Abstract: Air purification devices are described. Devices are powered to form an electric field along an airflow path that creates a plasma for destruction of pathogens carried through the device. Devices can be single-user, portable devices for purification of air flow to and/or from a single user.

Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein help designers find interesting designs for small electrical, mechanical, and/or hydraulic mechanisms by exhaustively enumerating the design space given a library of components and a maximum number of components allowed per design. Some embodiments work by creating a design space grammar of designs, solving the equations associated with parts of the grammar, and putting the solutions into equivalence classes. This dramatically reduces the number of designs that have to be evaluated to see if they satisfy the design criteria. The result is often a small number of base designs that show the range of possible solutions to the design problem.

Abstract: Described are natural language web browsers configured to provide a natural language interface to an existing web browser or a newly created web browser. That is, users interact with the web browser employing speech (or text) as input and output instead of using a mouse and keyboard as input and an electronic display screen as output. Embodiments of a natural language web browser converts user questions, statements, and/or commands into actions, reads the resulting HTML and converts the HTML into natural language descriptions to provide to the user.

Abstract: A one-time passphrase is transmitted from an authentication system to a personal communication device of a user. The one-time passphrase includes common but incongruous words. The user is prompted to verbalize the one-time passphrase to a processor-implemented, conversational user interface. Utterances from the user are received by a conversational user interface, and the utterances are communicated from the conversational user interface to the authentication system via a trusted communication channel. The authentication system determines, using speech recognition, presence or non-presence of the one-time passphrase within the received utterances. The authentication system authenticates the user in response to detecting presence of the one-time passphrase within the received utterances.

Abstract: A computer simulation includes qualitative values and constraints of a qualitative state. At least some of the constraints include additions of at least some of the qualitative values. The qualitative values are converted to inequalities and equalities. A subset of the original constraints is extracted that represents all of the additions. A conflict resolution method is applied to the inequalities along with the addition constraints. The conflict resolution method makes a tentative assignment of numerical values to the quantitative values and determines consistencies over all of the inequalities and equalities using the tentative assignments. Based on the conflict resolution method determining that the addition constraints reduce to a trivial inconsistency, the qualitative state can be invalidated.

Abstract: The techniques disclosed herein help designers find interesting designs for small electrical, mechanical, and/or hydraulic mechanisms by exhaustively enumerating the design space given a library of components and a maximum number of components allowed per design. Some embodiments work by creating a design space grammar of designs, solving the equations associated with parts of the grammar, and putting the solutions into equivalence classes. This dramatically reduces the number of designs that have to be evaluated to see if they satisfy the design criteria. The result is often a small number of base designs that show the range of possible solutions to the design problem.

Abstract: Described are natural language web browsers configured to provide a natural language interface to an existing web browser or a newly created web browser. That is, users interact with the web browser employing speech (or text) as input and output instead of using a mouse and keyboard as input and an electronic display screen as output. Embodiments of a natural language web browser converts user questions, statements, and/or commands into actions, reads the resulting HTML and converts the HTML into natural language descriptions to provide to the user.

Abstract: A method and system is provided to extract candidate utterances from conversational data. The conversational data includes a plurality of utterances and is stored in an electronic storage. A superficial property algorithm is applied to the stored conversational data. The superficial property algorithm is used to (i) search at least a portion of the stored conversational data by application of at least one superficial property of the superficial property algorithm, (ii) it is determined when the searched portion of the conversational data includes a candidate utterance, and (iii) then the portion of the conversational data which was determined to be the candidate utterance is then stored.

Abstract: Methods and system employing the same for optimizing an objective function are provided. The objective function assesses the quality of a candidate solution. One or more variables of an objective function are selected as pivot variables. Each of the variables include one or more candidate values. An upper bound function is generated from the objective function, where the pivot variables are held fixed. For each combination of the candidate values, one or more candidate solutions are searched using the upper bound function. One or more optimal solutions are selected from among the solutions to the searches.

Abstract: One embodiment provides a system that detects sensitive passages. During operation, the system receives a document and disassembles the document into a plurality of passages. For a respective passage, the system performs a search through a non-sensitive-passage database to determine whether the passage is a known non-sensitive passage. If so, the system marks the passage as non-sensitive, and if not, the system determines whether the passage triggers a cut-and-paste attack detection. If so, the system forwards the passage to an administrator and allows the administrator to determine whether the passage is non-sensitive and, further, to add the passage to the non-sensitive-passage database responsive to the administrator determining the passage to be non-sensitive.

Abstract: Methods and system employing the same for optimizing an objective function are provided. The objective function assesses the quality of a candidate solution. One or more variables of an objective function are selected as pivot variables. Each of the variables include one or more candidate values. An upper bound function is generated from the objective function, where the pivot variables are held fixed. For each combination of the candidate values, one or more candidate solutions are searched using the upper bound function. One or more optimal solutions are selected from among the solutions to the searches.

