The Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) is a voluntary, non-jeopardy reporting program supported by commercial airlines. The program provides pilots with a way to report unsafe occurrences, including their own errors, without risk of punitive action on the part of the airlines or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Through a set of on-site visits to airlines with ASAP programs, deficiencies were identified in the way airlines collect ASAP reports from pilots. It was concluded that these deficiencies might be limiting the ability of airlines to identify hazards contributing to reported safety events. The purpose of this research was to determine if the use of an ASAP reporting form based on a human factors model, referred to as the Threat and Error Management (TEM) model, would result in pilots providing a larger quantity and higher quality of information as compared to information provided by pilots using a standard ASAP reporting form. The TEM model provides a framework for a taxonomy that includes factors related to safety events pilots encounter, behaviors and errors they make, and threats associated with the complexities of their operational environment. A comparison of reports collected using the TEM Reporting Form and a standard reporting form demonstrated that narrative descriptions provided by pilots using the TEM Reporting Form included both a larger quantity and higher quality of information. Quantity of information was measured by comparing the average word count of the narrative descriptions. Quality of information was measured by comparing the discriminatory power of the words in the narrative descriptions and the extent to which the narrative descriptions from the two sets of reports contributed to a set of latent concepts. The findings suggest that the TEM Reporting Form can help pilots provide longer descriptions, more relevant information related to safety hazards, and expand on concepts that contribute to reported safety events. The use of the TEM Reporting Form for the collection of ASAP reports should be considered by airlines as a preferred collection method for improving the quantity and quality of information reported by pilots through ASAP programs. / text

Visual object category recognition is one of the most challenging problems in computer vision. Even assuming that we can obtain a near-perfect instance level representation with the advances in visual input devices and low-level vision techniques, object categorization still remains as a difficult problem because it requires drawing boundaries between instances in a continuous world, where the boundaries are solely defined by human conceptualization. Object categorization is essentially a perceptual process that takes place in a human-defined semantic space. In this semantic space, the categories reside not in isolation, but in relation to others. Some categories are similar, grouped, or co-occur, and some are not. However, despite this semantic nature of object categorization, most of the today's automatic visual category recognition systems rely only on the category labels for training discriminative recognition with statistical machine learning techniques. In many cases, this could result in the recognition model being misled into learning incorrect associations between visual features and the semantic labels, from essentially overfitting to training set biases. This limits the model's prediction power when new test instances are given. Using semantic knowledge has great potential to benefit object category recognition. First, semantic knowledge could guide the training model to learn a correct association between visual features and the categories. Second, semantics provide much richer information beyond the membership information given by the labels, in the form of inter-category and category-attribute distances, relations, and structures. Finally, the semantic knowledge scales well as the relations between categories become larger with an increasing number of categories. My goal in this thesis is to learn discriminative models for categorization that leverage semantic knowledge for object recognition, with a special focus on the semantic relationships among different categories and concepts. To this end, I explore three semantic sources, namely attributes, taxonomies, and analogies, and I show how to incorporate them into the original discriminative model as a form of structural regularization. In particular, for each form of semantic knowledge I present a feature learning approach that defines a semantic embedding to support the object categorization task. The regularization penalizes the models that deviate from the known structures according to the semantic knowledge provided. The first semantic source I explore is attributes, which are human-describable semantic characteristics of an instance. While the existing work treated them as mid-level features which did not introduce new information, I focus on their potential as a means to better guide the learning of object categories, by enforcing the object category classifiers to share features with attribute classifiers, in a multitask feature learning framework. This