Data fusion and abductive inference for metaphor resolution: a bridging discussion

Since the 1980s, metaphor has been recognized as a pervasively diffused phenomenon in communication, absolutely not restricted to rhetoric and linguistic phenomena, involving structured concepts, relations, and matching ‘rules’. Metaphor resolution, that is metaphor understanding, as well as metaphor creation, has become an issue in automated processing and understanding of natural language as well as of mixed visual communication. It can be showed as a process of structure finding and mapping procedure between conceptual denotation–connotation structures necessary for interpretation. Creative abduction is then showed to be the pattern inference required to work out structure-mappings in corresponding nodes as present in metaphors. In this paper, we review some key issues (definitions, typologies, theoretical problems) involving the concept of ‘metaphor’ and survey some definitions and concepts emerging in contemporary debate on abductive inference. Finally, we argue that metaphor understanding process can be recognized as a fusion tractable problem, allowing the exploitation of frameworks and algorithms of such domain.

Length-weight relationship and growth pattern inference of a small indigenous freshwater Prawn, Macrobrachium lamarrei (H. Milne-Edwards, 1837) in Bangladesh

The length-weight relationships (LWRs) of Macrobrachium lamarrei (H. Milne-Edwards, 1837) was studied to construct the generalized relationships of body weight to carapace length measurements for male, female and combined prawn population separately over a calendar year. A total of 1018 specimens were used for this study. The parameter values of the equation W = a Lb describing the relationships between body weight and carapace length for male, female and combined prawns. The parameter of equations, a varied from 0.00096 to 0.00333, 0.00059 to 0.00728 and 0.00081 to 0.00440 for male, female and combined prawn population respectively. On the other hand, the slope of equations, b varied from 2.4363 to 2.8229, 2.0761 to 3.0314 and 2.2915 to 2.8998 for male, female and combined prawn population respectively indicating isometric growth in females but negative allometric for males suggesting that female prawns were comparatively in better condition than males of the same population. The generalized length-weight relationship was fitted with the pooled data of all monthly samples for male, female and combined prawn separately which were BW = 0.0008 CL2.924, BW = 0.0012 CL2.783 and BW = 0.0010CL2.845 respectively indicating negative allometric growth as b varied from 2.783 to 2.924. The results further revealed that all length-weight relationships (LWRs) were highly correlated (r2 > 0.904). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ralf.v1i1.22377 Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.1(1): 137-145, Dec 2014