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This issue of the Occasional Papers Series aims to draw attention to the use of storytelling as a medium for provoking dialogue about inclusive classrooms and school communities. It offers readers stories of classroom life that provide insights into understanding the complexities that make up the lives of children with disabilities, their families, and teachers. The nine contributions to this issue include lived narratives and analyses presented from a wide range of useful subject positions: parents, general and special education teachers, researchers, advocates, siblings, and persons who are themselves disabled. The introduction titled, "Disability Studies in Education: Storying Our Way to Inclusion," was written by Joseph Michael Valente and Scot Danforth. The opening essay by Diane Linder Berman and David J. Connor, "Eclipsing Expectations: How A 3rd Grader Set His Own Goals (And Taught Us All How to Listen)," kicks off with a description of an illuminating journey through the eyes of a parent, Diane, who wanted a more inclusive experience for her son Benny. For Diane and Benny, this meant becoming meaningful participants not only in Benny's own classroom community but in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings that determined his educational goals. David uses a DSE framework to analyze and highlight the importance of context, as opposed to focusing on the disability condition, in enacting inclusionary practices. The authors argue for an "adhocratic" model of education that views children, educators, and parents as allies. In "Teaching Stories: Inclusion/exclusion and Disability Studies," Linda Ware and Natalie Wheeler-Hatz describe an exceptional collaboration between a university teacher-educator, Linda, and a public school teacher, Natalie. Together they develop a "Teaching Stories" in-service workshop for Natalie's colleagues to learn about disability studies, as well as a curriculum for her fifth grade class. Teaching Stories participants engage in self-reflection to examine personal biases about disability, use media to critically review representations of disability, and learn how to harness the potential of young adult literature to provide illustrative, non-deficit perspectives on disabilities. Louis Olander, an Iraqi war veteran and special education teacher in New York City, crafts a powerful story about his experiences coming to terms with a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and navigating the quandaries and everyday realities of what he terms "quasi-inclusion." In "Rethinking Those Kids: Lessons Learned From a Novice Teacher's Induction into In/Exclusion," Louis argues for reframing inclusionary practices as pedagogies for equity that attend to the intersectional dynamics of race, class, and disability. He also encourages more local control over the implementation of inclusionary classroom practices. Inspired by Vivian Paley's storying scholarship, the essay "The Unfolding of Lucas's Story in an Inclusive Classroom: Living, Playing, and Becoming in the Social World of Kindergarten," tells stories about a vibrant kindergartner named Lucas through the viewpoints of his mother (Emma), teacher (Carmen), and teacher-educator (Haeny). In this multi-voiced story, the narrative centers on Lucas and shifts outward toward those orbiting Lucas's wondrously playful universe. The magic of Lucas's unfolding story is in the ways it disrupts conventional discourses about labels, interventions, and imposed meanings of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Karen Watson's ethnographic study, "Talking Tolerance Inside the 'Inclusive' Early Childhood Classroom" provides an inside look into what the Australian government calls "inclusive learning communities." This term emerges from a national early-years learning framework that highlights ability and disability as diversity. Following the course of a six-month period in three "inclusive" early childhood classrooms, Karen offers an account of the transformative potential of inclusion in contrast to the harmful effects of teaching tolerance. Tolerance, as Karen's study reveals, preserves the dualism of normal versus abnormal (or Other) and hinders critical reflection about ableist assumptions. "Hitting the Switch: ¡Sí se puede!" takes the reader into the lifeworld of first-grader Jason at Castle Bridge Elementary School, a public, dual-language school in New York City. Written by Jason's teachers Stephanie and Andrea in conjunction with his mother Sandra, this essay puts forward the ethos ¡Sí se puede! (Yes, you can!), which relies on children's empathy and calls for a collective response to inclusion. "Hitting the Switch" concludes with practical suggestions for creating an inclusive space for children who use assistive communicative devices so that they can become meaningful participants in the classroom community. Emily Clark's "I [Don't] Belong Here: Narrating Inclusion at the Exclusion of Others," privileges the voices of families in their quest for inclusive education. Borrowing from narrative research and Disability Studies in Education, Emily tells the story of her adoptive siblings Maria and Isaac, who were orphaned by AIDS. She explores the paradox of inclusion which is that it sometimes, if not oftentimes, fails