Naturalness Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Human perception of riverscapes with and without large wood (LW) has been investigated with a photo-questionnaire submitted to 2250 students in ten countries, capturing reactions to 20 pictures in terms of naturalness, danger, aesthetics and need for improvement. Principal component analysis performed on average scores per country per item showed that the primary discriminating factors are human modification, turbulence and extent of water shown in the scenes. Wood discriminated the perception of student groups, but other factors are also critical. Features associated with human activity (channel deepening and straightening, rip-rapping) were perceived to be less aesthetically pleasing than wood. Perception of the most dangerous riverscapes is not specifically affected by wood, but by turbulent flows and wide rivers. The presence of wood clearly discriminated the need for human intervention. Perceptions differed among countries, reflecting different cultural contexts. Students from Germany, Sweden and Oregon perceived LW more positively as a natural and wild component of watercourses. These perceptions are linked to positive attitudes towards natural riverscapes. Other students, such as those from China, Russia or India, perceived rivers with wood as needing regulation and maintenance. Whatever the socio-cultural context, large wood elicits an emotional influence on how one perceives riverscapes. key words in-channel wood large woody debris public perception riverscape evaluation channel improvement naturalness cross-cultural comparison

The ongoing worldwide biodiversity crisis comes along with a growing demand for feasible environmental indicators to measure, evaluate and communicate anthropogenic influence on biodiversity. Those indicators can be useful tools for national and regional management and support decision making processes. We propose degree of naturalness (N d ), distance to natural habitat (D n ) and the composite index distance to nature (D 2 N) as a highly comprehensible environmental indicator set that can be used as surrogate for land use related anthropogenic influence on biodiversity. A high resolution naturalness map for Austria based on the best nationwide available land use data was produced and used to test and demonstrate the applicability of the indicator set. Spatially inclusive and comprehensive indicator maps were calculated for the entire country (83,872 km 2 ). Exemplary indicator values for all 2359 municipalities and six altitudinal zones were calculated and evaluated. Indicator maps of Austria clearly delimitate regions with elevated anthropogenic pressure on biodiversity due to land use characteristics. A sensitivity analysis conducted to evaluate the effect of land use data with different spatial and thematic resolution on the indicators showed that D n reacts sensitive to spatially more detailed information about natural and near natural habitats. By contrast N d and D 2 N were robust regarding the spatial and thematic resolution of input data. The proposed indicators do not measure biodiversity or a part of it directly, but the degree of habitat changes caused by anthropogenic land use, therefore they can be used for analysis over wide geographic ranges including different bio-geographic or climatic zones, and different spatial scales.

- by Johannes Rüdisser
- •
- Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Land Use, Ecological Indicators
- by Hub Zwart
- •
- Aristotle, Liberalism, Justice, Thomas Aquinas

Una regionalización biogeográfi ca es un sistema jerárquico para categorizar áreas geográfi cas en términos de su biota. Esta jerarquía incluye los niveles de reino, región, dominio, provincia y distrito, siendo el nivel básico la provincia. Se han propuesto numerosas regionalizaciones para caracterizar áreas biogeográfi cas, algunas de ellas basadas en la similitud total de sus biotas. Sin embargo, la identifi cación de patrones de homología geográfi ca (a través de la búsqueda de áreas de endemismo sucesivamente anidadas) sería un requisito fundamental para proponer esquemas de regionalización naturales. En el presente artículo se describen los principales conceptos y métodos asociados con el descubrimiento de los patrones biogeográfi cos usados en la construcción de regionalizaciones biogeográfi cas naturales.

- by Ilse Huitrón
- •
- Biogeography, Region, Naturalness, Hierarchy

Consumers seek naturalness across many domains, including physical appearance. It seems that the desire for natural beauty would discourage artificial appearance-enhancement consumption, such as cosmetic use. However, across an analysis of the "nomakeup movement" on Twitter and Nielsen cosmetic sales (Study 1a), an image analysis of #nomakeup selfies using machine learning approaches (Study 1b), and three experiments (Studies 2-4), we find that calls to look natural can be associated with increased artificial beauty practices. Drawing from attribution theory, we theorize that calls to look natural maintain the value of attractiveness while adding the consumer concern that others will discount their attractiveness if overt effort is present. Thus, rather than investing less effort, consumers may engage in a self-presentational strategy wherein they construct an appearance of naturalness to signal low effort to others, thereby augmenting their attractiveness. This work contributes to attribution and selfpresentation theory and offers practical implications for naturalness consumption.

