Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees

The NBA provides an intriguing place to test for taste-based discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting with referees making the type of split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to manifest themselves. Moreover, the referees receive constant monitoring and feedback on their performance. (Commissioner Stern has claimed that NBA referees "are the most ranked, rated, reviewed, statistically analyzed and mentored group of employees of any company in any place in the world.") The essentially arbitrary assignment of refereeing crews to basketball games, and the number of repeated interactions allow us to convincingly test for own-race preferences. We find -- even conditioning on player and referee fixed effects (and specific game fixed effects) -- that more personal fouls are called against players when they are officiated by an opposite-race refereeing crew than when officiated by an own-race crew. These biases are sufficiently large that we find appreciable differences in whether predominantly black teams are more likely to win or lose, based on the racial composition of the refereeing crew.

Measurement of acoustic properties of South Pole ice for neutrino astronomy

South Pole ice is predicted to be the best medium for acoustic neutrino detection. Moreover, ice is the only medium in which all three dense-medium detection methods (optical, radio, and acoustic) can be used to monitor the same interaction volume. Events detected in coincidence between two methods allow significant background rejection confidence, which is necessary to study rare GZK neutrinos. In 2007 and 2008 the South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS) was installed as a research and development project associated with the IceCube experiment. The purpose of SPATS is to measure the acoustic ice properties at the South Pole in order to determine the feasibility of a future large hybrid array. The deployment and performance of SPATS are described, as are first results and work in progress on the sound speed, background noise, and attenuation.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, uses elsart5p.cls, to appear in the proceedings of the Acoustic and Radio EeV Neutrino detection Activities (ARENA) 2008 conferenc

Presenting Indications Of Alternative Search Results Associated With A Voice Query

Disclosed herein is a mechanism for presenting indications of available alternative search results associated with a voice query. In response to receiving a voice query on a user device that instructs a system to cause a media content item to be presented on a particular media device (e.g., play Artist A on bedroom television , the mechanism can parse the query to identify a group of candidate media content items each corresponding to a result in a group of results associated with the query and can assign a keyword to each of the results in the group of results. The mechanism can cause media content associated with a top result (e.g., a result determined to be most relevant to the query) to be presented on the media device indicated in the voice query, and can cause indications of the keywords corresponding to one or more of the other results in the group of results to be presented. The mechanism can allow a user to issue a second voice query that includes one of the keywords, where the second voice query causes a different media content item corresponding to the spoken keyword to be presented

INPUT COMBINATION TO ACTIVATE DIFFERENT INPUT MODES UTILIZING A PRESENCE-SENSITIVE SCREEN

A computing device is described that changes input modes associated with a presence-sensitive screen, based on tactile user inputs detected by touch and/or pressure sensors that are distinct from the presence-sensitive screen. Input modes define the actions taken by a computing device in response to receiving indications of user input at the presence-sensitive screen, such as navigating through a user interface of the computing device, adjusting a setting of the computing device, or altering a state of the computing device. The computing device interprets inputs detected at the sensors to change which functions are performed when a user provides subsequent inputs at the presence-sensitive screen. This way, a computing device can use its presence-sensitive screen to detect more types of inputs that, traditionally, might require additional input components (e.g., a mechanical button, a mechanical switch, etc.) beyond just the presence-sensitive screen

Dynamic adjustment of power consumption based on a time or event goal

Users of mobile devices often experience a scenario where the available battery power is low, while a user activity is ongoing. Currently, users take actions such as reducing display brightness, turning off connectivity options, etc. to conserve battery power. However, such actions may not ensure that enough battery power is available to complete the user activity. This disclosure describes techniques to selectively enable smartphone power-saving features to achieve a user activity goal, or a desired amount of operating time to remain. The techniques can be enabled by a user of the device, or with user permission, can be enabled automatically. A power consumption model that provides a prediction of device power consumption is utilized to selectively enable power-saving features to meet the specified goal

An Eye Tracking System For Smart Devices

A system and method is disclosed to track user’s eye gaze on a lockscreen and infer whether a user has read each message on the screen. An incoming message is initially marked as unread. The system presents the message to the user on a lockscreen. Eye tracking software uses the camera\u27s video stream to detect that the user\u27s gaze is directed at the message on screen. When the user\u27s gaze is detected on the message for a sufficient duration, the system may tentatively mark that message as read. The system may notify and request confirmation from the user before marking the message as read. The system may then scroll the read message offscreen, making room for new messages to be displayed. Using this method, a user may be able to read through an entire set of unread messages without touching the device

Connection quality analysis for live video

Video chat or streaming applications depend on the availability of reliable and high-speed network connections to maintain quality. When the quality is poor, it is often difficult for users to diagnose the cause, and hence, the poor quality of experience may be misattributed to the video chat or streaming application. This disclosure describes use a trained classifier model to detect low quality during a video call or video streaming session. With user permission, the classifier model is trained using data from prior video calls or sessions. When low quality is detected, the classifier model determines one or more likely causes and possible remedial actions that a user can take. The causes and remedial actions are provided to the user

Automatic execution of authentication actions at high trust levels

Online authentication systems for payment, electronic commerce, personal communication, etc. are increasingly subject to attacks. If breached, such systems can permit fraudulent transactions. As a result, software applications (apps), e.g., e-commerce apps, banking apps, etc. deploy additional levels of identity authentication to verify user identity for sensitive transactions, e.g., money transfer from a new device, ordering goods to a new delivery address, etc. This disclosure proposes queueing actions that require additional levels of authentication such that such actions are executed at a later time once a high level of trust is obtained. High level of trust can be obtained in various ways, e.g., when the user uses the app or service from a trusted device, when the user device is at a trusted location or connects to a trusted network, the user device is close to another device that the user is signed into, etc

Measurement of impact of product placement advertising

Online content creators, e.g., video creators, earn revenue from product or brand in their content. However, there are no current techniques to measure the impact of such content. This disclosure describes techniques described to measure the impact of content viewership. For example, the techniques can be implemented to measure the search lift generated by such content. The content is selectively withheld from a subset of viewers. The difference in search volume for content related keywords from viewers in this group is compared with that from viewers that were exposed to the content. The advertiser is provided with the measurement and is charged based on a cost-per-incremental-search. Online content platforms can implement the techniques that provide benefits to advertisers (better measurement of impact of product placement advertising) and content creators (opportunities to increase revenue)

Efficient e-commerce on virtual personal assistants

Virtual personal assistants perform for their users a variety of tasks, e.g., placing online shopping orders, performing e-commerce transactions, handle shopping and commerce queries, etc. Typically, virtual personal assistants interact conversationally with their users and adapt to their user’s preferences using machine intelligence. The conversational model between users and virtual assistants makes it difficult for users to get product details needed to confidently place an online order. It is also difficult, through conversation alone, to input delivery information, authenticate payment, or even be confident of what is being purchased. Techniques of this disclosure facilitate e-commerce over virtual personal assistants by displaying on a nearby device, e.g., a smartphone, details of a shopping flow currently ongoing via virtual personal assistant. An interaction (e.g., shopping query) on one device, e.g., a virtual personal assistant, triggers installation of the advertiser’s native app on a second nearby device, e.g., a smartphone. The advertiser’s app, once installed on the smartphone, provides the user a convenient way to browse items and seamlessly continue with the shopping flow initiated at the virtual personal assistant