and results in exclusion. A chief reason for the failure of inclusion, Emily argues, is that children with real and perceived differences challenge the "grammar" of schooling--that is, they stand out for their differences. A beautifully crafted ethnographic description of a rural Midwestern middle school, "Lunch Detention: Our Little Barred Room," by Lisa A. Johnson, pulls back the "facades of inclusion" to reveal emotional violence and deep-seated discriminatory practices against special education students. Lisa, herself blind, describes how she was approached by an administrator to take over the role of lunch detention supervisor for the "little barred room." In a short time, the "little barred room" becomes a place of refuge for Lisa and the other students, who share stories of friendship and create an inclusive space that empowers them to challenge a culture of oppression. Melissa Tsuei's "A Circle With Edges: How Storytime Privileges the Abled Learner," takes a critical look at one of the commonplace features of early childhood classrooms--story time. In her essay, Melissa considers the ways in which story time reinforces unequal power dynamics for diverse learners by privileging the able-bodied learner. In response, Melissa creates and presents the SPHERE model, which promotes active engagement and shared dialogue through collaborative storytelling and nurtures an inclusive literacy-learning environment. Taken together, these essays are intended to offer readers an applied DSE approach to inclusive classroom pedagogy. These essays frame disability and the lives of young children with disabilities in ways that: privilege the self-understandings and experiential knowledge of the children and their families; illuminate oppressive systems, arrangements, and circumstances that deny them opportunities for access to participation and equality; and create opportunities for greater levels of access, participation, and equality for them. It is the hope that these essays will further amplify and provoke unending discussions about how to create and sustain genuinely inclusive classrooms and communities. (Individual papers contain references.)

We describe in this paper the application of several neural network architectures to the problem of simulating and predicting the dynamic behavior of complex economic time series. We use several neural network models and training algorithms to compare the results and decide at the end, which one is best for this application. We also compare the simulation results with the traditional approach of using a statistical model. In this case, we use real time series of prices of consumer goods to test our models. Real prices of tomato and green onion in the U.S. show complex fluctuations in time and are very complicated to predict with traditional statistical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been extensive studies on the morphological findings and pathogenesis of ARVC/D [1-3]. However, little attention has been directed toward the ultrastructural features of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we aim to investigate the use of Variational Bayesian methods for audio indexing purposes. Variational Bayesian (VB) techniques are approximated techniques for fully Bayesian learning. Contrarily to non Bayesian methods (e.g. Maximum Likelihood) or partially Bayesian criterion (e.g. Maximum a Posteriori), VB benefits from important model selection properties. VB learning is based on the Free Energy optimization; Free Energy can be used at the same time as an objective function and as a model selection criterion allowing simultaneous model learning/model selection. Here we explore the use of VB learning and VB model selection in a speaker clustering task comparing results with classical learning techniques (ML and MAP) and classical model selection criteria (BIC). Experiments are run on the evaluation data set NIST-1996 HUB-4 and results show that VB can outperform classical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demands in high-technology industries such as semiconductor, optics, MEMS, etc., have predicated the need for manufacturing processes that can fabricate increasingly smaller features reliably at very high tolerances. In-situ monitoring systems that can be used to characterize, control, and improve the fabrication of these smaller features are therefore needed to meet increasing demands in precision and quality. This paper discusses the unique requirements of monitoring of precision manufacturing processes, and the suitability of acoustic emission (AE) as a monitoring technique at the precision scale. Details are then given on the use of AE sensor technology in the monitoring of precision manufacturing processes; grinding, chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) and ultraprecision diamond turning in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a number of basic types and roles of ontologies, and use them as a basis to analyze several legal ontologies in the AI and Law literature. We discuss some dimensions in which to distinguish types of ontologies, for example considering their level of structure. We propose five main roles of ontologies in general: (a) organize and structure information; (b) reasoning and problem solving; (c) se-mantic indexing and search; (d) semantics