Soft reboot : the making of Hard Reset

textDirector, Writer and MFA Candidate Deepak Chetty will discuss his history as a filmmaker from an early age up until present day as well as the entire process of conceptualizing, creating, producing and finishing Hard Reset. Hard Reset, a science fiction thriller is the first short film out of UT3D and the first graduate thesis film shot natively in stereoscopic 3D in North America.Radio-Television-Fil

The Daily Texan

Texas Student Medi

A pattern mining approach for information filtering systems

It is a big challenge to clearly identify the boundary between positive and negative streams for information filtering systems. Several attempts have used negative feedback to solve this challenge; however, there are two issues for using negative relevance feedback to improve the effectiveness of information filtering. The first one is how to select constructive negative samples in order to reduce the space of negative documents. The second issue is how to decide noisy extracted features that should be updated based on the selected negative samples. This paper proposes a pattern mining based approach to select some offenders from the negative documents, where an offender can be used to reduce the side effects of noisy features. It also classifies extracted features (i.e., terms) into three categories: positive specific terms, general terms, and negative specific terms. In this way, multiple revising strategies can be used to update extracted features. An iterative learning algorithm is also proposed to implement this approach on the RCV1 data collection, and substantial experiments show that the proposed approach achieves encouraging performance and the performance is also consistent for adaptive filtering as well

Catching and displaying memory cues for a mobile augmented memory system

This report goes over and details the progress of the 2013 COMP477 project “Augmenting Memory: The Digital Parrot on Mobile Devices” undertaken by Jake Bellamy and supervised by Annika Hinze at the University of Waikato. The report begins with an overview on the problem with remembering events in people’s lives and details the background information on the Digital Parrot system. It also describes the previous project that preceded this one, which began to conceptualize the Digital Parrot on mobile devices. It analyses problems with the current design of the system and addresses them. The report then goes on to conduct an in depth user study with the functioning version of the software. The user study finds design flaws and incorrect functionality in the application that would not have otherwise been apparent. Finally, the report concludes with a proposed user interface concept that addresses all of the issues found in the user study and describes how the system would work. It describes the initial implementation that has begun in building this system

Old and New Riddles on Concept Sharing

We ask whether social interaction demands sharing social concepts. We illustrate our point by depicting possible situations that emerge when two individuals play chess. We formalize our hypothesis in First Order Logic and we show that the very idea of sharing social concepts poses an interesting challenge both from the standpoint of knowledge representation and of philosophical conceptual analysis. By endorsing a minimal notion of interaction, we conclude that sharing social concepts is not necessary for social interaction. Then, we relate our view to Wittgenstein\u27s and Kripke\u27s "Rule-following Considerations

An Investigation into the English Academic Writing Strategies Employed by Students of HE in the NE of England with Particular Reference to their Nationalities and Gender

ABSTRACT The research compared native (NSE) and non-native (NNSE) learners' academic writing strategies in higher education (HE), where natives are learners who were born and educated in Britain, and non-native participants are nationals of Mainland China and Libya. This comparison was made in order to determine similarities/differences in strategies employed by the three groups (British, Libyans, and Chinese) as well as to provide possible explanations for the findings. The study also explored a further effect, namely gender. This research utilized a mixture of quantitative (structured questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) approaches. The results of the first stage of this study were primarily based on a questionnaire completed by 302 HE students. This examined patterns and variations among NSE and NNSE academic writing use, finding important differences between these groups in terms of their nativeness, nationality, gender, age, qualification, length of residence in the UK, IELTS score, and subject area. The second stage focused on semi-structured interviews with twelve British, Libyan and Mainland Chinese students (four of each). These presented a more complex picture of NSE and NNSE problems in academic writing and the strategies used to overcome them as it looked not only for what they used, but also how and why certain strategies were employed. Interestingly, these findings indicated that even on the occasions when NSE and NNSE use a similar strategy they tend to approach it differently. The study deepens our understanding of the issues associated with writing strategy use in both L1 and L2 HE students and shows that very little may be assumed in cross-cultural research. Despite some variations, there is a general tendency for all three groups to adopt similar writing strategies. Moreover, the individual variations, cultural and educational background are more significant in accounting for the use of the writing strategies than the actual differences in writing by gender, nativeness and nationality. There are clear lessons to be learnt about the informal and unguided way that most participants, regardless of nativeness, nationality and gender, seem to learn how to write. They use a variety of sources as a model, including other students‘ assignments, and samples of varying standards would help them differentiate between good and bad writing. As efficient academic writing cannot be assumed, there needs to be a concerted effort by EAP teachers to improve their methods of promoting more effective writing. I believe that current methods are inadequate, and suggest two more integrated or holistic approaches. These approaches seek to reduce prevarication in writing and are referred to as the ‗sink‘ approach and the ‗shuttling‘ approach. The ‗sink‘ approach involves pouring down whatever thoughts come to mind. Some of these will be included in the final version, while others may be discarded (down the sink)! ‗Shuttling‘, which is particularly prevalent in the NNSE, refers to using a variety of sources and is a useful method of assimilating information. This may take place after the commencement of writing, where more inspiration is required, though conversely, ‗shuttling‘ could take place before the commencement of writing. The outcomes of this research, therefore, are important in informing pedagogy on the one hand for two countries where the learning of English has become an important educational requirement and on the other for a country where teaching English is a growth industry

Whalesong

Multi-million dollar UAS Student Housing repair project could start as early as June -- Pro-Act leadership attacked by USUAS out-going president -- Approval of certificate program highlighted the UA Board of Regents April 21-22 meeting -- Election confusion: Students should stop by the office and read the current student government constitution -- New LAC thanks students for their support -- "Our Lady of the Tortilla" playwright a success at Perseverance Theater -- City & Borough of Juneau approves lease of University of Alaska Southeast property -- Scholastic performance high for 1988-89 Lady Whales -- UAS's Lee Paavola recognized as Community Educator of the Year by the Juneau Community Education Council -- UAS student wins Archie Shiels Freshman Writing Contest -- New York musician performing at Juneau Jazz Festival -- Sealaska Corp. initiates Roger Lang Scholarship fund with $20,000 check -- Campus censors crack down on student play, magazine -- Classified

Improving children's written grammar and style: revising and editing with HARRY

Children usually improve their writing in response to teacher comments. HARRY is a computer tutor, designed to assist children improve their narrative writing, focusing particularly upon grammar and style. Providing assistance involved identifying aspects of grammar and style on which to concentrate, including ways to enable the computer to detect weaknesses and then present information concerning how to make improvements. HARRY delivers general, conversational style suggestions for how to revise a text during composition, followed by editing suggestions targeting specific grammar and style weaknesses detected in the text. Finally, spellings and technical errors are corrected in MS Word. Evaluating a writing intervention strategy is problematic, as paradoxically, attempts by children to improve texts, can result in a deterioration in some aspects of writing quality. Four case studies are presented to demonstrate the effects of the HARRY writing system upon children's grammar and style. Each child wrote a control and a HARRY assisted story. HARRY's effectiveness at improving written grammar and style is demonstrated through analyses made of the narratives by CHECK TEXT, a utility tool which calculates and interprets quantitative data. Separate analysis of each stage of the HARRY assisted stories reveals the idiosyncratic pattern of improvement exhibited by each child