Shimei PanArmonk, NY

7533089, May 12, 2009

Jun 27, 2006

11/475785

Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
James C. Shaw - Tenafly NJ, US

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 7/00
G06F 17/30

707 4, 707 5

Techniques are disclosed for combining natural language generation with query retrieval for context appropriate query recommendation. For example, a computer-implemented method for generating a recommended query for a conversation system in response to an original user query, wherein at least a portion of the original user query is not understandable to a query interpretation process, includes the following steps. Recommendation results are computed, in response to the original user query, using a natural language generation-based recommendation process. Recommendation results are computed, in response to the original user query, using a retrieval-based recommendation process. A recommended query is generated based on consideration of at least a portion of the natural language generation-based recommendation results and at least a portion of the retrieval-based recommendation results.

7552047, Jun 23, 2009

May 2, 2006

11/415196

Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
James Shaw - Tenafly NJ, US

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 17/27
G06F 17/28

704 9

A method for instance-based sentence boundary determination optimizes a set of criteria based on examples in a corpus, and provides a general domain-independent framework for the task by balancing a comprehensive set of sentence complexity and quality constraints. The characteristics and style of naturally occurring sentences are simulated through the use of semantic grouping and sentence length distribution. The method is parameterized so that it is easily adapts to suit a Natural Language Generation (NLG) system's generation.

8245135, Aug 14, 2012

Sep 8, 2009

12/555351

Wei Jia Cai - Beijing, CN
Xiao Xiao Lian - Beijing, CN
Shixia Liu - Beijing, CN
Shimei Pan - Elmsford NY, US
Wei Hong Qian - Beijing, CN
Yang Qiu Song - Beijing, CN
Qiang Zhang - Beijing, CN
Michelle Xue Zhou - Saratoga CA, US

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 17/00
G06F 17/30

715254, 715255, 715711, 707708, 707738

A method and system of producing a visual text summarization. According to the method, a plurality of topics may be extracted from a collection of text documents, where each of the topics comprises a distribution of topic keywords. An importance ranking for each of the topics may be determined, and an importance ranking for each of the topic keywords of a topic may also be determined. A graph may be displayed having a plurality of stacked layers representing a group of topics selected from the plurality of topics based on the importance ranking of the topics. A keyword cloud within each layer of the graph may also be displayed, where the one keyword cloud is a group of topic keywords selected from the extracted topic keywords based on the importance ranking of the extracted topic keywords.

2006001, Jan 19, 2006

Jul 14, 2004

10/890811

Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
James Shaw - Tenafly NJ, US

G06F 17/27

704009000

One embodiment of the present method and apparatus for natural language generation enables a language generation system to generate a grammatically correct natural language sentence by retrieving and adapting one or more stored sentences having semantic features similar to semantic features of a system-generated semantic representation. The retrieval of stored sentences is guided at least in part by the ease with which the stored sentences may be adapted to produce a grammatically correct sentence, enabling rapid generation of accurate output.

2006015, Jul 13, 2006

Jan 7, 2005

11/031038

Keith Houck - Rye NY, US
Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
Siwei Shen - Ann Arbor MI, US
Michelle Zhou - Briarcliff Manor NY, US

H04Q 7/20
H04B 7/00

707002000

One embodiment of the present method and apparatus for robust input interpretation by conversation systems includes receiving a user request containing at least one un-interpretable term. The present invention conveys the conversation system's interpretation capabilities to the user, for example by suggesting at least one alternative request in context of the un-interpretable user request, where the alternative request is phrased in a manner that is substantially fully interpretable. A user may then select a suggested alternative request or formulate a new request in accordance with knowledge of the conversation system capabilities learned from the conveyed information. In another embodiment, a method may independently (e.g., without user prompting) adapt the un-interpretable user request in accordance with learned information regarding the meaning of any un-interpretable terms in the user request.

2008021, Sep 4, 2008

May 13, 2008

12/119785

Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
James C. Shaw - Tenafly NJ, US

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 17/30

707 3, 707E17068

Techniques are disclosed for combining natural language generation with query retrieval for context appropriate query recommendation. For example, a computer-implemented method for generating a recommended query for a conversation system in response to an original user query, wherein at least a portion of the original user query is not understandable to a query interpretation process, includes the following steps. Recommendation results are computed, in response to the original user query, using a natural language generation-based recommendation process. Recommendation results are computed, in response to the original user query, using a retrieval-based recommendation process. A recommended query is generated based on consideration of at least a portion of the natural language generation-based recommendation results and at least a portion of the retrieval-based recommendation results.

2009013, May 21, 2009

Nov 20, 2007

11/943405

Keith C. Houck - Rye NY, US
Peter Kissa - Ossining NY, US
Shimei Pan - Armonk NY, US
Michelle X. Zhou - Briarcliff Manor NY, US

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 17/30

707 4, 707E17015

Methods and apparatus are provided for integrating a visual query interface and a natural language interface. The disclosed interface embeds a first of the visual query interface and the natural language interface into a second of the visual query interface and the natural language interface. The disclosed interface can also receives one or more natural language expressions in the natural language interface and one or more visual query expressions in the visual query interface in a same search turn. The disclosed interface can also receive a first query comprised of a first of a natural language query and a visual query; process the first query; and creates a substantially equivalent query to the first query in a second of the natural language query and the visual query The disclosed interface can process a natural language query to determine if a portion of the natural language query is not understood; and convert at least a portion of the natural language query to a visual query.

2012020, Aug 16, 2012

Feb 10, 2011

13/024467

Jennifer Lai - Garrison NY, US
Jie Lu - Hawthorne NY, US
Shimei Pan - Elmsford NY, US
Zhen Wen - Chappaqua NY, US

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION - Armonk NY

G06F 17/30

707769, 707E17014

Automated contextual information retrieval techniques are provided based on multi-tiered user modeling and a dynamic retrieval strategy. Content relevant to a current message is presented by initially obtaining a multi-tiered user model containing a multi-tiered representation of interactions of a first user with each contact, wherein the multi-tiered representation includes a plurality of topic models each corresponding to interactions between the first user and one contact. The topic models contain a set of topics, each containing topic keywords. Context information is extracted based on content of the current message, a sender and/or a recipient of the current message, and the multi-tiered user model. A retrieval strategy is determined based on the extracted context information. Contextual queries are generated to search the information repositories selected based on the determined retrieval strategy. Content relevant to the current message is presented based on search results from the selected information repositories.