Webber, Bonnie L

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 31
  • Publication
    The Penn Discourse Treebank 2.0 Annotation Manual
    (2007-12-17) Prasad, Rashmi; Miltsakaki, Eleni; Dinesh, Nikhil; Lee, Alan; Joshi, Aravind; Robaldo, Livio; Webber, Bonnie L
    This report contains the guidelines for the annotation of discourse relations in the Penn Discourse Treebank (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pdtb), PDTB. Discourse relations in the PDTB are annotated in a bottom up fashion, and capture both lexically realized relations as well as implicit relations. Guidelines in this report are provided for all aspects of the annotation, including annotation explicit discourse connectives, implicit relations, arguments of relations, senses of relations, and the attribution of relations and their arguments. The report also provides descriptions of the annotation format representation.
  • Publication
    Casualty modeling for real-time medical training
    (1996-12-01) Badler, Norman I; Chi, Diane M.; Webber, Bonnie L; Clarke, John R.
    We present a model for simulating casualties in virtual environments for real-time medical training. It allows a user to choose diagnostic and therapeutic actions to carry out on a simulated casualty who will manifest appropriate physiological, behavioral, and physical responses. Currently, the user or a "stealth instructor" can specify one or more injuries that the casualty has sustained. The model responds by continuously determining the state of the casualty, responding appropriately to medical assessment and treatment procedures. So far, we have modeled four medical conditions and over twenty procedures. The model has been designed to handle the addition of other injuries and medical procedures.
  • Publication
    Planning for Animation
    (1996-08-01) Badler, Norman I; Webber, Bonnie L; Becket, Welton; Geib, Christopher W; Moore, Michael B; Pelachaud, Catherine; Reich, Barry D; Stone, Matthew
  • Publication
    Progressive Horizon Planning - Planning Exploratory-Corrective Behavior
    (1992-03-01) Rymon, Ron; Webber, Bonnie L; Clarke, John R.
    Much planning research assumes that the goals for which one plans are known in advance. That is not true of trauma management, which involves both a search for relevant goals and reasoning about how to achieve them. TraumAID is a consultation system for the diagnosis and treatment of multiple trauma. It has been under development jointly at the University of Pennsylvania and the Medical College of Pennsylvania for the past eight years. TraumAID integrates diagnostic reasoning, planning and action. Its reasoner identifies diagnostic and therapeutic goals appropriate to the physician’s knowledge of the patient’s state, while its planner advises on beneficial actions to next perform. The physician’s lack of complete knowledge of the situation and the time limitations of emergency medicine constrain the ability of any planner to identify what would be the best thing to do. Nevertheless, TraumAID’s Progressive Horizon Planner has been designed to create a plan for patient care that is in keeping with the standards of managing trauma.
  • Publication
    TraumAID: Reasoning and Planning in the Initial Definitive Management of Multiple Injuries
    (1990-08-01) Webber, Bonnie L; Clarke, John R.; Niv, Michael; Rymon, Ron; Ibáñez, María Milagros
    The TraumAID system has been designed to provide computerized decision support to optimize the initial definitive management of acutely injured patients after resuscitation and stabilization. The currently deployed system, TraumAID 1.0, addresses penetrating injuries to the abdomen and to the chest. Our experience with TraumAID 1.0 has demonstrated some major deficiencies in rule-based reasoners that are faced with problems of both diagnosis and treatment. To address these deficiencies, we have redesigned the system (TraumAID 2.0), factoring it into two modules: (1) a rule-based reasoner embodying the knowledge and logical machinery needed to link clinical evidence to diagnostic and therapeutic goals, and (2) a planner embodying the global knowledge and logical machinery needed to create a plan that addresses combinations of goals. After describing TraumAID 2.0, we discuss an extension of the TraumAID interface (critique mode interaction) that may improve its acceptability in a clinical setting. We close with a brief discussion of management support in resource-limited environments, which is an important issue in the time-critical context of multiple trauma.
  • Publication
    Progressive Horizon Planning
    (1990-10-01) Rymon, Ron; Webber, Bonnie L.; Clarke, John R.
