This article reviews eight proposed strategies for solving the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP), which was given its classic formulation in Harnad (1990). After a concise introduction, we provide an analysis of the requirement that must be satisfied by any hypothesis seeking to solve the SGP, the zero semantical commitment condition. We then use it to assess the eight strategies, which are organi...

Daniel L. Dvorak Systems and Software Division Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology “The demand for complex hardware/software systems has increased more rapidly than the ability to design, implement, test, and maintain them. ... It is the integrating potential of software that has allowed designers to contemplate more ambitious systems encompassing a broader and more mul...

The unusual mixed public-private structure of the urban bus market in the metropolitan area of Barcelona provides an interesting context in which to analyze the management challenges and opportunities of the partial privatization of public services. Initiatives used by the public regulator to promote competition for contracts, such as short term concessions to private contractors and the remova...

This work exposes some observations on "shaking vowels". These vowels containing a tremolo-like sound are present in amused speech. Some of the temporal and spectral patterns are exposed and observations are given concerning them. This work is a preliminary step towards being able to use these "shaking vowels" along with speech-smiles, speechlaughs and laughter to control the degree of amusemen...

The inheritance class hierarchy is an important characteristic of object orientation. Many aspects of inheritance mechanisms remain controversial. Among others, many questions about the necessity of multiple inheritance have been put forward. Another contribution is given to this question by our experimental study. Dvorak [1994] revealed the phenomenon of conceptual entropy in class hierarchies...

Background. Reliable ICU severity scores have been achieved by various healthcare workers but nothing is known regarding the accuracy in real life of severity scores registered by untrained nurses. Methods. In this retrospective multicentre audit, three reviewers independently reassessed 120 SAPS II scores. Correlation and agreement of the sum-scores/variables among reviewers and between nurses...

People are prone to errors in many aspects of life, including when entering numbers. The effects of these errors can be disastrous, for example when an incorrect number is entered when programming a medical infusion pump or when entering financial information into a system. Designing better systems may help to prevent these errors however, in order to do this we need to understand far more abou...

Standard models fail to reproduce observed prices of vanilla options because implied volatilities exhibit a term structure of smiles. We consider time-inhomogeneous Lévy processes to overcome these limitations. Then the scope of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, we apply measure changes in the spirit of Geman et al., to simplify the valuation problem for various options. On the other han...

In this paper we present an evaluation study on mimicry performed by an Embodied Conversational Agent while being a listener during an interaction with a human user. Through an experimental setting, we analyze humans’ reactions to agent’s mimicry, in particular in relation with smiles. Results show that the agent’s behavior influences the user’s.