Modeling Narrative Discourse

This thesis describes new approaches to the formal modeling of narrative discourse. Although narratives of all kinds are ubiquitous in daily life, contemporary text processing techniques typically do not leverage the aspects that separate narrative from expository discourse. We describe two approaches to the problem. The first approach considers the conversational networks to be found in literary fiction as a key aspect of discourse coherence; by isolating and analyzing these networks, we are able to comment on longstanding literary theories. The second approach proposes a new set of discourse relations that are specific to narrative. By focusing on certain key aspects, such as agentive characters, goals, plans, beliefs, and time, these relations represent a theory-of-mind interpretation of a text. We show that these discourse relations are expressive, formal, robust, and through the use of a software system, amenable to corpus collection projects through the use of trained annotators. We have procured and released a collection of over 100 encodings, covering a set of fables as well as longer texts including literary fiction and epic poetry. We are able to inferentially find similarities and analogies between encoded stories based on the proposed relations, and an evaluation of this technique shows that human raters prefer such a measure of similarity to a more traditional one based on the semantic distances between story propositions

Extending and Evaluating a Platform for Story Understanding

We summarize recent developments in our platform for symbolically representing and reasoning over human narratives. The expressive range of the system is bolstered by the infusion of a large library of knowledge frames, including verbs, adjectives, nouns and adverbs, from external linguistic resources. Extensions to the model itself include alternate timelines (imagined states for goals, plans, beliefs and other modalities), hypotheticals, modifiers and connections between instantiated frames such as causality. We describe a corpus collection experiment that evaluates the usability of the graphical encoding interface, and measure the inter-annotator agreement yielded by our novel representation and tool

A Lightweight Intelligent Virtual Cinematography System for Machinima Production

Machinima is a low-cost alternative to full production filmmaking. However, creating quality cinematic visualizations with existing machinima techniques still requires a high degree of talent and effort. We introduce a lightweight artificial intelligence system, Cambot, that can be used to assist in machinima production. Cambot takes a script as input and produces a cinematic visualization. Unlike other virtual cinematography systems, Cambot favors an offline algorithm coupled with an extensible library of specific modular and reusable facets of cinematic knowledge. One of the advantages of this approach to virtual cinematography is a tight coordination between the positions and movements of the camera and the actors

Clinically insignificant association between anterior knee pain and patellofemoral lesions which are found incidentally.

Patellofemoral chondral lesions are frequently identified incidentally during the arthroscopic treatment of other knee pathologies. A role has been described for arthroscopic debridement of such lesions when symptoms are known to originate from pathology of the patellofemoral joint. However, it remains unclear how to manage lesions which are found incidentally whilst tackling other pathologies. The purpose of this study was to establish the strength of association between anterior knee pain and patellofemoral lesions identified incidentally in a typical arthroscopic population. A consecutive series of patients undergoing arthroscopy for a range of standard indications formed the basis of this cross section study. We excluded those with patellofemoral conditions in order to identify patellofemoral lesions which were solely incidental. Pre-operative assessments were performed on 64 patients, where anterior knee pain was sought by three methods: an annotated photographic knee pain map (PKPM), patient indication with one finger and by palpated tenderness. A single surgeon, who was blinded to previous recordings, performed standard arthroscopies and recorded patellofemoral lesions. Statistical correlations were performed to identify the association magnitude. Associations were identified between incidental patellofemoral lesions and tenderness palpated on the medial patella (P=0.007, χ2=0.32) and the quadriceps tendon (P=0.029, χ2=0.26), but these associations were at best fair, which could be interpreted as clinically insignificant. In which case incidental patellofemoral lesions are not necessarily associated with anterior knee pain, we suggest that they could be left alone. This recommendation is only applicable to patellofemoral lesions which are found incidentally whilst addressing other pathology

Toward Intelligent Support of Authoring Machinima Media Content: Story and Visualization

