AI Code Breaker

AI Code Breaker — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Web-based simulation

    Web-based simulation

    Web-based simulation (WBS) is the invocation of computer simulation services over the World Wide Web, specifically through a web browser. Increasingly, the web is being looked upon as an environment for providing modeling and simulation applications, and as such, is an emerging area of investigation within the simulation community. == Application == Web-based simulation is used in several contexts: In e-learning, various principles can quickly be illustrated to students by means of interactive computer animations, for example during lecture demonstrations and computer exercises. In distance learning, web-based simulation may provide an alternative to installing expensive simulation software on the student computer, or an alternative to expensive laboratory equipment. In software engineering, web-based emulation allows application development and testing on one platform for other target platforms, for example for various mobile operating systems or mobile web browsers, without the need of target hardware or locally installed emulation software. In online computer games, 3D environments can be simulated, and old home computers and video game consoles can be emulated, allowing the user to play old computer games in the web browser. In medical education, nurse education and allied health education (like sonographer training), web-based simulations can be used for learning and practicing clinical healthcare procedures. Web-based procedural simulations emphasize the cognitive elements such as the steps of the procedure, the decisions, the tools/devices to be used, and the correct anatomical location. == Client-side vs server-side approaches == Web-based simulation can take place either on the server side or on the client side. In server-side simulation, the numerical calculations and visualization (generation of plots and other computer graphics) is carried out on the web server, while the interactive graphical user interface (GUI) often partly is provided by the client-side, for example using server-side scripting such as PHP or CGI scripts, interactive services based on Ajax or a conventional application software remotely accessed through a VNC Java applet. In client-side simulation, the simulation program is downloaded from the server side but completely executed on the client side, for example using Java applets, Flash animations, JavaScript, or some mathematical software viewer plug-in. Server-side simulation is not scalable for many simultaneous users, but places fewer demands on the user computer performance and web-browser plug-ins than client-side simulation. The term on-line simulation sometimes refers to server-side web-based simulation, sometimes to symbiotic simulation, i.e. a simulation that interacts in real-time with a physical system. The upcoming cloud-computing technologies can be used for new server-side simulation approaches. For instance, there are multi-agent-simulation applications which are deployed on cloud-computing instances and act independently. This allows simulations to be highly scalable. == Existing tools == AgentSheets – graphically programmed tool for creating web-based The Sims-like simulation games, and for teaching beginner students programming. AnyLogic – a graphically programmed tool that generates Java code for discrete-event simulation, system dynamics and agent-based models Easy Java Simulations – a tool for modelling and visualization of physical phenomenons, that automatically generates Java code from mathematical expressions. ExploreLearning Gizmos – a large library of interactive online simulations for math and science education in grades 3–12. FreeFem++ Javascript Version – FreeFem++ is a free and open source PDE solver using the finite element method. GNU Octave web interfaces – MATLAB compatible open-source software Lanner Group Ltd L-SIM Server – Java-based discrete-event simulation engine which supports model standards such as BPMN 2.0 Nanohub – web 2.0 in-browser interactive simulation of nanotechnology NetLogo – a multi-agent programming language and integrated modeling environment that runs on the Java Virtual Machine OpenPlaG – PHP-based function graph plotter for the use on websites OpenEpi – web-based packet of tools for biostatistics Recursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit (Repast) – agent-based modeling and simulation toolkit implemented in Java and many other languages SageMath – open-source numerical-analysis software with web interface, based on the Python programming language SimScale – web-based simulation platform supporting computational fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, and thermodynamics StarLogo – agent-based simulation language written in Java. VisSim viewer – graphically programmed data-flow diagrams for simulation of dynamical systems webMathematica and Mathematica Player – a computer algebra system and programming language. VisualSim Architect – VisualSim Explorer enables system-level models to be embedded in documents for viewing, simulation and analysis from within a web browser without any local software installation.

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  • Dynamic texture

    Dynamic texture

    Dynamic texture ( sometimes referred to as temporal texture) is the texture with motion which can be found in videos of sea-waves, fire, smoke, wavy trees, etc. Dynamic texture has a spatially repetitive pattern with time-varying visual pattern. Modeling and analyzing dynamic texture is a topic of images processing and pattern recognition in computer vision. Extracting features that describe the dynamic texture can be utilized for tasks of images sequences classification, segmentation, recognition and retrieval. Comparing with texture found within static images, analyzing dynamic texture is a challenging problem. It is important that the extracted features from dynamic texture combine motion and appearance description, and also be invariance to some transformation such as rotation, translation and illumination. == Analysis methods of dynamic texture == The methods of dynamic texture recognition can categorized as follows: Methods based on optical flow: by applying optical flow to the dynamic texture, velocity with direction and magnitude can be detected and used to recognize the dynamic texture. Due to simplicity of its computation, it is currently the most popular method. Methods computing geometric properties: this methods track the surfaces of motion trajectories in spatiotemporal domain. Methods based on local spatiotemporal filtering : this methods analyze the local spatiotemporal patterns and its orientation and energy and employ them as feature used for classification. Methods based on global spatiotemporal transform: this method characterize the motion at different scale using wavelets that can decompose the motion into local and global. Model-based methods : These methods aims at generating a model to describe the motion by a set of parameters. == Applications == - Segmenting the sequence images of natural scenes. This helps on differentiate between streets and grass alongside these streets which could be used in the application of navigations. - Motion detection : Dynamic texture features extracted from footage videos can be exploited to detect abnormal crowd activities. - Video classification: video of natural scenes or other scenes that exhibit dynamic textures. - Video retrieval : Dynamic textures can be employed as a feature retrieve videos that contain, for example, sea-waves, smoke, clouds, wavy trees.

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  • DreamLab

    DreamLab

    DreamLab was a volunteer computing Android and iOS app launched in 2015 by Imperial College London and the Vodafone Foundation. It was discontinued on 2nd April 2025. == Description == The app helped to research cancer, COVID-19, new drugs and tropical cyclones. To do this, DreamLab accessed part of the device's processing power, with the user's consent, while the owner charged their smartphone, to speed up the calculations of the algorithms from Imperial College London. The aim of the tropical cyclone project was to prepare for climate change risks. Other projects aimed to find existing drugs and food molecules that could help people with COVID-19 and other diseases. The performance of 100,000 smartphones would reach the annual output of all research computers at Imperial College in just three months, with a nightly runtime of six hours. The app was developed in 2015 by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and the Vodafone Foundation. In May 2020, the project had over 490,000 registered users.

