A midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy has become the first Black woman selected for the academy’s top student leadership position
ByBRIAN WITTE Associated Press
December 2, 2020, 5:17 PM
• 4 min read
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Midshipman Sydney Barber had her doubts about applying for the top student leadership position at the U.S. Naval Academy. A Black woman had never held the post in the 44 years women have been able to attend the 175-year-old institution.
A Black academy alumna of another generation saw her potential. Navy Capt. Tasya Lacy, class of 1997, pressed Barber to apply. Next semester, Barber will become the first Black woman to be the academy’s brigade commander.
The brigade commander represents about 4,400 midshipmen — future Navy and Marine Corps officers — before the academy’s commandant. It’s a top leadership position that enables a midshipman to lead peers in achieving the goals of the brigade. The commander has a staff and helps academy officials keep a pulse on the needs of the brigade. Barber compares it to a student government president at a civilian university.
“This was never something that I dreamed of,” Barber said, adding of Lacy: “She had no doubt in her mind that I was the right person for the job, and hearing her say that and being so confident in that, that really helped me to be more confident in myself.”
Barber, who was selected for the position a few weeks ago, has achieved the milestone at a time of continuing national discussions about social and racial injustice — a debate that she says helped inspire her to step up.
“It’s definitely been a challenge and it’s definitely taken a lot of courage to … make this step, especially in this time of social disharmony, but these times bring a heavier calling, I feel,” said Barber, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering major from Lake Forest, Illinois.
Lacy remembers having doubts about applying for positions like brigade commander when she was a midshipman. Now an active-duty Navy captain, she said she learned “not to self-eliminate.”
“Those were the words that I used when I talked to her, and I did tell her to reach for the stars and not to sell herself short,” said Lacy, who is now legislative director for the Office of the Chief of Navy Reserve.
Barber, who aspires to be commissioned as a Marine Corps ground officer, will be the 16th woman to be brigade commander at the academy. The first, Juliane Gallina, held the position in 1991.
Similar ground was broken at the U.S. Military Academy in New York in 2017, when Simone Askew became the first Black female first captain, the highest position in the cadet chain of command at West Point.
Women were first allowed into the nation’s service academies in 1976. That’s also when Janie Mines became the first Black woman to enter the Naval Academy, graduating four years later in 1980. While the number of women at the academy has been rising, it’s still currently about 72% male and 28% female.
In a social media post, Mines wrote that Barber’s selection “brought me to tears. This young woman, Midshipman Sydney Barber, will be the first Black Female Brigade Commander at the U.S. Naval Academy. 40 years later. Thank you, Sydney! Love you!”
Lacy said Mines’ graduation paved the way for her, while Barber’s accomplishment will inspire more young women to both attend and seek top student positions at the academy.
“It is tremendously significant because there are people who sometimes don’t aspire for certain jobs because they’ve not seen anyone look like them get into that job,” Lacy said.
Lacy volunteers in the academy’s sponsor program, through which people who live nearby welcome midshipmen to a home-away-from home for breaks, free of the rigors of academy life. She is Barber’s sponsor, and last fall she attended a first-ever Black female networking breakfast students organized. Lacy also noticed other groups and activities promoting diversity that did not exist when she attended.
“So, as I see this, I know that growth is happening,” Lacy said. “Change is happening, and I’m ecstatic about it.”
Embrace creativity with the Super Mario Adventures LEGO set. The set comes with Goomba, Bowser Jr., and Mario figures, as well as the level-end flag, clouds, flowers, trees, warp pipes, and more, to enable the creation of unique LEGO Mario play areas.
The final ten episodes of Vikings will be all made available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video before they are aired on History Channel.On December 30, all of the final episodes of Vikings Season 6 will be made available on Amazon Prime Video. This is counter to the show’s traditional format, which sees episodes released weekly on History Channel before they are then made available on streaming platforms. “Prime Video has already delighted Prime members with all five and a half seasons of Vikings,” said Brad Beale, VP worldwide content licensing at Amazon. “On Dec. 30, Prime members in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria and Ireland will be the first to learn the fates of the beloved characters as the epic drama concludes in the final 10 episodes.”