- by Rosanna K Smith and +4
- •
- Attribution Theory, Self-presentation (Psychology), Beauty, Naturalness

The characteristics which were held to define the Chinese language within the Western intellectual tradition placed it for a time at the centre in discussions of the genealogy of mankind. The dominant premodern paradigm for the explanation of human linguistic diversity was Biblical exegesis, as discussed and elaborated within the framework of 'universal history'. A number of Western scholars argued that the Biblical patriarchs could be identified with legendary figures from Chinese history and that there was a direct link between the Chinese language and the pre-Babel linguistic order. The Chinese language, in particular its writing system, had universal characteristics, making it central in the quest for the restoration of the linguistic and conceptual unity of mankind. The rise of a modern linguistics marginalized universal projects of etymological speculation, and it was concluded that there was no cognate relationship between Chinese, Hebrew and the European languages. Both the language and the writing system were increasingly seen as anomalous and unnatural. Western understandings of the Chinese language and the Chinese writing system need to be contextualized within the evolution of conceptualizations of the natural and artificial.

- by Christopher Hutton
- •
- History, Cognitive Science, Semitic languages, Genealogy

Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.

This paper offers a critical appraisal of moderate truth pluralism through metaphysics. The appraisal is offered in the context of the ongoing debate between strong and moderate truth pluralists. Both kinds of pluralist endorse conceptual truth monism: there is a single concept of truth, TRUTH. Moderate pluralists endorse a generic truth property to go with truth. Strong pluralists maintain that there is no such property. Both moderate pluralists and strong pluralists endorse a plurality of properties (correspondence, coherence, superassertibility, etc.) that are truth-relevant for specific domains. Moderate pluralists think of truth-relevance as grounding: within a given domain instances of the truth-relevant property of that domain ground instances of generic truth. Generic truth is a property in its own right but, if true, propositions pertaining to a given domain are true because they have the truth-grounding property of the domain. Strong pluralists think of truth-relevance as reduction: truth is not a property in its own right. Within a given domain being true simply reduces to being F, where F is the truth-reducing property of the domain. We investigate how key ideas from contemporary metaphysics bear on moderate pluralism. We support three comparative claims: (i) instances of domain-specific truth-relevant properties enjoy a greater degree of qualitative similarity than instances of generic truth, (ii) domain-specific truth-relevant properties are more natural than generic truth, and (iii) domain-specific truth-relevant properties are more fundamental than generic truth. On the basis of our considerations regarding metaphysics we offer a critical appraisal of moderate pluralism. First, we argue that, in dealing with problems and challenges, moderate pluralist responses must always make ineliminable reference to the plurality of quasi-truth properties—a constraint that moderate pluralists often violate. Second, from a metaphysical point of view the unity of truth is in a certain sense grounded by its plurality—something that moderate pluralists tend to forget. Third, moderate pluralists cannot take the connection between TRUTH, the concept, and the nature of the property of truth to be too intimate. The former betrays the richness of the latter.

- by Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen
- •
- Truth, Theories Of Truth, Pluralism, Metaphysical grounding
- by Antonio Baroni
- •
- Natural Language Processing, Phonetics, Grammatology, Psycholinguistics

The content (proposed as naturalness, originality, childlikeness, and authenticity) and mechanism (as an infinite rotation of maintaining, searching, re-/finding) of genuineness are described in order to firstly apply the phenomenon to the field of artistic and aesthetic experiences, and secondly to expound the interplay of style, taste, and genuineness. Two examples are drawn to illustrate the stated concepts, namely the genuinizing strategy involved in the movies of Quentin Tarantino, as well as the fashion values of Garbiele Strehle.