approach essentially discovers the common low-dimensional features that support predictions in both semantic spaces. Then, I move on to the semantic taxonomy, which is another valuable source of semantic knowledge. The merging and splitting criteria for the categories on a taxonomy are human-defined, and I aim to exploit this implicit semantic knowledge. Specifically, I propose a tree of metrics (ToM) that learns metrics that capture granularity-specific similarities at different nodes of a given semantic taxonomy, and uses a regularizer to isolate granularity-specific disjoint features. This approach captures the intuition that the features used for the discrimination of the parent class should be different from the features used for the children classes. Such learned metrics can be used for hierarchical classification. The use of a single taxonomy can be limited in that its structure is not optimal for hierarchical classification, and there may exist no single optimal semantic taxonomy that perfectly aligns with visual distributions. Thus, I next propose a way to overcome this limitation by leveraging multiple taxonomies as semantic sources to exploit, and combine the acquired complementary information across multiple semantic views and granularities. This allows us, for example, to synthesize semantics from both 'Biological', and 'Appearance'-based taxonomies when learning the visual features. Finally, as a further exploration of more complex semantic relations different from the previous two pairwise similarity-based models, I exploit analogies, which encode the relational similarities between two related pairs of categories. Specifically, I use analogies to regularize a discriminatively learned semantic embedding space for categorization, such that the displacements between the two category embeddings in both category pairs of the analogy are enforced to be the same. Such a constraint allows for a more confusing pair of categories to benefit from a clear separation in the matched pair of categories that share the same relation. All of these methods are evaluated on challenging public datasets, and are shown to effectively improve the recognition accuracy over purely discriminative models, while also guiding the recognition to be more semantic to human perception. Further, the applications of the proposed methods are not limited to visual object categorization in computer vision, but they can be applied to any classification problems where there exists some domain knowledge about the relationships or structures between the classes. Possible applications of my methods outside the visual recognition domain include document classification in natural language processing, and gene-based animal or protein classification in computational biology. / text

Σκοπός της Μεταπτυχιακής Εργασίας είναι η επέκταση και αναβάθμιση του μηχανισμού που είχε δημιουργηθεί στα πλαίσια της Διπλωματικής Εργασίας που εκπόνησα με τίτλο «Δημιουργία Πύλης Προσωποποιημένης Πρόσβασης σε Περιεχόμενο του WWW». Η παραπάνω Διπλωματική εργασία περιλάμβανε τη δημιουργία ενός μηχανισμού που ξεκινούσε με ανάκτηση πληροφορίας από το Διαδίκτυο (HTML σελίδες από news portals), εξαγωγή χρήσιμου κειμένου και προεπεξεργασία της πληροφορίας, αυτόματη κατηγοριοποίηση της πληροφορίας και τέλος παρουσίαση στον τελικό χρήστη με προσωποποίηση με στοιχεία που εντοπίζονταν στις επιλογές του χρήστη. Στην παραπάνω εργασία εξετάστηκαν διεξοδικά θέματα που είχαν να κάνουν με τον τρόπο προεπεξεργασίας της πληροφορίας καθώς και με τον τρόπο αυτόματης κατηγοριοποίησης ενώ υλοποιήθηκαν αλγόριθμοι προεπεξεργασίας πληροφορίας τεσσάρων σταδίων και αλγόριθμος αυτόματης κατηγοριοποίησης βασισμένος σε πρότυπες κατηγορίες. Τέλος υλοποιήθηκε portal το οποίο εκμεταλλευόμενο την επεξεργασία που έχει πραγματοποιηθεί στην πληροφορία παρουσιάζει το περιεχόμενο στους χρήστες προσωποποιημένο βάσει των επιλογών που αυτοί πραγματοποιούν. Σκοπός της μεταπτυχιακής εργασίας είναι η εξέταση περισσοτέρων αλγορίθμων για την πραγματοποίηση της παραπάνω διαδικασίας αλλά και η υλοποίησή τους προκειμένου να γίνει σύγκριση αλγορίθμων και παραγωγή ποιοτικότερου αποτελέσματος. Πιο συγκεκριμένα αναβαθμίζονται όλα τα στάδια λειτουργίας του μηχανισμού. Έτσι, το στάδιο λήψης πληροφορίας βασίζεται σε έναν απλό crawler λήψης HTML σελίδων από αγγλόφωνα news portals. Η διαδικασία βασίζεται στο γεγονός πως για κάθε σελίδα υπάρχουν RSS feeds. Διαβάζοντας τα τελευταία νέα που προκύπτουν από τις εγγραφές στα RSS feeds μπορούμε να εντοπίσουμε όλα τα URL που περιέχουν HTML σελίδες με τα άρθρα. Οι HTML σελίδες φιλτράρονται προκειμένου από αυτές να γίνει εξαγωγή μόνο του κειμένου και πιο αναλυτικά του χρήσιμου κειμένου ούτως ώστε το κείμενο που εξάγεται να αφορά αποκλειστικά άρθρα. Η τεχνική εξαγωγής χρήσιμου κειμένου βασίζεται στην τεχνική web clipping. Ένας parser, ελέγχει την HTML δομή προκειμένου να εντοπίσει τους κόμβους που περιέχουν μεγάλη ποσότητα κειμένου και βρίσκονται κοντά σε άλλους κόμβους που επίσης περιέχουν μεγάλες ποσότητες κειμένου. Στα εξαγόμενα άρθρα πραγματοποιείται προεπεξεργασία πέντε σταδίων με σκοπό να προκύψουν οι λέξεις κλειδιά που είναι αντιπροσωπευτικές του άρθρου. Πιο αναλυτικά, αφαιρούνται όλα τα σημεία στίξης, όλοι