Abstract: Methods and systems supporting curation of items in a searchable knowledge base are provided. The methods and systems include mining one or more search queries of the searchable knowledge base, where each of the search queries includes a plurality of the items. The method further includes determining one or more pairs of items using a processor, where each of the pairs of items includes a correlation value exceeding a threshold. The correlation values for the pairs of items are based upon the frequency the items of the pairs of items co-occur within the search queries. The method further includes providing the pairs of items to a curator, where the curator reviews the pairs of items.

Abstract: A method for generating a gloss of medical content. The method includes repeatedly applying, using a processor, a plurality of simplification rules to the medical content until the medical content is fully simplified. Thereafter, one or more target patterns having slots associated with ontologies are matched to one or more portions of the medical content and the one or more portions of the medical content are extracted. The one or more portions correspond to the gloss.

Abstract: One embodiment provides a system that detects sensitive passages. During operation, the system receives a document and disassembles the document into a plurality of passages. For a respective passage, the system performs a search through a non-sensitive-passage database to determine whether the passage is a known non-sensitive passage. If so, the system marks the passage as non-sensitive, and if not, the system determines whether the passage triggers a cut-and-paste attack detection. If so, the system forwards the passage to an administrator and allows the administrator to determine whether the passage is non-sensitive and, further, to add the passage to the non-sensitive-passage database responsive to the administrator determining the passage to be non-sensitive.

Abstract: Techniques are provided to generate alternate phrases from a packed meaning representation. The semantics of input items in a packed meaning representation are matched against a lexicon to determine initial entries in a phrasal information structure. Context, syntax and semantic information describing each phrasal entry are added to the phrasal information structure. Linear or other implications are used to determine a set of unordered rewrite rules. The unordered rewrite rules associate semantic information with pseudofacts such that a complete set of choices from the set of disjunctions in the packed meaning representation is selected. Semantic information associated with the unordered rewrite rules identifies entries in the phrasal information structure to be updated with the pseudofact of the unordered rewrite rule.

Abstract: Techniques are provided to generate alternate phrases from a packed meaning representation. The semantics of input items in a packed meaning representation are matched against a lexicon to determine initial entries in a phrasal information structure. Context, syntax and semantic information describing each phrasal entry are added to the phrasal information structure. Linear or other implications are used to determine a set of unordered rewrite rules. The unordered rewrite rules associate semantic information with pseudofacts such that a complete set of choices from the set of disjunctions in the packed meaning representation is selected. Semantic information associated with the unordered rewrite rules identifies entries in the phrasal information structure to be updated with the pseudofact of the unordered rewrite rule. Entries in the phrasal information structure not associated with false contexts are combined based on ordered rewrite rules.

Abstract: A process for generating with unification based grammars such as Lexical Functional Grammars which uses construction and analysis of generation guides to determine internal facts and eliminate incomplete edges prior to constructing a generation chart. The generation guide can then be used in the construction of the generation chart to efficiently generate with unification-based grammars such as Lexical Functional Grammars. The generation guide is an instance of a grammar that has been specialized to the input and only contains those parts of the grammar that are relevant to the input. When the generation guide is analyzed to determine internal facts a smaller generation chart is produced.

Abstract: A process for generating with unification based grammars such as Lexical Functional Grammars which uses construction and analysis of generation guides to determine internal facts and eliminate incomplete edges prior to constructing a generation chart. The generation guide can then be used in the construction of the generation chart to efficiently generate with unification-based grammars such as Lexical Functional Grammars. The generation guide is an instance of a grammar that has been specialized to the input and only contains those parts of the grammar that are relevant to the input. When the generation guide is analyzed to determine internal facts a smaller generation chart is produced.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for determining the efficient conjunction of Boolean variables drawn from an and-or forest of choices. The techniques determine two contexts to conjoin, where the contexts consist of choices drawn from an and-or forest of choices. The choices in the first context are marked with a first mark, along with all of their antecedent choices. The choices in the second context are marked with a second mark, along with all of their antecedent choices. The techniques determine and-nodes in the and-or forest having the first mark from a first dependent or-node and the second mark from a second dependent node. The dependent or-nodes are refined and then partitioned into classes based on the presence of the first mark and the second mark, the first mark only, the second mark only, and neither mark.

Abstract: A method of unifying edge data structures using a processor. The method begins with creation of a first edge data structure and unifying it with a second edge data structure. If during unification any of the contexted lazy copy links associated with the second graph data structure are activated, then second graph data structure is expanded. Expansion involves first selecting a contexted lazy copy link from among the contexted lazy copy links associated with the second graph data, selecting a selected attribute from the subtree feature structure pointed to by the selected contexted lazy copy link, making a copy of the selected attribute and storing the copy of the selected attribute in the second graph data structure as a second attribute, and adding a contexted lazy copy link from the second attribute to the selected attribute value.