Abstract: Technologies for a human computation framework suitable for answering common sense questions that are difficult for computers to answer but easy for humans to answer. The technologies support solving general common sense problems without a priori knowledge of the problems; support for determining whether an answer is from a bot or human so as to screen out spurious answers from bots; support for distilling answers collected from human users to ensure high quality solutions to the questions asked; and support for preventing malicious elements in or out of the system from attacking other system elements or contaminating the solutions produced by the system, and preventing users from being compensated without contributing answers.

Abstract: Technologies for a human computation framework suitable for answering common sense questions that are difficult for computers to answer but easy for humans to answer. The technologies support solving general common sense problems without a priori knowledge of the problems; support for determining whether an answer is from a bot or human so as to screen out spurious answers from bots; support for distilling answers collected from human users to ensure high quality solutions to the questions asked; and support for preventing malicious elements in or out of the system from attacking other system elements or contaminating the solutions produced by the system, and preventing users from being compensated without contributing answers.

Abstract: A facility for visual search on a mobile device takes advantage of multi-modal and multi-touch input on the mobile device. By extracting lexical entities from a spoken search query and matching the lexical entities to image tags, the facility provides candidate images for each entity. Selected ones of the candidate images are used to construct a composite visual query image on a query canvas. The relative size and position of the selected candidate images in the composite visual query image, which need not be an existing image, contribute to a definition of a context of the composite visual query image being submitted for context-aware visual search.

Abstract: The techniques described herein determine an initial set of ranked images associated with an image-based search query. Based on visual content similarities between images in the initial set of ranked images, the techniques select confident image samples from the initial set of ranked images. The techniques then use the confident image samples to rerank the initial set of ranked images. Accordingly, a search engine uses the confident image samples to promote images that are likely to be relevant to the search query, while demoting images that are not likely to be relevant to the search query. Therefore, the search engine can provide improved relevance-based search results to an image-based search query.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a communication is established between two endpoints. The communication session may be a video call or an audio call. The communication session may be managed by a call manager using, for example, voice over internet protocol and session initiation protocol. One of the endpoints initiates recording the communication session. The call manager facilitates recording the communication session based on a recording policy associated with the initiating endpoint. The recording policy may specify far end recording, near end recording, or a prioritized order of far and near end recording. The call manager selected an anchor network device for copying the communication session based on the recording policy.

Abstract: Several improvements for use with Bidirectionally Predictive (B) pictures within a video sequence are provided. In certain improvements Direct Mode encoding and/or Motion Vector Prediction are enhanced using spatial prediction techniques. In other improvements Motion Vector prediction includes temporal distance and subblock information, for example, for more accurate prediction. Such improvements and other presented herein significantly improve the performance of any applicable video coding system/logic.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and computer-storage media for a method of contextually analyzing terms within a search query. In one embodiment, a received search query is classified into a domain category. Additionally, information is assigned to a schema associated with the domain by analyzing the search query. Further, at least one search result that helps a user complete a task within the domain is provided based on the information in the schema.

Abstract: An “Interactive Virtual Display,” as described herein, provides various systems and techniques that facilitate ubiquitous user interaction with both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices. More specifically, the Interactive Virtual Display uses various combinations of small-size programmable hardware and portable or wearable sensors to enable any display surface (e.g., computer display devices, televisions, projected images/video from projection devices, etc.) to act as a thin client for users to interact with a plurality heterogeneous computing devices regardless of where those devices are located relative to the user. The Interactive Virtual Display provides a flexible system architecture that enables communication and collaboration between a plurality of both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices.

Abstract: A home cloud computing system employs a virtualization system to virtualize data of a device and adaptively transform type or format of the virtualized data for one or more other devices, thus leveraging resources of the device for the one or more other devices. Through data virtualization and adaptive transformation, devices of heterogeneous types are seamlessly connected to one another and can act as input or output devices for each other to create a home cloud network of devices.

Abstract: Techniques for an image-based CAPTCHA for object recognition are described. The disclosure describes adding images to a database by collecting images by querying descriptive keywords to an image search engine or crawling images from the Internet. The disclosure describes generating the image-based CAPTCHA. The image is retrieved from the database, along with objects having significant values. An object is cropped from its image. The portion on the image where the object has been cropped is filled with image inpainting. The process obtains other objects from the database. The object is mixed among the other objects to from a set of candidate objects. A user is asked to select “the object” from the set of candidate objects that fits or matches the image. The image-based CAPTCHA evaluates whether a response, the selection, is from a human or a bot.

Abstract: A user behavior model provides personalized recommendations based in part on time and location, particularly to users of mobile devices. Entity types are ranked according to relevance to the user. Example entity types are restaurant, hotel, etc. The relevance may be based on reference to a large-scale database containing queries from other users. Additionally, entities within each entity type may be ranked based on relevance to the user and the time and location context. A user interface may display a ranked list of entity types, such as restaurant, hotel, etc., wherein each entity type is represented by a highest-ranked entity with the entity type. Thus, the user interface may display a highest-ranked restaurant, a highest-ranked hotel, etc. Upon user selection of one such entity type the user interface is replaced with a second user interface, for example showing a ranked hierarchy of restaurants, headed by the highest-ranked restaurant.

