this article.

We present a new method for detecting and disambiguating named entities in open domain text. A disambiguation SVM kernel is trained to exploit the high coverage and rich structure of the knowledge encoded in an online encyclopedia. The resulting model significantly outperforms a less informed baseline.

When you use the word “I ” it designates you; when I use the same word, it designates me. If you use “you ” talking to me, it designates me; when I use it talking to you, it designates you. “I ” and “you ” are indexicals. The designation of an indexical shifts from speaker to speaker, time to time, place to place. Different

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Preprint version of paper forthcoming in Journal of Biomedical Informatics The goal of referent tracking is to create an ever-growing pool of data relating to the entities existing in concrete spatiotemporal reality. In the context of Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) the relevant concrete entities are not only particular patients but also their parts, diseases, therapies, lesions, and so forth, insofar as these are salient to diagnosis and treatment. Within a referent tracking system, all such entities are referred to directly and explicitly, something which cannot be achieved when familiar concept-based systems are used in what is called “clinical coding”. In this paper we describe the components of a referent tracking system in an informal way and we outline the procedures that would have to be followed by healthcare personnel in using such a system. We argue that the referent tracking paradigm can be introduced with only minor – though nevertheless ontologically important – technical changes to existing EHR infrastructures, but that it will require a radically different mindset on the part of those involved in clinical coding and terminology development from that which has prevailed hitherto.

The problem of representing the spatial structure of images, which arises in visual object processing, is commonly described using terminology borrowed from propositional theories of cognition, notably, the concept of compositionality. The classical propositional stance mandates representations composed of symbols, which stand for atomic or composite entities and enter into arbitrarily nested relationships.

Evolution brought brains and minds into a world initially devoid of inteUlgent life. The evolutionary process designed the neural machinery that generates in-tehgent behavior, and important insights into how this machinery works can be gained by understanding how evolution constructs organisms. This is the ratio-nale that underlies research in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology was founded on interloclang contributions from evolutionary biology, cognitive science, psychology, anthropology, and neuro-science. It reflects an attempt to think through, from first principles, how cur-rent knowledge from these various fields can be integrated into a single, consistent, sciennfic framework for the study of the mind and brain (Cosmides

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This article advances a simple conception of test validity: A test is valid for measuring an attribute if (a) the attribute exists and (b) variations in the attribute causally produce variation in the measurement outcomes. This conception is shown to diverge from current validity theory in several respects. In particular, the emphasis in the proposed conception is on ontology, reference, and causality, whereas current validity theory focuses on epistemology, meaning, and correlation. It is argued that the proposed conception is not only simpler but also theoretically superior to the position taken in the existing literature. Further, it has clear theoretical and practical implications for validation research. Most important, validation research must not be directed at the relation between the measured attribute and other attributes but at the processes that convey the effect of the measured attribute on the test scores. We start this article with a request to the reader. Please take a slip of paper and write down your definition of the term construct validity. Now, take the classic article of Cronbach and Meehl (1955), who invented the concept, and a more recent authoritative article on validity, for instance that of Messick (1989), and check whether you recognize your definition in these works. You are

Standard generative linguistic theory, which uses discrete symbolic models of cognition, has some strengths and weaknesses. It is strong on providing a network of outposts that make scientific travel in the jungles of natural language feasible. It is weak in that it currently depends on the elaborate and unformalized use of intuition to develop critical supporting assumptions about each data point. In this regard, it is not in a position to characterize natural language systems in the lawful terms that ecological psychologists strive for. Connectionist learning models offer some help: They define lawful relations between linguistic environments and language systems. But our understanding of them is currently weak, especially when it comes to natural language syntax. Fortunately, symbolic linguistic analysis can help connectionism if the two meet via dynamical systems theory. I discuss a case in point: Insights from linguistic explorations of natural language syntax appear to have identified information structures that are particularly relevant to understanding ecologically appealing but analytically mysterious connectionist learning models. This article is concerned with the relation between discrete, symbolic systems of the