Simultaneous translation of lectures and speeches

With increasing globalization, communication across language and cultural boundaries is becoming an essential requirement of doing business, delivering education, and providing public services. Due to the considerable cost of human translation services, only a small fraction of text documents and an even smaller percentage of spoken encounters, such as international meetings and conferences, are translated, with most resorting to the use of a common language (e.g. English) or not taking place at all. Technology may provide a potentially revolutionary way out if real-time, domain-independent, simultaneous speech translation can be realized. In this paper, we present a simultaneous speech translation system based on statistical recognition and translation technology. We discuss the technology, various system improvements and propose mechanisms for user-friendly delivery of the result. Over extensive component and end-to-end system evaluations and comparisons with human translation performance, we conclude that machines can already deliver comprehensible simultaneous translation output. Moreover, while machine performance is affected by recognition errors (and thus can be improved), human performance is limited by the cognitive challenge of performing the task in real time.     

独立学院计算机基础讲座式教学法的初探

本文分析了独立学院计算机应用基础的教学现状以及存在的问题,提出了以突出学生计算机的应用能力为培养目标的讲座式教学法模式,并就计算机基础讲座式教学方法进行了分析和探讨。     

Joint face and head tracking inside multi-camera smart rooms

The paper introduces a novel detection and tracking system that provides both frame-view and world-coordinate human location information, based on video from multiple synchronized and calibrated cameras with overlapping fields of view. The system is developed and evaluated for the specific scenario of a seminar lecturer presenting in front of an audience inside a “smart room”, its aim being to track the lecturer’s head centroid in the three-dimensional (3D) space and also yield two-dimensional (2D) face information in the available camera views. The proposed approach is primarily based on a statistical appearance model of human faces by means of well-known AdaBoost-like face detectors, extended to address the head pose variation observed in the smart room scenario of interest. The appearance module is complemented by two novel components and assisted by a simple tracking drift detection mechanism. The first component of interest is the initialization module, which employs a spatio-temporal dynamic programming approach with appropriate penalty functions to obtain optimal 3D location hypotheses. The second is an adaptive subspace learning based 2D tracking scheme with a novel forgetting mechanism, introduced to reduce tracking drift and increase robustness. System performance is benchmarked on an extensive database of realistic human interaction in the lecture smart room scenario, collected as part of the European integrated project “CHIL”. The system consistently achieves excellent tracking precision, with a 3D mean tracking error of less than 16 cm, and is demonstrated to outperform four alternative tracking schemes. Furthermore, the proposed system performs relatively well in detecting frontal and near-frontal faces in the available frame views. This work was performed while Zhenqiu Zhang was on a summer internship with the Human Language Technology Department at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.     

Interactive lectures: Effective teaching and learning in lectures using wireless networks

Among the severe instructional shortcomings of lectures is their lack of interactivity. To overcome these problems, the learning environment of the interactive lecture is introduced, in which students and lecturer interact by using mobile computers in a wireless network. In an experimental study, 44 students participated in interactive and in conventional lecture meetings. A quiz service that allowed question to be posted, students’ answers to be evaluated, and the results to be presented graphically, was implemented on mobile computers. The participants rated the interactive condition better, also reporting higher levels of attention, activity and perceived learning success for this condition. Objective measures indicated a slight but insignificant difference toward better learning results in the interactive condition.     

中国早期寺院配置的形态演变初探：塔·金堂·法堂·阁的建筑形制

在以塔/浮图为中心的佛教寺院原型传入中国之后,经过“舍宅为寺”的汉化发展过程,在南北朝的后期进入了形态发展的高峰。以永宁寺和日本法隆寺等几个寺庙作为这一时期形态配置的例证看来,由于对佛像崇拜的宗教需求,金堂的地位日益重要,寺院开始将金堂与塔的位置,作或左右、或前后地并置。这种形态学上的多样发展一直延续到了唐代,在金堂的地位日渐巩固后,才确立了在中轴线上以山门、金堂和法堂为主体建筑的寺庙配置。从初唐开始,塔的重要性进一步降低,配置上开始将塔列入别院;同时,汉化的建筑元素如钟楼和楼阁也配合着中轴线的组成逐渐成为寺院配置的重要组成。这一系列佛寺配置的演变过程,也反映了这段时期各种佛教思想的产生与变迁以及寺院使用模式的本土化,从而导致的建筑形制的改变。 　　本文试图从形态发展的角度,就中国及东亚的实例与文献记载,包括敦煌壁画、《洛阳伽蓝记》及《法苑珠林》等诸多文献中出现的佛寺描绘,以及近年来永宁寺,青龙寺等考古资料的发现,将文字记载、考古发掘与现存的实例进行图面的排比,作为寺院形态演化的推测。这个图面排比的研究,以时间为主轴探讨从东汉至南北朝一路到晚唐和五代,佛教寺院配置的可能形式发展轨迹;并就金堂、法堂、寺塔与大殿或楼阁等的形制关系,提出一些初步的观察和问题。     

温度系统经验规则控制

温度系统是一类较难控制的对象 ,例如文中所述硅钼炉的温度控制问题 ,作者采用经验规则控制方法解决了这类对象的有效控制问题     

System for recognizing lecture quality based on analysis of physical parameters

In this paper we have presented a smart classroom system that is able to classify students’ satisfaction with the lecture quality by examining parameters of the physical environment obtained using different smart devices. The system is based on the Random forest classifier, which showed the best accuracy among all machine learning algorithms available in Weka tool, with dataset collected during 28 lectures and evaluated using 10-fold cross validation. The system is implemented using different set of tools (such as Matlab and Weka) and can extract features from the ambient sound and analyze values obtained from different smart devices deployed in the classroom. Based on the extracted and captured data the system provides in real time information about the students’ satisfaction with the lecture quality. For the validation purposes, we recorded 13 more lectures attended by four different student groups where the number of students varied from 5 to 18. The system accuracy was evaluated by comparing system outputs with the students’ feedback and ranged from 70.7% to 83.9%.     

香港盂兰胜会的临时竹戏棚

香港农历七月系列临时竹戏棚的建造,涉及空间组织类型与变体,以及盂兰胜会的策划及活动安排;指出建筑、需求、场地以及精神层级极为紧凑、合理的关联是该类型的民间轻质结构自然美妙的原因.     

Effect of the airflow rate of a ceiling type air-conditioner on ventilation effectiveness in a lecture room

We performed a study on the effect of the discharge airflow rate of the ceiling type air-conditioner on ventilation performance in the lecture room with the mixing ventilation. The experiments and CFD were conducted for analyzing ventilation performance. The concepts of mean air age and indoor CO₂ concentration were used for evaluating ventilation performance. We made the CO₂ generation model in the simulation and calculated a lot of cases with respect to the airflow rate of air-conditioner and the mechanical ventilation rate. And the selected experimental measurements were performed in the lecture room of the same layout as the numerical one for verifying simulation results. Mean air age is gradually increased, but CO₂ concentration is oppositely decreased in the occupied zone with the increment of the discharge airflow rate of the ceiling type air-conditioner. This result shows that both mean air age and residual life time must be considered for evaluating ventilation performance when the contaminants are generated indoors. And the increment of discharge airflow of the ceiling type air-conditioner can induce the piston effect and push the contaminants out of the occupied zone. From this result, it is found out that ventilation performance can be increased when the momentum source like an air-conditioner is used in the room with the mixing ventilation.