More Proofs of an Axiom of Łukasiewicz

This paper reports results and some new problems in one of the domains to which automatic first-order theorem provers have been most successfully applied: axiomatics of nonclassical propositional logics. It is well known that one of the standard axioms of the denumerable-valued pure implication logic of ukasiewicz becomes derivable from the remainder in the presence of negation. Here it is shown that the same axiom is similarly derivable using conjunction and disjunction instead of negation. This closes a problem left open by Harris and Fitelson (Journal of Automated Reasoning 27, 2001). Related problems are discussed, and five such open problems are proposed as challenges to the automated reasoning community.     

Content-Based Music Information Retrieval: Current Directions and Future Challenges

The steep rise in music downloading over CD sales has created a major shift in the music industry away from physical media formats and towards online products and services. Music is one of the most popular types of online information and there are now hundreds of music streaming and download services operating on the World-Wide Web. Some of the music collections available are approaching the scale of ten million tracks and this has posed a major challenge for searching, retrieving, and organizing music content. Research efforts in music information retrieval have involved experts from music perception, cognition, musicology, engineering, and computer science engaged in truly interdisciplinary activity that has resulted in many proposed algorithmic and methodological solutions to music search using content-based methods. This paper outlines the problems of content-based music information retrieval and explores the state-of-the-art methods using audio cues (e.g., query by humming, audio fingerprinting, content-based music retrieval) and other cues (e.g., music notation and symbolic representation), and identifies some of the major challenges for the coming years.     

On empirical realism and the defining of theoretical terms.

The so-called problem of theoretical terms rests on the notion that the signifiers of theoretical concepts cannot be completely defined for the reason that their referents are beyond the boundaries of human perception and/or cognition. Empirical realism is a scientific tradition that was born, in part, out of a dissatisfaction with the positivist treatment of theoretical terms. Empirical realists generally conceive of theoretical terms as playing an essential role in scientific activity, giving it its explanatory force, as it is such terms which denote the real, but unobservable, hypothetical entities which are thought to underlie those observable phenomena that the scientist seeks to explain. Despite certain consistencies that run throughout realist thought, there also exist a number of points of divergence among empirical realists. These are examined along with 2 different and contrasting traditions of empirical realism within psychological science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of different levels of agreement between expressed and inventoried vocational interests among college women.

Selected 175 female university students who were equally distributed over the 7-point Index of Agreement scale, which reflects the relation between expressed and inventoried interests. The Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) was used as a measure of inventoried interests. ANOVAs over the 7 groups indicated that there were significant differences in the relation between the VPI and college majors, in the relation between expressed choices and college majors, and on J. L. Holland's (1973) construct of differentiation. Analyses of extreme group differences, using low- and high-congruence groups, confirmed the differences found in the overall analyses. In addition, significant group differences were found on the Vocational Decision Making Difficulty Scale. The differences found consistently suggest that the groups lower in agreement between expressed and inventoried interests were less career decided than the groups higher in agreement. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hemifacial hypoplasia and hypomelanosis of Ito

Seventy patients with adolescent idiopathic right thoracic scoliosis had full assessment of their pulmonary function using a computerised pulmonary function system. Their mean age at evaluation was 13.8 years. The following measurements were obtained from anteroposterior and lateral standing and antero-posterior supine bending radiographs: lateral curvature, vertebral rotation, kyphosis, maximum sterno-vertebral distance and apical rib-vertebral angles. Using the above measurements, the flexibility of curve, vertebral rotation and rib-vertebral angle asymmetry were calculated. Patients were classified into three groups on the basis of their predicted vital capacity, to determine whether radiological features of deformity can help identify patients with compromised pulmonary function. The mean Cobb angle and vertebral rotation for the 70 patients were 50 degrees (range 35-100 degrees) and 22 degrees (range 1-44 degrees) respectively. The mean flexibility of curve and vertebral rotation were 52% and 49% respectively. Mean thoracic kyphosis was 25 degrees, ranging from -7 to 55 degrees. Of the patients with Cobb angle less than 90 degrees, 71% had vital capacity less than 80% of predicted values, and of these, 18% had marked compromise of vital capacity (less than 60% of predicted values). Mean values of Cobb angle, vertebral rotational flexibility, kyphosis, rib-vertebral angle asymmetry (in standing as well as supine bending radiographs) differed significantly between patients with more than 80% of predicted vital capacity and those with 60% or less of predicted values. Radiological features indicative of better pulmonary function were: rotational flexibility exceeding 55%, rib-vertebral angle asymmetry (standing) less than 25 degrees and kyphosis greater than 15 degrees. Two deformity parameters--that give a better prediction of pulmonary function than the widely used Cobb angle, vertebral rotational flexibility and rib-vertebral angle asymmetry--were identified in this study.     

