Fast algorithm extracts and compares document meaning

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) — A computer program could compare two documents and work spot the differences in their meaning using a fast semantic algorithm developed by information scientists in Poland.

Writing in the International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, Andrzej Sieminski of the Technical University of Wroclaw, explains that extracting meaning and calculating the level of semantic similarity between two pieces of texts is a very difficult task, without human intervention. There have been various methods proposed by computer scientists for addressing this problem, but they all suffer from computational complexity, he says.

Sieminski has now attempted to reduce this complexity by merging a computationally efficient statistical approach to text analysis with a semantic component. Tests of the algorithm on English and Polish tests work well. The test set consisted of 4,890 English sentences with 142,116 words and 11,760 Polish sentences with 184,524 words scraped from online services via their newsfeeds over the course of five days. Sieminski points out that the complexity of the algorithm used on the Polish documents required an additional level of sophistication in terms of computing word means and disambiguation.

Traditional "manual" methods of indexing simply cannot now cope with the vast quantities of information generated on a daily basis by humanity as a whole in scientific research more specifically. The new algorithm once optimised could radically change the way in which we make archived documents searchable and allow knowledge to be extracted far more readily than is possible with standard indexing and search tools.

The approach also circumvents three critical problems faced by most users of conventional search engines: First, the lack of familiarity with the advanced search options of search engines, with a semantic algorithm advanced options become almost unnecessary. Secondly, the rigid nature of the options that are unable to catch the subtle nuance of user information needs, again a tool that understands the meaning of a search and the meaning of the results it offers avoids this problem. Finally, the unwillingness or unacceptably long time necessary to type a long query, semantically aware search will require only simply input.

Sieminski points out that the key virtue of the research is the idea of using the statistical similarity measures to assess semantic similarity. He explains that semantic similarity of words could be inferred from the WordNet database. He proposes using this database only during text indexing. "Indexing is done only once so the inevitably long processing time is not an issue," he says. "From that point on we use only statistical algorithms, which are fast and high performance."

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Andrzej Sieminski. Fast algorithm for assessing semantic similarity of texts. Int. J. Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2012, 6, 495-512

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Space travel with a new language in tow

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) — September 28, for the first time ever, SES, the Luxembourg-based satellite operator, has allowed an Ariane 5 rocket to transport a TV satellite into space, which is made by Astrium and runs entirely on latest generation software. Every single one of the programs used to operate the satellite was written in the new satellite language SPELL. The acronym stands for "Satellite Procedure Execution Language & Library."

What we are talking about here is a new standard, which will help the many different programming languages that were previously used to operate satellites and their subsystems to be unified under one roof. The University of Luxembourg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has contributed substantially to SPELL's being adopted in the operations of Astrium satellites. To this end, SnT scientists took an existing mathematical tool and refined it getting it ready for practical application, with whose help the procedures written in different native languages can now be translated into SPELL using a fully automated process.

SES is one of the world's biggest satellite operators with a vast fleet of satellites in orbit. The satellites and their technical components are produced by different manufacturers who each use their own programming language. "Because of the complete and utter lack of common standards up until now, we used to have to make a big production out of operation and maintenance of the machines," explains Martin Halliwell, Chief Technology Officer at SES. "Our operators were working with a number of different programming languages to help us control our SES fleet through space." Which is problematic as the machines don't easily forgive programming errors. Says Halliwell: "If a single error is made, it may result in our satellite getting lost in space. Which, for us, literally means incurring millions in losses."

Which is why SES decided a while ago now to develop the open-source software, SPELL. SPELL allows for the careful execution of every imaginable navigational procedure from any given ground control system for all potential satellites in the fleet. In other words, maximum flexibility with maximum security. "There is, however, a catch to the whole thing," concedes Dr. Frank Hermann, SnT scientist. "All the various control procedures that exist in different programming languages and that are being used must be converted over to SPELL. If that does not happen automatically and is one hundred percent error-free, it quickly turns into very resource-intensive and error-prone undertaking."

