Daily use of inhaled preventer medication is recommended for most people with asthma. However, research suggests many do not adhere to this regime. The current thesis comprises two research studies utilising the common-sense model of self-regulation as the theoretical basis to explore how people make decisions about inhaled preventer use in asthma. The purpose of Study One was to compare a self-report and an objective measure of adherence to preventer medication for asthma and to examine the illness representations and treatment beliefs associated with these measures. Accordingly, 1,936 U.K. General Practice patients who were using preventer medication for asthma completed a questionnaire assessing illness and medication perceptions and gave consent for information to be obtained from their medical records. Adherence to preventer medication was calculated from the Medication Adherence Report Scale (MARS) and an objective measure, the proportion of prescribed medication that the participant collected over the previous year. Results show that nearly nine out of ten participants (88.4%) reported some non-adherence to their preventer medication. The most common form of non-adherence was using preventer inhaler only when feeling breathless. The relationships between participants’ representations of their asthma and their beliefs about their preventer medication and adherence measures were tested using structural equation modelling. Seeing asthma as a condition that was not present when asymptomatic was associated with more non-adherence (β=.22 p<.001) and also with collecting a smaller proportion of prescribed preventer medication over the past year (β=-.15, p<.001). Seeing asthma as an acute condition, as a condition without serious consequences, and as a condition that could not be controlled by treatment were also representations associated with non-adherence. Those who did not see the need for preventer medication at all, or did not see the need for preventer medication when asymptomatic were more likely to be non-adherent. The relationship between illness representations and self-report adherence was mediated by the belief that medication was necessary. Having identified a number of key beliefs that were associated with use of preventer medication in asthma, Study Two explored the way in which these beliefs may be developed through the process of appraisal of the influence of medication use on symptom experience. Using quantitative methods, 77 patients from a New Zealand General Practice completed a questionnaire measuring the reasons for experimenting and stopping medication, illness representations and treatment beliefs. Thirty percent of the sample reported actively experimenting with their medication. These participants were more likely to hold the belief that medication did not help in the absence of symptoms (Mann-Whitney U=343.5, p<.05) and to report trying to avoid thinking about asthma (Mann-Whitney U=330.5, p<.05). Fifty-one of the participants were subsequently interviewed about their experiences with using medication and transcripts of these interviews were subjected to a qualitative analysis. Participants’ responses suggested that the process of appraising whether medication is necessary was influenced by the match between what the participant expects to happen when using the medication and what actually does happen. The process of deciding when medication is necessary is influenced by the threshold at which medication is deemed to be necessary and the speed at which symptoms return if medication is stopped. These findings have implications for the development of interventions to improve adherence to preventer medication for asthma. They suggest that a key component of self-management education is educating patients about the nature of asthma as a chronic condition that is present even in the absence of symptoms. Additionally, they provide evidence that many patients are involved in an active process of appraising the success of their medication. Health professionals should be aware of that this process is likely to be influenced by patients’ expectations of medication, the level of symptoms at which they believe action is required to control asthma and the speed at which symptoms return if medication is discontinued. Future research could take the form of a randomised controlled intervention to assess whether discussion of these factors with patients could improve quality of life for people with asthma. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

p. 1-231 / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-04-24T20:51:28Z No. of bitstreams: 2 55555555555.pdf: 485267 bytes, checksum: f7ca906ae3a45c2734e5a69cefe2b37a (MD5) 66666666666666.pdf: 1164093 bytes, checksum: 315af7474aa37a66367077e95f9b0a0b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Creuza Silva(mariakreuza@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-05-04T17:07:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 55555555555.pdf: 485267 bytes, checksum: f7ca906ae3a45c2734e5a69cefe2b37a (MD5) 66666666666666.pdf: 1164093 bytes, checksum: 315af7474aa37a66367077e95f9b0a0b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-04T17:07:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 55555555555.pdf: 485267 bytes, checksum: f7ca906ae3a45c2734e5a69cefe2b37a (MD5) 66666666666666.pdf: 1164093 bytes, checksum: 315af7474aa37a66367077e95f9b0a0b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Este