οι αριθμοί, μετατρέπονται όλα τα γράμματα σε πεζά, αφαιρούνται όλες οι λέξεις που έχουν λιγότερους από 4 χαρακτήρες, αφαιρούνται όλες οι κοινότυπες λέξεις και τέλος εφαρμόζονται αλγόριθμοι εύρεσης της ρίζας μίας λέξεις. Οι λέξεις κλειδιά που απομένουν είναι stemmed το οποίο σημαίνει πως από τις λέξεις διατηρείται μόνο η ρίζα. Από τις λέξεις κλειδιά ο μηχανισμός οδηγείται σε δύο διαφορετικά στάδια ανάλυσης. Στο πρώτο στάδιο υπάρχει μηχανισμός ο οποίος αναλαμβάνει να δημιουργήσει μία αντιπροσωπευτική περίληψη του κειμένου ενώ στο δεύτερο στάδιο πραγματοποιείται αυτόματη κατηγοριοποίηση του κειμένου βασισμένη σε πρότυπες κατηγορίες που έχουν δημιουργηθεί από επιλεγμένα άρθρα που συλλέγονται καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια υλοποίησης του μηχανισμού. Η εξαγωγή περίληψης βασίζεται σε ευρεστικούς αλγορίθμους. Πιο συγκεκριμένα προσπαθούμε χρησιμοποιώντας λεξικολογική ανάλυση του κειμένου αλλά και γεγονότα για τις λέξεις του κειμένου αν δημιουργήσουμε βάρη για τις προτάσεις του κειμένου. Οι προτάσεις με τα μεγαλύτερη βάρη μετά το πέρας της διαδικασίας είναι αυτές που επιλέγονται για να διαμορφώσουν την περίληψη. Όπως θα δούμε και στη συνέχεια για κάθε άρθρο υπάρχει μία γενική περίληψη αλλά το σύστημα είναι σε θέση να δημιουργήσει προσωποποιημένες περιλήψεις για κάθε χρήστη. Η διαδικασία κατηγοριοποίησης βασίζεται στη συσχέτιση συνημίτονου συγκριτικά με τις πρότυπες κατηγορίες. Η κατηγοριοποίηση δεν τοποθετεί μία ταμπέλα σε κάθε άρθρο αλλά μας δίνει τα αποτελέσματα συσχέτισης του άρθρου με κάθε κατηγορία. Ο συνδυασμός των δύο παραπάνω σταδίων δίνει την πληροφορία που εμφανίζεται σε πρώτη φάση στο χρήστη που επισκέπτεται το προσωποποιημένο portal. Η προσωποποίηση στο portal βασίζεται στις επιλογές που κάνουν οι χρήστες, στο χρόνο που παραμένουν σε μία σελίδα αλλά και στις επιλογές που δεν πραγματοποιούν προκειμένου να δημιουργηθεί προφίλ χρήστη και να είναι εφικτό με την πάροδο του χρόνου να παρουσιάζεται στους χρήστες μόνο πληροφορία που μπορεί να τους ενδιαφέρει. / The scope of this MsC thesis is the extension and upgrade of the mechanism that was constructed during my undergraduate studies under my undergraduate thesis entitled “Construction of a Web Portal with Personalized Access to WWW content”. The aforementioned thesis included the construction of a mechanism that would begin with information retrieval from the WWW and would conclude to representation of information through a portal after applying useful text extraction, text pre-processing and text categorization techniques. The scope of the MsC thesis is to locate the problematic parts of the system and correct them with better algorithms and also include more modules on the complete mechanism. More precisely, all the modules are upgraded while more of them are constructed in every aspect of the mechanism. The information retrieval module is based on a simple crawler. The procedure is based on the fact that all the major news portals include RSS feeds. By locating the latest articles that are added to the RSS feeds we are able to locate all the URLs of the HTML pages that include articles. The crawler then visits every simple URL and downloads the HTML page. These pages are filtered by the useful text extraction mechanism in order to extract only the body of the article from the HTML page. This procedure is based on the web-clipping technique. An HTML parser analyzes the DOM model of HTML and locates the nodes (leafs) that include large amounts of text and are close to nodes with large amounts of text. These nodes are considered to include the useful text. In the extracted useful text we apply a 5 level preprocessing technique in order to extract the keywords of the article. More analytically, we remove the punctuation, the numbers, the words that are smaller than 4 letters, the stopwords and finally we apply a stemming algorithm in order to produce the root of the word. The keywords are utilized into two different interconnected levels. The first is the categorization subsystem and the second is the summarization subsystem. During the summarization stage the system constructs a summary of the article while the second stage tries to label the article. The labeling is not unique but the categorization applies multi-labeling techniques in order to detect the relation with each of the standard categories of the system. The summarization technique is based on heuristics. More specifically, we try, by utilizing language processing and facts that concern the keywords, to create a score for each of the sentences of the article. The more the score of a sentence, the more the probability of it to be included to the summary which consists of sentences of the text. The combination of the categorization and summarization provides the information that is shown to our web portal called perssonal. The personalization issue of the portal is based on the selections of the user, on the non-selections of the user, on the time that the user remains on an article, on the time that spends reading similar or identical articles. After a short period of time, the system is able to adopt on the user’s needs and is able to present articles that match the preferences of the user only.

