Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Uninformed search“

The well-known double marginalization problem understates the inefficiencies arising from vertical relations in consumer search markets where consumers are uninformed about the wholesale prices charged by manufacturers to retailers. Consumer search provides a monopoly manufacturer with an additional incentive to increase its price, worsening the double marginalization problem and lowering the manufacturer's profits. Nevertheless, manufacturers in more competitive wholesale markets may not have an incentive to reveal their prices to consumers. We show that retail prices decrease in search cost, and so both industry profits and consumer surplus increase in search cost. (JEL D11, D42, D83, L12, L25, L60, L81)

Some regularities enjoy only an attenuated existence in a body of training data. These are regularities whose statistical visibility depends on some systematic recoding of the data. The space of possible recodings is, however, infinitely large – it is the space of applicable Turing machines. As a result, mappings that pivot on such attenuated regularities cannot, in general, be found by brute-force search. The class of problems that present such mappings we call the class of “type-2 problems.” Type-1 problems, by contrast, present tractable problems of search insofar as the relevant regularities can be found by sampling the input data as originally coded. Type-2 problems, we suggest, present neither rare nor pathological cases. They are rife in biologically realistic settings and in domains ranging from simple animat (simulated animal or autonomous robot) behaviors to language acquisition. Not only are such problems rife – they are standardly solved! This presents a puzzle. How, given the statistical intractability of these type-2 cases, does nature turn the trick? One answer, which we do not pursue, is to suppose that evolution gifts us with exactly the right set of recoding biases so as to reduce specific type-2 problems to (tractable) type-1 mappings. Such a heavy-duty nativism is no doubt sometimes plausible. But we believe there are other, more general mechanisms also at work. Such mechanisms provide general (not task-specific) strategies for managing problems of type-2 complexity. Several such mechanisms are investigated. At the heart of each is a fundamental ploy – namely, the maximal exploitation of states of representation already achieved by prior, simpler (type-1) learning so as to reduce the amount of subsequent computational search. Such exploitation both characterizes and helps make unitary sense of a diverse range of mechanisms. These include simple incremental learning (Elman 1993), modular connectionism (Jacobs et al. 1991), and the developmental hypothesis of “representational redescription” (Karmiloff-Smith 1979; 1992). In addition, the most distinctive features of human cognition – language and culture – may themselves be viewed as adaptations enabling this representation/computation trade-off to be pursued on an even grander scale.

This study investigates the pattern of eye movements produced when adult readers encounter cross-sentence contradictions. Subjects read paragraphs which did or did not contain contradictions while their eye movements were being monitored. Uninformed subjects were asked to prepare to answer a question that would follow each paragraph. Informed subjects were told that the paragraphs might contain contradictions and that they were to prepare to report the contradictions and to answer a question after each paragraph. Eye fixations were categorized to indicate the frequency of different operationally defined patterns of eye movements. Analyses of the frequency of these categories provided evidence that both informed and uninformed subjects were aware of the inserted contradictions and that instructions to search for inserted errors caused readers to alter their reading behavior.

We present and analyse an algorithm that quickly finds falsifying inputs for hybrid systems. Our method is based on a probabilistically directed tree search, whose distribution adapts to consider an increasingly fine-grained discretization of the input space. In experiments with standard benchmarks, our algorithm shows comparable or better performance to existing techniques, yet it does not build an explicit model of a system. Instead, at each decision point within a single trial, it makes an uninformed probabilistic choice between simple strategies to extend the input signal by means of exploration or exploitation. Key to our approach is the way input signal space is decomposed into levels, such that coarse segments are more probable than fine segments. We perform experiments to demonstrate how and why our approach works, finding that a fully randomized exploration strategy performs as well as our original algorithm that exploits robustness. We propose this strategy as a new baseline for falsification and conclude that more discriminative benchmarks are required.

Test-based problems are search and optimization problems in which candidate solutions interact with multiple tests (examples, fitness cases, environments) in order to be evaluated. The approach conventionally adopted in most search and optimization algorithms involves aggregating the interaction outcomes into a scalar objective. However, passing different tests may require unrelated `skills' that candidate solutions may vary on.Scalar tness is inherently incapable of capturing such di erences and leaves a search algorithm largely uninformed about the diverse qualities of individual candidate solutions. In this paper, we discuss the implications of this fact and present a range of methods that avoid scalarization by turning the outcomes of interactions between programs and tests into 'search drivers' - partial, heuristic, transient pseudo-objectives that form multifaceted characterizations of candidate solutions. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by reviewing the experimental evidence from past work, confront it with related research endeavors, and embed it into a broader context of behavioral program synthesis.

Abstract Seismology has continuously recorded ground‐motion spanning up to decades. Blind, uninformed search for similar‐signal waveforms within this continuous data can detect small earthquakes missing from earthquake catalogs, yet doing so with naive approaches is computationally infeasible. We present results from an improved version of the Fingerprint And Similarity Thresholding (FAST) algorithm, an unsupervised data‐mining approach to earthquake detection, now available as open‐source software. We use FAST to search for small earthquakes in 6–11 yr of continuous data from 27 channels over an 11‐station local seismic network near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in central California. FAST detected 4554 earthquakes in this data set, with a 7.5% false detection rate: 4134 of the detected events were previously cataloged earthquakes located across California, and 420 were new local earthquake detections with magnitudes −0.3≤ML≤2.4, of which 224 events were located near the seismic network. Although seismicity rates are low, this study confirms that nearby faults are active. This example shows how seismology can leverage recent advances in data‐mining algorithms, along with improved computing power, to extract useful additional earthquake information from long‐duration continuous data sets.

The effect of an object-hypothesis on the organization of fragmented figures was investigated by varying instructions given prior to stimulus presentation. One group was uninformed as to the possibility of seeing a figure; a second group was instructed that it is possible to see a meaningful object; a third group was further instructed as to which class of object was presented. It was found that, in order to achieve organization of fragmented figures, the observer must have knowledge that a meaningful object may be integrated from the fragments. Knowledge of the class of object, while increasing the likelihood of recognition, does not significantly decrease search time.

We study directed search equilibria in a decentralized market with adverse selection, where uninformed buyers post general trading mechanisms and informed sellers select one of them. We show that this has differing and significant implications with respect to the traditional approach, based on bilateral contracting between the parties. In equilibrium, all buyers post the same mechanism and low‐quality sellers receive priority in any meeting with a buyer. Also, buyers make strictly higher profits with low‐ than with high‐type sellers. When adverse selection is severe, the equilibrium features rationing and is constrained inefficient. Compared to the equilibrium with bilateral contracting, the equilibrium with general mechanisms yields a higher surplus for most, but not all, parameter specifications.

We present several variants of a stochastic algorithm which all evolve tree-structured sets adapted to the geometry of general target subsets in metric spaces, and we briefly discuss their relevance to biological modelling. In all variants, one repeatedly draws random points from the target (step 1), each time selecting from the tree to be grown the point which is closest to the point just randomly drawn (step 2), then adding to the tree a new point in the vicinity of that closest point (step 3 or accretion step). The algorithms differ in their accretion rule, which can use the position of the target point drawn, or not. The informed case relates to the early behaviour of self-organizing maps that mimic somatotopy. It is simple enough to be studied analytically near its branching points, which generally follow some unsuccessful bifurcations. Further modifying step 2 leads to a fast version of the algorithm that builds oblique binary search trees, and we show how to use it in high-dimensional spaces to address a problem relevant to interventional medical imaging and artificial vision. In the case of an uninformed accretion rule, some adaptation also takes place, the behaviour near branching points is computationally very similar to the informed case, and we discuss its interpretations within the Darwinian paradigm.