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  • Photometric stereo

    Photometric stereo

    Photometric stereo is a technique in computer vision for estimating the surface normals of objects by observing that object under different lighting conditions (photometry). It is based on the fact that the amount of light reflected by a surface is dependent on the orientation of the surface in relation to the light source and the observer. By measuring the amount of light reflected into a camera, the space of possible surface orientations is limited. Given enough light sources from different angles, the surface orientation may be constrained to a single orientation or even overconstrained. The technique was originally introduced by Woodham in 1980. The special case where the data is a single image is known as shape from shading, and was analyzed by B. K. P. Horn in 1989. Photometric stereo has since been generalized to many other situations, including extended light sources and non-Lambertian surface finishes. Current research aims to make the method work in the presence of projected shadows, highlights, and non-uniform lighting. Photometric stereo is widely used in various fields, including archaeology, cultural heritage conservation, and quality control. It is now integrated into widely used open-source software, such as Meshroom. == Basic method == Under Woodham's original assumptions — Lambertian reflectance, known point-like distant light sources, and uniform albedo — the problem can be solved by inverting the linear equation I = L ⋅ n {\displaystyle I=L\cdot n} , where I {\displaystyle I} is a (known) vector of m {\displaystyle m} observed intensities, n {\displaystyle n} is the (unknown) surface normal, and L {\displaystyle L} is a (known) 3 × m {\displaystyle 3\times m} matrix of normalized light directions. This model can easily be extended to surfaces with non-uniform albedo, while keeping the problem linear. Taking an albedo reflectivity of k {\displaystyle k} , the formula for the reflected light intensity becomes I = k ( L ⋅ n ) . {\displaystyle I=k(L\cdot n).} If L {\displaystyle L} is square (there are exactly 3 lights) and non-singular, it can be inverted, giving L − 1 I = k n . {\displaystyle L^{-1}I=kn.} Since the normal vector is known to have length 1, k {\displaystyle k} must be the length of the vector k n {\displaystyle kn} , and n {\displaystyle n} is the normalised direction of that vector. If L {\displaystyle L} is not square (there are more than 3 lights), a generalisation of the inverse can be obtained using the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse, by simply multiplying both sides with L T {\displaystyle L^{T}} , giving L T I = L T k ( L ⋅ n ) , {\displaystyle L^{T}I=L^{T}k(L\cdot n),} ( L T L ) − 1 L T I = k n , {\displaystyle (L^{T}L)^{-1}L^{T}I=kn,} after which the normal vector and albedo can be solved as described above. == Non-Lambertian surfaces == The classical photometric stereo problem concerns itself only with Lambertian surfaces, with perfectly diffuse reflection. This is unrealistic for many types of materials, especially metals, glass and smooth plastics, and will lead to aberrations in the resulting normal vectors. Many methods have been developed to lift this assumption. In this section, a few of these are listed. === Specular reflections === Historically, in computer graphics, the commonly used model to render surfaces started with Lambertian surfaces and progressed first to include simple specular reflections. Computer vision followed a similar course with photometric stereo. Specular reflections were among the first deviations from the Lambertian model. These are a few adaptations that have been developed. Many techniques ultimately rely on modelling the reflectance function of the surface, that is, how much light is reflected in each direction. This reflectance function has to be invertible. The reflected light intensities towards the camera is measured, and the inverse reflectance function is fit onto the measured intensities, resulting in a unique solution for the normal vector. === General BRDFs and beyond === According to the Bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) model, a surface may distribute the amount of light it receives in any outward direction. This is the most general known model for opaque surfaces. Some techniques have been developed to model (almost) general BRDFs. In practice, all of these require many light sources to obtain reliable data. These are methods in which surfaces with general BRDFs can be measured. Determine the explicit BRDF prior to scanning. To do this, a different surface is required that has the same or a very similar BRDF, of which the actual geometry (or at least the normal vectors for many points on the surface) is already known. The lights are then individually shone upon the known surface, and the amount of reflection into the camera is measured. Using this information, a look-up table can be created that maps reflected intensities for each light source to a list of possible normal vectors. This puts constraints on the possible normal vectors the surface may have, and reduces the photometric stereo problem to an interpolation between measurements. Typical known surfaces to calibrate the look-up table with are spheres for their wide variety of surface orientations. Restricting the BRDF to be symmetrical. If the BRDF is symmetrical, the direction of the light can be restricted to a cone about the direction to the camera. Which cone this is depends on the BRDF itself, the normal vector of the surface, and the measured intensity. Given enough measured intensities and the resulting light directions, these cones can be approximated and therefore the normal vectors of the surface. Some progress has been made towards modelling an even more general surfaces, such as Spatially Varying Bidirectional Distribution Functions (SVBRDF), Bidirectional surface scattering reflectance distribution functions (BSSRDF), and accounting for interreflections. However, such methods are still fairly restrictive in photometric stereo. Better results have been achieved with structured light. == Uncalibrated photometric stereo == Uncalibrated Photometric Stereo is an approach in photometric stereo that aims to reconstruct the 3D shape of an object from images captured under unknown lighting conditions. Unlike classical methods, which often assume controlled or known lighting setups, this approach removes these constraints, making it adaptable to diverse and real-world environments. The advent of deep learning has revolutionized universal PS by replacing handcrafted assumptions with data-driven models. Recent approaches leverage Transformer-based architectures and multi-scale encoder–decoder networks to directly estimate surface normals from input images. Uncalibrated Photometric Stereo is inherently an ill-posed problem, as it attempts to recover 3D shape and lighting conditions simultaneously from images alone. This leads to fundamental ambiguities in the reconstruction process, which manifest as systematic errors in the recovered geometry, including global distortions in the object's overall shape, and misinterpretation of surface orientation, where concave regions may appear convex and vice versa. To address the challenges of uncalibrated photometric stereo, hybrid methods have emerged that combine multi-view stereo and photometric stereo. These approaches leverage the strengths of both techniques, including geometric reliability and resolution.

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  • SQLBuddy

    SQLBuddy

    SQL Buddy is an open-source web-based application primarily coded in PHP, that allows users to control both MySQL and SQLite database through a web browser. The project was well regarded for its easy installation process and the friendly user interface it offered. The application was further praised for its cross-platform compatibility, meaning users could manage their databases on various operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS. The development of SQL Buddy has stopped, with version 1.3.3 being the final release on January 18, 2011. No further releases are expected.