At present, it is yet to be determined the date when History Channel will air the remaining ten episodes, but it will be sometime in 2021.With Vikings concluded, showrunner Michael Hirst will move onto production on a sequel spin-off show for Netflix, as well as a limited series about the bubonic plague in 17th century London for History Channel.
Visa on Wednesday said it is linking its payments network of 60 million merchants to the USDC stablecoin developed by Centre, the consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase. The news was first reported by Forbes.
UPDATE (Dec. 2, 15:15 UTC): Added a comment from Circle and confirmation from Visa.
Jay Hao, CEO of Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, said his firm has taken steps to ensure the issue that caused a freeze of over five weeks in cryptocurrency withdrawals cannot reoccur.
In an ask-me-anything (AMA) session, a transcript of which was published on Wednesday, Hao said the incident led the exchange “to make several improvements in our internal processes.”
“I think that the incident highlighted several very important points. It exposed some weaknesses in our internal processes, which we are now steadfast in correcting,” he said.
The CEO stressed that user funds had never been in jeopardy and that OKEx maintains backups of the crypto private keys. He didn’t explain why they couldn’t be used in this incident, however.
On Oct. 16, OKEx was forced to halt withdrawals due to one of the key holders being held by authorities and “cooperating” with an investigation. The exchange managed to resume the service on Nov. 27, with OKEx saying the keyholder had been released and had not been involved in any wrongdoing or illegal activities.
In the AMA, Hao acknowledged the issue was harmful for the company and that trading has dropped as a result. He further apologized to customers for the uncertainty, inconvenience and stress caused by the event.
Another decentralized finance (DeFi) project was rug-pulled Tuesday, with some $10.8 million in investor funds stolen due to a hidden backdoor in the project’s smart contracts.
Compounder Finance – a self-described clone of Harvest and Yearn Finance built by pseudonymous programmers – had its contracts drained of $750,000 worth of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), $4.8 million ether, $5 million dai and a small assortment of other tokens, according to an address associated with the exploit.
And while the attack looks similar to other DeFi rug-pulls or exploits, performed time and time again in 2020, this act of thievery is different because of the apparent con Compounder’s developers were playing, according to Robert Leshner, founder of lending protocol Compound Finance.
In a phone interview, Leshner told CoinDesk Compounder looked like any other yield farming DeFi project that took the cryptocurrency industry by storm this past summer. But the developers had snuck in a call function that allowed them to withdraw all funds from the project – an action a decentralized finance project should never allow – whenever they deemed the booty large enough.
Rug pull
That threshold was apparently met Tuesday, even though Compounder’s token contracts were only created Nov. 10, according to Etherscan.
Leshner called the rug-pull “one of the largest ” purposeful cryptocurrency exploits in recent memory; an exploit categorically different from other DeFi exploits because of its patient endgame. He also alleges that Compounder “impersonated [Compound Finance’s] name” in order to lure in more victims.
A Telegram group of investors is currently investigating legal moves against the developers, although little information is known about the faces behind Compounder. One investor who claims to have lost $1 million in funds is offering a $50,000 bounty for information leading to the seizure of stolen funds.
Compounder’s native token, CP3R, is down 98.8% in the last 24 hours and is now trading hands at $0.24, according to CoinGecko.
Smart contract audits not enough
Compounder was audited by Solidity Finance. Audits are typically seen as an act of good faith in the wild west of DeFi. Solidity Finance told CoinDesk it found the time-locked contract in question as early as mid-November and flagged it to the project’s developers. It offered documentation as well.
Unfortunately, Compounder not only knew about the function, but apparently had plans for it.
“The Compounder team swapped the safe and audited Strategy contracts and replaced them with malicious ‘Evil Strategy’ contracts that allowed them to steal users funds,” Solidity Finance told CoinDesk in a Telegram message, adding:
“They did this through a public, though clearly unmonitored, 24-hour timelock. This issue of centralized control by the C3PR team was raised in our audit report and our discussions with their team. The team had the power to update strategy pools and they did so maliciously here to steal users’ funds.” In other words, the time lock in question was flagged by the audit, but was not communicated outside of the developer team.