The Internet and the availability of authoring tools have enabled a greater community of media content creators, including nonexperts. However, while media authoring tools often make it technically feasible to generate, edit and share digital media artifacts, they do not guarantee that the works will be valuable or meaningful to the community at large. Therefore intelligent tools that support the authoring and creative processes are especially valuable. In this paper, we describe two intelligent support tools for the authoring and production of machinima. Machinima is a technique for producing computer-animated movies through the manipulation of computer game technologies. The first system we describe, ReQUEST, is an intelligent support tool for the authoring of plots. The second system, Cambot, produces machinima from a pre-authored script by manipulating virtual avatars and a virtual camera in a 3D graphical environment

Extracting Social Networks from Literary Fiction

We present a method for extracting social networks from literature, namely, nineteenth-century British novels and serials. We derive the networks from dialogue interactions, and thus our method depends on the ability to determine when two characters are in conversation. Our approach involves character name chunking, quoted speech attribution and conversation detection given the set of quotes. We extract features from the social networks and examine their correlation with one another, as well as with metadata such as the novel’s setting. Our results provide evidence that the majority of novels in this time period do not fit two characterizations provided by literacy scholars. Instead, our results suggest an alternative explanation for differences in social networks

Multispectral imaging of organ viability during uterine transplantation surgery in rabbits and sheep

Uterine transplantation surgery (UTx) has been proposed as a treatment for permanent absolute uterine factor infertility (AUFI) in the case of the congenital absence or surgical removal of the uterus. Successful surgical attachment of the organ and its associated vasculature is essential for the organ’s reperfusion and long-term viability. Spectral imaging techniques have demonstrated the potential for the measurement of hemodynamics in medical applications. These involve the measurement of reflectance spectra by acquiring images of the tissue in different wavebands. Measures of tissue constituents at each pixel can then be extracted from these spectra through modeling of the light–tissue interaction. A multispectral imaging (MSI) laparoscope was used in sheep and rabbit UTx models to study short- and long-term changes in oxygen saturation following surgery. The whole organ was imaged in the donor and recipient animals in parallel with point measurements from a pulse oximeter. Imaging results confirmed the re-establishment of adequate perfusion in the transplanted organ after surgery. Cornual oxygenation trends measured with MSI are consistent with pulse oximeter readings, showing decreased StO2 immediately after anastomosis of the blood vessels. Long-term results show recovery of StO2 to preoperative levels

Core Formation by a Population of Massive Remnants

Core radii of globular clusters in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds show an increasing trend with age. We propose that this trend is a dynamical effect resulting from the accumulation of massive stars and stellar-mass black holes at the cluster centers. The black holes are remnants of stars with initial masses exceeding 20-25 solar masses; as their orbits decay by dynamical friction, they heat the stellar background and create a core. Using analytical estimates and N-body experiments, we show that the sizes of the cores so produced and their growth rates are consistent with what is observed. We propose that this mechanism is responsible for the formation of cores in all globular clusters and possibly in other systems as well.Comment: 5 page

Electrical Surge Protection Device (SPD): An Alternative to Reduce Material Loss

The SPD is undoubtedly the equipment designed to protect the electronics of any building, one of the protections that together with proper grounding and SPDA, are widely used by industry to protect their equipment and people. This research shows the importance of SPD for electrical installations in general, shows that we still do not have the risk of encircling all electrical protections in our homes, which lead to inquiring. Why not use all safety measures in our residential electrical installations, viewed as people who build a bus camera rated by a qualified professional, to guide their client, explaining to him the importance of a safe installation, ie the values with electrical material are still elevated for safe construction. In this research, some brands of SPD were analyzed and compared as to the method of manufacture, classification and prices, a survey that also did not comply with Law No. 11,337, of July 26, 2006. Determines the obligation that the buildings have a system grounding and electrical installations used with the use of conductor protective earth, as well as making the presence of conductor protective earth mandatory in the electrical appliances it specifies. Law 12,119 / 09, of December 15, 2009, amends art. 2 of Law No. 11,337, of July 26, 2006, to better detail the scope of its content and to adapt the nomenclature used to the technical standards used. "Art. 2 Electrical and electronic equipment, with metal housing marketed in the Country, classified in class I, in accordance with the relevant national technical standards, the items allowed for use in earth protection and with plugs, are also allowed in accordance with Brazilian technical standards