Abstract

In this paper, we describe an approach for creating semantic wiki pages from regular wiki pages, in the domain of scientific museums, using information extraction methods in general and named entity recognition in particular. We make use of a domain specific ontology called CIDOC-CRM as a base structure for representing and processing knowledge. We have described major components of the proposed approach and a three-step process involving name entity recognition, identifying domain classes using the ontology and establishing the properties for the entities in order to generate semantic wiki pages. Our initial evaluation of the prototype shows promising results in terms of enhanced efficiency and time and cost benefits.

Abstract

Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) between languages of the same origin is an interesting topic of research. The similarity of the writing systems used for these languages can be used effectively to not only improve CLIR, but to overcome the problems of textual variations, textual errors, and even the lack of linguistic resources like stemmers to an extent. We have conducted CLIR experiments between three languages which use writing systems (scripts) of Brahmi-origin, namely Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. We found significant improvements for all the six language pairs using a method for fuzzy text search based on Surface Similarity. In this paper we report these results and compare them with a baseline CLIR system and a CLIR system that uses Scaled Edit Distance (SED) for fuzzy string matching.

Abstract

. In this paper, we propose a convex optimization based approach for piecewise planar reconstruction. We show that the task of reconstructing a piecewise planar environment can be set in an L∞ based Homographic framework that iteratively computes scene plane and camera pose parameters. Instead of image points, the algorithm optimizes over inter-image homographies. The resultant objective functions are minimized using Second Order Cone Programming algorithms. Apart from showing the convergence of the algorithm, we also empirically verify its robustness to error in initialization through various experiments on synthetic and real data. We intend this algorithm to be in between initialization approaches like decomposition methods and iterative non-linear minimization methods like Bundle Adjustment.

Abstract

A standard solution for aligning scripts to movies is to use dynamic time warping with the subtitles (Everingham et al., BMVC 2006). We investigate the problem of aligning scripts to TV video/movies in cases where subtitles are not available, e.g. in the case of silent films or for film passages which are non-verbal. To this end we identify a number of “modes of alignment” and train classifiers for each of these. The modes include visual features, such as locations and face recognition, and audio features such as speech. In each case the feature gives some alignment information, but is too noisy when used independently. We show that combining the different features into a single cost function and optimizing this using dynamic programming, leads to a performance superior to each of the individual features. The method is assessed on episodes from the situation comedy Seinfeld, and on Charlie Chaplin and Indian movies.

Abstract

The word error rate of any optical character recognition system (OCR) is usually substantially below its component or character error rate. This is especially true of Indic languages in which a word consists of many components. Current OCRs recognize each character or word separately and do not take advantage of document level constraints. We propose a document level OCR which incorporates information from the entire document to reduce word error rates. Word images are first clustered using a locality sensitive hashing technique. Individual words are then recognized using a (regular) OCR. The OCR outputs of word images in a cluster are then corrected probabilistically by comparing with the OCR outputs of other members of the same cluster. The approach may be applied to improve the accuracy of any OCR run on documents in any language. In particular, we demonstrate it for Telugu, where the use of language models for post-processing is not promising. We show a relative improvement of 28% for long words and 12% for all words which appear at least twice in the corpus.

Abstract

This paper presents an XML-based scheme for managing a large multilingual OCR project. In particular we describe how a new XML based tagging scheme has been exploited to achieve the objectives of the project. Managing a large multi-lingual OCR project involving multiple research groups, developing script specific and script independent technologies in a collaborative fashion is a challenging problem. In this paper, we present some of the software and data management strategies designed for the project aimed at developing OCR for 11 scripts of Indian origin for which mature OCR technology was not available.

