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AI Avatar Background — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Fuse Services Framework

    Fuse Services Framework

    Fuse Services Framework is an open source SOAP and REST web services platform based on Apache CXF for use in enterprise IT organizations. It is productized and supported by the Fuse group at FuseSource Corp. Fuse Services Framework service-enables new and existing systems for use in enterprise SOA infrastructure. Fuse Services Framework is a pluggable, small-footprint engine that creates high performance, secure and robust services in minutes using front-end programming APIs like JAX-WS and JAX-RS. It supports multiple transports and bindings and is extensible so developers can add bindings for additional message formats so all systems can work together without having to communicate through a centralized server. Fuse Services Framework is now a part of Red Hat JBoss Fuse. Fabric8 is a free Apache 2.0 Licensed upstream community for the JBoss Fuse product from Red Hat.

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  • The Best Free AI Customer-support Bot for Beginners

    The Best Free AI Customer-support Bot for Beginners

    Shopping for the best AI customer-support bot? An AI customer-support bot is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it keeps getting smarter as the underlying models improve. Pricing, accuracy, and the size of the model behind the tool are the three factors that most affect daily usefulness. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI customer-support bot slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Below we compare features, pricing, and real output so you can choose with confidence.

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  • How to Choose an AI Art Generator

    How to Choose an AI Art Generator

    Looking for the best AI art generator? An AI art generator is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI art generator slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Read on for hands-on impressions, pricing tiers, and the standout features that matter.

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  • Peter Gerstoft

    Peter Gerstoft

    Peter Gerstoft is a Danish-American scientist and engineer specializing in ocean acoustics, seismology, and signal processing. He is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. He was previously a Distinguished Data Scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and an adjunct professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego. == Education == Gerstoft received his MSc in engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1983 and another MSc from the University of Western Ontario in 1984. He completed his PhD in engineering at the Technical University of Denmark in 1986. == Career == Gerstoft began his career in acoustics and vibrations at Odegaard & Danneskiold-Samsøe (1987–1992). He then served as a Senior Scientist at the NATO SACLANT Undersea Research Centre in La Spezia, Italy, from 1992 to 1997. Between 1999 and 2000, Gerstoft worked as a Senior Seismic Acoustic Officer with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. He has been a Data Scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography since 1997. From 2013, he held an adjunct faculty position in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, where he taught courses on seismology, data assimilation, and machine learning for physical systems. Gerstoft retired from UC San Diego in 2025 and accepted an appointment as Professor of Electrical and Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark in 2026 . == Research and contributions == Gerstoft's research focuses on environmental signal processing, with a particular emphasis on inversion methods, including their theoretical development, algorithmic implementation, and practical applications. In the 1990s, he investigated the use of nonlinear optimization and Bayesian approaches in acoustic inverse problems related to source localization and environmental parameter estimation. His work integrated physical propagation models with Bayesian sampling methods and a range of likelihood functions. These techniques have been applied to various data types, including vertical sensor arrays, single-sensor broadband data, and transmission loss measurements, and contributed to a general framework for inversion based on Gaussian assumptions. He has also conducted research in machine learning and sparse signal processing, particularly in the context of sensor array data. This includes applications such as direction of arrival estimation and source localization, including for seismic events such as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and for ship tracking in ocean environments. His work on sparse Bayesian sequential methods and techniques for estimating Lagrange multipliers in constrained optimization problems has contributed to the development of adaptive and high-resolution signal processing techniques. Gerstoft has applied supervised learning and deep neural networks to problems in physical acoustics, including source localization in ocean waveguides. He has also co-authored several review articles on the use of machine learning in acoustics and seismology. == Honors == Fulbright Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989–1990) Fellow, Acoustical Society of America (2003) Member, American Geophysical Union (since 2004) Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2018) Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2023) == Selected publications == === Book === Diachok, O., Caiti, A., Gerstoft, P., & Schmidt, H. (Eds.). Full Field Inversion Methods in Ocean and Seismo-Acoustics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. === Selected articles === Gerstoft, P. (1994). "Inversion of seismo-acoustic data using genetic algorithms and a posteriori probability distributions". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 95 (2): 770–782. doi:10.1121/1.408467. Gerstoft, P., & Mecklenbrauker, C. F. (1998). "Ocean acoustic inversion with estimation of a posteriori probability distributions". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 104 (2): 808–819. doi:10.1121/1.423287. Sabra, K. G., Gerstoft, P., Roux, P., Kuperman, W. A., & Fehler, M. (2005). "Extracting time-domain Green's function estimates from ambient seismic noise". Geophysical Research Letters. 32, L03310. Xenaki, A., Gerstoft, P., & Mosegaard, K. (2014). "Compressive beamforming". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 136, 260–271. Niu, H., Reeves, D., & Gerstoft, P. (2017). "Source localization in an ocean waveguide using supervised machine learning". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 142, 1176–1188.

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  • Real-time computer graphics

