Identifying and extracting named entities from web pages has been the subject of many researches. In this paper, we propose and evaluate some new unsupervised language modeling approaches to determine the membership level of a candidate answer, a named entity, to a natural language question to a very fine-grained conceptual class of entity. We propose to address this issue by using the Web or DBPedia hierarchy as sources of evidence. Then, this level of membership can be used to improve the ranking of candidate answers in a question-answering task. Lastly, we present the results we obtained by participating in TREC 2010 Entity track.

This paper presents MoonWalker, a lower limb exoskeleton able to sustain part of a user's bodyweight. This orthosis can be used for rehabilitation, to help people having weak legs, or to help those suffering from a broken leg, to walk. It can also be used as an assistive device helping people carrying heavy loads. Its main characteristic is that a passive force balancer provides the force to sustain bodyweight. An actuator is also required, but is used only to shift that force the same side as the leg in stance. Consequently, MoonWalker requires very low energy to work on flat terrains. That motor can provide also a part of the energy to climb stairs or slopes. We believe that this approach can help improving energetic autonomy of lower limb exoskeletons.

This paper presents a new robot which produces four motions for high speed handling (three translations and one rotation about a given axis in world coordinates). This machine is an evolution of H4's architecture. First, H4's advantages are recalled, and some limitations are mentioned. To compensate for these limitations a new design of the traveling plate is proposed. A description of the whole mechanism is given. The structure's ability to provide Scara motions is presented. Geometrical conditions that must be followed in order to obtain desired motions are discussed. Kinematics models are derived. The design of the first prototype is described.