- by Swantje Martach
- •
- Authenticity, Aesthetic Experience, Quentin Tarantino, Style

This paper puts forward a concept of naturalness as an alternative to the wilderness concept, which has been criticized for problematically situating human beings outside the natural world and thus conceptually foreclosing the possibility of humans living in harmony with nature. After examining and finding inadequate two concepts of naturalness dominant in the work of environmental ethicists, namely the natural as opposed to the supernatural and the natural as opposed to the anthropogenic, the paper delineates a concept of ecological naturalness, which links naturalness to ecological normality and ecosystem health. Tracing the historical roots of this concept back to classical Aristotelian philosophy, the paper shows that a contemporary ecological version of it actually underpins the intuitive views of many current-day environmentalists and ecologists. The paper concludes that the concept of ecological naturalness is better suited than the wilderness concept to support efforts at enabling humans to inhabit the earth’s ecosystems in ecologically sustainable ways.

According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is also constant, which is absurd. Avoiding this absurd conclusion requires questioning assumptions about infinity in the proof or interpretation of the theorem, adopting a sparse conception of properties, or denying degree of resemblance is a function of number of properties in common. After arguing against both the first two options, this paper argues for a version of the third which analyses degree of resemblance as a function of properties in common, but weighted by their degree of naturalness or importance.

- by Ben Blumson
- •
- Nelson Goodman, Pattern Recognition, David K Lewis, Universals

Despite the importance of speech naturalness to treatment outcomes, little research has been done on what constitutes speech naturalness and how to best maximize naturalness in relationship to other treatment goals like intelligibility. This study investigated the speech naturalness ratings of individuals with dysarthria and the associated perceptual correlates of highly natural and unnatural speech. Four speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to Parkinson's disease were recorded and rated for naturalness by 69 students in Communication Disorders. Students were presented with 436 speech samples and asked to provide speech naturalness ratings on a 1–9 Likert scale. After rating speech samples, subjects listed perceptual cues associated with samples rated most and least natural and weighted each cue on a visual analog scale. The data on naturalness ratings showed that spontaneous speech was rated the least natural on average, while sentences from a short story were rated slightly more natural and individually read sentences were rated the most natural of all of the utterance types. Thirteen themes emerged from the perceptual cues collected. Of the 13 themes, intelligibility was rated significantly more important than other cues in highly natural speech and intelligibility and articulation were rated significantly more important than other cues in highly unnatural speech.

- by Marie Klopfenstein
- •
- Dysarthria, Naturalness

Esperanto is a planned international auxiliary language, constructed by L.L. Zamenhof and published in 1887. It develops, however, in a speech community and its features allow for classifying it as nearing natural languages in many respects. This paper aims to assess Esperanto in terms of a variety of criteria and to demonstrate that it can be treated as natural.

- by Ida Stria
- •
- Artificial Language, International Planned Languages, Esperanto, Artificial Languages

Japanese are often said to have a traditionally close relationship to nature. This trait can also be found in Japanese religion. It does not mean, however, that the oncept of nature and the problems involved in it are widely discussed. Rather, the closeness to nature seems to be one of the reasons why there are, as far as I can see, only very few instances where the problem of 'nature' is considered at all in the context of Japanese religion. References in Buddhist dictionaries indicate that Shinran's thought is particularly important for the understanding of the Japanese word for nature, read jinen in Buddhist texts and shizen in modern Japanese.

- by Gerhard Schepers
- •
- Japanese Religions, Shinran, Naturalness

Research on speech and emotion is moving from a period of exploratory research into one where there is a prospect of substantial applications, notably in human–computer interaction. Progress in the area relies heavily on the development... more

- by E. Douglas-cowie
- •
- Cognitive Science, Human Computer Interaction, Linguistics, Speech Communication

In this paper I argue against Simion’s (2018) Epistemic Limiting Procedure for conceptual engineering and put forward a more permissive alternative, according to which epistemic losses do not systematically block amelioration, but merely provide reasons against it. On this less restrictive view, epistemic losses will be permissible, provided that they are compensated by the non-epistemic gains of the amelioration. After fleshing out the details of my proposal, I discuss two case studies in relation to which Simion’s restrictive procedure seems to yield the wrong predictions. I argue that my alternative accommodates these cases significantly better.