Signalų technologijų magistro darbo tema yra aktuali, nes nebepakanka įprastų informacijos įvedimo priemonių. Todėl ieškoti ir apdoroti informaciją, valdyti sudėtingus įrenginius ir programas daug patogiau būtų jei kompiuteriai ir įvairūs įrenginiai suprastų žmogaus kalbą. Pasaulyje panašios sistemos kuriamos jau daugelį metų. Tačiau šiuo metu lietuvių kalbos atpažinimo sistemos yra dar tik kūrimo stadijoje. Darbe nagrinėjamas Lietuvių kalbos žodžių atpažinimas skirstant juos į kategorijas ir naudojant paslėptuosius markovo modelius. Šio tyrimo tikslas – ištirti lietuvių kalbos žodžių skirstymo į kategorijas įtaką atpažinimo tikslumui.Taip pat tiriamas žodžių grupių bei pavienių žodžių atpažinimas. Akustinis modelis sukurtas su HTK paketu, kuris naudojasi paslėptųjų Markovo modelių metodika. Žodžių skirstymas į kategorijas aprašytas Backus-Naur formatu. Eksperimentai bus atliekami ir rezultatai gaunami naudojant, Julius programinės įrangos įrankius bei šio paketo, žodžių kategorijų pagrindu veikiančią, Julian kalbos atpažinimo sistemą. Geriausi rezultatai gauti bandant atpažinti pavienius žodžius suskirstytus į kategorijas. Atpažinimo tikslumas siekia 91 %. Bandant atpažinti žodžių sekas, nesuskirstytas į kategorijas, gautas atpažinimo tikslumas tesiekia 51 %. Microsoft Office Word 2003 meniu valdymo atpažinimo tikslumas siekia 82 %. / The theme of Master project of signal technology is actual, because not enough usual information introduction ways. Therefore information search and processing, complicated devices and programs control would be more handily if computers and devices understood human speech. Similar systems are designing for many years in the world. However Lithuanian speech recognition systems are still developing in nowadays. The thesis treats of isolated Lithuanian words recognition dividing them into category and using Hidden Markov Models. The idea of research is to explore categorization of Lithuanian words influence on the accuracy of recognition. The recognition of single words and word groups is under research too. Acoustic model is constructed by using HTK toolkit which is based on Hidden Markov Models. Categorization of words is described with Backus-Naur form. Experiments are made with Julius software speech recognition system Julian witch performs words category based recognition. Best results are got trying to recognize single words set into categories. The accuracy rate of recognition reaches 91 %. While trying to recognize uncategorized word sequences – the accuracy rate of recognition reaches only 51 %. The accuracy rate of Microsoft Office Word 2003 control menu recognition reaches 82 %.

