Interpretation of Multiparty Meetings: The AMI and AMIDA Projects

The AMI and AMIDA projects are collaborative EU projects concerned with the automatic recognition and interpretation of multiparty meetings. This paper provides an overview of the advances we have made in these projects with a particular focus on the multimodal recording infrastructure, the publicly available AMI corpus of annotated meeting recordings, and the speech recognition framework that we have developed for this domain

Inceptions of biomathematics from Lotka to Thom

Mathematical biology occupies a special place at the interface between the physical, mathematical and life sciences. Is this interface merely a meeting point for dabblers venturing out of their own proper domains to work on problems of mutual interest? Or is it an incipient science in its own right, with its own particular character, principles, and practices? The past century has seen vast advances in the application of mathematical and physical ideas and techniques to biological problems, in the process transforming many of them almost beyond recognition. Nonetheless, the question of a biomathematics as a new kind of science remains open, despite several fascinating, if sometimes problematic, attempts

SSPC (Solid State Proton Conductors 15 Meeting

The field of solid state protonics has had a small but dedicated following for the past several decades. The collection of papers compiled in this special issue of Solid State Ionics were presented at the most recent international conference focused specifically on this topic, the 15th International Conference on Solid State Proton Conductors (SSPC-15) held in Santa Barbara, California, United States, August 15-20, 2010. Early recognition of the importance of proton transport in solids led to the establishment of the first meeting in this series in 1981, held in Paris in the form of a Danish-Frenchworkshop. The subsequent thirteen meetingswere all held inWestern Europe,with increasing participation from Asian, Eastern European and North and South American researchers. In recognition of the growing international interest in the field, SSPC-14 was held in Kyoto, Japan. SSPC-15, the first North American meeting in this series, built on the momentum of internationalization achieved in SSPC-14, ensuring that the best and brightest minds continue to contribute to the important problems still facing the understanding and manipulation of proton transport in solids. This occasion warrants an update to the SSPC history, and is given. Overall, the oxide proton conductors were the topic of greatest interest, reflecting the deep history of Japanese involvement in these materials. Critical advances were described in both the understanding of the transport properties and the fabrication of technological devices, with particular emphasis on fuel cells. Interest in polymer and oxyacid proton conductors was also high, as with previous meetings. Again, advances in fundamental mechanistic understanding of proton transport pathways were reported in parallel with advances in device development. While only a subset of papers presented at SSPC-15 are included in this special issue, the articles reflect the breadth of topics covered. The reader is encouraged to browse the papers beyond his or her area of expertise to experience directly the remarkable breakthroughs reported at SSPC-15

New directions for medical artificial intelligence

AbstractThe past decade has seen significant advances in medical artificial intelligence (MAI), but its role in medicine and medical education remains limited. The goal for the next decade must be directed towards maximizing the utility of MAI in the clinic and classroom. Fundamental to achieving this is increasing the involvement of clinicians in MAI development. MAI developers must move from “pet projects” toward generalizable tasks meeting recognized clinical needs. Clinical researchers must be made aware of knowledge engineering, so clinical data bases can be prospectively designed to contribute directly into MAI “knowledge bases”. Closer involvement of MAI scientists with clinicians is also essential to further understanding of cognitive processes in medical decision-making. Technological advances in user interfaces—including voice recognition, natural language processing, enhanced graphics and videodiscs— must be rapidly introduced into MAI to increase physician acceptance. Development of expert systems in non-clinical areas must expand, particularly resource management, e.g. operating room or hospital admission scheduling. The establishment of MAI laboratories at major medical centers around the country, involving both clinicians and computer scientists, represents an ideal mechanism for bringing MAI into the mainstream of medical computing

Understanding images in biological and computer vision

yesThis issue of Interface Focus is a collection of papers arising out of a Royal Society Discussion meeting entitled ‘Understanding images in biological and computer vision’ held at Carlton Terrace on the 19th and 20th February, 2018. There is a strong tradition of inter-disciplinarity in the study of visual perception and visual cognition. Many of the great natural scientists including Newton [1], Young [2] and Maxwell (see [3]) were intrigued by the relationship between light, surfaces and perceived colour considering both physical and perceptual processes. Brewster [4] invented both the lenticular stereoscope and the binocular camera but also studied the perception of shape-from-shading. More recently, Marr's [5] description of visual perception as an information processing problem led to great advances in our understanding of both biological and computer vision: both the computer vision and biological vision communities have a Marr medal. The recent successes of deep neural networks in classifying the images that we see and the fMRI images that reveal the activity in our brains during the act of seeing are both intriguing. The links between machine vision systems and biology may at sometimes be weak but the similarity of some of the operations is nonetheless striking [6]. This two-day meeting brought together researchers from the fields of biological and computer vision, robotics, neuroscience, computer science and psychology to discuss the most recent developments in the field. The meeting was divided into four themes: vision for action, visual appearance, vision for recognition and machine learning

Data policy and availability supporting global change research, development, and decision-making: An information perspective

An explosion of information has created a crisis for today's information age. It has to be determined how to use the best available information sources, tools, and technology. To do this it is necessary to have leadership at the interagency level to promote a coherent information policy. It is also important to find ways to educate the users of information regarding the tools available to them. Advances in technology resulted in efforts to shift from Disciplinary and Mission-oriented Systems to Decision Support Systems and Personalized Information Systems. One such effort is being made by the Interagency Working Group on Data Management for Global Change (IAWGDMGC). Five federal agencies - the Department of Commerce (DOC), Department of Energy (DOE), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Library of Medicine (NLM), and Department of Defense (DOD) - have an on-going cooperative information management group, CENDI (Commerce, Energy, NASA, NLM, and Defense Information), that is meeting the challenge of coordinating and integrating their information management systems. Although it is beginning to be technically feasible to have a system with text, bibliographic, and numeric data online for the user to manipulate at the user's own workstation, it will require national recognition that the resource investment in such a system is worthwhile, in order to promote its full development. It also requires close cooperation between the producers and users of the information - that is, the research and policy community, and the information community. National resources need to be mobilized in a coordinated manner to move people into the next generation of information support systems