This study presents a methodological and conceptual framework that allows for the integration and creation of knowledge across professional borders in the field of environmental simulation. The framework has been developed on the basis of interviews with leading international practitioners, key theories of environmental performance in architecture and engineering, and a range of simulation expe...

The attitude one has towards language learning determines the success or failure of learning the language. To this effect, this study aimed to explore EFL learners’ attitudes towards communicative language learning and the relationship between learners’ attitudes and English language achievement. To address these objectives, the study adopted a survey research design. Two hundred seventeen grad...

The attitude one has towards language learning determines the success or failure of learning the language. To this effect, this study aimed to explore EFL learners’ attitudes towards communicative language learning and the relationship between learners’ attitudes and English language achievement. To address these objectives, the study adopted a survey research design. Two hundred seventeen grad...

PURPOSE To verify whether the use of a shorter filmed sample influences the results of pragmatic assessment in children with language impairment. METHODS Data was obtained from videotaped samples and protocols for pragmatic analysis of 30 children between 3 and 6 years old. Each 15-minute sample (total moment) was analyzed and divided into three moments with five minutes each (initial, medial...

In this paper we develop a logical framework for specifying and verifying systems of communicating agents. The framework is based on a Dynamic Linear Time Temporal Logic (DLTL). It provides a simple formalization of the communicative actions in terms of their effects and preconditions and the specification of an interaction protocol by means of temporal constraints. We adopt a social approach t...

Attempts to alleviate land degradation and water scarcity in arid/semi-arid regions of India have historically been carried out within the ambit of government schemes implemented disparately by concerned departments. These sectoral methods are being increasingly replaced by a watershed-based approach in which local communities are encouraged to assume ownership of development programs, albeit w...

The rise of the discourse of sustainable development has been fraught with conflict. Initial conceptual ambiguities have led to a conflictual understanding of the meaning of sustainable development, and the basis for action that this understanding implies. This thesis employs a Habermasian analytical framework to assess the competing views on the relationship between sustainable development and...

This work demonstrates that our natural language understanding framework can be applied across application domains and languages with ease. Approaches towards language understanding generally involve much handcrafting, e.g. in writing grammars or annotating corpora, hence portability is a desirable trait in the development of language understanding systems. Our framework for natural language un...