Personalcasting: Tailored Broadcast News

Broadcast news sources and newspapers provide society with the vast majority of real-time information. Unfortunately, cost efficiencies and real-time pressures demand that producers, editors, and writers select and organize content for stereotypical audiences. In this article we illustrate how content understanding, user modeling, and tailored presentation generation promise personalcasts on demand. Specifically, we report on the design and implementation of a personalized version of a broadcast news understanding system, MITRE’s Broadcast News Navigator (BNN), that tracks and infers user content interests and media preferences. We report on the incorporation of Local Context Analysis to both expand the user’s original query to the most related terms in the corpus, as well as to allow the user to provide interactive feedback to enhance the relevance of selected newsstories. We describe an empirical study of the search for stories on ten topics from a video corpus. By personalizing both the selection of stories and the form in which they are delivered, we provide users with tailored broadcast news. This individual news personalization provides more fine-grained content tailoring than current personalized television program level recommenders and does not rely on externally provided program metadata.     

Mechanical principles of dynamic terrestrial self-righting using wings

Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation compared to small animals like insects. Inspired by the winged discoid cockroach, we designed a new robot that opens its wings to self-right by pushing against the ground. We used this robot to systematically test how self-righting performance depends on wing opening magnitude, speed, and asymmetry, and modeled how kinematic and energetic requirements depend on wing shape and body/wing mass distribution. We discovered that the robot self-rights dynamically using kinetic energy to overcome potential energy barriers, that larger and faster symmetric wing opening increases self-righting performance, and that opening wings asymmetrically increases righting probability when wing opening is small. Our results suggested that the discoid cockroach’s winged self-righting is a dynamic maneuver. While the thin, lightweight wings of the discoid cockroach and our robot are energetically sub-optimal for self-righting compared to tall, heavy ones, their ability to open wings saves them substantial energy compared to if they had static shells. Analogous to biological exaptations, our study provided a proof-of-concept for terrestrial robots to use existing morphology in novel ways to overcome new locomotor challenges.     

A preliminary pharmacogenetic investigation of adverse events from topiramate in heavy drinkers.

Topiramate, an anticonvulsant medication, is an efficacious treatment for alcohol dependence. To date, little is known about genetic moderators of side effects from topiramate. The objective of this study was to examine 3 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the glutamate receptor GluR5 gene (GRIK1) as predictors of topiramate-induced side effects in the context of a laboratory study of topiramate. Heavy drinkers (n = 51, 19 women and 32 men), 75% of whom met criteria for an alcohol use disorder, completed a 5-week dose escalation schedule to a target dose of either 200 or 300 mg or matched placebo. The combined medication groups were compared with placebo-treated individuals for side effects at target dose. Analyses revealed that an SNP in intron 9 of the GRIK1 gene (rs2832407) was associated with the severity of topiramate-induced side effects and with serum levels of topiramate. Genes underlying glutamatergic neurotransmission, such as the GRIK1 gene, may help predict heterogeneity in topiramate-induced side effects. Future studies in larger samples are needed to more fully establish these preliminary findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synthesis of thermoset plastics by Lewis acid initiated copolymerization of fish oil ethyl esters and alkenes

The Lewis acid initiated cationic homopolymerization of Norway fish oil ethyl ester (NFO) or the corresponding conjugated fish oil (CFO) and their copolymerization with various alkene comonomers is investigated. Among the Lewis acids employed, boron trifluoride diethyl etherate (BFE, BF₃ · OEt₂) is found to be the most effective initiator for cationic polymerization of the NFO and CFO systems. The BFE‐initiated homopolymerization of NFO generally results in low molecular weight viscous oils, while that of CFO leads to a solid elastic gel with a gel time of more than 72 h at room temperature. Copolymerization of the NFO or CFO with some alkene comonomers significantly facilitates gelation. The gel times are largely dependent upon the stoichiometry, the type of fish oil, and the alkene comonomer. After postcuring at elevated temperatures, the cationic copolymerization affords polymers ranging from soft rubbery materials to rigid plastics. These NFO and CFO polymers are composed of highly crosslinked materials and a certain amount of free oils and are found to be fully cured thermosets. Generally, CFO polymers appear to be harder than the corresponding NFO polymers. However, the thermal properties of the bulk polymers are similar to each other, and their insoluble extracts exhibit much higher thermal stability than the bulk thermosets. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 81: 2001–2012, 2001