Enhancing scarce-resource language translation through pivot combinations

Chinese and Spanish are the most spoken languages in the world. However, there is not much research done in machine translation for this language pair. We experiment with the parallel Chinese-Spanish corpus (United Nations) to explore alternatives of SMT strategies which consist on using a pivot language. Particularly, two well-known alternatives are shown for pivoting: the cascade system and the pseudo-corpus. As Pivot language we use English, Arabic and French. Results show that English is the best pivot language between Chinese and Spanish. As a new strategy, we propose to perform a combination of the pivot strategies which is capable to highly outperform the direct translation strategy.Postprint (published version

Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness in Mexico and the USA: a comparative study of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour

Purpose The purpose of this study was to compare the perceptions of Mexican and US employees about effective and ineffective managerial behaviour. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative multiple cross-case comparative analysis of findings obtained from two past emic replication studies of observed effective and ineffective managerial behaviour carried out in Mexico and the USA respectively was conducted. Findings Notwithstanding the significant cultural variances between Mexico and the US underlined by various cross-cultural studies, our findings suggest that Mexican and US employees perceive effective and ineffective managerial behaviour in a very similar manner. Research limitations While the results of our study suggest that culture may not play a significant role in the way people perceive managerial and leadership effectiveness, we suggest that more replication studies with larger and more balanced gender samples using different methods need to be performed in both countries. Practical implications The findings of our study may be relevant for HRD professionals in both countries when providing training to expatriates for international assignments. Reinforcing the set of managerial practices that are perceived as effective in these two countries, and emphasizing those practices that may be particular to Mexico and the US respectively, could lead to an improvement in the performance of Mexican executives managing in the US and US executives managing in Mexico

Probing the "μ\mu from ν\nu" supersymmetric standard model with displaced multileptons from the decay of a Higgs boson at the LHC

The "$\mu$ from $\nu$" supersymmetric standard model ($\mu\nu$SSM) cures the $\mu$-problem and concurrently reproduces measured neutrino data by using a set of usual right-handed neutrino superfields. Recently, the LHC has revealed the first scalar boson which naturally makes it tempting to test $\mu\nu$SSM in the light of this new discovery. We show that this new scalar while decaying to a pair of unstable long-lived neutralinos, can lead to a distinct signal with non-prompt multileptons. With concomitant collider analysis we show that this signal provides an unmistakable signature of the model, pronounced with light neutralinos. Evidence of this signal is well envisaged with sophisticated displaced vertex analysis, which deserves experimental attention.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, title, text, abstract and references modifie

Hunting physics beyond the standard model with unusual W±W^\pm and ZZ decays

Nonstandard on-shell decays of $W^\pm$ and $Z$ bosons are possible within the framework of extended supersymmetric models, i.e., with singlet states and/or new couplings compared to the minimal supersymmetric standard model. These modes are typically encountered in regions of the parameter space with light singlet-like scalars, pseudoscalars, and neutralinos. In this letter we emphasize how these states can lead to novel signals at colliders from $Z$- or $W^\pm$-boson decays with prompt or displaced multileptons/tau jets/jets/photons in the final states. These new modes would give distinct evidence of new physics even when direct searches remain unsuccessful. We discuss the possibilities of probing these new signals using the existing LHC run-I data set. We also address the same in the context of the LHC run-II, as well as for the future colliders. We exemplify our observations with the "$\mu$ from $\nu$" supersymmetric standard model, where three generations of right-handed neutrino superfields are used to solve shortcomings of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. We also extend our discussion for other variants of supersymmetric models that can accommodate similar signatures.Comment: New discussions and references added, 8 pages, 1 figure, matches with the published version in Phys. Rev.

UPC-BMIC-VDU system description for the IWSLT 2010: testing several collocation segmentations in a phrase-based SMT system

This paper describes the UPC-BMIC-VMU participation in the IWSLT 2010 evaluation campaign. The SMT system is a standard phrase-based enriched with novel segmentations. These novel segmentations are computed using statistical measures such as Log-likelihood, T-score, Chi-squared, Dice, Mutual Information or Gravity-Counts. The analysis of translation results allows to divide measures into three groups. First, Log-likelihood, Chi-squared and T-score tend to combine high frequency words and collocation segments are very short. They improve the SMT system by adding new translation units. Second, Mutual Information and Dice tend to combine low frequency words and collocation segments are short. They improve the SMT system by smoothing the translation units. And third, Gravity- Counts tends to combine high and low frequency words and collocation segments are long. However, in this case, the SMT system is not improved. Thus, the road-map for translation system improvement is to introduce new phrases with either low frequency or high frequency words. It is hard to introduce new phrases with low and high frequency words in order to improve translation quality. Experimental results are reported in the Frenchto- English IWSLT 2010 evaluation where our system was ranked 3rd out of nine systems.Postprint (published version