from the Holder class given on a discrete grid.

Quizzing and retention in the high school science class

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The Architect's Vortex (As Described by Heidegger, Foucault, Wittig, and Others)

Abstract: This essay distinguishes relations of authority and control in the spatial arrangement of buildings. More specifically, it concretely describes interactions between particular spatial settings and their performers - producers, promoters, users, and architectural objects, by means of a concept that explains the role of vision and knowledge in post-industrial society: "the vortex." According to this concept, the perceived image has been controlled by its promoters through the imposition of a regime of scarcity, with common logistic intentions. Its visual character is revealed through formal aspects such as uniformity, absolute order, and cosmic rhythm. This attitude affirms the role of progress as short term profits in the interest of those in control, in a world where ends are nothing and development is all. In the traditional "vortex," the works of art carry the cultural prestige of their promoters. When audiences limit their selective possibilities as a result of the promoters´ prestige, "the vortex" takes on a paternalist position. Other emotions such as human affection and expressiveness (commonly related to maternal authority) are excluded from the interpretative process. Therefore, "the vortex" may be considered gender-biased, and if race or class do not exist independently of gender, is it considered race-biased or class-biased as well? In order to gain access to an audience, cultural authority operates through a traditional chain of linear communication. The subjects of this authority generally accept the artifacts and forms of speech traditionally displayed by the communication chain. This cultural chain limits subjectsselective possibilities. The functioning of this chain depends on subjectslegitimation, with subjects and promoters of artistic information not considered on the same level. For G. Debord, "the vortex" (known to him as "spectacle") is the main component of Western philosophy, which reduces reality to a world of mere appearances. Visual knowledge permeates the way audiences think and learn. In other words, particular perceptions become the desired social product. What kind of individuals shall this perceptual process create? Opinions are divided regarding this issue. Many theorists -such as Debord, consider that there is a sense of loss involved, carrying individuals to their own intellectual "death." For others, the structure of "the vortex" must always be present, in order to find more realistic alternatives. Thus, the question of how "the vortex" operates remains open.

Humble Primary Intensions: Fixing Two-Dimensional Semantics

Abstract: .Certain problems with standard two-dimensional semantics are addressed and cases in which these problems arise explored. In such cases the primary intension cannot be univocally mapped in one and only one indexical world, thus standard two-dimensional semantics cannot efficiently address the problems presented. Subsequently, a modified model is presented which leads these problems to be averted in the replicated cases. This modified model admits primary intensions that are not univocally mapped. The conclusion discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the modified model and analyzes its possible consequences for the philosophy of mind.Keywords: two-dimensional semantics, primary intensions, philosophical zombies, epistemically indistinguishable(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. IntroductionHow should one account for the linguistic use of phrases such as, "Russia might not have been the largest country in the world," even when the largest country in the world is Russia? We cannot say that the quote means Russia might not have been Russia. However, it does have a meaning. As many philosophers would agree, the statement roughly indicates that the object we refer to when we speak of Russia is an object of this world, which, when considered counterfactually - as all the things it could have been in other possible worlds - might not have been the largest country in at least one of these worlds. One of the main formalizations of the solution to this dilemma is known as two-dimensional semantics. We say that Russia has a twodimensional meaning. One is the function which maps "Russia" in our world - the indexical world, the world to which we belong - called primary intension; one is the class of functions which maps "Russia" in all other possible worlds, called secondary intension.Secondary intensions may appear as improbable ideas. Accordingly, some would find the notion that something belongs to other possible worlds imaginative; useful in fiction but not in philosophy. Conversely, primary intensions always appeared much better behaved, since we ought to have the right to make expressions about our own world. Primary intensions, however, are arrogant foes indeed. Under what grounds would we have the right to isolate only one world and then map entities on only this particular world? We would indeed have to possess extremely fine grained information about our placement in the vast realm of possible worlds.1 If we cannot have all the relevant knowledge which would be true in one and only one possible world, how can we single out only one of them as indexical? We must ascribe indexicality to all the worlds in which what is both believed and true would in fact obtain, that is be true. But if, behaving humbly, we do so, then how can the primary intension be just one function and not a class of functions on all the worlds that could be indexical?Enquiring more generally, how can we presume that we can speak of one indexical world and select an object in that world in a univocal fashion? Who gave us the power to choose the indexical world from among all the other epistemically indistinguishable worlds? Who filled us with the necessary divinity to track the untraceable and find the identical hay in the haystack? Can we subscribe to a more humble theory of primary intensions and continue to account properly for counterfactuals? After a brief introduction to standard two-dimensional semantics, a problem case will be presented in which these enquiries will be enacted, revealing faults with this standard model. A modified model where those faults do not arise will be introduced and its consequences for David Chalmer's arguments against physicalism will be explored.2. Two-Dimensional SemanticsIn Chalmers (2006),2 two-dimensional semantics is summarized as the concept whereby meanings are intensions divided into two dimensions. One is a function mapping entities in our world (primary intension) and one is a class of functions mapping these same entities on other worlds (secondary intension). …

Supervenience among classes of relations

Abstract: This paper extends the definition of strong supervenience to cover classes of relations of any adicity, including transworld relations. It motivates that project by showing that not all interesting supervenience claims involving relations are global supervenience claims. The proposed definition has five welcome features: it reduces to the familiar definition in the special case where the classes contain only monadic properties; it equips supervenience with the expected formal properties, such as transitivity and monotonicity; it entails that a relation supervenes on its converse; it classifies certain paradigms correctly; it makes distinctions even in the realm of the non-contingent, as witnessed by the fact that identity does not supervene on any class of relations. Finally, the paper applies the defined concept, and the related concept of orthogonality, to the study of internal and external relations.

CHAT 2013: Experience, University College London, 8–10 November 2013

Abstract: For ten years now CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) has set out to challenge assumptions around the archaeology of the recent past with a series of thought provoking thematic conferences. This year, the 11 th annual CHAT Conference was held at University College London and jointly organised by the Institute of Archaeology and Atkins, 1 with a broad focus on the topic of ‘experience.’ Over three days, established academics, early career researchers and practicing heritage professionals from across the world offered up their take on this sometimes nebulous theme. The results were - in turn - captivating, frustrating, enlightening and provocative, but never boring.

The Dichotomous Intensional Expressive Power of the Nested Relational Calculus with Powerset

Abstract: Most existing studies on the expressive power of query languages have focused on what queries can be expressed and what queries cannot be expressed in a query language. They do not tell us much about whether a query can be implemented efficiently in a query language. Yet, paradoxically, efficiency is a key concern in computer science. In this paper, the efficiency of queries in \(\mathcal{NRC}(powerset)\), a nested relational calculus with a powerset operation, is discussed. A dichotomy in the efficiency of these queries on a large general class of structures—which include long chains, deep trees, etc.—is proved. In particular, it is shown that these queries are either already expressible in the usual nested relational calculus or require at least exponential space. This Dichotomy Theorem, when coupled with the bounded degree and locality properties of the usual nested relational calculus becomes a powerful general tool in studying the intensional expressive power of query languages. The bounded degree and locality properties make it easy to prove that a query is inexpressible in the usual nested relational calculus. Then, if the query is expressible in \(\mathcal{NRC}(powerset)\), subject to the conditions of the Dichotomy Theorem, the query must take at least exponential space.