Inference is an important strategy that could be applied in listening activities. It could help one to grasp the meanings of an oral message by analysing textual and contextual information. When the listener has difficulties in activities because of his poor linguistic skills, it is strongly recommended that he apply the inference strategy efficiently. But how and to what degree does this strat...

Taken literally, the term “requirements engineering” (RE) is a misnomer. A requirement is something that is wanted; engineering, according to Webster’s, is calculated manipulation. If our wants would arise by calculated manipulation, then something would be wrong. Our wants should not be engineered. What should be engineered, are solutions that meet our wants. So what is requirements engineerin...

Designing cognitive tutors and modeling behavior for ill-defined domains require innovative methods and techniques. We combine a top-down, theoretical approach with a bottom-up, empirical approach to develop a student model for the selection of aspect in French verbs. In performing this task, we design a new representation applicable to feature-driven ill-defined problem spaces and utilize tuto...

I consider phenomenological changes in the standard solar model with the goal of testing recent claims that the solar neutrino puzzle requires new particle physics. The assumption of a steady-state sun producing the correct luminosity and governed by standard microphysics appears to leave only one nonstandard solar model possibility open, slow mixing of the solar core on timescales characterist...

Researchers investigated the effects of a read-aloud modification on students' performance on a reading comprehension test. A total of 338 students in Grades 4 and 5 participated; 76 of these students (22%) received special education services, the majority of whom were labeled learning disabled. Students completed a standardized reading comprehension test under two conditions: (a) standard admi...

In this review talk I cover some recent developments in understanding the role that magnetic fields play in cataclysmic variables. I discuss the recent DNO–QPO unification models; the disk–magnetosphere boundary; some issues concerning the soft blackbody component and the nature of the X-ray spectra in MCVs; whether the SW Sex stars are magnetic, and finally I mention the weird behavior of FS A...

This paper reports on a pilot study that is concerned with the cognitive aspects of reading in an electronic environment. The study focuses on text based electronic documents. A cognitive model for hypertext document reading proposed in an earlier work is here developed and validated with the use of think aloud protocols. The model is concerned with the general cognitive processes that take pla...

Some theorists argue that the node-link design of the Web mimics human information storage and that Web use encourages individuals to process information efficiently and effectively, potentially increasing meaningful learning. However, critics claim that Web navigation increases cognitive load and often produces disorientation. This reduces the processing devoted to meaningful learning, and, th...

Collective decision making is the process of mapping the individual views of several individual agents into a joint decision. The need for collective decision making mechanisms is abundant, not just in the realm of politics, but also for a wide range of scientific and technological applications. These include, for instance, logistics, grid computing, and recommender systems. The alternatives to...

The concept of a program in answer set programming is constantly evolving as additional constructs are being added to the basic syntax used in the original definition of a stable model: second negation, disjunction and negation in heads of rules, choice rules, cardinality constraints and other aggregates. The future may bring us new extensions, motivated both by applications of ASP and by consi...