Underspecification-based algorithms for processing partially disambiguated discourse structure must cope with extremely high numbers of readings. Based on previous work on dominance graphs and weighted tree grammars, we provide the first possibility for computing an underspecified discourse description and a best discourse representation efficiently enough to process even the longest discourses...

We present the first algorithm that computes optimal orderings of sentences into a locally coherent discourse. The algorithm runs very efficiently on a variety of coherence measures from the literature. We also show that the discourse ordering problem is NP-complete and cannot be approximated.

The Internet enables entirely new forms of interactive mass communication, which require novel ways of sociotechnological system design. It is argued that the e-democracy domain is an ideal field of application for what is here called ‘social intelligence design’. We suggest that the democratic and communicative potential of the Internet can be exploited in order to help strengthening the legit...

It is widely accepted that users should be involved in interactive systems development. However, involving users is often difficult and quite rare in software development organizations, especially in the context of product development, referring to the development of commercial software products or systems. This paper critically examines the position of user involvement in three software develo...

Background: Physical activity, whether in water or on land, can improve motor disorders in the elderly. However, the more effective type of exercise remains inconspicuous. Aim: To compare the effects of aquatic and land-based exercises on the bio-motor abilities of elderly men. Method: This clinical trial was performed on 60 elderly men visiting Imamat and Daneshamuz health centers in Mashhad, ...

Since the late 1990s political leaders in several African countries have pursued legislation to expand criminal penalties for same-sex sex. Yet, much of the research on efforts to expand criminalization of same-sex sexualities in Africa has focused on individual country cases, neglecting the role of national and transnational sociopolitical contexts and economic flows. Focusing on discourses pr...

In political speeches, the audience tends to react or resonate to signals of persuasive communication, including an expected theme, a name or an expression. Automatically predicting the impact of such discourses is a challenging task. In fact nowadays, with the huge amount of textual material that flows on the Web (news, discourses, blogs, etc.), it can be useful to have a measure for testing t...

Event-related potentials were used to investigate whether semantic integration in discourse is influenced by the number of intervening sentences between the endpoints of integration. Readers read discourses in which the last sentence contained a critical word that was either congruent or incongruent with the information introduced in the first sentence. Furthermore, for the short discourses, th...