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PTC Creo Elements/Direct (formerly CoCreate) allows you to immediately realize the proven performance of PTC's industry-leading design solutions today while putting you on the path to achieve breakthrough productivity gains with PTC Creo.
PTC Creo Elements/Direct 3D Access is a CAD viewer for sharing 2D and 3D product design concepts securely across extended product design teams. It allows your internal staff, customers, partners and supply chain members to visualize designs in detail, provide review input and access both neutral and native CAD data. The viewer also lets team members explore "what if" design alternatives for modifying, restructuring or repositioning of parts and assemblies, as well as managing product data seamlessly in combination with PTC Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager. By enabling multi-CAD file sharing and conversion, it can lower CAD license costs and enable risk-free design collaboration that can greatly accelerate your product development process.
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Supporting Quality, Safe Foods and Consumer Products
The GMA Science and Education Foundation (GMA SEF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit foundation that provides significant and meaningful scientific and educational contributions to the food and consumer products industry.
Through the foundation, the global food industry can leverage state-of-the-art technologies and processes with the technical expertise provided by GMA's scientific staff to achieve timely results and solutions.
The mission of the foundation is to deliver innovative research, state-of-the art training and best-in-class education programs to the food industry and consumers and, thereby, contributes to the delivery of high quality, safe food and consumer products.
Innovative Research
GMA SEF research projects are designed to advance knowledge in food safety and food science by targeting broad issues affecting the food industry.
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The SEF supports middle school education focusing on food safety concepts while meeting common core standard.
State-of-the-Art Training
The Science and Education Foundation, in close collaboration with GMA subject matter experts, scientists, and partner institutions, offer a comprehensive suite of training programs.

subset: commoncrawl


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|Half Baths
|Property type
|Minimum Stay
Bashan Lake is well known for its crystal clear waters. The cleanest lake in Connecticut! Enjoy swimming, hiking, boating (public boat launch), biking, fishing, wildlife viewing, shopping, restaurants, theatre, cinemas, museums, and sightseeing. Close driving distance to Public Golf Course, Goodspeed Opera House, Gillette Castle, Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, Devil's Hopyard, Essex Steam Train and much more.
My wife and my daughter's family (including my daughtr, her husband and two grandson's), stayed at this property while attending a funeral. We decided to stay a few extra days to fill up the week.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay there in this peaceful setting. The setup allowed privacy when needed for bedrooms and bathrooms, yet provided a great gathering area for the whole family in what I would call a "great room" portion of the house which included the spacious kitchen, dining room and large living area. This great room allowed us to chat while watching tv, dining, or preparing meals. The kitchen had everything we needed - all we had to do was buy the food.
While remote and quiet, the property is also centrally located in CT, allowing us a reasonable drive to the airport and to the shoreline where the whole family went to Mystic Seaport and the Aquarium as well as the beach. It is also located very close to a great state park, The Devil's Hopyard, which has a great stream complete with waterfalls. Here, my grandson caught his first fish, a large brook trout.
The owners were very easy to work with and the process was handled without hassles or surprises, The property was clean, and everything advertised met or exceeded our expectations. We would definitely stay there again and would recommend this property to any friend or relative.
My family had a wedding to attend in Connecticut so we stayed at this beautiful clean home in East Haddam. It was very spacious and family friendly with plenty of play space out in the backyard. Most importantly was the easy access to the private beach, which was small but never crowded. The owners of the home were easily accessible, prompt and very reliable. We wish we could have stayed more than one week!! We would definitely return here.
This newer house is located on a quiet Cul-de-sac just a short walk
away from Sunset acres private beach on Bashan Lake, with beach rights
included. This 2 bedroom home can sleep up to 6 people. Comes with fully equipped kitchen, linens & towels. Bashan Lake is a
crystal clear, spring-fed lake surrounded by natural beauty.
East Haddam is located 30 minutes from Hartford, 20 minutes from
Old Saybrook, and a perfect central location for daytrips to Mystic Seaport, Mystic Aquarium, Mohegan Sun, MGM and Foxwoods Casino's, Groton Submarine Base and Museum, Nature's Art (Dinosaur Park), Gillete Castle, Goodspeed Opera House, Kid City and many other attractions.
Other Activities: Shopping, wildlife viewing, beautiful sunsets over the lake.


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When you're taking notes at a meeting, conference or training class, how much information can you hope to recall? Do your notes help you easily recall the key points and actions? Or do they help very little even just a few hours after the event?
Over the years, there have been many tried and tested systems of note taking proposed for students and business people alike. The Cornell Note Taking System is a very simple yet effective system.
Originally developed for students by Walter Pauk at Cornell University, it is effective whenever you need to take notes and recall information.
The Cornell System is a great way of organizing your notes so that you can later identify the key points and actions, and recall information easily. With this system, you organize the notes as you take them; there is no need to go extra effort of rewriting your notes. So the system is both effective and efficient.
The Cornell format is very simple. Here's how to create a note-taking page:
|Cue Column
← 2.5 inches →
|Note Taking Column
| ↑
2 inches (4 cms) For Summary
Using the Cornell note taking system involves three main stages...
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Home » General News
Senior Angel Jones Has Big Plans
May 29, 2014By Donald Clark of Greene Central High School
By Stormie Moore
Senior Angel Jones, daughter of Dennis and Angela Jones of Hookerton, is planning big things for herself in the future.
Jones has big plans once she graduates from high school and takes the summer for a vacation from school. "I live in Hookerton and have lived there all my life," said Jones.
"My plans are to attend the University of North Carolina at Pembroke after I graduate. I have been accepted to this college and many others including Winston-Salem State University, Elizabeth City State University, and Chowan University, so my decision was difficult to make," commented Jones.
"I have always liked working with computers, so I knew I wanted to make this my career," said Jones. She plans to study Computer Science at UNC-Pembroke.
Jones participates in extra-curricular activities where she has also been awarded Student of the Month because of her achievements.
"I participate in Future Business Leaders of America, Spanish Club, and the Yearbook Club," said Jones.
She feels like participating in these clubs during her high school career helped contribute to her college acceptance.
"Angel is mature, hard-working, caring, and goal driven. When you give Angel an assignment, you don't worry about it--you know it will be carried out to the best of her ability, which means the assignment will be done well," said Digital Media teacher Sandra Stocks. "On a personal note, I have enjoyed getting to know Angel and her family, and I will truly miss her after graduation."
"Angel was a joy to teach; she was always willing to do what was asked of her without complaining," commented math teacher Dana Hedgpeth.
"Potential is the best word to describe Angel. She has tons of it. Whatever she chooses to do, she will do great at it," said Lenoir Community College Graphics teacher Doug Harrison.
"Angel has very big plans in her future, and I know she will succeed at the things she plans to accomplish in life," commented math teacher Rebecca Burris. "She is a very responsible young lady that has never giving anybody a hard time."
"Angel was my top students in Microsoft Excel/Access; she maintained an 'A' plus average," said Business teacher James Monroe. "Angel was duel certified in both Excel and Access; she was a joy to teach."


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Tuloso-Midway girls top Callalen to claim final 30-4A playoff spot
Second-half run boosts T-M past Calallen
CORPUS CHRISTI - There were no big third quarter runs by Calallen this time. The Wildcats never even took the lead on Tuloso-Midway in the second half of Friday night's battle for the final playoff spot from District 30-4A.
Instead, it was the Cherokees coming up big in the second half, and they're headed back to the Class 4A playoffs because of it.
T-M used a 25-15 second-half run to break a 25-all tie before holding off the Wildcats at home, 59-51 to claim the fourth and final playoff spot in 30-4A.
The Cherokees (21-13 overall) advance to play District 32-4A champion Floresville at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Beeville in the bi-district playoffs.
"With the coaching staff that we have, this is our fifth year in a row to be in the playoffs," T-M coach Hector Serna said. "So, the girls wanted to continue that, and the only way that we could keep it going was to come in here and beat Calallen. They did great. I'm really proud of them."
Calallen finished its season at 20-13.
"It hurts; I'm going to miss these (six) seniors," said Wildcats first-year coach Matt Oden, who previously coached girls basketball at T-M for six seasons. "I wish this senior group was sophomores and juniors so that I can be around them more than just one year."