- by Iñigo Valero Alzaga
- •
- Conceptual change, Natural Kinds, Naturalness, Conceptual Engineering

Protected areas are considered fundamental to the preservation of nature. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has standardized categories for protected areas designation, which are intended to represent varying levels of regulatory protection. We evaluate whether the present assignment of protected areas to IUCN categories corresponds to the expected gradient of naturalness in a globally consistent manner. Our proxy of naturalness was a global map of human influence known as Human Footprint (HF). Higher HF values represent less intact natural areas. Our final sample of protected areas included 21,186 IUCN-designated sites that were P1 km 2 . We used multiple linear regression to test for the effect of IUCN categories on mean HF while accounting for biome and protected area size.

- by Fiona K.a Schmiegelow
- •
- Conservation, Biodiversity, Biological Sciences, Biodiversity Conservation

The transition towards a sustainable bio-based society is one of the big global challenges of today. It envisions a ‘greening’ of agriculture, energy and industry and even a ‘second’ industrial revolution. Besides opportunities, it also involves challenges, such as tensions between food versus fuel versus nature or concerns over GMOs. They must be timely and effectively addressed to ensure public commitment and support. A number of key issues or concepts are involved that may act as sources of inspiration, but also as items for uneasiness and contestation. This project aimed to clarify and effectively address them through multiple-stakeholder, mutual learning exercises, turning them into sources of orientation and inspiration rather than obstacles. Notably, four key issues are involved: 1) Sustainability; 2) Naturalness; 3) Credibility; 4) Global justice. By focussing on these issues, the project aimed to understand and address the conceptual and normative dimensions of complex chain collaborations in the agro-food and adjacent bio-economy sectors, and to contribute to a paradigm shift towards open innovation. Food and other applications of biomass is not only about animals and plants, but first and foremost about people: their ideas and their concerns. Technically feasible innovations often require complex negotiations with policy and society and call for multiple stakeholder processes involving multiple moral languages and value systems. To forego confusion and collision, these must be voiced and addressed through mutual exposure and interdisciplinary collaboration, involving stakeholders from science, industry, governance and civil society. Our tools: 1) Interactive research, 2) Conceptual analysis, 3) Case study analysis.

- by Fiona Schmiegelow
- •
- Conservation, Biodiversity, Biological Sciences, Biodiversity Conservation

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus length of final unstressed syllables and pitch accent of final syllables emerged as possible acoustic variables contributing to within-speaker variations in speech naturalness. Results suggest that acoustic measures correlate with speech naturalness, but in dysarthric speech they depend on the speaker due to the within-speaker variation in speech impairment.

Being in ShakeSPSPeare'S MoMent flloyd kennedy UniverSity of QUeenSland The analyst's task is to account for [the] "lived" quality. .. to show how actors deal with this alliance between the rational and the pulsional. .. for it always says more than the intentional signs of the character (Pavis 2003, 136). Performers of text, even those working with short pieces of script at a time (as is the way with filmed performance) repeat memorised words many times, often with the objective to sound each time as if the words just happened to come to them in that instant, in response to the need to express a specific thought. I propose that when this is successfully achieved, particularly in the erformance of Shakespearean text without losing the heightened, poetic nature of the text, the illusion of 'natural' speech which is described as 'being in the moment' owes its existence to a particular meta-performative quality adhering in the voice.

- by Flloyd Kennedy
- •
- Voice Theory, Acting, Theory of Voice, Actor Training

Siipilehto, J. & Siitonen, J. 2004. Degree of previous cutting in explaining the differences in diameter distributions between mature managed and natural Norway spruce forests. Silva Fennica 38(4): 425-435.

- by Juha Siitonen
- •
- Naturalness, Norway Spruce
- by Elizabeth S Parks
- •
- Deaf Culture, American Sign Language, Deaf Education, Naturalness

In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for pitch modification. The linear prediction residual is obtained from pitch synchronous frames by inverse filtering the speech signal. Then Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is applied on these pitch synchronous frames. Based on the desired factor of pitch modification, the dimension of the DCT vector is changed by truncation or zero padding, and then Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform is applied. This period modified residual signal is then forward filtered to obtain the pitch modified speech. The quality of the speech thus obtained is better for increased pitch frequency than for decreased pitch by the same factor. The method can be applied pitch asynchronously also, with some distortion.