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  • Chai AI

    Chai AI

    Chai AI (also known as Chai Research) is an American artificial intelligence (AI) company that operates a chatbot platform where users can create, share, and interact with character-based chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs). The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. == History == Chai was founded in 2021 by William Beauchamp, a former quantitative trader educated at Cambridge, who began developing the initial prototype in 2020 in Cambridge, England. The company launched in 2021 and relocated to Palo Alto in 2022. In June 2023, Chai raised US$2 million in a pre-seed funding round. In September 2023, GPU cloud provider CoreWeave invested in the company at a valuation of US$450 million. In January 2024, Chai Research reported a $450 million valuation following an investment from cloud computing provider CoreWeave. In July 2024, authorities in Belgium launched an investigation into the company following reports of a man dying by suicide following extensive chats on the Chai app. == Reception == In 2025, Chai Research announced that their app had over 10 million downloads and 1 million daily active users. In 2022, Canadian writer Sheila Heti published her conversations with various chatbots in The Paris Review, including Chai AI chatbots, and later used Chai AI chatbots in the development of a novel. Heti said that she had found that Chai's default chatbot, Eliza, "had turned out to be like most of the other bots on the site—primarily interested in sex". In January 2026, CHAI introduced country-based blocks on its free, ad-supported tier, initially providing the community with little information and inaccurate lists of the affected countries. Users in "Low tier" regions are required to subscribe to use the app in any capacity, while "High tier" regions will retain free ad-supported access. In response to backlash, the company announced a "Basic" tier with unlimited messages and ads, intended to cover electricity and infrastructure costs. In February 2026, CHAI was criticized for the unannounced implementation of restrictive "token limits" that abruptly blocked messages and froze conversations for both free and paid subscribers. Users generating long responses or utilizing roleplay features found their quotas exhausted within minutes, resulting in lockouts lasting anywhere from a few hours to a week. == Technology == Chai allows users to create characters and interact with chatbot versions of those characters. These chatbots use the open-source large language model (LLM) GPT-J originally developed by EleutherAI. Chai AI chatbots can be shared on the platform for other users to interact with.

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  • Automatic taxonomy construction

    Automatic taxonomy construction

    Automatic taxonomy construction (ATC) is the use of software programs to generate taxonomical classifications from a body of texts called a corpus. ATC is a branch of natural language processing, which in turn is a branch of artificial intelligence. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially, a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. Among other things, a taxonomy can be used to organize and index knowledge (stored as documents, articles, videos, etc.), such as in the form of a library classification system, or a search engine taxonomy, so that users can more easily find the information they are searching for. Many taxonomies are hierarchies (and thus, have an intrinsic tree structure), but not all are. Manually developing and maintaining a taxonomy is a labor-intensive task requiring significant time and resources, including familiarity of or expertise in the taxonomy's domain (scope, subject, or field), which drives the costs and limits the scope of such projects. Also, domain modelers have their own points of view which inevitably, even if unintentionally, work their way into the taxonomy. ATC uses artificial intelligence techniques to quickly automatically generate a taxonomy for a domain in order to avoid these problems and remove limitations. == Approaches == There are several approaches to ATC. One approach is to use rules to detect patterns in the corpus and use those patterns to infer relations such as hyponymy. Other approaches use machine learning techniques such as Bayesian inferencing and Artificial Neural Networks. === Keyword extraction === One approach to building a taxonomy is to automatically gather the keywords from a domain using keyword extraction, then analyze the relationships between them (see Hyponymy, below), and then arrange them as a taxonomy based on those relationships. === Hyponymy and "is-a" relations === In ATC programs, one of the most important tasks is the discovery of hypernym and hyponym relations among words. One way to do that from a body of text is to search for certain phrases like "is a" and "such as". In linguistics, is-a relations are called hyponymy. Words that describe categories are called hypernyms and words that are examples of categories are hyponyms. For example, dog is a hypernym and Fido is one of its hyponyms. A word can be both a hyponym and a hypernym. So, dog is a hyponym of mammal and also a hypernym of Fido. Taxonomies are often represented as is-a hierarchies where each level is more specific than (in mathematical language "a subset of") the level above it. For example, a basic biology taxonomy would have concepts such as mammal, which is a subset of animal, and dogs and cats, which are subsets of mammal. This kind of taxonomy is called an is-a model because the specific objects are considered instances of a concept. For example, Fido is-a instance of the concept dog and Fluffy is-a cat. == Applications == ATC can be used to build taxonomies for search engines, to improve search results. ATC systems are a key component of ontology learning (also known as automatic ontology construction), and have been used to automatically generate large ontologies for domains such as insurance and finance. They have also been used to enhance existing large networks such as Wordnet to make them more complete and consistent. == ATC software == == Other names == Other names for automatic taxonomy construction include: Automated outline building Automated outline construction Automated outline creation Automated outline extraction Automated outline generation Automated outline induction Automated outline learning Automated outlining Automated taxonomy building Automated taxonomy construction Automated taxonomy creation Automated taxonomy extraction Automated taxonomy generation Automated taxonomy induction Automated taxonomy learning Automatic outline building Automatic outline construction Automatic outline creation Automatic outline extraction Automatic outline generation Automatic outline induction Automatic outline learning Automatic taxonomy building Automatic taxonomy creation Automatic taxonomy extraction Automatic taxonomy generation Automatic taxonomy induction Automatic taxonomy learning Outline automation Outline building Outline construction Outline creation Outline extraction Outline generation Outline induction Outline learning Semantic taxonomy building Semantic taxonomy construction Semantic taxonomy creation Semantic taxonomy extraction Semantic taxonomy generation Semantic taxonomy induction Semantic taxonomy learning Taxonomy automation Taxonomy building Taxonomy construction Taxonomy creation Taxonomy extraction Taxonomy generation Taxonomy induction Taxonomy learning

