A literature review of abstractive summarization methods

The paper contains a literature review for automatic abstractive text summarization. The classification of abstractive text summarization methods was considered. Since the emergence of text summarization in the 1950s, techniques for summaries generation were constantly improving, but because the abstractive summarization require extensive language processing, the greatest progress was achieved only recently. Due to the current fast pace of development of both Natural Language Processing in general and Text Summarization in particular, it is essential to analyze the progress in these areas. The paper aims to give a general perspective on both the state-of-the-art and older approaches, while explaining the methods and approaches. Additionally, evaluation results of the research papers are presented

Web tools for large-scale 3D biological images and atlases

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Large-scale volumetric biomedical image data of three or more dimensions are a significant challenge for distributed browsing and visualisation. Many images now exceed 10GB which for most users is too large to handle in terms of computer RAM and network bandwidth. This is aggravated when users need to access tens or hundreds of such images from an archive. Here we solve the problem for 2D section views through archive data delivering compressed tiled images enabling users to browse through very-large volume data in the context of a standard web-browser. The system provides an interactive visualisation for grey-level and colour 3D images including multiple image layers and spatial-data overlay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The standard Internet Imaging Protocol (IIP) has been extended to enable arbitrary 2D sectioning of 3D data as well a multi-layered images and indexed overlays. The extended protocol is termed IIP3D and we have implemented a matching server to deliver the protocol and a series of Ajax/Javascript client codes that will run in an Internet browser. We have tested the server software on a low-cost linux-based server for image volumes up to 135GB and 64 simultaneous users. The section views are delivered with response times independent of scale and orientation. The exemplar client provided multi-layer image views with user-controlled colour-filtering and overlays.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Interactive browsing of arbitrary sections through large biomedical-image volumes is made possible by use of an extended internet protocol and efficient server-based image tiling. The tools open the possibility of enabling fast access to large image archives without the requirement of whole image download and client computers with very large memory configurations. The system was demonstrated using a range of medical and biomedical image data extending up to 135GB for a single image volume.</p

Narrating Literary Transnationalism in Zake Smith and Dave Eggers

This work argues for a greater reception of transnationalism in literary studies. Though the steady rise of transnationalism has already been studied in many areas of academia, literary studies has only begun to pay attention to it, and scholars appear to remain largely rooted in postcolonial or nationalistic thought. Refusing to read current texts through the lens of transnationalism hinders the literary academy\u27s relevancy since creative writers today are addressing changes to the national structure in their fictive works. This study suggests why a new theoretical construct is needed to understand those texts, and it uses two representative examples: Zadie Smith\u27s novel White Teeth and Dave Eggers\u27 novel What Is the What. Smith\u27s work focuses intently upon the friction people experience in the face of transnationalism when they refuse to let go of their colonial mindset. Eggers\u27 text centers on a Lost Boy from Sudan and, through an alternative form of narration, examines how storytelling itself will have to change, since simple narratives no longer exist in a transnational world and people no longer identify with one nation or setting

Intertextuality reinterpreted : a cognitive linguistics approach with specific reference to conceptual blending

In this dissertation, I investigate the cognitive processes integral to intertextual readings by referring to the cognitive linguistics framework known as conceptual blending. I refer to different genres of intertextual texts and then explain these intertexts in terms of cognitive principles and processes, such as conceptual blending networks. By applying the framework of conceptual blending to intertexts within different genres, I suggest that the underlying cognitive processes are universal for the interpretation of any type of intertextual text. My findings indicate that conceptual blending underpins intertextuality which is cognitive, creative and dynamic in nature. This means that the meaning we construct from intertexts is dependent on the context in which they appear and cannot be studied in isolation. Investigating intertextual texts from a cognitive linguistics perspective reveals new inferences (such as the influence of implicit knowledge as a type of intertext) and the creativity involved in the meaning-making process.Linguistics and Modern LanguagesM.A. (Linguistics

Video Abstracting at a Semantical Level

One the most common form of a video abstract is the movie trailer. Contemporary movie trailers share a common structure across genres which allows for an automatic generation and also reflects the corresponding moviea s composition. In this thesis a system for the automatic generation of trailers is presented. In addition to action trailers, the system is able to deal with further genres such as Horror and comedy trailers, which were first manually analyzed in order to identify their basic structures. To simplify the modeling of trailers and the abstract generation itself a new video abstracting application was developed. This application is capable of performing all steps of the abstract generation automatically and allows for previews and manual optimizations. Based on this system, new abstracting models for horror and comedy trailers were created and the corresponding trailers have been automatically generated using the new abstracting models. In an evaluation the automatic trailers were compared to the original Trailers and showed a similar structure. However, the automatically generated trailers still do not exhibit the full perfection of the Hollywood originals as they lack intentional storylines across shots

