Using Synchronic and Diachronic Relations for Summarizing Multiple Documents Describing Evolving Events

In this paper we present a fresh look at the problem of summarizing evolving events from multiple sources. After a discussion concerning the nature of evolving events we introduce a distinction between linearly and non-linearly evolving events. We present then a general methodology for the automatic creation of summaries from evolving events. At its heart lie the notions of Synchronic and Diachronic cross-document Relations (SDRs), whose aim is the identification of similarities and differences between sources, from a synchronical and diachronical perspective. SDRs do not connect documents or textual elements found therein, but structures one might call messages. Applying this methodology will yield a set of messages and relations, SDRs, connecting them, that is a graph which we call grid. We will show how such a grid can be considered as the starting point of a Natural Language Generation System. The methodology is evaluated in two case-studies, one for linearly evolving events (descriptions of football matches) and another one for non-linearly evolving events (terrorist incidents involving hostages). In both cases we evaluate the results produced by our computational systems.Comment: 45 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the Journal of Intelligent Information System

OASys: An AND/OR parallel logic programming system

The OASys (Or/And SYStem) is a software implementation designed for AND/OR-parallel execution of logic programs. In order to combine these two types of parallelism, OASys considers each alternative path as a totally independent computation (leading to OR-parallelism) which consists of a conjunction of determinate subgoals (leading to AND-parallelism). This computation model is motivated by the need for the elimination of communication between processing elements (PEs). OASys aims towards a distributed memory architecture in which the PEs performing the OR-parallel computation possess their own address space while other simple processing units are assigned with AND-parallel computation and share the same address space. OASys execution is based on distributed scheduling which allows either recomputation of paths or environment copying. We discuss in detail the OASys execution scheme and we demonstrate OASys effectiveness by presenting the results obtained by a prototype implementation, running on a network of workstations. The results show that speedup obtained by AND/OR-parallelism is greater than the speedups obtained by exploiting AND or OR-parallelism alone. In addition, comparative performance measurements show that copying has a minor advantage over recomputation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Domain expert user development: The smartgov approach

SmartGov project funded by the European Union is a knowledge-based platform that assists pubic-sector employees with suitable expertise to generate online transaction devices by simplifying service development, maintenance, and integration with installed information technology systems. The project delivers intelligent e-forms development and maintenance environment and associated framework for e-government services. SmartGov address various problems faced by the stakeholders while implementing e-services such as limited view of domain experts, lost information, complexity of creating e-forms, and inadequate access. In a SmartGov approach, the implicit knowledge is made explicit in the form of documentation and data validation rules. The central concept of SmartGov is the transaction service element (TSE) that contain metadata and domain knowledge

Using synchronic and diachronic relations for summarizing multiple documents describing evolving events

In this paper we present a fresh look at the problem of summarizing evolving events from multiple sources. After a discussion concerning the nature of evolving events we introduce a distinction between linearly and non-linearly evolving events. We present then a general methodology for the automatic creation of summaries from evolving events. At its heart lie the notions of Synchronic and Diachronic cross-document Relations (SDRs), whose aim is the identification of similarities and differences between sources, from a synchronical and diachronical perspective. SDRs do not connect documents or textual elements found therein, but structures one might call messages. Applying this methodology will yield a set of messages and relations, SDRs, connecting them, that is a graph which we call grid. We will show how such a grid can be considered as the starting point of a Natural Language Generation System. The methodology is evaluated in two case-studies, one for linearly evolving events (descriptions of football matches) and another one for non-linearly evolving events (terrorist incidents involving hostages). In both cases we evaluate the results produced by our computational systems. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Crew Pairing Optimization Based on CLP

The crew pairing optimization problem is faced by airline companies as an intensive part of the crew scheduling process. Crew scheduling is the assignment of cockpit and cabin crews to the flight legs that a company has to carry out during a predefined period of time. Due to the significant contribution of the crew cost to the overall operating cost of an airline company, the automation of the crew scheduling procedure is highly desirable. However, the crew pairing optimization subproblem of crew scheduling is extremely difficult and combinatorial in nature due to the large number and complexity of the involved constraints. The requirement for optimality makes it even more difficult. Many attempts have been made in the past 40 years to tackle the crew pairing optimization problem using methods from Operations Research. In this paper, an approach based on pure Constraint Logic Programming is presented, which leads to an elegant and flexible modeling of the problem. The whole process is ..

OASys: An AND/OR parallel logic programming

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