Many DeFi investors are learning audits don’t necessarily equate to a secure protocol. Akropolis Finance stands as another recent example. It was hacked earlier last month for $2 million worth of dai, even though its contracts had been audited by two firms.
Indeed, audits come in different flavors. Solidity Finance told CoinDesk it was mainly looking for “external attackers.” The firm plans on providing more information on possible “risks stemming from developers’ control” going forward.
How might queries that trigger structured information cards change over time?
When does a search engine decide that it should show a knowledge panel in response to a query?
What words in a query will trigger that knowledge panel?
A knowledge panel is sometimes referred to as a structured information card by Google.
Other structured information cards contain information about things such as hotel reservations, flight arrivals, dinner reservations, movie tickets, and others.
If you’ve worked with knowledge panels, you’ve learned that different searches will trigger those to appear.
Often those include a mention of an entity, such as a business name, or a certain thing.
And queries that trigger structured information cards can change over time according to a recently granted patent.
Search queries can be used to return resources – such as web pages, images, text documents, electronic mail documents, multimedia content, etc. – relevant to a searcher’s needs and to present information about those resources in a way that is most useful to the searcher.
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Sometimes the best result may be a structured information card.
A computer system may:
Receive a search query.
Process the search query.
Identify results that are relevant to the search query.
Return a set of search results in response to a searcher submitted query.
The patent this post is about is from the start of November 2020, and it tells us about a card trigger-term identification unit that could identify additional trigger-terms that show a structured information card.
The card trigger-term identification unit allows the grammar of one or more structured information cards to be tuned, over time, by evaluating candidate terms in queries for potential inclusion in the grammar of a structured information card.
For example, assume the grammar for a “Movie” structured information card includes terms such as “movie time,” “movie ticket confirmation,” and “ticket confirmation number.”
The card trigger-term identification unit may:
Analyze terms associated with the grammar of the “Movie” structured information card and one or candidate queries.
Identify an additional trigger-term for the “Movie” structured information card such as the trigger-term “movie ticket.”
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Accordingly, follow-up queries that are received may include terms such as “movie time”, “movie ticket,” or both and will trigger the display of a “Movie” structured information card in response to such queries.
The subject matter of this patent may be used to identify additional trigger-terms that will show structured information cards.
The process behind the patent may include accessing data associated with a template for presenting structured information in response to a search query, wherein the accessed data references:
One or more label terms that, when included in the search query, triggers a structured information card to be presented according to the template.
For each of the one or more label terms, a value, obtaining a candidate label term that is not already associated with the template for presenting the structured information.
For each of the one or more label terms:
Identifying entities that are associated with the label term.
Identifying entities that are associated with the candidate label term.
For each of the entities associated with a candidate label term, a query may cause an association, with a candidate label term:
One or more of the label terms that are associated with the entity.
For each of the one or more of the label terms that are associated with the entity, the value associated with the label term, and after receiving a query that includes the candidate label term.
Using the one or more values associated with the candidate label term to determine whether to trigger the structured information to be presented according to the template.
These and other versions may optionally include one or more of the following features:
The label terms may correspond to parameters of a search query.
The value may be indicative of the number of times the query has been used to trigger the appearance of the structured information card.
Obtaining a candidate label term that is not already associated with the template for presenting the structured information card may involve identifying query terms from a query log.
Using the one or more values associated with the candidate label term to determine whether to trigger the structured information to be presented according to the template may include aggregating the one or more values that are associated with the candidate label term.
Determining whether the aggregated value satisfies a predetermined threshold, and in response to determining that the aggregated value satisfies the predetermined threshold.
Determining that the search query including the candidate label term will trigger the presentation of the structured information.
Triggering Structured Information Cards
Using the values associated with a candidate label term to trigger a structured information card to be presented according to the template may involve:
Aggregating the one or more values that are associated with the candidate label term.
Determining whether the aggregated value satisfies a predetermined threshold.