    Real-time computer graphics

    Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface (GUI) to real-time image analysis, but is most often used in reference to interactive 3D computer graphics, typically using a graphics processing unit (GPU). One example of this concept is a video game that rapidly renders changing 3D environments to produce an illusion of motion. Computers have been capable of generating 2D images such as simple lines, images and polygons in real time since their invention. However, quickly rendering detailed 3D objects is a daunting task for traditional Von Neumann architecture-based systems. An early workaround to this problem was the use of sprites, 2D images that could imitate 3D graphics. Different techniques for rendering now exist, such as ray-tracing and rasterization. Using these techniques and advanced hardware, computers can now render images quickly enough to create the illusion of motion while simultaneously accepting user input. This means that the user can respond to rendered images in real time, producing an interactive experience. == Principles of real-time 3D computer graphics == The goal of computer graphics is to generate computer-generated images, or frames, using certain desired metrics. One such metric is the number of frames generated in a given second. Real-time computer graphics systems differ from traditional (i.e., non-real-time) rendering systems in that non-real-time graphics typically rely on ray tracing. In this process, millions or billions of rays are traced from the camera to the world for detailed rendering—this expensive operation can take hours or days to render a single frame. Real-time graphics systems must render each image in less than 1/30th of a second. Ray tracing is far too slow for these systems; instead, they employ the technique of z-buffer triangle rasterization. In this technique, every object is decomposed into individual primitives, usually triangles. Each triangle gets positioned, rotated and scaled on the screen, and rasterizer hardware (or a software emulator) generates pixels inside each triangle. These triangles are then decomposed into atomic units called fragments that are suitable for displaying on a display screen. The fragments are drawn on the screen using a color that is computed in several steps. For example, a texture can be used to "paint" a triangle based on a stored image, and then shadow mapping can alter that triangle's colors based on line-of-sight to light sources. === Video game graphics === Real-time graphics optimizes image quality subject to time and hardware constraints. GPUs and other advances increased the image quality that real-time graphics can produce. GPUs are capable of handling millions of triangles per frame, and modern DirectX/OpenGL class hardware is capable of generating complex effects, such as shadow volumes, motion blurring, and triangle generation, in real-time. The advancement of real-time graphics is evidenced in the progressive improvements between actual gameplay graphics and the pre-rendered cutscenes traditionally found in video games. Cutscenes are typically rendered in real-time—and may be interactive. Although the gap in quality between real-time graphics and traditional off-line graphics is narrowing, offline rendering remains much more accurate. === Advantages === Real-time graphics are typically employed when interactivity (e.g., player feedback) is crucial. When real-time graphics are used in films, the director has complete control of what has to be drawn on each frame, which can sometimes involve lengthy decision-making. Teams of people are typically involved in the making of these decisions. In real-time computer graphics, the user typically operates an input device to influence what is about to be drawn on the display. For example, when the user wants to move a character on the screen, the system updates the character's position before drawing the next frame. Usually, the display's response-time is far slower than the input device—this is justified by the immense difference between the (fast) response time of a human being's motion and the (slow) perspective speed of the human visual system. This difference has other effects too: because input devices must be very fast to keep up with human motion response, advancements in input devices (e.g., the current Wii remote) typically take much longer to achieve than comparable advancements in display devices. Another important factor controlling real-time computer graphics is the combination of physics and animation. These techniques largely dictate what is to be drawn on the screen—especially where to draw objects in the scene. These techniques help realistically imitate real world behavior (the temporal dimension, not the spatial dimensions), adding to the computer graphics' degree of realism. Real-time previewing with graphics software, especially when adjusting lighting effects, can increase work speed. Some parameter adjustments in fractal generating software may be made while viewing changes to the image in real time. == Rendering pipeline == The graphics rendering pipeline ("rendering pipeline" or simply "pipeline") is the foundation of real-time graphics. Its main function is to render a two-dimensional image in relation to a virtual camera, three-dimensional objects (an object that has width, length, and depth), light sources, lighting models, textures and more. === Architecture === The architecture of the real-time rendering pipeline can be divided into conceptual stages: application, geometry and rasterization. === Application stage === The application stage is responsible for generating "scenes", or 3D settings that are drawn to a 2D display. This stage is implemented in software that developers optimize for performance. This stage may perform processing such as collision detection, speed-up techniques, animation and force feedback, in addition to handling user input. Collision detection is an example of an operation that would be performed in the application stage. Collision detection uses algorithms to detect and respond to collisions between (virtual) objects. For example, the application may calculate new positions for the colliding objects and provide feedback via a force feedback device such as a vibrating game controller. The application stage also prepares graphics data for the next stage. This includes texture animation, animation of 3D models, animation via transforms, and geometry morphing. Finally, it produces primitives (points, lines, and triangles) based on scene information and feeds those primitives into the geometry stage of the pipeline. === Geometry stage === The geometry stage manipulates polygons and vertices to compute what to draw, how to draw it and where to draw it. Usually, these operations are performed by specialized hardware or GPUs. Variations across graphics hardware mean that the "geometry stage" may actually be implemented as several consecutive stages. ==== Model and view transformation ==== Before the final model is shown on the output device, the model is transformed onto multiple spaces or coordinate systems. Transformations move and manipulate objects by altering their vertices. Transformation is the general term for the four specific ways that manipulate the shape or position of a point, line or shape. ==== Lighting ==== In order to give the model a more realistic appearance, one or more light sources are usually established during transformation. However, this stage cannot be reached without first transforming the 3D scene into view space. In view space, the observer (camera) is typically placed at the origin. If using a right-handed coordinate system (which is considered standard), the observer looks in the direction of the negative z-axis with the y-axis pointing upwards and the x-axis pointing to the right. ==== Projection ==== Projection is a transformation used to represent a 3D model in a 2D space. The two main types of projection are orthographic projection (also called parallel) and perspective projection. The main characteristic of an orthographic projection is that parallel lines remain parallel after the transformation. Perspective projection utilizes the concept that if the distance between the observer and model increases, the model appears smaller than before. Essentially, perspective projection mimics human sight. ==== Clipping ==== Clipping is the process of removing primitives that are outside of the view box in order to facilitate the rasterizer stage. Once those primitives are removed, the primitives that remain will be drawn into new triangles that reach the next stage. ==== Screen mapping ==== The purpose of screen mapping is to find out the coordinates of the primitives during the clipping stage. ==== Rasterizer stage ==== The rasterizer

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  • Philipp Koehn

    Philipp Koehn

    Philipp Koehn (born 1 August 1971 in Erlangen, West Germany) is a computer scientist and researcher in the field of machine translation. His primary research interest is statistical machine translation and he is one of the inventors of a method called phrase based machine translation. This is a sub-field of statistical translation methods that employs sequences of words (or so-called "phrases") as the basis of translation, expanding the previous word based approaches. A 2003 paper which he authored with Franz Josef Och and Daniel Marcu called Statistical phrase-based translation has attracted wide attention in Machine translation community and has been cited over a thousand times. Phrase based methods are widely used in machine translation applications in industry. Philipp Koehn received his PhD in computer science in 2003 from the University of Southern California, where he worked at the Information Sciences Institute advised by Kevin Knight. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow under Michael Collins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in the School of Informatics in 2005. He was appointed reader in 2010 and professor in 2012. In 2014, he was appointed professor at the computer science department of The Johns Hopkins University, where he is affiliated with the Center for Language and Speech Processing. == Moses statistical machine translation decoder == The Moses machine translation decoder is an open source project that was created by and is maintained under the guidance of Philipp Koehn. The Moses decoder is a platform for developing Statistical machine translation systems given a parallel corpus for any language pair. The decoder was mainly developed by Hieu Hoang and Philipp Koehn at the University of Edinburgh and extended during a Johns Hopkins University Summer Workshop and further developed under Euromatrix and GALE project funding. The decoder (which is part of a complete statistical machine translation toolkit) is the de facto benchmark for research in the field. Although Koehn continues to play a major role in the development of Moses, the Moses decoder was supported by the European Framework 6 projects Euromatrix, TC-Star, the European Framework 7 projects EuroMatrixPlus, Let's MT, META-NET and MosesCore and the DARPA GALE project, as well as several universities such as the University of Edinburgh, the University of Maryland, ITC-irst, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others. Substantial additional contributors to the Moses decoder include Hieu Hoang, Chris Dyer, Josh Schroeder, Marcello Federico, Richard Zens, and Wade Shen. == Europarl corpus == The Europarl corpus is a set of documents that consists of the proceedings of the European Parliament from 1996 to the present. The corpus has been compiled and expanded by a group of researchers led by Philipp Koehn at University of Edinburgh. The data that makes up the corpus was extracted from the website of the European Parliament and then prepared for linguistic research. The latest release (2012) comprised up to 60 million words per language, with 21 European languages represented: Romanic (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian), Germanic (English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish), Slavic (Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene), Finno-Ugric (Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian), Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian), and Greek. == Other interests and activities in chronological order == Koehn is a professor at Johns Hopkins University where he continues his research into machine translation through his affiliation with the Center for Language and Speech Processing Koehn is a professor and chair of machine translation at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics and contributes to its statistical machine translation group which organises workshops, seminars and project related to the subject. Koehn has consulted to SYSTRAN periodically between 2006 and 2011. SYSTRAN was acquired by CLSI, a Korean machine translation company in April 2014. Koehn worked for Facebook/META AI Research from 2018 to 2022. Koehn is also chief scientist for Omniscien Technologies and a shareholder in Omniscien Technologies since 2007. Omniscien Technologies is a private company developing and commercialising machine translation technologies. Koehn authored a book titled "Statistical Machine Translation" in 2009 and a book titled "Neural Machine Translation" in 2020. == Awards and recognition == 2013: One of three finalists in the category of Research for the European Patent Office (EPO) 2013 European Inventor Award. Koehn was recognised for patent EP 1488338 B, Phrase-Based Joint Probability Model for Statistical Machine Translations, a translation model that uses mathematical probabilities to determine the most likely interpretation of chunks of text between foreign languages. 2015: Koehn received the Award of Honor of the International Association for Machine Translation. 2024: Koehn was named Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).