Certains supposent que la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, donc la section 35(1) reconnait les droits existants des peuples autochtones, a complété la décolonisation du Canada. Par contre, malgré le passage d'un quart de siècle, plusieurs Autochtones estiment que la Cour suprême continue à nier l'existence de leurs droits. Cette étude examine cette problématique en formulant des définitions juridiques du « colonialisme » et du « post colonialisme ». Vu le remplacement de l'idéal de «la loi» comme «commande », promu par le juriste anglais John Austin au dernier siècle, par l'idéal du consensus populaire et démocratique, nous avons vécu une changement important dans le droit euro-canadien. Mais, selon la théorie des paradigmes de Thomas Kuhn, la continuation des anciennes habitudes est une partie normale du processus de changement, qui n'est jamais complète sans l'émergence de nouveaux modèles et procédures. Pour déterminer la situation de la Cour suprême du Canada par rapport au processus de décolonisation, la Partie I de cette étude examine le fonctionnement paradigmatique autant que le phénomène colonial, la décolonisation en droit international et le postcolonialisme pour identifier les indicateurs du paradigme colonial autant que le paradigme postcolonial. La Partie II adapte ce cadre analytique aux raisonnements de la Cour suprême du Canada concernant les droits autochtones protégés par l’article 35 (1) de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982. Cette double analyse coloniale/postcoloniale démontre la persistance des anciennes habitudes malgré la reconnaissance des idéaux postcoloniaux par la Cour. Les juges sont conscients des limites institutionnelles qui restreignent leur capacité de protéger les droits autochtones, mais plusieurs concepts qui structurent leur raisonnement perpétuent la dynamique coloniale. Une réflexion approfondie des juges, des praticiens et des peuples autochtones sur les problèmes qui découlent des changements paradigmatiques doit faciliter la tolérance mutuelle qui est un préalable aux ententes qui sont nécessaires selon les idéaux égalitaires qui sont partages par tous. / Many people believe that Canada became fully decolonized in 1982 with the "patriation" instituted by the Constitution Act, 1982, whose s.35 (1) explicitly recognized and affirmed "existing Aboriginal and treaty rights". Yet, a quarter century later, Indigenous critics continue to complain that their rights are being denied by the Supreme Court of Canada. This study has approached such questions by drawing on international law to establish legal definitions for "colonialism" and "postcolonialism". In this optic, it becomes clear that there has been a significant change in Euro-Canadian norms during the past century. Colonial concepts, like the English jurist John Austin's definition of "law" as "command" have been superseded by the ideal of informed, popular consent, yet modes of conduct that are consistent with the colonial paradigm persist. According to Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions this is predictable because changes from one paradigm to another are normally characterized by intensified assertions of the impugned orthodoxy and no change is complete until new models and procedures have emerged to replace established habits. In order to determine where the Supreme Court of Canada actually stands in relation to the decolonization process, Part I of this study examines the nature of paradigmatic function, including the metaphoric construction of language. It then reviews the colonial phenomenon, the emergence of decolonization in international law and postcolonialism to define the colonial and postcolonial paradigms in terms of specific indicia that can be used to classify institutional performance. Part II adapts this analytical framework to the specific circumstances of judicial decision making and applies it to the reasoning of over 60 Supreme Court of Canada cases concerned with section 35 (1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. This dual colonial/postcolonial analysis makes it possible to identify some of the ways in which colonial metaphors and modes of thought have persisted during the past quarter century despite the Court's firm commitment to postcolonial ideals. Though the judges themselves are aware of some of the institutional limitations that constrict their ability to validate Indigenous rights, many of the concepts that structure their reasoning induce them to perpetuate the colonial paradigm. Further reflection on the structure of our rational processes and on the problems predictably associated with paradigm change might make it easier for judges, practitioners and Indigenous peoples to develop the agreements that are necessary to implement the egalitarian ideals ascribed to by all. / Titre de la page de titre additionnel: Ghost dancing at the Supreme Court of Canada : indigenous rights during the First quarter century of s.35.of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982.

No description available.