Calallen and T-M came into Friday's winner-take-all game for 30-4A's final playoff berth with matching 5-7 district records. The teams also split their head-to-head 30-4A games this season — with each team winning on the other's home floor — which forced the additional game between the district rivals.
The last time the teams played at T-M, the Wildcats used a 21-2 third-quarter run to overcome a three-point halftime deficit and beat the Cherokees 52-45.
T-M made sure that wouldn't happen again, however.
"It was good for us to play here. That's what the girls wanted," Serna said. "Especially the (three) seniors, they wanted to play one more time in this
T-M junior guard Cami Horman scored nine of her team-high 19 points in the third quarter. Horman also made three of her four 3-pointers in that decisive quarter.
"We weren't up on her tight enough; you've just got to hand it to her," Oden said. "Horman stepped up in a big ballgame and hit those 3s."
Senior forward/post Leah Alley and senior guard/forward Deserae Iglesias also combined for 14 points in the second half for the Cherokees, who also got six points from sophomore forward/post Lexi Ruiz in the final two quarters of play. Alley finished with 13 points, while Iglesias had 11.
Calallen senior guard Jackie Treat scored 11 of her team-high 19 points in the second half. Treat also had the Wildcats' lone 3-pointer.
Treat's driving layup on the Wildcats' first possession of the third quarter tied the game at 25.
T-M then went on an 11-4 run — capped by Ruiz's driving basket — to take a 36-29 lead.
Calallen scored the next six points to pull to within 36-35 on jumper by senior guard Ally Karagas.
Horman responded with her third 3-pointer of the quarter with 27 seconds left in the frame to help the Cherokees take a 39-35 lead.
Iglesias' jumper pushed T-M's lead to six in the opening minute of the fourth quarter.
Senior guard Kristine Cramer's three-point play later brought Calallen to within 41-38, before T-M answered with junior guard/forward Miranda Jimenez's three-point play following a nice pass from Horman.
The Wildcats wouldn't come closer than four points the rest of the way, as Alley scored five straight points — on a three-point play and a driving layup — to cap a 6-0 T-M run which gave it a 50-40 lead with 4:19 remaining in the game.
Calallen later closed to within 55-51 on senior post Jenna Arevalo's putback with 46 seconds left to play.
T-M scored the next four points — on two free throws by Ruiz and a layup by Iglesias — to put it away, which also sparked a celebration near the Cherokees' bench immediately after the game.
Calallen 12 11 12 16—51
Calallen — Jackie Treat 19, Kristine Cramer 6, Sara Kneip 4, Jenna Arevalo 6, Haley Clayton 4, Ally Karagas 5, Emma Atkinson 7.
T-M — Cami Horman 19, Lauren Turner 3, Leah Alley 13, Deserae Iglesias 11, Lexi Ruiz 8, Miranda Jimenez 4, Katy Graves 1.
3-pointers — T-M, Horman 4, Iglesias 1, Turner 1. Calallen, Treat 1.
Records: T-M, Overall, 21-13. Calallen, Overall, 20-13.
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Sumire Takahana is a seemingly normal school girl cursed with the ability to see malevolent ghosts known as "Viruses." Her life hits a crossroads after a run-in with Lucia, a "gothic lolita" clad monster killer for hire. Not content to stay on the sidelines while these Viruses prey on the weak, Sumire decides to join forces with the mysterious eyepatch-wearing Lucia to hunt down the Viruses before they can hurt anyone else.
As Venus Vangard squares off against Sonoka's evil minions, Sumire's berserker powers spiral out of control... and it's Lucia who's caught in the middle!
While Sonoka-sama's minions continue their attacks on those with the "vision" like Sumire, pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place as Lucia and her friends discover the contents of her dead mother's forgotten diary!
It's been one battle after another against stronger and stranger foes. Now, the ultimate showdown between the crew of Venus Vanguard and their mysterious enemy has come. Will Sumire's feelings for her boyfriend Yoshiki survive the terrible discovery she's about to make?
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A system and method to interactively converse with a cognitively overloaded user of a device, includes maintaining a knowledge base of information regarding the device and a domain, organizing the information in at least one of a relational manner and an ontological manner, receiving speech from the user, converting the speech into a word sequence, recognizing a partial proper name in the word sequence, identifying meaning structures from the word sequence using a model of the domain information, adjusting a boundary of the partial proper names to enhance an accuracy of the meaning structures, interpreting the meaning structures in a context of the conversation with the cognitively overloaded user using the knowledge base, selecting a content for a response to the cognitively overloaded user, generating the response based on the selected content, the context of the conversation, and grammatical rules, and synthesizing speech wave forms for the response.
1. A dialog system, comprising:
a memory circuit including a knowledge base to store device information regarding a plurality of devices and corresponding domains, and to categorize the information in at least one of a relational and an ontological manner, wherein the respective device information of each one of the plurality of devices is encapsulated in the knowledge base in isolation from all other device information in the knowledge base and from device-independent information in the knowledge base for plug-n-play of the domains; and
a processor configured to execute:
a speech recognition module to receive speech from a user and convert the speech into a word sequence, and to recognize at least one of full and partial proper names using a statistical model;
a natural language understanding module to identify meaning structures from the word sequence using a statistically dependent model of a selected one of the domains and based on the device information in the knowledge base regarding the domain, and to adjust a boundary of the at least one of the full and partial proper names without using the statistical model;
a dialogue management module to interpret the meaning structures in a context of the conversation using the device information in the knowledge base regarding the domain, and to construct a content of a response;
a device/application manager to interface between the plurality of devices and the dialogue management module;
a response generation module to select content and generate the response based on the context and grammatical rules; and
a speech synthesis module to synthesize speech wave forms for the response.
2. The dialog system of
3. The dialog system of
a speech enhancer to provide noise reduction and echo cancellation of the received speech.
4. The dialog system of
a prosody detection module to detect at least one of intonation, pause, and duration of the received speech.
5. The dialog system of
6. The dialog system of
7. The dialog system of
8. The dialog system of
9. The dialog system of
10. The dialog system of
11. The dialog system of
12. The dialog system of
13. The dialog system of
14. The dialog system of
15. The dialog system of
the dialogue system distinguishes between definite and indefinite noun phrases of received speech and resolves at least one of definite and indefinite noun phrases of the received speech according to context; and
the response generation is performed in accordance with the resolved noun phrases.
16. The dialog system of
17. The dialog system of
18. The dialog system of
19. The dialog system of
20. The dialog system of
the device/application manager selects one of the plurality of devices to handle a task based on which device is in context; and
a particular device is determined to be the device in context when the particular device is one of (a) expressly addressed and (b) currently in use.
21. The dialog system of
22. A computer-implemented method of interactively conversing with a cognitively overloaded user of a device, the method comprising:
maintaining a knowledge base of information regarding the device and a domain;
organizing the information in at least one of a relational manner and an ontological manner;
receiving, by a processor of the computer, speech from the user;
converting, by the processor, the speech into a word sequence;
recognizing, by the processor, at least one of a full and partial proper name in the word sequence using a statistical model;
identifying, by the processor, meaning structures from the word sequence using a model of the domain information;
adjusting, by the processor, a boundary of the at least one of the full and partial proper names to enhance an accuracy of the meaning structures using a name database and without using the statistical model;
interpreting, by the processor, the meaning structures in a context of the conversation with the cognitively overloaded user using the knowledge base;
selecting, by the processor, a content for a response to the cognitively overloaded user;
generating, by the processor, the response based on the selected content, the context of the conversation, and grammatical rules; and
synthesizing speech wave forms for the response.
23. The method of
reducing a noise of the received speech; and
canceling an echo of the received speech.
24. The method of
registering the device to advertise a capability of the device in linguistic semantic form; and
selecting the device based on at least one of the capability of the device in linguistic semantic form and the context of the conversation, for all types of user requests.
25. The method of
identifying at least one of a pause, hesitation, and duration in the received speech.
26. The method of
forming a proper named class in a class-based grammar by training n-gram models on the named set only; and
dynamic inserting the trained n-gram models in the class-based grammar as the proper name class.