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  • Barney Pell

    Barney Pell

    Barney Pell (born March 18, 1968) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor and computer scientist. He was co-founder and CEO of Powerset, a pioneering natural language search startup, search strategist and architect for Microsoft's Bing search engine, a pioneer in the field of general game playing in artificial intelligence, and the architect of the first intelligent agent to fly onboard and control a spacecraft. He was co-founder, Vice Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of Moon Express; co-founder and chairman of LocoMobi; and Associate Founder of Singularity University. == Career == === Education === Pell received his Bachelor of Science degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar. Pell earned a PhD in computer science from Cambridge University in 1993, supervised by Stephen Pulman, where he was a Marshall Scholar. === Research === Pell's research is focused on basic problems in the study of intelligence, computer game playing, machine learning, natural language processing, autonomous robotics, and web search. Barney Pell has published over 30 technical papers on topics related to information retrieval, knowledge management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and scheduling systems. In computer game playing and machine learning, he was a pioneer in the field of General Game Playing, and created programs to generate the rules of chess-like games and programs to play individual games directly from the rules without human assistance. He also did early work on machine learning in the game of Go and on an architecture for pragmatic reasoning for bidding in the game of Bridge. In natural language processing, he was a scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, where he worked on the Core Language Engine. Barney Pell was the Technical Area Manager of the Collaborative and Assistant Systems area within the Computational Sciences Division (now the Intelligent Systems Division) at NASA Ames Research Center, where he oversaw a staff of 80 scientists working on information retrieval, search, knowledge management, machine learning, semantic technology, human centered systems, collaboration technology, adaptive user interfaces, human robot interaction, and other areas of artificial intelligence. From 1993 to 1998, Barney Pell worked as a Principal Investigator and Senior Computer Scientist at NASA Ames, where he conducted advanced research and development of autonomous control software for NASA's deep space missions. He was the Architect for the Deep Space One Remote Agent Experiment and the Project Lead for the Executive component of the Remote Agent Experiment, the first intelligent agent to fly onboard and control a spacecraft. === Business === Pell is an entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded several business ventures, including Powerset, Moon Express, and LocoMobi. He was the founder and CEO of Powerset, a San Francisco startup company that built a search engine based on natural language processing technology originally developed at XEROX PARC. On May 11, 2008, the company unveiled a tool for searching a fixed subset of Wikipedia using conversational phrases rather than keywords. On July 1, 2008, Microsoft signed an agreement to acquire Powerset for an estimated $100 million. Powerset became a part of Microsoft's search engine, Bing. From 2008 until August 2011, Pell served as Partner, Search Strategist, and Evangelist for Microsoft's search engine, Bing and as Head of Bing's Local and Mobile Search teams. Prior to joining Powerset, Pell was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Pell is also a founder of Moon Express, Inc., a U.S. company awarded a $10M commercial lunar contract by NASA and a competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Pell was also co-founder and chairman of LocoMobi, Inc., a U.S. company developing mobile, software and hardware technology solutions for the parking industry. LocoMobi was winner of the Tie50 Award in 2014. Pell is also an associate founder of Singularity University and a Machine Learning Fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School of Management From 1998 to 2000, Pell served as chief strategist and vice president of business development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring in March, 2000). From 2000 to 2002, Pell was Chief Strategist and Vice President of Business Development for Whizbang Labs. Pell has been an angel investor and advisor to numerous startup companies, including Pulse.io (acquired by Google), Aardvark (acquired by Google), Appjet (acquired by Google), Jibe Mobile (acquired by Google), Movity (acquired by Trulia), QuestBridge, BrandYourself, CrowdFlower (acquired by Appen), and LinkedIn. === Views and predictions === Pell has expressed views and predictions regarding technological advancements in coming years. He believes that humans will soon have "brain-machine interfaces that will let people interact with each other as if they had 'hangouts' in their mind." Pell predicts these interfaces to become available within 20 to 30 years. Pell also predicts advancements in bodily augmentation, such as "even-better-than-human prosthetics and high-quality tissue engineering within 10 years." Pell believes that with advancements in space exploration technology the moon will soon be a commercially viable resource for material such as platinum and water. == Awards and recognition == In 1986, Pell was awarded a National Merit Scholarship. In 1989, Pell was awarded a Marshall Scholarship. In 1989, Pell was elected Phi Beta Kappa. In 1997, Pell was part of the team award a NASA Software of the Year Award for the Deep Space 1 Remote Agent.

