Toward a theory of semantic representation

We present an account of semantic representation that focuses on distinct types of information from which word meanings can be learned. In particular, we argue that there are at least two major types of information from which we learn word meanings. The first is what we call experiential information. This is data derived both from our sensory-motor interactions with the outside world, as well as from our experience of own inner states, particularly our emotions. The second type of information is language-based. In particular, it is derived from the general linguistic context in which words appear. The paper spells out this proposal, summarizes research supporting this view and presents new predictions emerging from this framework.

Institutional legacies and capabilities: work practices and employment relations in Portugal and Mozambique

This is a study of institutional change and continuity, comparing the trajectories followed by Mozambique and its formal colonial power Portugal in HRM, based on two surveys of firm level practices. The colonial power sought to extend the institutions of the metropole in the closing years of its rule, and despite all the adjustments and shocks that have accompanied Mozambique’s post-independence years, the country continues to retain institutional features and associated practices from the past. This suggests that there is a post-colonial impact on human resource management. The implications for HRM theory are that ambitious attempts at institutional substitution may have less dramatic effects than is commonly assumed. Indeed, we encountered remarkable similarities between the two countries in HRM practices, implying that features of supposedly fluid or less mature institutional frameworks (whether in Africa or the Mediterranean world) may be sustained for protracted periods of time, pressures to reform notwithstanding. This highlights the complexities of continuities which transcend formal rules; as post-colonial theories alert us, informal conventions and embedded discourse may result in the persistence of informal power and subordination, despite political and legal changes.

Voice, appropriation and discourse representation in a student writing task

We investigate the practices by which bilingual university students in Hong Kong appropriate texts in producing utterances, particularly written texts. Following Wertsch and his colleagues we ask: • To what extent do our students appropriate texts in constructing their own discourses? • What linguistic means do they use to do this? • What can these processes tell us about what they now can do with discourse representation; and • What do we need to teach them? This research shows that our students' writing displays considerable intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Responses to this writing in tutorial sessions indicate that they are skilled at orchestrating the multiple voices within their own discourses. The commonly stated concern that our students do not know how to do quotation and citation correctly is somewhat misplaced and researchers need to move the focus away from the mechanisms of citation and attribution to the social practices of textual appropriation.

Institutional investors: arbitrageurs or rational trend chasers?

This paper studies the relationship between institutional investor holdings and stock misvaluation in the U.S. between 1980 and 2010. I find that institutional investors overweigh overvalued and underweigh undervalued stocks in their portfolio, taking the market portfolio as a benchmark. Cross-sectionally, institutional investors hold more overvalued stocks than undervalued stocks. The time-series studies also show that institutional ownership of overvalued portfolios increases as the portfolios' degree of overvaluation. As an investment strategy, institutional investors' ride of stock misvaluation is neither driven by the fund flows from individual investors into institutions, nor industry-specific. Consistent with the agency problem explanation, investment companies and independent investment advisors have a higher tendency to ride stock misvaluation than other institutions. There is weak evidence that institutional investors make positive profit by riding stock misvaluation. My findings challenge the models that view individual investors as noise traders and disregard the role of institutional investors in stock market misvaluation.

On the efficiency of data representation on the modeling and characterization of complex networks

Specific choices about how to represent complex networks can have a substantial impact on the execution time required for the respective construction and analysis of those structures. In this work we report a comparison of the effects of representing complex networks statically by adjacency matrices or dynamically by adjacency lists. Three theoretical models of complex networks are considered: two types of Erdos-Renyi as well as the Barabasi-Albert model. We investigated the effect of the different representations with respect to the construction and measurement of several topological properties (i.e. degree, clustering coefficient, shortest path length, and betweenness centrality). We found that different forms of representation generally have a substantial effect on the execution time, with the sparse representation frequently resulting in remarkably superior performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Concentric characterization and classification of complex network nodes: Application to an institutional collaboration network