In the face of the almost four-fold increase in study abroad participation over the past seven years, it is imperative to ask some pressing questions regarding how to optimize the study abroad experience, ensuring that students move beyond a superficially touristic mode of uninformed impressionistic response to their host locale into a more sophisticated engagement with its complex social, political, historical, and cultural particularities. In this spirit, this article presents an essay, which will use geocritical theory to inquire into the pedagogical uses and larger social functioning of texts that represent the places to which study abroad students flock in search of knowledge and experience. In doing so, it will ask what are some of the ways texts and the places they represent relate to each other, how do texts set up horizons of expectations regarding places to be encountered, and, as a function of these, how might these texts best be put to use in a study abroad educational context?

We illustrate how an information sender may use unverifiable signals regarding a set of substitute products located in an alternative market to manipulate the choices made by uninformed but perfectly rational decision makers (DMs) within the verifiable market where the information sender operates. We do so by defining an optimal information gathering structure for rational DMs who acquire information sequentially from a set of multidimensional products. The resulting strategic signaling environment delivers two main results that are illustrated numerically. First, in order for the sender to successfully manipulate the information gathering and choice behavior of DMs, he should release signals on characteristics that differ from their most preferred ones. Second, the capacity of the sender to manipulate the behavior of DMs depends negatively on his reputation regarding the expected value of the unobserved characteristics guaranteed to DMs within the market where he operates. Normative applications to online search environments conditioned by the provision of strategic reviews in social media are presented.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present design and performance evaluation through simulation of a parking management system (PMS) for a fully automated, multi-story, puzzle-type and robotic parking structure with the overall objective of minimizing customer wait times while maximizing the space utilization. Design/methodology/approach The presentation entails development and integration of a complete suite of path planning, elevator scheduling and resource allocation algorithms. The PMS aims to manage multiple concurrent requests, in real time and in a dynamic context, for storage and retrieval of vehicles loaded onto robotic carts for a fully automated, multi-story and driving-free parking structure. The algorithm suite employs the incremental informed search algorithm D* Lite with domain-specific heuristics and the uninformed search algorithm Uniform Cost Search for path search and planning. An optimization methodology based on nested partitions and Genetic algorithm is adapted for scheduling of a group of elevators. The study considered a typical business day scenario in the center of a metropolis. Findings The simulation study indicates that the proposed design for the PMS is able to serve concurrent storage-retrieval requests representing a wide range of Poisson distributed customer arrival rates in real time while requiring reasonable computing resources under realistic scenarios. The customer waiting times for both storage and retrieval requests are within acceptable bounds, which are set as no more than 5 min, even in the presence of up to 100 concurrent storage and retrieval requests. The design is able to accommodate a variety of customer arrival rates and presence of immobilized vehicles which are assumed to be scattered across the floors of the structure to make it possible for deployment in real-time environments. Originality/value The intelligent system design is novel as the fully automated robotic parking structures are just in the process of being matured from a technology standpoint.

Current planning schemes in Australia identify areas that are potentially liable to flooding. This identification of flood‐liable land is based on flood height levels over time. Throughout New South Wales (NSW) this measure of flood affectivity is determined by three classifications. These classifications also influence the development of residential property within these flood areas. Prospective purchasers are advised of this flood zoning, when a full title search is carried out. However, as these properties are often located on the flood plain, but not within sight of the river, flooding can appear visually remote to the uninformed buyer. This study analyses residential house sales in flood‐prone areas and compares price movements of these houses with similar houses in immediate adjoining areas that are not affected by flooding. The analysis covers the period 1984 to 2000, which includes the last major floods in Sydney during 1990. This study period determines what impact a major flood has on residential housing prices and whether this effect is ongoing or decreases, the longer the area is free from flood affectivity.

The N-puzzle problem is one of the most classical problems in mathematics. Since the number of states in the N-puzzle is equal to the factorial of the number of tiles, traditional algorithms can only provide solutions for small-scale ones, such as 8-puzzle. Various uninformed and informed search algorithms have been applied to solve the N-puzzle, and their performances have been evaluated. Apart from traditional methods, artificial intelligence algorithms are also used for solutions. This paper introduces a new approach based on a meta-heuristic algorithm with a solving of the 15-puzzle problem. Generally, only Manhattan distance is used as the heuristic function, while in this study, a linear conflict function is used to increase the effectiveness of the heuristic function. Besides, the puzzle was divided into subsets named pattern database, and solutions were obtained for the subsets separately with the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. The proposed approach reveals that the ABC algorithm is very successful in solving the 15-puzzle problem.

Johannes Kepler's most important publication on questions of religion and confession, his Profession of Faith appeared in 1623 when the universal scholar Matthias Bernegger had an edition of one hundred copies printed in Strasbourg — at Kepler's expense — under the title: Glaubensbekandtnus vnd Ableinung allerhand desthalben entstandener vngütlichen Nachreden. With this booklet, Kepler intended to demonstrate that his religious convictions did indeed stand in harmony with the Bible; in addition, he strove to refute the accusations of heterodoxy brought against him, the “gossip” or “Nachreden” as he called it. His argument peaks in the next passage: “It is indeed quite an irksome matter, and one very much a matter of great agitation for the average, uninformed man, that someone could be so foolhardy, proud, and swollen-headed as to join no [religious] party. But I swear by God that I have not found joy in the situation nor found any peace therein. It causes me great grief that the three large factiones have torn the truth so terribly among themselves that I am forced to search and piece the truth together where I find it.”

Background. The Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) measures 5 dimensions of decision making (feeling: uncertain, uninformed, unclear about values, unsupported; ineffective decision making). We examined the use of the DCS over its initial 20 years (1995 to 2015). Methods. We conducted a scoping review with backward citation search in Google Analytics/Web of Science/PubMed, followed by keyword searches in Cochrane Library, PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, PsycINFO, PRO-Quest, and Web of Science. Eligible studies were published between 1995 and March 2015, used an original experimental/observational research design, concerned a health-related decision, and provided DCS data (total/subscales). Author dyads independently screened titles, abstracts, full texts, and extracted data. We performed narrative data synthesis. Results. We included 394 articles. DCS use appeared to increase over time. Three hundred nine studies (76%) used the original DCS, and 29 (7%) used subscales only. Most studies used the DCS to evaluate the impact of decision support interventions ( n = 238, 59%). The DCS was translated into 13 languages. Most decisions were made by people for themselves ( n = 353, 87%), about treatment ( n = 225, 55%), or testing ( n = 91, 23%). The most common decision contexts were oncology ( n = 113, 28%) and primary care ( n = 82, 20%). Conclusions. This is the first study to descriptively synthesize characteristics of DCS data. Use of the DCS as an outcome measure for health decision interventions has increased over its 20-year existence, demonstrating its relevance as a decision-making evaluation measure. Most studies failed to report when decisional conflict was measured during the decision-making process, making scores difficult to interpret. Findings from this study will be used to update the DCS user manual.