Abstract: Tools and techniques for acquiring key roles and their relationships from a video independent of metadata, such as cast lists and scripts, are described herein. These techniques include discovering key roles and their relationships by treating a video (e.g., a movie, television program, music video, and personal video, etc.) as a community. For instance, a video is segmented into a hierarchical structure that includes levels for scenes, shots, and key frames. In some implementations, the techniques include performing face detection and grouping on the detected key frames. In some implementations, the techniques include exploiting the key roles and their correlations in this video to discover a community. The discovered community provides for a wide variety of applications, including the automatic generation of visual summaries or video posters including acquired key roles.

Abstract: A home cloud computing system employs a virtualization system to virtualize data of a device and adaptively transform type or format of the virtualized data for one or more other devices, thus leveraging resources of the device for the one or more other devices. Through data virtualization and adaptive transformation, devices of heterogeneous types are seamlessly connected to one another and can act as input or output devices for each other to create a home cloud network of devices.

Abstract: A rare-earth permanent magnetic powder, a bonded magnet, and a device comprising the bonded magnet are provided. The rare-earth permanent magnetic powder is mainly composed of 7-12 at % of Sm, 0.1-1.5 at % of M, 10-15 at % of N, 0.1-1.5 at % of Si, and Fe as the balance, wherein M is at least one element selected from the group of Be, Cr, Al, Ti, Ga, Nb, Zr, Ta, Mo, and V, and the main phase of the rare-earth permanent magnetic powder is of TbCu7 structure. Element Si is added into the rare-earth permanent magnetic powder for increasing the ability of SmFe alloy to from amorphous structure, and for increasing the wettability of the alloy liquid together with the addition of element M in a certain content, which enables the alloy liquid prone to be injected out of a melting device.

Abstract: A swiveling body is installed on a base in a swivelable manner. An electric motor for swiveling swivels the swiveling body. An inverter supplies electric power to the electric motor for swiveling. An obstacle detector detects an obstacle around the base and transmits a detected result to a control unit. When the obstacle detector detects the obstacle, the control unit determines whether or not the obstacle is present within a monitoring region, and when the obstacle is present inside the monitoring region, the control unit stops the electric motor for swiveling. In order to avoid danger, the swiveling operation can be stopped more safely.

Abstract: Several improvements for use with Bidirectionally Predictive (B) pictures within a video sequence are provided. In certain improvements Direct Mode encoding and/or Motion Vector Prediction are enhanced using spatial prediction techniques. In other improvements Motion Vector prediction includes temporal distance and subblock information, for example, for more accurate prediction. Such improvements and other presented herein significantly improve the performance of any applicable video coding system/logic.

Abstract: A rare-earth permanent magnetic powder, a bonded magnet containing thereof and a device using the bonded magnet are provided of the present disclosure. The rare-earth permanent magnetic powder comprises: 70 vol % to 99 vol % of a hard magnetic phase and 1 vol % to 30 vol % of a soft magnetic phase, the hard magnetic phase has a TbCu7 structure, and the grain size of the hard magnetic phase is 5 nm to 100 nm; the soft magnetic phase is a Fe phase having a bcc structure, the average grain size of the soft magnetic phase is 1 nm to 30 nm, and the standard deviation of the grain size is below 0.5?.

Abstract: Some examples include receiving a microblog entry from a social stream domain. Further, some implementations include determining, based on a topic space associated with the social stream domain and a media domain, a topic that is associated with the microblog entry. Some implementations include determining, based on the topic space, one or more media items that are associated with the topic.

Abstract: An adaptive screen and video coding system adaptively selects different coding schemes for coding an image block of a screen or video image based on a type of content included in the image block. The adaptive screen and video coding system further includes a screen coding scheme that classifies pixels of the image block into major colors and escape pixels and convert values of the pixels into index values assigned to the major colors and the escape pixels. Since the number of index values is usually less than a normal range of pixel values, using the index values instead of actual pixel values further facilitate compression and coding of the image block, thus improving coding accuracy and efficiency of the screen or video image. In one embodiment, the adaptive screen and video coding system may be used for screen sharing application.

Abstract: Systems and methods provide image compression based on parameter-assisted inpainting. In one implementation of an encoder, an image is partitioned into blocks and the blocks classified as smooth or unsmooth, based on the degree of visual edge content and chromatic variation in each block. Image content of the unsmooth blocks is compressed, while image content of the smooth blocks is summarized by parameters, but not compressed. The parameters, once obtained, may also be compressed. At a decoder, the compressed image content of the unsmooth blocks and the compressed parameters of the smooth blocks are each decompressed. Each smooth block is then reconstructed by inpainting, guided by the parameters in order to impart visual detail from the original image that cannot be implied from the image content of neighboring blocks that have been decoded.