Together, SnT's Frank Hermann and his collegues, in close collaboration with SES automation specialists, have tackled the problem head-on using a methode known as triple graph transformation to automatically translate the programming languages employed by the new satellite's subsystems into the common language SPELL. According to Hermann, " triple graph transformation is a mathematical tool that has been the focus of active research since the 1990s. Along with other mathematical tools, it represents the ideal instrument for combining different programming languages under SPELL."

What's special about the new translation process is that it does not require any source code programming. "We are working with a visual development setting, which records translation rules in a graphic user interface," explains Hermann. These rules are automatically executed by specialized transformation tools. Quality assurance happens through consistency checks, which are automated as well. "Their efficacy has been documented through multiple formal mathematical proofs," says Hermann. If the translation runs smoothly, every piece of information from the original language is first converted into a graph. "This creates a network made up of many different nodes on the graphic interface," explains Hermann. The network is then read and translated into target graphs for the target language SPELL. "Every single bit of information in the original language has a corresponding SPELL counterpart."

The SES validation teams have confirmed that the translation is highly precise. "This was a prerequisite for being able to unanimously program our new satellite's systems using SPELL," says Martin Halliwell. SnT's Vice-Director, Prof. Thomas Engel, is very pleased with the SnT scientists' performance specifically and with the SES/SnT collaborative in general: "The new satellite and SPELL will now have to prove themselves in space. If everything runs smoothly -- which we are quite certain that it will -- our basic science research will have made an important contribution to increasing SES's performance and to making Luxembourg more competitive in this area."

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Computers get a better way to detect threats

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2012) — UT Dallas computer scientists have developed a technique to automatically allow one computer in a virtual network to monitor another for intrusions, viruses or anything else that could cause a computer to malfunction.

The technique has been dubbed "space travel" because it sends computer data to a world outside its home, and bridges the gap between computer hardware and software systems.

"Space travel might change the daily practice for many services offered virtually for cloud providers and data centers today, and as this technology becomes more popular in a few years, for the user at home on their desktop," said Dr. Zhiquian Lin, the research team's leader and an assistant professor of computer science in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

As cloud computing is becoming more popular, new techniques to protect the systems must be developed. Since this type of computing is Internet-based, skilled computer specialists can control the main part of the system virtually -- using software to emulate hardware.

Lin and his team programmed space travel to use existing code to gather information in a computer's memory and automatically transfer it to a secure virtual machine -- one that is isolated and protected from outside interference.

"You have an exact copy of the operating system of the computer inside the secure virtual machine that a hacker can't compromise," Lin said. "Using this machine, then the user or antivirus software can understand what's happening with the space traveled computer setting off red flags if there is any intrusion.

Previously, software developer had to manually write such tools.

"With our technique, the tools already being used on the computer become part of the defense process," he said.

The gap between virtualized computer hardware and software operating on top of it was first characterized by Drs. Peter Chen and Brian Noble, faculty members from the University of Michigan.

"The ability to leverage existing code goes a long way in solving the gap problem inherent to many types of virtual machine services," said Chen, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who first proposed the gap in 2001. "Fu and Lin have developed an interesting way to take existing code from a trusted system and automatically use it to detect intrusions."

Lin said the space travel technique will help the FBI understand what is happening inside a suspect's computer even if they are physically miles away, instead of having to buy expensive software.

Space travel was presented at the most recent IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. Lin developed this with Yangchun Fu, a research assistant in computer science.

"This is the top conference in cybersecurity, said Bhavani Thuraisingham, executive director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Center and a Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Jonsson School. "It is a major breakthrough that virtual developers no longer need to write any code to bridge the gap by using the technology invented by Dr. Lin and Mr. Fu. This research has given us tremendous visibility among the cybersecurity research community around the world."

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Turn your dreams into music

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2012) — Computer scientists in Finland have developed a method that automatically composes music out of sleep measurements.

Developed under Hannu Toivonen, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland, the software automatically composes synthetic music using data related to a person's own sleep as input.