Abstract. Multiple-point statistics (MPS) has shown promise in representing complicated subsurface structures. For a practical three-dimensional (3-D) application, however, one of the critical issues is the difficulty in obtaining a credible 3-D training image. However, bidimensional (2-D) training images are often available because established workflows exist to derive 2-D sections from scattered boreholes and/or other samples. In this work, we propose a locality-based MPS approach to reconstruct 3-D geological models on the basis of such 2-D cross sections (3DRCS), making 3-D training images unnecessary. Only several local training subsections closer to the central uninformed node are used in the MPS simulation. The main advantages of this partitioned search strategy are the high computational efficiency and a relaxation of the stationarity assumption. We embed this strategy into a standard MPS framework. Two probability aggregation formulas and their combinations are used to assemble the probability density functions (PDFs) from different subsections. Moreover, a novel strategy is adopted to capture more stable PDFs, where the distances between patterns and flexible neighborhoods are integrated on multiple grids. A series of sensitivity analyses demonstrate the stability of the proposed approach. Several hydrogeological 3-D application examples illustrate the applicability of the 3DRCS approach in reproducing complex geological features. The results, in comparison with previous MPS methods, show better performance in portraying anisotropy characteristics and in CPU cost.

Introduction:Climate change and overdevelopment increase the intensity and frequency of flash flooding, which may generate more swiftwater rescue (SWR) incidents. Rescue personnel may fail to properly risk stratify (triage) these victims due to limited medical and/or variable SWR training, or due to an adverse rescuer-to-victim ratio. Some victims may attempt to refuse medical evaluation due to lack of awareness of incident-related morbidity and/or comprehension of risk.Aim:To develop an SWR emergency medical triage tool.Methods:A cross-sectional literature search identified SWR-related medical conditions. A flow diagram reliant upon incident history, chief complaint, and observational exam rather than interpretation of vital signs was created to guide medical decision-making.Results:Every SWR victim should receive a medical screening exam focused on six clinical categories—drowning, hypothermia, hazmat exposure, physical trauma, psychological trauma and exacerbation of pre-existing disease. Drowning potential is identified by dyspnea, new cough or a history of (even brief) submersion. Shivering SWR victims and those with altered mental status but no shivering are assumed to be hypothermic. Any victim with open skin lesions/wounds who was immersed in floodwater and anyone who has swallowed floodwater is contaminated; these victims require decontamination and possible antibiotic therapy. SWR victims injured upon entering the water or from contact with either water-borne stationary or floating objects require trauma evaluation. Distraught victims and those who exhibit exacerbation of pre-existing organ-system disease also require ED evaluation.Discussion:Most SWR course curricula are oriented towards technical rescue; they do not address comprehensive medical decision-making. We present a rapid medical screening exam designed to determine which SWR victims require an ED evaluation. Such a triage tool will assist rescuers to simultaneously honor patient autonomy and avoid risky and uninformed refusal of medical aid. Simplified medical decision-making should enable the application of this tool worldwide.

Background: The objective of the present study was to compare the efficacy between supervised and unsupervised rehabilitation after rotator-cuff (RC) repair in terms of clinical outcomes, visual-analog-scale (VAS) score, range of motion (ROM), and risk of retear. Material: a comprehensive search of Pubmed, CINAHL, Cochrane, EMBASE, Ovid, and Google Scholar databases through a combination of the following keywords with logical Boolean operators: “informed”, “uninformed”, “unsupervised”, “supervised”, “rehabilitation”, “physical therapy”, “physical therapies”, “postoperative period”, “physical-therapy techniques”, “physical-therapy technique”, “exercise”, “exercise therapy”, “rotator cuff”, “rotator-cuff tear”, and “rotator-cuff repair”. For each article included in the study, the following data were extracted: authors, year, study design, sample size and demographic features, RC tear characteristics, clinical outcomes, ROM, VAS score, retear rate, and time of follow-up. Meta-analysis was performed in terms of VAS score. Results: Four randomized control trials with 132 patients were included. One study demonstrated significant improvement in VAS, active ROM, and the activity of the muscle’s motor units at stop and during maximal effort in supervised patients. Another one showed lower retear rates in the supervised group. The remaining two randomized controlled trials did not reveal any significant differences between supervised and unsupervised rehabilitation in terms of clinical outcomes. Moreover, higher costs were described for supervised rehabilitation. The VAS was not significantly different in the two groups (9.9 compared with 8.25, p = 0.23). Conclusions: although several publications address the problem of RC lacerations, there is a paucity of evidence in the literature regarding the effectiveness of supervised and unsupervised rehabilitation protocols. This systematic review and meta-analysis showed no significant differences between the two types of rehabilitation in terms of VAS scores, while outlining the pros and cons of each protocol.

ObjectivesThe factors determining individuals’ self-reported behavioural responses to direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs were explored with an emphasis on ‘at-risk’ individuals’ responses.DesignNationally representative cross-sectional survey.SettingCommunity living adults in New Zealand.Participants2057 adults (51% women).Primary outcome measuresSelf-reported behavioural responses to drug advertising (asking a physician for a prescription, asking a physician for more information about an illness, searching the internet for more information regarding an illness and asking a pharmacist for more information about a drug).MethodsMultivariate logistic regressions determined whether participants’ self-reported behavioural responses to drug advertising were predicted by attitudes towards advertising and drug advertising, judgements about safety and effectiveness of advertised drugs, self-reported health status, materialism, online search behaviour as well as demographic variables.ResultsIdentifying as Indian and to a less extent Chinese, Māori and ‘other’ ethnicities were the strongest predictors of one or more self-reported responses (ORs 1.76–5.00, Ps<0.05). Poorer self-reported health status (ORs 0.90–0.94, all Ps<0.05), favourable attitude towards drug advertising (ORs 1.34–1.61, all Ps<0.001) and searching for medical information online (ORs 1.32–2.35, all Ps<0.01) predicted all self-reported behavioural outcomes. Older age (ORs 1.01–1.02, Ps<0.01), less education (OR 0.89, P<0.01), lower income (ORs 0.89–0.91, Ps<0.05) and higher materialism (ORs 1.02–1.03, Ps<0.01) also predicted one or more self-reported responses.ConclusionsTaken together, the findings suggest individuals, especially those who are ‘at-risk’ (ie, with poorer self-reported health status, older, less educated, lower income and ethnic minorities), may be more vulnerable to drug advertising and may make uninformed decisions accordingly. The outcomes raise significant concerns relating to the ethicality of drug advertising and suggest a need for stricter guidelines to ensure that drug advertisements provided by pharmaceutical companies are ethical.

Growing use of complementary and alternative supplements (CAS) is of concern because of the potential for herb—drug interaction among cardiovascular patients. Literary searches were conducted on PubMed to identify reports of extent and purpose of CAS use, disclosure of use by patients, physician knowledge, and possible drug—CAS interactions for cardiovascular patients. Additional published studies were located through the Web sites of various organizations. Further searches of case reports, case series, controlled trials, and laboratory evidence were performed for each of the top 10 CAS and their possible cardiovascular drug interactions. More research is needed to understand supplement—drug interactions, particularly in terms of how this potentially affects patients taking cardiovascular drugs. With this lack of research and clarity on supplement—dug interactions and the underreporting of CAS use by many patients, physician education is also in need of improvement.

Abstract We analyse dynamic general equilibrium models with more-or-less directed search by informed buyers and random search by uninformed buyers. This nests existing specifications and generates new insights. A quantitative application concerns the welfare cost of inflation, which is known to be quite high with pure random search and low with pure directed search. Our calibration implies the impact of inflation is fairly low, in part because, in addition to the usual costs, it provides benefits by more heavily taxing high-price sellers that inefficiently profit from exploiting the uninformed. Other applications analyse analytically and numerically changes in credit conditions and information.

