Turing-, Human- and Physical Computability: An Unasked Question

In recent years it has been convincingly argued that the Church-Turing thesis concerns the bounds of human computability: The thesis was presented and justified as formally delineating the class of functions that can be computed by a human carrying out an algorithm. Thus the Thesis needs to be distinguished from the so-called Physical Church-Turing thesis (or Thesis M), according to which all physically computable functions are Turing computable. The latter is often claimed to be false, or, if true, contingently so. On all accounts, though, thesis M is not easy to give counterexamples to, but it is never asked why—how come that a thesis that transfers a notion from the strictly human domain to the general physical domain just happens to be so difficult to falsify (or even to be true). In this paper I articulate this question and consider several tentative answers to it.

Legal concepts as inferential nodes and ontological categories

I shall compare two views of legal concepts: as nodes in inferential nets and as categories in an ontology (a conceptual architecture). Firstly, I shall introduce the inferential approach, consider its implications, and distinguish the mere possession of an inferentially defined concept from the belief in the concept’s applicability, which also involves the acceptance of the concept’s constitutive inferences. For making this distinction, the inferential and eliminative analysis of legal concepts proposed by Alf Ross will be connected to the views on theoretical concepts in science advanced by Frank Ramsey and Rudolf Carnap. Consequently, the mere comprehension of a legal concept will be distinguished from the application of the concept to a particular legal system, since application presupposes a doctrinal commitment, namely, the belief that the inferences constituting the concept hold in that system. Then, I shall consider how concepts can be characterised by defining the corresponding terms and placing them within an ontology. Finally, I shall argue that there is a tension between the inferential and the ontological approach, but that both need to be taken into account, to capture the meaning and the cognitive function of legal concepts.     

Quantity of experience: brain-duplication and degrees of consciousness

If a brain is duplicated so that there are two brains in identical states, are there then two numerically distinct phenomenal experiences or only one? There are two, I argue, and given computationalism, this has implications for what it is to implement a computation. I then consider what happens when a computation is implemented in a system that either uses unreliable components or possesses varying degrees of parallelism. I show that in some of these cases there can be, in a deep and intriguing sense, a fractional (non-integer) number of qualitatively identical phenomenal experiences. This, in turn, has implications for what lessons one should draw from neural replacement scenarios such as Chalmers’ “Fading Qualia” thought experiment.     

Recursion Hypothesis Considered as a Research Program for Cognitive Science

Humans grasp discrete infinities within several cognitive domains, such as in language, thought, social cognition and tool-making. It is sometimes suggested that any such generative ability is based on a computational system processing hierarchical and recursive mental representations. One view concerning such generativity has been that each of the mind’s modules defining a cognitive domain implements its own recursive computational system. In this paper recent evidence to the contrary is reviewed and it is proposed that there is only one supramodal computational system with recursion in the human mind. A recursion thesis is defined, according to which the hominin cognitive evolution is constituted by a recent punctuated genetic mutation that installed the general, supramodal capacity for recursion into the human nervous system on top of the existing, evolutionarily older cognitive structures, and it is argued on the basis of empirical evidence and theoretical considerations that the recursion thesis constitutes a plausible research program for cognitive science.     

MT model space: statistical versus compositional versus example-based machine translation

We offer a perspective on EBMT from a statistical MT standpoint, by developing a three-dimensional MT model space based on three pairs of definitions: (1) logical versus statistical MT, (2) schema-based versus example-based MT, and (3) lexical versus compositional MT. Within this space we consider the interplay of three key ideas in the evolution of transfer, example-based, and statistical approaches to MT. We depict how all translation models face these issues in one way or another, regardless of the school of thought, and suggest where the real questions for the future may lie.     