In the North Scandinavian area of investigation, which is in focus in this dissertation, seal-hunting has been an important means of livelihood from prehistoric times up to the present. The Swedish-speaking seal-hunters' conceptual system for seal during the 20th century is analysed here. The analysis is mainly based on oral recorded interviews with hunters from the coastal areas around the Gulf of Bothnia – from Norrbotten and Västerbotten in Sweden, and Österbotten in Finland. A cognitive perspective is applied in the analysis, in which focus is on the hunters' knowledge of the seal with the purpose of investigating the construction of the hunters' conceptual system for seal. The dissertation's theoretical starting-point is taken in cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology. The investigated vocabulary contains 150 different words for seal. The analysis also includes the cultural and ecological context of the hunt. The hunters' conceptual system for seal is characterised by breadth and variation. There is regional variation in the construction of the conceptual system in the investigated area. In addition to that there is also variation with regard to different hunting seasons, something which is apparent both in the vocabulary and in the structure of the conceptual system. The summer and autumn hunt was not particularly complicated and there was consequently no need for categorising the seal. During this season a limited conceptual system with more general terms was used, which included all seals that were hunted at that time. The late winter and early summer hunt, on the other hand, required an immense amount of knowledge, for example with regard to ecology. In that connection the hunters used an extended conceptual system for seal. The analysis of the conceptual system of the late winter and early summer hunt is based on three different scenarios in which the categories for seal direct the actions of the hunters – in locating the seals in the ice environment, in the hunters' actions during the hunt and in the utilisation of the seal as a resource. A number of categories for seal which were used during the late winter and early spring hunt are the same in the whole area of investigation and can be said to constitute a cognitive and communicative basic level. / digitalisering@umu

La tesi de Crous (2009) descriu les característiques de les estructures gramaticals del català i del mandinga que expressen malalties, signes i símptomes, trets físics i psíquics, etc. (com ser diabètic, estar refredat, tenir febre, tenir un bony (a la cama), tenir mal de panxa o tenir mal a la panxa, venir un atac de tos, agafar febre o fer mal el cap). La tesi demostra que la conceptualització i la categorització dels estats patològics, la manera com els parlants perceben alguns aspectes dels estats (com la temporalitat, l'abast corporal, la causalitat o el grau d'afectació) i les relacions entre aquests estats i els altres dos participants de la situació d'afectació (una persona i les seves parts del cos), no només es posa de manifest en els mots d'una llengua sinó que també intervé en la construcció i en la distribució dels diferents participants dins d'una oració. / Crous' doctoral dissertation (2009) describes the characteristics of Catalan and Mandinga grammatical structures expressing illnesses, signs and symptoms, physical and psychic traits, etc. (like ser diabètic 'to be diabetic', estar refredat 'to have a cold', tenir febre 'to have a fever', tenir un bony (a la cama) 'to have a lump (in one's leg)', tenir mal de panxa 'to have a bellyache' or tenir mal a la panxa 'to have an ache/a wound in one's belly', venir un atac de tos 'to have/suffer a cough attack', agafar febre 'to catch a fever' or fer mal el cap '(someone's head) to hurt'). This dissertation shows that the conceptualization and the categorization of the pathological states, the way speakers perceive some aspects of the states (such as their temporality, the corporal extend, the causality or the degree of affectedness), and the relations between these states and the other two participants in the situation (a person and his/her body parts) are not only manifested in the vocabulary of the language, but also in the construction and distribution of the participants in a sentence.

Aquesta tesi versa sobre la classificació automàtica de gèneres musicals, basada en l'anàlisi del contingut del senyal d'àudio, plantejant-ne els problemes i proposant solucions. Es proposa un estudi de la classificació de gèneres musicals des del punt de vista computacional però inspirat en teories dels camps de la musicologia i de la percepció. D'aquesta manera, els experiments presentats combinen diferents elements que influeixen en l'encert o fracàs de la classificació, com ara els descriptors d'àudio, les tècniques d'aprenentatge, etc. L'objectiu és avaluar i comparar els resultats obtinguts d'aquests experiments per tal d'explicar els límits d'encert dels algorismes actuals, i proposar noves estratègies per tal de superar-los. A més a més, partint del processat de la informació d'àudio, s'inclouen aspectes musicals i culturals referents al gènere que tradicionalment no han estat tinguts en compte en els estudis existents. En aquest context, es proposa l'estudi de diferents famílies de descriptors d'àudio referents al timbre, ritme, tonalitat o altres aspectes de la música. Alguns d'aquests descriptors són proposats pel propi autor mentre que d'altres ja són perfectament coneguts. D'altra banda, també es comparen les tècniques d'aprenentatge artificial que s'usen tradicionalment en aquest camp i s'analitza el seu comportament davant el nostre problema de classificació. També es presenta una discussió sobre la seva capacitat per representar els diferents models de classificació proposats en el camp de la percepció. Els resultats de la classificació es comparen amb un seguit de tests i enquestes realitzades sobre un conjunt d'individus. Com a resultat d'aquesta comparativa es proposa una arquitectura específica de classificadors que també està raonada i explicada en detall. Finalment, es fa un especial èmfasi en comparar resultats dels classificadors automàtics en diferents escenaris que pressuposen la barreja de bases de dades, la comparació entre bases de dades grans i petites, etc. A títol de conclusió, es mostra com l'arquitectura de classificació proposada, justificada pels resultats dels diferents anàlisis, pot trencar el límit actual en tasques de classificació automàtica de gèneres musicals. De