Determining the most appropriate search method or artificial intelligence technique to solve a problem is not always evident and usually requires implementation of the different approaches to ascertain this. In some instances a single approach may not be sufficient and hybridization of methods may be needed to find a solution. This process can be time consuming. The paper proposes the use of hyper-heuristics as a means of identifying which method or combination of approaches is needed to solve a problem. The research presented forms part of a larger initiative aimed at using hyper-heuristics to develop intelligent hybrid systems. As an initial step in this direction, this paper investigates this for classical artificial intelligence uninformed and informed search methods, namely depth first search, breadth first search, best first search, hill-climbing and the A* algorithm. The hyper-heuristic determines the search or combination of searches to use to solve the problem. An evolutionary algorithm hyper-heuristic is implemented for this purpose and its performance is evaluated in solving the 8-Puzzle, Towers of Hanoi and Blocks World problems. The hyper-heuristic employs a generational evolutionary algorithm which iteratively refines an initial population using tournament selection to select parents, which the mutation and crossover operators are applied to for regeneration. The hyper-heuristic was able to identify a search or combination of searches to produce solutions for the twenty 8-Puzzle, five Towers of Hanoi and five Blocks World problems. Furthermore, admissible solutions were produced for all problem instances.

Objective To report on (i) the health care eco-system that produces data on AMR, and (ii) pattern of resistance in typhoidal Salmonellae isolates in the city of Ahmedabad in western India. Introduction India carries the highest burden of Enteric Fever in the world. This is further aggravated by the high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in typhoidal Salmonellae. The strategy to combat resistance has been to combine and cycle anti-microbials based on the regional AMR pattern of the organism. But this requires that resistance patterns and genetic mechanisms are mapped at a regional level and regularly recorded and disseminated by a national surveillance system. Methods Through municipality records and internet searches we identified 1696 private and 83 public labs. Our screening of these yielded 4 public medical colleges, 4 private healthcare-institution-attached labs, and 4 corporate labs which were probably performing culture and antibiotic sensitivity testing (AST). Only 2 public medical colleges and 1 corporate lab shared their data with us (Fig 1). There was considerable variation in culturing and sensitivity testing methodology across labs. Results Out of 51,260 blood cultures, Salmonellae isolates were detected in only 146 (0.28%); 67 (54%) of these were resistant. Multi-drug resistance was absent. The extremely low isolation rates in our three facilities may be indicative of lower referral rates of suspected patients for blood culture or, possibly, lower incidence of Salmonella infection in Ahmedabad. Anti-microbial susceptibility testing (AST) was conducted on 124 isolates, of which 67 (54%) were found resistant. Multi-drug resistance was absent, but ciprofloxacin resistance varied widely between the private and public sector labs. The minimal resistance to 3rd generation cephalosporins probably indicates initiation of resistance to this important group of antibiotics in the city's typhoidal salmonella. Notably, isolates from the private sector lab showed complete resistance to azithromycin. Concurrent resistance to more than 1 antibiotic was very high, 88%, amongst the 67 resistant isolates. Although we were unable to estimate the true size of salmonella positivity against total blood cultures in our city, the difference in proportion of AMR isolates reported in our public and private samples, 30% vs 100%, is important because it may be indicative of high levels of AMR in the private. Notably, isolates from the public sector showed higher resistance to Ciprofloxacin and from private sector showed complete resistance to Azithromycin. The higher Ciprofloxacin resistance in the public sector may be indicative of more usage of the relatively cheaper ciprofloxacin among public hospital clientele. The 100% resistance to azithromycin seen in our private sample is a significant finding, and has also been reported in another recent study from Ahmedabad [1]. Out of approximately 1779 big and small facilities in Ahmedabad, we identified 12 (4 public and 8 private) laboratories which had the ability to report AMR in typhoidal salmonella. 2 public and 4 private refused to share data with us. Based on data shared by 3 medium-sized private facilities, we believe that salmonella isolation and testing in private health-institution-attached laboratories is negligible. Our data collection efforts over one year led to reasonable volume of data from only 2 publicly funded teaching hospitals and 1 private standalone lab. Although all facilities claimed to follow CLSI guidelines, the total number of antibiotics tested at each facility varied. Minimum inhibitory concentration to assess extent of resistance was not reported by any of the labs. The publicly-funded teaching hospitals in the city have the largest concentration of microbiologists and the motivation to test for AMR in indoor patients. But they did not consistently test all isolates against all antibiotics in their list. The proportion of private hospitals and laboratories that conduct ASTs in Ahmedabad is relatively small. For individual labs, both private and public, there is no inherent incentive to detect city-level AMR patterns or subsequent molecular level mechanisms of transmission of resistance. This lack of enthusiasm among microbiologists to further process their samples through more specialized lab testing and analysis is an issue in other parts of the world too [2]. Thus patchy performance of AST and incomparability of sensitivity across labs results in poor surveillance [3]. The antibiotic regimen currently recommended by ICMR for treatment of Enteric Fever in the entire country is based on 209 Salmonella isolates from only four public institutes [4]. Across India’s cities and towns, there are several hundreds of public and private hospitals and laboratories undertaking ASTs, just like the ones in Ahmedabad presented in this study [5]. Unless practitioners are guided by regional data on resistance in endemic organisms, uninformed prescription practices will worsen existing microbial resistance. Drawing these varied facilities, or at least a representative sample of them into a cohesive network is essential for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in all major bacterial pathogens; particularly so for typhoidal Salmonella which are endemic in our part of the world and are primarily exposed to antibiotics consumed by humans since they are obligate human parasites. Only a representative network of labs will provide the contextualized and stratified data necessary for development of the most accurate strategy to formulate regional prescription guidelines. However, this is an enormous challenge in our setting. Conclusions High resistance to Ciprofloxacin and Azithromycin in Ahmedabad may be due to increased use of these two antibiotics in the public and private sectors respectively. But they are in need of further molecular characterization. Clinical microbiological methods lack uniformity and laboratory referral networks are not developed even in large cities of India. Although some useful data is produced by a few individual labs, the crucial exercise of meaningful networking for effective surveillance remains. As we enter an era of internationally linked anti-microbial resistance surveillance systems, the biggest challenge lies in selecting performing laboratories and inducing them to integrate with it. References 1) Jeeyani HN, Mod HK, Tolani JN. Current perspectives of enteric fever : a hospital based study of 185 culture positive cases from Ahmedabad , India. 2017;4: 4–9. 2) Petti CA, Polage CR, Quinn TC, Ronald AR, Sande MA. Laboratory Medicine in Africa : A Barrier to Effective Health Care. Clin Infect Dis. 2006;42: 377–382. 3) Masterton RG. Surveillance studies: how can they help the management of infection? J Antimicrob Chemother. 2000;46: 53–58. doi:10.1093/jac/46.suppl_2.53 4) ICMR. Treatment Guidelines for Antimicrobial Use in Common Syndromes Indian Council of Medical Research Department of Health Research New Delhi , India. 2017; 5) Gandra S, Merchant AT, Laxminarayan R. A role for private sector laboratories in public health surveillance of antimicrobial resistance. Future Microbiol. 2016;11: 709–712. doi:10.2217/fmb.16.17

