Behavior of geographic objects holds a critical role in spatial databases. This, along with objects’ position and space-varying attributes, form a minimal set of concepts sufficient to capture spatial peculiarities in terms of the object-oriented rational. We present the semantics and the graphical notation of a prototypical object-oriented model for the conceptual design of spatial databases: ...

The application of phylogenetic techniques to the documentation of cultural history can present a distorted picture due to horizontal transmission and blending. Moreover, the units of cultural transmission must be communicable concepts, rather than conveniently measurable attributes, and relatedness between elements of culture often resides at the conceptual level, something not captured by phy...

We give an overview of the SIRUP (Semantic Integration Reflecting User-specific semantic Perspectives) approach to semantic data integration that takes into account heterogeneity of data receivers. Our goal is to provide means that allow data from heterogeneous sources to be integrated in a way that it perfectly fits to a particular user’s information needs, emphasizing his individual way to pe...

Eye movements made by listeners during language-mediated visual search reveal a strong link between visual processing and conceptual processing. For example, upon hearing the word for a missing referent with a characteristic colour (e.g., "strawberry"), listeners tend to fixate a colour-matched distractor (e.g., a red plane) more than a colour-mismatched distractor (e.g., a yellow plane). We as...

The lateral prefrontal cortex has been implicated in a wide variety of functions that guide our behavior, and one such candidate function is selection. Selection mechanisms have been described in several domains spanning different stages of processing, from visual attention to response execution. Here, we consider two such mechanisms: selecting relevant information from the perceptual world (e....

HowNet is an on-line common-sense knowledge base unveiling inter-conceptual relations and inter-attribute relations of concepts as connoting in lexicons of the Chinese and their English equivalents [1]. Each concept is represented and understood by their definition and association links to other concepts. To Compare with WordNet, HowNet’s architecture provides richer information apart from hypo...

In this paper, we examine Decision Graphs, a generalization of decision trees. We present an inference scheme to construct decision graphs using the Minimum Message Length Principle. Empirical tests demonstrate that this scheme compares favourably with other decision tree inference schemes. This work provides a metric for comparing the relative merit of the decision tree and decision graph form...

Research in student knowledge and learning of science has typically focused on explaining conceptual change. Recent research, however, documents the great degree to which student thinking is dynamic and context-sensitive, implicitly calling for explanations not only of change but also of stability. In other words: When a pattern of student reasoning is sustained in specific moments and settings...