trabalho apresenta uma análise do modelo adotado pelo Programa Atuação Responsável na construção dos Conselhos Consultivos CC. O recorte empírico trata do Conselho Comunitário Consultivo de Camaçari - Ba, primeiro adotado no país e que tem sido referência para a implantação de outros. Os CCs têm sido divulgados pelo setor químico industrial como ferramenta democrática, consensual e transparente, cujos objetivos são a promoção, aproximação e o diálogo entre complexos industriais e comunidades vizinhas. Ao lado disso permite estabelecer uma interação entre a percepção das comunidades e as ações das indústrias químico-petroquímicas instaladas em Camaçari, buscando a melhoria crescente nas condições de segurança, saúde e meio ambiente associadas às atividades das referidas indústrias. Dezessete entrevistas, registros de reuniões e observação participante foram as principais fontes de dados, cuja análise aponta para 3 principais características deste instrumento: falta de autonomia dos membros representantes da comunidade, ênfase no consenso e hegemonia do discurso técnicocientífico. O Conselho se constitui num sofisticado mecanismo de domesticação, docilização e responsabilização pela disseminação de uma ideologia organizacional hegemônica e de modos de governança neoliberais. Na raiz deste processo está o poder, protegido das massas e concentrado em mãos dominantes, que impossibilita a participação e o empoderamento dos segmentos populares. O consenso, considerado signo de civilidade, se apresenta mais como recurso retórico do que como prática. Embora as discussões geralmente aconteçam frente-a-frente, é permanente o risco de falseamento ou escamoteamento dos seus sentidos, pois não há compromisso explícito acerca da autonomia dos membros. As informações técnico-científicas referentes à saúde ambiental, questões ambientais de saúde e segurança do trabalhador são provenientes das empresas, não havendo outras fontes de informação para os conselheiros a não ser aquelas oriundas do senso comum. São grandes, portanto, as dificuldades de contraposição a um conhecimento socialmente legitimado, fazendo crer que o celebrado consenso é algo construído com base na omissão e perpetuação da concentração de poder. / Salvador

This thesis investigates the design of sociable technologies and is divided into three main parts described below. In the first part, we introduce sociable technologies. We review our the definition of technology and propose categories of technologies according to the motivation underlying their design: improvement of control, improvement of communication or improvement of cooperation. Sociable technologies are then presented as an extension of techniques to improve cooperation. The design of sociable technologies are then discussed leading to the observation that acquisition of social common sense is a key challenge for designing sociable technologies. Finally, polite technologies are presented as an approach for acquiring social common sense. In the second part, we focus on the premises for the design of sociable technologies. A key aspect of social common sense is the ability to act appropriately in social situations. Associating appropriate behaviour with social situations is presented as a key method for implementing polite technologies. Reinforcement learning is proposed as a method for learning such associations and variation of this algorithm are experimentally evaluated. Learning the association between situation and behaviour relies on the strong assumption that mutual understanding of social situations can be achieved between technologies and people during interaction. We argue that in order to design sociable technologies, we must change the model of communication used by our technologies. We propose to replace the well-known code model of communication, with the ostensive-inferential model proposed by Sperber and Wilson. Hypotheses raised by this approach are evaluated in an experiment conducted in a smart environment, where, subjects by group of two or three are asked to collaborate with a smart environment in order to teach it how to behave in an automated meeting. A novel experimental methodology is presented: The Sorceress of Oz. The results collected from this experiment validate our hypothesis and provide insightful information for the design. We conclude by presenting, what we believe are, the premises for the design of sociable technologies. The final part of the thesis concerns an infrastructure for the design of sociable technologies. This infrastructure provides the support for three fundamental components. First, it provides the support for an inferential model of context. This inferential model of context is presented; a software architecture is proposed and evaluated in an experiment conducted in a smart-environment. Second, it provides the support for reasoning by analogy and introduces the concept of eigensituations. The advantage of this representation are discussed and evaluated in an experiment. Finally, it provides the support for ostensive-inferential communication and introduces the concept of ostensive interface. / This thesis investigates the design of sociable technologies and is divided into three main parts described below. In the first part, we introduce sociable technologies. We review our the definition of technology and propose categories of technologies according to the