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  • Image moment

    Image moment

    In image processing, computer vision and related fields, an image moment is a certain particular weighted average (moment) of the image pixels' intensities, or a function of such moments, usually chosen to have some attractive property or interpretation. Image moments are useful to describe objects after segmentation. Simple properties of the image which are found via image moments include area (or total intensity), its centroid, and information about its orientation. == Raw moments == For a 2D continuous function f(x,y) the moment (sometimes called "raw moment") of order (p + q) is defined as M p q = ∫ − ∞ ∞ ∫ − ∞ ∞ x p y q f ( x , y ) d x d y {\displaystyle M_{pq}=\int \limits _{-\infty }^{\infty }\int \limits _{-\infty }^{\infty }x^{p}y^{q}f(x,y)\,dx\,dy} for p,q = 0,1,2,... Adapting this to scalar (grayscale) image with pixel intensities I(x,y), raw image moments Mij are calculated by M i j = ∑ x ∑ y x i y j I ( x , y ) {\displaystyle M_{ij}=\sum _{x}\sum _{y}x^{i}y^{j}I(x,y)\,\!} In some cases, this may be calculated by considering the image as a probability density function, i.e., by dividing the above by ∑ x ∑ y I ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \sum _{x}\sum _{y}I(x,y)\,\!} A uniqueness theorem states that if f(x,y) is piecewise continuous and has nonzero values only in a finite part of the xy plane, moments of all orders exist, and the moment sequence (Mpq) is uniquely determined by f(x,y). Conversely, (Mpq) uniquely determines f(x,y). In practice, the image is summarized with functions of a few lower order moments. === Examples === Simple image properties derived via raw moments include: Area (for binary images) or sum of grey level (for greytone images): M 00 {\displaystyle M_{00}} Centroid: { x ¯ , y ¯ } = { M 10 M 00 , M 01 M 00 } {\displaystyle \{{\bar {x}},\ {\bar {y}}\}=\left\{{\frac {M_{10}}{M_{00}}},{\frac {M_{01}}{M_{00}}}\right\}} == Central moments == Central moments are defined as μ p q = ∫ − ∞ ∞ ∫ − ∞ ∞ ( x − x ¯ ) p ( y − y ¯ ) q f ( x , y ) d x d y {\displaystyle \mu _{pq}=\int \limits _{-\infty }^{\infty }\int \limits _{-\infty }^{\infty }(x-{\bar {x}})^{p}(y-{\bar {y}})^{q}f(x,y)\,dx\,dy} where x ¯ = M 10 M 00 {\displaystyle {\bar {x}}={\frac {M_{10}}{M_{00}}}} and y ¯ = M 01 M 00 {\displaystyle {\bar {y}}={\frac {M_{01}}{M_{00}}}} are the components of the centroid. If ƒ(x, y) is a digital image, then the previous equation becomes μ p q = ∑ x ∑ y ( x − x ¯ ) p ( y − y ¯ ) q f ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \mu _{pq}=\sum _{x}\sum _{y}(x-{\bar {x}})^{p}(y-{\bar {y}})^{q}f(x,y)} The central moments of order up to 3 are: μ 00 = M 00 , μ 01 = 0 , μ 10 = 0 , μ 11 = M 11 − x ¯ M 01 = M 11 − y ¯ M 10 , μ 20 = M 20 − x ¯ M 10 , μ 02 = M 02 − y ¯ M 01 , μ 21 = M 21 − 2 x ¯ M 11 − y ¯ M 20 + 2 x ¯ 2 M 01 , μ 12 = M 12 − 2 y ¯ M 11 − x ¯ M 02 + 2 y ¯ 2 M 10 , μ 30 = M 30 − 3 x ¯ M 20 + 2 x ¯ 2 M 10 , μ 03 = M 03 − 3 y ¯ M 02 + 2 y ¯ 2 M 01 . {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\mu _{00}&=M_{00},&\mu _{01}&=0,\\\mu _{10}&=0,&\mu _{11}&=M_{11}-{\bar {x}}M_{01}=M_{11}-{\bar {y}}M_{10},\\\mu _{20}&=M_{20}-{\bar {x}}M_{10},&\mu _{02}&=M_{02}-{\bar {y}}M_{01},\\\mu _{21}&=M_{21}-2{\bar {x}}M_{11}-{\bar {y}}M_{20}+2{\bar {x}}^{2}M_{01},&\mu _{12}&=M_{12}-2{\bar {y}}M_{11}-{\bar {x}}M_{02}+2{\bar {y}}^{2}M_{10},\\\mu _{30}&=M_{30}-3{\bar {x}}M_{20}+2{\bar {x}}^{2}M_{10},&\mu _{03}&=M_{03}-3{\bar {y}}M_{02}+2{\bar {y}}^{2}M_{01}.\end{aligned}}} It can be shown that: μ p q = ∑ m p ∑ n q ( p m ) ( q n ) ( − x ¯ ) ( p − m ) ( − y ¯ ) ( q − n ) M m n {\displaystyle \mu _{pq}=\sum _{m}^{p}\sum _{n}^{q}{p \choose m}{q \choose n}(-{\bar {x}})^{(p-m)}(-{\bar {y}})^{(q-n)}M_{mn}} Central moments are translational invariant. === Examples === Information about image orientation can be derived by first using the second order central moments to construct a covariance matrix. μ 20 ′ = μ 20 / μ 00 = M 20 / M 00 − x ¯ 2 μ 02 ′ = μ 02 / μ 00 = M 02 / M 00 − y ¯ 2 μ 11 ′ = μ 11 / μ 00 = M 11 / M 00 − x ¯ y ¯ {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\mu '_{20}&=\mu _{20}/\mu _{00}=M_{20}/M_{00}-{\bar {x}}^{2}\\\mu '_{02}&=\mu _{02}/\mu _{00}=M_{02}/M_{00}-{\bar {y}}^{2}\\\mu '_{11}&=\mu _{11}/\mu _{00}=M_{11}/M_{00}-{\bar {x}}{\bar {y}}\end{aligned}}} The covariance matrix of the image I ( x , y ) {\displaystyle I(x,y)} is now cov ⁡ [ I ( x , y ) ] = [ μ 20 ′ μ 11 ′ μ 11 ′ μ 02 ′ ] . {\displaystyle \operatorname {cov} [I(x,y)]={\begin{bmatrix}\mu '_{20}&\mu '_{11}\\\mu '_{11}&\mu '_{02}\end{bmatrix}}.} The eigenvectors of this matrix correspond to the major and minor axes of the image intensity, so the orientation can thus be extracted from the angle of the eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue towards the axis closest to this eigenvector. It can be shown that this angle Θ is given by the following formula: Θ = 1 2 arctan ⁡ ( 2 μ 11 ′ μ 20 ′ − μ 02 ′ ) {\displaystyle \Theta ={\frac {1}{2}}\arctan \left({\frac {2\mu '_{11}}{\mu '_{20}-\mu '_{02}}}\right)} The above formula holds as long as: μ 20 ′ − μ 02 ′ ≠ 0 {\displaystyle \mu '_{20}-\mu '_{02}\neq 0} The eigenvalues of the covariance matrix can easily be shown to be λ i = μ 20 ′ + μ 02 ′ 2 ± 4 μ ′ 11 2 + ( μ ′ 20 − μ ′ 02 ) 2 2 , {\displaystyle \lambda _{i}={\frac {\mu '_{20}+\mu '_{02}}{2}}\pm {\frac {\sqrt {4{\mu '}_{11}^{2}+({\mu '}_{20}-{\mu '}_{02})^{2}}}{2}},} and are proportional to the squared length of the eigenvector axes. The relative difference in magnitude of the eigenvalues are thus an indication of the eccentricity of the image, or how elongated it is. The eccentricity is 1 − λ 2 λ 1 . {\displaystyle {\sqrt {1-{\frac {\lambda _{2}}{\lambda _{1}}}}}.} == Moment invariants == Moments are well-known for their application in image analysis, since they can be used to derive invariants with respect to specific transformation classes. The term invariant moments is often abused in this context. However, while moment invariants are invariants that are formed from moments, the only moments that are invariants themselves are the central moments. Note that the invariants detailed below are exactly invariant only in the continuous domain. In a discrete domain, neither scaling nor rotation are well defined: a discrete image transformed in such a way is generally an approximation, and the transformation is not reversible. These invariants therefore are only approximately invariant when describing a shape in a discrete image. === Translation invariants === The central moments μi j of any order are, by construction, invariant with respect to translations. === Scale invariants === Invariants ηi j with respect to both translation and scale can be constructed from central moments by dividing through a properly scaled zero-th central moment: η i j = μ i j μ 00 ( 1 + i + j 2 ) {\displaystyle \eta _{ij}={\frac {\mu _{ij}}{\mu _{00}^{\left(1+{\frac {i+j}{2}}\right)}}}\,\!} where i + j ≥ 2. Note that translational invariance directly follows by only using central moments. === Rotation invariants === As shown in the work of Hu, invariants with respect to translation, scale, and rotation can be constructed: I 1 = η 20 + η 02 {\displaystyle I_{1}=\eta _{20}+\eta _{02}} I 2 = ( η 20 − η 02 ) 2 + 4 η 11 2 {\displaystyle I_{2}=(\eta _{20}-\eta _{02})^{2}+4\eta _{11}^{2}} I 3 = ( η 30 − 3 η 12 ) 2 + ( 3 η 21 − η 03 ) 2 {\displaystyle I_{3}=(\eta _{30}-3\eta _{12})^{2}+(3\eta _{21}-\eta _{03})^{2}} I 4 = ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 + ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 {\displaystyle I_{4}=(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}+(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}} I 5 = ( η 30 − 3 η 12 ) ( η 30 + η 12 ) [ ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 − 3 ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 ] + ( 3 η 21 − η 03 ) ( η 21 + η 03 ) [ 3 ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 − ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 ] {\displaystyle I_{5}=(\eta _{30}-3\eta _{12})(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})[(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}-3(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}]+(3\eta _{21}-\eta _{03})(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})[3(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}-(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}]} I 6 = ( η 20 − η 02 ) [ ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 − ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 ] + 4 η 11 ( η 30 + η 12 ) ( η 21 + η 03 ) {\displaystyle I_{6}=(\eta _{20}-\eta _{02})[(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}-(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}]+4\eta _{11}(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})} I 7 = ( 3 η 21 − η 03 ) ( η 30 + η 12 ) [ ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 − 3 ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 ] − ( η 30 − 3 η 12 ) ( η 21 + η 03 ) [ 3 ( η 30 + η 12 ) 2 − ( η 21 + η 03 ) 2 ] . {\displaystyle I_{7}=(3\eta _{21}-\eta _{03})(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})[(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}-3(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}]-(\eta _{30}-3\eta _{12})(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})[3(\eta _{30}+\eta _{12})^{2}-(\eta _{21}+\eta _{03})^{2}].} These are well-known as Hu moment invariants. The first one, I1, is analogous to the moment of inertia around the image's centroid, where the pixels' intensities are analogous to physical density. The first six, I1 ... I6, are reflection symmetric, i.e. they are unchanged if the image is changed to a mirror image. The last one, I7, is reflection antisymmetric (changes sign under reflection), which enables it to distinguish mirror images of otherwise identical im

