Conversational interfaces have received much attention as a promising natural communication channel between humans and computers. A typical conversational interface consists of three major systems: speech understanding, dialog management and spoken language generation. In such a conversational interface, speech recognition…

Current methods for bipedal walking control include playback of recorded joint motion and the derivation of dynamic equations to map desired forces at the body to the required torques at the joints. Both methods require a significant amount of up-front…

The paper explores the origin of the dialogue form in India and its roots in traditional knowledge, discusses the meaning of dialogue and its role in the making of India today, and notes that longitudinal thinking could prove an effective…

Design and optimization of distillation columns for ethanol dehydration, using a hydrocarbon as entrainer, implies a good knowledge of vapor-liquid (VLE), liquid-liquid (LLE) and vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium (VLLE). Chemical process simulation programs always require the use of a thermodynamic model that…

Trypanosoma cruzi isolates from 23 acute chagasic patients from localities of Western Venezuela (state
of Barinas) where Chagas’ disease is endemic were typed using ribosomal and mini-exon gene markers.
Results showed that isolates of the two major phylogenetic lineages, T.…

AIM: To discover whether nursing students believed that a post-registration cardiac module was meeting their needs.

METHOD: A descriptive qualitative approach was used in this study. Semi-structured interviews were recorded with a purposive sample of six registered nurses who…

This dissertation analyzes the strategic implications of customization policies available to companies that must simultaneously provide service and learn about their customers through automated interfaces. The first part of the dissertation lays out the theoretical framework within which the analysis…

Signature schemes are fundamental cryptographic primitives, useful as a stand-alone application, and as a building block in the design of secure protocols and other cryptographic objects. In this thesis, we study both the uses that signature schemes find in protocols,…

This thesis proposes a miethodology for the design of man-machine interfaces by combining top-down and bottom-up processes in vision. From a computational perspective, we propose that the scientific-cognitive question of combining top-down and bottom-up knowledge is similar to the engineering…

Computers have dramatically changed the nature of structural engineering practice by shifting work from process-oriented tasks, such as performing hand calculations and drafting, to structural modeling and interpretation of computer results. To perform these new functions, engineers need to have…