IntroductionIn the wine world, authenticity is not just desired, it is actively required. That demand comes from a complex of producers, distributors and consumers, and other interested parties. Consequently, the authenticity of wine is constantly created, reworked, presented, performed, argued over, contested and appreciated.At one level, such processes have clear economic elements. A wine deemed to be an authentic “expression” of something—the soil and micro-climate in which it was grown, the environment and culture of the region from which it hails, the genius of the wine-maker who nurtured and brought it into being, the quintessential characteristics of the grape variety it is made from—will likely make much more money than one deemed inauthentic. In wine, as in other spheres, perceived authenticity is a means to garner profits, both economic and symbolic (Beverland).At another level, wine animates a complicated intertwining of human tastes, aesthetics, pleasures and identities. Discussions as to the authenticity, or otherwise, of a wine often involve a search by the discussants for meaning and purpose in their lives (Grahm). To discover and appreciate a wine felt to “speak” profoundly of the place from whence it came possibly involves a sense of superiority over others: I drink “real” wine, while you drink mass-market trash (Bourdieu). It can also create reassuring senses of ontological security: in discovering an authentic wine, expressive of a certain aesthetic and locational purity (Zolberg and Cherbo), I have found a cherishable object which can be reliably traced to one particular place on Earth, therefore possessing integrity, honesty and virtue (Fine). Appreciation of wine’s authenticity licenses the self-perception that I am sophisticated and sensitive (Vannini and Williams). My judgement of the wine is also a judgement upon my own aesthetic capacities (Hennion).In wine drinking, and the production, distribution and marketing processes underpinning it, much is at stake as regards authenticity. The social system of the wine world requires the category of authenticity in order to keep operating. This paper examines how and why this has come to be so. It considers the crafting of authenticity in long-term historical perspective. Demand for authentic wine by drinkers goes back many centuries. Self-conscious performances of authenticity by producers is of more recent provenance, and was elaborated above all in France. French innovations then spread to other parts of Europe and the world. The paper reviews these developments, showing that wine authenticity is constituted by an elaborate complex of environmental, cultural, legal, political and commercial factors. The paper both draws upon the social science literature concerning the construction of authenticity and also points out its limitations as regards understanding wine authenticity.The History of AuthenticityIt is conventional in the social science literature (Peterson, Authenticity) to claim that authenticity as a folk category (Lu and Fine), and actors’ desires for authentic things, are wholly “modern,” being unknown in pre-modern contexts (Cohen). Consideration of wine shows that such a view is historically uninformed. Demands by consumers for ‘authentic’ wine, in the sense that it really came from the location it was sold as being from, can be found in the West well before the 19th century, having ancient roots (Wengrow). In ancient Rome, there was demand by elites for wine that was both really from the location it was billed as being from, and was verifiably of a certain vintage (Robertson and Inglis). More recently, demand has existed in Western Europe for “real” Tokaji (sweet wine from Hungary), Port and Bordeaux wines since at least the 17th century (Marks).Conventional social science (Peterson, Authenticity) is on solider ground when demonstrating how a great deal of social energies goes into constructing people’s perceptions—not just of consumers, but of wine producers and sellers too—that particular wines are somehow authentic expressions of the places where they were made. The creation of perceived authenticity by producers and sales-people has a long historical pedigree, beginning in early modernity.For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, wine-makers in Bordeaux could not compete on price grounds with burgeoning Spanish, Portuguese and Italian production areas, so they began to compete with them on the grounds of perceived quality. Multiple small plots were reorganised into much bigger vineyards. The latter were now associated with a chateau in the neighbourhood, giving the wines connotations of aristocratic gravity and dignity (Ulin). Product-makers in other fields have used the assertion of long-standing family lineages as apparent guarantors of tradition and quality in production (Peterson, Authenticity). The early modern Bordelaise did the same, augmenting their wines’ value by calling upon aristocratic accoutrements like chateaux, coats-of-arms, alleged long-term family ownership of vineyards, and suchlike.Such early modern entrepreneurial efforts remain the foundations of the very high prestige and prices associated with elite wine-making in the region today, with Chinese companies and consumers particularly keen on the grand crus of the region. Globalization of the wine world today is strongly rooted in forms of authenticity performance invented several hundred years ago.Enter the StateAnother notable issue is the long-term role that governments and legislation have played, both in the construction and presentation of authenticity to publics, and in attempts to guarantee—through regulative measures and taxation systems—that what is sold really has come from where it purports to be from. The west European State has a long history of being concerned with the fraudulent selling of “fake” wines (Anderson, Norman, and Wittwer). Thus Cosimo III, Medici Grand Duke of Florence, was responsible for an edict of 1716 which drew up legal boundaries for Tuscan wine-producing regions, restricting the use of regional names like Chianti to wine that actually came from there (Duguid).These 18th century Tuscan regulations are the distant ancestors of quality-control rules centred upon the need to guarantee the authenticity of wines from particular geographical regions and sub-regions, which are today now ubiquitous, especially in the European Union (DeSoucey). But more direct progenitors of today’s Geographical Indicators (GIs)—enforced by the GATT international treaties—and Protected Designations of Origin (PDOs)—promulgated and monitored by the EU—are French in origin (Barham). The famous 1855 quality-level classification of Bordeaux vineyards and their wines was the first attempt in the world explicitly to proclaim that the quality of a wine was a direct consequence of its defined place of origin. This move significantly helped to create the later highly influential notion that place of origin is the essence of a wine’s authenticity. This innovation was initially wholly commercial, rather than governmental, being carried out by wine-brokers to promote Bordeaux wines at the Paris Exposition Universelle, but was later elaborated by State officials.In Champagne, another luxury wine-producing area, small-scale growers of grapes worried that national and international perceptions of their wine were becoming wholly determined by big brands such as Dom Perignon, which advertised the wine as a luxury product, but made no reference to the grapes, the soil, or the (supposedly) traditional methods of production used by growers (Guy). The latter turned to the idea of “locality,” which implied that the character of the wine was an essential expression of the Champagne region itself—something ignored in brand advertising—and that the soil itself was the marker of locality. The idea of “terroir”—referring to the alleged properties of soil and micro-climate, and their apparent expression in the grapes—was mobilised by one group, smaller growers, against another, the large commercial houses (Guy). The terroir notion was a means of constructing authenticity, and denouncing de-localised, homogenizing inauthenticity, a strategy favouring some types of actors over others. The relatively highly industrialized wine-making process was later represented for public consumption as being consonant with both tradition and nature.The interplay of commerce, government, law, and the presentation of authenticity, also appeared in Burgundy. In that region between WWI and WWII, the wine world was transformed by two new factors: the development of tourism and the rise of an ideology of “regionalism” (Laferté). The latter was invented circa WWI by metropolitan intellectuals who believed that each of the French regions possessed an intrinsic cultural “soul,” particularly expressed through its characteristic forms of food and drink. Previously despised peasant cuisine was reconstructed as culturally worthy and true expression of place. Small-scale artisanal wine production was no longer seen as an embarrassment, producing wines far more “rough” than those of Bordeaux and Champagne. Instead, such production was taken as ground and guarantor of authenticity (Laferté). Location, at regional, village and vineyard level, was taken as the primary quality indicator.For tourists lured to the French regions by the newly-established Guide Michelin, and for influential national and foreign journalists, an array of new promotional devices were created, such as gastronomic festivals and folkloric brotherhoods devoted to celebrations of particular foodstuffs and agricultural events like the wine-harvest (Laferté). The figure of the wine-grower was presented as an exemplary custodian of tradition, relatively free of modern capitalist exchange relations. These are the beginnings of an important facet of later wine companies’ promotional literatures worldwide—the “decoupling” of their supposed commitments to tradition, and their “passion” for wine-making beyond material interests, from everyday contexts of industrial production and profit-motives (Beverland). Yet the work of making the wine-maker and their wines authentically “of the soil” was originally stimulated in response to international wine markets and the tourist industry (Laferté).Against this background, in 1935 the French government enacted legislation which created theInstitut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) and its Appelation d’Origine Controlle (AOC) system (Barham). Its goal was, and is, to protect what it defines as terroir, encompassing both natural and human elements. This legislation went well beyond previous laws, as it did more than indicate that wine must be honestly labelled as deriving from a given place of origin, for it included guarantees of authenticity too. An authentic wine was defined as one which truly “expresses” the terroir from which it comes, where terroir means both soil and micro-climate (nature) and wine-making techniques “traditionally” associated with that area. Thus French law came to enshrine a relatively recently invented cultural assumption: that places create distinctive tastes, the value of this state of affairs requiring strong State protection. Terroir must be protected from the untrammelled free market. Land and wine, symbiotically connected, are de-commodified (Kopytoff). Wine is embedded in land; land is embedded in what is regarded as regional culture; the latter is embedded in national history (Polanyi).But in line with the fact that the cultural underpinnings of the INAO/AOC system were strongly commercially oriented, at a more subterranean level the de-commodified product also has economic value added to it. A wine worthy of AOC protection must, it is assumed, be special relative to wines un-deserving of that classification. The wine is taken out of the market, attributed special status, and released, economically enhanced, back onto the market. Consequently, State-guaranteed forms of authenticity embody ambivalent but ultimately efficacious economic processes. Wine pioneered this Janus-faced situation, the AOC system in the 1990s being generalized to all types of agricultural product in France. A huge bureaucratic apparatus underpins and makes possible the AOC system. For a region and product to gain AOC protection, much energy is expended by collectives of producers and other interested parties like regional development and tourism officials. The French State employs a wide range of expert—oenological, anthropological, climatological, etc.—who police the AOC classificatory mechanisms (Barham).Terroirisation ProcessesFrench forms of legal classification, and the broader cultural classifications which underpin them and generated them, very much influenced the EU’s PDO system. The latter uses a language of authenticity rooted in place first developed in France (DeSoucey). The French model has been generalized, both from wine to other foodstuffs, and around many parts of Europe and the world. An Old World idea has spread to the New World—paradoxically so, because it was the perceived threat posed by the ‘placeless’ wines and decontextualized grapes of the New World which stimulated much of the European legislative measures to protect terroir (Marks).Paxson shows how artisanal cheese-makers in the US, appropriate the idea of terroir to represent places of production, and by extension the cheeses made there, that have no prior history of being constructed as terroir areas. Here terroir is invented at the same time as it is naturalised, made to seem as if it simply points to how physical place is directly expressed in a manufactured product. By defining wine or cheese as a natural product, claims to authenticity are themselves naturalised (Ulin). Successful terroirisation brings commercial benefits for those who engage in it, creating brand distinctiveness (no-one else can claim their product expresses that particularlocation), a value-enhancing aura around the product which, and promotion of food tourism (Murray and Overton).Terroirisation can also render producers into virtuous custodians of the land who are opposed to the depredations of the industrial food and agriculture systems, the categories associated with terroir classifying the world through a binary opposition: traditional, small-scale production on the virtuous side, and large-scale, “modern” harvesting methods on the other. Such a situation has prompted large-scale, industrial wine-makers to adopt marketing imagery that implies the “place-based” nature of their offerings, even when the grapes can come from radically different areas within a region or from other regions (Smith Maguire). Like smaller producers, large companies also decouple the advertised imagery of terroir from the mundane realities of industry and profit-margins (Beverland).The global transportability of the terroir concept—ironic, given the rhetorical stress on the uniqueness of place—depends on its flexibility and ambiguity. In the French context before WWII, the phrase referred specifically to soil and micro-climate of vineyards. Slowly it started mean to a markedly wider symbolic complex involving persons and personalities, techniques and knowhow, traditions, community, and expressions of local and regional heritage (Smith Maguire). Over the course of the 20th century, terroir became an ever broader concept “encompassing the physical characteristics of the land (its soil, climate, topography) and its human dimensions (culture, history, technology)” (Overton 753). It is thought to be both natural and cultural, both physical and human, the potentially contradictory ramifications of such understanding necessitating subtle distinctions to ward off confusion or paradox. Thus human intervention on the land and the vines is often represented as simply “letting the grapes speak for themselves” and “allowing the land to express itself,” as if the wine-maker were midwife rather than fabricator. Terroir talk operates with an awkward verbal balancing act: wine-makers’ “signature” styles are expressions of their cultural authenticity (e.g. using what are claimed as ‘traditional’ methods), yet their stylistic capacities do not interfere with the soil and micro-climate’s natural tendencies (i.e. the terroir’sphysical authenticity).The wine-making process is a case par excellence of a network of humans and objects, or human and non-human actants (Latour). The concept of terroir today both acknowledges that fact, but occludes it at the same time. It glosses over the highly problematic nature of what is “real,” “true,” “natural.” The roles of human agents and technologies are sequestered, ignoring the inevitably changing nature of knowledges and technologies over time, recognition of which jeopardises claims about an unchanging physical, social and technical order. Harvesting by machine production is representationally disavowed, yet often pragmatically embraced. The role of “foreign” experts acting as advisors —so-called “flying wine-makers,” often from New World production cultures —has to be treated gingerly or covered up. Because of the effects of climate change on micro-climates and growing conditions, the taste of wines from a particular terroir changes over time, but the terroir imaginary cannot recognise that, being based on projections of timelessness (Brabazon).The authenticity referred to, and constructed, by terroir imagery must constantly be performed to diverse audiences, convincing them that time stands still in the terroir. If consumers are to continue perceiving authenticity in a wine or winery, then a wide range of cultural intermediaries—critics, journalists and other self-proclaiming experts must continue telling convincing stories about provenance. Effective authenticity story-telling rests on the perceived sincerity and knowledgeability of the teller. Such tales stress romantic imagery and colourful, highly personalised accounts of the quirks of particular wine-makers, omitting mundane details of production and commercial activities (Smith Maguire). Such intermediaries must seek to interest their audience in undiscovered regions and “quirky” styles, demonstrating their insider knowledge. But once such regions and styles start to become more well-known, their rarity value is lost, and intermediaries must find ever newer forms of authenticity, which in turn will lose their burnished aura when they become objects of mundane consumption. An endless cycle of discovering and undermining authenticity is constantly enacted.ConclusionAuthenticity is a category held by different sorts of actors in the wine world, and is the means by which that world is held together. This situation has developed over a long time-frame and is now globalized. Yet I will end this paper on a volte face. Authenticity in the wine world can never be regarded as wholly and simply a social construction. One cannot directly import into the analysis of that world assumptions—about the wholly socially constructed nature of phenomena—which social scientific studies of other domains, most notably culture industries, work with (Peterson, Authenticity). Ways of thinking which are indeed useful for understanding the construction of authenticity in some specific contexts, cannot just be applied in simplistic manners to the wine world. When they are applied in direct and unsophisticated ways, such an operation misses the specificities and particularities of wine-making processes. These are always simultaneously “social” and “natural”, involving multiple forms of complex intertwining of human actions, environmental and climatological conditions, and the characteristics of the vines themselves—a situation markedly beyond beyond any straightforward notion of “social construction.”The wine world has many socially constructed objects. But wine is not just like any other product. Its authenticity cannot be fabricated in the manner of, say, country music (Peterson, Country). Wine is never in itself only a social construction, nor is its authenticity, because the taste, texture and chemical elements of wine derive from complex human interactions with the physical environment. Wine is partly about packaging, branding and advertising—phenomena standard social science accounts of authenticity focus on—but its organic properties are irreducible to those factors. Terroir is an invention, a label put on to certain things, meaning they are perceived to be authentic. But the things that label refers to—ranging from the slope of a vineyard and the play of sunshine on it, to how grapes grow and when they are picked—are entwined with human semiotics but not completely created by them. A truly comprehensive account of wine authenticity remains to be written.ReferencesAnderson, Kym, David Norman, and Glyn Wittwer. “Globalization and the World’s Wine Markets: Overview.” Discussion Paper No. 0143, Centre for International Economic Studies. Adelaide: U of Adelaide, 2001.Barham, Elizabeth. “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labelling.” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 127–38.Beverland, Michael B. “Crafting Brand Authenticity: The Case of Luxury Wines.” Journal of Management Studies 42.5 (2005): 1003–29.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1992.Brabazon, Tara. “Colonial Control or Terroir Tourism? 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Could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences -- his feelings, moods, and the rest -- for his private use? Well, can't we do so in our ordinary language? -- But that is not what I mean. The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations par. 243 I will be using 'audience' in two ways in the following essay: as a phenomenon that produces and is produced by media technologies (readers, hearers, viewers, Internet-users), and as something, audiens, that is essential to language itself, something without which language cannot be. I shall do so in specific references to invented languages. Who, then, are the 'consumers' of invented languages? In referring to invented languages, I am not talking about speakers of Esperanto or Occidental; I am not concerned with the invention of international auxiliary languages. These projects, already well-debated, have roots that go back at least as far as the 17th-century language philosophers who were at pains to undo the damage of Babel and restore a common language to the world. While Esperanto never became what it intended to be, it at least has readers and speakers. I am also not even talking about speakers of Klingon or Quenya. These privately invented languages have had the good fortune to be attached to popular invented cultures, and to media with enough money and publicity to generate a multitude of fans. Rather, I am talking about a phenomenon on the Internet and in a well- populated listserv whereby a number of people from all over the globe have discovered each other on-line. They all have a passion for what Jeffrey Schnapp calls uglossia ('no-language', after utopia, 'no-place'). Umberto Eco calls it 'technical insanity' or glottomania. Linguist Marina Yaguello calls language inventors fous du langage ('language lunatics') in her book of the same title. Jeffrey Henning prefers the term 'model language' in his on-line newsletter: 'miniaturized versions that provide the essence of something'. On CONLANG, people call themselves conlangers (from 'constructed language') and what they do conlanging. By forming this list, they have created a media audience for themselves, in the first sense of the term, and also literally in the second sense, as a number of them are setting up soundbytes on their elaborately illustrated and explicated Webpages. Originally devoted to advocates for international auxiliary languages, CONLANG started out about eight years ago, and as members joined who were less interested in the politics than in the hobby of language invention, the list has become almost solely the domain of the latter, whereas the 'auxlangers', as they are called, have moved to another list. An important distinguishing feature of 'conlangers' is that, unlike the 'auxlangers', there is no sustained hope that their languages will have a wide-body of hearers or users. They may wish it, but they do not advocate for it, and as a consequence their languages are free to be a lot weirder, whereas the auxlangs tend to strive for regularity and useability. CONLANG is populated by highschool, college, and graduate students; linguists; computer programmers; housewives; librarians; professors; and other users worldwide. The old debate about whether the Internet has become the 'global village' that Marshall McLuhan predicted, or whether it threatens to atomise communication 'into ever smaller worlds where enthusiasms mutate into obsessions', as Jeff Salamon warns, seems especially relevant to a study of CONLANG whose members indulge in an invention that by its very nature excludes the casual listener-in. And yet the audio-visual capacities of the Internet, along with its speed and efficiency of communication, have made it the ideal forum for conlangers. Prior to the Web, how were fellow inventors to know that others were doing -- in secret? J.R.R. Tolkien has been lauded as a rare exception in the world of invention, but would his elaborate linguistic creations have become so famous had he not published The Lord of the Rings and its Appendix? Poignantly, he tells in "A Secret Vice" about accidentally overhearing another army recruit say aloud: 'Yes! I think I shall express the accusative by a prefix!'. Obviously, silent others besides Tolkien were inventing languages, but they did not have the means provided by the Internet to discover one another except by chance. Tolkien speaks of the 'shyness' and 'shame' attached to this pursuit, where 'higher developments are locked in secret places'. It can win no prizes, he says, nor make birthday presents for aunts. His choice of title ("A Secret Vice") echoes a Victorian phrase for the closet, and conlangers have frequently compared conlanging to homosexuality, both being what conservative opinion expects one to grow out of after puberty. The number of gay men on the list has been wondered at as more than coincidental. In a survey I conducted in October 1998, many of the contributors to CONLANG felt that the list put them in touch with an audience that provided them with intellectual and emotional feedback. Their interests were misunderstood by parents, spouses, lovers, and employers alike, and had to be kept under wraps. Most of those I surveyed said that they had been inventing a language well before they had heard of the list; that they had conceived of what they were doing as unique or peculiar, until discovery of CONLANG; and that other people's Websites astounded them with the pervasive fascination of this pursuit. There are two ways to look at it: conlanging, as Henning writes, may be as common and as humanly creative as any kind of model-making, i.e., dollhouses, model trains, role-playing, or even the constructed cultures with city plans and maps in fantasy novels such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The Web is merely a means to bring enthusiasts together. Or it may provide a site that, with the impetus of competition and showmanship, encourages inutile and obsessive activity. Take your pick. From Hildegard von Bingen's Lingua Ignota to Dante's Inferno and the babbling Nimrod to John Dee's Enochian and on, invented languages have smacked of religious ecstacy, necromancy, pathology, and the demonic. Twin speech, or 'pathological idioglossia', was dramatised by Jodie Foster in Nell. Hannah Green's 'Language of Yr' was the invention of her schizophrenic protagonist in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Language itself is the centre of furious theoretical debate. Despite the inventive 'deformities' it is put to in poetry, punning, jest, singing, and lying, human language, our most 'natural' of technologies, is a social machine, used by multitudes and expected to get things done. It is expected of language that it be understood and that it have not only hearers but also answerers. All human production is founded on this assumption. A language without an audience of other speakers is no language. 'Why aren't you concentrating on real languages?' continues to be the most stinging criticism. Audience is essential to Wittgenstein's remark quoted at the beginning of this essay. Wittgenstein posits his 'private languages theory' as a kind of impossibility: all natural languages, because they exist by consensus, can only refer to private experience externally. Hence, a truly private language, devoted to naming 'feelings and moods' which the subject has never heard about or shared with others, is impossible among socialised speakers who are called upon to define subjective experience in public terms. His is a critique of solipsism, a charge often directed at language inventors. But very few conlangers that I have encountered are making private languages in Wittgenstein's sense, because most of them are interested in investing their private words with public meaning, even when they are doing it privately. For them, it is audience, deeply desireable, that has been impossible until now. Writing well before the development of CONLANG, Yaguello takes the stance that inventing a language is an act of madness. 'Just look at the lunatic in love with language', she writes: sitting in his book-lined study, he collects great piles of information, he collates and classifies it, he makes lists and fills card indexes. He is in the clutches of a denominatory delirium, of a taxonomic madness. He has to name everything, but before being able to name, he has to recognize and classify concepts, to enclose the whole Universe in a system of notation: produce enumerations, hierarchies, and paradigms. She is of course describing John Wilkins, whose Real Character and Universal Language in 1668 was an attempt to make each syllable of his every invented word denote its placement in a logical scheme of classification. 