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 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

In this paper, we report our participation in Update Summarization, Knowledge Base Population and Recognizing Textual Entailment at TAC 2009. This year, we enhanced our basic summaization system with support vector regression to better estimate the combined affect of different features in ranking. A Novelty measure is devised to effectively capture relevance and novelty of a term. For Knowledge Base Population, we analyzed IR approaches and Naive Bayes Classification with Phrase and Token searches. Finally for RTE, we built templates using WordNet and predict entailments.

Abstract

Gold nanoparticle-loaded liposomes can serve as important biophysical and biochemical tools. A rapid, green, one-step synthetic method has been used for direct and controlled loading of gold nanoparticles onto liposomes. The effects of various synthetic parameters on nanoparticle loading as well as on optical properties of the liposome-anchored nanoparticles are discussed. Gold nanoparticle-loaded individual liposomes have been characterized by dark-field microscopy and optical spectroscopy.

Abstract

We report on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) from single star-shaped gold nanoparticles coated with self-assembled monolayers of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid. SERS is observed without the formation of gold nanoparticle aggregates or resonant excitation of the analyte. Total Raman scattering enhancement factors for single nanostars are comparable to those of nanoparticle assemblies exhibiting coupled plasmon resonances. This renders gold nanostars promising for Raman imaging applications in complex environments such as cells or membranes.

Abstract

Despite the growing importance of other sectors, agriculture continues to hold the key to the growth of GDP, food security, employment and income in India. Over a period of time, agriculture is undergoing a change towards high value crops, livestock, fisheries etc. Along with it substantial changes have occurred in seed varieties, use of chemical inputs, cultivation practices. Such a process has also culminated in distress conditions in the farm sector. Studies1 undertaken in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharastra and Punjab have revealed the serious crisis among the farming community. It is pertinent to note that net income is negative in some states( Narayan Moorthy: 2006) and nearly two thirds of the farmers are frustrated with their profession ( Desh

Abstract

The eSaguTMsystem is an IT-based personalized agro advisory system. In this system, the agricultural experts generate the advice by using the latest information about the crop situation received in the form of both photographs and text. The agricultural expert advice is delivered to each farm on a regular basis (typically once in a week/two weeks depending on the type of crop) from the sowing stage to the harvesting stage to the farmer without farmer asking a question. Since 2004, the eSagu system is being developed by operating on several crops and farms in Andhra Pradesh state of India. It has been found that the agriculture expert can prepare the expert advice in an efficient manner based on the crop photographs and the related information. The impact results show that the expert advices helped the farmers to achieve significant savings in the capital investment and improvement in the yield. Encouraged by the results of eSagu experiment, a country-wide integrated agri-service program is planned by Media Lab Asia to provide expert advice and other agri-related services to Indian farming community. In this paper we briefly explain the development of eSagu system, advantages and future plan.

Abstract

To improve the performance of agricultural education, research efforts are being made to exploit to developan education methodology to impart practical skills to agricultural graduates regarding aforesaid farming situationproblems in an effective and efficient manner. In this paper, we explain the background and the overview of theproposed ICT-based framework to impart applied education to agriculture professionals.

Abstract

The method of calibrated simulation has been used to estimate the energy savings by application of cool roof for the building of Satyam Learning Centre (SLC) at Hyderabad

Abstract

In this paper, we re-visit the problem of unconditionally secure message transmission (USMT) from a sender S to a receiver R, who are part of a distributed synchronous network, modeled as an arbitrary directed graph. Some of the intermediate nodes between S and R can be under the control of an adversary having unbounded computing power. Desmedt and Wang [4] have given the characterization of USMT in directed networks. However, in their model, the underlying network is abstracted as directed node disjoint paths (also called as wires/channels) between S and R, where the intermediate nodes are oblivious, message passing nodes and perform no other computation. In this work, we first show that the characterization of USMT given by Desmedt et.al [4] does not hold good for arbitrary directed networks, where the intermediate nodes can perform some computation, beside acting as message forwarding nodes. We then give the characterization of USMT in arbitrary directed networks, considering the entire network as a whole. As far our knowledge is concerned, this is the first ever characterization of USMT in arbitrary directed networks.