27. The method of
identifying a part of speech tag for each word of the word sequence;
deriving dependency structures from the word sequence to dynamically adapt the model of the domain information;
converting the dependency structures to feature structures; and
associating the part of speech tag and features structures with a semantic topic of the word sequence.
28. The method of
29. The method of
determining one of the plurality of devices for handling an utterance based on at least one of a current device in context, linguistic cues indicating a change in context, and explicit addressing.
30. A hardware-implemented storage medium having stored thereon a set of instructions executable by a processor to perform the following:
maintaining a knowledge base of information regarding a device and a domain;
organizing the information in at least one of a relational manner and an ontological manner;
receiving speech from a user of the device;
converting the speech into a word sequence;
recognizing a partial proper name in the word sequence using a statistical model;
identifying meaning structures from the word sequence using a model of the domain information;
adjusting a boundary of the partial proper names to enhance an accuracy of the meaning structures using a name database and without using the statistical model;
interpreting the meaning structures in a context of the conversation with the user using the knowledge base;
selecting a content for a response to the user;
generating the response based on the selected content, the context of the conversation, and grammatical rules; and
synthesizing speech wave forms for the response.
The present invention relates to a method and system for interactive conversational dialogue for cognitively overloaded device users.
Systems with spoken dialogue interfaces have gained increasing acceptance in a wide range of applications. However, spoken dialogue interface systems may use restricted language and scripted dialogue interactions. In particular, spoken language dialogue systems may involve narrowly focused language understanding and simple models of dialogue interaction. Real human dialogue, however, may be highly context- and situation-dependent, full of ill-formed utterances and sentence fragments, and may be highly interactive and collaborative. For example, speakers may interrupt each other, finish each others' sentences, and jointly build contributions to the shared context.
Understanding language and modeling natural dialogue may be important in building friendly spoken-language interfaces, and may be critically important in settings where the user is focused on external tasks, such as flying a helicopter or driving a car. In such scenarios, users may not be able to plan their utterances ahead of time or "hold that thought" until an appropriate time. Instead, users may need to be able to interrupt the dialogue system and issue instructions that build on the context and situation. Conversely, the dialog system must interpret these contributions in context and should only interrupt the user when appropriate (such as, for example, in critical situations), and any questions from the system should be as focused as possible. Accordingly, speech interfaces in highly stressed or cognitively overloaded domains, i.e. those involving a user concentrating on other tasks, may require a more flexible dialogue with robust, wide-coverage language understanding
In the automotive industry, for example, dialogue systems may offer command and control for devices. However, these systems may rely on key word spotting techniques and finite state techniques for language understanding and dialogue management. These systems may also encounter difficulties associated with updating a new database or porting to a new device/application. Accordingly, due to the limitations of the technologies used by these systems, only constrained spoken language expressions may be handled. Furthermore, the more frequently occurring language phenomena, such as, for example, pronouns, ambiguity, and revisions, may not be processed properly.
An exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention provides an exemplary dialog system and/or method that is flexible, allows users to verbally interact with a variety of devices, and is capable of rich dialogue with full spoken language understanding, multi-threaded dialogue management, dynamic update of information, recognition of partial proper names, and allows easy and efficient plug-n-play domain porting.
In this regard, the exemplary dialog system and/or exemplary method according to the present invention understands certain language phenomena, which may be pervasive in human dialogs but may not be easily handled by existing technologies. In particular, the exemplary dialog system according to the present invention may provide full language analysis, in which the exemplary system understands the subtleties in non-content words, such as "a", "the", "this", "that" and "other". Moreover, an exemplary dialog system may provide situation- and context-dependent interpretation of user utterances.
An exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention may provide dynamic updates so that devices and information content may be added or extended dynamically. In this regard, the present invention may use a set of technologies that allow dynamic update of new content and a fast adaptation to new domains. The exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention may increase the ease of the user to the user in terms of managing explosive amount of content, and may consequently speed up the market acceptance of the technologies. The exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention makes possible a number of applications, and allows companies to quickly adding new applications so they may gain market share in industries, such as, for example, automotive, hand-held devices, and cell-phones. The exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention uses a new set of technologies that allows dynamic content updates and provides the user more convenience in managing the their favorite content items. The new technologies may also allow a developer/company to come up with new applications in more quickly and a cost-effective manner.
The exemplary system and/or exemplary method of the present invention may include a statistical natural language understanding (NLU) module to provide robust full sentence analysis, and a dialogue manager (DM) to support context-dependent interpretation and manage user-system interaction. An exemplary system and/or exemplary method of the present invention may provide robustness in the face of imperfect input from a Speech Recognition (SR) module and human users, including, for example, input involving incomplete references to partial proper names.
An exemplary dialog system and/or exemplary method of the present invention may support a dialogue involving control of an MP3 music-player (a domain with challenges in dealing with proper names), a cellular telephone, a navigation system and/or other point-of-interest (POI) services.
The speech enhancer module 101 enhances the speech received by the exemplary dialog system 100. In particular, the enhancer module 101 may provide, for example, noise reduction and/or echo cancellation.
The speech recognition module 102 receives acoustic signals and outputs a sequence or a lattice of words with additional labels, such as, for example, confidence scores. In this regard, the speech recognition module 102 may include a Nuance speech recognition engine with class-based n-grams and dynamic grammars. N-grams relate to the statistical algorithms that relate words and classes based on probabilities. The natural language understanding module 103 receives the sequence or lattice of words with attached confidence scores and outputs a structured meaning representation based on a statistical model trained on in-domain linguistic data. In this regard, the natural language understanding module 103 is intended to provide a flexible and robust spoken language capability.
The dialogue management module 104 takes the structured meaning representation and issues appropriate instructions to other modules based on the context of the conversation and knowledge obtained from the knowledge base 107.
The knowledge base 107 stores knowledge regarding, for example, the user, the devices, the external environment, and the current contextual situation. The knowledge base 107 may include one or more databases, including, for example, both relational and ontological databases. In particular, the knowledge base 107 may include, for example, a database of ontological relationships among songs, genre, artists, and other attributes. The knowledge base 107 may also include, for example, a database of ontological relationships for navigation tasks and point of interest (POI) services. In this regard, the knowledge base 107 may acquire domain data/knowledge to train the statistical models used in language understanding. The domain data/knowledge may include, for example, statistics for profiling and predicting users' behavior. The knowledge base 107 may also include linguistic knowledge to resolve, for example, ambiguities. In this regard, the linguistic knowledge may be constructed, for example, from generally available dictionaries and other sources, including, for example, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) published by Longman Publishing Corp. or WordNet—an open resource provided by Professor George Miller and his associates at Princeton University (see the Princeton University Website under the Cognitive Science Group).
The knowledge management module 108 manages the knowledge base 107, the general ontology, the domain-specific ontology, and any databases for any active domain. The knowledge management module 108 also updates and synchronizes the current knowledge base 107 among different modules.
The response generation module 105 takes content from the dialog management module 104, selects the relevant parts in this context, and organizes them in succinct and grammatical manner for input to the speech synthesis module 106. In this regard, a content selection method may be used, which is described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/923,590, entitled "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ADAPTIVE NAVIGATION USING A DRIVER'S ROUTE KNOWLEDGE", which was filed on Aug. 20, 2004, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
The speech synthesis module 106 takes a word sequence with tagged features and produces speech waveforms. In particular, the speech synthesis module 106 may include a text-to-speech (TTS) engine implemented, for example, using a Nuance Vocalizer.
The prosody detection module 109 provides additional features, such as, for example, detection of intonation, pause and duration, to improve the performance of certain modules of the exemplary system 100, including, for example, the speech recognition module 102, the natural language understanding module 103 and the dialog manager module 104. In this regard, the techniques described by Venkataraman et al. in "Training a prosody-based dialog act tagger from unlabeled data", IEEE Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2003, may be used.
The exemplary system dialog system 100 may be implemented in a decentralized manner. For example, rather than a hub architecture employed by other systems as described, for example, by Seneff et al. in "Galaxy-II: A Reference Architecture for Conversational System Development", Proc. ICLSP '98, 1998, the exemplary system 100 may be configured in a distributed manner with an event-based, message-oriented middleware to allow for example, dynamic registration of new modules and/or devices 151.