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  • Sequential minimal optimization

    Sequential minimal optimization

    Sequential minimal optimization (SMO) is an algorithm for solving the quadratic programming (QP) problem that arises during the training of support-vector machines (SVM). It was invented by John Platt in 1998 at Microsoft Research. SMO is widely used for training support vector machines and is implemented by the popular LIBSVM tool. The publication of the SMO algorithm in 1998 has generated a lot of excitement in the SVM community, as previously available methods for SVM training were much more complex and required expensive third-party QP solvers. == Optimization problem == Consider a binary classification problem with a dataset (x1, y1), ..., (xn, yn), where xi is an input vector and yi ∈ {-1, +1} is a binary label corresponding to it. A soft-margin support vector machine is trained by solving a quadratic programming problem, which is expressed in the dual form as follows: max α ∑ i = 1 n α i − 1 2 ∑ i = 1 n ∑ j = 1 n y i y j K ( x i , x j ) α i α j , {\displaystyle \max _{\alpha }\sum _{i=1}^{n}\alpha _{i}-{\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}\sum _{j=1}^{n}y_{i}y_{j}K(x_{i},x_{j})\alpha _{i}\alpha _{j},} subject to: 0 ≤ α i ≤ C , for i = 1 , 2 , … , n , {\displaystyle 0\leq \alpha _{i}\leq C,\quad {\mbox{ for }}i=1,2,\ldots ,n,} ∑ i = 1 n y i α i = 0 {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}y_{i}\alpha _{i}=0} where C is an SVM hyperparameter and K(xi, xj) is the kernel function, both supplied by the user; and the variables α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} are Lagrange multipliers. == Algorithm == SMO is an iterative algorithm for solving the optimization problem described above. SMO breaks this problem into a series of smallest possible sub-problems, which are then solved analytically. Because of the linear equality constraint involving the Lagrange multipliers α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} , the smallest possible problem involves two such multipliers. Then, for any two multipliers α 1 {\displaystyle \alpha _{1}} and α 2 {\displaystyle \alpha _{2}} , the constraints are reduced to: 0 ≤ α 1 , α 2 ≤ C , {\displaystyle 0\leq \alpha _{1},\alpha _{2}\leq C,} y 1 α 1 + y 2 α 2 = k , {\displaystyle y_{1}\alpha _{1}+y_{2}\alpha _{2}=k,} and this reduced problem can be solved analytically: one needs to find a minimum of a one-dimensional quadratic function. k {\displaystyle k} is the negative of the sum over the rest of terms in the equality constraint, which is fixed in each iteration. The algorithm proceeds as follows: Find a Lagrange multiplier α 1 {\displaystyle \alpha _{1}} that violates the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions for the optimization problem. Pick a second multiplier α 2 {\displaystyle \alpha _{2}} and optimize the pair ( α 1 , α 2 ) {\displaystyle (\alpha _{1},\alpha _{2})} . Repeat steps 1 and 2 until convergence. When all the Lagrange multipliers satisfy the KKT conditions (within a user-defined tolerance), the problem has been solved. Although this algorithm is guaranteed to converge, heuristics are used to choose the pair of multipliers so as to accelerate the rate of convergence. This is critical for large data sets since there are n ( n − 1 ) / 2 {\displaystyle n(n-1)/2} possible choices for α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} and α j {\displaystyle \alpha _{j}} . == Related work == The first approach to splitting large SVM learning problems into a series of smaller optimization tasks was proposed by Bernhard Boser, Isabelle Guyon, and Vladimir Vapnik. It is known as the "chunking algorithm". The algorithm starts with a random subset of the data, solves this problem, and iteratively adds examples which violate the optimality conditions. One disadvantage of this algorithm is that it is necessary to solve QP-problems scaling with the number of SVs. On real world sparse data sets, SMO can be more than 1000 times faster than the chunking algorithm. In 1997, E. Osuna, R. Freund, and F. Girosi proved a theorem which suggests a whole new set of QP algorithms for SVMs. By the virtue of this theorem a large QP problem can be broken down into a series of smaller QP sub-problems. A sequence of QP sub-problems that always add at least one violator of the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions is guaranteed to converge. The chunking algorithm obeys the conditions of the theorem, and hence will converge. The SMO algorithm can be considered a special case of the Osuna algorithm, where the size of the optimization is two and both Lagrange multipliers are replaced at every step with new multipliers that are chosen via good heuristics. The SMO algorithm is closely related to a family of optimization algorithms called Bregman methods or row-action methods. These methods solve convex programming problems with linear constraints. They are iterative methods where each step projects the current primal point onto each constraint.

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  • Niki.ai

    Niki.ai

    Niki was an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. It was founded in May 2015 by IIT Kharagpur graduates Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Shishir Modi, and Nitin Babel. The Niki android app was launched for a limited beta in June 2015, then released for public during YourStory's TechSparks 2015, and is a Tech30 company. The company raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Unilazer Ventures, a Mumbai-based VC firm founded by Ronnie Screwvala, in October 2015. This was followed by another seed funding round by Ratan Tata in May 2016. The company then raised US$2 million in Series A round of funding from SAP.iO, existing investors and some US and German-based investors, among others. Niki.ai shut down in October 2021 as per media reports. Website not working. == Product == The product is an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot which works as an intelligent personal assistant, named Niki. Leveraging natural language processing and machine learning, Niki presents a chat-based natural language user interface to the users where they can interact with Niki in their natural language. Niki understands how users chat in India, deciphers the words, in the context of product/services that they would like to purchase, and comes up with apt recommendations. Initially, it was only available on the Android platform as a mobile app. The company has expanded its operations to the Facebook Messenger and Apple iOS platforms. The company aims to soon be present on more messaging platforms like Slack and WhatsApp. The company currently provides 20+ services to over 2 million consumers, covering a wide spectrum ranging from utility services like mobile recharge, bill payments, travel services like cabs, buses, hotels and entertainment services like movies and events. Services such as flights and healthcare are also planned. == Partnerships == In September 2017, Infosys Finacle joined with Niki.ai to provide chat-based service to banking customers. In August 2017, Niki partnered with LazyPay to enable a 'buy now, pay later' feature for its users.

