Showing papers on "Character (mathematics) published in 2003"

Stochastic mapping of morphological characters.

Abstract: Many questions in evolutionary biology are best addressed by comparing traits in different species Often such studies involve mapping characters on phylogenetic trees Mapping characters on trees allows the nature, number, and timing of the transformations to be identified The parsimony method is the only method available for mapping morphological characters on phylogenies Although the parsimony method often makes reasonable reconstructions of the history of a character, it has a number of limitations These limitations include the inability to consider more than a single change along a branch on a tree and the uncoupling of evolutionary time from amount of character change We extended a method described by Nielsen (2002, Syst Biol 51:729-739) to the mapping of morphological characters under continuous-time Markov models and demonstrate here the utility of the method for mapping characters on trees and for identifying character correlation (Bayesian estimation; character correlation; character mapping; Markov chain Monte Carlo) The footprint of natural selection on organisms can of- ten be detected using phylogenetic methods Correlation in either molecular or morphological characters is taken as evidence of natural selection acting on those charac- ters (Harvey and Pagel, 1991) The correlation might be between a character and the environment, with the re- peated evolution of the character in a particular environ- ment indicating that the trait confers an advantage, or the correlation may be between one character and another In ribosomal RNA sequences, for example, correlated changes occur in nucleotides paired in the stem struc- tures; natural selection is acting to maintain Watson- Crick pairing of nucleotides in the functionally impor- tant stem structures In either case-correlation between different characters or the repeated evolution of a charac- ter in a particular environment-phylogenetic methods provide the best framework for the analysis of correlation because they allow the effects of a common phylogenetic history that simultaneously acts on all of the characters to be partitioned from the evolutionary processes gener- ating the character patterns (Felsenstein, 1985) Despite the importance of phylogenetic analysis of character change in evolutionary biology, detection of correlation in characters is fraught with difficulties One dilemma involves how characters should be mapped onto a phylogenetic tree Many methods for detecting correlations rely on mapping character changes on a phylogenetic tree using the parsimony method (Ridley, 1983; Maddison, 1990) The parsimony method provides the minimum number of transformations required to explain the evolution of the character on the tree and therefore necessarily underestimates the total number of changes Furthermore, some methods treat the par- simony mapping of a character as an observation in fur- ther statistical analyses (Ridley, 1983; Maddison, 1990) Although the parsimony method is expected to provide a reasonable mapping of a character when the rates of evolution are low, the fundamental problem with the method is that it does not account for the uncertainty in the process of character change In effect, the parsimony method wagers all on the mapping requiring the fewest changes, when in reality many other perhaps slightly less parsimonious mappings may be nearly as good or

Building efficient, accurate character skins from examples

Abstract: Good character animation requires convincing skin deformations including subtleties and details like muscle bulges. Such effects are typically created in commercial animation packages which provide very general and powerful tools. While these systems are convenient and flexible for artists, the generality often leads to characters that are slow to compute or that require a substantial amount of memory and thus cannot be used in interactive systems. Instead, interactive systems restrict artists to a specific character deformation model which is fast and memory efficient but is notoriously difficult to author and can suffer from many deformation artifacts. This paper presents an automated framework that allows character artists to use the full complement of tools in high-end systems to create characters for interactive systems. Our method starts with an arbitrarily rigged character in an animation system. A set of examples is exported, consisting of skeleton configurations paired with the deformed geometry as static meshes. Using these examples, we fit the parameters of a deformation model that best approximates the original data yet remains fast to compute and compact in memory.

Entering text into an electronic communications device

Abstract: In entering text into an electronic device with a keypad having a number of keys, each key represents a plurality of characters. A character is entered by the corresponding key and selected among the plurality of characters by pressing the key a number of times corresponding to the character. To each key is attached, in addition to the plurality of characters, a further, ambiguous character representing any one of the plurality of characters. A key sequence is activated such that an ambiguous character sequence comprising at least one ambiguous character is generated. Possible non-ambiguous character sequences corresponding to the ambiguous character sequence are generated and compared with a vocabulary stored in a memory and comprising character sequences representing words occurring in a given language. Those possible character sequences that match character sequences in the vocabulary are pre-selected. One of the pre-selected character sequences is selected and entered into the device.