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  • Managed private cloud

    Managed private cloud

    Managed private cloud (also known as "hosted private cloud" or "single-tenant SaaS") refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serves a single client organization (tenant), and is managed by a third party. The third-party provider is responsible for providing the hardware for the server and also for preliminary maintenance. This is in contrast to multitenancy, where multiple client organizations share a single server, or an on-premises deployment, where the client organization hosts its software instance. Managed private clouds also fall under the larger umbrella of cloud computing. == Adoption == The need for private clouds arose due to enterprises requiring a dedicated service and infrastructure for their cloud computing needs, such as for business-critical operations, improved security, and better control over their resources. Managed private cloud adoption is a popular choice among organizations. It has been on the rise due to enterprises requiring a dedicated cloud environment and preferring to avoid having to deal with management, maintenance, or future upgrade costs for the associated infrastructure and services. Such operational costs are unavoidable in on-premises private cloud data centers. == Advantages and challenges of managed private cloud == A managed private cloud cuts down on upkeep costs by outsourcing infrastructure management and maintenance to the managed cloud provider. It is easier to integrate an organization's existing software, services, and applications into a dedicated cloud hosting infrastructure which can be customized to the client's needs instead of a public cloud platform, whose hardware or infrastructure/software platform cannot be individualized to each client. Customers who choose a managed private cloud deployment usually choose them because of their desire for efficient cloud deployment, but also have the need for service customization or integration only available in a single-tenant environment. This chart shows the key benefits of the different types of deployments, and shows the overlap between these cloud solutions. This chart shows key drawbacks. Since deployments are done in a single-tenant environment, it is usually cost-prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses. While server upkeep and maintenance are handled by the service provider, including network management and security, the client is charged for all such services. It is up to the potential client to determine if a managed private cloud solution aligns with their business objectives and budget. While the service provider maintains the upkeep of servers, network, and platform infrastructure, sensitive data is typically not stored on managed private clouds as it may leave business-critical information prone to breaches via third-party attacks on the cloud service provider. Common customizations and integrations include: Active Directory Single Sign-on Learning Management Systems Video Teleconferencing == Deployment strategies and service providers == Software companies have taken a variety of strategies in the Managed Private Cloud realm. Some software organizations have provided managed private cloud options internally, such as Microsoft. Companies that offer an on-premises deployment option, by definition, enable third-party companies to market Managed Private Cloud solutions. A few managed private cloud service providers are: Adobe Connect: Adobe Connect may be purchased for on-premises deployment, multi-tenant hosted deployment, managed private cloud as ACMS, or managed by third-party managed private cloud provider ConnectSolutions. Rackspace CenturyLink Microsoft licenses for Lync, SharePoint and Exchange may be purchased for on-premises deployment, a multi-tenant hosted deployment via Office 365, or managed by third-party cloud hosting from Azaleos, ConnectSolutions and others.

