Evorus: A Crowd-powered Conversational Assistant Built to Automate Itself Over Time

Crowd-powered conversational assistants have been shown to be more robust than automated systems, but do so at the cost of higher response latency and monetary costs. A promising direction is to combine the two approaches for high quality, low latency, and low cost solutions. In this paper, we introduce Evorus, a crowd-powered conversational assistant built to automate itself over time by (i) allowing new chatbots to be easily integrated to automate more scenarios, (ii) reusing prior crowd answers, and (iii) learning to automatically approve response candidates. Our 5-month-long deployment with 80 participants and 281 conversations shows that Evorus can automate itself without compromising conversation quality. Crowd-AI architectures have long been proposed as a way to reduce cost and latency for crowd-powered systems; Evorus demonstrates how automation can be introduced successfully in a deployed system. Its architecture allows future researchers to make further innovation on the underlying automated components in the context of a deployed open domain dialog system.Comment: 10 pages. To appear in the Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2018 (CHI'18

How Live Music Moves Us: Head Movement Differences in Audiences to Live Versus Recorded Music

A live music concert is a pleasurable social event that is among the most visceral and memorable forms of musical engagement. But what inspires listeners to attend concerts, sometimes at great expense, when they could listen to recordings at home? An iconic aspect of popular concerts is engaging with other audience members through moving to the music. Head movements, in particular, reflect emotion and have social consequences when experienced with others. Previous studies have explored the affiliative social engagement experienced among people moving together to music. But live concerts have other features that might also be important, such as that during a live performance the music unfolds in a unique and not predetermined way, potentially increasing anticipation and feelings of involvement for the audience. Being in the same space as the musicians might also be exciting. Here we controlled for simply being in an audience to examine whether factors inherent to live performance contribute to the concert experience. We used motion capture to compare head movement responses at a live album release concert featuring Canadian rock star Ian Fletcher Thornley, and at a concert without the performers where the same songs were played from the recorded album. We also examined effects of a prior connection with the performers by comparing fans and neutral-listeners, while controlling for familiarity with the songs, as the album had not yet been released. Head movements were faster during the live concert than the album-playback concert. Self-reported fans moved faster and exhibited greater levels of rhythmic entrainment than neutral-listeners. These results indicate that live music engages listeners to a greater extent than pre-recorded music and that a pre-existing admiration for the performers also leads to higher engagement

Network FOuNTAIN a CDBB network: For ONTologies and information maNagement in digital built Britain. Final report.

Network FOuNTAIN is the Network For ONTologies And Information maNagement in Digital Built Britain. The Network is supported by the Centre for Digital Built Britain. The vision of the Network is for all stakeholders in Digital Built Britain (DBB) to be able to meet their information needs. With the establishment of concepts such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Common Data Environments (CDE), built environment design, construction and operation are becoming increasingly information-intensive. The Network undertook five workshop activities between July and December 2018. This report summarises the proceedings of these workshops, and in particular establishes future capabilities needed to realise the vision of DBB

Diagenesis of archaeological bone and tooth

An understanding of the structural complexity of mineralised tissues is fundamental for exploration into the field of diagenesis. Here we review aspects of current and past research on bone and tooth diagenesis using the most comprehensive collection of literature on diagenesis to date. Environmental factors such as soil pH, soil hydrology and ambient temperature, which influence the preservation of skeletal tissues are assessed, while the different diagenetic pathways such as microbial degradation, loss of organics, mineral changes, and DNA degradation are surveyed. Fluctuating water levels in and around the bone is the most harmful for preservation and lead to rapid skeletal destruction. Diagenetic mechanisms are found to work in conjunction with each other, altering the biogenic composition of skeletal material. This illustrates that researchers must examine multiple diagenetic pathways to fully understand the post-mortem interactions of archaeological skeletal material and the burial environment

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

On some families of modules for the current algebra

Given a finite-dimensional module V for a finite-dimensional, complex semi-simple Lie algebra , and a positive integer m, we construct a family of graded modules for the current algebra indexed by simple C -modules. These modules are free of finite rank for the ring of symmetric polynomials and so can be localized to give finite-dimensional graded -modules. We determine the graded characters of these modules and show that these graded characters admit a curious duality201197208sem informaçã

Dietary Intakes of Elite Male Professional Rugby Union Players in Catered and Non-Catered Environments

In professional rugby union, it is common for players to switch between catered and non-catered dietary environments throughout a season. However, little is known about the difference in dietary intake between these two settings. Twelve elite male professional rugby union players (28.3 ± 2.9 y, 188.9 ± 9.5 cm, 104.1 ± 13.3 kg) from the New Zealand Super Rugby Championship completed seven-day photographic food diaries with two-way communication during two seven-day competition weeks in both catered and non-catered environments. While no significant differences were observed in relative carbohydrate intake, mean seven-day absolute energy intakes (5210 ± 674 vs. 4341 ± 654 kcal·day−1), relative protein (2.8 ± 0.3 vs. 2.3 ± 0.3 g·kgBM·day−1) and relative fat (2.1 ± 0.3 vs. 1.5 ± 0.3 g·kgBM·day−1) intakes were significantly higher in the catered compared to the non-catered environment (respectively) among forwards (n = 6). Backs (n = 6) presented non-significantly higher energy and macronutrient intakes within a catered compared to a non-catered environment. More similar dietary intakes were observed among backs regardless of the catering environment. Forwards may require more support and/or attention when transitioning between catered and non-catered environments to ensure that recommended dietary intakes are being achieved

Temporal Dynamics of Human Frontal and Cingulate Neural Activity During Conflict and Cognitive Control

Cognitive control refers to the ability to produce flexible, goal-oriented behavior in the face of changing task demands and conflicting response tendencies. A classic cognitive control experiment is the Stroop-color naming task, which requires participants to name the color in which a word is written while inhibiting the tendency to read the word. By comparing stimuli with conflicting word-color associations to congruent ones, control processes over response tendencies can be isolated. We assessed the spatial specificity and temporal dynamics in the theta and gamma bands for regions engaged in detecting and resolving conflict in a cohort of 13 patients using a combination of high-resolution surface and depth recordings. We show that cognitive control manifests as a sustained increase in gamma band power, which correlates with response time. Conflict elicits a sustained gamma power increase but a transient theta power increase, specifically localized to the left cingulate sulcus and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Additionally, activity in DLPFC is affected by trial-by-trial modulation of cognitive control (the Gratton effect). Altogether, the sustained local neural activity in dorsolateral and medial regions is what determines the timing of the correct response

Network dynamics of human face perception

<div><p>Prevailing theories suggests that cortical regions responsible for face perception operate in a serial, feed-forward fashion. Here, we utilize invasive human electrophysiology to evaluate serial models of face-processing via measurements of cortical activation, functional connectivity, and cortico-cortical evoked potentials. We find that task-dependent changes in functional connectivity between face-selective regions in the inferior occipital (f-IOG) and fusiform gyrus (f-FG) are bidirectional, not feed-forward, and emerge following feed-forward input from early visual cortex (EVC) to both of these regions. Cortico-cortical evoked potentials similarly reveal independent signal propagations between EVC and both f-IOG and f-FG. These findings are incompatible with serial models, and support a parallel, distributed network underpinning face perception in humans.</p></div