motivation underlying their design: improvement of control, improvement of communication or improvement of cooperation. Sociable technologies are then presented as an extension of techniques to improve cooperation. The design of sociable technologies are then discussed leading to the observation that acquisition of social common sense is a key challenge for designing sociable technologies. Finally, polite technologies are presented as an approach for acquiring social common sense. In the second part, we focus on the premises for the design of sociable technologies. A key aspect of social common sense is the ability to act appropriately in social situations. Associating appropriate behaviour with social situations is presented as a key method for implementing polite technologies. Reinforcement learning is proposed as a method for learning such associations and variation of this algorithm are experimentally evaluated. Learning the association between situation and behaviour relies on the strong assumption that mutual understanding of social situations can be achieved between technologies and people during interaction. We argue that in order to design sociable technologies, we must change the model of communication used by our technologies. We propose to replace the well-known code model of communication, with the ostensive-inferential model proposed by Sperber and Wilson. Hypotheses raised by this approach are evaluated in an experiment conducted in a smart environment, where, subjects by group of two or three are asked to collaborate with a smart environment in order to teach it how to behave in an automated meeting. A novel experimental methodology is presented: The Sorceress of Oz. The results collected from this experiment validate our hypothesis and provide insightful information for the design. We conclude by presenting, what we believe are, the premises for the design of sociable technologies. The final part of the thesis concerns an infrastructure for the design of sociable technologies. This infrastructure provides the support for three fundamental components. First, it provides the support for an inferential model of context. This inferential model of context is presented; a software architecture is proposed and evaluated in an experiment conducted in a smart-environment. Second, it provides the support for reasoning by analogy and introduces the concept of eigensituations. The advantage of this representation are discussed and evaluated in an experiment. Finally, it provides the support for ostensive-inferential communication and introduces the concept of ostensive interface.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3797.pdf: 4434849 bytes, checksum: dbd742e0f69dad1d01f765ed8fba19a7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-09-24 / In this research we described a way to obtain a method, through a cyclical approach of work, which goals to identify people, users of social networks that are talking about the same subject. The motivation for obtaining this method came from the perceived problem in the Social Network Management Systems, which is to identify and/or group people around the same issue in order to make social touch possible among them. The differential this method is related to consider people's culture as the main point to try to identify the various forms they have to express themselves on a particular issue, and thereby to observe what people are writing about it in the social networks, considering the many ways in which people express themselves. In this context, this method makes use of cultural information get by the Open Mind Common Sense in Brazil Project (OMCS-Br), that goal to collect Brazilians&#8223; cultural knowledge (ANACLETO, 2008), in order to identify similarity of contexts among different vocabularies. With the purpose of to observe the feasibility of this method, we performed a case study with the participation of people that through questionnaires could opine on the results obtained by the method, in order to observe the feasibility of its applicability. / Este trabalho descreve a obtenção de um método, por meio de uma metodologia cíclica de trabalho, que objetiva identificar pessoas, usuários de redes sociais, que estão falando sobre um mesmo assunto. A motivação para a obtenção deste método partiu de um problema percebido em Sistemas Gerenciadores de Redes Sociais, que é identificar e/ou agrupar pessoas em torno de um mesmo assunto, a fim poder viabilizar uma possível ligação social entre elas. O diferencial desse método está relacionado em considerar a cultura das pessoas como o ponto principal para tentar identificar as diversas formas que elas têm para se expressar sobre um determinado assunto e, assim, observar quais são as pessoas que estão escrevendo sobre as mesmas coisas nas redes sociais, considerando as muitas formas como elas se expressam. Nesse contexto, esse método faz uso das informações culturais obtidas por meio do Projeto Open Mind Common Sense no Brasil (OMCS-Br), que tem como objetivo coletar o conhecimento cultural dos brasileiros (ANACLETO, 2008), a fim de identificar similaridade de contextos entre vocabulários distintos. Com o intuito de observar a viabilidade desse método, foi realizado um estudo de caso com a participação de pessoas, que por meio de questionários puderam opinar sobre os resultados obtidos pelo método, com o intuito de observar a viabilidade de sua aplicabilidade.

