Yeung, Wang Chun. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Declarations / Acknowledgements / Table of Contents / Introduction --- p.1 / PART I FROM MIXED TRUTHS TO TWO-DIMENSIONALISM / Chapter Chapter One: --- "Rigidity, Descriptivism, and Direct Reference" / Chapter 1.1. --- Meaning and Reference --- p.7 / Chapter 1.2. --- Rigidity and the Dusk of Descriptivism --- p.13 / Chapter 1.3. --- Different Theories of Reference --- p.22 / Chapter 1.4. --- Apriority and Necessity --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Two-Dimensionalism / Chapter 2.1. --- Possible-World Semantics --- p.38 / Chapter 2.2. --- Two-Dimensional Semantics --- p.43 / Chapter 2.3. --- Variety of Two-Dimensionalism --- p.48 / PART II TWO-DIMENSIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS / Chapter Chapter Three: --- The Argument from Ignorance and Error / Chapter 3.1. --- A-Intension and Associated Properties --- p.59 / Chapter 3.2. --- The Argument from Ignorance and Error --- p.65 / Chapter 3.3. --- The a Priori Argument --- p.73 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- The Argument from Variability / Chapter 4.1. --- Associated Properties and Meanings --- p.88 / Chapter 4.2. --- A-Intension and Understanding --- p.90 / Chapter 4.3. --- A-Intension and Communication --- p.97 / CONCLUDING REMARKS --- p.109 / BIBLOGRAPHY --- p.112

This thesis is a collection of essays about Paxton, a small town in western Nebraska, and an exploration of the contradictions and complexities found there. It is also a reflection on the layers of history and connections that exist not only among families that have lived in these towns for generations, but in the whole town and the surrounding landscape. These layers become intricately intertwined, blurring the distinctions among landscape, people, and their experiences. In making these explorations, I also compare my experience in western Nebraska to that of other authors who have written on the Great Plains, such as Kathleen Norris and Gretel Ehrlich. Chapter I introduces the town and the historical significance it has to my family. Chapter II delves into the complications and connections I eventually discovered while living in Paxton, and Chapter III explores the difficulties of living in a small town. The collection focuses on accepting, even celebrating, the contraries that make up life in Paxton, Nebraska. / Graduation date: 1996

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Göttingen Univ., 1997-1998. / Bibliogr. p. [691]-739. Index. L'ouvrage porte à tort 119 comme numéro de collection.

It has been debated whether knowledge attributions are descriptions of the world. Descriptivists argue that they are. Non-cognitivists discover that knowledge attributions have characteristics that are not shared by paradigm cases of descriptions. Most forms of non-cognitivism therefore deny that knowledge attributions are descriptions of the world. This thesis approaches the debate using data from the ordinary use of language. It is argued that a prominent form of descriptivism, attributor contextualism, is in conflict with treating ordinary use of simple knowledge attributions as true. This treatment of ordinary language is adopted by prominent contextualists, and is what distinguishes contextualism from its main rival, invariantism. The conflict is generalized to descriptivism in general so that either descriptivism or the treatment of simple ordinary use of the language as true has to be given up. Various arguments for and against such treatment of ordinary language and descriptivism’s alternative, non-cognitivism, are examined respectively. It is held that although many forms of non-cognitivism are problematic, whether non-cognitivism is a true thesis still remains open. It is also argued that despite its initial plausibility, the treatment of simple ordinary use of indicative language as true is not as attractive as it first appears to be. Since we are not forced to accept treating simple ordinary knowledge attributions as true, as far as the conflict between the two goes, we are not forced to give up descriptivism, either. However, non-cognitivism remains an attractive alternative to descriptivism. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Master / Master of Philosophy

