3,986 research outputs found
How Fast Can We Play Tetris Greedily With Rectangular Pieces?
Consider a variant of Tetris played on a board of width and infinite
height, where the pieces are axis-aligned rectangles of arbitrary integer
dimensions, the pieces can only be moved before letting them drop, and a row
does not disappear once it is full. Suppose we want to follow a greedy
strategy: let each rectangle fall where it will end up the lowest given the
current state of the board. To do so, we want a data structure which can always
suggest a greedy move. In other words, we want a data structure which maintains
a set of rectangles, supports queries which return where to drop the
rectangle, and updates which insert a rectangle dropped at a certain position
and return the height of the highest point in the updated set of rectangles. We
show via a reduction to the Multiphase problem [P\u{a}tra\c{s}cu, 2010] that on
a board of width , if the OMv conjecture [Henzinger et al., 2015]
is true, then both operations cannot be supported in time
simultaneously. The reduction also implies polynomial bounds from the 3-SUM
conjecture and the APSP conjecture. On the other hand, we show that there is a
data structure supporting both operations in time on
boards of width , matching the lower bound up to a factor.Comment: Correction of typos and other minor correction
Entrepreneurial Design Thinking Course at Secondary School in Nepal: Contextual Prospects and Challenges
The glorification of entrepreneurship in Nepal has led to various stakeholders being interested in the entrepreneurship ecosystem of the country including the educational stakeholders. A surge is being observed in the number of educational institutions that now offer entrepreneurship courses to their students. However, little has been done to investigate the impact of such courses. A secondary school in Nepal used the design thinking approach strategy to conduct entrepreneurship classes for its secondary level students. This paper attempts to assess the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship classes conducted at the school by using the mixed method strategy. Our paper found that the year-long entrepreneurship course helped shift the mindset of students from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset by giving them a solution-seeking lens and the emotional engagement of the students with the course was also seen as high. Similarly, an emotional growth was also seen in the side of the educator. However, owing to the time boundaries and less support from school administration, the entrepreneurship course was not seen as successful in leading meaningful development of 21st-century skills like collaboration, creativity, curiosity, experimentalism in students. Keywords: entrepreneurship, design thinking, entrepreneurship education, emotional engagement DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-1-04 Publication date: January 31st 2021
Creating sparks: comparing search results using discriminatory search term word co-occurrence to facilitate serendipity in the enterprise.
Categories or tags that appear in faceted search interfaces which are representative of an information item, rarely convey unexpected or non-obvious associated concepts buried within search results. No prior research has been identified which assesses the usefulness of discriminative search term word co-occurrence to generate facets to act as catalysts to facilitate insightful and serendipitous encounters during exploratory search. In this study, 53 scientists from two organisations interacted with semi-interactive stimuli, 74% expressing a large/moderate desire to use such techniques within their workplace. Preferences were shown for certain algorithms and colour coding. Insightful and serendipitous encounters were identified. These techniques appear to offer a significant improvement over existing approaches used within the study organisations, providing further evidence that insightful and serendipitous encounters can be facilitated in the search user interface. This research has implications for organisational learning, knowledge discovery and exploratory search interface design
Measuring Expressive Music Performances: a Performance Science Model using Symbolic Approximation
Music Performance Science (MPS), sometimes termed systematic musicology in Northern Europe, is concerned with designing, testing and applying quantitative measurements to music performances. It has applications in art musics, jazz and other genres. It is least concerned with aesthetic judgements or with ontological considerations of artworks that stand alone from their instantiations in performances. Musicians deliver expressive performances by manipulating multiple, simultaneous variables including, but not limited to: tempo, acceleration and deceleration, dynamics, rates of change of dynamic levels, intonation and articulation. There are significant complexities when handling multivariate music datasets of significant scale. A critical issue in analyzing any types of large datasets is the likelihood of detecting meaningless relationships the more dimensions are included. One possible choice is to create algorithms that address both volume and complexity. Another, and the approach chosen here, is to apply techniques that reduce both the dimensionality and numerosity of the music datasets while assuring the statistical significance of results. This dissertation describes a flexible computational model, based on symbolic approximation of timeseries, that can extract time-related characteristics of music performances to generate performance fingerprints (dissimilarities from an ‘average performance’) to be used for comparative purposes. The model is applied to recordings of Arnold Schoenberg’s Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment, Opus 47 (1949), having initially been validated on Chopin Mazurkas.1 The results are subsequently used to test hypotheses about evolution in performance styles of the Phantasy since its composition. It is hoped that further research will examine other works and types of music in order to improve this model and make it useful to other music researchers. In addition to its benefits for performance analysis, it is suggested that the model has clear applications at least in music fraud detection, Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and in pedagogical applications for music education
