1095698
DaNaLIX: a domain-adaptive natural language interface for querying XML
We present DaNaLIX, a prototype domain-adaptive natural language interface for querying XML. Our system is an extension of NaLIX, a generic natural language interface for querying XML. While retaining the portability of a purely generic system like NaLIX, DaNaLIX can exploit domain knowledge, whenever available, to its advantage for query translation. More importantly, in DaNaLIX such domain knowledge does not have to be pre-defined; instead it can be automatically obtained from the interactions between a user and the system. In this demonstration, we describe the overall architecture of DaNaLIX. We also demonstrate how a generic system like DaNaLIX can take advantage of domain knowledge to improve its usability and query translation accuracy. In addition, we show DaNaLIX still possesses the portability of a generic system by using data collections from three different domains. Finally, we present how domain knowledge can be obtained through user interactions in an automatic fashion.
7190108
NaLIX: an interactive natural language interface for querying XML
Database query languages can be intimidating to the non-expert, leading to the immense recent popularity for keyword based search in spite of its significant limitations. The holy grail has been the development of a natural language query interface. We present NaLIX, a generic interactive natural language query interface to an XML database. Our system can accept an arbitrary English language sentence as query input, which can include aggregation, nesting, and value joins, among other things. This query is translated, potentially after reformulation, into an XQuery expression that can be evaluated against an XML database. The translation is done through mapping grammatical proximity of natural language parsed tokens to proximity of corresponding elements in the result XML. In this demonstration, we show that NaLIX, while far from being able to pass the Turing test, is perfectly usable in practice, and able to handle even quite complex queries in a variety of application domains. In addition, we also demonstrate how carefully designed features in NaLIX facilitate the interactive query process and improve the usability of the interface.
16207650
Term Disambiguation in Natural Language Query for XML
Converting a natural language query sentence into a formal database query is a major challenge. We have constructed NaLIX, a natural language interface for querying XML data. Through our experience with NaLIX, we find that failures in natural language query understanding can often be dealt with as ambiguities in term meanings. These failures are typically the result of either the user's poor knowledge of the database schema or the system's lack of linguistic coverage. With automatic term expansion techniques and appropriate interactive feedback, we are able to resolve these ambiguities. In this paper, we describe our approach and present results demonstrating its effectiveness.
1293275
Getting work done on the web: supporting transactional queries
Many searches on the web have a transactional intent. We argue that pages satisfying transactional needs can be distinguished from the more common pages that have some information and links, but cannot be used to execute a transaction. Based on this hypothesis, we provide a recipe for constructing a transaction annotator. By constructing an annotator with one corpus and then demonstrating its classification performance on another,we establish its robustness. Finally, we show experimentally that a search procedure that exploits such pre-annotation greatly outperforms traditional search for retrieving transactional pages.
32047
Constructing a Generic Natural Language Interface for an XML Database
We describe the construction of a generic natural language query interface to an XML database. Our interface can accept an arbitrary English sentence as a query, which can be quite complex and include aggregation, nesting, and value joins, among other things. This query is translated, potentially after reformulation, into an XQuery expression. The translation is based on mapping grammatical proximity of natural language parsed tokens in the parse tree of the query sentence to proximity of corresponding elements in the XML data to be retrieved. Our experimental assessment, through a user study, demonstrates that this type of natural language interface is good enough to be usable now, with no restrictions on the application domain.
372272
Data-Driven Grasp Synthesis Using Shape Matching and Task-Based Pruning
Human grasps, especially whole-hand grasps, are difficult to animate because of the high number of degrees of freedom of the hand and the need for the hand to conform naturally to the object surface. Captured human motion data provides us with a rich source of examples of natural grasps. However, for each new object, we are faced with the problem of selecting the best grasp from the database and adapting it to that object. This paper presents a data-driven approach to grasp synthesis. We begin with a database of captured human grasps. To identify candidate grasps for a new object, we introduce a novel shape matching algorithm that matches hand shape to object shape by identifying collections of features having similar relative placements and surface normals. This step returns many grasp candidates, which are clustered and pruned by choosing the grasp best suited for the intended task. For pruning undesirable grasps, we develop an anatomically-based grasp quality measure specific to the human hand. Examples of grasp synthesis are shown for a variety of objects not present in the original database. This algorithm should be useful both as an animator tool for posing the hand and for automatic grasp synthesis in virtual environments.
2685399
EaseDB: a cache-oblivious in-memory query processor
We propose to demonstrate EaseDB, the first cache-oblivious queryprocessor for in-memory relational query processing. The cache-oblivious notion from the theory community refers to the property that no parameters in an algorithm or a data structure need to be tuned for a specific memory hierarchy for optimality. As a result, EaseDB automatically optimizes the cache performance as well as the overall performance of query processing on any memory hierarchy. We have developed a visualization interface to show the detailed performance of EaseDB in comparison with its cache-conscious counterpart, with both the parameters in the cache-conscious algorithms and the hardware platforms varied.
25738322
GABI-Kat SimpleSearch: A Flanking Sequence Tag (FST) Database for the Identification of T-DNA Insertion Mutants in Arabidopsis Thaliana
SUMMARY
GABI-Kat SimpleSearch is a database of flanking sequence tags (FSTs) of T-DNA mutagenized Arabidopsis thaliana lines that were generated by the GABI-Kat project. Sequences flanking the T-DNA insertion sites were aligned to the A.thaliana genome sequence, annotated with information about the FST, the insertion site and the line from which the FST was derived. A web interface permits text-based as well as sequence-based searches for relevant insertions. GABI-Kat SimpleSearch aims to help biologists to quickly find T-DNA insertion mutants for their research.


AVAILABILITY
http://www.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/GABI-Kat/
9911218
Design of efficiently encodable moderate-length high-rate irregular LDPC codes
This paper presents a new class of irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of moderate length (10/sup 3//spl les/n/spl les/10/sup 4/) and high rate (R/spl ges/3/4). Codes in this class admit low-complexity encoding and have lower error-rate floors than other irregular LDPC code-design approaches. It is also shown that this class of LDPC codes is equivalent to a class of systematic serial turbo codes and is an extension of irregular repeat-accumulate codes. A code design algorithm based on the combination of density evolution and differential evolution optimization with a modified cost function is presented. Moderate-length, high-rate codes with no error-rate floors down to a bit-error rate of 10/sup -9/ are presented. Although our focus is on moderate-length, high-rate codes, the proposed coding scheme is applicable to irregular LDPC codes with other lengths and rates.
44498059
Penbuilder: Platform for the Development of Pen-Based User Interface
Pen-based user interfaces is widely used in mobile computing environment, which provides natural, efficient interaction. It has substantial differences from any previous interface and it is difficult to be implemented. A well-designed platform will improve the development of pen-based user interface. In this paper, the architecture of Pen-Book-Page-Paper is presented, which is extended from the metaphor of Pen-Paper. Penbuilder is a development platform based on this architecture. Pen-based user interface can be constructed from three layers of Penbuilder: modal-primitive layer, task-primitive layer and task layer. Each layer provides different extent supports for flexibility and reusability. The components of the platform are discussed in detail and some properties of the platform are argued. Penbuilder is also compliant for the development of distributed user interface. In the section of discussion, we analyze the platform through task tree. The platform provides full supports for extensibility and new interactive devices can be easily added.