La thèse s’intéresse à la problématique de la répétition dans le discours. Le langage de la répétition relève de la doxa, mot que nous avons utilisé dans la thèse comme le terme générique qui englobe cette réalité complexe que Nathalie Sarraute dénonce dans son œuvre en s’attaquant au réalisme discursif. Il s’agit d’étudier dans un corpus littéraire le langage figé qui exprime des réalités figées. C’est un langage qui s’appuie sur un système de référence prototypique. Le référent est soit un objet, soit une propriété ou un processus isolable dont les réalistes considèrent qu’il existe en dehors de notre esprit. C’est le discours de la modélisation qui privilégie ce que Paul VALERY appelle dans Monsieur Teste « la machine » de langage. Ce sont les habitudes langagières qui consistent à inventer des codes d’écriture et de lecture servant de règle à toutes les communautés doxiques dans leur rapport avec le monde. Ce langage apparaît à travers l’utilisation des formes génériques et figées comme le stéréotype, le lieu commun, le cliché, le préjugé, l’idée reçue. La thèse essaie de mettre en exergue les stratégies de dénonciation d’une telle forme de discours dans le roman de Nathalie Sarraute. Elle passe en revue l’énonciation et la dénonciation des stéréotypes qui se divisent en stéréotypes de pensées et en stéréotypes de langue. / The thesis deals with the problem of repetition in speech. The language of repetition is the doxa, word that we used in the thesis as the generic term that encompasses this complex reality that Nathalie Sarraute denounces in his work by attacking the discursive realism. He is studying the set language that expresses frozen realities in a literary corpus. It is a language that relies on a prototypical reference system. The referent is either an object, either a property or a reportable process wich realists consider that there are outside our mind. It is the speech of modeling that privileges what Paul VALERY call in Mr tests the "machine language ". These are the language habits which consist in inventing of the codes of writing and reading rule for all doxa communities in their relation to the world. This language appears through the use of generic and frozen forms as the stereotype, the common place, the cliché, the prejudice, the received idea. The thesis tries to highlight strategies for the reporting of such a form of speech in the novel to Nathalie Sarraute. She will review the enunciation and the denunciation of the stereotypes that divide in stereotypes of thoughts and language stereotypes

Cette dissertation rend compte de la théorie des premiers principes de la connaissance de Thomas Reid (1710-1796), plus particulièrement, de la théorie des premiers principes de la philosophie de l'esprit, de la morale et de la politique. Dans le premier chapitre, je discute des engagements fondationnalistes de Reid dans la philosophie de l'esprit, de la morale et de la politique. Je soutiens qu'il est clairement un fondationnaliste en ce qui concerne la connaissance spéculative et morale, mais qu’il n'est pas clair qu’il conserve les engagements fondationnalistes en matière de savoir politique - les premiers principes de la politique ne sont pas des croyances évidentes en soi : ils ne sont pas justifiés depuis le début de la recherche. Par conséquent, ils n'ont pas ce qu'il faut pour être une croyance fondamentale dans une vision fondationnaliste de la structure de la connaissance. Dans le deuxième chapitre, je discute la compréhension de Reid des sources de la connaissance, à savoir, le sens commun et la connaissance de l'humanité. Je soutiens que si la philosophie de l'esprit et de la morale repose sur les premiers principes du sens commun (croyances immédiates et irrésistibles dues à la constitution originelle de l'esprit), la politique repose sur les premiers principes de la connaissance de l'humanité (croyances dues à un mélange de la sagacité et de l'expérience du philosophe politique qui vit parmi les êtres humains dans une société politique). Dans le troisième chapitre, j'essaie d'expliquer la compréhension de Reid des premiers principes de la philosophie de l'esprit, de la morale et de la politique. Je m’efforce de répondre à ces questions : Qu'est-ce qu'un principe premier de la connaissance ? Comment expliquer la distinction entre les principes des vérités contingentes et les principes des vérités nécessaires ? Quelles sont les moyens que nous avons pour identifier les premiers principes de la connaissance ? Le quatrième et dernier chapitre est entièrement consacré à la discussion du sens commun. Plus particulièrement, je discute la manière dont Reid défend les premiers principes du sens commun contre l'attaque sceptique. / This thesis aims to discuss Thomas Reid’s (1710-1796) theory of the first principles of