Abstract

Design of biomimetic systems is an alternative method of finding biologically active molecules. Peptides incorporating tetrahydrofuran amino acids (TAA) adopt secondary folding patterns and thus mimic natural peptides. The preferred conformation of TAA derived linear and cyclized peptides depends on the stereochemistry of the tetrahydrofuran (THF) ring. Control of stereochemistry of THF ring in the structure of the linear tripeptide Boc-TAA-Leu-Val- OMe containing (2R,5S)-cis TAA, (2S,5R)-cis TAA, (2R,5R)-trans TAA and (2S,5S)-trans TAA is investigated using structural parameters and energetics data obtained from density functional theory (DFT) based calculations at B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level of theory. We found that the conformations associated with -, -turn structures are stabilized by intramolecular hydrogen bonding interactions. Kinetic control of reactions leading to intra and inter molecular cyclization of tripeptide TAA-Gly-Gly containing (2S,5R)-cis TAA and (2S,5S)-trans TAA is studied at the same level of theory in gas phase.[1] We observe that kinetic control favors cyclodimerization instead of intramolecular cyclization.

Abstract

Cyclic peptides incorporating a 5 membered ring such as furan mimic naturally occurring cyclic peptides[1]. The preferred conformation of linear and cyclic tripeptides incorporating such sugar amino acids depends on the stereochemistry at the chiral center. Control of stereochemistry at C position of amino ethyl furan carboxylic acid (AEFC) unit in the linear and cyclic tripeptides is investigated using structural parameters and energetics data obtained from density functional theory (DFT) based calculations at B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level of theory. We found that R-isomer of AEFC unit prefers to form bond with its S-isomer. Thermodynamic analysis revealed that linear tripeptide formed by two R-configured isomers of AEFC and one S-configured isomer of AEFC (RRS or RSR linear) is more stable than that formed by three R-configured isomers of AEFC (RRR linear). It is found that the cyclic tripeptide formed by two R-configured isomers of AEFC and one S-configured isomer of AEFC, i. e., cyclic RRS product is formed with high yield than that formed by three R-configured isomers of AEFC (RRR cyclic) though cyclic RRR trimer is more stable than cyclic RRS trimer. This is substantiated by kinetic control of reactions leading to cyclic tripeptides from linear tripeptides. Using NBO analysis stabilizing interactions in all the linear and cyclic tripeptides are identified. Molecular electrostatic potential (MESP) surfaces of cyclic tripeptides provide insights of intramolecular hydrogen bond interactions. The MESP mapped electron density surfaces have shown the charge distribution around the cyclic peptides.

Abstract

Quantum optimal control theory along with time dependent quantum dynamics is used to control the nuclear motion in the hydrogen bonds of adenine-thymine (A-T) DNA base pair [1]. Optimal infrared laser pulses are designed for selective excitations of (a) single N-H


O hydrogen bond and (b) both N-H


O and N-H


N bonds simultaneously. The conjuagte gradient method is employed to optimize the constructed eld dependent grand functional. Optimal laser elds are realized which give more than 99% population transfer to the preselected vibrational states. The mechanism of population transfer during the vibrational excitation process is investigated by projecting the laser driven nuclear wavefunction onto the vibrational states of the system.

Abstract

Conventionally optimal control theory [1, 2, 3] has been used in the theoretical design of laser pulses through the direct variation of the electric field of the laser pulse as a function of time. This often leads to designed laser pulses which contain a broad and seemingly arbitrary frequency structure that varies in time in a manner which may be difficult to realize experimentally. In contrast, in Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach, a few control parameters are used, which are actually available to the experimentalist. In this work, we investigate the possibility of using GA optimization methods in the theoretical design of laser pulses to bring about quantum state transitions in molecules. This allows us to select only a small limited number of parameters to vary and to choose these parameters so that they correspond to those available to the experimentalist. In this work, we apply our methods to the vibrational-rotational excitation of the HF molecule. We choose a small limited number of frequencies and vary only the associated electric field amplitudes and pulse envelopes. We show that laser pulses designed in this way can lead to very high transition probabilities. The mechanism of population transfer during the excitation process is investigated by projecting the laser driven nuclear wave function onto the eigenstates of the system. We have also investigated the possibility of photodissociation of HF molecule by climbing up the vibrational ladder using this genetic algorithm approach.