The composition program is the work of Aurora Tulilaulu, a student of Professor Toivonen.

"The software composes a unique piece based on the stages of sleep, movement, heart rate and breathing. It compresses a night's sleep into a couple of minutes," she describes.

"We are developing a novel way of illustrating, or in fact experiencing, data. Music can, for example, arouse a variety of feelings to describe the properties of the data. Sleep analysis is a natural first application," Hannu Toivonen justifies the choice of the research topic.

The project utilises a sensitive force sensor placed under the mattress.

"Heartbeats and respiratory rhythm are extracted from the sensor's measurement signal, and the stages of sleep are deducted from them," says Joonas Paalasmaa, a postgraduate student in the Department of Computer Science. He designed the sleep stage software at Beddit, a company that provides services in the field.

The composition service is available online at http://sleepmusicalization.net/. The users of Beddit's service can have music composed from their own sleep, while others can listen to the compositions. The online service is the work of the fourth research team member, Mikko Waris.

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Engineers built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2012) — Computational Engineers at the University of Southampton have built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego.

The team, led by Professor Simon Cox, consisted of Richard Boardman, Andy Everett, Steven Johnston, Gereon Kaiping, Neil O'Brien, Mark Scott and Oz Parchment, along with Professor Cox's son James Cox (aged 6) who provided specialist support on Lego and system testing.

Professor Cox comments: "As soon as we were able to source sufficient Raspberry Pi computers we wanted to see if it was possible to link them together into a supercomputer. We installed and built all of the necessary software on the Pi starting from a standard Debian Wheezy system image and we have published a guide so you can build your own supercomputer."

The racking was built using Lego with a design developed by Simon and James, who has also been testing the Raspberry Pi by programming it using free computer programming software Python and Scratch over the summer. The machine, named "Iridis-Pi" after the University's Iridis supercomputer, runs off a single 13 Amp mains socket and uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to communicate between nodes using Ethernet. The whole system cost under £2,500 (excluding switches) and has a total of 64 processors and 1Tb of memory (16Gb SD cards for each Raspberry Pi). Professor Cox uses the free plug-in 'Python Tools for Visual Studio' to develop code for the Raspberry Pi.

Professor Cox adds: "The first test we ran -- well obviously we calculated Pi on the Raspberry Pi using MPI, which is a well-known first test for any new supercomputer."

"The team wants to see this low-cost system as a starting point to inspire and enable students to apply high-performance computing and data handling to tackle complex engineering and scientific challenges as part of our on-going outreach activities."

James Cox (aged 6) says: "The Raspberry Pi is great fun and it is amazing that I can hold it in my hand and write computer programs or play games on it."

If you want to build a Raspberry Pi Supercomputer yourself see: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi

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Computers match humans in understanding art

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) — Understanding and evaluating art has widely been considered as a task meant for humans, until now. Computer scientists Lior Shamir and Jane Tarakhovsky of Lawrence Technological University in Michigan tackled the question "can machines understand art?" The results were very surprising. In fact, an algorithm has been developed that demonstrates computers are able to "understand" art in a fashion very similar to how art historians perform their analysis, mimicking the perception of expert art critiques.

In the experiment, published in the recent issue of ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, the researchers used approximately 1,000 paintings of 34 well-known artists, and let the computer algorithm analyze the similarity between them based solely on the visual content of the paintings, and without any human guidance. Surprisingly, the computer provided a network of similarities between painters that is largely in agreement with the perception of art historians.

The analysis showed that the computer was clearly able to identify the differences between classical realism and modern artistic styles, and automatically separated the painters into two groups, 18 classical painters and 16 modern painters. Inside these two broad groups the computer identified sub-groups of painters that were part of the same artistic movements. For instance, the computer automatically placed the High Renaissance artists Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo very close to each other. The Baroque painters Vermeer, Rubens and Rembrandt were also clustered together by the algorithm, showing that the computer automatically identified that these painters share similar artistic styles.

