897 research outputs found
Overview of the personalized and collaborative information retrieval (PIR) track at FIRE-2011
The Personalized and collaborative Information Retrieval (PIR) track at FIRE 2011 was organized with an aim to extend standard information retrieval (IR) ad-hoc test collection design to facilitate research on personalized and collaborative IR by collecting additional meta-information during the topic (query) development process. A controlled query generation process through task-based activities with activity logging was used for each topic developer to construct the final list of topics. The standard ad-hoc collection is thus accompanied by a new set of thematically related topics and the associated log information. We believe this can better simulate a real-world search scenario and encourage mining user information from the logs to improve IR effectiveness. A set of 25 TREC formatted topics and the associated metadata of activity logs were released for the participants to use. In this paper we illustrate the data construction phase in detail and also outline two simple ways of using the additional information from the logs to improve retrieval effectiveness
A Comparative Study of Knots of Star Formation in Interacting vs. Spiral Galaxies
Interacting galaxies are known to have higher global rates of star formation
on average than normal galaxies, relative to their stellar masses. Using UV and
IR photometry combined with new and published H-alpha images, we have compared
the star formation rates of ~700 star forming complexes in 46 nearby
interacting galaxy pairs with those of regions in 39 normal spiral galaxies.
The interacting galaxies have proportionally more regions with high star
formation rates than the spirals. The most extreme regions in the interacting
systems lie at the intersections of spiral/tidal structures, where gas is
expected to pile up and trigger star formation. Published Hubble Telescope
images show unusually large and luminous star clusters in the highest
luminosity regions. The star formation rates of the clumps correlate with
measures of the dust attenuation, consistent with the idea that regions with
more interstellar gas have more star formation. For the clumps with the highest
star formation rates, the apparent dust attenuation is consistent with the
Calzetti starburst dust attenuation law. This suggests that the high luminosity
regions are dominated by a central group of young stars surrounded by a shell
of clumpy interstellar gas. In contrast, the lower luminosity clumps are bright
in the UV relative to H-alpha, suggesting either a high differential
attenuation between the ionized gas and the stars, or a post-starburst
population bright in the UV but faded in H-alpha. The fraction of the global
light of the galaxies in the clumps is higher on average for the interacting
galaxies than for the spirals. Thus the star forming regions in interacting
galaxies are more luminous, dustier, or younger on average.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in pres
Arson treatment programmes for offenders with disability : a systematic review of the literature
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate treatment for adult fire setters with an intellectual disability, given the specific risks they present, the complexities of criminal proceedings associated with their behaviour, and subsequent rehabilitation. However, the review also took into account programmes for fire setters in the wider population, including those for children and adolescents, given that such research might also inform the development of programmes for offenders with an intellectual disability.Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review of the literature was undertaken.Findings – Only four studies which evaluated treatment programmes specifically for arsonists with an intellectual disability were identified. Although each of these studies reported a reduction in fire-setting behaviour following programme completion, all employed relatively weak research designs. An additional 12 studies investigating programmes for arsonists without intellectual disability were also identified. It is concluded that there is a lack of evidence regarding treatment programme outcomes for arsonists with an intellectual disability. The extent to which such programmes can be adapted to suit adult offenders with an intellectual disability is discussed, with recommendations made for the design and evaluation of arson treatment programmes for offenders with intellectual disabilities.Originality/value – Currently, minimal treatments programs exist for fire setting in offenders with intellectual disability. This review highlights the importance of further research into treatment programs for this specialised population.<br /
Army initial acquisition training: an analysis of costs and benefits
MBA Professional ReportThis research estimates the costs of training and educating Army Acquisition officers using three different courses of action. We analyze the most cost effective means for an officer to earn a graduate degree, complete military education level four and satisfy technical training requirements of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act. The most cost-effective alternative is to accomplish these concurrently while attending the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). We also informally assess that, relative to the alternative courses of action, the NPS alternative has more benefits due to the defense focus of the degree and because all of the educational requirements are completed in the shortest amount of time, which benefits the Army. Our research provides senior leadersâ recommendations for the least costly way of developing a highly trained Acquisition Corps.http://archive.org/details/armyinitialcquis1094547908Major, United States ArmyCaptain, United States ArmyLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited
Utilization of multimodal interaction signals for automatic summarisation of academic presentations
Multimedia archives are expanding rapidly. For these, there exists a shortage of retrieval and summarisation techniques for accessing and browsing content where the main information exists in the audio stream. This thesis describes an investigation into the development of novel feature extraction and summarisation techniques for audio-visual recordings of academic presentations.
We report on the development of a multimodal dataset of academic presentations. This dataset is labelled by human annotators to the concepts of presentation ratings, audience engagement levels, speaker emphasis, and audience comprehension. We investigate the automatic classification of speaker ratings and audience engagement by extracting audio-visual features from video of the presenter and audience and training classifiers to predict speaker ratings and engagement levels. Following this, we investigate automatic identiïżœcation of areas of emphasised speech. By analysing all human annotated areas of emphasised speech, minimum speech pitch and gesticulation are identified as indicating emphasised speech when occurring together.