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  • You Only Look Once

    You Only Look Once

    You Only Look Once (YOLO) is a series of real-time object detection systems based on convolutional neural networks. First introduced by Joseph Redmon et al. in 2015, YOLO has undergone several iterations and improvements, becoming one of the most popular object detection frameworks. The name "You Only Look Once" refers to the fact that the algorithm requires only one forward propagation pass through the neural network to make predictions, unlike previous region proposal-based techniques like R-CNN that require thousands for a single image. == Overview == Compared to previous methods like R-CNN and OverFeat, instead of applying the model to an image at multiple locations and scales, YOLO applies a single neural network to the full image. This network divides the image into regions and predicts bounding boxes and probabilities for each region. These bounding boxes are weighted by the predicted probabilities. === OverFeat === OverFeat was an early influential model for simultaneous object classification and localization. Its architecture is as follows: Train a neural network for image classification only ("classification-trained network"). This could be one like the AlexNet. The last layer of the trained network is removed, and for every possible object class, initialize a network module at the last layer ("regression network"). The base network has its parameters frozen. The regression network is trained to predict the ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} coordinates of two corners of the object's bounding box. During inference time, the classification-trained network is run over the same image over many different zoom levels and croppings. For each, it outputs a class label and a probability for that class label. Each output is then processed by the regression network of the corresponding class. This results in thousands of bounding boxes with class labels and probability. These boxes are merged until only one single box with a single class label remains. == Versions == There are two parts to the YOLO series. The original part contained YOLOv1, v2, and v3, all released on a website maintained by Joseph Redmon. === YOLOv1 === The original YOLO algorithm, introduced in 2015, divides the image into an S × S {\displaystyle S\times S} grid of cells. If the center of an object's bounding box falls into a grid cell, that cell is said to "contain" that object. Each grid cell predicts B bounding boxes and confidence scores for those boxes. These confidence scores reflect how confident the model is that the box contains an object and how accurate it thinks the box is that it predicts. In more detail, the network performs the same convolutional operation over each of the S 2 {\displaystyle S^{2}} patches. The output of the network on each patch is a tuple as follows: ( p 1 , … , p C , c 1 , x 1 , y 1 , w 1 , h 1 , … , c B , x B , y B , w B , h B ) {\displaystyle (p_{1},\dots ,p_{C},c_{1},x_{1},y_{1},w_{1},h_{1},\dots ,c_{B},x_{B},y_{B},w_{B},h_{B})} where p i {\displaystyle p_{i}} is the conditional probability that the cell contains an object of class i {\displaystyle i} , conditional on the cell containing at least one object. x j , y j , w j , h j {\displaystyle x_{j},y_{j},w_{j},h_{j}} are the center coordinates, width, and height of the j {\displaystyle j} -th predicted bounding box that is centered in the cell. Multiple bounding boxes are predicted to allow each prediction to specialize in one kind of bounding box. For example, slender objects might be predicted by j = 2 {\displaystyle j=2} while stout objects might be predicted by j = 1 {\displaystyle j=1} . c j {\displaystyle c_{j}} is the predicted intersection over union (IoU) of each bounding box with its corresponding ground truth. The network architecture has 24 convolutional layers followed by 2 fully connected layers. During training, for each cell, if it contains a ground truth bounding box, then only the predicted bounding boxes with the highest IoU with the ground truth bounding boxes is used for gradient descent. Concretely, let j {\displaystyle j} be that predicted bounding box, and let i {\displaystyle i} be the ground truth class label, then x j , y j , w j , h j {\displaystyle x_{j},y_{j},w_{j},h_{j}} are trained by gradient descent to approach the ground truth, p i {\displaystyle p_{i}} is trained towards 1 {\displaystyle 1} , other p i ′ {\displaystyle p_{i'}} are trained towards zero. If a cell contains no ground truth, then only c 1 , c 2 , … , c B {\displaystyle c_{1},c_{2},\dots ,c_{B}} are trained by gradient descent to approach zero. === YOLOv2 === Released in 2016, YOLOv2 (also known as YOLO9000) improved upon the original model by incorporating batch normalization, a higher resolution classifier, and using anchor boxes to predict bounding boxes. It could detect over 9000 object categories. It was also released on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. === YOLOv3 === YOLOv3, introduced in 2018, contained only "incremental" improvements, including the use of a more complex backbone network, multiple scales for detection, and a more sophisticated loss function. === YOLOv4 and beyond === Subsequent versions of YOLO (v4, v5, etc.) have been developed by different researchers, further improving performance and introducing new features. These versions are not officially associated with the original YOLO authors but build upon their work. As of 2026, versions up to YOLO26 have been released..

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  • Predictive text

    Predictive text

    Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the physical numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a prediction rather than repeatedly sequencing through the same group of "letters" it represents, in the same, invariable order. Predictive text could allow for an entire word to be input by a single keypress. Predictive text makes efficient use of fewer device keys to input writing into a text message, an e-mail, an address book, a calendar, and the like. The most widely used, general, predictive text systems are T9, iTap, eZiText, and LetterWise/WordWise. There are many ways to build a device that predicts text, but all predictive text systems have initial linguistic settings that offer predictions that are re-prioritized to adapt to each user. This learning adapts, by way of the device memory, to a user's disambiguating feedback that results in corrective key presses, such as pressing a "next" key to get to the intention. Most predictive text systems have a user database to facilitate this process. Theoretically the number of keystrokes required per desired character in the finished writing is, on average, comparable to using a keyboard. This is approximately true provided that all words used are in its database, punctuation is ignored, and no input mistakes are made when typing or spelling. The theoretical keystrokes per character, KSPC, of a keyboard is KSPC=1.00, and of multi-tap is KSPC=2.03. Eatoni's LetterWise is a predictive multi-tap hybrid, which when operating on a standard telephone keypad achieves KSPC=1.15 for English. The choice of which predictive text system is the best to use involves matching the user's preferred interface style, the user's level of learned ability to operate predictive text software, and the user's efficiency goal. There are various levels of risk in predictive text systems, versus multi-tap systems, because the predicted text that is automatically written provides the speed and mechanical efficiency benefit, which, if the user is not careful to review, results in transmitting misinformation. Predictive text systems take time to learn to use well, and so generally, a device's system has user options to set up the choice of multi-tap or any one of several schools of predictive text methods. == Background == Short message service (SMS) permits a mobile phone user to send text messages (also called messages, SMSes, texts, and txts) as a short message. The most common system of SMS text input is referred to as "multi-tap". Using multi-tap, a key is pressed multiple times to access the list of letters on that key. For instance, pressing the "2" key once displays an "a", twice displays a "b" and three times displays a "c". To enter two successive letters that are on the same key, the user must either pause or hit a "next" button. A user can type by pressing an alphanumeric keypad without looking at the electronic equipment display. Thus, multi-tap is easy to understand and can be used without any visual feedback. However, multi-tap is not very efficient, requiring potentially many keystrokes to enter a single letter. In ideal predictive text entry, all words used are in the dictionary, punctuation is ignored, no spelling mistakes are made, and no typing mistakes are made. The ideal dictionary would include all slang, proper nouns, abbreviations, URLs, foreign-language words and other user-unique words. This ideal circumstance gives predictive text software a reduction in the number of key strokes a user is required to enter a word. The user presses the number corresponding to each letter. As long as the word exists in the predictive text dictionary or is correctly disambiguated by non-dictionary systems, it will appear. For instance, pressing "4663" will typically be interpreted as the word good, provided that a linguistic database in English is currently in use, though alternatives such as home, hood and hoof are also valid interpretations of the sequence of key strokes. The most widely used systems of predictive text are Tegic's T9, Motorola's iTap, and the Eatoni Ergonomics' LetterWise and WordWise. T9 and iTap use dictionaries, but Eatoni Ergonomics' products use a disambiguation process, a set of statistical rules to recreate words from keystroke sequences. All predictive text systems require a linguistic database for every supported input language. == Dictionary vs. non-dictionary systems == Traditional disambiguation works by referencing a dictionary of commonly used words, though Eatoni offers a dictionaryless disambiguation system. In dictionary-based systems, as the user presses the number buttons, an algorithm searches the dictionary for a list of possible words that match the keypress combination and offers up the most probable choice. The user can then confirm the selection and move on, or use a key to cycle through the possible combinations. A non-dictionary system constructs words and other sequences of letters from the statistics of word parts. To attempt predictions of the intended result of keystrokes not yet entered, disambiguation may be combined with a word completion facility. Either system (disambiguation or predictive) may include a user database, which can be further classified as a "learning" system when words or phrases are entered into the user database without direct user intervention. The user database is for storing words or phrases that are not well disambiguated by the pre-supplied database. Some disambiguation systems further attempt to correct spelling, format text or perform other automatic rewrites, with the risky effect of either enhancing or frustrating user efforts to enter text. == History == The predictive text and autocomplete technology was invented out of necessities by Chinese scientists and linguists in the 1950s to solve the input inefficiency of the Chinese typewriter, as the typing process involved finding and selecting thousands of logographic characters on a tray, drastically slowing down the word processing speed. The actuating keys of the Chinese typewriter created by Lin Yutang in the 1940s included suggestions for the characters following the one selected. In 1951, the Chinese typesetter Zhang Jiying arranged Chinese characters in associative clusters, a precursor of modern predictive text entry, and broke speed records by doing so. Predictive entry of text from a telephone keypad has been known at least since the 1970s (Smith and Goodwin, 1971). Predictive text was mainly used to look up names in directories over the phone until mobile phone text messaging came into widespread use. == Example == On a typical phone keypad, if users wished to type the in a "multi-tap" keypad entry system, they would need to: Press 8 (tuv) once to select t. Press 4 (ghi) twice to select h. Press 3 (def) twice to select e. Meanwhile, in a phone with predictive text, they need only: Press 8 once to select the (tuv) group for the first character. Press 4 once to select the (ghi) group for the second character. Press 3 once to select the (def) group for the third character. The system updates the display as each keypress is entered, to show the most probable entry. In this example, prediction reduced the number of button presses from five to three. The effect is even greater with longer words and those composed of letters later in each key's sequence. A dictionary-based predictive system is based on the hope that the desired word is in the dictionary. That hope may be misplaced if the word differs in any way from common usage—in particular, if the word is not spelled or typed correctly, is slang, or is a proper noun. In these cases, some other mechanism must be used to enter the word. Furthermore, the simple dictionary approach fails with agglutinative languages, where a single word does not necessarily represent a single semantic entity. == Companies and products == Predictive text is developed and marketed in a variety of competing products, such as Nuance Communications's T9. Other products include Motorola's iTap; Eatoni Ergonomic's LetterWise (character, rather than word-based prediction); WordWise (word-based prediction without a dictionary); EQ3 (a QWERTY-like layout compatible with regular telephone keypads); Prevalent Devices's Phraze-It; Xrgomics' TenGO (a six-key reduced QWERTY keyboard system); Adaptxt (considers language, context, grammar and semantics); Lightkey (a predictive typing software for Windows); Clevertexting (statistical nature of the language, dictionaryless, dynamic key allocation); and Oizea Type (temporal ambiguity); Intelab's Tauto; WordLogic's Intelligent Input Platform™ (patented, layer-based advanced text prediction, includes multi-language dictionary, spell-check, built-in Web search); Google's Gboard. == Textonyms == Words produced by the same combination of keypresses have been called "textonyms"; also "txtonyms"; or "T9o

