We focused on two issues: answer selection and confidence estimation. We found that some simple constraints on the candidate answers can improve a pure IR-based technique for answer selection. We also found that a few simple features derived from the questionanswer pairs can be used for effective confidence estimation. Our results also confirmed findings by Dumais et al, 2002 that the World-Wid...

In this paper, a candidate selection method using a voting scheme is proposed for speeding up a on-line Chinese character recognition system. Three steps in this method are described as follows: First, several simple features are extracted from the input ink data, such as peripheral code. Then, the number of votes which denote the coarse matching scores between input features and 5401 reference...

In this paper we augment the wave-averaged mean field equations commonly used to describe wave set-up and wave-induced mean currents in the near-shore zone, with an empirical sediment flux law depending only on the wave-induced mean current and mean total depth. This model allows the bottom to evolve slowly in time, and is used to examine how sediment transport affects wave set-up in the surf z...

The shallow and fragile knowledge on the Web does not examine in depth the things: it behaves lightly. The conditions created by the Web makes our attention labile and especially fickle, it’s unable to concentrate for long as we are trained to “surf” without going though never in depth. The Web also brings with it the added advantage of a nearly availability infinite knowledge but leads to a lo...

An exportable and robust system using only camera images is proposed for path execution in robot navigation. Motion information is extracted in the form of optical flow from SURF robust descriptors of consecutive frames, so the method is called SURF flow. This information is used to correct robot displacement when a straight forward path command is sent to the robot, but it is not really execut...

Using topology for feature analysis in flow fields faces several problems. First of all, not all features can be detected using topology based methods. Second, while in flow feature analysis the user is interested in a quantification of feature parameters like position, size, shape, radial velocity and other parameters of feature models, many of these parameters can not be determined using topo...

Black Africans constitute a small proportion of previous audience research into mobile consumption. Most especially, the teenage Africans, who are most likely than adult Africans to adopt mobile phones, are under researched despite their increasing population and spending power in the UK in recent years. However, they constitute a distinct market for mobile phones with distinct preference for e...

The SenseCam is a wearable camera that automatically takes photos of the wearer’s activities, generating thousands of images per day. Automatically organising these images for efficient search and retrieval is a challenging task, but can be simplified by providing semantic information with each photo, such as the wearer’s location during capture time. We propose a method for automatically deter...

At present, online shopping is typically a search-oriented activity where a user gains access to products which best match their query. Instead, we propose a surf-oriented online shopping paradigm, which links associated products allowing users to ”wander around” the online store and enjoy browsing a variety of items. As an initial step in creating this experience, we constructed a prototype of...

Software to interpret tandem mass spectra, entitled Method for Analyzing Patterns in Spectra (MAPS), has been developed to provide substructure information for an automated compound identification system, This software consists of several program modules which manipulate databases of tandem mass spectra and substructure information, generate substructure identification rules, and apply these ru...