TEQUILA: Temporal Question Answering over Knowledge Bases

Question answering over knowledge bases (KB-QA) poses challenges in handling complex questions that need to be decomposed into sub-questions. An important case, addressed here, is that of temporal questions, where cues for temporal relations need to be discovered and handled. We present TEQUILA, an enabler method for temporal QA that can run on top of any KB-QA engine. TEQUILA has four stages. It detects if a question has temporal intent. It decomposes and rewrites the question into non-temporal sub-questions and temporal constraints. Answers to sub-questions are then retrieved from the underlying KB-QA engine. Finally, TEQUILA uses constraint reasoning on temporal intervals to compute final answers to the full question. Comparisons against state-of-the-art baselines show the viability of our method

Commutativity theorems for rings with constraints on commutators

In this paper, we generalize some well-known commutativity theorems for associative rings as follows: Let n>1, m, s, and t be fixed non-negative integers such that s≠m−1, or t≠n−1, and let R be a ring with unity 1 satisfying the polynomial identity ys[xn,y]=[x,ym]xt for all y∈R. Suppose that (i) R has Q(n) (that is n[x,y]=0 implies [x,y]=0); (ii) the set of all nilpotent elements of R is central for t>0, and (iii) the set of all zero-divisors of R is also central for t>0. Then R is commutative. If Q(n) is replaced by m and n are relatively prime positive integers, then R is commutative if extra constraint is given. Other related commutativity results are also obtained

Answering Complex Questions by Joining Multi-Document Evidence with Quasi Knowledge Graphs

Direct answering of questions that involve multiple entities and relations is a challenge for text-based QA. This problem is most pronounced when answers can be found only by joining evidence from multiple documents. Curated knowledge graphs (KGs) may yield good answers, but are limited by their inherent incompleteness and potential staleness. This paper presents QUEST, a method that can answer complex questions directly from textual sources on-the-fly, by computing similarity joins over partial results from different documents. Our method is completely unsupervised, avoiding training-data bottlenecks and being able to cope with rapidly evolving ad hoc topics and formulation style in user questions. QUEST builds a noisy quasi KG with node and edge weights, consisting of dynamically retrieved entity names and relational phrases. It augments this graph with types and semantic alignments, and computes the best answers by an algorithm for Group Steiner Trees. We evaluate QUEST on benchmarks of complex questions, and show that it substantially outperforms state-of-the-art baselines

Look before you Hop: Conversational Question Answering over Knowledge Graphs Using Judicious Context Expansion

Fact-centric information needs are rarely one-shot; users typically ask follow-up questions to explore a topic. In such a conversational setting, the user's inputs are often incomplete, with entities or predicates left out, and ungrammatical phrases. This poses a huge challenge to question answering (QA) systems that typically rely on cues in full-fledged interrogative sentences. As a solution, we develop CONVEX: an unsupervised method that can answer incomplete questions over a knowledge graph (KG) by maintaining conversation context using entities and predicates seen so far and automatically inferring missing or ambiguous pieces for follow-up questions. The core of our method is a graph exploration algorithm that judiciously expands a frontier to find candidate answers for the current question. To evaluate CONVEX, we release ConvQuestions, a crowdsourced benchmark with 11,200 distinct conversations from five different domains. We show that CONVEX: (i) adds conversational support to any stand-alone QA system, and (ii) outperforms state-of-the-art baselines and question completion strategies

A representation of bounded commutative BCK

In this note, we prove a representation theorem for bounded commutative BCK-algebras

Familiares de Pessoas Com Sofrimento Psíquico e Profissionais de Saúde Mental: Encontros e Desencontros

As diretrizes assistenciais em saúde mental, no Brasil, prevêem o apoio à família da pessoa com sofrimento psíquico. No entanto, esses familiares referem despreparo em lidar com os encargos cotidianos da convivência com seus entes e desamparo em relação à assistência que recebem dos serviços de saúde mental. Os profissionais de saúde mental, por sua vez, enfrentam dificuldades na inclusão da família nos projetos terapêuticos e na assistência da pessoa com transtorno mental. Diante de tais fragilidades nessa relação, a proposta deste estudo foi conhecer a relação que se estabelece entre esses atores e buscar reflexão sobre fatores que interferem na possibilidade de um bom encontro entre eles. Nesse sentido, foram percorridos temas que se configuram como centrais para o conhecimento das dimensões dessa relação, como o modo de subjetivação desses sujeitos e a ética na filosofia de Espinosa. A perspectiva qualitativa de investigação configurou-se como método para alcançar os objetivos propostos. Foram realizadas entrevistas com profissionais de saúde mental de dois centros de atenção psicossocial do município de Vitória ES e com familiares de usuários destas instituições. Após análise temática do conteúdo dessas entrevistas, foram indicados e discutidos fatores de impasses a serem enfrentados nessa relação, tais como: lógica manicomial presente na relação que cada um desses sujeitos estabelecem com a loucura; dificuldade do profissional na relação com a alteridade do familiar, com prática pautada na polarização do saber, na sua moral e na retificação da dinâmica familiar; disparidade entre oferta e demanda, sem conhecimento das necessidades desses sujeitos. Familiares e profissionais não acreditam em possibilidades desse encontro e distanciam-se com suas potências de ação diminuídas. Apoiando-se na filosofia espinosana,é discutida as causas das inconveniências dessa relação e proposta a ética como possibilidade de aproximação de paixões alegres e potencia de agir dessas pessoas. Palavras-chave: ... Encargos Familiares; Práticas em Saúde; CAPS