Science fiction reduces the eeriness of android robots: A field experiment

As suggested by the uncanny valley hypothesis, robots that resemble humans likely elicit feelings of eeriness. Based on the psychological model of meaning maintenance, we expected that the uncanny valley experience could be mitigated through a fictional story, due to the meaning-generating function of narratives. A field experiment was conducted, in which 75 participants interacted with the humanlike robot Telenoid. Prior to the interaction, they either read a short story, a non-narrative leaflet about the robot, or they received no preliminary information. Eeriness ratings were significantly lower in the science fiction condition than in both other conditions. This effect was mediated by higher perceived human-likeness of the robot. Our findings suggest that science fiction may provide meaning for otherwise unsettling future technologies.     

An unsupervised approach to generating generic summaries of documents

We present an optimization-based unsupervised approach to automatic document summarization. In the proposed approach, text summarization is modeled as a Boolean programming problem. This model generally attempts to optimize three properties, namely, (1) relevance: summary should contain informative textual units that are relevant to the user; (2) redundancy: summaries should not contain multiple textual units that convey the same information; and (3) length: summary is bounded in length. The approach proposed in this paper is applicable to both tasks: single- and multi-document summarization. In both tasks, documents are split into sentences in preprocessing. We select some salient sentences from document(s) to generate a summary. Finally, the summary is generated by threading all the selected sentences in the order that they appear in the original document(s). We implemented our model on multi-document summarization task. When comparing our methods to several existing summarization methods on an open DUC2005 and DUC2007 data sets, we found that our method improves the summarization results significantly. This is because, first, when extracting summary sentences, this method not only focuses on the relevance scores of sentences to the whole sentence collection, but also the topic representative of sentences. Second, when generating a summary, this method also deals with the problem of repetition of information. The methods were evaluated using ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2 and ROUGE-SU4 metrics. In this paper, we also demonstrate that the summarization result depends on the similarity measure. Results of the experiment showed that combination of symmetric and asymmetric similarity measures yields better result than their use separately.     

The development of a single-item Food Choice Questionnaire

Based on the multi-item Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) originally developed by Steptoe and colleagues (1995), the current study developed a single-item FCQ that provides an acceptable balance between practical needs and psychometric concerns. Studies 1 (N = 1851) and 2 (2a (N = 3290), 2b (N = 4723), 2c (N = 270)) showed that the single-item FCQ scale has good convergent and discriminant validity. Generally, the results showed the highest correlations with the related multi-item dimensions (>0.40). Study 2 refined the scale. Only the items for convenience (Study 2a), sensory appeal (Study 2b) and mood (Study 2c) needed to be revised (as Study 1 showed a correlation between the multi-item and the single-item below the threshold of 0.60). The results also showed comparable predictive validity. Both methods revealed similar association patterns between food motives and consumption behaviours (Fisher’s z tests revealed agreements of 86.2% for Study 1, 92.9% for Study 2a and 100% for Studies 2b and 2c). Study 3 (N = 6062) showed an example of the added value of a context-specific application for the single-item FCQ. Different motives were shown to be relevant across contexts, and the context-specific motives had additional explained variance beyond the general multi-item FCQ. Studies 2b and 3 also showed the performance of the single-item FCQ in an international context. In sum, the results indicate that the single-item FCQ can be used as a flexible and short substitute for the multi-item FCQ. The study also discusses the conditions that should be considered when using the single-item scale.     

Ranking of aircraft maintenance organization based on human factor performance

Aircraft maintenance organisation is a complex socio-technical setup, where human factors influence the quality of aircraft maintenance service. Maintenance service quality is assessed based on the commitment of management and its ability to provide suitable facility, tools, spares and manpower supported with comfortable environment and maintenance procedures. Assessment of the service quality of the aircraft maintenance organisation is a complex process. Airlines, regulators, insurance companies and other agencies need decision support system, to assess the performance of a maintenance organisation. This paper provides criteria and scientific approach for assessing the maintenance organisation; it presents a methodology of applying Analytical Hierarchy Process to prioritise the key functions and to rank the maintenance organisations under study. The study has established that maintenance service quality in airline is directly correlated to its fleet size.     

Time-series clustering – A decade review

Clustering is a solution for classifying enormous data when there is not any early knowledge about classes. With emerging new concepts like cloud computing and big data and their vast applications in recent years, research works have been increased on unsupervised solutions like clustering algorithms to extract knowledge from this avalanche of data. Clustering time-series data has been used in diverse scientific areas to discover patterns which empower data analysts to extract valuable information from complex and massive datasets. In case of huge datasets, using supervised classification solutions is almost impossible, while clustering can solve this problem using un-supervised approaches. In this research work, the focus is on time-series data, which is one of the popular data types in clustering problems and is broadly used from gene expression data in biology to stock market analysis in finance. This review will expose four main components of time-series clustering and is aimed to represent an updated investigation on the trend of improvements in efficiency, quality and complexity of clustering time-series approaches during the last decade and enlighten new paths for future works.     

热镀锌板(卷)工程设计中的环境保护问题

对热镀锌板(卷)的生产工艺、主要生产设备进行了简要介绍，并就其污染源(工序)、生产过程中产生的污染物及其控制措施进行了评述，同时就设计和生产中宜注意的几个环保问题进行了分析。     

环境影响及计算机设备可靠性

和所有设备一样，计算机设备也是在一定环境中工作的，各种环境因素无时不对设备产生影响。要使计算机设备在各种环境中保持良好的性能，必须了解各种环境对计算机设备影响的机理和过程，分析在环境因素中那些因素是影响计算机设备的主要因素及其力度、频率、周期等，以便采取措施保护计算机设备正常工作。简要介绍除温度外，各种环境因素对计算机设备的影响。     

浅谈会计信息失真的成因及对策

阐述了会计信息失真的表现形式及其危害性，从会计自身、内控制度、外部审计、道德观念、执法等方面分析了会计信息失真的原因，并从完善法规制度、实行会计委派制、健全会计监督体系、加强立法和执法力度、更新观念、提高素质等方面提出了治理会计信息失真的办法，从根本上杜绝会计信息失真的现象。     

石油测井仪器可靠性指标探讨

在分析常用可靠性指标及其应用现状的基础上，根据可靠性理论及石油测井仪器的特点。提出了石油测井仪器的可靠性模型。在探讨常用可靠性指标对石油测井仪器适用性的同时，提出将平衡稳定工作时间NWTURE和免维修测井井次NOLWNM作为石油测井仪器可靠性指标的思想；探讨了获取可靠性指标的途径。给出了推荐使用的石油测井仪器可靠性指标。     

开工生产装置改扩建施工防火安全管理手段和举措

系统地分析了开工生产装置改扩建施工的特点及其火灾危险性,在此基础上提出了改扩建施工现场的防火安全管理手段和应采取的防火安全措施。