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  • Query understanding

    Query understanding

    Query understanding is the process of inferring the intent of a search engine user by extracting semantic meaning from the searcher’s keywords. Query understanding methods generally take place before the search engine retrieves and ranks results. It is related to natural language processing but specifically focused on the understanding of search queries. == Methods == === Stemming and lemmatization === Many languages inflect words to reflect their role in the utterance they appear in. The variation between various forms of a word is likely to be of little importance for the relatively coarse-grained model of meaning involved in a retrieval system, and for this reason the task of conflating the various forms of a word is a potentially useful technique to increase recall of a retrieval system. Stemming algorithms, also known as stemmers, typically use a collection of simple rules to remove suffixes intended to model the language’s inflection rules. For some languages, there are simple lemmatisation methods to reduce a word in query to its lemma or root form or its stem; for others, this operation involves non-trivial string processing and may require recognizing the word's part of speech or referencing a lexical database. The effectiveness of stemming and lemmatization varies across languages. === Query Segmentation === Query segmentation is a key component of query understanding, aiming to divide a query into meaningful segments. Traditional approaches, such as the bag-of-words model, treat individual words as independent units, which can limit interpretative accuracy. For languages like Chinese, where words are not separated by spaces, segmentation is essential, as individual characters often lack standalone meaning. Even in English, the BOW model may not capture the full meaning, as certain phrases—such as "New York"—carry significance as a whole rather than as isolated terms. By identifying phrases or entities within queries, query segmentation enhances interpretation, enabling search engines to apply proximity and ordering constraints, ultimately improving search accuracy and user satisfaction. === Entity recognition === Entity recognition is the process of locating and classifying entities within a text string. Named-entity recognition specifically focuses on named entities, such as names of people, places, and organizations. In addition, entity recognition includes identifying concepts in queries that may be represented by multi-word phrases. Entity recognition systems typically use grammar-based linguistic techniques or statistical machine learning models. === Query rewriting === Query rewriting is the process of automatically reformulating a search query to more accurately capture its intent. Query expansion adds additional query terms, such as synonyms, in order to retrieve more documents and thereby increase recall. Query relaxation removes query terms to reduce the requirements for a document to match the query, thereby also increasing recall. Other forms of query rewriting, such as automatically converting consecutive query terms into phrases and restricting query terms to specific fields, aim to increase precision. === Spelling Correction === Automatic spelling correction is a critical feature of modern search engines, designed to address common spelling errors in user queries. Such errors are especially frequent as users often search for unfamiliar topics. By correcting misspelled queries, search engines enhance their understanding of user intent, thereby improving the relevance and quality of search results and overall user experience.

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  • Cloud-computing comparison

    Cloud-computing comparison

    The following is a comparison of cloud-computing software and providers. == IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) == === Providers === ==== General ==== == SaaS (Software as a Service) == === General === === Supported hosts === === Supported guests === == PaaS (Platform as a service) == === Providers === === Providers on IaaS === PaaS providers which can run on IaaS providers ("itself" means the provider is both PaaS and IaaS):