knowledge, more particularly, the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals and politics. In the first chapter, I discuss Reid’s foundationalist commitments in philosophy of mind, morals and politics. I argue that he is clearly a foundationalist about speculative and moral knowledge, but it is not clear if he keeps foundationalist commitments with regard to political knowledge – the first principles of politics are not self-evident beliefs: they are not justified from the start and, therefore, they do not have what is needed for being basic beliefs in a foundationalist view of the structure of knowledge. In the second chapter, I discuss Reid’s understanding of the sources of speculative, moral and political knowledge, namely, common sense and knowledge of mankind. I argue that while philosophy of mind and morals are based upon the first principles of common sense – immediate and irresistible beliefs due to the original constitution of mind, politics is based upon first principles of the knowledge of mankind – beliefs that are due to a mixture of the sagacity and the experience of the political scientist who lives among other human beings in a political society. In the third chapter, I try to explain Reid’s comprehension on the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals and politics. I try to explain what a first principle of knowledge is, how to understand the distinction between the principles of contingent and necessary truths and what the means we have to identify the first principles of knowledge are. The fourth and last chapter is entirely dedicated to common sense. More particularly, I discuss how Reid defends the first principles of common sense from the skeptical attack.

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>A recent surge of research on commonsense knowledge has given the AI community new opportunities and challenges. Many studies focus on constructing commonsense knowledge representations from natural language data. However, how to learn such representations from large-scale text data is still an open question. This thesis addresses the problem through statistical script learning, which learns event representations from stereotypical event relationships using weak supervision. These event representations serve as an abundant source of commonsense knowledge to be applied in downstream language tasks. We propose three script learning models that generalize previous works with new insight. A feature-enriched model characterizes fine-grained and entity-based event properties to address specific semantics. A multi-relational model generalizes traditional script learning models which rely on one type of event relationship—co-occurrence—to a multi-relational model that considers typed event relationships, going beyond simple event similarities. A narrative graph model leverages a narrative graph to inform an event with a grounded situation to maintain a global consistency of event states. Also, pretrained language models such as BERT are used to further improve event semantics.</p><p>Our three script learning models do not rely on annotated datasets, as the cost of creating these at large scales is unreasonable. Based on weak supervision, we extract events from large collections of textual data. Although noisy, the learned event representations carry profound commonsense information, enhancing performance in downstream language tasks.</p> <p>We evaluate their performance with various intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations. In the intrinsic evaluations, although the three models are evaluated in terms of various aspects, the shared core task is Multiple Choice Narrative Cloze (MCNC), which measures the model’s ability to predict what happens next, out of five candidate events, in a given situation. This task facilitates fair comparisons between script learning models for commonsense inference. The three models were proposed in three consecutive years, from 2018 to 2020, each outperforming the previous year’s model as well as the competitors’ baselines. Our best model outperforms EventComp, a widely recognized baseline, by a large margin in MCNC: i.e., absolute accuracy improvements of 9.73% (53.86% → 63.59%). In the extrinsic evaluations, we use our models for implicit discourse sense classification (IDSC), a challenging task in which two argument spans are annotated with an implicit discourse sense; the task is to predict the sense type, which requires a deep understanding of common sense between discourse arguments. Moreover, in an additional work we touch on a more interesting group of tasks about psychological commonsense reasoning. Solving these requires reasoning about and understanding human mental states such as motivation, emotion, and desire. Our best model, an enhancement of the narrative graph model, combines the advantages of the above three works to address entity-based features, typed event relationships, and grounded context in one model. The model successfully captures the context in which events appear and interactions between characters’ mental states, outperforming previous works.