Description: This paper discusses computational models for incongruity resolution. Abstract: Incongruity resolution is one of the most widely accepted theories of humor, suggesting that humor is due to the mixing of two disparate interpretation frames in one statement. In this paper, the authors explore several computational models for incongruity resolution. The authors introduce a new data set, consisting of a series of 'set-ups' (preparations for a punch line), each of them followed by four possible coherent continuations out of which only one has a comic effect. Using this data set, the authors redefine the task as the automatic identification of the humorous punch line among all the plausible endings. The authors explore several measures of semantic relatedness, along with a number of joke-specific features, and try to understand their appropriateness as computational models for incongruity detection.

Description: This article discusses evaluation results of an Engineering (E) and Engineering Technology (ET) education forum. Abstract: Under a two-year Department of Education FIPSE grant, the College of Technology at the University of Houston hosted a two-day forum in spring 2010 to explore a variety of issues related to E and ET education. A central focus to these discussions revolved around whether E and ET exist as separate fields or whether there was value in thinking about them as part of a continuum. The CDIO (conceive-design-implement-operate) model was used as a framework for thinking about these two knowledge areas as facets of an overarching engineering profession, where the majority of E and ET graduates flow to the middle of CDIO and engage in "design-implement" tasks within three to five years after graduation. Several implications of a continuum-based framework for engineering education were debated within the context of two alternative curricular approaches. The first approach envisions a two-year curriculum in which E and ET students enroll in a set of common technical core courses. At the end of the second year, students would make a well-educated decision to become either engineering or engineering technology majors, subsequently completing a BS degree. The second ...

Description: This poster received 1st place in the 2013 Graduate Exhibition in the Engineering category. Abstract: High energy lasers emerged as an innovative and potential industrial tool to fabricate complex shapes on structural ceramics which is otherwise difficult using conventional machining techniques. However, obtaining a desired surface finish at higher material removal rate during laser machining of structural ceramics is still a critical issue. In this situation, the better understanding of various physical phenomena such as heat transfer, fluid flow, recoil pressure, Marangoni convection, and surface tension and its influence on the evolution of typical surface topography during laser machining could be more helpful. In light of this, this study was attempted to present the state of the art of laser machining of alumina using an integrated experimental and computational approach. A multistep computational model based on COMSOL™ Multiphysics was developed to study the effect of various physical phenomena on the generation of surface topography for various laser machining conditions. Furthermore, this process model can be used as a handy tool for the process engineers to configure the process variables (laser power, scanning speed, pulse rate, size of overlap) to obtain the specified quality characteristics. The surface topography of laser machined ...

Description: This article discusses a novel space partitioning algorithm to improve current practices in facility placement. In the presence of naturally occurring and man-made public health threats, the feasibility of regional bio-emergency contingency plans plays a crucial role in the mitigation of such emergencies. While the analysis of in-place response scenarios provides a measure of quality for a given plan, it involves human judgement to identify improvements in plans that are otherwise likely to fail. Since resource constraints and government mandates limit the availability of service provided in case of an emergency, computational techniques can determine optimal locations for providing emergency response assuming that the uniform distribution of demand across homogeneous resources will yield and optimal service outcome. This paper presents an algorithm that recursively partitions the geographic space into sub-regions while equally distributing the population across the partitions. For this method, the authors have proven the existence of an upper bound on the deviation from the optimal population size for sub-regions.

Description: This paper analyzes the topic identification stage of single-document automatic text summarization across four different domains, consisting of newswire, literary, scientific and legal documents. The authors present a study that explores the summary space of each domain via an exhaustive search strategy, and finds the probability density function (pdf) of the ROUGE score distributions for each domain. The authors then use this pdf to calculate the percentile rank of extractive summarization systems. Their results introduce a new way to judge the success of automatic summarization systems and bring quantified explanations to questions such as why it was so hard for the systems to date to have a statistically significant improvement over the lead baseline in the news domain.