'A lunatic ambition', Yaguello pronounces, because it missed the essential quality of language: that its signs are arbitrary, practical, and changeable, so as to admit neologism and cultural difference. But Yaguello denounces auxiliary language makers in general as amateurs 'in love with language and with languages, and ignorant of the science of language'. Her example of 'feminine' invention comes from Helene Smith, the medium who claimed to be channeling Martian (badly disguised French). One conlanger noted that Yaguello's chapter entitled 'In Defence of Natural Languages' reminded him of the US Federal 'Defense of Marriage Act', whereby the institution of heterosexual marriage is 'defended' from homosexual marriage. Let homosexuals marry or lunatics invent language, and both marriage and English (or French) will come crashing to the ground. Schnapp praises Yaguello's work for being the most comprehensive examination of the phenomenon to date, but neither he nor she addresses linguist Suzette Haden Elgin's creative work on Láadan, a language designed for women, or even Quenya or Klingon -- languages that have acquired at least an audience of readers. Schnapp is less condemnatory than Yaguello, and interested in seeing language inventors as the 'philologists of imaginary worlds', 'nos semblables, nos frères, nos soeurs' -- after all. Like Yaguello, he is given to some generalities: imaginary languages are 'infantile': 'the result is always [my emphasis] an "impoverishment" of the natural languages in question: reduced to a limited set of open vowels [he means "open syllables"], prone to syllabic reduplication and to excessive syntactical parallelisms and symmetries'. To be sure, conlangs will never replicate the detail and history of a real language, but to call them 'impoverishments of the natural languages' seems as strange as calling dollhouses 'impoverishments of actual houses'. Why this perception of threat or diminishment? The critical, academic "audience" for language invention has come largely from non-language inventors and it is woefully uninformed. It is this audience that conlangers dislike the most: the outsiders who cannot understand what they are doing and who belittle it. The field, then, is open to re-examination, and the recent phenomenon of conlanging is evidence that the art of inventing languages is neither lunatic nor infantile. But if one is not Tolkien or a linguist supported by the fans of Star Trek, how does one justify the worthwhile nature of one's art? Is it even art if it has an audience of one ... its artist? Conlanging remains a highly specialised and technical pursuit that is, in the end, deeply subjective. Model builders and map-makers can expect their consumers to enjoy their products without having to participate in the minutia of their building. Not so the conlanger, whose consumer must internalise it, and who must understand and absorb complex linguistic concepts. It is different in the world of music. The Cocteau Twins, Bobby McFerrin in his Circle Songs, Lisa Gerrard in Duality, and the new group Ekova in Heaven's Dust all use 'nonsense' words set to music -- either to make songs that sound like exotic languages or to convey a kind of melodic glossolalia. Knowing the words is not important to their hearers, but few conlangers yet have that outlet, and must rely on text and graphs to give a sense of their language's structure. To this end, then, these are unheard, unaudienced languages, existing mostly on screen. A few conlangers have set their languages to music and recorded them. What they are doing, however, is decidedly different from the extempore of McFerrin. Their words mean something, and are carefully worked out lexically and grammatically. So What Are These Conlangs Like? On CONLANG and their links to Websites you will find information on almost every kind of no-language imaginable. Some sites are text only; some are lavishly illustrated, like the pages for Denden, or they feature a huge inventory of RealAudio and MP3 files, like The Kolagian Languages, or the songs of Teonaht. Some have elaborate scripts that the newest developments in fontography have been able to showcase. Some, like Tokana and Amman-Iar, are the result of decades of work and are immensely sophisticated. Valdyan has a Website with almost as much information about the 'conculture' as the conlang. Many are a posteriori languages, that is, variations on natural languages, like Brithenig (a mixture of the features of Brythonic and Romance languages); others are a priori -- starting from scratch -- like Elet Anta. Many conlangers strive to make their languages as different from European paradigms as possible. If imaginary languages are bricolages, as Schnapp writes, then conlangers are now looking to Tagalog, Basque, Georgian, Malagasay, and Aztec for ideas, instead of to Welsh, Finnish, and Hebrew, languages Tolkien drew upon for his Elvish. "Ergative" and "trigger" languages are often preferred to the "nominative" languages of Europe. Some people invent for sheer intellectual challenge; others for the beauty and sensuality of combining new and privately meaningful sounds. There are many calls for translation exercises, one of the most popular being 'The Tower of Babel' (Genesis 10: 1-9). The most recent innovation, and one that not only showcases these languages in all their variety but provides an incentive to learn another conlanger's conlang, is the Translation Relay Game: someone writes a short poem or composition in his or her language and sends it with linguistic information to someone else, who sends a translation with directions to the next in line all the way around again, like playing 'telephone'. The permutations that the Valdyan Starling Song went through give good evidence that these languages are not just relexes, or codes, of natural languages, but have their own linguistic, cultural, and poetic parameters of expression. They differ from real languages in one important respect that has bearing on my remarks about audience: very few conlangers have mastered their languages in the way one masters a native tongue. These creations are more like artefacts (several have compared it to poetry) than they are like languages. One does not live in a dollhouse. One does not normally think or speak in one's conlang, much less speak to another, except through a laborious process of translation. It remains to a longer cultural and sociolinguistic study (underway) to tease out the possibilities and problems of conlanging: why it is done, what does it satisfy, why so few women do it, what are its demographics, or whether it can be turned to pedagogical use in a 'hands-on', high- participation study of language. In this respect, CONLANG is one of the 'coolest' of on-line media. Only time will show what direction conlanging and attitudes towards it will take as the Internet becomes more powerful and widely used. Will the Internet democratise, and eventually make banal, a pursuit that has until now been painted with the romantic brush of lunacy and secrecy? (You can currently download LangMaker, invented by Jeff Henning, to help you construct your own language.) Or will it do the opposite and make language and linguistics -- so often avoided by students or reduced in university programs -- inventive and cutting edge? (The inventor of Tokana has used in-class language invention as a means to study language typology.) Now that we have it, the Internet at least provides conlangers with a place to hang their logodaedalic tapestries, and the technology for some of them to be heard. References Von Bingen, Hildegard. Lingua Ignota, or Wörterbuch der unbekannten Sprache. Eds. Marie-Louise Portmann and Alois Odermatt. Basel: Verlag Basler Hildegard-Gesellschaft, 1986. Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language. Trans. James Fentress. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995, 1997. Elgin, Suzette Haden. A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan. Madison, WI: Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science- Fiction, 1985. Henning, Jeffrey. Model Languages: The Newsletter Discussing Newly Imagined Words for Newly Imagined Worlds. <http://www.Langmaker.com/ml00.htm>. Kennaway, Richard. Some Internet Resources Relating to Constructed Languages. <http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/jrk/conlang.php>. (The most comprehensive list (with links) of invented languages on the Internet.) Laycock, Donald C. The Complete Enochian Dictionary: A Dictionary of the Angelic Language as Revealed to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1994. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Reprinted. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1994. Salamon, Jeff. "Revenge of the Fanboys." Village Voice 13 Sep., 1994. Schnapp, Jeffrey. "Virgin Words: Hildegard of Bingen's Lingua Ignota and the Development of Imaginary Languages Ancient and Modern." Exemplaria 3.2 (1991): 267-98. Tolkien, J.R.R. "A Secret Vice." The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. 198-223. Wilkins, John. An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. Presented to the Royal Society of England in 1668. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. 3rd ed. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958. Yaguello, Marina. Lunatic Lovers of Language: Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors. Trans. Catherine Slater. (Les fous du langage. 1985.) London: The Athlone Press, 1991. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Sarah L. Higley. "Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.php>. Chicago style: Sarah L. Higley, "Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Sarah L. Higley. (2000) Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.php> ([your date of access]).