Named entity recognition with character-level models

Abstract: We discuss two named-entity recognition models which use characters and character n-grams either exclusively or as an important part of their data representation. The first model is a character-level HMM with minimal context information, and the second model is a maximum-entropy conditional markov model with substantially richer context features. Our best model achieves an overall F1 of 86.07% on the English test data (92.31% on the development data). This number represents a 25% error reduction over the same model without word-internal (substring) features.

Algebraic loop groups and moduli spaces of bundles

Abstract: We study algebraic loop groups and affine Grassmannians in positive character- istic. The main results are normality of Schubert-varieties, the construction of line-bundles on the affine Grassmannian, and the proof that they induce line-bundles on the moduli-stack of torsors.

Layered acting for character animation

Abstract: We introduce an acting-based animation system for creating and editing character animation at interactive speeds. Our system requires minimal training, typically under an hour, and is well suited for rapidly prototyping and creating expressive motion. A real-time motion-capture framework records the user's motions for simultaneous analysis and playback on a large screen. The animator's real-world, expressive motions are mapped into the character's virtual world. Visual feedback maintains a tight coupling between the animator and character. Complex motion is created by layering multiple passes of acting. We also introduce a novel motion-editing technique, which derives implicit relationships between the animator and character. The animator mimics some aspect of the character motion, and the system infers the association between features of the animator's motion and those of the character. The animator modifies the mimic by acting again, and the system maps the changes onto the character. We demonstrate our system with several examples and present the results from informal user studies with expert and novice animators.

Building efficient, accurate character skins from examples

Abstract: Good character animation requires convincing skin deformations including subtleties and details like muscle bulges. Such effects are typically created in commercial animation packages which provide...

Character input method

Abstract: PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an accurately, speedy, and easily operable character input method. SOLUTION: This information processor 1 having a touch panel input function is configured to display a 12 keys 3 constituted of vertical three columns and horizontal four lines on a display screen 2, and to input characters by depressing keys 4 on the display screen 2. When one key 4 is assigned with a plurality of characters, the key 4 is continuously depressed until a desired character appears, or a character input key 6 displayed in another frame 5 is depressed, or the character input keys 6 of a plurality of characters displayed in the other pop-up displayed frame 5 are depressed. Also, the character is inputted with two digit numbers by a pocket bell system. Also, the kind of the character is switched so that the character can be inputted. Also, a tab 7 is depressed so that an input mode can be switched. Also, an inputted character 9 can be displayed at a normal display part 8. Also, the 12 keys 3 can be displayed at the lower part of the display screen 2. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

On Quantum Statistical Inference, I

Abstract: Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions addressed apart from those met classically in stochastics. Furthermore, concurrent advances in experimental techniques and in the theory of quantum computation have led to a strong interest in questions of quantum information, in particular in the sense of the amount of information about unknown parameters in given observational data or accessible through various possible types of measurements. This scenery is outlined (with an audience of statisticians and probabilists in mind).

Plans for Discourse

Abstract: This chapter contains sections titled: Intentions and Actions in Discourse Structures Theory, The Character of Plans Underlying Discourse, Plans and Plan Recognition Algorithms Thus Far, Shared Plans, Shared Plans in Discourse, Feedforward and Backward, Further Work, Notes, References

Detection and recognition of license plate characters with different appearances

Abstract: This paper proposes an approach to developing an automatic license plate recognition system Car images are taken from various positions outdoors Because of the variations of angles from the camera to the car, license plates have various locations and rotation angles in an image In the license plate detection phase, the magnitude of the vertical gradients is used to detect candidate license plate regions These candidate regions are then evaluated based on three geometrical features: the ratio of width and height, the size and the orientation The last feature is defined by the major axis In the character recognition phase, we must detect character features that are non-sensitive to the rotation variations The various rotated character images of a specific character can be normalized to the same orientation based on the major axis of the character image The crossing counts and peripheral background area of an input character image are selected as the features for rotation-free character recognition Experimental results show that the license plates detection method can correctly extract all license plates from 102 car images taken outdoors and the rotation-free character recognition method can achieve an accuracy rate of 986%

