http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/ The School of Computing regularly runs seminars on selected topics. Those include research and inductrial themes of general interest with a computing context. The seminars are open to members of the Robert Gordon and Aberdeen Universities and visitors alike. If you would like to present a topic yourself or you know someone whom would be interested, please get in touch. Enjoy the seminars. Dr Xiangyang Ju (seminar coordinator x.ju@rgu.ac.uk). en-uk 300 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:29:00 GMT x.ju@rgu.ac.uk (Xiangyang Ju) Computing Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:30:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091211/ jCOLIBRI framework has been developed by Dr. Recio-Garcia during the last few years and is currently an established tool in the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) community. In this talk he will review the functionality offered by jCOLIBRI for developing different types of CBR systems: Textual, Knowledge Intensive, Data Intensive, and Recommender Applications. He will also present his outgoing work at RGU for including web knowledge and resources in the CBR process. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091211/ Computing Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:30:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091204/ Automated Question Answering (QA) remains both challenging and important task for computational linguists, artificial intelligence and information retrieval researchers. I will present work in progress that attempts to formulate and explore 'active approach' to QA, which may be considered an alternative to a more popular and extensively studied 'passive' approach in which all the necessary resources (such as ontologies, grammars, transformations, patterns and numerous other heuristics) are built first... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091204/ Computing Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:30:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091113/ Document genre (e.g. scientific article, fiction, advertisement) is closely bound to the physical and conceptual structure of the document as well as the level of depth and reliability of the information found within the text. Hence, it is useful as a reference for comparing documents on the basis of metrics other than topical similarity. Despite its usefulness, the success of previous attempts to automate genre classification is somewhat unsatisfactory. In this talk ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091113/ Computing Fri, 13 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091030/ Linkage learning has been a focus of research interest since the early days of evolutionary computation. There is a strong connection between linkage learning and the concept of structure learning, which is a crucial component of a multivariate Estimation of Distribution Algorithm. Structure learning determines the interactions between variables in the probabilistic model of an EDA, based on analysis of the fitness function or a population.. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091030/ Computing Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091023/ Modelling and recognition of human faces are interrelated disciplines. The challenge in developing a facial model is not only to have a model that looks realistic but one which also can be efficiently utilized for the specific purpose for which the geometry is created. For recognition purposes, the processing of 3D facial data is an essential step, because these images may have outliers, or noise, and could be in any arbitrary orientation. Hence, by processing these images certain facial characteristics could be identified... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091023/ Computing Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091002/ This talk will discuss the business need for remote speaker verification solutions and will detail the supervised and unsupervised neural network based methods that are being developed at Nottingham Trent University to address this need. The talk will include an overview of a practical VoIP based computer network biometric logon demonstrator that has been produced and will conclude with a short account of the spin-out company creation processes that are currently being undertaken to commercially exploit the technology. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20091002/ Computing Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090924/ Many optimization problems in the real world, by nature, have multiple conflicting objectives. Unlike a single optimization problem, a multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) has a set of Pareto optimal solutions (Pareto front) which could be required by a decision maker to make her final decision. Evolutionary algorithms are able to generate an approximation to the Pareto front in a single run, and many traditional optimization methods have been also developed for solving MOPs. Although there is not much work that has been done ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090924/ Computing Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090617/ In many decision-making contexts, choice is taken not by isolated individuals but is rather the result of a process of interaction among many incumbents. "Deliberative Agreement" intends to explore and analyze those situations where a decision is made by a group of individuals in the context of multiagent systems and distributed computing. The overall goal of our ongoing research is to analyze properties and develop mechanisms for collective decision making in human and arti?cial agents. The focus will be on tasks that require complex agreements, i.e. involving at least one of the following: (i) argumentation processes for deliberation, (ii) aggregation of sets of interconnected judgments. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090617/ Computing Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090601/ The openness and anonymity of the Internet environment create many hazards for e-commerce. For collaborative recommender systems, it raises the possibility of that attackers will seek to bias the output recommendations through manipulation of the public inputs that the system permits. Fighting such manipulation is a constant battle for the owners and maintainers of such systems. In this talk, ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090601/ Computing Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090320/ Security requirements for a software system often change. However, imprecise traceability links discovered or documented between requirements and implementations can make the security analysis difficult. Therefore it is important for the analyst to verify secure requirements on the implementation and to reflect the impact of changes on both sides ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090320/ Computing Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090313/ We propose textual reuse as the identification of reusable textual constructs in a retrieved solution text. This is done by annotating a solution text so that reusable sections are identifiable from those that need revision. We present a novel and generic architecture, Case Retrieval Reuse Net (CR2N), that can be used to generate these annotations to denote text content as reusable or not ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090313/ Computing Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090227/ A Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DisCSP) is a constraint satisfaction problem distributed between several agents who cooperate in order to solve the overall problem. Frequently, these DisCSPs are coarse-grained where each agent has its own subproblem to solve which is linked to other agents' subproblems through inter-agent constraints. Existing techniques to solve DisCSPs can be mainly categorised into backtracking and local search algorithms. Backtracking algorithms are ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090227/ Computing Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090220/ Dr Laura Muir is a Lecturer in the Department of Information Management at Aberdeen Business School and a member of the research team in the Centre for Video Communications (School of Engineering). Her research seminar explores the visual perception mechanisms that influence how video information is communicated and used. She presents the methods and models developed in her PhD research (Content-Prioritised Video Coding for British Sign Language Communication) and how they are being applied to address a new research problem. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090220/ Computing Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090213/ Social software technologies have led to an increase in user content on the Internet. In particular users are now able to post their sentiments on products and services with ease on a regular basis. Such postings range from one-line-comments to detailed reviews on movies, books, photo albums, holiday bargains, medical treatment and other experiences that the authors have been through. ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20090213/ Computing Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081121/ This is a great opportunity to learn about some brand new technology which is being used in industry and you are likely to be exposed to when you complete your studies. It’s also a chance to learn about some of the programmes that Microsoft offers to students which can help you get hold of their software for free and enhance your CV. http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081121/ Computing Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081121b/ Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are a commonly used search heuristic. They are one of a range of Evolutionary Algorithms, i.e. search techniques which follow evolutionary inspired procedures to evolve solutions to problems. GAs have been successfully applied to a plethora of application areas. One area where GAs have been effective is that of deriving schedules for optimal control problems. This talk reviews the work undertaken over the last 3 years of my PhD... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081121b/ Computing Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081114/ The facial expression clone project involves modelling facial models with expressions for particular individuals. Creating a facial model from scratch is a labour intensive work, which involves several modelling pipelines; and crafting natural life-like facial expressions is really an artistic endeavour... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081114/ Computing Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081107/ Human beings are adept and drawing context-sensitive associations and inferences across a broad range of situations ranging from the mundane to the creative inferences that lead to scientific discovery. Such reasoning has a strongly pragmatic character and is transacted with comparatively scarce cognitive assets. The question is ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081107/ Computing Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081031/ Sharing of experience has always contributed to the collective knowledge of societies. Traditionally experience has been shared in the form of fables and stories passed on from person to person. In well defined domains the role of apprenticeship has been instrumental in knowledge sharing. In the information age computers have started playing a role as facilitators in knowledge sharing. We look at an approach to knowledge management (KM) ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081031/ Computing Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081024/ Several EDAs based on Markov networks have been recently proposed. Key ideas behind these EDAs were to factorise the joint probability distribution of the solution variables in terms of the clique in the undirected graph, and sample from them to generate the new population. As such, they made use of the global Markov property of the Markov network. In this talk, I will present a Markov Network based EDA ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081024/ Computing Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081017/ The first decade of the 21st century has seen tremendous uptake in the use of mobile phones. Less than a year ago it was announced that 50% of the world’s population had mobile phone subscriptions. It is expected that this figure will rise significantly by the end of the decade. Mobiles are generally used for voice communications and text messaging, but they are capable of much more. The world of today is ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081017/ Computing Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081010/ This research focuses on overlaps of information retrieval (IR), cognitive science and genre, merging and utilizing these for one particular goal: to analyse and retrieve structured text. Structured textual documents are normally composed of several layers or sections which together form types, or genres, of text preserved, in particular, in e-mail and Wikipedia (XHTML)... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20081010/ Computing Fri, 16 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20080516/ Selection is one of the defining characteristics of an evolutionary algorithm, yet inherent in the selection process is the loss of some information from a population. Poor solutions may provide information about how to bias the search toward good solutions. Many Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs) use truncation selection which discards all solutions below a certain fitness, thus losing this information ... http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/docs/seminars/documents/20080516/