In response to determining that the aggregated value exceeds the predetermined threshold, determining that the search query including the candidate label term will not trigger the presentation of the structured information.
The method behind the patent may also include adjusting the values that are associated with candidate labels based on those candidate label’s similarity to the label terms.
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This structured information cards patent can be found at:
Inventors: Marc Alexander Najork, Sujith Ravi, Michael Bendersky, Peter Shao-sen Young, Timothy Youngjin Sohn, Mingyang Zhang, Thomas Nelson, and Xuanhui Wang Assignee: Google LLC US Patent: 10,824,630 Granted: November 3, 2020 Filed: October 26, 2016
Abstract
Methods, systems, apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, to facilitate identification of additional trigger-terms for a structured information card. In one aspect, the method includes actions of accessing data associated with a template for presenting structured information, wherein the accessed data references:
(i) a label term and (ii) a value.
Other actions may include obtaining a candidate label term, identifying one or more entities that are associated with the label term, identifying one or more of the entities that are associated with the candidate label term, and for each particular entity of the one or more entities that are associated with the candidate label term, associating, with the candidate label term, (i) a label term that is associated with the particular entity, and (ii) the value associated with the label term.
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A System for Identifying Additional Trigger – Terms for a Structured Information Card
The patent shows off some examples of information that might be used to create structured information cards in a drawing:
It provides an example of a structured information card involving flight information.
Assume a searcher is standing at an airport ticket counter before his or her flight #437 to Denver, Colorado.
To check their bags, and obtain a boarding pass, they need to provide a flight confirmation number for their upcoming flight.
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To respond to a request for a flight confirmation number from an airline employee, the searcher may look for a confirmation email from the airline that includes their flight confirmation number.
To obtain that confirmation email, the searcher may search for a query that includes the term “Flight Ticket” into a search box at the search engine.
After receiving a query, the search device may send the query to a server using a network.
The server may process the query, identify search results responsive to the query term “Flight Ticket,” and then return the search results to the search device.
The search results may be received by the search device and provided for display using the interface of the search device.
The search results may include references to email documents. The references may include a link that, when selected, provides an email document associated with the link to display on the search device.
Each respective email reference may include text such as the name of the email sender, the subject line of the email, the time the email was received, and the date the email was received.
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The search results identified based on the query “Flight Ticket” may include emails from a variety of different senders.
The search results may refer to an email from a movie theater “ABC Theatre” related to the searcher’s purchase of a movie ticket to see “Pilot’s First Flight.”
The search results may also refer to an email from a restaurant reservation service “Closed Table” for a reservation at the “Wine Flight Bar.”
The search results may also refer to an email of an order confirmation from “DC Outfitters” for the purchase of a “Flight Jacket.”
The search results may refer to emails associated with airline ticket purchase confirmations from an airline such as “NE Airlines,” “SE Airlines,” or the like.
One particular reference is for a confirmation email that the searcher received after purchasing an airline ticket from “NE Airlines” for “Flight 437.”
However, given the number of search results provided in response to the search query, it could be time-consuming to obtain the searcher’s flight confirmation number.
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This is because the searcher must read the sender and subject line of each reference to each respective email that is responsive to the search.
It may not be until the searcher reads the sender and subject line of each email that the searcher will even identify the correct email that includes the flight confirmation number.
Then, the searcher using the search device must request the email document associated with the reference.
Finally, after the email document is selected, the email document with the flight confirmation number for the searcher’s upcoming Flight #437 is returned.
Though the searcher was able to obtain the user’s confirmation number, the process was inefficient.
In addition, the process may not go smoothly for reasons below and the like, such as:
Pressure on the user because of a long line of passengers at the ticket counter.
Slow cellular data signals due to poor reception in the airport terminal.
This system may work to improve the searcher’s retrieval of information from the searcher’s email inbox.
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For instance, at stage A, the system provides multiple structured information cards stored in a structured information card storage unit.
Each structured information card includes a template and a grammar.
The template of the structured information card includes one or more predetermined fields that can be populated with information from an email document in response to a particular search query.
