Sentiment analysis research has predominantly been on English texts. Thus there exist many sentiment resources for English, but less so for other languages. Approaches to improve sentiment analysis in a resource-poor focus language include: (a) translate the focus language text into a resource-rich language such as English, and apply a powerful English sentiment analysis system on the text, and (b) translate resources such as sentiment labeled corpora and sentiment lexicons from English into the focus language, and use them as additional resources in the focus-language sentiment analysis system. In this paper we systematically examine both options. We use Arabic social media posts as stand-in for the focus language text. We show that sentiment analysis of English translations of Arabic texts produces competitive results, w.r.t. Arabic sentiment analysis. We show that Arabic sentiment analysis systems benefit from the use of automatically translated English sentiment lexicons. We also conduct manual annotation studies to examine why the sentiment of a translation is different from the sentiment of the source word or text. This is especially relevant for building better automatic translation systems. In the process, we create a state-of-the-art Arabic sentiment analysis system, a new dialectal Arabic sentiment lexicon, and the first Arabic-English parallel corpus that is independently annotated for sentiment by Arabic and English speakers.

With the increasingly global nature of our everyday interactions, the need for multilin- gual technologies to support efficient and effective information access and communication cannot be overemphasized. Computational modeling of language has been the focus of Natural Language Processing, a subdiscipline of Artificial Intelligence. One of the current challenges for this discipline is to design methodologies and algorithms that are cross- language in order to create multilingual technologies rapidly. The goal of this JAIR special issue on Cross-Language Algorithms and Applications (CLAA) is to present leading re- search in this area, with emphasis on developing unifying themes that could lead to the development of the science of multi- and cross-lingualism. In this introduction, we provide the reader with the motivation for this special issue and summarize the contributions of the papers that have been included. The selected papers cover a broad range of cross-lingual technologies including machine translation, domain and language adaptation for sentiment analysis, cross-language lexical resources, dependency parsing, information retrieval and knowledge representation. We anticipate that this special issue will serve as an invaluable resource for researchers interested in topics of cross-lingual natural language processing.

Rehabilitation robots physically support and guide a patient's limb during motor therapy, but require sophisticated control algorithms and artificial intelligence to do so. This article provides an overview of the state of the art in this area. Furthermore, it describes exercise adaptation algorithms that change the overall exercise intensity based on the patient's performance or physiological responses, as well as socially assistive robots that provide only verbal and visual guidance. The article concludes with a discussion of the current challenges in rehabilitation robot software: evaluating existing control strategies in a clinical setting as well as increasing the robot's autonomy using entirely new artificial intelligence techniques.

Rehabilitation robots physically support and guide a patient's limb during motor therapy, but require sophisticated control algorithms and artificial intelligence to do so. This article provides an overview of the state of the art in this area. It begins with the dominant paradigm of assistive control, from impedance-based cooperative controller through electromyography and intention estimation. It then covers challenge-based algorithms, which provide more difficult and complex tasks for the patient to perform through resistive control and error augmentation. Furthermore, it describes exercise adaptation algorithms that change the overall exercise intensity based on the patient's performance or physiological responses, as well as socially assistive robots that provide only verbal and visual guidance. The article concludes with a discussion of the current challenges in rehabilitation robot software: evaluating existing control strategies in a clinical setting as well as increasing the robot's autonomy using entirely new artificial intelligence techniques.

We present a method for learning Bayesian networks from data sets containing thousands of variables without the need for structure constraints. Our approach is made of two parts. The first is a novel algorithm that effectively explores the space of possible parent sets of a node. It guides the exploration towards the most promising parent sets on the basis of an approximated score function that is computed in constant time. The second part is an improvement of an existing ordering-based algorithm for structure optimization. The new algorithm provably achieves a higher score compared to its original formulation. Our novel approach consistently outperforms the state of the art on very large data sets.

We introduce a novel approach to Compressed Path Databases, space efficient oracles used to very quickly identify the first edge on a shortest path. Our algorithm achieves query running times on the 100 nanosecond scale, being significantly faster than state-of-the-art first-move oracles from the literature. Space consumption is competitive, due to a compression approach that rearranges rows and columns in a first-move matrix and then performs run length encoding (RLE) on the contents of the matrix. One variant of our implemented system was, by a convincing margin, the fastest entry in the 2014 Grid-Based Path Planning Competition. We give a first tractability analysis for the compression scheme used by our algorithm. We study the complexity of computing a database of minimum size for general directed and undirected graphs. We find that in both cases the problem is NP-complete. We also show that, for graphs which can be decomposed along articulation points, the problem can be decomposed into independent parts, with a corresponding reduction in its level of difficulty. In particular, this leads to simple and tractable algorithms with linear running time which yield optimal compression results for trees.

Active learning (AL) is a learning paradigm where an active learner has to train a model (e.g., a classifier) which is in principal trained in a supervised way, but in AL it has to be done by means of a data set with initially unlabeled samples. To get labels for these samples, the active learner has to ask an oracle (e.g., a human expert) for labels. The goal is to maximize the performance of the model and to minimize the number of queries at the same time. In this article, we first briefly discuss the state of the art and own, preliminary work in the field of AL. Then, we propose the concept of collaborative active learning (CAL). With CAL, we will overcome some of the harsh limitations of current AL. In particular, we envision scenarios where an expert may be wrong for various reasons, there might be several or even many experts with different expertise, the experts may label not only samples but also knowledge at a higher level such as rules, and we consider that the labeling costs depend on many conditions. Moreover, in a CAL process human experts will profit by improving their own knowledge, too.

Mode clustering is a nonparametric method for clustering that defines clusters using the basins of attraction of a density estimator's modes. We provide several enhancements to mode clustering: (i) a soft variant of cluster assignment, (ii) a measure of connectivity between clusters, (iii) a technique for choosing the bandwidth, (iv) a method for denoising small clusters, and (v) an approach to visualizing the clusters. Combining all these enhancements gives us a complete procedure for clustering in multivariate problems. We also compare mode clustering to other clustering methods in several examples

In this paper we review the concepts of Bayesian evidence and Bayes factors, also known as log odds ratios, and their application to model selection. The theory is presented along with a discussion of analytic, approximate and numerical techniques. Specific attention is paid to the Laplace approximation, variational Bayes, importance sampling, thermodynamic integration, and nested sampling and its recent variants. Analogies to statistical physics, from which many of these techniques originate, are discussed in order to provide readers with deeper insights that may lead to new techniques. The utility of Bayesian model testing in the domain sciences is demonstrated by presenting four specific practical examples considered within the context of signal processing in the areas of signal detection, sensor characterization, scientific model selection and molecular force characterization.

Although the traits emerged in a mass gathering are often non-deliberative, the act of mass impulse may lead to irre- vocable crowd disasters. The two-fold increase of carnage in crowd since the past two decades has spurred significant advances in the field of computer vision, towards effective and proactive crowd surveillance. Computer vision stud- ies related to crowd are observed to resonate with the understanding of the emergent behavior in physics (complex systems) and biology (animal swarm). These studies, which are inspired by biology and physics, share surprisingly common insights, and interesting contradictions. However, this aspect of discussion has not been fully explored. Therefore, this survey provides the readers with a review of the state-of-the-art methods in crowd behavior analysis from the physics and biologically inspired perspectives. We provide insights and comprehensive discussions for a broader understanding of the underlying prospect of blending physics and biology studies in computer vision.