Fine-Grained Crowdsourcing for Fine-Grained Recognition

Fine-grained recognition concerns categorization at sub-ordinate levels, where the distinction between object classes is highly local. Compared to basic level recogni-tion, fine-grained categorization can be more challenging as there are in general less data and fewer discriminative features. This necessitates the use of stronger prior for fea-ture selection. In this work, we include humans in the loop to help computers select discriminative features. We intro-duce a novel online game called “Bubbles ” that reveals dis-criminative features humans use. The player’s goal is to identify the category of a heavily blurred image. During the game, the player can choose to reveal full details of circu-lar regions (“bubbles”), with a certain penalty. With proper setup the game generates discriminative bubbles with as-sured quality. We next propose the “BubbleBank ” algo-rithm that uses the human selected bubbles to improve ma-chine recognition performance. Experiments demonstrate that our approach yields large improvements over the pre-vious state of the art on challenging benchmarks. 1

Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research

This volume focuses on realisations of wordplay in different cultures and social and historical contexts, and brings together various research traditions of approaching wordplay. Together with the volume DWP 7, it assembles selected papers presented at the interdisciplinary conference The Dynamics of Wordplay / La dynamique du jeu de mots (Trier, 2016) and stresses the inherent dynamicity of wordplay and wordplay research

Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research

This volume focuses on realisations of wordplay in different cultures and social and historical contexts, and brings together various research traditions of approaching wordplay. Together with the volume DWP 7, it assembles selected papers presented at the interdisciplinary conference The Dynamics of Wordplay / La dynamique du jeu de mots (Trier, 2016) and stresses the inherent dynamicity of wordplay and wordplay research

The Island in Contemporary Art: a curatorial gaze

This thesis explores the island in contemporary art through curatorial practice-lead research. It is driven by the perceived lack of critical discourse around this widely used artistic and curatorial motif. To understand the inherited concepts of ‘islandness’ and island metaphor, this thesis first maps the subject of island encounter within a broad range of Western historical, theoretical, literary and creative works. By doing so, a sequence of stages to island encounter is made visible – dreaming, journey, contact, settlement and departure. Island encounters marked by this type of sequence both generate and propagate enduring tropes of island figuration in the Western imagination. The practice-lead research of this thesis is explored through three curatorial case studies. The first, Nowhereisland (2012) by British artist Alex Hartley, wholly subscribes to the aforementioned sequence of island encounter. It demonstrates how island approach has continuing relevance in the twenty-first century, but also how island tropes might prove artistically or curatorially generative. Beyond simply replicating the masculine heroics of colonisation, the island of Nowhereisland offers an alternative political and philosophical position on burgeoning questions of climate change and political efficacy. The two remaining case studies – Ash Island and its Transformations (2014) and The Island Could be Heard by Night (2015) – constitute curatorial investigations into concepts of place, memory and the construction of history, through the island motif. These case studies demonstrate the qualities shared by the island and the exhibition: both are unique spatial and temporal devices, offering an overview and compression of space and time; both are marked and enlivened by visitation; both are approached thematically; and, as a combination of these ideas, both the island and the exhibition are short-term, often an experimental occupation of location, ideas or philosophies. This thesis offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art by critically considering contemporary curatorial practices and philosophies by way of island studies, and vice versa

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars and the Demise of the Human Mediator

As technology has advanced, many have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligent devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of the human mediator or arbitrator is imminent, one cannot deny that artificial intelligence now has the capability to assume many of the responsibilities currently being performed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners. It is fascinating (and perhaps unsettling) to realize the complexity and seriousness of tasks currently delegated to avatars and robots. This article will review some of those delegations and suggest how the artificial intelligence developed to complete those assignments may be relevant to dispute resolution and problem solving. “Relational Agents,” which can have a physical presence such as a robot, be embodied in an avatar, or have no detectable form whatsoever and exist only as software, are able to create long term socio-economic relationships with users built on trust, rapport and therapeutic goals. Relational agents are interacting with humans in circumstances that have significant consequences in the physical world. These interactions provide insights as to how robots and avatars can participate productively in dispute resolution processes. Can human mediators and arbitrators be replaced by robots and avatars that not only physically resemble humans, but also act, think, and reason like humans? And to raise a particularly interesting question, can robots, avatars and other relational agents look, move, act, think, and reason even “better” than humans

ENGLISH WORD-MAKING

English Word-Making presents the content and methods of modern research in morphology in the form of a textbook for secondary school English students. The opening section offers a rationale for the uses of morphology at the secondary level. The emergence of English as a subject in the curriculum is traced historically; and the study of morphology is related specifically to humanistic goals and to the enhancing of skills in language analysis, speaking, reading, vocabulary growth, grammar and usage study, spelling, composition, and literary interpretation. The main body of the text consists of ten chapters, each exploring, diachronically and synchronically, a primary category of English word-formation: compounding, reduplication, derivation, conversion, clipping, back formation, acronyming, blending, and eponyming. Each chapter includes exercises that require students to apply what they have learned about the English language. At the end of each chapter are extensive Notes that reinforce and expand the concepts presented in the main text. Appendix 1 is an exposition of English spelling through a cataloguing of various phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Appendix 2 is an attempt to apply to the slang lexicon of St. Paul\u27s School (vintage 1978) the principals of morphological analysis that are treated throughout the manuscript