For example, the structured information storage unit may include a structured information card for “Flight” information.
The structured information card for “Flight” information may include:
A “To” field
A “From” field
A “Departs” field
A “Conf. #” field
A “Flight #” field
Trigger Terms Associated with Structured Information Cards
The grammar of structured information cards may include one or more trigger-terms that are associated with the card.
A trigger-term may include terms that, when detected by the server as being included in a search query, trigger the retrieval, population, and the display of the structured information card associated with the trigger-term.
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So, in response to a query that includes the term “flight reservation,” the “Flight” structured information card may be:
Obtained.
Populated with data from the most recent email that is associated with an upcoming flight.
Provided for display via a searcher interface.
However, the “Flight” structured information card may not have been triggered in response to a query including the term “Flight Ticket” because the search term “Flight Ticket” may not have been included in the “Flight” structured information card’s grammar at an initial stage A.
The search server may use the card trigger-term identification unit to identify additional terms that trigger the “Flight” structured information card.
Those additional terms may be based on queries received from a search box associated with a user interface displayed by a search device such as a search box.
The card trigger-term identification unit could:
Obtain a query term from a log of received query terms.
Determine if the query term is related to one or more other terms in a structured information card’s grammar.
Add the query term to the structured information card’s grammar.
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The card trigger-term identification unit may determine that the term “Flight Ticket” should be added to the grammar of the “Flight” structured information card.
Adding the term “Flight Ticket” to the grammar of the “Flight” structured information card results would be done in an updated structured information storage unit at stage B of the process.
At stage B, the searcher of the same search device can access a user interface at a later point in time.
The search interface may be the same searcher interface. The searcher may input a search query that includes the term “Flight Ticket” into the search box.
The search device may transmit the search query to a server.
The server may process the query, identify search results responsive to the search query “Flight Ticket,” and then return the search results to the search device.
The search results may be received by the search device and provided for display using the interface of the search device.
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The search results may refer to email documents.
At stage B the search interface includes a structured information card.
That structured information card may include a display with fields that are populated with data extracted from a resource that is responsive to the search query.
The structured information card may be obtained, populated, and provided for display through the search interface because the grammar of the structured information card now includes the term “Flight Ticket.”
The term “Flight Ticket” may have been added to the grammar of the “Flight” structured information card based on:
The card trigger-term identification unit’s analysis of the existing terms included within the grammar of the structured information card.
Identified relationships between existing terms included within the grammar of the structured information card.
Identified relationships between the aforementioned grammar terms and one or more queries previously submitted via the search box.
The particular structured information card obtained and displayed may be based on query terms submitted through the search box.
For example, the server may select a particular structured information card for display via the user interface based on a determination that the search query term such as “Flight Ticket” matches one or more grammar terms associated with the particular structured information card.
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The server may populate the obtained structured information card with the contents from the highest-ranked search result that includes information requested by the fields of the structured information card template.
Those highest-ranked search results might be from the most recent email document that includes information requested by the fields of the structured information card template.
Advantages of This Structured Information Card Approach
It can display relevant information related to the searcher’s upcoming flight without requiring the searcher to read the data associated with each reference returned as a search result by the server.
The structured information card displays:
The user’s flight destination (e.g., Denver, Co).
The user’s flight origin (e.g., Washington, D.C.).
The user’s flight departure time (e.g., 11:45 a.m. EST).
The user’s flight confirmation number (e.g., KP4EG).
The user’s flight number (e.g., 437).
The searcher does not need to open the email including information about the searcher’s upcoming flight because the necessary information associated with the user’s upcoming flight is within the structured information card.
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Because of this, the searcher using the search device who is standing at the ticket counter can:
Quickly search their email.
Obtain their flight confirmation number from the structured information card.
Provide the flight confirmation number to the airline representative in an efficient manner.
The patent description provides an example of a system that uses a card trigger-term identification unit to identify additional terms that can be added to the grammar of a structured information card is directed towards a “Flight” structured information card.
However, the description of the patent tells us that it should not be so limited.
The card trigger-term identification unit can be used to identify additional grammar terms for any type of structured information card such as:
Movie Ticket structured information cards.