Proving the Asymmetry Thesis Principles for a BDI Agent-Oriented Programming Language

In this paper, we consider each of the nine principles of BDI logics as defined by Rao and Georgeff based on Bratman's asymmetry thesis, and we verify which ones are satisfied by Rao's AgentSpeak(L), a computable logic language inspired by the BDI architecture for cognitive agents. This is in line with Rao's original motivation for defining AgentSpeak(L): to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of BDI agent systems. In order to set the grounds for the proof, we first introduce a particular way in which to define the informational, motivational, and deliberative modalities of BDI logics for AgentSpeak(L) agents, according to its structural operational semantics (that we introduced in a recent paper). This provides a framework that can be used to investigate further properties of AgentSpeak(L) agents, contributing towards giving firm theoretical grounds for BDI agent programming.     

Is the Church-Turing thesis true?

The Church-Turing thesis makes a bold claim about the theoretical limits to computation. It is based upon independent analyses of the general notion of an effective procedure proposed by Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930's. As originally construed, the thesis applied only to the number theoretic functions; it amounted to the claim that there were no number theoretic functions which couldn't be computed by a Turing machine but could be computed by means of some other kind of effective procedure. Since that time, however, other interpretations of the thesis have appeared in the literature. In this paper I identify three domains of application which have been claimed for the thesis: (1) the number theoretic functions; (2) all functions; (3) mental and/or physical phenomena. Subsequently, I provide an analysis of our intuitive concept of a procedure which, unlike Turing's, is based upon ordinary, everyday procedures such as recipes, directions and methods; I call them mundane procedures. I argue that mundane procedures can be said to be effective in the same sense in which Turing machine procedures can be said to be effective. I also argue that mundane procedures differ from Turing machine procedures in a fundamental way, viz., the former, but not the latter, generate causal processes. I apply my analysis to all three of the above mentioned interpretations of the Church-Turing thesis, arguing that the thesis is (i) clearly false under interpretation (3), (ii) false in at least some possible worlds (perhaps even in the actual world) under interpretation (2), and (iii) very much open to question under interpretation (1).     

Distributed shortest-path protocols for time-dependent networks

 This paper addresses algorithms for networks whose behavior changes with time according to known functions. Because the computation depends on the same functions it attempts to compute, its execution must obey strict timing constraints. When distributed versions of such algorithms are considered, a key difficulty is how to transfer local timing functions among the participating nodes. To that end it is necessary to characterize the parameterization of the functions and accommodate this parameterization in the computation. In particular, we consider the shortest-path problem in networks in which the delay of the edges changes with time according to continuous functions. We present distributed protocols for finding the shortest and minimum delay path under various waiting constraints. We investigate and analyze protocols that exchange local time-delay functions only within limited intervals yet allow every node to calculate its representation in the shortest path in time for it to be used. Received: November 1992 / Accepted: December 1995     

Multi-tag and multi-owner RFID ownership transfer in supply chains

In any supply chain, there is a high likelihood for individual objects to change ownership at least once in their lifetime. As RFID tags enter the supply chain, these RFID-tagged objects should ideally be able to seamlessly accommodate ownership transfer issues while also accomplishing their primary intended purpose. Physical ownership transfer does not translate to strict ownership transfer in the presence of RFID tags given the wireless nature of communication with these tags. Moreover, whereas existing protocols implicitly assume a single tag that is owned by a single entity, it is not uncommon to encounter scenarios where tag ownership is shared among multiple entities. A dual of this is the case of an object with multiple tags. We consider ownership transfer scenarios for shared ownership transfer and single object with multiple RFID tags. In the multiple-tagged object case, we consider the possibility where objects gain and lose tags over time. We also present a protocol for simultaneous transfer of ownership of multiple tags between owners. Since ownership transfer without a trusted third party (TTP) is difficult to achieve, we propose a shared ownership sharing protocol and evaluate its properties.     