Interacting with an embodied emotional character

Abstract: A salient feature of the ambient intelligent home of the future will be the natural interaction between the home and its inhabitants through speech. An embodied home character is necessary to ensure a natural dialogue by continuously providing intuitive feedback in the form of conversational and emotional body language. This study experimentally investigates the influence of the character's embodiment (screen character and robotic character) and its emotional expressiveness on the enjoyability of the interaction. The presence of emotional expressions significantly increased the enjoyability of the interaction with the robotic character. The embodiment had no significant influence on the enjoyability. However, in the robotic character condition a social facilitation effect and a high forgiveness for speech recognition errors was observed.

Character Not Charisma is the Critical Measure of Leadership Excellence

Abstract: The leadership crisis in ethics in many organizations partially stems from the crisis in character of our leaders. The character of the leader is grounded on such core values as integrity, trust, t...

Character Strengths Among Youth

Abstract: Four hundred and fiftynine students from 20 different high school classrooms in Michigan participated in focus group discussions about the character strengths included in the Values in Action Classification. Students were interested in the subject of good character and able to discuss with candor and sophistication instances of each strength. They were especially drawn to the positive traits of leadership, practical intelligence, wisdom, social intelligence, love of learning, spirituality, and the capacity to love and be loved. Students believed that strengths were largely acquired rather than innate and that these strengths developed through ongoing life experience as opposed to formal instruction. They cited an almost complete lack of contemporary role models exemplifying different strengths of character. Implications of these findings for the quantitative assessment of positive traits were discussed, as were implications for designing character education programs for adolescents. We suggest that peers can be an especially important force in encouraging the development and display of good character among youth.

Single n-gram stemming

Abstract: Stemming can improve retrieval accuracy, but stemmers are language-specific. Character n-gram tokenization achieves many of the benefits of stemming in a language independent way, but its use incurs a performance penalty. We demonstrate that selection of a single n-gram as a pseudo-stem for a word can be an effective and efficient language-neutral approach for some languages.

What's Wrong With Character Education?

Abstract: We can distinguish three sorts of “character education”: (1) simple moral education (essentially, Kohlbergian moral education in the classroom), (2) just‐community education (a Deweyesque practice emphasizing democratic decision making outside the classroom), and (3) simple character education (attempting to build character both in and outside of class one trait at a time by emphasizing good behavior). Simple moral education may have a modest effect on character; just‐community education probably has no greater effect, even though it has considerably higher risks and other costs. But simple moral education suffers from three disadvantages that should lead us to reject it: the disadvantages are empirical (absence of evidence that it does what it claims), conceptual (a conflict between what good character is and the way that simple character education proposes to teach it), and moral (its failure to do the right things for the right reasons).

Apparatus and method for efficient animation of believable speaking 3D characters in real time

Abstract: An apparatus for animating a moving and speaking enhanced-believability, character in real time, comprising a plurality of behavior generators, each for defining a respective aspect of facial behavior, a unifying scripter, associated with the behavior generators, the scripter operable to combine the behaviors into a unified animation script, and a renderer, associated with the unifying scripter, the renderer operable to render the character in accordance with the script, thereby to enhance believability of the character.

Cyclic Homology in Non-Commutative Geometry

Abstract: Cyclic Theory, Bivariant K-Theory and the Bivariant Chern-Connes Character.- Cyclic Homology.- Noncommutative Geometry, the Transverse Signature Operator, and Hopf Algebras [after A. Connes and H. Moscovici].

Intelligent default selection in an on-screen keyboard

Abstract: Systems and methods are described for intelligent default selection of characters to be entered via an on-screen keyboard. Based on one to several criteria, a character most likely to be selected for entry via the on-screen keyboard during a search request is determined and a selector is positioned at that particular character. If that character is indeed the character the user wishes to enter, the user does not have to execute any navigation steps to enter the character, but can—with a single actuation—enter that character. In many instances, the user will only have to enter the selection without first having to navigate to the selection. As a result, the number of times buttons need to be actuated by the user to enter a character string can be significantly reduced.