Differently from theoretical scale-free networks, most real networks present multi-scale behavior, with nodes structured in different types of functional groups and communities. While the majority of approaches for classification of nodes in a complex network has relied on local measurements of the topology/connectivity around each node, valuable information about node functionality can be obtained by concentric (or hierarchical) measurements. This paper extends previous methodologies based on concentric measurements, by studying the possibility of using agglomerative clustering methods, in order to obtain a set of functional groups of nodes, considering particular institutional collaboration network nodes, including various known communities (departments of the University of Sao Paulo). Among the interesting obtained findings, we emphasize the scale-free nature of the network obtained, as well as identification of different patterns of authorship emerging from different areas (e.g. human and exact sciences). Another interesting result concerns the relatively uniform distribution of hubs along concentric levels, contrariwise to the non-uniform pattern found in theoretical scale-free networks such as the BA model. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Matrix Representation of the Stationary Measure for the Multispecies TASEP

In this work we construct the stationary measure of the N species totally asymmetric simple exclusion process in a matrix product formulation. We make the connection between the matrix product formulation and the queueing theory picture of Ferrari and Martin. In particular, in the standard representation, the matrices act on the space of queue lengths. For N > 2 the matrices in fact become tensor products of elements of quadratic algebras. This enables us to give a purely algebraic proof of the stationary measure which we present for N=3.

Representation type of Jordan algebras

The problem of classification of Jordan bit-nodules over (non-semisimple) finite dimensional Jordan algebras with respect to their representation type is considered. The notions of diagram of a Jordan algebra and of Jordan tensor algebra of a bimodule are introduced and a mapping Qui is constructed which associates to the diagram of a Jordan algebra J the quiver of its universal associative enveloping algebra S(J). The main results are concerned with Jordan algebras of semi-matrix type, that is, algebras whose semi-simple component is a direct sum of Jordan matrix algebras. In this case, criterion of finiteness and tameness for one-sided representations are obtained, in terms of diagram and mapping Qui, for Jordan tensor algebras and for algebras with radical square equals to 0. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Landskommunens beslutsfattande kvinnor : Om kvinnors representation i kommunalfullmäktige ochförekomst i fullmäktigeprotokoll i Kalmar länslandskommuner 1939-1951

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka den kvinnliga representationen i Kalmar läns landskommuners kommunalfullmäktige från 1938 till kommunsammanslagningen 1951. Detta innefattar att söka en översikt över i vilken grad kvinnor är representerade i länets kommunalfullmäktigeförsamlingaroch att undersöka hur dessa kvinnliga ledamöter syns i protokollsmaterial i ett par kommuners fullmäktigeprotokoll. Södra Möckelby och Vickleby kommuner med relativt hög andel kvinnliga ledamöter har valts som exempel.Undersökningen av valstatistiken visar en ökning i både antal kvinnor och antal kommunalfullmäktige med kvinnlig representation under perioden. Länet ligger under riksgenomsnittet, men ökningen är ungefär densamma i relativa termer. Närläsningen av protokoll visar att kvinnor främst omnämns vid frånvaro, vid val till olika uppdrag eller vid uppföljning av dessa val. I den kommun som har en längre tradition av relativt hög kvinnlig representation märks kvinnor i fler sammanhang som förutsätter att man tar ett större utrymme på mötena. Dessa tillfällen sammanfaller med en speciell kvinnas aktiva period i fullmäktige och försvinner när den kvinnliga representationen minskar till en ensam kvinna.

La confrontation de la laideur avec la beauté dans lesromans Mercure et Attentat. Une étude sur lareprésentation de la dualité thématique laideur-beautéchez Amélie Nothomb. : "Where there is Quasimodo, there is also Esmeralda." The confrontationbetween ugliness and beauty in the novels Mercure and Attentat. Astudy on the representation of the duality beauty-ugliness in the worksof Amélie Nothomb.

This paper studies one of the recurrent topics of writing found in Amélie Nothomb’snovels: beauty and ugliness. The novels Mercure and Attentat are analyzed in detail,with respect to figures of speech used to describe the extreme physical appearance ofthe protagonists and the role of the duality beauty-ugliness in the advancement of theplot.