The exemplary dialogue system 100 may use off-the-shelf components. In particular, portions of the exemplary dialogue system 100 may be implemented using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, Nuance Vocalizer 4.0, and Nuance Recognizer 8.5. The exemplary dialog system 100 may include, for example, any suitable processing arrangement, such as, for example, a personal computer with an Intel-based microprocessor. The suitable processing arrangement may be supported, for example, by a wide variety of operating and/or application development environments, including, for example, a Microsoft Windows version 2000 or Linux-based environment. It will be appreciated that modules 101 to 109 of the exemplary dialog system 100 may be co-located on a common platform, or alternatively some or all of these modules may reside separately.
The NLU Module
The statistical tagger 103 a uses Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to describe probabilities in predicting part of speech (POS) tags based on history. The models may be trained, for example, from dependent and/or annotated text data. In this regard, the statistical tagger 103 a may implemented, for example, using techniques as described by Dermataso and Kokkinakis in "Automatic Stochastic Tagging of Natural Language Texts", Computational Linguistics, Volume 21, No. 2, 1995, and a Viterbi algorithm may be used to find a suitable tag sequence.
The statistical dependency parser 103 b uses the statistical probabilities described the statistical tagger 103 a to build a language model that includes a conditional probability component and a mutual information component. The conditional probability component estimates the probability of the grammatical relation of two heads given their two corresponding subtrees. It may be computed using the selective gain computation (SGC) method for conditional maximum entropy modeling as described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/613,366 entitled "A FAST FEATURE SELECTION METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MAXIMUM ENTROPY MODELING", which was filed on Jul. 3, 2003, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
Maximum Entropy (ME) modeling is a general statistical modeling paradigm that may be applied in language modeling and natural language processing to predict linguistic behavior by incorporatinge various informative certain features, each encoding some linguistically statistical event from a corpus of data into a common framework of conditional models. In this regard, the conditional maximum entropy model may take the form:
The mutual information component characterizes the redundancy between the representatives of the left and right subtrees, and may be computed through the factorization of the head tags and conditional mutual information of the words given tags.
The feature mapper 103 c takes the dependency relations from the statistical dependency parser 103 b and produces an Extensible Markup Language (XML) representation of feature structures similar to an f-structure. In the representation, head words, predicates, various modifiers, and sentential features, such as mood, aspect, and tense, are explicitly listed. The mapping is based on a set of patterns of the heads and the modifiers. The patterns may include words, tags, or grammatical relations.
Unlike other prior dialogue systems, the natural language understanding module 103 provides robust full analysis of an input sentence. Not only are conventionally perceived content words extracted, but so are the subtle meanings of various other words. For example, the articles "a", "the", "this", "that" and "other" are differentiated by the natural language module 103 and interpreted appropriately by the dialogue management module 104. It is believed that such articles are ignored by the template matchers of other prior systems, including, for example, those described by Jackson et al. in "A Template Matcher for Robust Natural Language Interpretation", Darpa Speech and Natural Language Workshop, 1991, or by U.S. Pat. No. 6,292,767, entitled "Method And System For Building and Running Natural Language Understanding Systems".
The natural language understanding module 103 supports dynamic updates of the knowledge base 107. The dependency parser 103 b is trained on template data. For example, in the MP3 domain, the training data does not contain any specific song names, but rather a generic class name called songname. This may be true for other classes as well. During parsing, a new song database is supplied or updated. When an input sentence contains a full song name, the name is first identified and its class name songname is added to the existing word sequence as an alternative path. A more difficult case may be when song names are incomplete (a common case with distracted users).
A speech recognizer with class-based grammar (statistical or non-statistical), where a name class, such as, for example, song names, may be defined by another n-gram model trained on the song name set only, and the trained n-gram model is dynamically or statically inserted in the class-based grammar. In this regard, a recognizer for partial proper names may be provided, which labels the corresponding word sub-sequence with more than 90% accuracy when the song name database as described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/892,724 entitled "A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROPER AND PARTIAL PROPER NAME RECOGNITION", which was filed on Jul. 15, 2004, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein. The modified input lattice with proper names is then given to the parser for analysis. In this regard, the exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of present invention may use certain techniques described, for example, by Weng et al. in "Parsing a Lattice with Multiple Grammars", 6th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, ACL/SIGPARSE, Trento, 2000.
The semantic topic classifier 103 d identifies the topic based on input from the statistical tagger 103 a and the statistical dependency parser 103 b. The semantic topic classifier 103 d may use techniques such as, conditional maximum entropy modeling, memory-based modeling, and/or other methods to classify the input sentence into semantic categories. The models used in the semantic topic classifier 103 d may be trained using labeled data.
Dialogue Management Module
Multi-domain Design
The dialogue management module 104 supports a multi-domain environment and may be applied to a wide range of applications, including, for example, control of intelligent devices and tutoring. Different application domains may involve specifying a different grammar for surface-level generation, and a device-specific Activity Model (AM), which represents the tasks being managed by the dialogue management module 104 and their status so that an explicit reference to the task may be provided (e.g., "cancel that"). The Activity Model is a declarative specification of the capabilities of the agent or device with which the dialogue management module 104 interfaces, and includes linguistic information, such as mappings from verbs and their arguments to device-actions. See, for example,
The dialogue management module 104 includes a semantic analyser component 104 a to construct semantic logical forms from a quasi f-structure from the natural language understanding module 103, and obtain dialogue-move types that require contextual information. For example, when the dialogue management module 104 accepts an utterance from the natural language understanding module 103, semantic meaning may be extracted using the current context and referents may be filled using a "salience list", which maintains representations of noun phrases (NPs) and objects that have been introduced into the conversation. Depending on the type of dialogue move, a new command may be added to the Activity Model (AM), or if the incoming utterance was a question, the knowledge management module 108 may be consulted and a resulting answer sent to the natural language understanding module 103. Some of the internal dialogue management module 104 components may allow a mix of domain-dependent and domain-independent processes, where default procedures are implemented independently from a particular domain, but some of their sub-processes may be easily configured to make use of domain-dependent information. Similarly, for new applications, the current implementation may also allow the expansion of logical forms or dialogue-move operators without disrupting the core CDM implementation.
Multi-threaded Context Management
The dialogue management module 104 is configured to manage multi-threaded, multi-topic conversations. This may be particularly important in the car situation, where the driver interacts with multiple devices, potentially interleaved. For example, an interaction to choose and book a restaurant may be interrupted by a cell phone request. In this regard, it is noted that when interacting with multiple devices users may desire to interact with a central controller rather than individually with each device.
The components of the dialogue management module 104 for supporting multi-threaded conversation include a dialogue move tree 104 b and an activity tree 104 c, which act as a framework for other dialogue context functionalities, such as, for example, generating task reports and grounding the user after a break in the conversation (e.g., "What were we talking about?").
The dialogue move tree 104 b represents the historical context of a dialogue. An incoming utterance, classified as a dialogue move, is interpreted in context by attaching itself to an appropriate active node on the dialogue move tree. For example, an answer may attach to an active corresponding question node. A new conversation topic spawns a new branch and a dialogue move that cannot attach itself to the most recent active node may attach to an active node in another branch, which corresponds to a resumed conversation.
The activity tree 104 c manages activities relevant to the current dialogue. When the user issues a command, this may result in a new activity being created and added to the activity tree 104 c. Before the activity can actually be sent to the device for execution, the exemplary system 100 attempts to fully resolve it, including, for example, an attempt to resolve all noun phrases (NPs) or spawning a sub-dialogue to elicit further information. Revisions and corrections (e.g. "I meant/said . . . ") may involve editing an existing activity representation. Activity-execution is monitored on the activity tree 104 c and changes may result in generated output, e.g. on failure or successful completion.
The dialogue move tree 104 b and the activity tree 104 c act as a framework for other dialogue context functionalities, such as, for example, generating task reports and grounding the user after a break in conversation (e.g., the exemplary system 100 may prompt the user with "what were we talking about"). The dialogue move tree 104 b also provides implicit discourse structure for tasks such as reference resolution.
