Search results

Digitization of historical documents is a challenging task in many digital humanities projects. A popular approach for digitization is to scan the documents into images, and then convert images into text using optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms. However, the outcome of OCR processing of historical documents is usually inaccurate and requires post-processing error correction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how crowdsourcing can be utilized to correct OCR errors in historical text collections, and which crowdsourcing methodology is the most effective in different scenarios and for various research objectives.

A series of experiments with different micro-task’s structures and text lengths were conducted with 753 workers on the Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. The workers had to fix OCR errors in a selected historical text. To analyze the results, new accuracy and efficiency measures were devised.

The analysis suggests that in terms of accuracy, the optimal text length is medium (paragraph-size) and the optimal structure of the experiment is two phase with a scanned image. In terms of efficiency, the best results were obtained when using longer text in the single-stage structure with no image.

The study provides practical recommendations to researchers on how to build the optimal crowdsourcing task for OCR post-correction. The developed methodology can also be utilized to create golden standard historical texts for automatic OCR post-correction.

This is the first attempt to systematically investigate the influence of various factors on crowdsourcing-based OCR post-correction and propose an optimal strategy for this process.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the causes that justify the application of presumptions in corporate income taxation. The authors focus on motives showing a connection to errors or fraud in the recognition of operations by the financial accounting system. The research question can be framed as follows: How to define the frontier between reliable accounting records and unreliable information, the latter rendering presumptions as an admissible way of taxing income?

The research design of this paper rests on two analytical steps based on the legal research method. The first step enquires, at the accounting level, how to define and quantify errors that render accounting statements inappropriate to assess firms’ performance and compute taxable income. The second step explores the practical application of presumptive tax concepts by Portuguese courts, to offer some criteria that can function as guidelines to firms and tax auditors.

The judgment about the boundaries of accounting errors that allow the use of presumption-based taxation is often decided by litigation. Portuguese jurisprudence provides strong evidence that presumptions should only be applied if, even by correcting of errors and inaccuracies, corporate real income cannot be obtained. The level of contamination must be obvious, and tax audits must present a strong and documented claim that presumptions are a last-resort mechanism to compute an appropriate tax base. The Supreme Tax Court has been applying a consistent approach characterized by: presumptive taxation is a last-resort mechanism; tax audits must prove that a generalized contamination of accounting data is observed; it is not possible to correct accounting errors, given their extension and depth, and the taxpayer did not submit contradictory solid evidence.

Applying, in practice, legal criteria to decide that accounting manipulation is so extensive that taxation must be based on presumptions is fraught with subjectivism. However, we offer an analysis where some guidelines to this complex issue are presented in a logical way. Principles-based taxation can, nonetheless, be applied with a significant degree of fairness and consistency.

The paper contributes to the literature by offering an analysis of the criteria used by Portuguese tax courts when deciding that accounting data can be disregarded and presumptions used as a tax computation tool. Given that the rule, in many countries, is to base taxable income on accounting records (albeit with adjustments established in Corporate Income Tax Codes), presumptions are a notable exception to this well-established rule. As such, taxpayers have a significant interest in knowing how courts rule on tax authorities’ use of presumptions. In this light, the paper has also potential value to professionals in the accounting and tax fields. They are often confronted with tax audits that apply presumptions. Therefore, knowing jurisprudential trends in the judgment of such, usually complex, cases is an important issue.

Lectures can be digitally recorded and replayed to provide multimedia revision material for students who attended the class and a substitute learning experience for students unable to attend. Deaf and hard of hearing people can find it difficult to follow speech through hearing alone or to take notes while they are lip‐reading or watching a sign‐language interpreter. Notetakers can only summarise what is being said while qualified sign language interpreters with a good understanding of the relevant higher education subject content are in very scarce supply. Synchronising the speech with text captions can ensure deaf students are not disadvantaged and assist all learners to search for relevant specific parts of the multimedia recording by means of the synchronised text. Real time stenography transcription is not normally available in UK higher education because of the shortage of stenographers wishing to work in universities. Captions are time consuming and expensive to create by hand and while Automatic Speech Recognition can be used to provide real time captioning directly from lecturers’ speech in classrooms it has proved difficult to obtain accuracy comparable to stenography. This paper describes the development of a system that enables editors to correct errors in the captions as they are created by Automatic Speech Recognition.

Attitude and heading are very important measurements on board aircraft. In modern solutions they are measured by the attitude and heading reference system (AHRS). In some small unmanned systems, the GPS track angle is used for heading corrections instead of the magnetometer; then, the system measures the track angle instead of heading. With a temporary lack of correction signals, the measurement error increases very quickly. Similarly, a quick increase in the measurement error is observed when a magnetic heading sensor used for correction stops working properly. This study aims to propose measurement of the roll angle for yaw angle correction.

AHRS algorithms were designed; typical maneuvers were analyzed. The method was verified by simulation and in flight testing analysis. For quantitative analyses, a performance index was proposed.

The method enables reduction of the yaw angle error caused by the gyros bias error. This study presents the idea, results of simulations and flight testing data analysis and discusses advantages and limitations of the presented method.