manera condensada, es pot dir que aquesta tesi contribueix al camp de la classificació de gèneres musicals en els següents aspectes: a) Proporciona una revisió multidisciplinar delsgèneres musicals i la seva classificació; b)Presenta una avaluació qualitativa i quantitativa de les famílies de descriptors d'àudio davant el problema de la classificació de gèneres; c) Avalua els pros i contres de les diferents tècniques d'aprenentatge artificial davant el gènere; d) Proposa una arquitectura nova de classificador d'acord amb una visió interdisciplinar dels gèneres musicals; e) Analitza el comportament de l'arquitecturaproposada davant d'entorns molt diversos en el que es podria implementar el classificador. / Esta tesis estudia la clasificación automática degéneros musicales, basada en el análisis delcontenido de la señal de audio, planteando sus problemas y proponiendo soluciones. Sepropone un estudio de la clasificación de los géneros musicales desde el punto de vista computacional, pero inspirado en teorías de los campos de la musicología y la percepción. De este modo, los experimentos persentados combinan distintos elementos que influyen en el acierto o fracaso de la clasificación, como por ejemplo los descriptores de audio, las técnicas de aprondiza je, etc. El objetivo es comparar y evaluar los resultados obtenidos de estos experimentos para explicar los límites de las tasas de acierto de los algorismos actuales, y proponer nuevas estrategias para superarlos. Además, partiendo del procesado de la información de Audio, se han incluido aspectos musicales y culturales al género que tradicionalmente no han sido tomados en cuenta en los estudios existentes. En este contexto, se propone el estudio de distintas famílias de descriptores de audio referentes al timbre, al ritmo, a la tonalidad o a otros aspectos de la música. Algunos de los descriptores son propuestos por el mismo autor, mientras que otros son perfectamente conocidos. Por otra parte, también se comparan las técnicas de aprendiza je artificial que se usan tradicionalmente, y analizamos su comportamiento en frente de nuestro problema de clasificación. Tambien planteamos una discusión sobre su capacidad para representar los diferentes modelos de clasificación propuestos en el campo de la percepción. Estos resultados de la clasificación se comparan con los resultados de unos tests y encuestas realizados sobre un conjunto de individuos. Como resultado de esta comparativa se propone una arquitectura específica de clasificadores que tambien está razonada y detallada en el cuerpo de la tesis. Finalmente, se hace un émfasis especial en comparar los resultados de los clasificadores automáticos en distintos escenarios que assumen la mezcla de bases de datos, algunas muy grandes y otras muy pequeñas, etc. Como conclusión, mostraremos como la arquitectura de clasificación propuesta permite romper el límite actual en el ámbito de la classificación automática de géneros musicales.De forma condensada, se puede decir que esta tesis contribuye en el campo de la clasificación de los géneros musicales el los siguientes aspectos: a) Proporciona una revisión multidisciplinar de los géneros musicales y su clasificación; b) Presenta una evaluación cualitativa y cuantitativa de las famílias de descriptores de audio para la clasificación de géneros musicales; c) Evalua los pros y contras de las distintas técnicas de aprendiza je artificial delante del género; d) Propone una arquitectura nueva del clasificador de acuerdo con una visión interdisciplinar de los géneros musicales; e) Analiza el comportamiento de la arquitectura propuesta delante de entornos muy diversos en los que se podria implementar el clasificador. / This dissertation presents, discusses, and sheds some light on the problems that appear when computers try to automatically classify musical genres from audio signals. In particular, a method is proposed for the automatic music genre classification by using a computational approach that is inspired in music cognition and musicology in addition to Music Information Retrieval techniques. In this context, we design a set of experiments by combining the different elements that may affect the accuracy in the classification (audio descriptors, machine learning algorithms, etc.). We evaluate, compare and analyze the obtained results in order to explain the existing glass-ceiling in genre classification, and propose new strategies to overcome it. Moreover, starting from the polyphonic audio content processing we include musical and cultural aspects of musical genre that have usually been neglected in the current state of the art approaches. This work studies different families of audio descriptors related to timbre, rhythm, tonality and other facets of music, which have not been frequently addressed in the literature. Some of these descriptors are proposed by the author and others come from previous existing studies. We also compare machine learning techniques commonly used for classification and analyze how they can deal with the genre classification problem. We also present a discussion on their ability to represent the different classification models proposed in cognitive science. Moreover, the classification results using the machine learning techniques are contrasted with the results of some listening experiments proposed. This comparison drive us to think of a specific architecture of classifiers that will be justified and described in detail. It is also one of the objectives of this dissertation to compare results under different data configurations, that is, using different datasets, mixing them and reproducing some real scenarios in which genre classifiers could be used (huge datasets). As a conclusion, we discuss how the classification architecture here proposed can break the existing glass-ceiling effect in automatic genre classification. To sum up, this dissertation contributes to the field of automatic genre classification: a) It provides a multidisciplinary review of musical genres and its classification; b) It provides a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of families of audio descriptors used for automatic classification; c) It evaluates different machine learning techniques and their pros and cons in the context of genre classification; d) It proposes a new architecture of classifiers after analyzing music genre classification from different disciplines; e) It analyzes the behavior of this proposed architecture in different environments consisting of huge or mixed datasets.