Knowledge Management Module
The knowledge manager (KM) 108 controls the access to knowledge base sources (such as, domain general knowledge and device information) and their updates. Domain knowledge is structured according to domain-dependent ontologies. The knowledge management module 108 may be implemented, for example, using Prot�g�, a domain-independent ontology tool available from Stanford University. Further details regarding Prot�g� may be available, for example, at the web site address of "protege.stanford.edu".
The knowledge management module 108 may be queried by the dialogue management module for instances matching semantic descriptions constructed from a command or query. For example, in the MP3 domain, a command to "play some rock music by Cher" may result in a query for objects of class song with genre=rock and artist=Cher, where genre and rock are (inherited) properties of the class song. When many results satisfy constraints from the user, the dialog management module 104 may use the ontology hierarchy to categorize them and output them in a succinct way to reduce the user's cognitive load. As explained above, the knowledge base module 107 may be dynamically updated with new instances at any point.
In addition, the knowledge management module 108 also serves as the repository of device information, such as the activity model (AM). Alternatively, the activity model (AM) may reside in the device/application manager 110. As a new device is made available, it registers its information with the knowledge management module 108, which then makes it available to the CDM 104.
Device/Application Manager
The device/application manager 110 determines which device is most appropriate for handling a given utterance (e.g., a command or a question) based on factors, such as, for example, the current device in context, linguistic cues that indicate a change in context, explicit addressing, and/or a best match of the utterance to a language template associated with a particular device's Activity Model. In this regard, the device/application manager 110 may isolate the device and/or application dependent information from the general dialogue management module 104 for the purpose of providing a plug-n-play capability. The device/application management module 110 includes state information, which describes the various possible states of a certain device or application and the possible set of values for the states. The activities applicable to the devices/applications, the functionalities provided therefrom, or the possible linguistic expressions that are used for a particular activity or functionality may be maintained and coordinated by the device/application manager 110. In this regard, the device/application-specific items may be encapsulated in a domain model, which may be published when the application is initially used. In particular, the linguistic expressions may be captured via statistical model associated with the natural language understanding module 103, a "tag" module, or via other forms.
To maintain device autonomy, however, each device agent 160 a, 160 b and 160 c may be required to independently process the commands that apply to it, manage its own tasks, and add device-specific utterances to the dialogue management module 104 so that a more successful and natural task dialogue and execution may occur.
The dialogue management module 104 may be implemented using an adaptation from the CSLI Dialogue Manager (CDM), which provides a single-device system that uses a dialogue manager, dialogue move tree, task tree, and a simulation task tree to handle dialogue management and task execution.
According to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, despite supporting multiple devices, the exemplary system 100 may be configured with only one dialogue management module 104 that handles all linguistic communication between the user 151 and the device agents 160 a, 160 b and 160 c. In this regard, the user may feel as if they are only addressing a single agent/device, which has been shown to result in a more effective user interface. Hence, the user 151 may simply issue commands, such as, for example, "drive to the restaurant", or "turn up the volume," and may feel like they are talking to a single agent, and not to the GPS system and radio, respectively.
When the exemplary system 100 is configured with a singled dialogue management module 104, the dialogue management module 104 uses a task-oriented approach to route utterances to the correct agent. For example, when the user 151 makes an utterance, the dialogue management module 104 takes that utterance and places it on the DialogueMoveTree as it does in the single-device dialogue system. If the utterance is not related to any previous utterances (e.g., a command to one of the devices), the dialogue management module 104 may communicate with the device management module 110 to find out which device should receive the utterance. In this instance, the device management module 110 may identify the appropriate device to handle the utterance and act accordingly. If the utterance is in response to a conversational thread that already exists, however, the effects of that utterance may be automatically routed to the appropriate device.
Contextual Devices
The dialogue management module 104 may additionally keep track of the device in current linguistic context. Each time a device is explicitly addressed, or a command may be made that corresponds to a certain device, that device becomes the current device in context. A device may also become the current contextual device by making an utterance itself. This may be maintained, for example, by a device context management module 111, which makes sure that the device in context only remains in context for a logical amount of time before resetting. In other words, when a device becomes the device in context, a timer is started which records how long the device has been in context. At the end of a certain time period, the device in context is reset to null. The timer restarts each time the device, or a different one, is addressed or says an utterance. Hence, the device context management module 111 may be coordinate and/or regulated the taking of turns. In this regard, the device in context may show up in the "CAR" main panel that appears when you run MultideviceApp, or CarApp for the NIST project.
Task-Related Dialogue
To facilitate task-related communication between the user 151 and the devices, an integrated TaskTree may be maintained by the dialogue management module 104, which represents all tasks that each agent has handled. The TaskTree may be synchronized with each agent's task execution management in their SimTaskTree, as described below, so that the dialogue management module 104 may provide feedback to the user about the progress, success and failure of tasks belonging to any and all agents. Thus, reports about task status, completion, failures, etc. may still be generated by the TaskTree.
Alternatively, each device may be responsible for device-specific task-oriented dialogue. For example, if given an ambiguous command, it may be the device's responsibility to resolve the ambiguity and continue with task execution. These utterances and queries may be handled, for example, in the same manner as similar queries in a single-device dialogue system. A sample dialogue involving such device-generated queries is shown in
Distributed Task Management
According to an exemplary embodiment and/or exemplary method of the present invention, task management may involve requiring each device and/or device agent to autonomously and separately manage its own tasks. In this regard, when initially given a user command by the dialogue management 104, the device management module 110 may build a set of generic task properties, using the class MultiDeviceTaskProperties. These properties represent a basic, domain-independent idea of the task corresponding to the user command. The slots of these properties are normal NL slots, such as "command", "direct_object" and "adjectives". Once these properties are built, the device management module 110 sends a copy of these properties to the devices, who each reply back whether they can definitely handle the command, maybe handle the command, or can definitely not handle the command. The current device in context is given the first chance to say that it can, and if it returns that it can definitely handle it then it is automatically given the task. Otherwise, the answers from all devices are compiled and, if there is ambiguity (i.e. two devices can 'definitely' handle the task) then a query is generated to ask the user which device they would like to handle the utterance. When an appropriate device is found, then that command is assigned to that device, the appropriate nodes are added to the TaskTree and the device's SimTaskTree, and the device handles the rest of task execution and communication itself.
Device Registration
In order for a device to participate in the integrated system 100, it may be required to fulfill several requirements, including, for example, requirements related to identification, task functionality and system-specific functionality.
In regard to the requirements related to identification, the device may be required to have a unique identification string so that the device management module 110 may tkeep track of each device. Each device may have a DeviceType (i.e., UAV), and a unique DeviceName (i.e., UAV1). Everything such as Ifs, task management, etc., may use the DeviceName as the identifying tag.
In regards to requirements related to task functionality, the device may be required to have the ability to decide whether, given a generic task description, it has the ability to handle and execute that task as described above. This functionality may be used in both single-device and single-agent tasks as well as multiple-device tasks. It may be implemented by a series of device-specific functions that can be found in the device's code. They take in MultiDeviceTaskProperties, or a GenericSlotSet, and use those properties to determine whether or not they feel like they can execute the task described by the properties.
In regards to requirements related to system-specific functionality, to be compatible with the exemplary system 100, the device may be required to supply other, system-specific classes and functionality. This may include, for example, a TaskLFParser, which takes the generic task properties and builds from then the device-specific task properties, the device's activity model, NPResolver, etc. All of these classes (look in the RestaurantDevice for an example of what must be implemented) may be utilized to provide device-specific task and dialogue handling. Each device's own DeviceStarter class may also fall under this category.
