This paper describes an approach to adapt an existing multilingual Open-Domain Question Answering (ODQA) system for factoid questions to a Restricted Domain, the Geographical Domain. The adaptation of this ODQA system involved the modification of some components of our system such as: Question Processing, Passage Retrieval and Answer Extraction. The new system uses external resources like GNS G...

A dual-parameter optical sensor has been realized by UV-writing a long-period and a Bragg grating structure in D-fiber. The hybrid configuration permits the detection of the temperature from the latter and measuring the external refractive index from the former responses, respectively. The employment of the D-fiber allows as effective modification and enhancement of the device sensitivity by cl...

Only 17.5 % of all Indian homes use LPG as their primary cooking fuel, with 90 % of rural households dependent on some form of biomass. To improve the quality of life of such a large number of people, it is imperative that clean and renewable alternatives are provided for cooking. This paper presents one such. An ethanol stove running on 50 % ethanol-water mixture has been developed at Nimbkar ...

Values of some characteristic parameters of confined explosions for LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas)-air quiescent mixtures are examined in correlation with the initial pressure of fuel-air mixture and fuel/air ratio. The explosion pressures, the explosion times and the maximum rates of pressure rise were obtained from experiments made at ambient initial temperature in two closed vessels with cent...

The relationship between individual cognition and cultural phenomena at the society level can be transformed by cultural transmission (Kirby, Dowman, & Griffiths, 2007). Top-down models of this process have typically assumed that individuals only adopt a single linguistic trait. Recent extensions include ‘bilingual’ agents, able to adopt multiple linguistic traits (Burkett & Griffiths, 2010). H...

The effect of hydrogen diffusion on the transmission spectrum of Long Period Grating (LPG) is investigated by monitoring the wavelength shift and the intensity variation in the loss peaks. The LPG is inscribed in a hydrogen loaded standard telecommunication fiber and experiments are performed at different annealing temperature and time to observe the spectral changes. Keywords— Fiber grating, L...

ZnO nanorods (diameters∼25 nmand lengths∼145-150 nm) were synthesized by using a simple solochemical method and their LPG sensing properties were investigated. The ZnO nanorods exhibited outstanding gas sensingcharacteristics such as, higher gas response (∼502 to 50ppm LPG at 300 ◦C), extremely rapid response(∼6-7 s), fast recovery (∼6–7 s), excellent reproducibility, good sensing selectivity a...

The long-term goal of this project is to improve the high-resolution model forecasts by developing a real-time globally re-locatable capability to initialize/assimilate the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) land-surface model soil parameters. The partition of the model surface sensible and latent heat fluxes in the land-surface parameterization is sensitive to the in...

This paper describes categories for landscape elements in the language of the Yindjibarndi people, a community of Indigenous Australians. Yindjibarndi terms for topographic features were obtained from dictionaries, and augmented and refined through discussions with local language experts in the Yindjibarndi community. In this paper, the Yindjibarndi terms for convex landforms and for water bodi...

...................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION .................................................................. 5 Introduction......................................................................................................................... 5 Thesis Organization .....................