Dinner Reservation structured information cards.
Hotel Reservation structured information cards.
Vehicle Rental structured information cards.
Device Rental structured information cards.
The like.
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The patent also tells us that any type of structured information card may be used where the structured information card can be uniquely identified using a set of one or more grammar terms.
Entities, Attributes, & Graph Structure Information Cards
Google identifies entities and associates labels and attributes with those entities, and described in the following flowchart drawing from the patent:
A card trigger-term identification unit analyzes existing terms associated with the grammar of one or more structured information cards.
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The terms associated with the grammar of one or more structured information cards include terms that, when received in a query, trigger the display of a particular structured information card.
Analyzing existing terms associated with the grammar of one or more information cards may include the generation of a graph structure.
This graph structure may include query nodes each associated with a particular grammar term that triggers the selection, population, and display of a particular structured information card.
Each query node may be associated with a respective label term.
One query node may be associated with the label term “Flight Reservation” and another query node may be associated with the label term “Ticket.”
Label terms used to build the graph may be obtained from the structured information card storage unit, a query log, or the like.
The graph structure may also include one or more entity nodes.
The entity nodes may include an item of data that is indicative of a relationship between the respective label terms of one or more nodes.
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The relationship may include a semantic relationship associated with the label terms.
By way of example, the card trigger-term identification unit may obtain the candidate query term “Flight Ticket” to evaluate the candidate query term “Flight Ticket” for potential inclusion in the grammar associated with a structured information card such the “Flight” structured information card.
The query term “Flight Ticket” may have been stored in a query log after the user of a user device such as user device submitted the query “Flight Ticket” to search one or more emails using an interface for an electronic mailbox such as interface before the inclusion of the term “Flight Ticket” in the grammar of the “Flight” structured information card.
A query node may be generated in the graph structure based on the candidate query term “Flight Ticket.”
The candidate query node is associated with a candidate label term “Flight Ticket.”
The information from the structured information card may be information that is in a graph structure.
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For instance, when an information card is about flight information, it contains key/value pairs that provide information about related entities and attributes of those entities (making it structured information).
Referring to it as a card means that it is using a display format with a related template for that format.
For flight information, you would have a departure city, a destination city, a departure time, and an arrival time, a departure airport and an arrival airport, a confirmation number, a flight number, and so on.
These related entities and attributes for them can be found in a template that has labels for each of the fields of information that it covers, and those labels can be used in a query to show an information card about a flight ticket.
They can be used for identifying an additional trigger-term for a structured information card.
This drawing from the patent shows how labels might be connected to entities and attributes:
Generally, the process may include:
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Accessing data associated with a template for presenting structured information.
Identifying the first set of one or more entities.
Associating one or more labels and one or more values with one or more entities in the first set of the identified entities.
Obtaining a candidate label term.
Identifying a subset of one or more entities from the first set of entities.
Associating one or more labels and one or more values with one or more candidate label terms
Receiving a search query.
Using values associated with each candidate label term to determine whether to trigger display of the structured information.
So these candidate labels may be chosen, when they appear in queries to display a structured information card.
For example, where an entity includes an email document, network address, URL, or the like, an entity may be associated with a candidate label term if the candidate label term would return the email document, network address, URL, or the like when a query that includes the candidate label term is executed.
The system may associate one or more labels and one or more values with each candidate label term.
For example, any label terms associated with a particular entity at stage may be associated with a candidate label term with which the entity is related.
Thus a label term that was propagated to a particular entity from a query node may be further propagated from the entity to a candidate label term with which the particular entity is related.
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One or more values associated with an entity may similarly be associated with one or more candidate label terms with which the entity is related.
Accordingly, a value that was propagated to a particular entity from a query node may be further propagated to a candidate label term.
This system may analyze each of the one or more values that are associated with a candidate label term to determine whether the candidate label term should be added to the grammar associated with a structured information card.
Determining whether a label term should be associated with a structured information card may include aggregating the values associated with the candidate label term, and evaluating the aggregated value against a predetermined threshold.