Character recognition system and method

Abstract: A system and method for translating a written document into a computer readable document by recognizing the character written on the document aim at recognizing typed or printed, especially hand-printed or handwritten characters, in the various fields of a form. Providing a pixel representation of the written document, the method allows translating a written document into a computer readable document by i) identifying at least one field into the pixel representation of the document; ii) segmenting each field so as to yield at least one segmented symbol; iii) applying a character recognition method on each segmented symbol; and iii) assigning a computer-readable code to each recognized character resulting from the character recognition method. The character recognition method includes doing a vector quantization on each segmented symbol, and doing a vector classification using a vector base. A learning base is also created based on the optimal elliptic separation method. System and method according to the present invention allow to achieve a substitution rate of near zero.

Character assessment: an examination of leadership levels

Abstract: This paper discusses character assessment from a leadership level perspective. The organization studied is developing a leadership model for the next century. One of the leadership traits identified as essential was character. Approximately one thousand managers in the company were given two character assessment instruments via a Web-based medium. Significant differences were found between early-, mid-, and mature-level managers with an increasing trend in character traits across the levels. This research is consistent with Katz and Kahn's (1976) levels of leadership research.

Host-based intelligent results related to a character stream

Abstract: Information may be presented to a user by using a first application to receive a character stream of one or more noncompletion characters. The noncompletion characters indicate that additional characters may be received. The character stream is exchanged with a host that analyzes the character stream to generate results that are responsive to the user's predicted interest. Results are received and displayed so that the user may select one of the results to launch a code segment related to the selected result.

Statistical character structure modeling and its application to handwritten Chinese character recognition

Abstract: This paper proposes a statistical character structure modeling method. It represents each stroke by the distribution of the feature points. The character structure is represented by the joint distribution of the component strokes. In the proposed model, the stroke relationship is effectively reflected by the statistical dependency. It can represent all kinds of stroke relationship effectively in a systematic way. Based on the character representation, a stroke neighbor selection method is also proposed. It measures the importance of a stroke relationship by the mutual information among the strokes. With such a measure, the important neighbor relationships are selected by the nth order probability approximation method. The neighbor selection algorithm reduces the complexity significantly because we can reflect only some important relationships instead of all existing relationships. The proposed character modeling method was applied to a handwritten Chinese character recognition system. Applying a model-driven stroke extraction algorithm that cooperates with a selective matching algorithm, the proposed system is better than conventional structural recognition systems in analyzing degraded images. The effectiveness of the proposed methods was visualized by the experiments. The proposed method successfully detected and reflected the stroke relationships that seemed intuitively important. The overall recognition rate was 98.45 percent, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Game machine and game program

Abstract: Image processing means of a game apparatus includes first motion control means and second motion control means. The first motion control means controls the motion of a first character appearing in a game space in response to an operation performed on a first operation switch included in a plurality of operation switches. The second motion control means controls the motion of a second character also appearing in the game space but different from the first character in response to an operation performed on a second operation switch, and changes the motion of the first character based on the motion of the second character. Thus, the present game apparatus makes a relationship between a player and subjects of operation involved, thereby allowing the player to experience a novel sensation in playing a game.

Character input device

Abstract: PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a character input device which can perform an input operation of a character, a symbol, etc. more easily. SOLUTION: In the character input device which performs character input by a contact operation to a touch panel 4, character recognition is performed on the basis of a character position contact input means for displaying an operation area of each character in the touch panel 4, and performing a character position contact input mode which makes characters corresponding to a contact operation position as an input character, and of a contact operation locus in the touch panel 4. The character input device is further provided with; a locus character input means for performing a locus character input mode which makes a recognized character an input character; and a mode switching means which switches a character position contact input mode and a locus character input mode in input processing of a word which consists of a plurality of characters and enables mixed input of the character position contact input and the locus character input. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

The Hochschild Class of the Chern Character For Semifinite Spectral Triples

Abstract: We provide a proof of Connes' formula for a representative of the Hochschild class of the Chern character for (p,\infty)-summable spectral triples. Our proof is valid for all semifinite von Neumann algebras, and all integral p\geq 1. We employ the minimum possible hypotheses on the spectral triples.