OBJECTIVES As part of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Single Technology Appraisal (STA) process, manufacturers present submissions outlining the clinical and cost-effectiveness of new technologies. These submissions are critically appraised by Evidence Review Groups (ERGs), who produce a report, which forms part of the evidence considered by the NICE Appraisal C...

We summarize the status of our program of near-infrared adaptive optics observations of ultracompact Hii regions. By means of selected results we demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for disentangling the complexity of massive star-forming regions. The primary scientific aims of our study are the identification of the ionizing stars, the characterization of the stellar population, the c...

These notes were prepared for three guest lectures I gave at Stanford in Spring quarter of 2017 as part of Amir Dembo’s graduate-level course on Large Deviations and Random Matrices. My primary sources were: (1) Sections 2.3 and 2.7 of Tao’s text on random matrix theory [Tao12] (also available on his blog). (2) The ICM lecture notes of Rudelson and Vershynin [RV10]. (3) The paper [TV10a] of Tao...

Technological advancements have made increased internet usage around the world in recent times and individuals use internet search engines as primary medium of reference for clarification of concept and knowledge level doubts. Rarely printed books are used for such purposes and its usage is fading out. However technology should help the learner to gain knowledge fully and effectively. Many lear...

This paper describes a method of processing unknown words in a HPSGbased dialogue system, with acquisition of lexical semantics via clarification questions answered by the user. Use of a highly contextualized semantic representation, together with an utterance-anaphoric view of clarification, allows the clarificational dialogue to be integrated within the grammar and governed by standard rules ...

Enabling respondents to obtain clarification about the intended meaning of survey questions can dramatically improve response accuracy. However, respondents often do not recognize that their conceptions of terms in a question can differ from the question author's conception. As a result they do not request clarification on many occasions when it could improve their understanding and, thus, the ...