Incremental LSTM-based Dialog State Tracker

A dialog state tracker is an important component in modern spoken dialog systems. We present an incremental dialog state tracker, based on LSTM networks. It directly uses automatic speech recognition hypotheses to track the state. We also present the key non-standard aspects of the model that bring its performance close to the state-of-the-art and experimentally analyze their contribution: including the ASR confidence scores, abstracting scarcely represented values, including transcriptions in the training data, and model averaging

Using Explicit Semantic Analysis for Cross-Lingual Link Discovery

This paper explores how to automatically generate cross language links between resources in large document collections. The paper presents new methods for Cross Lingual Link Discovery(CLLD) based on Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA). The methods are applicable to any multilingual document collection. In this report, we present their comparative study on the Wikipedia corpus and provide new insights into the evaluation of link discovery systems. In particular, we measure the agreement of human annotators in linking articles in different language versions of Wikipedia, and compare it to the results achieved by the presented methods

Vector analysis of stimulated Brillouin scattering amplification in standard single-mode fibers

The polarization properties of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) amplification or attenuation in standard single-mode fibers are examined through vectorial analysis, simulation and experiment. Vector propagation equations for the signal wave, incorporating SBS and birefringence, are derived and analyzed in both the Jones and Stokes spaces. The analysis shows that in the undepleted pump regime, the fiber may be regarded as a polarization-dependent gain (or loss) medium, having two orthogonal input SOPs, and corresponding two orthogonal output SOPs, for the signal, which, respectively, provide the signal with maximum and minimum SBS amplification (or attenuation). Under high Brillouin gain conditions and excluding zero-probability cases, the output SOP of arbitrarily polarized input signals, would tend to converge towards that of maximum SBS gain. In the case of high SBS attenuation the output SOP of an arbitrarily polarized signal would approach the output SOP corresponding to minimum attenuation. It is found that for a wide range of practical pump powers (<= 100 mW) and for sufficiently long fibers with typical SBS and birefringence parameters, the signal aligned for maximum SBS interaction will enter/emerge from the fiber with its electric field closely tracing the same ellipse in space as that of the pump at the corresponding side of the fiber, albeit with the opposite sense of rotation. The analytic predictions are experimentally demonstrated for both Stokes (amplification) and anti-Stokes (attenuation) signals

Gender Justice and Islam: For Male Two and For Female One Qurban. Why?

Excerpt: The question we have to ask today as believing Muslims is this: how is it that, in the 21st century, Muslims would rather use a hadith that prefers boys over girls than the actual practice of the Prophet Muhammad? If the Prophet treated his children equally, and showed public affection for his daughter Fatima with the specific gesture of standing up to welcome her every time she came to visit, and if he constantly warned believers to take care of their daughters, how have Muslims ended up cultivating this naming tradition that sends a clear message to daughters that they are not as equally valued as sons

Polarization-induced distortion in stimulated Brillouin scattering slow-light systems

The vector analysis of stimulated Brillouin scattering amplification in birefringent fibers is extended to include signal pulses. The analysis finds that the different slow-light delays experienced by the states of polarization corresponding to maximum and minimum gain may result in severe pulse distortion. Thus, a generally polarized pulse, experiencing only a moderate gain, can become broader than a pulse aligned for maximum gain and delay. The effect is demonstrated in both numerical simulations and experiments

Hagia Sophia: Holy Wisdom is Feminine Wisdom

Hagia Sophia: could it be a mosque on Fridays, a synagogue on Saturdays, a church on Sundays, and a museum during the week

KMI, The Open University at NTCIR-9 CrossLink: Cross-Lingual Link Discovery in Wikipedia using explicit semantic analysis

This paper describes the methods used in the submission of Knowledge Media institute (KMI), The Open University to the NTCIR-9 Cross-Lingual Link Discovery (CLLD)task entitled CrossLink. KMI submitted four runs for link discovery from English to Chinese; however, the developed methods, which utilise Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA), are applicable also to other language combinations. Three of the runs are based on exploiting the existing cross-lingual mapping between different versions of Wikipedia articles. In the fourth run, we assume information about the mapping is not available. Our methods achieved encouraging results and we describe in detail how their performance can be further improved. Finally, we discuss two important issues in link discovery: the evaluation methodology and the applicability of the developed methods across dfferent textual collections

Content aware user interface retargeting

This disclosure describes the preservation of important elements of a user interface (UI) during retargeting of the interface image on a mobile device. An on-device machine learned (ML) model is utilized to detect saliency or lack thereof of various UI elements in the user interface. Training of the ML model is performed by utilizing training data from repositories of software application designs and screenshot data from online marketplaces and app evaluation services. The trained ML model is utilized to detect salient UI elements that are to be preserved during display retargeting. During resizing of the UI, with express user permission, content-aware image retargeting techniques are utilized for the preservation of elements identified as important by the UI saliency detection model. Past interactions are utilized, and interpretation or corrective action is performed only upon permission from the user

A psychology-driven computational analysis of political interviews

Can an interviewer influence the cooperativeness of an interviewee? The role of an interviewer in actualising a successful interview is an active field of social psychological research. A large-scale analysis of interviews, however, typically involves time-exorbitant manual tasks and considerable human effort. Despite recent advances in computational fields, many automated methods continue to rely on manually labelled training data to establish ground-truth. This reliance obscures explainability and hinders the mobility of analysis between applications. In this work, we introduce a cross-disciplinary approach to analysing interviewer efficacy. We suggest computational success measures as a transparent, automated, and reproducible alternative for pre-labelled data. We validate these measures with a small-scale study with human-responders. To study the interviewer’s influence on the interviewee we utilise features informed by social psychological theory to predict interview quality based on the interviewer’s linguistic behaviour. Our psychologically informed model significantly outperforms a bag-of-words model, demonstrating the strength of a cross-disciplinary approach toward the analysis of conversational data at scale

DISPLAYING INFORMATION RELATING TO SELECTED TEXT

A device (e.g., a mobile phone, a camera device, a smart display, a tablet computer, a laptop computer, a desktop computer, a gaming system, a media player, an e-book reader, a television platform, a vehicle infotainment system or head unit, etc.) may display useful information such as a translation, definition, and/or description of text selected on the device by a user. The user may select text, such as a character, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, passage, etc. on the device (e.g., by using a long press, drag, tap, click, or other gesture or input) to cause a language identification module to identify the language of the selected text and determine whether the language of the selected text is a language the user understands. If the language identification module determines that the language of the selected text is not a language the user understands (e.g., based on a system language, user preferences, etc.), a dictionary module and/or other module for displaying information related to the selected text may display a translation, definition, and/or description of the selected text in a non-obtrusive manner on the device (e.g., the translation may be in-line with the selected text, positioned above the selected text, positioned below the selected text, etc.)