Phenomenologies of Mars: Exploring Methods for Reading the Scientific Planetext Of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy

In 2013, The New Yorker Magazine called Kim Stanley Robinson ‘one of the greatest living science-fiction writers’. And in 2008, Time Magazine named him a ‘hero of the environment.’[1] Yet, no lengthy study has yet been attempted on any of his fiction. This thesis aims to redress this absence with a long-form reading of one of the high peaks of his achievement: the Mars Trilogy. It considers that what I am calling the ‘planetext’ (or planet-text) is a vital narrative space. It assumes the perspectival form in which the Trilogy is told is crucial to understanding how its planetexts are read. The several viewpoints in the Trilogy comprise the several attempts of this thesis toward understanding not only how the planet is used in the novels, but also how it arranges and functions according to textual principles of readability. My several readings adopt the scientific bases of each of these viewpoints, and develops a sense of the way different characters experience the planet around them as either enabled by science, or confounded by it. ‘Planetext’ is therefore a useful neologism for interpreting how such a vast and multidimensional site as Mars is, or is not, encountered through these sciences. Understanding the planetext of Mars is therefore a phenomenological task, with the requirement of reading how each character is able, or unable, to experience and comprehend their experiences. A sense of the phenomenologies of Mars means this thesis must take the approach of seeing how different sciences yield different phenomenologies, and different experiences of the planet. By calling Mars a planetext, this thesis investigates the ways in which language, writing, and textuality participate in building the planet of the Trilogy, treating writing as a coefficient of terraforming. Understood as a kind of planetography, or planetary writing, the planetext (or host of planetexts) foregrounds the written-ness of the Martian space in Robinson’s Trilogy. The planetextual space of the novels shapes a variety of readerly paths through the narrative, which are in turn adopted. As a long study, this thesis understands the planet as a sizeable arena, which challenges the view any one reading can give of it. Acknowledging this as a limitation, its four chapters focus only on four characters, aiming to supplement an overview style of reading the Trilogy with a series of close readings. Understanding the textual status of the planet means paying specific attention to how characters either find meaningful access to the planet, or fail to find any. For Ann Clayborne, a geologist who wants to keep Mars uncontaminated and un-colonized, the planetext forms itself as a zone of différance, in which the task of interpreting the non-living planet must coincide with her resistance to the terraforming project. With Michel Duval, the Martian psychiatrist, readability is itself questioned as he attempts to overcome his depression and homesickness. For Saxifrage Russell, one of the chief terraformers, a discussion over scientific method takes the path of this thesis away from the troubling and compromised planetexts of Ann and Michel, toward how textual meaning is enabled and opened. With Hiroko Ai, a final theorization of what I call viridical force is proposed as a planetextual function, based around the Trilogy’s mention of viriditas and Jacques Derrida’s idea of force, to come to terms with how the planet makes itself available to the reader as expansive, rich in possible meaning, and always arranging itself around the reader. Between the opening of the planetext and its equivocations, this thesis charts its course. [1] Tim Kreider, ‘Our Greatest Living Novelist?’ December 12, 2013. The New Yorker Magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/our-greatest-political-novelist; Oliver Morton, ‘Kim Stanley Robinson: Heroes of the Environment 2008,’ Wednesday September 24, 2008. Time Magazine. http://content.time.com/ time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841779_1841803,00.htm

A handful of spaghetti : entanglements of space, place and identity in the works of Imraan Coovadia.