- by Ramakrishnan Angarai Ganesan and +1
- •
- Natural Language Processing, Speech Prosody, Signal Processing, Speech Synthesis

This paper addresses "ecosystem health", a concept recently popularised as the way forward in evaluating nature. The concept is often defined in vague expressions and is being seen more as a broad societal aspiration rather than a specific performance measure of ecosystem management. As such, the paper aims to demystify ecosystem health, that is, to demarcate an accurate and feasible characterisation of the concept. To achieve this aim an examination of the various viewpoints of nature is undertaken. Models of ecosystem health, such as the notions of naturalness, genetic fitness, climax, diversity, stability and keystone species are each considered and subsequently deemed inappropriate, especially when viewing ecosystems as "complex self-organising systems". Complex self-organising systems are non-linear dynamic systems that have multiple steady states and have emergent and chaotic properties. One model that captures this selforganisation process is Holling's adaptive cycle. However, when investigating this model it was concluded that there is no means to determining which phase within a system state, or state within a system is ecologically "better". Therefore, ecosystem health cannot be considered in a positive manner established by scientific objectivity. Rather, the concept must be determined in a normative fashion through it is suggested the elicitation of subjective societal values, so to define an optimal management strategy. But, implementing such a strategy is difficult because the changing nature and unpredictability of complex self-organising systems means we cannot focus on "locking-in" ecosystems (or preferences), instead it is argued we must forever adapt to changing ecological conditions.

- by Ross Cullen
- •
- Resilience, Complexity, Ecosystem health, Naturalness

The paper asks the question, whether nakedness embodies a potential wisdom. It deals with two different approaches to the phenomenon of nakedness: the first one rejecting, the second one appreciating the corporeality. The authors show different meanings the various cultures and civilizations attributed to nakedness, e.g. nakedness as a religious symbol of social subordination or belittling (Mesopotamia, Israel) or of a specific national dominance (Greece). Attention is paid also to the meanings of nakedness in Jainism, where the nakedness is a symbol of non-possessiveness; in Christianity, where the approach to nakedness is ambiguous; in tantrism with its vision of a person with numerous bodies, where the role of nakedness and sexuality is seen in cosmic context. Thus the meaning of nakedness remains multiple, depending on its context and visualization. The authors reject the pornography culture of contemporary society in favor of gymnosophy as the hierophany of the naturalness of nakedness.

- by Pavel Hlavinka and +1
- •
- Social impact, Corporeality, Naturalness, Tantra Philosophy

Conservation goals at the start of the 21st century reflect a combination of contrasting ideas. Ideal nature is something that is historically intact but also futuristically flexible. Ideal nature is independent from humans, but also, because of the pervasiveness of human impacts, only able to reach expression through human management. These tensions emerge in current management rationales because scientists and managers are struggling to accommodate old and new scientific and cultural thinking, while also maintaining legal mandates from the past and commitments to preservation of individual species in particular places under the stresses of global change. Common management goals (such as integrity, wilderness, resilience), whether they are forward looking and focused on sustainability and change, or backward looking and focused on the persistence and restoration of historic states, tend to create essentialisms about how ecosystems should be. These essentialisms limit the options of managers to accommodate the dynamic, and often novel, response of ecosystems to global change. Essentialisms emerge because there is a tight conceptual coupling of place and historical species composition as an indicator of naturalness (e.g., normal, healthy, independent from humans). Given that change is increasingly the norm and ecosystems evolve in response, the focus on idealized ecosystem states is increasingly unwise and unattainable.

- by Nicole Heller
- •
- Ethics, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Resilience

