Time-Aware Evidence Ranking for Fact-Checking

Truth can vary over time. Fact-checking decisions on claim veracity should therefore take into account temporal information of both the claim and supporting or refuting evidence. In this work, we investigate the hypothesis that the timestamp of a Web page is crucial to how it should be ranked for a given claim. We delineate four temporal ranking methods that constrain evidence ranking differently and simulate hypothesis-specific evidence rankings given the evidence timestamps as gold standard. Evidence ranking in three fact-checking models is ultimately optimized using a learning-to-rank loss function. Our study reveals that time-aware evidence ranking not only surpasses relevance assumptions based purely on semantic similarity or position in a search results list, but also improves veracity predictions of time-sensitive claims in particular.Comment: 16 pages, accepted for publication in Journal of Web Semantics - Special Issue on Content Credibilit

Detecting noise in decision making processes of a biotechnology startup

This dissertation is about noise, which is a flaw in human judgment. When it comes to judgment errors, bias and heuristics are well-established fields of study. Noise, or decision scatter, is a relatively new area of research and hence deserves attention. The following paper will highlight whether and why noise exists in a young organization using a German biotechnology startup as an example. The study topics were investigated using exploratory research and in-depth interviews with every employee of the organization. As the results demonstrate, there are different kinds of noise in a startup. Although there is limited knowledge of the issue, the startup is very interested in incorporating it into the current development of decision-making frameworks. This thesis is, thus, a first step into a scarcely explored subject and suggests companies should increase their awareness of the topic to reduce noise and better serve their consumers.Esta dissertação é sobre ruído, que é uma falha no julgamento humano. Quando se trata de erros de julgamento, o campo de estudo de enviesamentos e heurísticas é bem estabelecido. O ruído, ou dispersão de decisões, é uma área de investigação relativamente nova e, por isso, merece atenção. O documento seguinte irá destacar se e porquê o ruído existe numa organização jovem e se o assunto é abordado com consciência, utilizando como exemplo uma start-up de biotecnologia alemã. Os tópicos do estudo foram investigados utilizando uma investigação exploratória e entrevistas aprofundadas com cada funcionário da organização. Como os resultados demonstram, existem diferentes tipos de ruído na empresa start-up. Embora haja um conhecimento limitado da questão, a start-up está muito interessada em incorporá-lo no actual desenvolvimento de abordagens à de tomada de decisão. Ao diminuir o ruído, é possível tomar decisões mais precisas e assim optimizadas

The Simulation of Smiles (SIMS) model: Embodied simulation and the meaning of facial expression

Recent application of theories of embodied or grounded cognition to the recognition and interpretation of facial expression of emotion has led to an explosion of research in psychology and the neurosciences. However, despite the accelerating number of reported findings, it remains unclear how the many component processes of emotion and their neural mechanisms actually support embodied simulation. Equally unclear is what triggers the use of embodied simulation versus perceptual or conceptual strategies in determining meaning. The present article integrates behavioral research from social psychology with recent research in neurosciences in order to provide coherence to the extant and future research on this topic. The roles of several of the brain's reward systems, and the amygdala, somatosensory cortices, and motor centers are examined. These are then linked to behavioral and brain research on facial mimicry and eye gaze. Articulation of the mediators and moderators of facial mimicry and gaze are particularly useful in guiding interpretation of relevant findings from neurosciences. Finally, a model of the processing of the smile, the most complex of the facial expressions, is presented as a means to illustrate how to advance the application of theories of embodied cognition in the study of facial expression of emotion.Peer Reviewe

The proximate mechanisms and ultimate functions of smiles

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognitio

Probabilistic Graphical Models for Credibility Analysis in Evolving Online Communities

One of the major hurdles preventing the full exploitation of information from online communities is the widespread concern regarding the quality and credibility of user-contributed content. Prior works in this domain operate on a static snapshot of the community, making strong assumptions about the structure of the data (e.g., relational tables), or consider only shallow features for text classification. To address the above limitations, we propose probabilistic graphical models that can leverage the joint interplay between multiple factors in online communities --- like user interactions, community dynamics, and textual content --- to automatically assess the credibility of user-contributed online content, and the expertise of users and their evolution with user-interpretable explanation. To this end, we devise new models based on Conditional Random Fields for different settings like incorporating partial expert knowledge for semi-supervised learning, and handling discrete labels as well as numeric ratings for fine-grained analysis. This enables applications such as extracting reliable side-effects of drugs from user-contributed posts in healthforums, and identifying credible content in news communities. Online communities are dynamic, as users join and leave, adapt to evolving trends, and mature over time. To capture this dynamics, we propose generative models based on Hidden Markov Model, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and Brownian Motion to trace the continuous evolution of user expertise and their language model over time. This allows us to identify expert users and credible content jointly over time, improving state-of-the-art recommender systems by explicitly considering the maturity of users. This also enables applications such as identifying helpful product reviews, and detecting fake and anomalous reviews with limited information.Comment: PhD thesis, Mar 201

Moral Performances: Melodrama and Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Despite a high number of ticket sales, theater reviews, and innumerable letters and diary entries detailing trips to the theater, the stereotype that theater in nineteenth-century America was almost culturally invisible continued well into the twentieth century. Indeed, a scan of anthologies of American literature fails to yield any examples of nineteenth-century drama, even though figures like Henry James were also theater critics and playwrights. Just as it did in American life, theater exhibits a strong presence in the literature of the time. Considering theater’s pervasiveness, this dissertation seeks to restore it to its proper place in our study of nineteenth-century American literature. By contextualizing nineteenth-century literature within a framework of theater, specifically melodrama, we might be able to discern how writers of the period used theater as a vehicle to grapple with form, genre, and approach to audience. This dissertation examines the Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance , and Louisa May Alcott’s Behind a Mask. In their novels, these writers harness the power of theater for thematic or generic purposes while simultaneously exposing the inherent weakness of the dramatic form. There is strength in theater, they argue, but ultimately the effect is reduced to nothing more than shadows on the cave wall. For this reason, American writers utilized melodrama’s strengths while, at the same time, built a case for fiction’s primacy and consequently made arguments for the existence of their own writing

Motivational aspects of recognizing a smile

What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrate

How does perceiving eye direction modulate emotion recognition?

Niedenthal et al. postulate that eye contact with the expresser of an emotion automatically initiates embodied simulation. Our commentary explores the generality of such an eye contact effect for emotions other than happiness. Based on the appraisal theory of emotion, we propose that embodied simulation may be reinforced by mutual or averted gaze as a function of emotional contex