Pope Francis and his Visit to Cuba: A Conversation

This flyer promotes the event "Pope Francis and his Visit to Cuba: A Conversation" , a lecture by Monsignor Thomas Wenski, Dagoberto Valdes, and Giselle Jamison, Professor of Political Studies at St. Thomas University. The lecture was held at St. Thomas University Convocation Hall on October 3, 2015.

Topic extraction from microblog posts using conversation structures

Conventional topic models are ineffective for topic extraction from microblog messages since the lack of structure and context among the posts renders poor message-level word co-occurrence patterns. In this work, we organize microblog posts as conversation trees based on reposting and replying relations, which enrich context information to alleviate data sparseness. Our model generates words according to topic dependencies derived from the conversation structures. In specific, we differentiate messages as leader messages, which initiate key aspects of previously focused topics or shift the focus to different topics, and follower messages that do not introduce any new information but simply echo topics from the messages that they repost or reply. Our model captures the different extents that leader and follower messages may contain the key topical words, thus further enhances the quality of the induced topics. The results of thorough experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model.

The Economics of Climate Adaptation on America’s Coasts: A Washington Conversation

Report of a colloquium on the economics of coastal climate change adaptation held in Washington D.C. on April 16, 2015. The event was sponsored by The Center for Blue Economy of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the Urban Coast Institute of Monmouth University. Participants included Michael Conathan, Center for American Progress; Frank Nutter, Reinsurance Association of America; Dr. Robert Kopp, Rutgers University; Josh Sawislak, Council on Environmental Quality; Tony MacDonald, Urban Coast Institute; Jason Scorse and Charles Colgan, Center for the Blue Economy

Understanding social media in everyday life: Ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspectives

Over the last decade, social media has become a hot topic for researchers of collaborative technologies (e.g., CSCW). The pervasive use of social media in our everyday lives provides a ready source of naturalistic data for researchers to empirically examine the complexities of the social world. In this talk I outline a different perspective informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) - an orientation that has been influential within CSCW, yet has only rarely been applied to social media use. EMCA approaches can complement existing perspectives through articulating how social media is embedded in everyday life, and how its social organisation is achieved by users of social media. Outlining a possible programme of research, I draw on a corpus of screen and ambient audio recordings of mobile device use to show how EMCA research can be generative for understanding social media through concepts such as adjacency pairs, sequential context, turn allocation / speaker selection, and repair. In doing so, I also raise questions about existing studies of social media use and the way they characterise interactional phenomena.

Conversation Circles as a Teaching Strategy: An Experience to Reflect on and Implement in Higher Education

The experience approached in this paper aims at reflecting, reasoning, planning and implementing the “Conversation Circles” as a teaching strategy in the PF-4237 course “Theory of Education: Multiculturalism and Education” of the Latin American Doctoral Program in Education, University of Costa Rica. This training experience, based on the communicative action theory, intended to integrate the assistance of the teacher, the confrontation to otherness and the building of knowledge, skills and social attitudes in higher education.

Distributed Estimation Over an Adaptive Incremental Network Based on the Affine Projection Algorithm

We study the problem of distributed estimation based on the affine projection algorithm (APA), which is developed from Newton`s method for minimizing a cost function. The proposed solution is formulated to ameliorate the limited convergence properties of least-mean-square (LMS) type distributed adaptive filters with colored inputs. The analysis of transient and steady-state performances at each individual node within the network is developed by using a weighted spatial-temporal energy conservation relation and confirmed by computer simulations. The simulation results also verify that the proposed algorithm provides not only a faster convergence rate but also an improved steady-state performance as compared to an LMS-based scheme. In addition, the new approach attains an acceptable misadjustment performance with lower computational and memory cost, provided the number of regressor vectors and filter length parameters are appropriately chosen, as compared to a distributed recursive-least-squares (RLS) based method.

The Sooty show laid bear - Children, puppets and make-believe

This article seeks to examine the complex nature of pretence as portrayed in a popular UK children's television puppet show. Central to the various theoretical concerns with make-believe philosophical, psychological and lucid - has been the phenomenological axis of the 'real-imaginary'. Because of the serial types of transformations undertaken by characters in the programme and the reliance placed on natural models of conversation, the problematic nature of this core boundary is highlighted. Despite its overt status as a fictional representation of animal behaviour, the very animality of the puppets is rendered opaque as their identities as children are linguistically accomplished. As a consequence we argue that the show as a piece of representational art is structured by moral and behavioural dictates typical of conventional adult-child interaction.

Auditory results from cochlear implants in elderly people

According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the elderly population grew 47.8% in the last decade in Brazil. A portion of this population has severe and/or profound hearing loss and do not benefit from conventional hearing aids. Thus, the use of cochlear implant is required. Aim: To analyze the benefits of cochlear implants in the elderly based on the comparison of primary auditory thresholds before and after the operation, discrimination of sentences in speech and in talking on the telephone. Methodology: Retrospective cohort study, analyzing medical records from patients aged over 60 years, users of cochlear implant for at least 1 year. Results: Fourteen medical records were analyzed. Mean age of patients was 63.07 years. The mean pure tone thresholds between 500Hz, 1kHz, 2kHz and 4kHz before the implantation was 113dBHL. None of the patients, before operation, could discriminate sentences in open sets and only 3 scored 17% in closed sets sentence recognition. After one year of implantation, the mean sound field thresholds reached 34dBHL, and open set sentences recognition of 93.57%, while 71% of the patients had become able to have a conversation on the telephone. Conclusion: The elderly users of cochlear implant showed important outcomes, with significant improvement in understanding in the open set and in using the telephone.