The notion of naturalness is an important concept of forest sustainable management, biological
conservation, or as a base for restoration projects. The naturalness degree of a forest system is commonly
evaluated based on forest ecology indicators, primarily with a relative short time resolution (e.g. dendroecological
indication). However, the current state of ecological systems is the result of processes
occurring in interaction at different and hierarchically connected spatial and temporal scales, including
long term resolution (e.g. Holocene scale). Consequently, to assess the naturalness degree of ecological
systems it is important to deal with their various temporal and spatial scales. In order to do that,
palaeoecological approaches are needed, but hitherto have rarely been applied in naturalness investigations.
The difficulties of interpretation in terms of spatial resolution of the main used palaeoecological
approaches (e.g. palynology) and the presence of archive sites favourable to provide palaeoecological
proxies seem to be limiting factors. Pedoanthracology allows the investigation of forest dynamics at the
local spatial scale potentially everywhere, and for a longer time resolution. This paper illustrates this by
using pedoanthracology to contribute to the naturalness assessment of three study cases in various
biomes in Europe, in the south French Alps, in Central Germany and in Northern Germany. The charcoal
richness of soil samples was quantified, and fragments were analysed taxonomically. Radiocarbon dating
of single charcoals, combined with soil description, allows interpretation of the data within a temporal
and spatial framework.
At the site in Northern Germany, the ancient occurrence of fire was identified, burning early Holocene
pioneer forest vegetation, while during more recent times, the burning of Fagus forest happened, Fagus
sylvatica being today’s dominant forest tree. At the site south of the Harz Mountains, in Central Germany,
the established reference system is a Quercus dominated forest, which has persisted for thousands of
years until today, possibly due to human woodland management. At the third site, in the French
Southern Alps, the local forest system has never been more mature than in the current state, because it
was regularly renewed by fire disturbances.

- by Vincent Robin and +1
- •
- Forest History, Naturalness, Charcoal in soil, Macro Charcoal
- by Hillel Schwartz
- •
- Natural Resources, Naturalness, Overweight and Obesity

This article examines the inventorying of Finnish intangible cultural heritage with regard to UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. I analyze the participatory Wiki-inventory for Living Heritage, concentrating on entries that discuss food and foodways, to study how food, materiality, and the national intertwine the practices of producing intangible cultural heritage. The article’s theoretical background draws from the fields of banal nationalism and critical heritage studies. Food is eminently important in narratives of Finnishness: by using the concepts of naturalness and pastness, I show how Finnish food becomes interpreted as ‘authentic’ Finnish heritage. The concepts illuminate the complex processes in which the materiality of food, the Finnish terroir and landscape, narratives of the past, and the consumer that prepares, eats, and digests the heritagized food are tied to each other. These processes reinforce the banality of Finnishness, though the practices of inventorying paradoxically strive for the ideal of cultural diversity that UNESCO promotes.

- by Heidi Henriikka Mäkelä
- •
- Intangible cultural heritage, Foodways, Naturalness, Pastness

There are four widely accepted qualities of a good Bible translation; accuracy, clarity, naturalness and acceptability. This paper will explore how the internalization step of oral Bible translation is a key component in achieving a natural translation by addressing the needs of oral preference learners. I will review the process of internalization and how it has been implemented in the Central Pame translation project in Mexico as they translated the book of Jonah using the Render software program. The Central Pame translation project is the first OBT project in Mexico and is a partnership program between SIL, UNTI (a national indigenous translation organization in Mexico) and the Seed Company. The Central Pame Project In the Central Pame project, we were initially planning on a traditional written translation project. However, out of the six members of our translation team, only one had received training in Pame literacy and was comfortable writing in her language. Everyone on the team felt that she had to be the person to do everything that was related to translation. The pressure from the team even caused this one member to step down from the translation team temporarily. In 2014, our team was invited by UNTI to participate in an oral storying training program. This training was our first exposure to oral methodology and the process of internalization. Internalization is not just memorizing the story. It is the idea that the translators will listen to and interact with the story until they are so familiar with it that they are thinking about it in their own language and expressing it in a way that is natural for their own culture. Part of that process includes asking the participants to think of similar or related stories from their own cultures and then telling those stories in preparation for telling the story from the Bible. As the team went through this process for learning the stories, the goal was that they would tell the story as if it was their own story. The result was a story that was understandable and acceptable in the community. After the team finished the last oral story training, we returned to the community. The very next day, during a church service, the pastor and his brother both shared one of the stories with the congregation. Immediately after the service, several women from a neighboring community approached the pastor and asked if he would teach them the

- by Kris Toler
- •
- Storytelling, Bible Translation, Understanding, Internalization
- by Anne Henriques
- •
- Reading, Animals and Animality, Flesh, Nature

According to a prominent view of organism persistence (" vitalicism "), organisms cease to exist at death. According to a rival view (" somaticism "), organisms can continue to exist as dead organisms. Most of the arguments in favor of the latter view rely on linguistic and common sense intuitions. I propose a new argument for somaticism by appealing to two other sources that have thus far not figured in the debate: the concept of naturalness, and biological descriptions of organisms, in particular in ethology and ecology. I show that if we hone in on the relevant notion of naturalness, we can show that organisms can (and often do) continue to instantiate the natural property being an organism after death.