Task Assignment
To maximize or at least improve the reliability of assigning tasks to devices, several factors may be considered by the device management module 110 when it chooses a device to handle a task. It may give first priority to the current device in context. If that device can handle the user command, then it is automatically assigned to it and task execution ensues. Otherwise, the device management module 110 may ask each device whether or not it has the ability to handle this task, and compiles a list of devices that respond affirmatively. If more than one device thinks it can handle a certain task, a query may be generated asking the user to more specifically indicate the device they want used. A sample dialogue is shown in
Task Handling and Execution
As stated earlier, each task may be responsible for executing and maintaining its own tasks. It may do this by maintaining its own SimTaskTree. These SimTaskTrees are, as previously mentioned, kept synchronized with the dialogue management module's single TaskTree to facilitate task-related dialogue—i.e. updates and reports. Thus, each device may continuously update the tasks on its own SimTaskTree according to how its execution is going, (i.e. whether the task is current, done or failed), and these updates may then be picked up by the TaskTree to keep it current as well. As previously mentioned, this may allow the dialogue management module 104 to provide feedback to the user about the progress of all tasks. In other words, the TaskTree may be thought of as a composite of each individual devices' SimTaskTrees. The individual devices only have on their SimTaskTree tasks that they themselves are executing (or have executed, etc), with only a few exceptions with respect to team tasks described below. The TaskTree, however, has a combination of all the tasks from all the devices, and thus in a sense is the conglomeration of each individual SimTaskTree, and a representation of everything going on in the system.
Example Dialogue
The main functionalities are illustrated via an actual sample dialogue for controlling an MP3 music player.
Data Collection
To improve and evaluate the performance of the exemplary system 100 dialogue data may be collected for a particular task. In this regard, a "Wizard of Oz" (WOZ) approach may be used, in which an experiment subject talks to a human being in another room pretending to be a smart machine. This setup may be required to design a high quality dialogue system that simulates human behavior in task-oriented interactions. This is partly because the WOZ approach may set the right expectations for the user during the conversation in terms of language complexity. Consequently, the WOZ approach may avoid being trapped by the difficult problems of understanding human-human conversation, which may be beyond the capability of the state-of-the-art NLP techniques.
To simulate a cognitively overloaded scenario, a driving simulator may be used as an occupying task. As part of the simulator, a video game called Midtown Madness 1 may be used, which is situated in downtown Chicago. A steering wheel with force feedback is mounted in front of the game display. Two divided rooms (called subject room and wizard room) may be set up so that the subject and wizard do not see each other. The wizard acts as an "deal′" dialogue system and the subject interacts with the wizard without knowing or seeing her. The wizard can see the game screen through a video splitter so that she knows the subject's current situation in the driving scene. When the subject needs navigation or entertainment information, she presses a push-to-talk (PTT) button on the wheel and talks into a head-mounted microphone. The wizard only hears the subject speech when PTT is pressed.
The speech from both subject and wizard is recorded to a hard disk by recording software. One scenario may be constructed for operating the MP3 player, where the subjects are asked to create two song lists while they are driving around the city. To create the song lists, the subjects may query about songs in their collection, listen to songs, and add to or delete songs from their lists. This scenario provides multi-threaded dialogues.
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|Raiders at Chargers Point Spread Odds, Trends, Injuries & Matchup
|Written by Anthony Rome
|Tuesday, 02 December 2008 13:50
Thursday Night Preview
San Diego, CA - The San Diego Chargers haven't had a losing season in five years. It's been just as long since their last loss to the Oakland Raiders.
Possibly the most disappointing team of this NFL season wants to make sure neither of those streaks end Thursday night, with the Chargers hosting the Raiders and looking to avoid putting their slim playoff hopes at risk this weekend.
Oddsmakers from online sports book Sportsbook.com have made the Chargers -10 point spread favorites (View NFL Football odds) for Thursday's game (Game Matchup). Current public betting information shows that 55% of bets for this game have been placed on the Chargers -10 (View NFL Football bet percentages).
"They don't call the season off when you're going bad or when the odds are stacked against you that you won't be playing in January," San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers said. "So we've got to go play a game. If you've got any pride or anything about you, you'll prepare and go play."
A year after reaching the AFC championship game, the Chargers (4-8) likely need to win their final four games to have any shot of making the playoffs, and it's a necessity if they are to avoid their first sub-.500 season since going 4-12 in 2003.
The NFC West champion three of the last four years, San Diego is three games behind division-leading Denver with four to play. That means if the Chargers lose Thursday, they will be eliminated from postseason contention if the Broncos beat Kansas City on Sunday.
"We've got to win them all and they've got to lose three of four," Rivers said. "Can it happen? Sure, but we haven't shown the ability to be able to win four in a row."
Rivers' team enters this matchup on a three-game losing streak, equaling the longest he's seen since joining the Chargers in 2004. San Diego hasn't dropped four straight since an 0-5 start in 2003, and one of those losses was a 34-31 defeat in Oakland.
The Raiders (3-9) have lost all 10 meetings since that game, and only one of the last seven has been decided by fewer than 10 points.
A victory Sunday would give San Diego the longest winning streak in the 48-year history of this series. Oakland took 10 in a row from 1972-77, a stretch in which it won the first of its three Super Bowls.
The Raiders' glory days are long gone. They must win out to avoid becoming the third team in NFL history to suffer at least 10 losses in six consecutive seasons - Tampa Bay (1983-94) and Detroit (2001-06) previously did it.
"Every time we win a game right now is very important for us," interim coach Tom Cable said. "For us to go down (to San Diego) and win would be huge."
The Raiders could not slow down LaDainian Tomlinson in the first meeting as he rushed for a season-high 106 yards and two touchdowns in San Diego's 28-18 win on Sept. 28. Lately, though, the ineffectiveness of the reigning two-time NFL rushing champion has mirrored his team's struggles.
He's been held to 60.8 rushing yards per game and 3.2 per carry over the last four weeks. Tomlinson has 794 rushing yards through 12 games after having at least 1,400 in each of the previous six seasons, during which San Diego's run offense finished among the league's top 10 every year. The Chargers are 26th this season with 93.4 yards per game.
Tomlinson had 24 yards on 14 carries in a 22-16 home loss to Atlanta on Sunday as the Chargers gained a season-low 201 yards.
"A lot of people around the league probably think we are going to pack it in and give up. But we won't," Tomlinson said after posting the second-lowest rushing total of his career.
While problems running the ball have plagued a Chargers offense that's proficient through the air - Rivers leads the AFC with a 100.5 passer rating - the Raiders have been done in by the NFL's worst passing attack (139.5 yards per game).
The slow development of second-year quarterback JaMarcus Russell is a big reason why Oakland ranks 29th in total offense (263.3 ypg) and 30th in scoring (14.3 ppg). The only offense to score fewer touchdowns than the Raiders' 13 is that of St. Louis (12).
Oakland's offense had gone 15 consecutive quarters without a TD before a surprising 31-10 win in Denver on Nov. 23. That victory kept the Raiders mathematically in the playoff chase, but they fell right out of it Sunday with a 20-13 home loss to Kansas City as Russell finished 10-of-28 for 132 yards.
"Even though we were 3-8, we were still thinking that there was a chance that we could get to the playoffs," cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha said. "It hurts us because now it's pretty much out of the way. So, we just got to keep playing and, hopefully, get some more wins before the season's over."
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Posted: 12/2/08 5:54 PM ET


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Originally written on Fox Sports Florida | Last updated 11/17/14
When No. 8 Florida State and Virginia Tech meet Thursday night only the Seminoles will be playing for high stakes. The Hokies (4-5, 2-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) are in the midst of their worst season in 20 years and fighting just to become bowl eligible. It's exactly the kind of setup Florida State quarterback E.J. Manuel has warned his teammates about this week -- a struggling team putting its best effort forward on a big stage. "I think I saw that a little bit in the N.C. State game," Manuel said of Florida State's lone loss, 17-16 at N.C. State on Oct. 6. "Not to say that we took them lightly, but they played lights out, they had a good game. ... If they get a chance to knock us off, it will kind of make their season." The Hokies have three games remaining, and need to win two to qualify for a bowl game for the 20th consecutive season. They still have games against Boston College and Virginia, but beating the Seminoles would be a big boost. And despite how frustrating the ...
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Does a competent leader make a good friend?
New research shows that when we elect leaders and politicians we tend to prefer dominant-looking, masculine men, but when we are looking to make new friends we seek the opposite.
New research shows that when we elect leaders and politicians we tend to prefer dominant-looking, masculine men, but when we are looking to make new friends we seek the opposite.