The automatic computer analysis is in agreement with the view of art historians, who associate these three painters with the Baroque artistic movement. Similarly, the computer algorithm deduced that Gauguin and Cézanne, both considered post-impressionists, have similar artistic styles, and also identified similarities between the styles of Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, and Giorgio de Chirico, all are considered by art historians to be part of the surrealism school of art. Overall, the computer automatically produced an analysis that is in large agreement with the influential links between painters and artistic movements as defined by art historians and critiques.

While the average non-expert can normally make the broad differentiation between modern art and classical realism, they have difficulty telling the difference between closely related schools of art such as Early and High Renaissance or Mannerism and Romanticism. The experiment showed that machines can outperform untrained humans in the analysis of fine art.

The experiment was performed by computing from each painting 4,027 numerical image context descriptors -- numbers that reflect the content of the image such as texture, color and shapes in a quantitative fashion. This allows the computer to reflect very many aspects of the visual content, and use pattern recognition and statistical methods to detect complex patterns of similarities and dissimilarities between the artistic styles and then quantify these similarities.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Lawrence Technological University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

Lior Shamir, Jane A. Tarakhovsky. Computer analysis of art. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 2012; 5 (2): 1 DOI: 10.1145/2307723.2307726

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Education: Get with the computer program

ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2012) — From email to Twitter, blogs to word processors, computer programs provide countless communications opportunities. While social applications have dominated the development of the participatory web for users and programmers alike, this era of Web 2.0 is applicable to more than just networking opportunities: it impacts education.

The integration of increasingly sophisticated information and communication tools (ICTs) is sweeping university classrooms. Understanding how learners and instructors perceive the effectiveness of these tools in the classroom is critical to the success or failure of their integration higher education settings. A new study led by Concordia University shows that when it comes to pedagogy, students prefer an engaging lecture rather than a targeted tweet.

Twelve universities across Quebec recently signed up to be a part of the first cross-provincial study of perceptions of ICT integration and course effectiveness on higher learning. This represented the first pan-provincial study to assess how professors are making the leap from lectures to LinkedIn -- and whether students are up for the change to the traditional educational model.

At the forefront of this study was Concordia's own Vivek Venkatesh. As associate dean of academic programs and development within the School of Graduate Studies, he has a particular interest in how education is evolving within post-secondary institutions. To conduct the study, Venkatesh partnered with Magda Fusaro from UQAM's Department of Management and Technology. Together, they conducted a pilot project at UQAM before rolling the project out to universities across the province.

"We hit the ground running and received an overwhelmingly positive response with 15,020 students and 2,640 instructors responding to our electronic questionnaires in February and March of 2011," recalls Venkatesh. The 120-item surveys gauged course structure preferences, perceptions of the usefulness of teaching methods, and the level of technology knowledge of both students and teachers.

The surprising results showed that students were more appreciative of the literally "old school" approach of lectures and were less enthusiastic than teachers about using ICTs in classes. Instructors were more fluent with the use of emails than with social media, while the opposite was true for students.

"Our analysis showed that teachers think that their students feel more positive about their classroom learning experience if there are more interactive, discussion-oriented activities. In reality, engaging and stimulating lectures, regardless of how technologies are used, are what really predict students' appreciation of a given university course," explains Fusaro.

The researchers hope these results will have a broad impact, especially in terms of curriculum design and professional development. For Venkatesh, "this project represents a true success story of collaboration across Québec universities that could definitely have an effect outside the province." Indeed, the large number of participants involved means this research is applicable to populations of learners across North America and Europe with similar educational and information technology infrastructures. An electronic revolution could soon sweep post-secondary classrooms around the world, thanks to this brand new research from Quebec.

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Journal Reference:

Kamran Shaikh, Vivek Venkatesh, Tieja Thomas, Kathryn Urbaniak, Timothy Gallant, David I., Amna Zuberi. Technological Transparency in the Age of Web 2.0: A Case Study of Interactions in Internet-Based Forums. InTech, 2012 DOI: 10.5772/29082

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