Investigations are conducted into the speaker's potential to be comprehended by the audience. Following crowdsourced annotation of comprehension levels during academic presentations, a set of audio-visual features considered most likely to affect comprehension levels are extracted. Classifiers are trained on these features and comprehension levels could be predicted over a 7-class scale to an accuracy of 49%, and over a binary distribution to an accuracy of 85%.
Presentation summaries are built by segmenting speech transcripts into phrases, and using keywords extracted from the transcripts in conjunction with extracted paralinguistic features. Highest ranking segments are then extracted to build presentation summaries. Summaries are evaluated by performing eye-tracking experiments as participants watch presentation videos. Participants were found to be consistently more engaged for presentation summaries than for full presentations. Summaries were also found to contain a higher concentration of new information than full presentations
Technical Note: Durability Analysis of Large Corn Stover Briquettes
Densification of agricultural residues is a key step in a cost-effective, large-scale, biomass feedstock supply system. Lab-scale densification systems exist which can produce large-scale densified corn stover briquettes that measure between 220 and 420 mm in length and with an average bulk density of 190 kg/m3 (dry particle density of 460 kg/m3). MOG (material other than grain ) and pure cob briquettes produced similar lengths and dry particle densities of 424 kg/m3 and 421 kg/m3, respectively. Durability testing, utilizing a modified form of ASABE S269.4 (ASABE Standards, 2007) was conducted to determine the overall product quality associated with these densified briquettes. This publication describes experiments which quantified the durability or briquettes produced with different material types (corn stover, MOG, the chaff from a conventional corn harvest, and pure cobs) and material particle sizes (produced from a combine chopper, MOG, and a hammer mill with a 19-mm screen opening size). The durability rating varied with each of the main effect test parameters and produced a maximum 46% durability rating using pure cobs directly from a combine without additional size reduction. The durability rating was quite low for corn stover and MOG briquettes, and it was improved for pure cob briquettes. Biomass preprocessing in a hammermill significantly reduced durability due to a lack of fiber interaction throughout the large briquette
What Makes Health Data Privacy Calculus Unique? Separating Probability from Impact
Patient health data is heavily regulated and sensitive. Patients will sometimes falsify data to avoid embarrassment resulting in misdiagnoses and even death. Existing research to explain this phenomenon is scarce with little more than attitudes and intents modeled. Similarly, health data disclosure research has only applied existing theories with additional constructs for the healthcare context. We argue that health data has a fundamentally different cost/benefit calculus than the non-health contexts of traditional privacy research. By separating the probability of disclosure risks and benefits from the impact of that disclosure, it is easier to understand and interpret health data disclosure. In a study of 1590 patients disclosing health information electronically, we find that the benefits of disclosure are more difficult to conceptualize than the impact of the risk. We validate this using both a stated and objective (mouse tracking) measure of patient lying
Corn Stover Densification Methods and their Large-Scale Logistical ImpactsâPreliminary Analysis
The bulk density of corn stover poses a major obstruction to its large scale acceptance as a biomass feedstock. The loose bulk density of corn stover is low enough to create large inefficiencies during the harvest, transport, and storage phases of production. Overall production costs of stover could be reduced if a densification method were developed that provided adequate bulk density at a low specific energy during the harvest phase of production. So far, stover densification has been accomplished either by baling, grinding, or briquetting processes. Baling faces a logistical challenge with the handling cost of an individual bale, grinding systems donât achieve high enough bulk densities alone, and briquetting systems generally require stover preprocessing (grinding), and the addition of heat energy. All of these factors for each system drive up the unit cost of corn stover production
HLVU : A New Challenge to Test Deep Understanding of Movies the Way Humans do
In this paper we propose a new evaluation challenge and direction in the area
of High-level Video Understanding. The challenge we are proposing is designed
to test automatic video analysis and understanding, and how accurately systems
can comprehend a movie in terms of actors, entities, events and their
relationship to each other. A pilot High-Level Video Understanding (HLVU)
dataset of open source movies were collected for human assessors to build a
knowledge graph representing each of them. A set of queries will be derived
from the knowledge graph to test systems on retrieving relationships among
actors, as well as reasoning and retrieving non-visual concepts. The objective
is to benchmark if a computer system can "understand" non-explicit but obvious
relationships the same way humans do when they watch the same movies. This is
long-standing problem that is being addressed in the text domain and this
project moves similar research to the video domain. Work of this nature is
foundational to future video analytics and video understanding technologies.
This work can be of interest to streaming services and broadcasters hoping to
provide more intuitive ways for their customers to interact with and consume
video content
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