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  • Hartmut Neven

    Hartmut Neven

    Hartmut Neven (born 1964) is a German American scientist working in quantum computing, computer vision, robotics and computational neuroscience. He is best known for his work in face and object recognition and his contributions to quantum machine learning. He is currently Vice President of Engineering at Google where he leads the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, which he founded in 2012. == Education == Hartmut Neven studied Physics and Economics in Brazil, Köln, Paris, Tübingen and Jerusalem. He wrote his Master thesis on a neuronal model of object recognition at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics under Valentino Braitenberg. In 1996 he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Institute for Neuroinformatics at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, for a thesis on "Dynamics for vision-guided autonomous mobile robots" written under the tutelage of Christoph von der Malsburg. He received a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Germany's most prestigious scholarship foundation. == Work == In 1998 Neven became research professor of computer science at the University of Southern California at the Laboratory for Biological and Computational Vision. In 2003 he returned as the head of the Laboratory for Human-Machine Interfaces at USC's Information Sciences Institute. === Face recognition, avatars and face filters === Neven co-founded two companies, Eyematic for which he served as CTO and Neven Vision which he initially led as CEO. At Eyematic he developed face recognition technology and real-time facial feature analysis for avatar animation. Teams led by Neven have repeatedly won top scores in government sponsored tests designed to determine the most accurate face recognition software. Face filters, now ubiquitous on mobile phones, were launched for the first time by Neven Vision on the networks of NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone Japan in 2003. Neven Vision also pioneered mobile visual search for camera phones. Neven Vision was acquired by Google in 2006. === Object recognition and adversarial images === At Google he managed teams responsible for advancing Google's visual search technologies. His team launched Google Goggles now Google Lens. The concept of adversarial patterns originated in his group when he tasked Christian Szegedy with a project to modify the pixel inputs of a deep neural network to lower the activity of select output nodes. The motivation was to use this technique for object localization which did not work out. But the idea gave rise to the fields of adversarial learning and DeepDream art. In 2013 his optical character recognition team won the ICDAR Robust Reading Competition by a wide margin and in 2014 the object recognition team won the ImageNet challenge. === Google Glass === Neven was a co-founder of the Google Glass project. His team completed the first prototype, codenamed Ant, in 2011. === Quantum Artificial Intelligence === In 2006 Neven started to explore the application of quantum computing to hard combinatorial problems arising in machine learning. In collaboration with D-Wave Systems he developed the first image recognition system based on quantum algorithms. It was demonstrated at SuperComputing07. At NIPS 2009 his team demonstrated the first binary classifier trained on a quantum processor. In 2012 together with Pete Worden at NASA Ames he founded the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2014 he invited John M. Martinis and his group at UC Santa Barbara to join the lab to start a fabrication facility for superconducting quantum processors. The Quantum Artificial Intelligence team performed the first experimental demonstration of a scalable simulation of a molecule. In 2016 the team formulated an experiment to demonstrate quantum supremacy. Quantum supremacy was then declared by Google in October 2019. In 2023 Quantum AI researchers demonstrated that quantum error correction works in practice by showing for the first time that the error of a logical qubit decreases when increasing the number of physical qubits it is composed of. Google's quantum processors have been used to study the physics of quantum many body states that otherwise are challenging to prepare in a laboratory such as time crystals, traversable wormholes and non-Abelian anyons. ==== Neven's law ==== Neven's law states that the performance of quantum computers improves at a doubly exponential rate.

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  • MRF optimization via dual decomposition

