Agents for Distributed Multimedia Information Management

This paper discusses the role of agents in a distributed multimedia information system (DMIS) engineered according to the principles of open hypermedia. It is based on the new generation of Microcosm, an open hypermedia system developed by the Multimedia Research Group at the University of Southampton. Microcosm provides a framework for supporting the three major roles of agents within open information systems: resource discovery, information integrity and navigation assistance. We present Microcosm and its agents, and discuss our current research in applying agent technology in this framework

A Subband-Based SVM Front-End for Robust ASR

This work proposes a novel support vector machine (SVM) based robust automatic speech recognition (ASR) front-end that operates on an ensemble of the subband components of high-dimensional acoustic waveforms. The key issues of selecting the appropriate SVM kernels for classification in frequency subbands and the combination of individual subband classifiers using ensemble methods are addressed. The proposed front-end is compared with state-of-the-art ASR front-ends in terms of robustness to additive noise and linear filtering. Experiments performed on the TIMIT phoneme classification task demonstrate the benefits of the proposed subband based SVM front-end: it outperforms the standard cepstral front-end in the presence of noise and linear filtering for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) below 12-dB. A combination of the proposed front-end with a conventional front-end such as MFCC yields further improvements over the individual front ends across the full range of noise levels

Parallel smoothing algorithms for causal and acausal systems

Includes bibliographical references (p. 17-18).Caption title.Research supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. AFOSR-88-0032 Research supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office. DAAL03-86-K-0171 Research supported in part by the Office of Naval Research. N00014-91-J-1001Darrin Taylor and Alan S. Willsky

A canonical theory of dynamic decision-making

Decision-making behavior is studied in many very different fields, from medicine and eco- nomics to psychology and neuroscience, with major contributions from mathematics and statistics, computer science, AI, and other technical disciplines. However the conceptual- ization of what decision-making is and methods for studying it vary greatly and this has resulted in fragmentation of the field. A theory that can accommodate various perspectives may facilitate interdisciplinary working. We present such a theory in which decision-making is articulated as a set of canonical functions that are sufficiently general to accommodate diverse viewpoints, yet sufficiently precise that they can be instantiated in different ways for specific theoretical or practical purposes. The canons cover the whole decision cycle, from the framing of a decision based on the goals, beliefs, and background knowledge of the decision-maker to the formulation of decision options, establishing preferences over them, and making commitments. Commitments can lead to the initiation of new decisions and any step in the cycle can incorporate reasoning about previous decisions and the rationales for them, and lead to revising or abandoning existing commitments. The theory situates decision-making with respect to other high-level cognitive capabilities like problem solving, planning, and collaborative decision-making. The canonical approach is assessed in three domains: cognitive and neuropsychology, artificial intelligence, and decision engineering

Complexity and coherence

Leslie Topp traces the emergence of the asylum mortuary as an architectural challenge. Drawing on new archival research, Complexity and Coherence: The Challenge of the Asylum Mortuary in Central Europe, 1898–1908 unpacks the highly fraught combination of scientific practices, death rituals, and psychiatric strategies that made up the mortuary's program. Topp analyzes three mortuary buildings in new psychiatric institutions at Vienna, Mauer-Öhling (Lower Austria), and Kroměříž (Moravia). Far from conforming to an established type, each building represents a radically different approach to the challenge of rendering the program's abrupt juxtapositions meaningful and coherent. In each case the building is conceived within the force field of Wagner School modernism, but the contrasting built results show the diversity of that modernism pushed to its limits by the complexity of the program's requirements and associations