</p> <div> <div> <div> <p>The main contributions of this thesis are as follows: (1) We identify the importance of entity-based features for representing commonsense knowledge with script learning. (2) We create one of the first, if not the first, script learning models that addresses the multi-relational nature between events. (3) We publicly release contextualized event representations (models) trained on large-scale newswire data. (4) We develop a script learning model that combines entity-based features, typed event relationships, and grounded context in one model, and show that it is a good fit for modeling psychological common sense.</p><p>To conclude, this thesis presents an in-depth exploration of statistical script learning, enhancing existing models with new insight. Our experimental results show that models informed with the new knowledge aspects significantly outperform previous works in both intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations. </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>

In my master’s degree project in Design at Konstfack, completed and presented during the spring semester of 2022, I combine three of my competencies: Applied knowledge in industrial design, textile and pattern construction and textile materials science. The project was carried out in contact with many different actors, in the industrial design field as well as the textile field. 92% of the garments we wash, we wash unnecessarily. Many garments are washed after just one use. Washing less reduces the wear and tear of the fabric. If we extend the life of the garment by one year, we can reduce our carbon footprint by 25%. Sweat is one of the main reasons why we wash, although the whole fabric does not need to be cleaned. Based on the collected user data, the armpit was identified as one of the primary problem areas. I am developing an absorbent patch for the armpit. This product consists of circular textile materials, in symbiosis with function and shape. The product’s imprint is traceable, as well as transparent in manufacturing. With this absorbing patch, I want to contribute to a sustainable change in the fast-fashion industry by affecting design thinking, demand and consumerism. This project focuses on how we can practice washing less, by identifying behavior patterns, material research in textiles and circular design in product development. Last but not least it is a close study of a product category and how it can be developed. Hence the title: VETT. - “common sense”.

No description available.

Many applications of neural linguistic models rely on their use as pre-trained features for downstream tasks such as dialog modeling, machine translation, and question answering. This work presents an alternate paradigm: Rather than treating linguistic embeddings as input features, we treat them as common sense knowledge repositories that can be queried using simple mathematical operations within the embedding space, without the need for additional training. Because current state-of-the-art embedding models were not optimized for this purpose, this work presents a novel embedding model designed and trained specifically for the purpose of "reasoning in the linguistic domain".Our model jointly represents single words, multi-word phrases, and complex sentences in a unified embedding space. To facilitate common-sense reasoning beyond straightforward semantic associations, the embeddings produced by our model exhibit carefully curated properties including analogical coherence and polarity displacement. In other words, rather than training the model on a smorgaspord of tasks and hoping that the resulting embeddings will serve our purposes, we have instead crafted training tasks and placed constraints on the system that are explicitly designed to induce the properties we seek. The resulting embeddings perform competitively on the SemEval 2013 benchmark and outperform state-of- the-art models on two key semantic discernment tasks introduced in Chapter 8.The ultimate goal of this research is to empower agents to reason about low level behaviors in order to fulfill abstract natural language instructions in an autonomous fashion. An agent equipped with an embedding space of sucient caliber could potentially reason about new situations based on their similarity to past experience, facilitating knowledge transfer and one-shot learning. As our embedding model continues to improve, we hope to see these and other abilities become a reality.