    MRF optimization via dual decomposition

    In dual decomposition a problem is broken into smaller subproblems and a solution to the relaxed problem is found. This method can be employed for MRF optimization. Dual decomposition is applied to markov logic programs as an inference technique. == Background == Discrete MRF Optimization (inference) is very important in Machine Learning and Computer vision, which is realized on CUDA graphical processing units. Consider a graph G = ( V , E ) {\displaystyle G=(V,E)} with nodes V {\displaystyle V} and Edges E {\displaystyle E} . The goal is to assign a label l p {\displaystyle l_{p}} to each p ∈ V {\displaystyle p\in V} so that the MRF Energy is minimized: (1) min Σ p ∈ V θ p ( l p ) + Σ p q ∈ ε θ p q ( l p ) ( l q ) {\displaystyle \min \Sigma _{p\in V}\theta _{p}(l_{p})+\Sigma _{pq\in \varepsilon }\theta _{pq}(l_{p})(l_{q})} Major MRF Optimization methods are based on Graph cuts or Message passing. They rely on the following integer linear programming formulation (2) min x E ( θ , x ) = θ . x = ∑ p ∈ V θ p . x p + ∑ p q ∈ ε θ p q . x p q {\displaystyle \min _{x}E(\theta ,x)=\theta .x=\sum _{p\in V}\theta _{p}.x_{p}+\sum _{pq\in \varepsilon }\theta _{pq}.x_{pq}} In many applications, the MRF-variables are {0,1}-variables that satisfy: x p ( l ) = 1 {\displaystyle x_{p}(l)=1} ⇔ {\displaystyle \Leftrightarrow } label l {\displaystyle l} is assigned to p {\displaystyle p} , while x p q ( l , l ′ ) = 1 {\displaystyle x_{pq}(l,l^{\prime })=1} , labels l , l ′ {\displaystyle l,l^{\prime }} are assigned to p , q {\displaystyle p,q} . == Dual Decomposition == The main idea behind decomposition is surprisingly simple: decompose your original complex problem into smaller solvable subproblems, extract a solution by cleverly combining the solutions from these subproblems. A sample problem to decompose: min x Σ i f i ( x ) {\displaystyle \min _{x}\Sigma _{i}f^{i}(x)} where x ∈ C {\displaystyle x\in C} In this problem, separately minimizing every single f i ( x ) {\displaystyle f^{i}(x)} over x {\displaystyle x} is easy; but minimizing their sum is a complex problem. So the problem needs to get decomposed using auxiliary variables { x i } {\displaystyle \{x^{i}\}} and the problem will be as follows: min { x i } , x Σ i f i ( x i ) {\displaystyle \min _{\{x^{i}\},x}\Sigma _{i}f^{i}(x^{i})} where x i ∈ C , x i = x {\displaystyle x^{i}\in C,x^{i}=x} Now we can relax the constraints by multipliers { λ i } {\displaystyle \{\lambda ^{i}\}} which gives us the following Lagrangian dual function: g ( { λ i } ) = min { x i ∈ C } , x Σ i f i ( x i ) + Σ i λ i . ( x i − x ) = min { x i ∈ C } , x Σ i [ f i ( x i ) + λ i . x i ] − ( Σ i λ i ) x {\displaystyle g(\{\lambda ^{i}\})=\min _{\{x^{i}\in C\},x}\Sigma _{i}f^{i}(x^{i})+\Sigma _{i}\lambda ^{i}.(x^{i}-x)=\min _{\{x^{i}\in C\},x}\Sigma _{i}[f^{i}(x^{i})+\lambda ^{i}.x^{i}]-(\Sigma _{i}\lambda ^{i})x} Now we eliminate x {\displaystyle x} from the dual function by minimizing over x {\displaystyle x} and dual function becomes: g ( { λ i } ) = min { x i ∈ C } Σ i [ f i ( x i ) + λ i . x i ] {\displaystyle g(\{\lambda ^{i}\})=\min _{\{x^{i}\in C\}}\Sigma _{i}[f^{i}(x^{i})+\lambda ^{i}.x^{i}]} We can set up a Lagrangian dual problem: (3) max { λ i } ∈ Λ g ( λ i ) = Σ i g i ( x i ) , {\displaystyle \max _{\{\lambda ^{i}\}\in \Lambda }g({\lambda ^{i}})=\Sigma _{i}g^{i}(x^{i}),} The Master problem (4) g i ( x i ) = m i n x i f i ( x i ) + λ i . x i {\displaystyle g^{i}(x^{i})=min_{x^{i}}f^{i}(x^{i})+\lambda ^{i}.x^{i}} where x i ∈ C {\displaystyle x^{i}\in C} The Slave problems == MRF optimization via Dual Decomposition == The original MRF optimization problem is NP-hard and we need to transform it into something easier. τ {\displaystyle \tau } is a set of sub-trees of graph G {\displaystyle G} where its trees cover all nodes and edges of the main graph. And MRFs defined for every tree T {\displaystyle T} in τ {\displaystyle \tau } will be smaller. The vector of MRF parameters is θ T {\displaystyle \theta ^{T}} and the vector of MRF variables is x T {\displaystyle x^{T}} , these two are just smaller in comparison with original MRF vectors θ , x {\displaystyle \theta ,x} . For all vectors θ T {\displaystyle \theta ^{T}} we'll have the following: (5) ∑ T ∈ τ ( p ) θ p T = θ p , ∑ T ∈ τ ( p q ) θ p q T = θ p q . {\displaystyle \sum _{T\in \tau (p)}\theta _{p}^{T}=\theta _{p},\sum _{T\in \tau (pq)}\theta _{pq}^{T}=\theta _{pq}.} Where τ ( p ) {\displaystyle \tau (p)} and τ ( p q ) {\displaystyle \tau (pq)} denote all trees of τ {\displaystyle \tau } than contain node p {\displaystyle p} and edge p q {\displaystyle pq} respectively. We simply can write: (6) E ( θ , x ) = ∑ T ∈ τ E ( θ T , x T ) {\displaystyle E(\theta ,x)=\sum _{T\in \tau }E(\theta ^{T},x^{T})} And our constraints will be: (7) x T ∈ χ T , x T = x | T , ∀ T ∈ τ {\displaystyle x^{T}\in \chi ^{T},x^{T}=x_{|T},\forall T\in \tau } Our original MRF problem will become: (8) min { x T } , x Σ T ∈ τ E ( θ T , x T ) {\displaystyle \min _{\{x^{T}\},x}\Sigma _{T\in \tau }E(\theta ^{T},x^{T})} where x T ∈ χ T , ∀ T ∈ τ {\displaystyle x^{T}\in \chi ^{T},\forall T\in \tau } and x T ∈ x | T , ∀ T ∈ τ {\displaystyle x^{T}\in x_{|T},\forall T\in \tau } And we'll have the dual problem we were seeking: (9) max { λ T } ∈ Λ g ( { λ T } ) = ∑ T ∈ τ g T ( λ T ) , {\displaystyle \max _{\{\lambda ^{T}\}\in \Lambda }g(\{\lambda ^{T}\})=\sum _{T\in \tau }g^{T}(\lambda ^{T}),} The Master problem where each function g T ( . ) {\displaystyle g^{T}(.)} is defined as: (10) g T ( λ T ) = min x T E ( θ T + λ T , x T ) {\displaystyle g^{T}(\lambda ^{T})=\min _{x^{T}}E(\theta ^{T}+\lambda ^{T},x^{T})} where x T ∈ χ T {\displaystyle x^{T}\in \chi ^{T}} The Slave problems == Theoretical Properties == Theorem 1. Lagrangian relaxation (9) is equivalent to the LP relaxation of (2). min { x T } , x { E ( x , θ ) | x p T = s p , x T ∈ CONVEXHULL ( χ T ) } {\displaystyle \min _{\{x^{T}\},x}\{E(x,\theta )|x_{p}^{T}=s_{p},x^{T}\in {\text{CONVEXHULL}}(\chi ^{T})\}} Theorem 2. If the sequence of multipliers { α t } {\displaystyle \{\alpha _{t}\}} satisfies α t ≥ 0 , lim t → ∞ α t = 0 , ∑ t = 0 ∞ α t = ∞ {\displaystyle \alpha _{t}\geq 0,\lim _{t\to \infty }\alpha _{t}=0,\sum _{t=0}^{\infty }\alpha _{t}=\infty } then the algorithm converges to the optimal solution of (9). Theorem 3. The distance of the current solution { θ T } {\displaystyle \{\theta ^{T}\}} to the optimal solution { θ ¯ T } {\displaystyle \{{\bar {\theta }}^{T}\}} , which decreases at every iteration. Theorem 4. Any solution obtained by the method satisfies the WTA (weak tree agreement) condition. Theorem 5. For binary MRFs with sub-modular energies, the method computes a globally optimal solution.

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  • Linguistics Research Center at UT Austin

    Linguistics Research Center at UT Austin

    The Linguistics Research Center (LRC) at the University of Texas is a center for computational linguistics research & development. It was directed by Prof. Winfred Lehmann until his death in 2007, and subsequently by Dr. Jonathan Slocum. Since its founding, virtually all projects at the LRC have involved processing natural language texts with the aid of computers. The principal activities of the Center at present focus on Indo-European languages and comprise historical study, lexicography, and web-based teaching; staff members engage in several independent but often complementary projects in these fields using a variety of software, almost all of it developed in-house. == History == The LRC was founded by Winfred Lehmann in 1961. In the early days, research efforts at the LRC concentrated on machine translation (MT) -- the translation of texts from one human language to another with the aid of computers, very developed nowadays in the field of language industry—funded by the USAF and other sponsors. The LRC concentrated on German English translation, though a copy of the Russian Master Dictionary was deposited at the LRC after the ALPAC report. After a general hiatus ca. 1975-78, new funding led to the development by Jonathan Slocum and others of a new system with the same name (the METAL MT system), but with new sets of tools for linguists and vastly greater success, resulting in the delivery a production prototype then later a full-fledged commercial MT system. MT R&D continued at the LRC, with funding by various sponsors, until well into the 1990s. From its early years to the present, the LRC has mounted a number of smaller projects resulting in the publication of significant works relating to Indo-European languages and/or their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. The hallmark of this work has been the use of computers to transcribe texts and prepare them for publication. A prominent example of the LRC using computers to prepare texts for print publication is the book by Winfred P. Lehmann, A Gothic Etymological Dictionary (Leiden: Brill, 1986). The final print-ready version was produced with the aid of a laser printer (exotic new technology, in those days) using, for the various languages included in the entries, approximately 500 special characters—many of them designed at the Center. This was the first major etymological dictionary for Indo-European languages to be produced with the aid of computers. Current LRC projects have concentrated on transcribing early Indo-European texts, developing language lessons based on them, and publishing on the web these and other materials related to the study of Indo-European languages, of their common ancestor Proto-Indo-European, and of historical linguistics more generally. == Alumni == Winfred Lehmann Rolf A. Stachowitz Jonathan Slocum Winfield S. Bennett John White

