Be Your Own Curator with the CHIP Tour Wizard [html]

Web 2.0 enables increased access to the museum digital collection. More and more, users will spend time preparing their visits to the museums and reflecting on them after the visits. In this context, the CHIP (Cultural Heritage Information Personalization) project offers tools to the users to be their own curator, e.g. planning a personalized museum tour, discovering interesting artworks they want to see in a 'virtual' or a 'real' tour and quickly finding their ways in the museum. In this paper we present the new additions to the CHIP tools, which target the above functionality - a Web-based Tour Preparation Wizard and an export of a personalized tour to an interactive Mobile Guide used in the physical museum space. In addition, the user interactions during a real museum visit are stored and synchronized with the user model, which is maintained at the museum Web site

Be Your Own Curator with the CHIP Tour Wizard [pdf]

Web 2.0 enables increased access to the museum digital collection. More and more, users will spend time preparing their visits to the museums and reflecting on them after the visits. In this context, the CHIP (Cultural Heritage Information Personalization) project offers tools to the users to be their own curator, e.g. planning a personalized museum tour, discovering interesting artworks they want to see in a 'virtual' or a 'real' tour and quickly finding their ways in the museum. In this paper we present the new additions to the CHIP tools, which target the above functionality - a Web-based Tour Preparation Wizard and an export of a personalized tour to an interactive Mobile Guide used in the physical museum space. In addition, the user interactions during a real museum visit are stored and synchronized with the user model, which is maintained at the museum Web site

Multi-label classification with output kernels

Although multi-label classification has become an increasingly important problem in machine learning, current approaches remain restricted to learning in the original label space (or in a simple linear projection of the original label space). Instead, we propose to use kernels on output label vectors to significantly expand the forms of label dependence that can be captured. The main challenge is to reformulate standard multi-label losses to handle kernels between output vectors. We first demonstrate how a state-of-the-art large margin loss for multi-label classification can be reformulated, exactly, to handle output kernels as well as input kernels. Importantly, the pre-image problem for multi-label classification can be easily solved at test time, while the training procedure can still be simply expressed as a quadratic program in a dual parameter space. We then develop a projected gradient descent training procedure for this new formulation. Our empirical results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach on complex image labeling tasks

Influence of Spatial Correlations on the Lasing Threshold of Random Lasers

The lasing threshold of a random laser is computed numerically from a generic model. It is shown that spatial correlations of the disorder in the medium (i.e., dielectric constant) lead to an increase of the decay rates of the eigenmodes and of the lasing threshold. This is in conflict with predictions that such correlations should lower the threshold. While all results are derived for photonic systems, the computed decay rate distributions also apply to electronic systems

Multipole interaction between atoms and their photonic environment

Macroscopic field quantization is presented for a nondispersive photonic dielectric environment, both in the absence and presence of guest atoms. Starting with a minimal-coupling Lagrangian, a careful look at functional derivatives shows how to obtain Maxwell's equations before and after choosing a suitable gauge. A Hamiltonian is derived with a multipolar interaction between the guest atoms and the electromagnetic field. Canonical variables and fields are determined and in particular the field canonically conjugate to the vector potential is identified by functional differentiation as minus the full displacement field. An important result is that inside the dielectric a dipole couples to a field that is neither the (transverse) electric nor the macroscopic displacement field. The dielectric function is different from the bulk dielectric function at the position of the dipole, so that local-field effects must be taken into account.Comment: 17 pages, to be published in Physical Review

Analyzing sensory data using non-linear preference learning with feature subset selection

15th European Conference on Machine Learning, Pisa, Italy, September 20-24, 2004The quality of food can be assessed from different points of view. In this paper, we deal with those aspects that can be appreciated through sensory impressions. When we are aiming to induce a function that maps object descriptions into ratings, we must consider that consumers’ ratings are just a way to express their preferences about the products presented in the same testing session. Therefore, we postulate to learn from consumers’ preference judgments instead of using an approach based on regression. This requires the use of special purpose kernels and feature subset selection methods. We illustrate the benefits of our approach in two families of real-world data base

Photon Localization in Resonant Media

We report measurements of microwave transmission over the first five Mie resonances of alumina spheres randomly positioned in a waveguide. Though precipitous drops in transmission and sharp peaks in the photon transit time are found near all resonances, measurements of transmission fluctuations show that localization occurs only in a narrow frequency window above the first resonance. There the drop in the photon density of states is found to be more pronounced than the fall in the photon transit time, leading to a minimum in the Thouless number.Comment: To appear in PRL; 5 pages, including 5 figure

General boundary conditions for the envelope function in multiband k.p model

We have derived general boundary conditions (BC) for the multiband envelope functions (which do not contain spurious solutions) in semiconductor heterostructures with abrupt heterointerfaces. These BC require the conservation of the probability flux density normal to the interface and guarantee that the multiband Hamiltonian be self--adjoint. The BC are energy independent and are characteristic properties of the interface. Calculations have been performed of the effect of the general BC on the electron energy levels in a potential well with infinite potential barriers using a coupled two band model. The connection with other approaches to determining BC for the envelope function and to the spurious solution problem in the multiband k.p model are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; to be published in Phys. Rev. B 65, March 15 issue 200

Transcriptomics reveal an integrative role for maternal thyroid hormones during zebrafish embryogenesis

Thyroid hormones (THs) are essential for embryonic brain development but the genetic mechanisms involved in the action of maternal THs (MTHs) are still largely unknown. As the basis for understanding the underlying genetic mechanisms of MTHs regulation we used an established zebrafish monocarboxylic acid transporter 8 (MCT8) knock-down model and characterised the transcriptome in 25hpf zebrafish embryos. Subsequent mapping of differentially expressed genes using Reactome pathway analysis together with in situ expression analysis and immunohistochemistry revealed the genetic networks and cells under MTHs regulation during zebrafish embryogenesis. We found 4,343 differentially expressed genes and the Reactome pathway analysis revealed that TH is involved in 1681 of these pathways. MTHs regulated the expression of core developmental pathways, such as NOTCH and WNT in a cell specific context. The cellular distribution of neural MTH-target genes demonstrated their cell specific action on neural stem cells and differentiated neuron classes. Taken together our data show that MTHs have a role in zebrafish neurogenesis and suggest they may be involved in cross talk between key pathways in neural development. Given that the observed MCT8 zebrafish knockdown phenotype resembles the symptoms in human patients with Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome our data open a window into understanding the genetics of this human congenital condition.Portuguese Fundacao para Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) [PTDC/EXPL/MARBIO/0430/2013]; CCMAR FCT Plurianual financing [UID/Multi/04326/2013]; FCT [SFRH/BD/111226/2015, SFRH/BD/108842/2015, SFRH/BPD/89889/2012]; FCT-IF Starting Grant [IF/01274/2014]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio