Visualizing for the Non‐Visual: Enabling the Visually Impaired to Use Visualization

The majority of visualizations on the web are still stored as raster images, making them inaccessible to visually impaired users. We propose a deep‐neural‐network‐based approach that automatically recognizes key elements in a visualization, including a visualization type, graphical elements, labels, legends, and most importantly, the original data conveyed in the visualization. We leverage such extracted information to provide visually impaired people with the reading of the extracted information. Based on interviews with visually impaired users, we built a Google Chrome extension designed to work with screen reader software to automatically decode charts on a webpage using our pipeline. We compared the performance of the back‐end algorithm with existing methods and evaluated the utility using qualitative feedback from visually impaired users.     

Assessment of Anger and Aggression in Male Offenders With Developmental Disabilities.

Systematic assessment of anger among people with developmental disabilities has been lacking, especially for hospital inpatients. Reliability and validity of anger self-report psychometric scales were investigated with 129 male patients, mostly forensic. Anger prevalence and its relationship to demographic, cognitive, and personality variables and to hospital assaultive behavior were examined. High internal and intermeasure consistency, and some concurrent validity with staff ratings, were found. Retrospective validity regarding physically assaultive behavior in the hospital was obtained. Hierarchical regressions revealed that patient-reported anger was a significant predictor of assaults postadmission, controlling for age, length of stay, IQ, violence offense history, and personality variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fuzzy versus quantitative association rules: a fair data-driven comparison.

As opposed to quantitative association rule mining, fuzzy association rule mining is said to prevent the overestimation of boundary cases, as can be shown by small examples. Rule mining, however, becomes interesting in large databases, where the problem of boundary cases is less apparent and can be further suppressed by using sensible partitioning methods. A data-driven approach is used to investigate if there is a significant difference between quantitative and fuzzy association rules in large databases. The influence of the choice of a particular triangular norm in this respect is also examined.     

A Diffusion-Compensation Relation for Normal Grain Growth and Grain-Boundary Diffusion of Oxygen in Oxides

Values of D₀/δ and Q for grain-boundary diffusion, derived from published studies of normal grain growth in Al₂O₃, BeO, CaO, MgO, SiO₂, and CaSiO₃, are fit by the linear compensation equation log D₀/δ=0.03170Q -7.6792 (r²=0.9384). Comparison of grain-boundary diffusion coefficients derived from grain growth in oxides with those obtained by direct experimental measurement suggests that the kinetics of normal grain growth are controlled by grain-boundary diffusion of oxygen.     

Logical foundations of nonmonotonic reasoning

In this paper we shall review the main appraches to nonmonotonic reasoning which we classify from the perspective of their underlying logical settings as classical, intuitionistic, three-valued/partial models, and conditional. We shall be placing special emphasis on some of the prominent approaches. We shall also give hints on potential future directions and emphasize that more theoretical work is still needed before a move to application is made.     

Control of discrete time nonlinear systems with a time-varying structure

In this paper, we present a control methodology for a class of discrete time nonlinear systems that depend on a possibly exogenous scheduling variable. This class of systems consists of an interpolation of nonlinear dynamic equations in strict feedback form, and it may represent systems with a time-varying nonlinear structure. Moreover, this class of systems is able to represent some cases of gain scheduling control, Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems, as well as input-output realizations of nonlinear systems which are approximated via localized linearizations. We present two control theorems, one using what we call a “global” approach (akin to traditional backstepping), and a “local” approach, our main result, where backstepping is again used but the control law is an interpolation of local control terms. An aircraft wing rock regulation problem with varying angle of attack is used to illustrate and compare the two approaches.