integration and interoperation; and (e) understanding the domain. We then discuss example of works that have exploited each of these roles in the AI and Law literature. Further, we discuss some of the consequences of using ontologies to play each of these roles in terms of the level of structure of the knowledge represented in the ontologies, the kinds of knowledge representation formalisms they use, and the reasoning methods they employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we present an overview of legal ontological modeling over a period of more than a decade. Most of the research reported concerns results from mid-size (European) projects aimed at the development of legal reasoning and information management tools and systems. In these projects we developed ontologies for several legal or regulation domains. However, the main thread of this article is provided by fundamental research performed by us or under our supervision (e.g. PhD theses by [1], [2], [3]), leading to more abstract legal ‘core' ontologies and legal reasoning architectures. The major insights we have obtained from these experiences can be summarized as follows: Legal sources contain and assume non-legal, common-sense based domain knowledge. Therefore, a legal core ontology should be rooted in highly abstract common sense concepts as a foundational ontology. This notion is worked out in the LRI-Core ontology, presented in this article. What remains as typical legal knowledge to be modelled is normative and legal responsability knowledge. However, in this article we only summarize our work in this area, refering to [4] and to [5] on these issues. As law and legal theory is focussed on questions of justification, legal (core) ontologies, e.g. FOLaw, are epistemological frameworks, describing legal reasoning, rather than legal ontologies, explaining knowledge resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of time series databases is very important in areas like medicine, engineering or finance. Most of the approaches that address this problem are based on numerical algorithms calculating distances, clusters, index trees, etc. We have developed a numerical pattern discovery algorithm to find similar patterns to characterize time series, with good results in the isokinetics domain. However, it is sometimes necessary to conduct a domain-dependent analysis, searching for symbolic rather than numerical characteristics of the time series. For this purpose, we have designed a symbol extraction method that translates a numerical sequence into a symbolic one with a semantic value in a particular domain. This method provides a semi-analyzed symbolic series, in which the main characteristics of the numerical series have been discovered. So, this symbolic series help users to efficiently analyze time series similarly to how an expert in the domain would do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present essay investigates the historical development of information theory, and traces its intellectual impact on the academic field of communication. Claude E. Shannon's information theory shaped the directions taken by the field of human communication, defined many of its concepts, and contributed to the intellectual integration of this field that arose from diverse multidisciplinary roots. The present discussion centers on how communication scholars used Claude E. Shannon's information theory. The concept of information, while central to communication research, has been poorly constructed by communication scholars. This misconstruction and less-than-full appropriation of Shannon's information theory illuminates the relationship between communication and information in a historical light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welcome to the Proceedings of the first IFIP WG 2.12 & WG 12.4 International Workshop on Web Semantics (SWWS'05). This book reflects the issues raised and presented during the SWWS workshop which proves to be an interdisciplinary forum for subject matters involving the theory and practice of web semantics. A special session on Regulatory Ontologies has been organized to allow researcher of different backgrounds (such as Law, Business, Ontologies, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and lexical semantics) to meet and exchange ideas. This first year, a total of 35 papers were submitted to SWWS. Each submission was reviewed by at least two experts. The papers were judged according to their originality, validity, significance to theory and practice, readability and organization, and relevancy to the workshop topics and beyond. This resulted in the selection of 18 papers for presentation at the workshop and publication in this proceedings. We feel that these Proceedings will inspire further research and create an intense following. The Program Committee comprised: Aldo Gangemi, Amit Sheth, Androod Nikvesh, Mihaela Ulieru, Mohand-Said Hacid, Mukesh Mohania, Mustafa Jarrar, Nicola Guarino, Peter Spyns, Pieree Yves Schobbens, Qing Li, Radboud Winkels, Ramasamy Uthurusamy, Richard Benjamins, Rita Temmerman, Robert Meersman, Robert Tolksdorf, Said Tabet, Stefan Decker, Susan Urban, Tharam Dillon, Trevor Bench-Capon, Usuama Fayed, Valentina Tamma, Wil van der Aalst, York Sure, and Zahir Tari. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]