Development and application of artificial intelligence strategies to solve infrared spectroscopic problems

The ever-increasing power of modern infrared instrumentation, coupled with the decreasing number of experienced spectroscopists has created an imbalance between information generation and interpretation capabilities. At the same time, digital computers are being developed which continue to grow in storage and processing capabilities, and shrink in cost. Clearly, the computer may serve as a valuable tool to aid the analytical chemist in interpreting spectroscopic information. This dissertation deals with the development of new approaches to exploiting computer technology to interpret infrared spectroscopic data. A large existing expert system for functional group analysis, PAIRS, has been modified to transfer the maximum amount of information to the chemist. Two closely coupled knowledge based systems, IRBASE and MIXIR, have been created to identify major components of condensed phase mixtures. A second version of MIXIR has been developed to identify major components of vapor phase mixtures. Finally, a neural network approach to peak detection in analytical data has been developed

On Method in the Humanities

Presentation on Bruno Latour, Northrop Frye, Marshall McLuhan, Robert Fogel, and the history of "method" in the humanities. Given at the 2016 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Part of a panel stream that explored lab culture in the arts and humanities: "Practitioners from a variety of laboratories will discuss the politics of creating and maintaining an arts/humanities laboratory. They will also discuss recent research emerging from their labs. This specific panel focuses on bioart, health studies, and interdisciplinary research.

A new heap game

Given $k\ge 3$ heaps of tokens. The moves of the 2-player game introduced here are to either take a positive number of tokens from at most $k-1$ heaps, or to remove the {\sl same} positive number of tokens from all the $k$ heaps. We analyse this extension of Wythoff's game and provide a polynomial-time strategy for it.Comment: To appear in Computer Games 199

Head-Related Transfer Function Selection Using Neural Networks

In binaural audio systems, for an optimal virtual acoustic space a set of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) should be used that closely matches the listener’s ones. This study aims to select the most appropriated HRTF dataset from a large database for users without the need for extensive listening tests. Currently, there is no way to reliably reduce the number of datasets to a smaller, more manageable number without risking discarding potentially good matches. A neural network that estimates the appropriateness of HRTF datasets based on input vectors of anthropometric measurements is proposed. The shapes and sizes of listeners’ heads and pinnas were measured using digital photography; the measured anthropometric parameters form the feature vectors used by the neural network. A graphical user interface (GUI) was developed for participants to listen to music transformed using different HRTFs and to evaluate the fitness of each HRTF dataset. The listening scores recorded were the target outputs used to train the neural networks. The aim was to learn a mapping between anthropometric parameters and listener’s perception scores. Experimental validations were performed on 30 subjects. It is demonstrated that the proposed system produces a much more reliable HRTF selection than previously used methods

Spectacular horizons: the birth of science fiction film, television, and radio, 1900-1959

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Gadgetry: New Media and the Fictional Imagination

Gadgets like smartphones and GPS receivers, say the pundits, are fundamentally altering the ways we read, communicate, and even think. Gadgetry: New Media and the Fictional Imagination throws such claims into relief with a cultural history of these seemingly small, everyday tools. The word "gadget" has historically referred to both concrete objects and indeterminate tools that have been forgotten, rigged up on the fly, or not yet invented. Spanning a range of literary, social, and technical histories, a genealogy of these alternately functional and fictional devices from their origins in mid-nineteenth-century nautical jargon to their current association with mobile media reveals a distinct evolution in the imaginative space between tools and their users. While other scholars have catalogued various fantasies about media technologies, these projects often resort to a binary in which works of representational modernity merely respond to technological revolutions. Focusing on the nascent tinkerer and genre fiction communities of early twentieth century America, I argue that fictions play a constitutive role in the emergence of new media as socially shared systems of communication and expression. The gadget is an object of study that, by its very nature, calls for an interdisciplinary approach able to place a range of technical, social, and literary histories into conversation. Gadgetry engages with fields like media archaeology, science fiction studies, design, and the history of science. Being interdisciplinary doesn't mean, however, that one simply maintains a diverse list of primary and secondary sources. It means holding one's methodologies up to the lens of critical inquiry. In order to construct a more comprehensive conceptual framework, part of my research has involved building a dataset on the etymology of the word "gadget." Using several text mining resources and a simple Perl script that visualizes the prevalence of categories into which I plug each instance of the word, I am able to watch as the tools, applications, cultural contexts, and social valuations of gadgetry evolve from the 1880s to the present. My work thus provides a model for how theories of technology and cultural form might engage with the explanatory power of digital resources

Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown

In this tutorial, you will first learn the basics of Markdown—an easy to read and write markup syntax for plain text—as well as Pandoc, a command line tool that converts plain text into a number of beautifully formatted file types: PDF, .docx, HTML, LaTeX, slide decks, and more.1 With Pandoc as your digital typesetting tool, you can use Markdown syntax to add figures, a bibliography, formatting, and easily change citation styles from Chicago to MLA (for instance), all using plain text

Autoria Sustentável em Texto Simples usando Pandoc e Markdown

Neste tutorial, você aprenderá primeiro o básico do Markdown - uma sintaxe de marcação fácil de ler e escrever para texto simples - bem como Pandoc, uma ferramenta de linha de comando que converte texto simples em vários tipos de ficheiros formatados: PDF, docx, HTML, LaTeX, apresentação de slides e muito mais