This thesis explores interfaces for locating and comprehending patterns among time-based materials in digital libraries. Time-based digital library materials are like other digital library materials in that they are comprised of data and metadata. In addition, they have a time or period of time attached to each data item. The specific focus of this thesis is on fine-granularity items-items that have relatively little data and cover brief periods of time. In such a context, people often are left to discern patterns of activity by retrospectively making sense of the collection or parts thereof. The specific domain chosen for the implementation is the daily diary of President George Bush, the 41st president of the USA. This project developed a searching and browsing interface, which allows people to study the relationship between activities and people in the library data. As part of this thesis, a corpus of the Presidential daily diary was digitized. Two interfaces were provided to this corpus, one based on a standard information retrieval engine (Greenstone) and another presenting time-based visualizations of data items. An evaluation was conducted to explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two interfaces.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / John A. Harrington, Jr. / Clearly, the character of the relationship between humans and their environment has changed over time. Scholars have developed a geologic timeline and a timeline for life, but there is not a human-environment timeline. The proposed new geologic epoch of the Anthropocene is inadequate for encapsulating the diversity of the human-environment relationship throughout history and prehistory. This dissertation initiates conversation about developing an official human-environment timeline. Oriented from the perspective of a geographer, this exploratory research involved the qualitative analysis of human-environment events and ideas from a series of four geographic encyclopedias. A human-environment timeline emerged from this research, as well as a hierarchical typology of time periods: durations, duration revolutions, scenes, scene transitions, and intervals. The timeline was then interpreted according to four “ways of knowing”: normal science, cultural ecology, political ecology, and humanistic geography. This research supports inquiry into how time periods can be employed to better understand and communicate the human-environment relationship through time.

Possession is an asymmetric semantic relation between two entities, where one entity (the possessee) belongs to the other entity (the possessor). Automatically extracting possessions are useful in identifying skills, recommender systems and in natural language understanding. Possessions can be found in different communication modalities including text, images, videos, and audios. In this dissertation, I elaborate on the techniques I used to extract possessions. I begin with extracting possessions at the sentence level including the type and temporal anchors. Then, I extract the duration of possession and co-possessions (if multiple possessors possess the same entity). Next, I extract possessions from an entire Wikipedia article capturing the change of possessors over time. I extract possessions from social media including both text and images. Finally, I also present dense annotations generating possession timelines. I present separate datasets, detailed corpus analysis, and machine learning models for each task described above.

This thesis investigates the problem of content selection for timeline generation from single history articles. While the task of timeline generation has been addressed before, most previous approaches assume the existence of a large corpus of history articles from the same era. They exploit the fact that salient information is likely to be mentioned multiple times in such corpora. However, large resources of this kind are only available for historical events that happened in the most recent decades. In this thesis, I present approaches which can be used to create history timelines for any historical period, even for eras such as the Middle Ages, for which no large corpora of supplementary text exist. The thesis first presents a system that selects relevant historical figures in a given article, a task which is substantially easier than full timeline generation. I show that a supervised approach which uses linguistic, structural and semantic features outperforms a competitive baseline on this task. Based on the observations made in this initial study, I then develop approaches for timeline generation. I find that an unsupervised approach that takes into account the article's subject area outperforms several supervised and unsupervised baselines. A main focus of this thesis is the development of evaluation methodologies and resources, as no suitable corpora existed when work began. For the initial experiment on important historical figures, I construct a corpus of existing timelines and textual articles, and devise a method for evaluating algorithms based on this resource. For timeline generation, I present a comprehensive evaluation methodology which is based on the interpretation of the task as a special form of single-document summarisation. This methodology scores algorithms based on meaning units rather than surface similarity. Unlike previous semantic-units-based evaluation methods for summarisation, my evaluation method does not require any manual annotation of system timelines. Once an evaluation resource has been created, which involves only annotation of the input texts, new timeline generation algorithms can be tested at no cost. This crucial advantage should make my new evaluation methodology attractive for the evaluation of general single-document summaries beyond timelines. I also present an evaluation resource which is based on this methodology. It was constructed using gold-standard timelines elicited from 30 human timeline writers, and has been made publicly available. This thesis concentrates on the content selection stage of timeline generation, and leaves the surface realisation step for future work. However, my evaluation methodology is designed in such a way that it can in principle also quantify the degree to which surface realisation is successful.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / William H. Hsu / The goal of my project is to summarize large volumes of data and help users to visualize how events have unfolded over time. I address the problem of extracting overview terms from a time-tagged corpus of data and discuss some previous work conducted in this area. I use a statistical approach to automatically extract key terms, form groupings of related terms, and display the resultant groups on a timeline. I use a static corpus composed of news stories, as opposed to an on-line setting where continual additions to the corpus are being made. Terms are extracted using a Named Entity Recognizer, and importance of a term is determined using the [superscript]X[superscript]2 measure. My approach does not address the problem of associating time and date stamps with data, and is restricted to corpora that been explicitly tagged. The quality of results obtained is gauged subjectively and objectively by measuring the degree to which events known to exist in the corpus were identified by the system.

Digital forensics is the practice of trained investigators gathering and analyzing evidence from digital devices such as computers and smart phones. On these digital devices, it is possible to change the time on the device for a purpose other than what is intended. Currently there are no documented techniques to determine when this occurs. This research seeks to prove out a technique for determining when the time has been changed on forensic disk image by analyzing the log files found on the image. Out of this research a tool is created to perform this analysis in automated fashion. This tool is TADpole, a command line program that analyzes the log files on a disk image and determines if a timeline anomaly has occurred.

abstract: The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning and management system that causally links actions and subsequent financial and nonfinancial outcomes. The primary goal of the BSC is to motivate actions that are congruent with the organization's long-term strategy. A secondary purpose of the BSC is to facilitate the performance evaluation of managers charged with advancing the corporate strategy. To serve this second purpose the BSC must include a time dimension. Specifically, the strategic plan must recognize time lags between actions taken, lead outcomes (often nonfinancial in nature) and lagged outcomes (usually financial success measures). If an evaluator is not provided with timeline information a subordinate may be evaluated based on inappropriate performance metrics; that is, a subordinate may be held accountable for an outcome beyond the subordinate's time span of control. This study evaluates the effect on performance evaluations and bonus allocations when evaluators are provided (or not provided) with a strategy implementation timeline. This issue has not been previously examined in the literature. This study also examines the moderating effect of experience, management buy-in to the corporate strategy, and affect on performance evaluations and bonus allocations. Results from an experiment conducted with evening MBA students show that inclusion of a strategy implementation timeline leads to more normatively correct performance evaluations, but only for experienced participants. Higher levels of both positive and negative affect were found to result in choice avoidance behavior. Buy-in to the corporate strategy was not found to have an effect. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Accountancy 2012

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / This paper presents a method for generating estimates of temporal changes in the surrounding area of a highway located in the Amazon, using the technique Cellular Automata and explanatory variables, only attributes of the land. The proposed model uses vector images (obtained from the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil), which are converted to grid type files â raster image, representing a series of spatial changes in the region of study. With this proposition, it is expected to assist decision makers in order to meet the requests of CONAMA Resolution 01, relating to environmental impacts, more specifically, as regards the construction of models which consider scenarios with and without the project, and that the process of construction / rehabilitation of roads can be made in view of the legal norms in order to minimize potential environmental and social impacts. The model generated from the CAs showed promise in generating future estimates of deforestation and a good quantitative and qualitative indicators to support the decision making process to consider future deforestation being caused by construction and / or paving of road in the Amazon. / Este trabalho apresenta um mÃtodo para a estimativa de mudanÃas espaÃo temporais no entorno de uma rodovia localizada na AmazÃnia, utilizando para tanto a tÃcnica AutÃmatos Celulares adaptada em ambiente SIG, onde as variÃveis explicativas do modelo serÃo somente os atributos do terreno. O modelo proposto usa imagens vetoriais (obtidas junto ao Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais) que posteriormente sÃo convertidas para arquivos tipo grid â em formato raster, com a sÃrie histÃrica das mudanÃas espaciais na regiÃo objeto de estudo. Espera-se auxiliar os tomadores de decisÃo no atendimento das solicitaÃÃes da resoluÃÃo CONAMA 01/86 relativas à concepÃÃo de modelos que considerem cenÃrios com e sem o empreendimento, e que os processos de construÃÃo/recuperaÃÃo de rodovias possam ser realizados atendendo Ãs normas legais, visando minimizar os potenciais impactos sÃcio ambientais. O modelo gerado a partir dos ACs mostrou-se promissor na geraÃÃo de estimativas futuras de desmatamento e um bom indicador quantitativo e qualitativo para suporte no processo de tomada de decisÃo que pondere o desmatamento futuro a ser causado pela construÃÃo e/ou pavimentaÃÃo de uma rodovia na AmazÃnia.

The aim of this thesis is on the base of accounting and tax treatment of corporate transformations modeled timelines for each phase of transformation, respectively. merger and spin-off, and test their functionality on the practical example. For the purpose of accomplish this goal was done, especially in the first two parts, the analysis of individual Czech and European professional publications and articles, as well as Czech and European legislation and judicature. For the next parts it was also used comparison of accounting and tax treatment of transformation, respectively. merger and spin-off, modeling timelines for each phase of transformation and their testing on practical example for the purpose of verification of functionality. The conclusion evaluates the usability of modeled timelines for practice.

The Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA) has been selected as the second large (L-class) mission designed to address the Cosmic Vision science theme “The Hot and Energetic Universe”. The European Space Agency has produced a Mission Observation Plan which contains objectives and constraints of the mission. In addition, this plan includes a representative sequence of targets, the Mock Observation Sequence, which defines the order in which ATHENA has to observe the targets. The feasibility of the Mock Observation Plan has to be assessed and the Mission Timeline Simulator has been designed for this purpose. It is a tool developed by Airbus DS that includes all the spacecraft operations. The analysis of the Mock Observation Plan in the Mission Timeline Simulator showed that the ATHENA’s line of sight points into the sun during some observations. This would lead to a loss of the whole mission since sunlight damages the instruments. Consequently, a new Observation Sequence has been produced by Airbus DS, in which the spacecraft does not point to the sun. However, this new sequence does not meet one important requirement: the operational availability shall be above 90%. The operational availability is defined by the percentage of the total time which is used for science observation. The version at the start of the thesis of the artificial case study but representative to the ATHENA mission achieved a value of 87.3 %. One of the main objectives of this thesis is therefore to obtain a sequence that meets the operational availability requirement with the final goal of generating a functional timeline of several days. If any interrupt occurs to the timeline (Targets of Opportunity, safe mode events, etc.), the spacecraft shall be able to find the way back to the optimal timeline or replan a new one. The current status includes these events but the timeline does not get interrupted. In this aspect, the currently implemented Greedy algorithm, that chooses the observation sequence, must be extended in branch and horizon. In order to achieve these objectives, a Beam Search algorithm has been developed and implemented in the Mission Timeline Simulator. The operational availability has been increased by incrementing the width search (branching factor). The depth search (horizon factor) allows the user to restrict the longitude of the timeline in terms of number of targets. A first implementation not including interrupts was analysed and an operational availability higher than 90% was achieved. A second implementation with a functional timeline considering interrupts shows a decrease in the operational availability, which does not reach 90%; nevertheless improving the results of the previous version with a final operational availability of 89.24%. Note that this is a representative case study of the mission. The Beam Search algorithm has been demonstrated to be suitable for the defined problem and a future sensitivity analysis of different parameters, such as depth and width search, could increase further the performance of the algorithm and therefore the simulation results. / ATHENA mission