The aim of the present study was to investigate whether learning a meaningless phonological word-form, can affect its ability to compete with other words shortly after it was learned. According to previous experimental work we expected that a semantic referent (Leach & Samuel, 2007), and/or consolidation over a significant amount of time (Gaskell& Dumay, 2003) are necessary for a novel word-form to be able to engage in lateral inhibition with other words. In order to examine this we used the experimental design that was used by Dahan, Magnuson, Tanenhaus and Hogan (2001). Experiment 1 was a replication of the Dahan et al (2001) study. In Experiment 2 we added a condition in which a novel word was now assigned the role of the competitor, by inserting a nonword learning task (that was performed right before the Dahan task). The goal was to see whether any differences would arise between this new novel-word condition and the nonword condition. The results from Experiment 2 were inconclusive due to the stimulus set and this is why we conducted Experiment 3, which was similar to Experiment 2, but had a different stimulus set. The results of Experiment 3 showed that, in contrast to the predictions, a novel word can compete with other words, even if it does not have meaning and, moreover, this happens immediately after training. These findings indicate that 1) a word does not have to be complete (i.e. include semantic information) in order to compete with other words and 2) connections between novel and known words can form faster than what has been suggested.

The problem of resource allocation and management in the context of multiple crises occurring in an urban environment is challenging. In this thesis, the problem is formulated using game theory and a solution is developed based on the Nash equilibrium to optimize the allocation of resources to the different crisis events in a fair manner considering several constraints such as the availability of resources, the criticality of the events, the amount of resources requested etc. The proposed approach is targeted at managing small to medium level crisis events occurring simultaneously within a specific pre-defined perimeter with the resource allocation centers being located within the same fixed region. The objective is to maximize the utilization of the emergency response units while minimizing the response times. In the proposed model, players represent the crisis events and the strategies correspond to possible allocations. The choice of strategies by each player impacts the decisions of the other players. The Nash equilibrium condition will correspond to the set of strategies chosen by all the players such that the resource allocation optimal for a given player also corresponds to the optimal allocations of the other players. The implementation of the Nash equilibrium condition is based on the Hansen's combinatorial theorem based approximation algorithm. The proposed solution has been implemented using C++ and experimental results are presented for various test cases. Further, metrics are developed for establishing the quality and fairness of the obtained results.

The intent of this essay is to shed light on the relevance and meaning of the concept of ”form” in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Drawing on his early texts as well as on the published notes of his first course held at the Collège de France, we argue that the notion of form essentially carries two meanings in the thought of the philosopher. One epistemological, stating that the perceived always assumes the figure-ground structure (signifying a figurative dimension of form). Another ontological according to which form designates the originary manifestation of the world in the event of expression (signifying a genetic dimension of form). Finally, we argue that the interplay of these two dimension of form lead Merleau-Ponty to an intuitive understanding of rhythm as the sensible manifestation of form, suggesting a potentially fruitful encounter, converging upon this notion, with the thought of Henri Maldiney.

No description available.

Using Foucault’s notion of a dispositif or social apparatus, this thesis charts the pedagogical relations established in contemporary literacy discourse in terms of a space of visibility and a form of sayability, and analyses them as operating within power-knowledge. It furthers this analysis by conceptualising the space of literacy as a normative heterotopia and as a recent mutation of bio-power, the government of the developing body. Such analysis problematises the discourse of literacy, from the term’s systematic indefiniteness to its real effectivity in producing subjects, spaces and disciplinary techniques. Literacy combines and interrelates a nineteenth-century establishment and a twentieth-century rearrangement of pedagogical space. The national language, the developing child, as well as the world of demands and national progress: all emerge as part of the nineteenth-century educational state, forming a set of disciplinary procedures, a structure of perception and a desire to recognise and utilise language development. Literacy discourse appropriates these knowledges and multiplies the sites in which they operate. It articulates the recognition and enablement of non-standard literacies with the governmental project of intensifying and directing the powers of a population. The pedagogical relations operationalised in literacy discourse project a continuous disciplinary power over a general social space. Thus, literacy has become both a common and much theorised social concern, and a term which structures lives, spaces, discourse and power. / Beginning with a close analysis of a recent education policy document, this thesis looks at the deployment of literacy as a way of organising experience through discourse and as a means of modulating the relations between three historically constituted terms: the student, the text, and the world. Schooling and literacy thus insert themselves into a machinery of social production and into the production of everyday concerns and processes. Consequently, literacy enters into our most material and non-linguistic moments through a teleological arrangement of time and space, a pedagogisation which is at the same time a textualisation of existence.

Abstract not available

Encoding the shape of objects within the visual environment is one of the important roles of the visual system. This thesis investigates the proposition that human sensitivity to a broad range of closed-contour shapes is underpinned by multiple shape channels (Loffler, Wilson, & Wilkinson, 2003). Radial frequency (RF) contours are a novel type of stimulus that can be used to represent simple and complex shapes; they are created by sinusoidally modulating the radius of a circle, where the number of cycles of modulation defines the RF number (Wilkinson, Wilson, & Habak, 1998). This thesis uses RF contours to enhance our understanding of the visual processes which support shape perception. The first part of the thesis combines low and high RF components, which Loffler et al. have suggested are detected by separate global and local processes respectively, onto a single contour and shows that, even when combined, the components are detected independently at threshold. The second part of the thesis combines low RF components from across the range where global processing has been demonstrated (up to approximately RF10) onto a single contour in order to test for interactions between them. The resulting data reveal that multiple narrow-band contour shape channels are required to account for performance, and also indicate that these shape channels have inhibitory connections between them. The third part of the thesis examines the local characteristics which are used to represent shape information within these channels. The results show that both the breadth (polar angle subtended) of individual curvature features, and their relative angular positions (in relation to object centre) are important for representing RF shapes; however, processing is IV not tuned for object size, or for modulation amplitude. In addition, we show that luminance and contrast cues are effectively combined at the level where these patterns are detected, indicating a single later processing stage is adequate to explain performance for these pattern characteristics. Overall the findings show that narrow-band shape channels are a useful way to explain sensitivity to a broad range of closed-contour shapes. Modifications to the current RF detection model (Poirier & Wilson, 2006) are required to incorporate inhibitory connections between shape channels and also, to accommodate the effective integration of luminance and contrast cues.