- by Rina Tzinman
- •
- Death, Personal Identity, Persistence, Animalism

The purposes of this study were to investigate naturalness of the post-treatment speech of Comprehensive Stuttering Program (CSP) clients and differences in naturalness ratings by three listener groups. Listeners were 21 student speech-language pathologists, 9 community members, and 15 listeners who stutter. Listeners rated perceptually fluent speech samples of CSP clients obtained immediately post-treatment (Post) and at 5 years follow-up (F5), and speech samples of matched typically fluent (TF) speakers. A 9-point interval rating scale was used. A 3 (listener group) × 2 (time) × 2 (speaker) mixed ANOVA was used to test for differences among mean ratings. The difference between CSP Post and F5 mean ratings was statistically significant. The F5 mean rating was within the range reported for typically fluent speakers. Student speech-language pathologists were found to be less critical than community members and listeners who stutter in rating naturalness; however, there were no significant differences in ratings made by community members and listeners who stutter. Results indicate that the naturalness of post-treatment speech of CSP clients improves in the post-treatment period and that it is possible for clients to achieve levels of naturalness that appear to be acceptable to adults who stutter and that are within the range of naturalness ratings given to typically fluent speakers.

- by Marilyn Langevin
- •
- Speech Language Pathology, Speech perception, Fluency disorders, Adolescent

This study examines people's acceptance of genetically modified (GM) food. Results suggest that GM acceptance depends most on how natural the genetically modified product is perceived and not directly on how natural the non-GM product is seen. A GM product that is perceived as more natural is more likely to be accepted than a GM product that is perceived as less natural. The extent to which GM affects the perceived naturalness of a product partly depends on the kind of product. q

- by Ellen Dreezens
- •
- Genetics, Psychiatry, Perception, Public Opinion

A frustrating aspect of software development is that compiler error messages often fail to locate the actual cause of a syntax error. An errant semicolon or brace can result in many errors reported throughout the file. We seek to find the actual source of these syntax errors by relying on the consistency of software: valid source code is usually repetitive and unsurprising. We exploit this consistency by constructing a simple N-gram language model of lexed source code tokens. We implemented an automatic Java syntax-error locator using the corpus of the project itself and evaluated its performance on mutated source code from several projects. Our tool, trained on the past versions of a project, can effectively augment the syntax error locations produced by the native compiler. Thus we provide a methodology and tool that exploits the naturalness of software source code to detect syntax errors alongside the parser.

- by Abram Hindle
- •
- Syntax, Language, NLP, N-Grams
- by Jonathan Ochs
- •
- Intuitionistic Logic, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ontology

Virtual humans are employed in many interactive applications using 3D virtual environments, including (serious) games. The motion of such virtual humans should look realistic (or 'natural') and allow interaction with the surroundings and other (virtual) humans. Current animation techniques differ in the trade-off they offer between motion naturalness and the control that can be exerted over the motion. We show mechanisms to parameterize, combine (on different body parts) and concatenate motions generated by different animation techniques. We discuss several aspects of motion naturalness and show how it can be evaluated. We conclude by showing the promise of combinations of different animation paradigms to enhance both naturalness and control.

- by Zsófia Ruttkay
- •
- Computer Graphics, Control, Naturalness, Serious Game

In this review of Dominik Perler’s book Eine Person sein, Perler’s reconstruction of the relationship between Thomas Aquinas’s unitarist position and his theory of incontinence is analyzed. Perler argues that the unitarist position of Thomas allowes him to conceive of incontinence as a weakness of the whole psychological system of the person. Unlike the mad person, the incontinent has responsibility because she has preserved a degree of rational control. Perler argues that the incontinent person is not responsible for the spontaneous emergence of desire, which is a natural process, only for the way in which she rationally controls it (or not). By analyzing Aquinas’s notion of naturality with respect to desires, I argue that the person is actually responsible for the emergence of a desire, just in case the content of the desire is constituted by a rational choice of end.

