Computer Science

Abstract: This session commences with a demonstration of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) currently in use followed by a brief panel discussion of the factors considered crucial for reusability: community of practice, quality assurance, flexibility etc.. A major challenge ...

Abstract Despite much discussion of the benefits of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOS) there is little evidence available regarding how teachers might systematically use third party materials in their teaching. The ACETS project has created a number of formal case studies recording the thoughts and activities involved in creating a learning activity using third party materials. This paper presents the ACETS methodology and a range of provisional findings from the Project including observations on the impacts of reuse on teaching and learning ...

This series of reviews has been produced to assist both the experienced surgeon and coder, as well as those just starting practice that may have little formal training in this area. Understanding this complex system will allow the provider to work “smarter, not harder” and garner the maximum compensation for their work. We hope we have been successful in achieving and that goal that this series will provide useful information and be worth the time invested in reading it by bringing tangible benefits to the efficiency of practice and its reimbursement. This third section deals with coding of additional select procedures, modifiers, telemedicine coding, and robotic surgery.

In this paper we argue that Kîîıtharaka in situ and ex situ object focus constructions are exhaustive. Sentences with a preverbal focus marker are argued to be nonexhaustive. Our conclusions are based on felicity in mention-some contexts, simple and multiple questions and entailment relations.  

Previous research has argued that learners infer word order patterns when learning a new language based on knowledge about underlying structure, rather than linear order (Culbertson & Adger, 2014). Specifically, learners prefer typologically common noun phrase word order patterns that transparently reflect how elements like nouns, adjectives, numerals, and demonstratives combine hierarchically. We test whether this result still holds after removing a potentially confounding strategy present in the original study design. We find that when learners are taught a naturalistic “foreign” language, a clear preference for noun phrase word order is replicated but for a subset of modifier types originally tested. Specifically, participants preferred noun phrases with the order N-Adj-Dem (as in “mug red this”) over the order N-Dem-Adj (as in “mug this red”). However, they showed no preference between orders N-AdjNum (as in “mugs red two”) and N-Num-Adj (as in “mugs two red”). We interpret this...

Numerical simulations of wave conditions in Callao bay in normal and extreme conditions were carried out to characterize the wave dynamics in the bay. Bathymetry data from the navigation charts to represent bottom depth were used. Waves in deep waters from numerical reanalysis were calibrated with satellite data that have allowed define scenarios of wave propagation to shallow water in normal and extreme conditions. Model results were compared with in situ wave data obtaining good approximation between modeling and observed waves. Results indicates that waves coming from Southwest and South-Southwest, which is the most predominant waves in deep waters, due to the diffraction effects caused by San Lorenzo Island generate two areas with different wave height conditions, in this way in the area affected by diffraction wave reach height between 0.5 to 1m, while area unaffected by diffraction effects wave reach heigh between 2 to 5m. Waves coming from Northwest has more influence in the ...

This paper reports research developed in the scope of building a wordnet for Portuguese (WordNet.PT), particularly f ocusing on the impact the results obtained have in the dens ity of the network of relations and, thus, on its usability for NLP tasks. Following from basic research on different linguist ic phenomena and on strategies for modeling them in relationa l models of the lexicon, the implementation of these results am ounts to a richer resource, with new cross-PoS relations and inf ormation on event and argument structures, thus crucially co ntributing to accurately modeling all the main PoS in the databas e. We also define a way to integrate prepositions in wordnets a nd discuss the motivations and modeling strategies used to do so. Based on this work, we show how our contributions augment the c overage and the accuracy of WordNet.PT, by increasing th e density of the network of relations, thus making it more usa ble for NLP applications.

The growing amount of available information and the growing importance given to the access to technical information enhance the potential role of NLP applications in enabling users to deal with information for a variety of knowledge domains. In this process, lexical resources are crucial. Using and comparing already existent wordnets for common and technical lexica, we set up a basis for integrating these resources without losing their specific information and properties. We demonstrate their compatibility and discuss strategies to overcome the issues arrising in their merging, namely aspects concerning conceptual variation, subnet and synset merging, and the incorporation of technical and non-technical information in definitions. As we are using models of the lexicon that mirror the organization of the mental lexicon, the accomplishment of this goal can provide insights on the type of relations holding between common lexical items and terms. Also, the results of integrating such re...

Nowadays, citizens require high level quality information from public institutions in order to guarantee their transparency. Institutional websites of governmental and public bodies must publish and keep updated a large amount of information stored in thousands of web pages in order to satisfy the demands of their users. Due to the amount of information, the “search form”, which is typically available in most such websites, is proven limited to support the users, since it requires them to explicitly express their information needs through keywords. The sites are also affected by the so-called “long tail” phenomenon, a phenomenon that is typically observed in e-commerce portals. The phenomenon is the one in which not all the pages are considered highly important and as a consequence, users searching for information located in pages that are not condiered important are having a hard time locating these pages.

This paper discusses the experience of reusing annotation tools developed for written corpora to tag a spoken corpus with POS information. Eric Brill’s tagger, initially trained over a written and tagged corpus of 250.000 words, is being used to tag the Portuguese C-ORAL-ROM spoken corpus, of 300.000 words. First, we address issues related with the tagset definition as well as the tagger performance over the written corpus. We discuss important options concerning the spoken corpus transcription, with direct impact on the tagging task, as well as the additional tags required. Transcription options allow in some cases for automatic tag identification and replacement, through a post-tagger process. Other cases, like the annotation of discourse markers, are more complex and require manual revision (and eventual listening). Since the final annotation will not only include the POS tag but also the wordform lemma, the paper also addresses issues related to the lemmatisation task. The posit...

This paper reports the current Portuguese WordNet (WordNet.PT) research and development directions, which mainly regard the enrichment of the WordNet model with event and argument structures (section 1), the codification of crosspart-of speech relations (section 2) and the exploitation of WordNet.PT in concrete applications (section 3).

Lexicology and lexicon models are necessarily concerned with content words, being grammatical and functional categories often set aside. Currently, however, lexicographers work for real needs and, in a NLP perspective, the nature of computational lexicons reflects a necessary match between what we know about the mental lexicon and what we need to encode about the set of words of a given language. Prepositions, in many languages, combine these two prototypes of words – lexical and functional –, as they can have full meaning or serve solely as structural aids. Based on the analysis of Portuguese prepositions related to the expression of movement, this paper describes how the integration of prepositions in wordnets is possible and quite easy, requiring mainly the linguistic adaptation of the tests and conditions that mediate the establishment of the relations of synonymy, antonymy, hyperonymy and cause. In what concerns lexicographic strategies, the integration of prepositions shows th...

This paper addresses issues on coding design in the context of control of systems equipped with low-energy sensors networks. We particularly focus on issues of low energy consumption (energy-aware). To this aim, we propose to use a coding strategy with the ability to quantify and to differentiate stand-still signal events from changes in the source (level crossing detector). Coding is effectuated by defining a 3-valued alphabet. Then, the stand-still signal event is modulated with a low energy carrier, whereas the changes of levels will be modulated with enough energy. The paper studies the closed-loop properties of such arrangement for one-dimensional system. In particular, we derive conditions required so that this coding algorithm preserves closed loop stability.