The FORA Framework - A Fuzzy Grassroots Ontology for Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management deals with monitoring and influencing the online record of a person, an organization or a product. The Social Web offers increasingly simple ways to publish and disseminate personal or opinionated information, which can rapidly have a disastrous influence on the online reputation of some of the entities. This dissertation can be split into three parts: In the first part, possible fuzzy clustering applications for the Social Semantic Web are investigated. The second part explores promising Social Semantic Web elements for organizational applications,while in the third part the former two parts are brought together and a fuzzy online reputation analysis framework is introduced and evaluated. Theentire PhD thesis is based on literature reviews as well as on argumentative-deductive analyses.The possible applications of Social Semantic Web elements within organizations have been researched using a scenario and an additional case study together with two ancillary case studies—based on qualitative interviews. For the conception and implementation of the online reputation analysis application, a conceptual framework was developed. Employing test installations and prototyping, the essential parts of the framework have been implemented.By following a design sciences research approach, this PhD has created two artifacts: a frameworkand a prototype as proof of concept. Bothartifactshinge on twocoreelements: a (cluster analysis-based) translation of tags used in the Social Web to a computer-understandable fuzzy grassroots ontology for the Semantic Web, and a (Topic Maps-based) knowledge representation system, which facilitates a natural interaction with the fuzzy grassroots ontology. This is beneficial to the identification of unknown but essential Web data that could not be realized through conventional online reputation analysis. Theinherent structure of natural language supports humans not only in communication but also in the perception of the world. Fuzziness is a promising tool for transforming those human perceptions intocomputer artifacts. Through fuzzy grassroots ontologies, the Social Semantic Web becomes more naturally and thus can streamline online reputation management.

Notes on a Queer Brain: Can there be a Critical Research on Sex/Gender in Neuroscience?

Anelis Kaiser is associate researcher at the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Dr. Kaiser recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Neuroethics on gender and brain science. She is co-founder (with Isabelle Dussauge) of the interdisciplinary network NeuroGenderings, which brings together experts from the brain sciences, the humanities and science studies (STS) to critically study the sexed brain. She has published on sex and gender as constructed categories in science as well as on the topics of multilingualism and language processing in the brain. Co-sponsored with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. - See more at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Centers-and-Institutes/Center-for-the-Study-of-Women-and-Society/Center-Events#sthash.bDeBg5fk.dpuf

White matter in aphasia: a historical review of the Dejerines' studies

The Objective was to describe the contributions of Joseph Jules Dejerine and his wife Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke to our understanding of cerebral association fiber tracts and language processing. The Dejerines (and not Constantin von Monakow) were the first to describe the superior longitudinal fasciculus/arcuate fasciculus (SLF/AF) as an association fiber tract uniting Broca's area, Wernicke's area, and a visual image center in the angular gyrus of a left hemispheric language zone. They were also the first to attribute language-related functions to the fasciculi occipito-frontalis (FOF) and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) after describing aphasia patients with degeneration of the SLF/AF, ILF, uncinate fasciculus (UF), and FOF. These fasciculi belong to a functional network known as the Dejerines' language zone, which exceeds the borders of the classically defined cortical language centers. The Dejerines provided the first descriptions of the anatomical pillars of present-day language models (such as the SLF/AF). Their anatomical descriptions of fasciculi in aphasia patients provided a foundation for our modern concept of the dorsal and ventral streams in language processing.

"Sounds Funny? – Humor Effects of Phonological and Prosodic Figures of Speech"

Whereas semantic, logical, and narrative features of verbal humor are well-researched, phonological and prosodic dimensions of verbal funniness are hardly explored. In a 2 × 2 design we varied rhyme and meter in humorous couplets. Rhyme and meter enhanced funniness ratings and supported faster processing. Rhyming couplets also elicited more intense and more positive affective responses, increased subjective comprehensibility and more accurate memory. The humor effect is attributed to special rhyme and meter features distinctive of humoristic poetry in several languages. Verses that employ these formal features make an artful use of typical poetic vices of amateurish poems written for birthday parties or other occasions. Their metrical patterning sounds “mechanical” rather than genuinely “poetic”; they also disregard rules for “good” rhymes. The processing of such verses is discussed in terms of a metacognitive integration of their poetically deviant features into an overall effect of processing ease. The study highlights the importance of nonsemantic rhetorical features in language processing.

Enhanced Knowledge Management by Synchronizing Mind Maps and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

This paper presents a conceptual approach to enhance knowledge management by synchronizing mind maps and fuzzy cognitive maps. The use of mind maps allows taking advantage of human creativity, while the application of fuzzy cognitive maps enables to store information expressed in natural language. By applying cognitive computing, it makes possible to gather and extract relevant information out of a data pool. Therefore, this approach is supposed to give a framework that enhances knowledge management. To demonstrate the potential of this framework, a use case concerning the development of a smart city app is presented.

Balanced bilinguals favor lexical processing in their opaque language and conversion system in their shallow language

Referred to as orthographic depth, the degree of consistency of grapheme/phoneme correspondences varies across languages from high in shallow orthographies to low in deep orthographies. The present study investigates the impact of orthographic depth on reading route by analyzing evoked potentials to words in a deep (French) and shallow (German) language presented to highly proficient bilinguals. ERP analyses to German and French words revealed significant topographic modulations 240-280ms post-stimulus onset, indicative of distinct brain networks engaged in reading over this time window. Source estimations revealed that these effects stemmed from modulations of left insular, inferior frontal and dorsolateral regions (German>French) previously associated to phonological processing. Our results show that reading in a shallow language was associated to a stronger engagement of phonological pathways than reading in a deep language. Thus, the lexical pathways favored in word reading are reinforced by phonological networks more strongly in the shallow than deep orthography.