We investigate using the PARADISE framework to develop predictive models of system performance in our spoken dialogue tutoring system. We represent performance with two metrics: user satisfaction and student learning. We train and test predictive models of these metrics in our tutoring system corpora. We predict user satisfaction with 2 parameter types: 1) system-generic, and 2) tutoringspecifi...

1834), the English Romantic poet, wrote, “If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he [awakes]—Aye, what then?” Coleridge’s scenario is not hypothetical. On the edge of death, millions of people have passed through what seems to them a paradise. This phenomeno...

Birds-of-paradise are nature's prime examples of the evolution of color by sexual selection. Their brilliant, structurally colored feathers play a principal role in mating displays. The structural coloration of both the occipital and breast feathers of the bird-of-paradise Lawes' parotia is produced by melanin rodlets arranged in layers, together acting as interference reflectors. Light reflect...