In 1960 Louis Kahn’s theoretical concerns began to focus on a concept which he called “form”, not meaning a building’s three dimensional shape, but the essence of its underlying type. The current study considers Kahn’s post-1960 concept of “form”, as espoused in his 1961 article, “Form and Design”, in relation to Plato’s theory of Forms, as that theory is presented in The Republic. A deeper appreciation of Kahn’s text is achieved through an examination of the hypothesis that the word “form”, as it is defined in Kahn’s article, is congruous with Plato’s famous concept, whereby Forms are said to be independent of humans and particulars. This leads to a related hypothesis, that Kahn’s shift in emphasis towards transcendent types is reflected in his development of what could be called Platonising architectural strategies, because they reflect parallel aims between Plato and Kahn. While Kahn and Plato are quite different figures, separated by time, profession and intentions, consideration of Plato’s treatment of the Forms in The Republic illuminates a new interpretation of “Form and Design” and the building which is most closely associated with that text, Kahn’s First Unitarian Church and School in Rochester. The thesis identifies ideas within Kahn’s text which resonate with Plato’s philosophy, suggesting that Kahn’s theory can be interpreted through notions stemming from the early moments of the Western philosophical tradition. It also identifies inconsistencies between Kahn’s text and Plato’s and between various statements made by Kahn, highlighting the fact that Kahn’s philosophical musings are not those of a trained philosopher. / PhD Doctorate

Recent research has shown that it is often preferable to encode real-world problems as propositional satisfiability (SAT) problems and then solve using a general purpose SAT solver. However, much of the valuable information and structure of these realistic problems is flattened out and hidden inside the corresponding Conjunctive Normal Form (CNF) encodings of the SAT domain. Recently, systematic SAT solvers have been progressively improved and are now able to solve many highly structured practical problems containing millions of clauses. In contrast, state-of-the-art Stochastic Local Search (SLS) solvers still have difficulty in solving structured problems, apparently because they are unable to exploit hidden structure as well as the systematic solvers. In this thesis, we study and evaluate different ways to effectively recognise, model and efficiently exploit useful structures hidden in realistic problems. A summary of the main contributions is as follows: 1. We first investigate an off-line processing phase that applies resolution-based pre-processors to input formulas before running SLS solvers on these problems. We report an extensive empirical examination of the impact of SAT pre-processing on the performance of contemporary SLS techniques. It emerges that while all the solvers examined do indeed benefit from pre-processing, the effects of different pre-processors are far from uniform across solvers and across problems. Our results suggest that SLS solvers need to be equipped with multiple pre-processors if they are ever to match the performance of systematic solvers on highly structured problems. [Part of this study was published at the AAAI-05 conference]. 2. We then look at potential approaches to bridging the gap between SAT and constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) formalisms. One approach has been to develop a many-valued SAT formalism (MV-SAT) as an intermediate paradigm between SAT and CSP, and then to translate existing highly efficient SAT solvers to the MV-SAT domain. In this study, we follow a different route, developing SAT solvers that can automatically recognise CSP structure hidden in SAT encodings. This allows us to look more closely at how constraint weighting can be implemented in the SAT and CSP domains. Our experimental results show that a SAT-based mechanism to handle weights, together with a CSP-based method to instantiate variables, is superior to other combinations of SAT and CSP-based approaches. In addition, SLS solvers based on this many-valued weighting approach outperform other existing approaches to handle many-valued CSP structures. [Part of this study was published at the AAAI-05 conference]. 3. Finally, we propose and evaluate six different schemes to encode temporal reasoning problems, in particular the Interval Algebra (IA) networks, into SAT CNF formulas. We then empirically examine the performance of local search as well as systematic solvers on the new temporal SAT representations, in comparison with solvers that operate on native IA representations. Our empirical results show that zChaff (a state-of-the-art complete SAT solver) together with the best IA-to-SAT encoding scheme, can solve temporal problems significantly faster than existing IA solvers working on the equivalent native IA networks. [Part of this study was published at the CP-05 workshop].

This thesis analyses 'incomplete sentences' in languages which utilise distinctively agglutinative components in their morphology. In the grammars of the languages dealt with in this thesis, there are certain types of sentences which are variously referred to as 'elliptical sentences' (Turkish eksiltili c�mleler), 'incomplete sentences' (Uzbek to'liqsiz gaplar), 'cut-off sentences' (Turkish kesik c�mleler), etc., for which the grammarians provide elaborated semantic and syntactic analyses. The current work attempts to present an alternative approach for the analysis of such sentences. The distribution of morphemes in incomplete sentences is examined closely, based on which a system of analysis that can handle a variety of incomplete sentences in an integrated manner is proposed from a morphological point of view. It aims to aid grammarians as well as researchers in area studies by providing a simple description of incomplete sentences in agglutinative languages. The linguistic data are taken from Turkish, Uzbek, and Japanese, with special reference to (Bukharan) Tajik.