Visual units and confusion modelling for automatic lip-reading

Automatic lip-reading (ALR) is a challenging task because the visual speech signal is known to be missing some important information, such as voicing. We propose an approach to ALR that acknowledges that this information is missing but assumes that it is substituted or deleted in a systematic way that can be modelled. We describe a system that learns such a model and then incorporates it into decoding, which is realised as a cascade of weighted finite-state transducers. Our results show a small but statistically significant improvement in recognition accuracy. We also investigate the issue of suitable visual units for ALR, and show that visemes are sub-optimal, not but because they introduce lexical ambiguity, but because the reduction in modelling units entailed by their use reduces accuracy

Representing disease courses: An application of the Neurological Disease Ontology to Multiple Sclerosis Typology

The Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) is being developed to provide a comprehensive framework for the representation of neurological diseases (Diehl et al., 2013). ND utilizes the model established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) for the representation of entities in medicine and disease (Scheuermann et al., 2009). The goal of ND is to include information for each disease concerning its molecular, genetic, and environmental origins, the processes involved in its etiology and realization, as well as its clinical presentation including signs and symptoms

The Relationship Between Creativity and Self-Directed Learning Among Adult Community College Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between creativity and self-directed learning readiness in a sample of adult community college students in Tennessee. A cluster sample of 114 students enrolled in Walters State Community College evening school were participants. Participants were administered the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), the Khatena Torrance Creative Perception Inventory (KTCPI), and a demographic questionnaire. Demographic information substantiated a preponderance of female students with an average age of 25.5. Students were typically Caucasian and generally held a high school diploma. A significant moderate positive correlation was found between creativity and self-directed learning readiness. There were also significant positive correlations between self-directed learning readiness and the components of the KTCPI (SAM and WKOPAY?). The SAM and WKOPAY? had a moderate positive correlation. There were significant positive correlations, ranging from moderate to weak, between self-directed learning readiness and seven of the 11 factors of the KTCPI. Multiple regression produced a significant variable in Intellectuality, which explained about 24% of the variability in the SDLRS total score. Creativity differed by gender with males having higher mean levels of creativity. There were no differences for gender or birth order in self-directed learning readiness. Ethnic background and educational level had insufficient numbers for analysis. There was not a significant correlation between age and creativity or between age and the factors of the KTCPI. There was a weak but significant relationship between age and self-directed learning readiness. The results suggest that there is a relationship between creativity and self-directed learning readiness, which reinforces earlier accounts. It is possible that these related attributes, especially if used together, could help the achievement of adult community college students. Recommendations include the assessment of creativity and self-directed learning and the expansion of these skills at the community college level. Research recommendations include the development of new measures of creativity and self-directed learning, exploration of previous models, and the use of qualitative research. Additional research should continue to investigate demographic variables, experimental studies should be broadened, and related concepts within psychology need to be examined for potential contributions

A review of the research literature relating to ICT and attainment

Summary of the main report, which examined current research and evidence for the impact of ICT on pupil attainment and learning in school settings and the strengths and limitations of the methodologies used in the research literature

The Space Object Ontology

Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a computable fashion. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in the Space Object Ontology and stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space domain awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators. This paper presents the core of the Space Object Ontology, discusses its advantages over other approaches to space object classification, and demonstrates its ability to combine diverse sets of data from multiple sources within an expandable framework. Finally, we show how the ontology provides benefits for enhancing and maintaining longterm space domain awareness

Generalised Einstein mass-variation formulae: II Superluminal relative frame velocities

AbstractIn part I of this paper we have deduced generalised Einstein mass variation formulae assuming relative frame velocities v<c. Here we present corresponding new expressions for superluminal relative frame velocities v>c. We again use the notion of the residual mass m0(v) which for v>c is defined by the equation m(v)=m0(v)[(v/c)2-1]-1/2 for the actual mass m(v). The residual mass is essentially the actual mass with the Einstein factor removed, and we emphasise that we make no restrictions on m0(v). Using this formal device we deduce corresponding new mass variation formulae applicable to superluminal relative frame velocities, assuming only the extended Lorentz transformations and their consequences, and two invariants that are known to apply in special relativity. The present authors have previously speculated a dual framework such that both the rest mass m0∗ and the residual mass at infinite velocity m∞∗ (by which we mean p∞∗/c, assuming finite momentum at infinity) are equally important parameters in the specification of mass as a function of its velocity, and the two arbitrary constants can be so determined. The new formulae involving two arbitrary constants may also be exploited so that the mass remains finite at the speed of light, and two distinct mass profiles are determined as functions of their velocity with the rest mass assumed to be alternatively prescribed at the origin of either frame. The two profiles so obtained (M(U),m(u)) and (M∗(U),m∗(u)) although distinct have a common ratio M(U)/M∗(U)=m(u)/m∗(u) that is a function of v>c, indicating that observable mass depends upon the frame in which the rest mass is prescribed

Spectator 1960-09-30

vii, 244 p.; 23 cm

Persistent Offenders in the North West of England, 1880-1940: Some Critical Research Questions

This article examines the concept of the persistent offender as a group within society, and the presumed impact of that discrete group upon society via a case study of offending in Crewe between 1880 and 1940. The findings of persistent offending in Crewe challenge the assumptions and prejudices of the period, about the links between unemployment and crime and the extent to which crime was an enduring ‘career’. There were no ‘hardened’ persistent offenders in the sample of the type envisaged by contemporary comment, though the role of drink in offending was sustained; and there was no clear ‘type’ of offender either. Examination of the life histories of a selection of offenders is shown to raise a number of interdisciplinary questions, challenging the assumptions of criminologists and legal scholars in relation to the role of legislation in the management of criminality, including the concept (of interest also to historians) that reformation of the criminal was more achievable in the past than it is in the overregulated present