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  • Speech segmentation

    Speech segmentation

    Speech segmentation is the process of identifying the boundaries between words, syllables, or phonemes in spoken natural languages. The term applies both to the mental processes used by humans, and to artificial processes of natural language processing. In the field of automatic pronunciation assessment, the process of segmenting an utterance against expected word(s) is called forced alignment. Speech segmentation is a subfield of general speech perception and an important subproblem of the technologically focused field of speech recognition, and cannot be adequately solved in isolation. As in most natural language processing problems, one must take into account context, grammar, and semantics, and even so the result is often a probabilistic division (statistically based on likelihood) rather than a categorical one. Though it seems that coarticulation—a phenomenon which may happen between adjacent words just as easily as within a single word—presents the main challenge in speech segmentation across languages, some other problems and strategies employed in solving those problems can be seen in the following sections. This problem overlaps to some extent with the problem of text segmentation that occurs in some languages which are traditionally written without inter-word spaces, like Chinese and Japanese, compared to writing systems which indicate speech segmentation between words by a word divider, such as the space. However, even for those languages, text segmentation is often much easier than speech segmentation, because the written language usually has little interference between adjacent words, and often contains additional clues not present in speech (such as the use of Chinese characters for word stems in Japanese). == Lexical recognition == In natural languages, the meaning of a complex spoken sentence can be understood by decomposing it into smaller lexical segments (roughly, the words of the language), associating a meaning to each segment, and combining those meanings according to the grammar rules of the language. Though lexical recognition is not thought to be used by infants in their first year, due to their highly limited vocabularies, it is one of the major processes involved in speech segmentation for adults. Three main models of lexical recognition exist in current research: first, whole-word access, which argues that words have a whole-word representation in the lexicon; second, decomposition, which argues that morphologically complex words are broken down into their morphemes (roots, stems, inflections, etc.) and then interpreted and; third, the view that whole-word and decomposition models are both used, but that the whole-word model provides some computational advantages and is therefore dominant in lexical recognition. To give an example, in a whole-word model, the word "cats" might be stored and searched for by letter, first "c", then "ca", "cat", and finally "cats". The same word, in a decompositional model, would likely be stored under the root word "cat" and could be searched for after removing the "s" suffix. "Falling", similarly, would be stored as "fall" and suffixed with the "ing" inflection. Though proponents of the decompositional model recognize that a morpheme-by-morpheme analysis may require significantly more computation, they argue that the unpacking of morphological information is necessary for other processes (such as syntactic structure) which may occur parallel to lexical searches. As a whole, research into systems of human lexical recognition is limited due to little experimental evidence that fully discriminates between the three main models. In any case, lexical recognition likely contributes significantly to speech segmentation through the contextual clues it provides, given that it is a heavily probabilistic system—based on the statistical likelihood of certain words or constituents occurring together. For example, one can imagine a situation where a person might say "I bought my dog at a ____ shop" and the missing word's vowel is pronounced as in "net", "sweat", or "pet". While the probability of "netshop" is extremely low, since "netshop" isn't currently a compound or phrase in English, and "sweatshop" also seems contextually improbable, "pet shop" is a good fit because it is a common phrase and is also related to the word "dog". Moreover, an utterance can have different meanings depending on how it is split into words. A popular example, often quoted in the field, is the phrase "How to wreck a nice beach", which sounds very similar to "How to recognize speech". As this example shows, proper lexical segmentation depends on context and semantics which draws on the whole of human knowledge and experience, and would thus require advanced pattern recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to be implemented on a computer. Lexical recognition is of particular value in the field of computer speech recognition, since the ability to build and search a network of semantically connected ideas would greatly increase the effectiveness of speech-recognition software. Statistical models can be used to segment and align recorded speech to words or phones. Applications include automatic lip-synch timing for cartoon animation, follow-the-bouncing-ball video sub-titling, and linguistic research. Automatic segmentation and alignment software is commercially available. == Phonotactic cues == For most spoken languages, the boundaries between lexical units are difficult to identify; phonotactics are one answer to this issue. One might expect that the inter-word spaces used by many written languages like English or Spanish would correspond to pauses in their spoken version, but that is true only in very slow speech, when the speaker deliberately inserts those pauses. In normal speech, one typically finds many consecutive words being said with no pauses between them, and often the final sounds of one word blend smoothly or fuse with the initial sounds of the next word. The notion that speech is produced like writing, as a sequence of distinct vowels and consonants, may be a relic of alphabetic heritage for some language communities. In fact, the way vowels are produced depends on the surrounding consonants just as consonants are affected by surrounding vowels; this is called coarticulation. For example, in the word "kit", the [k] is farther forward than when we say 'caught'. But also, the vowel in "kick" is phonetically different from the vowel in "kit", though we normally do not hear this. In addition, there are language-specific changes which occur in casual speech which makes it quite different from spelling. For example, in English, the phrase "hit you" could often be more appropriately spelled "hitcha". From a decompositional perspective, in many cases, phonotactics play a part in letting speakers know where to draw word boundaries. In English, the word "strawberry" is perceived by speakers as consisting (phonetically) of two parts: "straw" and "berry". Other interpretations such as "stra" and "wberry" are inhibited by English phonotactics, which does not allow the cluster "wb" word-initially. Other such examples are "day/dream" and "mile/stone" which are unlikely to be interpreted as "da/ydream" or "mil/estone" due to the phonotactic probability or improbability of certain clusters. The sentence "Five women left", which could be phonetically transcribed as [faɪvwɪmɘnlɛft], is marked since neither /vw/ in /faɪvwɪmɘn/ nor /nl/ in /wɪmɘnlɛft/ are allowed as syllable onsets or codas in English phonotactics. These phonotactic cues often allow speakers to easily distinguish the boundaries in words. Vowel harmony in languages like Finnish can also serve to provide phonotactic cues. While the system does not allow front vowels and back vowels to exist together within one morpheme, compounds allow two morphemes to maintain their own vowel harmony while coexisting in a word. Therefore, in compounds such as "selkä/ongelma" ('back problem') where vowel harmony is distinct between two constituents in a compound, the boundary will be wherever the switch in harmony takes place—between the "ä" and the "ö" in this case. Still, there are instances where phonotactics may not aid in segmentation. Words with unclear clusters or uncontrasted vowel harmony as in "opinto/uudistus" ('student reform') do not offer phonotactic clues as to how they are segmented. From the perspective of the whole-word model, however, these words are thought be stored as full words, so the constituent parts would not necessarily be relevant to lexical recognition. == In infants and non-natives == Infants are one major focus of research in speech segmentation. Since infants have not yet acquired a lexicon capable of providing extensive contextual clues or probability-based word searches within their first year, as mentioned above, they must often rely primarily upon phonotactic and rhythmic cues (with prosody being the dominant cue), all

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  • Averbis

    Averbis

    Averbis has a focus on healthcare, pharma, automotive and intellectual property analytics. Averbis is involved in various research projects of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy and the European Union such as DebugIT, EUCases, Mantra and SEMCARE. In addition to these projects, Averbis was also involved in the following projects: Greenpilot is a virtual library, which provides technical information in the fields of nutrition, environment and agriculture. Medpilot is a virtual library, which provides information about medicine and related sciences. In 2013, Averbis has been nominated for the German Founder Prize 2013. Averbis GmbH provides text analytics and text mining software to transform unstructured text into actionable information. It was founded in 2007 by IT experts after years of relevant scientific experience in the field of text mining and multilingual information retrieval. Averbis works in the field of terminology management, natural language processing, machine learning and semantic search. Its text mining software is embedded into the text mining framework UIMA.

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