Craniofrontonasal dysplasia

The results of liver function tests and ultrasonographical findings were analysed in 7 dogs that were intravenously injected dimethylnitrosamine (DMNA 2 mg/kg body weight) on 2 consecutive days each week for 10 weeks. Typical clinical signs and similar changes in liver enzyme concentrations that develop in dogs with natural cirrhosis were observed in this canine model. Severe anaemia and a significant reduction in the platelet numbers occurred in the dogs that died in the 5th week, while in all the other dogs these parameters decreased slightly. Serum total protein and the albumin/globulin ratio decreased gradually while the alkaline phosphatase, alanine amino transferase, aspartate amino transferase and gamma glutamyl transpeptidase activities increased significantly (p < 0.05) in all dogs after beginning the administration of DMNA. Ultrasound findings of a coarsened and heterogeneous echo pattern with increased echogenicity that are characteristic of canine cirrhosis were noticed at the same time when the changes in liver enzymes became evident. Present results suggest that ultrasonography in conjunction with liver function tests may be useful in the evaluation of experimentally induced liver cirrhosis.     

Influence of career indecision on treatments exploring the vocational interests of college women.

180 undergraduate women at 1 of 3 levels of career indecision were randomly assigned to Vocational Card Sort treatment, Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory treatment, or no-treatment control. Outcome measures assessed vocational needs, vocational exploration, and satisfaction with career choice. The percentage of women who were employed in the expressed vocational choices chosen by the Ss was examined, and 2 methods of analyzing changes in the expressed choices were used. Results indicate some modest treatment effects. There was clearer support for the importance of career indecision in relation to the impact of the vocational interventions. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of Minimum Distances in High-Dimensional Musical Spaces

We propose an automatic method for measuring content-based music similarity, enhancing the current generation of music search engines and recommended systems. Many previous approaches to track similarity require brute-force, pair-wise processing between all audio features in a database and therefore are not practical for large collections. However, in an Internet-connected world, where users have access to millions of musical tracks, efficiency is crucial. Our approach uses features extracted from unlabeled audio data and near-neigbor retrieval using a distance threshold, determined by analysis, to solve a range of retrieval tasks. The tasks require temporal features-analogous to the technique of shingling used for text retrieval. To measure similarity, we count pairs of audio shingles, between a query and target track, that are below a distance threshold. The distribution of between-shingle distances is different for each database; therefore, we present an analysis of the distribution of minimum distances between shingles and a method for estimating a distance threshold for optimal retrieval performance. The method is compatible with locality-sensitive hashing (LSH)-allowing implementation with retrieval times several orders of magnitude faster than those using exhaustive distance computations. We evaluate the performance of our proposed method on three contrasting music similarity tasks: retrieval of mis-attributed recordings (fingerprint), retrieval of the same work performed by different artists (cover songs), and retrieval of edited and sampled versions of a query track by remix artists (remixes). Our method achieves near-perfect performance in the first two tasks and 75% precision at 70% recall in the third task. Each task was performed on a test database comprising 4.5 million audio shingles.     

Expressed and inventoried vocational interests: A comparison of instruments.

Compared the responses of 84 female Ss to the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) and the Vocational Card Sort (VCS). The VCS task included J. L. Holland's themes and used the basic interest and occupational scales from the SCII. The results from both measures were related. The VCS was not significantly different from the SCII in internal consistency. The VCS themes were better predictors of expressed choices than the SCII themes. Comparisons of the instruments by the Ss did not yield clear preferences, and there was a strong tendency for Ss to suggest that a friend take both instruments. Ss perceived sex bias in the SCII but not in the VCS. Overall, the results support the use of the VCS including the Holland themes and the SCII basic interest category. Findings are discussed in relation to their implications for vocational counseling and future research. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)