Symbolic-to-statistical hybridization: extending generation-heavy machine translation

The last few years have witnessed an increasing interest in hybridizing surface-based statistical approaches and rule-based symbolic approaches to machine translation (MT). Much of that work is focused on extending statistical MT systems with symbolic knowledge and components. In the brand of hybridization discussed here, we go in the opposite direction: adding statistical bilingual components to a symbolic system. Our base system is Generation-heavy machine translation (GHMT), a primarily symbolic asymmetrical approach that addresses the issue of Interlingual MT resource poverty in source-poor/target-rich language pairs by exploiting symbolic and statistical target-language resources. GHMT’s statistical components are limited to target-language models, which arguably makes it a simple form of a hybrid system. We extend the hybrid nature of GHMT by adding statistical bilingual components. We also describe the details of retargeting it to Arabic–English MT. The morphological richness of Arabic brings several challenges to the hybridization task. We conduct an extensive evaluation of multiple system variants. Our evaluation shows that this new variant of GHMT—a primarily symbolic system extended with monolingual and bilingual statistical components—has a higher degree of grammaticality than a phrase-based statistical MT system, where grammaticality is measured in terms of correct verb-argument realization and long-distance dependency translation.     

Density matrix formalism of duality quantum computer and the solution of zero-wave-function paradox

Duality quantum computer can accommodate both unitary and non-unitary operations. In this paper, we derive the mathematical theory of duality quantum computer in terms of density matrix using the duality mode of quantum computers. We give a solution to the ‘zero-wave-function’ paradox of duality quantum computer raised by Zou et al. (Quantum Inf Process 8:37–50 2009) where in duality quantum computer the final wave function may be zero, which contradicts the general understanding of an normalized wave function for a quantum system. We show that it is natural for zero wave function to occur in duality quantum computer because we only consider a part of the wave function in duality quantum computer. In addition, the conditions for zero wave function are presented in both pure state formalism and mixed state formalism.     

浅谈发散性设计思维在设计创作过程中的重要体现

对于设计创作来说,思维方法无疑是非常重要的。本文通过对设计创作过程的挖掘,总结、分析了发散性设计思维在设计创作过程中的重要地位。并从个体案例出发进一步对发散性设计思维进行了系统的探索和研究。从中得出:发散性设计思维是达到设计创新的良好途径之一,好的创意是需要我们运用发散性设计思维进行开拓和寻找的。     

基于WordNet词义消歧的系统融合

最近混淆网络在融合多个机器翻译结果中展示很好的性能. 然而为了克服在不同的翻译系统中不同的词序, 假设对齐在混淆网络的构建上仍然是一个重要的问题. 但以往的对齐方法都没有考虑到语义信息. 本文为了更好地改进系统融合的性能, 提出了用词义消歧(Word sense disambiguation, WSD)来指导混淆网络中的对齐. 同时骨架翻译的选择也是通过计算句子间的相似度来获得的, 句子的相似性计算使用了二分图的最大匹配算法. 为了使得基于WordNet词义消歧方法融入到系统中, 本文将翻译错误率(Translation error rate, TER)算法进行了改进, 实验结果显示本方法的性能好于经典的TER算法的性能.     

一种自适应负载的I/O调度算法

I/O调度算法对磁盘阵列(RAID)性能具有至关重要的影响。虽然已有很多典型的I/O调度算法在一定负载情况下可获得较好的性能,但很难有哪一种算法在各种负载情况下均能获得很好的性能。本文提出了一种智能RAID控制模型,结合C4.5决策树和AdaBoost算法实现负载自动分类,根据负载变化和性能反馈情况动态调整I/O调度策略,实现面向应用需求的自治调度。模拟实验结果表明,自适应调度算法具有较好的适应性,在各种负载情况下优于现有的I/O调度算法,尤其适用于多线程混合负载环境的I/O性能优化。     

Translation project adaptation for MT-enhanced computer assisted translation

The effective integration of MT technology into computer-assisted translation tools is a challenging topic both for academic research and the translation industry. In particular, professional translators consider the ability of MT systems to adapt to the feedback provided by them to be crucial. In this paper, we propose an adaptation scheme to tune a statistical MT system to a translation project using small amounts of post-edited texts, like those generated by a single user in even just one day of work. The same scheme can be applied on a larger scale in order to focus general purpose models towards the specific domain of interest. We assess our method on two domains, namely information technology and legal, and four translation directions, from English to French, Italian, Spanish and German. The main outcome is that our adaptation strategy can be very effective provided that the seed data used for adaptation is ‘close enough’ to the remaining text to be translated; otherwise, MT quality neither improves nor worsens, thus showing the robustness of our method.     

