Structural Embedding of Syntactic Trees for Machine Comprehension

Deep neural networks for machine comprehension typically utilizes only word or character embeddings without explicitly taking advantage of structured linguistic information such as constituency trees and dependency trees. In this paper, we propose structural embedding of syntactic trees (SEST), an algorithm framework to utilize structured information and encode them into vector representations that can boost the performance of algorithms for the machine comprehension. We evaluate our approach using a state-of-the-art neural attention model on the SQuAD dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that our model can accurately identify the syntactic boundaries of the sentences and extract answers that are syntactically coherent over the baseline methods

Contrasts between classes of assets in fixed investment panel equations as a way of testing real option theory

This paper reports estimation of investment equations for two classes of fixed assets: plant & machinery and building for a large sample of UK manufacturing industries. It exploits the different degree of irreversibility that characterises these assets to test the power of real options theory to explain investment under uncertainty. Additionally, the paper uses a specially constructed industry-specific measure of irreversibility for plant and machinery investment to test for real options effects within that class of investment.Investment, Industry, Irreversibility, Real Options, Uncertainty

NASA Pilot-Engaged Expert Response Using IBM Watson Technology: Prototype Evaluation of Knowledge Retrieval System

NASA Langley Research Center and IBM have been investigating the use of IBM Watson technology in aerospace research and development. One application of Watson technology is the Pilot-Engaged Expert Response (PEER) use case. The PEER system is envisioned as an in-cockpit advisor that will act as a source of situationally-relevant information for pilots and other flight crew members to assist in decision making about real-time events and situations that arise in the course of aircraft operations. PEER will make available vast stores of knowledge and information quickly and directly, putting important informational resources where they are needed most. IBM has worked with NASA to develop an architecture and articulate a roadmap for the development of the PEER system. That vision is built around Watson Discovery Advisor (WDA) software solution, derived from IBM's Jeopardy!-winning automatic question answering system. PEER makes use of WDA's sophisticated question-answering capabilities as its core, adding important User Interface components and other customizations for the cockpit environment, including communication with flight systems and other external data sources. The development plan for PEER includes four development stages, with the current project constituting the first phase. In this project, a prototype instance of PEER was successfully adapted to the aviation domain, enabling users to ask questions about aviation topics and receive useful and accurate answers to these questions. Major tasks accomplished include the development of procedures for domain adaptation through automatic lexicon extraction from domain glossaries; generation of question-answer training data which was used to train the system; and assessment of the effectiveness of domain adaptation, which showed a dramatic improvement in the ability of the PEER system to answer domain-relevant questions. In addition, the vision for the PEER system was pushed forward by the articulation of a plan for the automatic enhancement of question-answering with contextual information. This initial phase focused on two main goals: 1) the targeted domain adaptation of the underlying WDA system to the aviation domain; and, 2) the design of the software systems needed to leverage flight-contextual data. Domain adaptation of the WDA system proceeds via three main activities: Domain data ingestion, lexical customization and model training. A textual corpus consisting of 1,147 individual documents with more than 7.5 million words of text was ingested into the system and this served as the basis of all further development. A domain lexicon of over 3,500 aviation-domain terms was semi-automatically generated from domain documents and used to train the system. In addition, a set of over 500 question-answer (QA) pairs relevant to the PEER use case was developed; these were used to train and assess the system. These important first steps established the basis for the PEER system. In addition, steps were taken towards the integration of the PEER system into the cockpit environment with the development of a functional design for the Contextual Data Augmentation (CDA) subsystem. This subsystem brings to bear contextual data to improve system responses. It has three main submodules: the Contextual Data Collection module, the Contextual Data Selection module, and the Contextual QA Augmentation module. These modules form a processing pipeline that addresses the problems associated with automatically integrating information from external resources into the knowledge-retrieval mechanism

A Component-Based Approach for Scientific Services for Education and Research (Scientific SEARCH)

Today’s challenge for retrieving digital information by users such as “students,” educators,” or “researchers” is coping, more than ever before, with the excessive data and information available. The problem is further compounded because of the way scientific knowledge is structured, in terms of expert interviews, articles, conference coverage, journal scans etc. Great progress has been made in digital library research. The NSF/NSDL through their initiatives has assembled a great set of tools and techniques that hold significant potential. Many projects are now underway applying these tools and techniques to meet the information needs of different user communities. The primary focus of Scientific SEARCH project is enhancing access to high quality learning materials and resources, modules, and other digital objects targeted towards scientific consumer and scientific producer. The project will use a multi-phased approach to achieve the objective. The paper describes the first-phase work submitted to NSF 04-542 solicitation

Evaluating the quality of project planning: a model and field results

Faulty planning will result in project failure, whereas high-quality project planning increases the project's chances of success. The paper reports on the successful development and implementation of a model aimed at evaluating the quality of project planning. The model is based on both the abilities required of the project manager and the organizational support required for a proper project management infrastructure. The model was validated and applied by 282 project managers in nine organizations, where strong and weak planning processes were identified and analysed

The pre-solicitation phase of Government R and D contracting

Decision environment during pre-solicitation phase of procurement cycle in government agency contractin

Implementation of IT service management in Australia: case studies focusing on organisational change strategies

In order to provide better Information Technology (IT) services to their customers, organisations are increasingly implementing the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). ITIL describes processes, procedures, tasks, and checklists that can be applied by an organisation for establishing integration with its own strategies, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of competency. It allows the organisation to establish a baseline from which it can plan, implement, and measure improvements as well as compliance. Whilst the promise of ITIL implementation is compelling, many implementations do not achieve the anticipated outcomes. The extant literature provides very little information as to how ITIL is implemented or the organisational change strategies that organisations use to implement it. To find a point of comparison, study of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) projects have found that there are similarities in this change processes with those observed during ITIL implementations. Research into the implementation of ERP and BPR has found that applying a formal change management strategy, incorporating a Socio-Technical Systems (STS) approach, can assist in the likelihood of a successful implementation. This exploratory research was conducted using a multiple case study approach to investigate the organisational change strategies that organisations have applied to ITIL implementation. This research also sought to identify if using STS as an approach to organisational change can influence the success of ITIL implementations. In this research, one particular STS model, the Leavitt Diamond, was applied in order to investigate the inter-relationships between the STS components and how they are affected during the implementation of ITIL. This research found that organisations were not deliberately selecting and applying an organisational change strategy during implementation. Interestingly though, without knowing it or doing so consciously, the organisations adopted similar organisational change approaches and types for their ITIL implementations. All eight of the organisations studied adopted a planned change approach with a phased ITIL implementation. The research found that although none of the organisations deliberately applied an STS approach to their ITIL implementations, they did without realising, apply an STS approach. The ITIL implementation was found to require greater effort to be applied to the people component of the STS; followed by process, technology and structure. The research also found that an appropriate amount of effort was necessary for each of the individual STS components; rather than an equal effort per component. This research has developed new insights into organisational change strategies and ITIL implementations that had not previously been explored. Through this research, an ITIL STS Model of Organisational Change has been produced that provides a plan and overview of the primary decisions to be made, with the resultant actions, in response to changes to the STS components. This research provides ITIL practitioners, for the first time, information about organisational change strategies as they have been applied to successful ITIL implementations; as well as a model that may assist with developing their own organisational change strategies