A toolkit for a generative lexicon

In this paper we describe the conception of a software toolkit designed for the construction, maintenance and collaborative use of a Generative Lexicon. In order to ease its portability and spreading use, this tool was built with free and open source products. We eventually tested the toolkit and showed it filters the adequate form of anaphoric reference to the modifier in endocentric compounds.Comment: poster - 6 page

Studies of the evolution of the x ray emission of clusters of galaxies

The x ray luminosity function of clusters of galaxies was determined at different cosmic epoches using data from the Einstein Observatory Extended Medium Survey. The sample consisted of 67 x ray selected clusters that were grouped into three redshift shells. Evolution was detected in the x ray properties of clusters. The present volume density of high luminosity clusters was found to be greater than it was in the past. This result is the first convincing evidence for evolution in the x ray properties of clusters. Investigations into the constraints provided by these data on various Cold Dark Matter models are underway

Large Eddy Simulation of a Turbulent Nonpremixed Jet Flame Using a Finite-Rate Chemistry Model

Large eddy simulation (LES) is conducted of a turbulent piloted nonpremixed methane jet flame. This flame has been studied experimentally at Sandia National Laboratories. The subgrid scale (SGS) closure in LES is based on the scalar filtered mass density function (SFMDF) methodology. The SFMDF is essentially the mass weighted probability density function (PDF) of the SGS scalar quantities. The SFMDF is obtained from an exact transport equation which provides a closed form for the chemical reaction effects. The unclosed terms in this equation are modeled by a set of stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The SDEs are solved by a hybrid finite-difference/Lagrangian Monte Carlo procedure. This flame exhibits little local extinction. In previous work, the instantaneous flame composition was related to the mixture fraction based on the flamelet model at low strain rates. In the present work, this assumption is relaxed, and a direct solver is employed for finite-rate chemistry. The results via this method agree favorably with those obtained experimentally. The end result is an accurate and affordable method for the LES of realistic turbulent flames

Environmental Resource Management in Borderlands: Evolution from Competing Interests to Common Aversions

Great enthusiasm is attached to the emergence of cross-border regions (CBRs) as a new institutional arrangement for dealing with local cross-border environmental resource management and other issues that remain too distant from national capitals and/or too expensive to be addressed in the traditional topocraticmanner requiring instead local adhocratic methods. This study briefly discusses the perceived value of CBRs and necessary and sufficient conditions for the successful and sustainable development of such places. Then, assuming that necessary conditions can be met, the study investigates an intriguing hypothesis concerning the catalyzing of sustainable consensus for cross-border resource management based on a game theoretical approach that employs the use of dilemma of common aversion rather than the more traditional dilemma of competing common interests. Using this lens to investigate a series of events on the Pacific northwestern Canadian-American border in a part of the Fraser Lowland, we look for evidence of the emergence of an active and sustainable CBR to address local trans-border resource management issues. Although our micro-level scale fails to conclusively demonstrate such evidence, it does demonstrate the value of using this approach and suggests a number of avenues for further research

The Genesis Story Understanding and Story Telling System A 21st Century Step toward Artificial Intelligence

Story understanding is an important differentiator of human intelligence, perhaps the most important differentiator. The Genesis system was built to model and explore aspects of story understanding using simply expressed, 20-100 sentence stories drawn from sources ranging from fairy tales to Shakespeare’s plays. I describe Genesis at work as it reflects on its reading, searching for concepts, reads stories with controllable allegiances and cultural biases, models personality traits, answers basic questions about why and when, notes concept onsets, anticipating trouble, calculates similarity using concepts, models question-driven interpretation, aligns similar stories for analogical reasoning, develops summaries, and tells and persuades using a reader model. I conclude with thoughts on how Genesis would describe people in pictures and video, thus engaging with the CBMM challenge problem.This work was supported, in part, by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF - 1231216

The multi-faceted use of the OAI-PMH in the LANL Repository

This paper focuses on the multifaceted use of the OAI-PMH in a repository architecture designed to store digital assets at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and to make the stored assets available in a uniform way to various downstream applications. In the architecture, the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language is used as the XML-based format to represent complex digital objects. Upon ingestion, these objects are stored in a multitude of autonomous OAI-PMH repositories. An OAI-PMH compliant Repository Index keeps track of the creation and location of all those repositories, whereas an Identifier Resolver keeps track of the location of individual objects. An OAI-PMH Federator is introduced as a single-point-of-access to downstream harvesters. It hides the complexity of the environment to those harvesters, and allows them to obtain transformations of stored objects. While the proposed architecture is described in the context of the LANL library, the paper will also touch on its more general applicability

The Strong Story Hypothesis and the Directed Perception Hypothesis

I ask why humans are smarter than other primates, and I hypothesize that an important part of the answer lies in what I call the Strong Story Hypothesis, which holds that story telling and understanding have a central role in human intelligence. Next, I introduce another hypothesis, the Driven Perception Hypothesis, which holds that we derive much of our commonsense, including the commonsense required in story understanding, by deploying our perceptual apparatus on real and imagined events. Then, after discussing methodology, I describe the representations and methods embodied in the Genesis system, a story-understanding system that analyzes stories ranging from precis of Shakespeare's plots to descriptions of conflicts in cyberspace. The Genesis system works with short story summaries, provided in English, together with low-level commonsense rules and higher-level reflection patterns, likewise expressed in English. Using only a small collection of commonsense rules and reflection patterns, Genesis demonstrates several story-understanding capabilities, such as determining that both Macbeth and the 2007 Russia-Estonia Cyberwar involve revenge, even though neither the word revenge nor any of its synonyms are mentioned. Finally, I describe Rao's Visio-Spatial Reasoning System, a system that recognizes activities such as approaching, jumping, and giving, and answers commonsense questions posed by Genesis.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (IIS-0413206)United States. Office of Naval Research (N00014-09-1-0597)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (A9550-05-1-0321)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (FA8750-10-1-0076