M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.Durban born novelist, essayist, and academic, Imraan Coovadia has been described by Jane Rosenthal as “turning into a national treasure as a novelist” (Coovadia 2012a: cover). Despite winning numerous prizes including the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and University of Johannesburg Prize for High Low In-between (2009), and the M-Net Literary Award for The Institute for Taxi Poetry (2012), there has been little extended scholarly focus on his works. This thesis focuses primarily on The Wedding (2001), Green-Eyed Thieves (2006), High Low In-between 2009), and The Institute for Taxi Poetry (2012), with brief remarks, in the conclusion, on the recently-published fifth novel Tales of the Metric System (2014). I argue that Coovadia, while being a South African Indian author, eschews romanticising nostalgia that has come to typify much South African Indian authored fictions. In doing so, he looks beyond archetypal depictions of Indian experience in South Africa, opting for a more global and cosmopolitan approach to his works. My study examines how Coovadia, in his novels, is able to look simultaneously both directly at and beyond the South African cultural milieu, creating fictions that are punctuated by cosmopolitan places and people while retaining local specificity. Using selected theories of space, place, and identity, I suggest that the novels under discussion reflect an era of globalisation, interconnectedness, and hybridity through the construction of cosmopolitan literary cities and the hybrid identities that inhabit them. In doing so, I find that Coovadia writes beyond what Mphahlele has termed the ‘tyranny of place’ (Web2), creating literary spaces that are porous and offer potential for (re)definition, personal growth and fulfilment, and cultural newness. In this way, I argue that his works can be tentatively labelled as post-transitional texts that strive to craft connections rather than to construct self-isolating communities and characters seen in South African texts such as Richard Rive’s Buckingham Palace, District Six (1986), Aziz Hassim’s The Lotus People (2003), and Phyllis Naidoo’s Footprints in Grey Street (2002). Coovadia’s status as a post-transitional author would group him with a younger generation of South African global imaginaries – like Lauren Beukes (Moxyland [2008], Zoo City [2010], The Shining Girls [2013], and Broken Monsters [2014]) and Phaswane Mpe (Welcome to Our Hillbrow [2001]) – that situate South Africa, along with its unstable and protracted political transition, within a complex global network characterised by global exchange of information, items, people, and cultures

Improving the Correctness of Automated Program Repair

Developers spend much of their time fixing bugs in software programs. Automated program repair (APR) techniques aim to alleviate the burden of bug fixing from developers by generating patches at the source-code level. Recently, Generate-and-Validate (G&V) APR techniques show great potential to repair general bugs in real-world applications. Recent evaluations show that G&V techniques repair 8–17.7% of the collected bugs from mature Java or C open-source projects. Despite the promising results, G&V techniques may generate many incorrect patches and are not able to repair every single bug. This thesis makes contributions to improve the correctness of APR by improving the quality assurance of the automatically-generated patches and generating more correct patches by leveraging human knowledge. First, this thesis investigates whether improving the test-suite-based validation can precisely identify incorrect patches that are generated by G&V, and whether it can help G&V generate more correct patches. The result of this investigation, Opad, which combines new fuzz-generated test cases and additional oracles (i.e., memory oracles), is proposed to identify incorrect patches and help G&V repair more bugs correctly. The evaluation of Opad shows that the improved test-suite-based validation identifies 75.2% incorrect patches from G&V techniques. With the integration of Opad, SPR, one of the most promising G&V techniques, repairs one additional bug. Second, this thesis proposes novel APR techniques to repair more bugs correctly, by leveraging human knowledge. Thus, APR techniques can repair new types of bugs that are not currently targeted by G&V APR techniques. Human knowledge in bug-fixing activities is noted in the forms such as commits of bug fixes, developers’ expertise, and documentation pages. Two techniques (APARE and Priv) are proposed to target two types of defects respectively: project-specific recurring bugs and vulnerability warnings by static analysis. APARE automatically learns fix patterns from historical bug fixes (i.e., originally crafted by developers), utilizes spectrum-based fault-localization technique to identify highly-likely faulty methods, and applies the learned fix patterns to generate patches for developers to review. The key innovation of APARE is to utilize a percentage semantic-aware matching algorithm between fix patterns and faulty locations. For the 20 recurring bugs, APARE generates 34 method fixes, 24 of which (70.6%) are correct; 83.3% (20 out of 24) are identical to the fixes generated by developers. In addition, APARE complements current repair systems by generating 20 high-quality method fixes that RSRepair and PAR cannot generate. Priv is a multi-stage remediation system specifically designed for static-analysis security-testing (SAST) techniques. The prototype is built and evaluated on a commercial SAST product. The first stage of Priv is to prioritize workloads of fixing vulnerability warnings based on shared fix locations. The likely fix locations are suggested based on a set of rules. The rules are concluded and developed through the collaboration with two security experts. The second stage of Priv provides additional essential information for improving the efficiency of diagnosis and fixing. Priv offers two types of additional information: identifying true database/attribute-related warnings, and providing customized fix suggestions per warning. The evaluation shows that Priv suggests identical fix locations to the ones suggested by developers for 50–100% of the evaluated vulnerability findings. Priv identifies up to 2170 actionable vulnerability findings for the evaluated six projects. The manual examination confirms that Priv can generate patches of high-quality for many of the evaluated vulnerability warnings