The presented methodology can be implemented in AHRS systems for manned and unmanned aircraft.

This study enables more accurate measurement of the yaw angle in the case of missing correction signals.

This paper describes ongoing developments in the LRE‐2 project SECC (Simplified English Grammar and Style Checker/Corrector). After a general description of the project, the approach to building the SECC writing tool is discussed. First, lingware issues are dealt with: resources used, technical implications of simplified grammar correction as machine translation, testing and evaluation issues. Next, we take a look at software issues, in particular the user interfaces. Finally, we discuss some open issues and future developments.

To propose novel predictor‐corrector time‐integration algorithms for pseudo‐dynamic testing.

The novel predictor‐corrector time‐integration algorithms are based on both the implicit and the explicit version of the generalized‐α method. In the non‐linear unforced case second‐order accuracy, stability in energy, energy decay in the high‐frequency range as well as asymptotic annihilation are distinctive properties of the generalized‐α scheme; while in the non‐linear forced case they are the limited error near the resonance in terms of frequency location and intensity of the resonant peak. The implicit generalized‐α algorithm has been implemented in a predictor‐one corrector form giving rise to the implicit IPC‐ρ_∞ method, able to avoid iterative corrections which are expensive from an experimental standpoint and load oscillations of numerical origin. Moreover, the scheme embodies a secant stiffness formula able to approximate closely the actual stiffness of a structure. Also an explicit algorithm has been implemented, the EPC‐ρ_b method, endowed with user‐controlled dissipation properties. The resulting schemes have been tested experimentally both on a two‐ and on a six‐degrees‐of‐freedom system, exploiting substructuring techniques.

The analytical findings and the tests have indicated that the proposed numerical strategies enhance the performance of the pseudo‐dynamic test (PDT) method even in an environment characterized by considerable experimental errors. Moreover, the schemes have been tested numerically on strongly non‐linear multiple‐degrees‐of‐freedom systems reproduced with the Bouc‐Wen hysteretic model, showing that the proposed algorithms reap the benefits of the parent generalized‐α methods.

Further developments envisaged for this study are the application of the IPC‐ρ_∞ method and of EPC‐ρ_b scheme to partitioned procedures for high‐speed pseudo‐dynamic testing with substructuring.

The implicit IPC‐ρ_∞ and the explicit EPC‐ρ_b methods allow a user to have defined dissipation which reduces the effects of experimental error in the PDT without needing onerous iterations.

The paper proposes novel time‐integration algorithms for pseudo‐dynamic testing. Thanks to a predictor‐corrector form of the generalized‐α method, the proposed schemes maintain a high computational efficiency and accuracy.

Not only does the problem of correcting spelling errors by computer have a long history, it is evidently of considerable current interest as papers and letters on the topic continue to appear rapidly. This is not surprising, since techniques useful in detecting and correcting mis‐spellings normally have other important applications. Moreover, both the power of small computers and the routine production of machine‐readable text have increased enormously over the last decade to the point where automatic spelling error detection/correction has become not only feasible but highly desirable.

The purpose of this study is mainly to find out the EFL learners' attitude towards corrective feedback. This paper also investigates types of learners who prefer the online or offline corrective feedback, and how feedback should be tailored to the needs of the learners.

The study was conducted on sixty female participants who were students of levels 7 and 8 of the B. A. program (English) at King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia. They were administered a questionnaire comprising eight questions about corrective feedback from teachers individually and independently so that they could identify their own choices without any influence from other participants. The items in the questionnaire were closed items.

It was found that both types of feedbacks are essential to enhance learners' linguistic accuracy. Learners have shown their positive attitude towards teachers' corrective feedback because they consider it a motivating learning tool. Not only that the learners have expressed the view that corrective feedback is very useful in enhancing the learning process for EFL learners. On the other hand, some of the learners are not serious about going through corrective feedback given by teachers because sometimes they are unable to differentiate between what helps or hampers progress towards language learning. However, they preferred both online (immediate/automated) feedback and offline (delayed) feedback. In general, the results state that the learners have expressed the view that corrective feedback is very useful in enhancing the learning process for EFL learners.

This study has some limitations. The first one is the sample size. Only students from levels 7 and 8 (undergraduates) were taken into consideration. The second limitation is that the researchers focused on only one university in Saudi Arabia. The third limitation is that no male students participated in this study. The results might be different if the male students participated as well.

One vital point in employing CF in the language classrooms is timing. Considering the timing of corrective feedback, teachers face the problem of whether CF should be immediate (online) or delayed (offline).

The air data system of an aircraft includes, amongst other items, the airspeed indicator, altimeter and machmeter all of which derive their readings from measurement of air pressures. The instruments are designed on the assumption that they will be fed with pressures from the undisturbed free‐stream in which the aircraft is flying; this is not generally the case. In flight the aircraft disturbs the air mass and in doing so causes a pressure field around itself which produces the forces necessary for lift and control. The pressure sensors which detect the airstream pressures may be located within the aircraft pressure field and the pressures transmitted to the instruments may not correspond to the free‐stream pressures; if this is so then the instrument indications will be in error.