Young children’s peer interactions involve their use of interactional resources to organise, manage and participate in their social worlds. Investigation of children’s employment of interactional resources highlights how children participate in peer interaction and their social orders, providing insight into their active construction and management of their social worlds. Frequently, these interactions are described by adults as ‘play’. The term play is often used to describe children’s activities in early childhood education, and constructed in three main ways: as educative, as enjoyable, and as an activity of children. Play in educational settings is often constructed, and informed by, adult agendas such as learning and is often part of the educational routine. This study shows how children work with a different set of agendas to those routinely ascribed by adults, as they actively engage with local education orders, and use play for their own purposes as they construct their own social orders. By examining children’s peer interactions, and not describing these activities as play, the focus becomes the construction and organisation of their social worlds. In so doing, this study investigates some interactional resources that children draw upon to manage their social orders and organise their peer interactions. This study was conducted within an Australian, non-government elementary school. The participants were children in a preparatory year classroom (children aged 4 – 6 years). Over a one month period, children’s naturally occurring peer interactions within ‘free play’ were video-recorded. Selected video-recorded episodes were transcribed and analysed, using the approaches of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. These methodologies focus on everyday, naturalistic data, examining how participants orient to and produce social action. The focus is on the members’ perspectives, that of the children themselves, as they interact. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis allow for in-depth examination of talk and action, and are used in this study to provide a detailed account of the children’s interactional strategies. Analysis focused on features of children’s situated peer interaction, identifying three interactional resources upon which the children drew as they constructed, maintained, and transformed their social orders. The interactional resources included: justification; category work, in particular the category of mother; and the pretend formulation of place. The children used these interactional resources as a means of managing peer participation within interactions. First, the children used justification to provide reasons for their actions and to support their positions. Justifications built and reinforced individual children’s status, contributing to the social organisation of their peer group. Second, the children negotiated and oriented to categories within the pretend frame of ‘families’. The children’s talk and actions jointly-constructed the mother category as authoritative, enabling the child, within the category of mother, to effectively organise the interaction. Third, pretense was used by the children to negotiate and describe places, thus enabling them to effectively manage peer activity within these places. For a successful formulation of a place as something other than it actually was, the children had to work to produce shared understandings of the place. Examining instances of pretense demonstrated the highly collaborative nature of the children’s peer interactions. The study contributes to sociological understandings of childhood. By analysing situated episodes of children’s peer interaction, this study contributes empirical work to the sociology of childhood and insight into the interactional work of children organising their social worlds. It does this by closely analysing social interactions, as they unfold, among children. This study also makes a methodological contribution, using ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and membership categorization analysis in conjunction to analyse children’s peer interactions in an early childhood setting. In so doing, the study provides alternative ways for educators to understand children’s interactions. For example, adult educational agendas, such as the educative value of play, can be applied to examine children’s family play, highlighting the learning opportunities provided through pretend role play, or indicating children’s understanding of adult roles. Alternatively, the children’s interaction could be subjected to fine-grained analysis to explicate how children construct shared understandings of the category of mother and use it to organise their interaction. Rather than examining the interaction to discern what children are learning, the interaction is examined with a focus on how children are accomplishing everyday social practices. Close analysis of children’s everyday peer interaction enables the complex interactional work of managing, and participating in, social order within an early childhood setting to be explicated. This offers educators insight into children’s social worlds, described not as play, but as the construction and negotiation of social order.