If it is determined that the aggregated value satisfies a predetermined threshold, the label term may be added to the grammar of the structured information card.
If the aggregated value does not satisfy a predetermined threshold, the label term is not added to the grammar of the structured information card.
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Triggering a Structured Information Card
The system may process the received search query, and use values associated with each identified candidate label term to determine whether to trigger the display of a structured information card.
Using the values associated with each candidate label term may include:
Aggregating the values associated with the candidate label term.
Evaluating the aggregated value against a predetermined threshold.
Determining that the aggregated value associated with the candidate label term satisfies the predetermined threshold, the system may let the search query including the candidate label term trigger a related structured information card.
Triggering Structured Information Cards Takeaways
A structured information card may appear in response to a query that is related to the grammar from the template for the different types of structured information cards.
It may be possible to anticipate which entities may be relevant for a structured information card, and which queries might trigger that card.
Structured information cards evolve in how they are triggered based on queries and the grammar of the information in the card.
Federal prosecutors are seeking to restore the tossed convictions for the former president of Pilot Flying J and two former employees related to a rebate scheme to cheat trucking companies out of millions of dollars
ByJONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press
December 2, 2020, 4:15 PM
• 3 min read
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Federal prosecutors are seeking to restore the tossed convictions for the former president of Pilot Flying J and two of his former employees related to a rebate scheme to cheat trucking companies out of millions of dollars.
The petition filed this week asks a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel to reconsider its ruling that jurors should not have heard recordings of racist language by the former president, Mark Hazelwood.
The panel’s split decision in October vacated convictions for Hazelwood, who received the harshest prison sentence at 12 ½ years, and two others. The panel ordered the case to be sent back to a lower court for a new trial, ruling further that it would not be necessary to assign the case to a different judge.
At trial, the jury heard secret recordings of Hazelwood using racial slurs and profanely criticizing his board of directors and his boss’s football team and fans. Hazelwood later apologized for his language.
The majority wrote that the racist recordings were wrongly admitted on the “theory that if the defendant was reckless enough to use language that could risk public outrage against the company, he was a ‘bad businessman,’ and as a bad businessman, he was also reckless enough to commit fraud.”
In their petition for reconsideration, prosecutors wrote that they offered the recordings to “rebut Hazelwood’s assertion that he was too good an executive and businessman to do anything that could jeopardize the company’s viability and success” because the racist remarks “would have damaged Pilot’s success and reputation” if they became publicly known.
Hazelwood was convicted in 2018 of conspiracy, wire fraud and witness tampering. Former company Vice President Scott “Scooter” Wombold was convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to six years in prison, and former account representative Heather Jones was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and sentenced to more than 2 ½ years.
Fourteen former Pilot Flying J employees pleaded guilty earlier.
Pilot Flying J is controlled by the family of Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. The Haslams have not been charged with any wrongdoing. The former governor has not been involved with the company in recent years.
The company earlier agreed to pay an $85 million settlement to defrauded customers and a $92 million penalty to the government.
A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to killing a woman whose remains were found six months after she disappeared
ByThe Associated Press
December 2, 2020, 3:46 PM
• 1 min read
LANCASTER, Ky. — A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to killing a woman whose remains were found six months after she disappeared, according to court records.
David Sparks, 25. entered the plea Monday in Garrard County Circuit Court, news outlets reported, citing court records. He was indicted last year on murder and other charges in the death of Savannah Spurlock, 23. Spurlock was last seen in January 2019 leaving a Lexington bar with Sparks and two other men.
A tip about a foul odor led authorities to search property connected to Sparks’ family in Garrard County, where they discovered Spurlock’s naked remains buried in a shallow grave and wrapped in a rug and garbage bags, with her feet bound.
Sparks pleaded guilty to murder, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with physical evidence, court records show and a prosecutor confirmed.
“I think justice was served,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Andy Sims said. “I knew from the beginning he killed her, and it was important for me that he stood in court and admitted it.”
The plea agreement calls for Sparks to be sentenced to 50 years in prison. Sentencing was set for Dec. 17.
