Annual Report of the University, 2005-2006, Volumes 1-7

PROPOSED POLICIES The Office of Government & Community Relations is in charge of advancing the University\u27s interests at all levels of federal, state and local government. The following policy guidelines for working with University units will achieve a coordinated and effective institutional advancement program. • To inform the Office of Government & Community Relations of all planned contacts and correspondence with elected officials and policy-making employees of federal, state and local government, including those who are alumni or friends of the University. Those items which pertain to sponsored research should be coordinated with the Vice President for Research. • To consult the Office of Government & Community Relations on any verbal or written statements made on behalf of the University that concern federal, state or local policies, legislation or regulations. • To advise the Office of Government & Community Relations on any activities, conferences, seminars, lectures or projects that involve the community and/or impact the University area. • Faculty or staff members who contact federal, state or local policy-making employees as experts in a specific field, or who act on behalf of themselves or another organization, should include a disclaimer which clearly states that they are not acting on behalf of the University

Soundtrack recommendation for images

The drastic increase in production of multimedia content has emphasized the research concerning its organization and retrieval. In this thesis, we address the problem of music retrieval when a set of images is given as input query, i.e., the problem of soundtrack recommendation for images. The task at hand is to recommend appropriate music to be played during the presentation of a given set of query images. To tackle this problem, we formulate a hypothesis that the knowledge appropriate for the task is contained in publicly available contemporary movies. Our approach, Picasso, employs similarity search techniques inside the image and music domains, harvesting movies to form a link between the domains. To achieve a fair and unbiased comparison between different soundtrack recommendation approaches, we proposed an evaluation benchmark. The evaluation results are reported for Picasso and the baseline approach, using the proposed benchmark. We further address two efficiency aspects that arise from the Picasso approach. First, we investigate the problem of processing top-K queries with set-defined selections and propose an index structure that aims at minimizing the query answering latency. Second, we address the problem of similarity search in high-dimensional spaces and propose two enhancements to the Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) scheme. We also investigate the prospects of a distributed similarity search algorithm based on LSH using the MapReduce framework. Finally, we give an overview of the PicasSound|a smartphone application based on the Picasso approach.Der drastische Anstieg von verfügbaren Multimedia-Inhalten hat die Bedeutung der Forschung über deren Organisation sowie Suche innerhalb der Daten hervorgehoben. In dieser Doktorarbeit betrachten wir das Problem der Suche nach geeigneten Musikstücken als Hintergrundmusik für Diashows. Wir formulieren die Hypothese, dass die für das Problem erforderlichen Kenntnisse in öffentlich zugänglichen, zeitgenössischen Filmen enthalten sind. Unser Ansatz, Picasso, verwendet Techniken aus dem Bereich der Ähnlichkeitssuche innerhalb von Bild- und Musik-Domains, um basierend auf Filmszenen eine Verbindung zwischen beliebigen Bildern und Musikstücken zu lernen. Um einen fairen und unvoreingenommenen Vergleich zwischen verschiedenen Ansätzen zur Musikempfehlung zu erreichen, schlagen wir einen Bewertungs-Benchmark vor. Die Ergebnisse der Auswertung werden, anhand des vorgeschlagenen Benchmarks, für Picasso und einen weiteren, auf Emotionen basierenden Ansatz, vorgestellt. Zusätzlich behandeln wir zwei Effizienzaspekte, die sich aus dem Picasso Ansatz ergeben. (i) Wir untersuchen das Problem der Ausführung von top-K Anfragen, bei denen die Ergebnismenge ad-hoc auf eine kleine Teilmenge des gesamten Indexes eingeschränkt wird. (ii) Wir behandeln das Problem der Ähnlichkeitssuche in hochdimensionalen Räumen und schlagen zwei Erweiterungen des Lokalitätssensitiven Hashing (LSH) Schemas vor. Zusätzlich untersuchen wir die Erfolgsaussichten eines verteilten Algorithmus für die Ähnlichkeitssuche, der auf LSH unter Verwendung des MapReduce Frameworks basiert. Neben den vorgenannten wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen beschreiben wir ferner das Design und die Implementierung von PicassSound, einer auf Picasso basierenden Smartphone-Anwendung

Across Space and Time. Papers from the 41st Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Perth, 25-28 March 2013

This volume presents a selection of the best papers presented at the forty-first annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. The theme for the conference was "Across Space and Time", and the papers explore a multitude of topics related to that concept, including databases, the semantic Web, geographical information systems, data collection and management, and more

Enabling the Future, or How to Survive FOREVER. A study of networks, processes and ambiguity in net art and the need for an expanded practice of conservation.

Net art is one of the most viewed and experienced artforms, yet some net artworks stop functioning in less than five months. At the heart of this research lies the question of net art’s survival. While net art is hardly accounted for in museum collections – the traditional keepers of cultural heritage – this dissertation explores the material and behaviour of net art. Using a broad range of interdisciplinary resources the chapters open up key theoretical issues that rethink museum practices. Among others, this includes notions of authenticity, authorship, documentation and documents, networks, open source, performativity and processual. Arguing for the need to reconsider traditional attitudes in museums and notions of static conservation as well as acknowledging decentralised and community-based approaches, this dissertation describes an expanded practice of conservation in the computational age. It shows how net art operates through often imperceptible or ambiguous performance of processes and is networked in various ways. It then examines the way these strategies are used and fold back into notions of authenticity, documentation and variability. It is in addressing and answering some of the challenges facing net art that this dissertation makes a distinctive contribution to the field of conservation, curatorial studies as well as to cultural and museum analysis. At the same time, an exploration of net art’s intersections with conservation puts studies on net art into a new perspective. Consequently, the study enables more informed decisions when responding to, critically analysing or working with net art, in particular software-based processes. Surviving FOREVER means embracing rather then fearing ephemerality, loss and obsolescence

The impact of mathematics teaching efficacy on teachers’ pedagogical practices

This study explores the pedagogical practices of 167 Year 4 and 160 Year 8 New Zealand mathematics teachers who have different levels of mathematics teaching efficacy. Using data from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement 2013, the teacher questionnaire items believed to be the indicators of mathematics teaching efficacy were selected, represented by six items such as “I feel confident about teaching maths”. Then, low, mid, and high efficacious teachers were identified and compared to see how they differed with respect to their teaching profile and the frequency they used effective pedagogies when teaching mathematics (italicised below) (Anthony & Walshaw, 2007). Twenty eight percent of Year 4 and 41% of Year 8 teachers had high mathematics teaching efficacy. Compared with the other teachers, teachers with high mathematics teaching efficacy were better able to provide an ethic of care in their classroom, they more frequently arranged their classrooms for learning to enable students to collaborate, and more frequently expected their students to communicate their thinking and debate ideas with others. They more frequently provided students with worthwhile mathematical tasks, they more frequently provided opportunities for their students to build on their own thinking, and to explore how new learning linked to or changed what they already knew. They more frequently expected their students to make mathematical connections by reflecting on their learning, to use multiple representations, and use ideas and skills from different curriculum areas