    In an earlier paper [Rymon et a1 89], we showed how domain localities and regularities can be used to reduce the complexity of finding a trauma management plan that satisfies a set of diagnostic and therapeutic goals. Here, we present another planning idea - Progressive Horizon - useful for optimizing such plans in domains where planning can be regarded as an incremental process, continuously interleaved with situation - goals analysis and plan execution. In such domains, planned action cannot be delayed until all essential information is available: A plan must include actions intended to gather information as well as ones intended to change the state of the world. Interleaving planning with reasoning and execution, a progressive horizon planner constructs a plan that answers all currently known needs but has only its first few actions optimized (those within its planning horizon). As the executor cames out actions and reports back to the system, the current goals and the plan are updated based on actual performance and newly discovered goals and information. The new plan is then optimized within a newly set horizon. In this paper, we describe those features of a domain that are salient for the use of a progressive horizon planning paradigm. Since we believe that the paradigm may be useful in other domains, we abstract from the exact techniques used by our program to discuss the merits of the general approach.
  • Publication
    MediSim: Simulated Medical Corpsmen and Casualties for Medical Forces Planning and Training
    (1995-03-01) Badler, Norman I; Clarke, John R; Hollick, Michael J; Kokkevis, Evangelos; Metaxas, Dimitris; Webber, Bonnie L; Bindiganavale, Ramamani; Chi, Diane M; Foster, Nick; Ogunyemi, Omolola; Kaye, Jonathan
    The MediSim system extends virtual environments (both local and network) to represent simulated medical personnel interacting with simulated casualties. Our technology fosters dual-use applications involving planning, training, and evaluation of both medical corpsmen and civilian EMTs. Behaviors and behavioral control are being developed for the medical corpsmen that will enable their actions on the digital battlefield to conform to both military practice and medical protocols. From situationally-appropriate injury models, a set of physical and behavioral manifestations in a simulated casualty will be determined and portrayed on a three-dimensional body.
  • Publication
    Discourse Deixis: Reference to Discourse Segments
    (1988-04-01) Webber, Bonnie L
    Computational approaches to discourse understanding have a two-part goal: (1) to identify those aspects of discourse understanding that require process-based accounts, and (2)to characterize the processes and data structures they involve. To date, in the area of reference, process-based accounts have been developed for subsequent reference via anaphoric pronouns and reference via definite descriptors. In this paper, I propose and argue for a process-based account of subsequent reference via deictic expressions. A significant feature of this account if that it attributes distinct mental reality to units of text often called discourse segments, a reality that is distinct from that of the entities described therein.
  • Publication
    Integrating Anatomy and Physiology for Behavior Modeling
    (1995) DeCarlo, Douglas; Kaye, Jonathan; Metaxas, Dimitris; Webber, Bonnie L.; Clarke, John R.; Badler, Norman I
    In producing realistic, animatable models of the human body, we see much to be gained from developing a functional anatomy that links the anatomical and physiological behavior of the body through fundamental causal principles. This paper describes our current Finite Element Method implementation of a simplified lung and chest cavity during normal quiet breathing and then disturbed by a simple pneumothorax. The lung model interacts with the model of the chest cavity through applied forces. The models are modular, and a second lung and more complex chest wall model can be added without disturbing the model of the other lung. During inhalation, a breathing force (corresponding to exertion of the diaphragm and chest wall muscles) is applied, causing the chest cavity to expand. When this force is removed (at the start of exhalation), the stretched lung recoils, applying pressure forces to the chest wall which cause the chest cavity to contract. To simulate a simple pneumothorax, the intrapleural pressure is set to atmospheric pressure, which removes pressure forces holding the lung close to the chest cavity and results in the lung returning to its unstretched shape.
  • Publication
    Animation through Reactions, Transition Nets and Plans
    (1995-10-01) Webber, Bonnie L; Badler, Norman I
    We describe a framework for creating animated simulations of virtual human agents. The framework allows us to capture flexible patterns of activity, as well as reactivity to a changing environment. Both lead to variation in how an animated simulation will be realized. In addition, because different parts of an activity make different demands on an agent's resources and decision-making, our framework allows special-purpose reasoners and planners to be associated with only those phases of an activity where they are needed.