The relationship between strategic entrepreneurship and performance of small and medium enterprises in Malaysia
The objective of this research is to determine the relationship between entrepreneurial
orientation (EO), entrepreneurial values (EV), knowledge creation process (KCP), and the
performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. This research analyzes these contributing variables to strategic entrepreneurship and their relationships
with the performance of SMEs. There are a number of views on strategic entrepreneurship,
which most have propensity for opportunity-seeking and advantage seeking behavior that
require combined theories in entrepreneurship and strategic management. However, a few
scholars argue that it is actually a balance of exploration and exploitation activities which
correspond to the firm's capability to explore opportunities internally plus externally, and
allow the sustaining of wealth creation. The research employs a quantitative and survey
method, and data were collected from owner/managers of SMEs throughout peninsular
Malaysia. Out of the 370 responses collected, only 335 were usable in this research. The
data were analysed using multiple regressions. The findings reveal that exploration and
exploitation depicted in entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial values and knowledge creation process respectively were significant predictors in strategic entrepreneurship and exhibited positive influence to the performance of SMEs in Malaysia. This research contributes theoretically to the enhancement of the understanding as well as the analysis of the strategic entrepreneurship model in SMEs. It provides another empirical supports to the three variables of EO, EV and KCP where EO having the biggest strength and contribution to the firm performance. In managerial contribution aspect, the findings provide opportunities for the SMEs to engage strategic entrepreneurship activities and develop sustaining competitive advantages thereby shoring up their performance
Publications from NIAS: January 1988-June 2013 (NIAS Report No. R23-2014)
This report has a bibliographic listing of all the publications from NIAS since inception till June 201
Generative rhythmic models
A system for generative rhythmic modeling is presented. The work aims to explore computational models of creativity, realizing them in a system designed for realtime generation of semi-improvisational music. This is envisioned as an attempt to develop musical intelligence in the context of structured improvisation, and by doing so to enable and encourage new forms of musical control and performance; the systems described in this work, already capable of realtime creation, have been designed with the explicit intention of embedding them in a variety of performance-based systems. A model of qaida, a solo tabla form, is presented, along with the results of an online survey comparing it to a professional tabla player's recording on dimensions of musicality, creativity, and novelty. The qaida model generates a bank of rhythmic variations by reordering subphrases. Selections from this bank are sequenced using a feature-based approach. An experimental extension into modeling layer- and loop-based forms of electronic music is presented, in which the initial modeling approach is generalized. Starting from a seed track, the layer-based model utilizes audio analysis techniques such as blind source separation and onset-based segmentation to generate layers which are shuffled and recombined to generate novel music in a manner analogous to the qaida model.M.S.Committee Chair: Chordia, Parag; Committee Member: Freeman, Jason; Committee Member: Weinberg, Gi
Designing empowering and critical identities in social computing and gaming
This article presents theory and technology addressing the design of computing technologies for social computing and gaming: (1) to provide dynamic means of identity representation while avoiding stigmatising norms, and (2) to provide for critical reflection on stigmatising identity infrastructures found in other systems. The theory and technologies developed with these aims are encapsulated under the rubric of the Advanced Identity Representation (AIR) Project that initiated in the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) directed by the author. This work has a basis in the cognitive science foundations of categorisation and metaphor-based bias, and study of social classification infrastructures from sociology of science. Using this theoretical framework, this article provides a model to reveal a set of inadequacies of many current identity infrastructures in social computing and gaming systems for supporting the needs of collective groups of people and individuals in marginalised categories. As results, several social networking systems and games developed in the ICE Lab to empower users in the creative goal of constructing computational identities and/ or critiquing the phenomenon of stigma in these applications are presented
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