What had started off as a handful of enthusiasts' bid to build the first open digital cinema, camera, AXIOM, from scratch has now become a platform for film-makers, creative industry professionals, artists ...
No one disputes the importance of affordable access to high-speed internet for economic growth in the 21st century.
The global heat streak of the 21st century can be explained with statistics that defy astronomical odds.
Yellowhammers are small, colourful and apparently innocuous birds, but they were once considered to be enemies by farmers in New Zealand. Yellowhammers were introduced there to help fight insect crop pests, ...
The "warming hiatus" that has occurred over the last 15 years has been partly caused by small volcanic eruptions.
German automaker Daimler on Monday showed its vision of the driverless car, a prototype vehicle that allows four passengers to face each other as the vehicle finds its way.
This year has seen a series of reports about likely pensions shortfalls and the urgent need to increase savings.
he Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, revamped, restored and expanded after a three-year closure, is reopening at last, all decked out for the 21st century in its historic Carnegie Mansion home just ...
We've been burning things for hundreds of thousands of years.
With temperature data showing 2014 currently tied for the hottest year on record, the U.N. weather agency on Wednesday rejected claims that global warming has paused.
Shifts in the timing and duration of ice cover, especially the possible lengthening of ice-free periods, may impact polar bears under projected warming before the end of the 21st century, according to a study ...
President Barack Obama says the United States needs to bring its schools into the 21st century when it comes to technology.
In September 2014, archaeologists from the Danish Castle Centre and Aarhus University announced the discovery of a Viking fortress in a field belonging to Vallø Manor, located west of Køge on the east coast ...
Queensland scientists delving into newspaper archives have discovered that catch rates for Queensland's pink snapper fishery have declined almost 90 per cent since the 19th Century.


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Multi-colored fliers line the walls outside Grand Central Art Center's Main Gallery. A blue banner hangs from the ceiling and reads, "Welcome Homeland Security."
A red, black and white sign just inside the Main Gallery mysteriously states: "You may already be a member." Further inside, chaos and mayhem ensue.
"The Cacophony Society – Zone Show" is the newest exhibition at Santa Ana's Grand Central Art Center. It opened Feb. 4 with a massive reception attended by thousands crowding the Artists Village, and continues through April 15.
The show looks back at a series of events, pranks and performances by Cacophony Societies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, New York and, before them, the original Suicide Club of San Francisco.
For the uninitiated, the Cacophony Society – created in 1986 – is a loosely organized collective of guerrilla artists, Dada pranksters and oddball eccentrics seeking "experiences beyond the mainstream." The society grew out of the ashes of the Suicide Club, founded in San Francisco in 1977.
Cacophony Society members have a taste for surrealist sabotage, gluing toasters to light posts, infiltrating cults, and filling teddy bears with cement and placing them on actual store shelves.
The society's best-known activities have been the Burning Man festival at Black Rock Desert in Nevada, and Santa Claus rampages that have occurred in cities around the world. One society member, Chuck Palahniuk, penned a Cacophony-inspired novel titled "Fight Club," which became a major 1999 motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.
The Grand Central exhibit was organized by Cal State Fullerton professor and gallery director Mike McGee and members of the Los Angeles Cacophony Society, namely Al Ridenour, Jon Alloway and Albert Cuellar. The show is filled with fliers, posters, photographs, costumes, installations, gag products and original art overhead – none of which is labeled.
"The style of Cacophony is madhouse," said Ridenour, founder of the L.A. Cacophony Society. "It's dense, with lots of angles. The show consists of old props from events, photos, videos and loops. There's footage from events. It's meant to be an immersive experience."
Without a doubt, there's a lot of clowning going on in the Cacophony Society. Members have often dressed up in clown costumes and acted accordingly.
But members have also worn dog costumes and crashed a Beverly Hills dog show. They've put on bandages, fake blood and zombie makeup and attended political conventions, holding signs that scream, "Zombies for Gore." And, of course, they've donned the red and white Santa outfits and careened through downtown districts with drunken abandon, prompting the city of Portland to respond with police in full riot gear in 1996.
"Their whole thing is really about nihilism, and about a celebration of the individual," McGee said. "It's the individual over corporate mentality. They're always trying to do things that get people to look at things differently."
Before it even opened, the Santa Ana exhibition caused some controversy, though much of it was self-generated. When organizers of the exhibit and the reception outside were in the process of obtaining permits, their plans fell under the scrutiny of Downtown Incorporated of Santa Ana, which produces street fairs and Santa Ana's monthly Art Walk, and a police officer in charge of issuing permits for the city.
Mike McCoy, who works for the Santa Ana Police Department's Division of Homeland Security, raised concerns about initial aims to set objects on fire with a barbecue propellant. He voiced those concerns to Vicky Baxter, executive director of Downtown Inc., who subsequently asked the exhibit's organizers for details on the opening night activities.
Here's where things got a little screwy. Either intentionally or accidentally, members of the L.A. Cacophony Society saw "Homeland Security" and immediately set off the alarms to their constituents. On its website, cacophony.org, and through press releases, the Cacophony Society warned that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was getting involved in a peaceful domestic assembly, inquiring in Big Brother fashion about the activities planned for the Feb. 4 opening.


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2003 BEST Bartender
Greg Griffin, Saint
There are some who believe that a bartender should be neither seen nor heard—that he or she should be a pair of hands floating mimelike in the ether, deft with the empty glass and silent unless rattling out a martini. Not so Greg Griffin, one of the many fine bartenders at Saint. A master of strainer and bottle, Griffin is a briskly professional maker of both cocktails and good conversation—NHL hockey, travel, the accents of Santiago versus Barcelona. Griffin is one of the rare breed of bartenders who's neither grossly snooty nor wincingly effusive, and he can easily prop up a heated Red Sox argument before ducking out, ghostlike, his job of host fulfilled.
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Brad Martin holds his recently designed bottle opener called Bottle Grenade.
- Filed Under
A crowd-funding website will help Brad Martin produce a grenade-shaped tool, a launching point that he hopes could ultimately lead to multiple products and a small business.
The Webster City inventor has used Kickstarter to raise $30,000 and counting in three weeks. As of Friday, 925 backers were interested in his bottle opener/wrench.
"I just had to try," Martin said. "After all, I'm not out anything if I fail." ...


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Mon-Fri: 7am-1am EST / Sat-Sun: 7am-11pm EST
ApplianceAmana Refrigerator
Level of DifficultyReally easy
Time to do repairLess than 15 mins
Age of ApplianceMore than 10 years
Screw drivers
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Removed everything from above shelf. Removed entire assembly from fridge. (Easy, just clips into back) Then removed the rail assembly from the shelf and replaced with the new rails. Also had to remove the little roller wheels from the old assembly and put them on new rails. All this took less than 20 minutes to do, including taking out and replacing the food. I am really glad you provide this service. I really like my "old" fridge and this was the only problem I have had in all the time I have owned it. Thanks for all your help and helpful diagrams. Sally B. TygerSan Antonio, TX
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Tony Award Nominations
Tony Nominations: Cyndi Lauper's 'Kinky Boots' gets 13 nominationsComment
The Cyndi Lauper-scored "Kinky Boots" has earned a leading 13 Tony Award nominations, with the British import "Matilda: The Musical" close behind with 12.
Jessica Simpson finally delivers her long-awaited baby, a girlComment
Daybreak Daily's afternoon glance toward the pop-culture world finds a pregnancy that finally ends, crazy dudes teaming up, other things, and the mystery music video.