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  • Vegas Pro

    Vegas Pro

    Vegas Pro (formerly known as Sony Vegas) is a professional video editing software package for non-linear editing (NLE), designed to run on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The first release of Vegas Beta was on June 11, 1999. Vegas was originally developed as a non-linear audio editing application. Version 2.0 would split the program into audio and video editing variants, with the former being dropped by version 4.0, making the video offering the only variant available to consumers. Vegas Pro features real-time multi-track video and audio editing on unlimited tracks, resolution-independent video sequencing, complex effects, compositing tools, 24-bit/192 kHz audio support, VST and DirectX plug-in effect support, and Dolby Digital surround sound mixing. The software was originally published by Sonic Foundry until May 2003, when Sony purchased Sonic Foundry and formed Sony Creative Software. On May 24, 2016, Sony announced that Vegas was sold to MAGIX, which formed VEGAS Creative Software, to continue support and development of the software. As of the end of March 2026, it was publicly announced that Boris FX had taken ownership of Vegas Pro. Each release of Vegas is sold standalone; however, upgrade discounts are sometimes provided. == Features == Vegas does not require any specialized hardware to run properly, allowing it to operate on any Windows computer that meets the system requirements. == History == Vegas 1.0 was released after a brief public beta by Sonic Foundry on July 23, 1999 at the NAMM Show in Nashville, Tennessee as an audio-only tool with a particular focus on re-scaling and resampling audio. It supported formats like DivX and Real Networks RealSystem G2 file formats. Martin Walker from Sound on Sound described working in Vegas 1.0 as a "very pleasurable experience, especially since so many functions are highly intuitive" though also criticizing some features as hard to figure out due to the lack of a central help file. Later, on June 12, 2000, Vegas Video and Audio 2.0 (also referred to as just Vegas 2.0) was released, with its beta releasing earlier that year on April 10. This was the first version of Vegas to include video-editing tools and was also the first to have a low-cost "LE" version alongside the regular release. The LE releases would continue through version 3.0 of Vegas but would be discontinued by the release of Vegas 4.0. Vegas 3.0 was released the next year on December 3, and added new video effects, features for ease-of-use with DV, and support for editing Windows Media files. Vegas 4.0 was released on 6 February 2003 and added application scripting, advanced color correction, 5.1 surround sound mixing, and Steinberg ASIO support. This was the last release under the Sonic Foundry name after it sold much of its software suite, including Sound Forge and Acid Pro, to Sony Pictures Digital for $18 million later in 2003. Under Sony's ownership, Vegas 5.0 was released on April 19, 2004, bringing 3D track motion, compositing, reversing, envelope automation, etc. 7.0 also added an improved video preview, enhanced layout management, improved snapping, and more customization. With the release of 8.0, Sony opted to go back to the original "Vegas Pro" branding that the first version released with. It added the ability to burn Blu-ray and DVD optical media, support for 32-bit floating point audio, support for tempo-based audio effects, and more. It also moved the timeline to the bottom of the window by default with the option of moving it back to the top if the user wished to. Sony was also experimenting with 64-bit at this time and ported Vegas Pro 8.0 to 64-bit systems under the name "Vegas Pro 8.1". Vegas Pro 9.0 added support for 4K resolution and pro camcorder formats like Red and XDCAM EX. In 2009, Sony Creative Software purchased the Velvetmatter Radiance suite of video FX plug-ins which were included in Sony Vegas Pro 9.0. As a result, they were no longer available as a separate product from Velvetmatter. Vegas Pro 10 was released in 2010 with stereoscopic 3D editing, image stabilization, OpenFX plugin support, real-time audio event effects, and a few UI changes. This was the last release to include support for Windows XP. Vegas Pro 11 was released the next year on 17 October, with GPGPU video acceleration, enhanced text tools, enhanced stereoscopic/3D features, RAW photo support, and new event synchronization mechanisms. In addition, Vegas Pro 11 comes pre-loaded with "NewBlue" Titler Pro, a 2D and 3D titling plug-in. Vegas Pro 12 would add two new configurations: Vegas Pro 12 Edit, for "Professional Video and Audio Production"; and Vegas Pro 12 Suite, for "Professional Editing, Disc Authoring, and Visual Effects Design". Vegas Pro 13 would be the last version released with Sony branding after the acquisition of much of Sony Creative Software's library by Magix. After they acquired Vegas, Magix released version 14 on September 20, 2016. It featured advanced 4K upscaling as well as many bug fixes, a higher video velocity limit, RED camera support, and a variety of other features. This was also the last version to have the light theme enabled by default. Released on August 28, 2017, Vegas Pro 15 features major UI changes that claim to bring usability improvements and customization. It was the first version of VEGAS Pro to have a dark theme; it also allows more efficient editing speeds, including adding new shortcuts to speed the video editing process. Vegas Pro 15 includes support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) and other technologies, as well as various other features. It introduced a new VEGAS Pro icon as a V. Vegas Pro 16 has some new features including file backup, motion tracking, improved video stabilization, 360° editing and HDR support. Magix has continued to improve Vegas through version 21 with support for reading Matroska files, a more detailed render dialogue, live streaming, VST3 support, a VST 32-bit bridge, and a selective Paste Event Attributes menu. Magix would later release a subscription model for using Vegas named "Vegas Pro 365" on January 17, 2018, although the perpetual licence is still an option for customers. This version includes cloud-based speech synthesis among other features not included in the mainline Vegas release. == Version history == Each release of Vegas is sold standalone, however upgrade discounts are sometimes provided. === Vegas Beta === Sonic Foundry introduced a sneak preview version of Vegas Pro on June 11, 1999. It is called a "Multitrack Media Editing System". === Vegas 1.0 === Released on July 23, 1999 at the NAMM Show in Nashville, Tennessee, Vegas was an audio-only tool with a particular focus on rescaling and resampling audio. It supported formats like DivX and Real Networks RealSystem G2 file formats. Version 1.0 is the final Vegas release to include Windows 95 support. === Vegas Video beta (Vegas 2.0 beta) === Released on April 10, 2000, this was the first version of Vegas to include video-editing tools. === Vegas Video (Vegas 2.0) === Released on June 12, 2000. Version 2.0 is the final Vegas Video release to include Windows NT 4.0 support. === Vegas Video 3.0 === Released on December 3, 2001. This release added: New Video Effects – Lens Flare, Light Rays, Film FX, Color Curves, Mirror, Remap, Deform, Convolution, Linear Blur, Black Restore, Levels, Unsharp Mask, Color Grading, and Timecode Burn filter. Batch Capture with Automatic Scene Detection – Captures DV with automatic scene detection, batch capture, tape logging, still image capture and thumbnail previews. Red Book Audio CD Mastering with CD Architect (TM) Technology – Used for burning Red Book audio CD masters directly from the Vegas timeline with ISRC, UPC, and PQ list support. New Sonic Foundry DV Codec – Introduces a DV codec developed by Sonic Foundry that offers artifact-free compositing and DV chromakeying. DV Print-to-Tape from the Timeline – Prints projects to DV cameras and decks from the Vegas timeline. Windows Media (TM) File Editing – Creates and edits Windows Media (TM) files. New MPEG Encoding Tools – Used for producing MPEG-2 files for DVD productions. Dynamic RAM Previewing – Temporary RAM/render-free previews for analysis and tweaking of complex video FX without rendering. VideoCD and Data CD Burning – Burning projects directly to VideoCD for playback on most DVD players or data CDs for playback computers' CD-ROMs. === Vegas 4.0 === Released on February 6, 2003. This release added: Advanced Color Correction Tools Searchable Media Pool Bins Vectorscope, Histogram, Parade and Waveform Monitoring Application Scripting Improved Ripple Editing Motion Blur and Super-Sampling Envelopes 5.1 Surround Mixing Dolby® Digital AC-3 Encoding certified and tested by Dolby Laboratories DirectX® Audio Plug-In Effects Automation ASIO Driver Support Windows Media™ 9 Support, including Surround Encoding DVD Authoring with AC-3 File Import Capabilities Integration with DVD Architect via Chap

