The Climate Change Debate and Natural Language Processing

The debate around climate change (CC)---its extent, its causes, and the necessary responses---is intense and of global importance. Yet, in the natural language processing (NLP) community, this domain has so far received little attention. In contrast, it is of enormous prominence in various social science disciplines, and some of that work follows the ''text-as-data'' paradigm, seeking to employ quantitative methods for analyzing large amounts of CC-related text. Other research is qualitative in nature and studies details, nuances, actors, and motivations within CC discourses. Coming from both NLP and Political Science, and reviewing key works in both disciplines, we discuss how social science approaches to CC debates can inform advances in text-mining/NLP, and how, in return, NLP can support policy-makers and activists in making sense of large-scale and complex CC discourses across multiple genres, channels, topics, and communities. This is paramount for their ability to make rapid and meaningful impact on the discourse, and for shaping the necessary policy change.

Cartography of Natural Language Processing for Social Good (NLP4SG): Searching for Definitions, Statistics and White Spots

The range of works that can be considered as developing NLP for social good (NLP4SG) is enormous. While many of them target the identification of hate speech or fake news, there are others that address, e.g., text simplification to alleviate consequences of dyslexia, or coaching strategies to fight depression. However, so far, there is no clear picture of what areas are targeted by NLP4SG, who are the actors, which are the main scenarios and what are the topics that have been left aside. In order to obtain a clearer view in this respect, we first propose a working definition of NLP4SG and identify some primary aspects that are crucial for NLP4SG, including, e.g., areas, ethics, privacy and bias. Then, we draw upon a corpus of around 50,000 articles downloaded from the ACL Anthology. Based on a list of keywords retrieved from the literature and revised in view of the task, we select from this corpus articles that can be considered to be on NLP4SG according to our definition and analyze them in terms of trends along the time line, etc. The result is a map of the current NLP4SG research and insights concerning the white spots on this map.

Automatic Classification of Neutralization Techniques in the Narrative of Climate Change Scepticism

Neutralisation techniques, e.g. denial of responsibility and denial of victim, are used in the narrative of climate change scepticism to justify lack of action or to promote an alternative view. We first draw on social science to introduce the problem to the community of nlp, present the granularity of the coding schema and then collect manual annotations of neutralised techniques in text relating to climate change, and experiment with supervised and semi- supervised BERT-based models.

CLIMATE RESPONSIVE BUILDING DESIGN STRATEGIES OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE IN SWAIDA CITY, SYRIA

The history of Swaida city in several civilizations was clear through architecture as if it formed a mixture of them all. Each culture had its own way of dealing with the environmental conditions, combining these design strategies accumulatively resulted in a rich architecture that deals with the environment in a very systematic way. On the other hand, the construction strategies dealt with a lot of limitation such as the lack of resources and experiences which were not available during those periods. This report describes the historical and climatical characteristics that Swaida city has, and reviews some design strategies that used to respond to climate challenges.

The school climate at the Talent Schools from the point of view of the Teachers and Management Staff - A Field Study in all Homs, Tartous, and Lattakia

This research aimed at recognize the school climate at the Talent Schools in Syria Arab Republic from the point of view of the Teachers and Management Staff, it also tries to identify the differences in their opinions based on the following variables: (job title, educational and scientific qualifications and years of experience). To achieve this research, questionnaire was designed including (56) items included school climate at the Talent Schools; distributed to the five areas (Management, Teachers, Curricula and Methods of Instruction, examination, teaching Environment), then applied to a sample of (222) Teachers and Management Staff for the academic year 2016/2017. The present research used the descriptive analytical approach. Validity of the questionnaire was established though a jury of (7) of the teaching staff of educational at Damascus and Tishreen universities. Pilot sample consisted of (22) Teachers and Management Staff, Reliability was established by Cronbach – Alpha Reliability at lest (0.775). The final results showed that the school climate at the Talent Schools in Syria was middle degree. In fact there are no found differences about the school climate at the Talent Schools according to variables (job title, and years of experience), but there are found differences according to variable educational and scientific qualifications. The Research suggestions to developed the school climate at the Talent Schools, as well as carrying further researches about the problems of the Gifted Students.

management of the psycho-social climate skills and its relation to the problems of classroom discipline A Field study on a sample of teachers of the first stage of basic education in Tartous city

The research aimed to identify The level of teachers' practice of psychological and social climate management skills, and the level of classroom discipline problems from the perspective of teachers themselves. And to know the relationship between them. The descriptive approach was used to verify the validity of the research hypotheses. The study sample consisted of (89) teachers of the basic education/ first stage in Tartous city for the year 2016/2017, based on a questionnaire constructed by the researcher for this purpose. Which consists of two areas (management of psychological and social climate - classroom discipline problems) after verifying the validity and reliability, and a statistical program for educational and psychological (spss) was used. The research reached the following results: The mean value of the psychological and social climate management field was (4.2165) with a standard deviation (27456). It is a high value within a scale that "always". The degree of prevalence of class discipline problems was law. The average value was (1.9363) with a standard deviation (47,493), There is a strong inverse relationship between practicing psychosocial and social climate management skills and class discipline problems. The researcher concludes a number of suggestions like: preparing and training students teachers on the positive classroom discipline skills, to prevent behavioral problems and raise their level of managing the psychological and social climate in the classroom, conducting more studies about the subject.

The Status of School Climate In the Second Cycle Schools of Basic Education in The Light Of The Supportive Positive School Climate Standards to Educate Citizenship

This research aims at achieving the following main aim: "to Identifying the status of school climate in the second cycle schools of basic education in Damascus city in the light of the supportive positive school climate standards to educate citizenship. To achieve this aim the research used the descriptive analytical approach, and the questionnaire as a research tool which was implemented on all principals of the second cycle of basic education schools in the Damascus city. Their number was (115) principals.

المناخ الأسري كما يدركه المراهقون و علاقته بالسلوك البيئي لدى طلاب المدارس الثانوية في مدينة دمشق

يهدف البحث إلى معرفة طبيعة العلاقة بين المناخ الأسري و السلوك البيئي لدى أفراد عينة البحث تبعاً لبعض المتغيرات: كالاختصاص الدراسي كما يهدف إلى دراسة الفروق بين أفراد العينة تبعاً لجنس أفراد العينة، و مكان إقامة الأسرة.

The Organizational climate in the kindergarten and its relationship to the level of creative behavior among teachers working in Damascus province

The research aims to identify the Organizational climate in kindergarten institutions, according to the estimate research sample of employed individuals in the kindergarten level. And the level of creative behavior of kindergarten teachers according to the estimate research sample of employed individuals in the kindergarten. And examine the relationship between organizational climate and the level of creative behavior of kindergarten teachers. Also known significance of differences in the answers to the research sample to identify the Organizational climate and to identify creative individuals behavior according to the variables of research: (qualification, years of experience).

The School climate and relationship a Job satisfaction by a Sample of psychological Counselors in the City of Aleppo

The study aims at identifying the relationship between School climate and Job satisfaction, and Identify the level of Job satisfaction the psychological Counselors in city of Aleppo. The study aimed to identify statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the sample of School climate and Job satisfaction according to the variables of the School, academicals Level, experience and number the Courses.