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Tuesday, August 1, 2006
© Copyright 2015 Gwinnett Daily Post
FLOWERY BRANCH - One man's words have legitimized the Falcons as a Super Bowl contender.Lawyer Milloy's words, not Michael Vick's. Not to disparage what Vick said last Thursday. His admission that he, as Atlanta's veteran quarterback and most high-profile player, feels a personal obligation for the success or failure of the team is refreshing. His statements showed maturity and perspective. But Milloy's words echoed across the practice field, not an interview room. The chatter from the veteran Pro Bowler, signed as a free agent in the offseason, is constant, whether he is participating in the drill or not. No, talk doesn't produce any more tackles. Not does it force any more turnovers. But attitude does. And Atlanta's defense is a different unit with the addition of Milloy and fellow free agent signees Chris Crocker and John Abraham. "He's going to encourage, he's going to chide, he's going to get after it," said head coach Jim Mora of Milloy. "That's what makes him the best and the others around him. Every team needs to have that." The Falcons lacked a Milloy-type for much of last season. Middle linebacker Ed Hartwell suffered a season-ending injury five games in, forcing Mora's staff to shift personnel around. The shuffling hurt the continuity, but not as much as injuries later in the season would. Veteran defensive end Brady Smith went down with a dislocated toe. Defensive back Kevin Mathis blew out his knee. Other members of the secondary suffered various scrapes, sprains and strains. And just like that, the Falcons went from title contenders to playoff missers. Vick can take the blame for last season if he wants. But one stat tells the story: Atlanta went 3-4 in games decided by less than a touchdown. A year earlier, on the way to an 11-5 finish, the Falcons were 6-1 in those games. Defense wins close games. Vick did some spectacular things in the clutch two years ago. Yet the defense gave him those opportunities. And when the Falcons had the lead, they didn't give it up. Not so last season. Falcons' fans could sense late rallies coming in losses to New England and Tampa Bay. The pass rush disappeared, and the secondary became a sieve. Vick said there were times last season where the offense played more like a team trying not to lose than one competing to win. Right idea, wrong side of the ball. The overhaul in the secondary will make the biggest difference. Replacing Keion Carpenter and Bryan Scott with Crocker and Milloy is like trading in an abacus for a handheld computer. Safety is what Crocker calls the "glue-spots" in an NFL defense. Two of the last four Super Bowl teams, Pittsburgh last season and Philadelphia two years ago, had impact players at safety: the Steelers' Troy Polamalu and the Eagles' Brian Dawkins. "Safety is a position where you set the tempo," Crocker said. "Every good team in the league has tempo-setters in those spot. It's about coming out and being physical and making big plays." The Falcons have that now. A Super Bowl could be next. Adam Van Brimmer is an Atlanta-based writer for Morris News Service. E-mail him at firstname.lastname@example.com or telephone him at 404-589-8424.
More like this story
- Falcons Milloy charged with DUI ( September 16, 2008 )
- Mora looking for kicker at camp ( July 23, 2006 )
- Falcons' injury list long at season's halfway mark ( November 9, 2006 )
- Milloy report released
Police: Falcon failed three sobriety tests ( September 17, 2008 )
- Vick, poor start confirm that nothing seems to go right for Falcons ( October 16, 2007 )


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In the optimization seminar I have to study the quadratic linear ordering problem. And there is one lemma saying some equations form a 'minimal equation system' of a polytope. Does anybody know, what it is?
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Showing faster with the second pregnancy?
I am 5 weeks prgnant and I am showing so much faster than I did if my first one. I know you that you usually show faster with the second one but I didn't think it was this fast. I have already grown into a new bra size and my pants are snug. Could I be further along?
Posted: 10/15/2007 by laurabeth31
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I am 10 weeks with number 2 and i have a little bulge never had anything until 5 month with first they will be 5 yrs apart the due date is my daughters b-dayposted 02/07/2010 by nicole139
I am so happy I came across this!!!! I am 6 weeks pregnant and everything is becoming tight, I'm exhausted, AND have morning sickness. I didn't show until 6 months and didn't experience any of these symptoms with my first child.posted 07/14/2010 by organicgurugirl
this is absolutely true for me. i'm about 11 weeks along right now, and i look like i did last time when i was around 18 weeks!posted 06/21/2010 by CorinaMar
I AM 11 WEEKS WITH MY SECOND BABY AND I FEEL LIKE, I LOOK LIKE IM 4 MONTHS WITH MY FIRST. MY DOCTOR DID TELL ME THAT WITH EVERY PREGNANCY YOU SHOW FASTER AND NOW I FEEL NORMAL!!!posted 07/07/2010 by natalie60
I love this website for all the feedback and reassurance! I'm 10 weeks and my doctor also said I'd show sooner with baby #2, but what is sooner?!?!? I thought I can't be showing! It must be in my head. I started showing at 6 months with baby #1 and so I thought I should suck in my tummy and not let my tummy muscles go so early in the pregnancy, but it's not in my head! I am showing and even though I just look fat I know it's my little baby's environment getting all situated :) Exciting!! Congrats everyone!!posted 07/08/2010 by DDiva86
I am 6 weeks along with my 2nd and just last night I had 3 people ask me if I was pregnant. Yep, already that big. Not sure if I wanted people to know so quickly but what else do you do? Lie and then just keep getting bigger? I seriously was gonna call the Doc today and make sure I was normal, but after reading everyone's comments I feel MUCH better about myself! Thanks ladies! Gotta love this pregnancy thing! Seriously! :)posted 07/14/2010 by baby swenny
I am going into my 6th week of my second pregnancy and my belly is already showing! At first, I thought I was getting fat but I began to feel my uterus expanding and my breasts were so very, very sore. I feel four months pregnant!posted 07/16/2010 by cohoyo1
So happy to read all these posts! I am 7 weeks along and am close to going up a bra size already and feel like I am starting to show. Like everyone I knew that you would start to show sooner with your second one (my daughter is almost 2) but I was thinking I had at least until about 12 weeks! My husband and I are trying to keep it between us for now but I am thinking I may have to tell sooner.... glad to hear it's normal though!posted 04/21/2010 by a BabyCenter Member
I feel the same way! I am 5 weeks along with my second ( my daughter is 3) and bought maternity pants yesterday. Maybe it is becuase im bloated, but not the bloating is causing my belly to be much more rounded. I have only gained aout 2 lbs, but i feel like ive gained 100!! I look 5 months pregnant and im barely one lol. Also with my first i was sick, but had energy and didnt show until i was about 6 months. this time im not sick atall, but can sleep for a week straight if i could!!posted 04/06/2010 by chercano
I am 18 weeks pregnant and my stomache seems to have already "popped". I look like I am 6 months pregnant! it's crazy! This is my second pregnancy though. My first pregnancy was the total opposite of this one. I just wonder how much bigger am I actually going to get because I not quite even half way through yet!posted 02/27/2010 by Ash843
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We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
What is a country without rabbits and partridges They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable familes known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
When a woman drinks it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in a woman, and a female alcoholic is rare, a serious matter. It's a slur on the divine in our nature.


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National Cathedral to host 1st same-sex weddings
In light of the cathedral's national prominence, Peters called the marriage announcement "an opportunity for people to wake up to what's happening."
"It reminds us that marriage is really an all or nothing deal," he said. "Does America want to retain its marriage tradition or fundamentally give it up?"
Gay weddings will be allowed immediately. But it will likely be six months to a year before the first marriages are performed due to the cathedral's busy schedule and its pre-marital counseling requirement. Generally, only couples affiliated with the cathedral will be eligible. Church leaders had not received any requests for weddings ahead of Wednesday's announcement.
While Hall does not expect any objections within the National Cathedral congregation, he said the change may draw criticism from outside. It may be divisive for some, just as it was to preach against segregation or to push for the ordination of women, Hall said.
The New York-based Episcopal Church is the U.S. body of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. The House of Bishops voted last year 111-41 to authorize a provisional rite for same-sex unions. Some congregations have left the church over its inclusion of gays and lesbians over the years.
Same-sex marriage is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. Legislators in Illinois and Rhode Island are set to take up bills to possibly join them, and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear cases on gay marriage in March.
The first same-sex wedding performed last month at West Point's Cadet Chapel drew some protests from conservatives. The National Cathedral is even more visible.
Hall, the cathedral dean, said the church has a long history of taking stands on public issues. But he said he sees marriage as a human issue, not a political issue.
"For us to be able to say we embrace same-sex marriage as a tool for faithful people to live their lives as Christian people," he said, "for us to be able to say that at a moment when so many other barriers toward full equality and full inclusion for gay and lesbian people are falling, I think it is an important symbolic moment."
Associated Press National Writer David Crary in New York City contributed to this report.
Washington National Cathedral: http://www.nationalcathedral.org
Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat
The Associated Press