Analyzing the researcher's work in generating data: The case of complaints

This article investigates the researcher's work in the coproduction (or not) of complaint sequences in research interviews. Using a conversation analytic approach, we show how the interviewer's management of complaint sequences in a research setting is consequential for subsequent talk and thus directly affects the data generated. In the examples shown here, researchers sharing cocategorial incumbency with respondents may well provide spaces for research participants to formulate complaints. This article examines sequences of talk surrounding complaints to show how researchers generate complaints (or not) and handle unsafe complaints. Researchers are able to provoke specific types of accounts from respondents, whereas their respondents may actively resist the researchers' direction. For researchers using the interview as a method of data generation, examination of complaint sequences and how these appear in interview data provides insight into how interview talk is coproduced and managed within a socially situated setting.

Introducing ethnomethodological analysis to the field of music education

In recent years qualitative research methods have been adopted within in the field of music education and have received widespread acceptance. However, the theoretical framework provided by ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1974, in R. Turner, Ethnomethodology , Penguin, Middlesex, UK) and the tools of conversational analysis (Sacks, 1992, Lectures on Conversation , edited by Gail Jefferson, Blackwell, Oxford, UK) have, to this point, been overlooked by researchers in the field of music education. In this paper I argue that the application of ethnomethodological and conversation analytical approaches in the field of research in music education can provide fresh insights into the work of music teachers and how this work is accomplished in institutional settings. Here I demonstrate how a conversation analytical perspective drawing on an ethnomethodological framework might be used to investigate transcripts of audio-recorded interview talk. This type of analysis can illuminate aspects of members' roles in relation to, and perceptions about music education in school settings that might be overlooked in other types of analysis. A conversation analytical approach to the examination of talk-in-interaction explicates in fine-grained detail how members orient to matters at hand in the context of research settings, as well as revealing features of the cultural world of music teaching. Further application of the approach to research problems in other school settings, I argue, will inform the field of music education in ways yet to be realised.

Social cognition, language acquisition and the development of the theory of mind

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the cognitive achievement that enables us to report our propositional attitudes, to attribute such attitudes to others, and to use such postulated or observed mental states in the prediction and explanation of behavior. Most normally developing children acquire ToM between the ages of 3 and 5 years, but serious delays beyond this chronological and mental age have been observed in children with autism, as well is in those with severe sensory impairments. We examine data from Studies of ToM in normally developing children and those with deafness, blindness, autism and Williams syndrome, as well as data from lower primates, in a search for answers to key theoretical questions concerning the origins, nature and representation of knowledge about the mind. In answer to these, we offer a framework according to which ToM is jointly dependent upon language and social experience, and is produced by a conjunction of language acquisition with children's growing social understanding, acquired through conversation and interaction with others. We argue that adequate language and adequate social skills are jointly causally sufficient, and individually causally necessary, for producing ToM. Thus our account supports a social developmental theory of the genesis of human cognition, inspired by the work of Sellars and Vygotsky.

Infusing the use of seasonal climate forecasting into crop management practice in North East Australia using discussion support software

Seasonal climate forecasting offers potential for improving management of crop production risks in the cropping systems of NE Australia. But how is this capability best connected to management practice? Over the past decade, we have pursued participative systems approaches involving simulation-aided discussion with advisers and decision-makers. This has led to the development of discussion support software as a key vehicle for facilitating infusion of forecasting capability into practice. In this paper, we set out the basis of our approach, its implementation and preliminary evaluation. We outline the development of the discussion support software Whopper Cropper, which was designed for, and in close consultation with, public and private advisers. Whopper Cropper consists of a database of simulation output and a graphical user interface to generate analyses of risks associated with crop management options. The charts produced provide conversation pieces for advisers to use with their farmer clients in relation to the significant decisions they face. An example application, detail of the software development process and an initial survey of user needs are presented. We suggest that discussion support software is about moving beyond traditional notions of supply-driven decision support systems. Discussion support software is largely demand-driven and can compliment participatory action research programs by providing cost-effective general delivery of simulation-aided discussions about relevant management actions. The critical role of farm management advisers and dialogue among key players is highlighted. We argue that the discussion support concept, as exemplified by the software tool Whopper Cropper and the group processes surrounding it, provides an effective means to infuse innovations, like seasonal climate forecasting, into farming practice. Crown Copyright (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Opening windows into the mind: mothers' preferences for mental state explanations and children's theory of mind

A new questionnaire, the Maternal Mental State Input Inventory (MMSII) was created to measure mothers' preferences for introducing and elaborating on mental states in conversation with their young children. In two studies, the questionnaire was given to mothers of young children, and the children's theory of mind (ToM) development was assessed with standard tasks. In both studies, the questionnaire exhibited good internal reliability, and significant correlations emerged between mothers' self-reported preferences for elaborated, explanatory talk about the mental states and children's theory of mind performance. Further, mothers' conversational preferences, as measured by the MMSII, were the best predictors of children's theory of mind development when relevant control variables were included in the analyses. These results converge with naturalistic observational research that has demonstrated links between mothers' conversational styles and their children's theory of mind. They go further in suggesting that mothers' tendencies toward elaborated, explanatory talk about a range of mental states is particularly beneficial to children's theory of mind development. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Um seminário dispositivo : a humanização do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) em debate

O artigo discute o processo de construção do seminário "Humanização do SUS em Debate" indicando sua conexão com os desafios atuais do SUS e com as proposições da Política Nacional de Humanização (PNH). Apresenta os princípios e diretrizes da Política Nacional de Humanização do SUS e seu processo de construção, discutindo os diversos sentidos do termo humanização. Ao final é indicada a aposta metodológica do seminário que se destinou a promover um amplo debate sobre a humanização do SUS, por meio de rodas de conversação que objetivavam a interface com profissionais que atuam na formação dos trabalhadores do SUS, responsáveis pela produção de conhecimento na área da saúde e pela formação dos acadêmicos neste campo.