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  • Leslie P. Kaelbling

    Leslie P. Kaelbling

    Leslie Pack Kaelbling is an American roboticist and the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is widely recognized for adapting partially observable Markov decision processes from operations research for application in artificial intelligence and robotics. Kaelbling received the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 1997 for applying reinforcement learning to embedded control systems and developing programming tools for robot navigation. In 2000, she was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. == Career == Kaelbling received an A. B. in Philosophy in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1990, both from Stanford University. During this time she was also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Language and Information. She then worked at SRI International and the affiliated robotics spin-off Teleos Research before joining the faculty at Brown University. She left Brown in 1999 to join the faculty at MIT. Her research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty, machine learning, and sensing with applications to robotics. == Journal of Machine Learning Research == In the spring of 2000, she and two-thirds of the editorial board of the Kluwer-owned journal Machine Learning resigned in protest to its pay-to-access archives with simultaneously limited financial compensation for authors. Kaelbling co-founded and served as the first editor-in-chief of the Journal of Machine Learning Research, a peer-reviewed open access journal on the same topics which allows researchers to publish articles for free and retain copyright with its archives freely available online. In response to the mass resignation, Kluwer changed their publishing policy to allow authors to self-archive their papers online after peer-review. Kaelbling responded that this policy was reasonable and would have made the creation of an alternative journal unnecessary, but the editorial board members had made it clear they wanted such a policy and it was only after the threat of resignations and the actual founding of JMLR that the publishing policy finally changed. == Selected works == Reinforcement Learning: A Survey (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AW Moore). Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 4 (1996) 237-285. A highly cited survey on the field of reinforcement learning. Planning and acting in partially observable stochastic domains (LP Kaelbling, ML Littman, AR Cassandra). Artificial Intelligence 101 (1), 99-134. Acting under uncertainty: Discrete Bayesian models for mobile-robot navigation (AR Cassandra, LP Kaelbling, JA Kurien). Intelligent Robots and Systems (2) 963-972. The synthesis of digital machines with provable epistemic properties (SJ Rosenschein, LP Kaelbling). Proceedings of the 1986 Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Knowledge, 83-98. Practical reinforcement learning in continuous spaces (WD Smart, LP Kaelbling). 2000 International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 903-910. Hierarchical task and motion planning in the now (LP Kaelbling, T Lozano-Pérez). 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 1470-1477.

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  • Noémie Elhadad

    Noémie Elhadad

    Noémie Elhadad is an American data scientist who is an associate professor of biomedical informatics at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. As of 2022, she serves as the chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research considers machine learning in bioinformatics, natural language processing and medicine. == Early life and education == Elhadad studied computer software engineering at École nationale supérieure d'électronique, informatique, télécommunications, mathématique et mécanique de Bordeaux (ENSEIRB). She completed her doctoral research at Columbia University. She was based in the Department of Computer Science, where she developed patient-focused text summaries of clinical literature. == Research and career == Elhadad joined the faculty at the City College of New York. In 2007 she joined the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. She was made Chair of the Health Analytics Center at the Columbia Data Science Institute in 2013. Her research considers how clinical data, electronic health records and patient-generated data can enhance access to information for researchers, patients and physicians. She developed an artificial intelligence tool that supported patients in the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Elhadad is interested in using data to advance women's health. She led the Citizen Endo Project that looks to comprehensively describe how patients experience endometriosis. It was built using principles of citizen science, using patient testimonials from focus groups in New York City and data aggregation. She created the app, Phendo, which asks patients about their experience of the disease. The name Phendo is a portmanteau of phenotyping endometriosis. Elhadad was announced as chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in December 2022. == Selected publications == Caruana, Rich; Lou, Yin; Gehrke, Johannes; Koch, Paul; Sturm, Marc; Elhadad, Noemie (August 10, 2015). "Intelligible Models for HealthCare". Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 1721–1730. doi:10.1145/2783258.2788613. ISBN 9781450336642. S2CID 14190268. Chaitanya Shivade; Preethi Raghavan; Eric Fosler-Lussier; Peter J Embi; Noemie Elhadad; Stephen B Johnson; Albert M Lai (November 7, 2013). "A review of approaches to identifying patient phenotype cohorts using electronic health records". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 21 (2): 221–230. doi:10.1136/AMIAJNL-2013-001935. ISSN 1067-5027. PMC 3932460. PMID 24201027. Wikidata Q37598951. Shivade, Chaitanya; Raghavan, Preethi; Fosler-Lussier, Eric; Embi, Peter J; Elhadad, Noemie; Johnson, Stephen B; Lai, Albert M (March 2014). "A review of approaches to identifying patient phenotype cohorts using electronic health records". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 21 (2): 221–230. doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2013-001935. ISSN 1067-5027. PMC 3932460. PMID 24201027. == Personal life == Elhadad suffers from endometriosis.

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