Foodi - Automated Ordering System

We worked for BeSprout Technology to create an automated ordering system called Foodi. The Foodi system uses a combination of Java, IBM Watson, and MySQL to gather all the necessary information needed for the conversation, and is dynamic so it can be used in multiple restaurants. Many people still place orders via a phone call, so in an effort to streamline the ordering process, this project was created to enable automatic order placing so employees can focus on other tasks within the restaurant. When a customer calls a restaurant, Foodi will take care of any orders and answer questions the customer may have. The input from the user is sent to Watson, and is filtered through a conversation tree created with IBM’s Bluemix. Bluemix uses the user input to navigate to certain nodes. When a node in the conversation tree is hit, the user input is passed into Java code and parsed appropriately. After the input has been parsed in Java, Watson is told which node in the conversation tree to travel to next and how to respond to the user. This process is repeated until the user is finished ordering and the final order is repeated back to the customer. The restaurant receives the final order and begins preparing the food.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1181/thumbnail.jp

CS (Cottonwood Creek Trail Extension)

This report documents the substantive findings and management recommendations of the archeological survey conducted by Integrated Environmental Solutions, LLC (IES) for the Cottonwood Creek Trail Extension Project (CSJ: 0918-24-214), City of Plano, Collin County, Texas. As the City of Plano is a political subdivision of the State of Texas, the proposed project will require coordination with the Texas Historical Commission (THC) prior to construction, per the provisions of the Antiquities Code of Texas (ACT). In addition, as the project will require a Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) Nationwide Permit (NWP) 14 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), portions of the project will be subject to the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. All work conformed to 36 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 800, and 13 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 26, which outline the regulations for implementing Section 106 of the NHPA and the ACT, respectively. The goal of the survey was to locate, identify, and assess any archeological sites that could be adversely affected by the proposed development, and to evaluate such resources for their potential eligibility for listing as a State Antiquities Landmark (SAL) or eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The archeological survey was conducted by archeologists Thomas Chapman and Kevin Stone on 05 July 2017, under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 8091. During the IES survey, no archeological sites were encountered within the 2.31-mile Area of Potential Effects (APE). No artifacts were collected as part of this survey. All records will be temporarily curated at the IES McKinney office and permanently curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL). No further work is warranted. However, if any archeological sites, other than those documented within this report, are unearthed during construction, the operators should stop construction activities, and immediately contact the project environment representative to initiate coordination with the THC prior to resuming any construction activities

Representation of numerical information : exploration of the category structure of distributions of numerical stimuli.

A series of experiments explored the nature of the memory representation of numerical information. Two distributions were presented to each subject as three-digit numbers paired with distribution labels. Three stimulus presentation conditions were used in Experiment 1: a rapid serial presentation as used in Malmi and Samson (1983); a task which requires the subject to retype each stimulus item; and a classification task in which the subject must supply the category name when presented with the stimulus number. In Experiment 1, subjects estimated the averages of the distributions they were presented. In Experiment 2, subjects classified an additional 40 items, chosen to enable discrimination between two classes of models of memory representation. Subjects in Experiment 3 made estimates of the frequency of scores per decade for each distribution. The results strongly favor the category density model (Fried and Holyoak, 1984), a model which assumes that the subject abstracts distributional information and uses a default \u27normal\u27 distribution to organize the incoming information. The Nosofsky (1988) exemplar similarity model did not predict subject classification behavior or subject frequency estimation as accurately as the category density model. Reasons for these findings are discussed

Rhetoric, participation, and democracy: The positioning of public hearings under the National Environmental Policy Act

There are two predominant models for thinking about proper communicative conduct on the part of citizens participating in federal environmental decision making. The consultative model is typically the basis for traditional forms of public participation. The consensus model has been developed as an alternative to the perceived failings of traditional forms of public participation, and underpin increasingly common collaborative approaches to public participation). In this paper, I will take a humanities based approach to advocating for the consideration of a third approach, that of ‘reasonable hostility.’ I argue that neither of the currently dominant models of participatory conduct successfully accounts for a role for the public hearing in a way that is compelling to most would-be participants. There is a need for a renewed view of public hearings that is both honest regarding the degree of opportunity for the public to directly influence federal environmental policy while also reconsidering the potential of public hearings in NEPA as a democratic communicative space. In the tradition of rhetorical scholarship I hope to enrich that view by highlighting the communicative moves necessary for the public hearing in NEPA to occupy a simultaneously ubiquitous but limited role as well as offering guidance for enhancing that role

Cultural Resources Survey of the Lebow Drainage Improvement Project, City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas

This report documents the substantive findings and management recommendations of a cultural resource inventory conducted by Integrated Environmental Solutions, LLC (IES) for the Lebow Drainage Improvement Project in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas. As the City of Fort Worth is a political subdivision of the State of Texas, the proposed project will require coordination with the Texas Historical Commission (THC) prior to construction, per the provisions of the Antiquities Code of Texas (ACT). In addition, as the project will require a Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), it will also be subject to the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. All work conformed to 36 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 800, and 13 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 26, which outline the regulations for implementing Section 106 of the NHPA and the ACT, respectively. The goal of the survey was to locate, identify, and assess any cultural resources, which include standing structures and archeological sites that could be adversely affected by the proposed development, and to evaluate such resources for their potential eligibility for listing as a State Antiquities Landmark (SAL) or eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The cultural resources inventory was conducted by archeologists Kevin Stone and Joshua Hamilton on 04 June 2015, under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 7291. Proposed construction consists of an approximately 61.95-acre project corridor that extends along an unnamed tributary of the West Fork Trinity River. Although the project is still in the development stage, current designs call for the enhancement of Lebow Channel through regrading and reinforcement of the channel and the creation of several water retention/detention areas Although four historic-period sites (41TR279, 41TR280, 41TR281, and 41TR282) were documented during the field survey, based on the degree of disturbance and general nature of each site, they were deemed ineligible for listing on the NRHP or as a SAL. No artifacts were collected as part of this survey. All records will be curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL). No further work is warranted. However, if any cultural resources, other than those documented within this report, are unearthed during construction, the operators should stop construction activities, and immediately contact the project environmental representative to initiate coordination with the THC prior to resuming any construction activities

Cultural Resources Survey of the Proposed Bonnie Wenk Park Phase II, City of McKinney, Collin County, Texas

This report documents the substantive findings and management recommendations of a cultural resource inventory conducted by Integrated Environmental Solutions, LLC (IES) for the Bonnie Wenk Park Phase II project in McKinney, Collin County, Texas. As the City of McKinney is a political subdivision of the State of Texas, the proposed project will require coordination with the Texas Historical Commission (THC) prior to construction, per the provisions of the Antiquities Code of Texas (ACT). In addition, as the project will require a Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), it will also be subject to the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. The goal of the survey was to locate, identify, and assess any cultural resources, which include standing structures and archeological sites that could be adversely affected by the proposed development, and to evaluate such resources for their potential eligibility for listing as a State Antiquities Landmark (SAL) or eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). All work conformed to 36 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 800, and 13 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 26, which outline the regulations for implementing Section 106 of the NHPA and the ACT, respectively. The cultural resources inventory was conducted on the 23 and 26 March 2015, under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 7217. During the IES survey, no cultural resources were documented within APE. No further work is warranted. However, if any cultural resources are unearthed during construction, the operators should cease work immediately in that area, and the THC/SHPO should be prior to resuming any construction activities