- by Oliver Istvan Toth
- •
- Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Philosophy of Action, Aquinas

Our participation in the Blizzard Challenge 2014 is only for the Tamil language. We have a unit selection based concatenative speech synthesis system. Sentence level viterbi search is used to select the reliable speech units among a set of candidate units. The given RD (reading), SUS (semantically unpredictable sentences) and ML (multi‐lingual) test sentences are synthesized using the corpus made available for the participants. The listening test results reported by the blizzard evaluation team are discussed. The letter code for MILE TTS is “J”.

- by Ramakrishnan Angarai Ganesan and +1
- •
- Human Computer Interaction, Speech Synthesis, Thirukkural, Evaluation

The basic problem of contemporary sport is the question if some boundary of growth exists. If such growth of records is possible ad infinitum, or if we have to crash on any boundaries. New terms as "transhumanism" or "posthumanism" denotative situation where the human personality try "to make better" his/her being through the techniques by overcrossing a horizon of (natural) humanity. When the human being stays at boundary of his/her possibilities at maximum achievement, he/she looks other ways leading to victory: doping and technique. However, both lead to dishonor of human naturalness, both squander the potential of authentic existence in sport framework and both lead to the cyborgization of sport.

- by Ivo Jirásek
- •
- Sport Psychology, Human Evolution, Humanities, Cyborg Theory

Bellcore's large-screen teleconferencing prototype is a significant step in the direction of lifelike teleconferencing. It realizes a good part of a service concept for easy, informal video and audio communication, augmented with visual aids and shared computer applications. Users of this prototype describe it as comfortable and almost as though the conference participants were in the same room. This presentation

- by Eric Addeo
- •
- Computer Science, Interpersonal Communication, Multimedia, Human Factors

In the Ebersberger Forest, which is the largest enclosed wooded region in the lowlands of Southern Germany, the effects of forest conversion of spruce monocultural stands into mixed spruce-beech forests on humus and ground vegetation (assessing plant diversity and composition) were examined. Three management systems (pure Norway spruce stands “Z” vs. conversion of pure Norway spruce stands into mixed stands of Norway spruce and European beech with a low “L” or high percentage of hardwood “H”) were compared to one another. On a total of 54 sample areas (18 per system), humus (humus form and thickness of the humus layer) and ground vegetation (vascular plants, bryophytes) were recorded by using standardized sampling methods.
The proportion of "unfavorable" humus forms, designated as raw humus-like moder and moder in the German system, decreased with increasing beech proportion, while the favorable humus forms, designated as mull-like moder and F-mull, showed an increase. Along with these changes, a significant lower average thickness of the organic humus layers (O) considering the fermented (f) and the humus (h) O horizon could be found in the L- and H-system.
The effects of forest conversion caused changes in the constancy and/or cover of species of the un-derstorey vegetation. The “losers” of forest conversion (indicator species of pure spruce stands) were predominantly species indicating acidic and nutrient poor sites and low temperatures. The “winners” (indicator species of L- and H-system), on the other hand, were predominantly the natural regeneration of deciduous trees and indicators of increased nutrient availability and base saturation.
The introduction of beech affected the dominance of single species or species groups, resulting in a significant increase in evenness and Shannon diversity (and thus a higher alpha diversity) or a signifi-cant decrease in the cover of the moss layer in the H-system. Changes in total species number (gamma diversity) play a less important role. Due to a mosaic of small patches of spruce and beech dominated parts in the forest conversion variants with heterogeneous site conditions, there is also an increased floristic heterogeneity between the individual sampling plots and thus a continuous increase in beta diversity from the Z- over the L- to the H-system. The degree of naturalness or the proportion of species of closed forests also increases due to conversion. Accordingly, the overall effects of forest conversion on plant diversity can be assessed as positive.

- by H. Walentowski
- •
- Plant Diversity, Naturalness, Species Composition, Humus