复杂地物背景下的电力线提取方法

随着无人机航拍在电力线巡检领域的快速发展,提取航拍影像中的电力线成为巡检工作的前提和基础,如何从背景复杂的航拍影像中提取出完整的电力线,成为电力线巡检中亟待解决的问题。在利用Canny算子提取图像边缘、Hough变换生成破碎直线段的基础上提出一种根据电力线的几何特征恢复完整电力线的算法。利用实际航拍影像进行实验验证,结果表明算法可以在复杂的背景中提取出完整且位置准确的电力线,实验结果稳定,对电力线巡检工作具有重要意义。     

Hybrid data-driven models of machine translation

This paper presents an extended, harmonised account of our previous work on combining subsentential alignments from phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) and example-based MT (EBMT) systems to create novel hybrid data-driven systems capable of outperforming the baseline SMT and EBMT systems from which they were derived. In previous work, we demonstrated that while an EBMT system is capable of outperforming a phrase-based SMT (PBSMT) system constructed from freely available resources, a hybrid ‘example-based’ SMT system incorporating marker chunks and SMT subsentential alignments is capable of outperforming both baseline translation models for French–English translation. In this paper, we show that similar gains are to be had from constructing a hybrid ‘statistical’ EBMT system. Unlike the previous research, here we use the Europarl training and test sets, which are fast becoming the standard data in the field. On these data sets, while all hybrid ‘statistical’ EBMT variants still fall short of the quality achieved by the baseline PBSMT system, we show that adding the marker chunks to create a hybrid ‘example-based’ SMT system outperforms the two baseline systems from which it is derived. Furthermore, we provide further evidence in favour of hybrid systems by adding an SMT target-language model to the EBMT system, and demonstrate that this too has a positive effect on translation quality. We also show that many of the subsentential alignments derived from the Europarl corpus are created by either the PBSMT or the EBMT system, but not by both. In sum, therefore, despite the obvious convergence of the two paradigms, the crucial differences between SMT and EBMT contribute positively to the overall translation quality. The central thesis of this paper is that any researcher who continues to develop an MT system using either of these approaches will benefit further from integrating the advantages of the other model; dogged adherence to one approach will lead to inferior systems being developed.     

Inessential Features, Ineliminable Features, and Modal Logics for Model Theoretic Syntax

While monadic second-order logic (MSO) has played a prominent role in model theoretic syntax, modal logics have been used in this context since its inception. When comparing propositional dynamic logic (PDL) to MSO over trees, Kracht (1997) noted that there are tree languages that can be defined in MSO that can only be defined in PDL by adding new features whose distribution is predictable. He named such features “inessential features”. We show that Kracht’s observation can be extended to other modal logics of trees in two ways. First, we demonstrate that for each stronger logic, there exists a tree language that can only be defined in a weaker logic with inessential features. Second, we show that any tree language that can be defined in a stronger logic, but not in some weaker logic, can be defined with inessential features. Additionally, we consider Kracht’s definition of inessential features more closely. It turns out that there are features whose distribution can be predicted, but who fail to be inessential in Kracht’s sense. We will look at ways to modify his definition.     

How to construct identity-based signatures without the key escrow problem

The inherent key escrow problem is one of the main reasons for the slow adoption of identity-based cryptography. The existing solution for mitigating the key escrow problem is by adopting multiple Private Key Generators (PKGs). Recently, there was a proposal that attempted to reduce the trust of the PKG by allowing a malicious PKG to be caught if he reveals the user’s identity-based private key illegally. Nonetheless, the proposal does not consider that the PKG can simply decrypt the ciphertext instead of revealing the private key itself (in the case of identity-based encryption schemes). The aim of this paper is to present an escrow-free identity-based signature (IBS) scheme, in which the malicious PKG will be caught if it releases a signature on behalf of the user but signed by itself. We present a formal model to capture such a scheme and provide a concrete construction.