An important sub-field of machine learning is the inductive formation of a pertinent class description. Given a collection of positive and negative examples of the concept, the aim is to create a description not only capable of correctly classifying the training examples, but one able to be used predictively on unseen examples. This thesisi nvestigatesth e problemo f inductivec onceptf ormation in poorly understood domains.M any well-understoodp roblemse xist wheret he individual attribute-valueuss ed to describee xamplesv ary systematicallyw ith categorym embership.O ften this meanst hat such descriptions are sufficient to identify significant regularities in the concept. In contrastm, anyr eal-worldp roblemsa rep oorly understoodi,. e . examplesa re describedb y a relatively large number of seemingly irrelevant attributes (because expertise is often unavailablet o specify a suitable level of abstractionw hen measurementas re initially recorded). The fundamentaal ssumptionb eing that when combinedi n somew ay, these attributes are complete enough to identify the target concept. This initial language insufficiency,o ften causedb y concealeda ttributei nteractionp resentsp roblemsf or many current induction algorithms which typically reply on uncovering simpler correlations. For all but the simplestp roblems,t he combinatoriale xplosiona ssociatedw ith unconstrained hypothesis generation means that the inductive process must employ more intelligent mechanisms. A two-stage solution is proposed based on first identifying whether the initial problem formulation has the potential to cause difficulties for typical inductive learners. A qualitative measure based on a novel information theoretic function is used to gauge the absence of conditional dependencies between attributes. This approach is compared to other current identification measures, in particular a bias towards misleading estimates of concept difficulty due to irrelevant attributes is addressed. Once the level of attribute interaction has been estimated one of two learning components is selected for acquiring the relevant concept. For low to moderate degrees of attribute interaction, a general-to-specific beam search is utilised. However this mechanism focuses the induction process on the most promising hypotheses by utilising relative assessment measures i. e. the degree with which a specialised hypothesis improves with respect to its constituent parts. This relative improvement becomes increasingly important as conditional dependencies increase. In addition, a pair of relative bounds are calculated for each hypothesis based on the assessmenht euristic used for validation whilst learning. These bounds place limits on the number of negative examples a hypothesis can cover and still outperform its best constituent part. These bounds result in a substantial reduction in the number of poor hypotheses generated during concept formation. For extremel evels of featurei nteraction,a specific-to-generagl reedy searcht echniquei s employed. This approach is more likely to uncover hidden interactions than approaches that begin hypothesisf ormationb asedo n one-dimensionapl rojections. This combination of search direction and a heuristic based on Minimum Description Length, ensures that highly conditional dependenciecsa n be pinpointed. In addition a number of speedup operatorsa re developedw hich curtail the numbero f tentativeh ypothesesg enerateda nd alsor esulti n fewerp roblemsa ssociatedw ith local searchs pacem inima.

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The increasing demand on multimedia communication over wired and wireless networks imposes a continuous pressure on developing more robust coding schemes. Recently, joint source-channel coding with multiple description codes has become an attractive solution to ensure robust communication over noisy channels. In this thesis, we conduct analysis and design of multiple description codes for wired and wireless communication channels. First, a multiple description quantizer (MDQ) design method based on channel optimized quantization is developed. The proposed multiple channel optimized quantizer design scheme does not require index assignment and offers the benefit of resilience to both symbol and erasure errors. Low complexity MDQ is further explored and used to build a multiple description audio coder. Next, the advantages of employing multiple description coding over multiple-input multiple-output wireless channels are investigated. Information theoretical analysis is conducted and practical MDQ codes are designed. Finally, a new E-model based performance measure accounting for both rate-distortion performance and delay impairment is proposed to compare multiple description coding and layered coding for communication over packet networks. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-28 15:07:27.322

The project presents the interesting sights and places in Indianapolis using both pictures and German texts. It would be possible for German visitors in Indianapolis to enjoy their visit more by means of this project. Also included is the history of 'the city with interesting comments on the German contribution to the development of Indianapolis. In the appendix the reader finds the history of the three German societies still active in the city.All pictures were also taken by the degree candidate.

Techn. Hochsch., Diss.--Aachen, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [235] - 244) and index.

Texte remanié de: Inaug.-Diss.--Literaturwissenschaft--Bochum, 1978. / Bibliogr. p. 169-173.