External knowledge and query strategies in active learning: A study in clinical information extraction

This paper presents a new active learning query strategy for information extraction, called Domain Knowledge Informativeness (DKI). Active learning is often used to reduce the amount of annotation effort required to obtain training data for machine learning algorithms. A key component of an active learning approach is the query strategy, which is used to iteratively select samples for annotation. Knowledge resources have been used in information extraction as a means to derive additional features for sample representation. DKI is, however, the first query strategy that exploits such resources to inform sample selection. To evaluate the merits of DKI, in particular with respect to the reduction in annotation effort that the new query strategy allows to achieve, we conduct a comprehensive empirical comparison of active learning query strategies for information extraction within the clinical domain. The clinical domain was chosen for this work because of the availability of extensive structured knowledge resources which have often been exploited for feature generation. In addition, the clinical domain offers a compelling use case for active learning because of the necessary high costs and hurdles associated with obtaining annotations in this domain. Our experimental findings demonstrated that 1) amongst existing query strategies, the ones based on the classification model’s confidence are a better choice for clinical data as they perform equally well with a much lighter computational load, and 2) significant reductions in annotation effort are achievable by exploiting knowledge resources within active learning query strategies, with up to 14% less tokens and concepts to manually annotate than with state-of-the-art query strategies.

A theoretical framework for designing and evaluating strategies to identify cases of serious child abuse and neglect

A central dimension of the State’s responsibility in a liberal democracy and any just society is the protection of individuals’ central rights and freedoms, and the creation of the minimum conditions under which each individual has an opportunity to lead a life of sufficient equality, dignity and value. A special subset of this responsibility is to protect those who are unable to protect themselves from genuine harm. Substantial numbers of children suffer serious physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and neglect at the hands of their parents and caregivers or by other known parties. Child abuse and neglect occurs in a situation of extreme power asymmetry. The physical, social, behavioural and economic costs to the individual, and the social and economic costs to communities, are vast. Children are not generally able to protect themselves from serious abuse and neglect. This enlivens both the State’s responsibility to protect the child, and the debate about how that responsibility can and should be discharged. A core question arises for all societies, given that most serious child maltreatment occurs in the family sphere, is unlikely to be disclosed, causes substantial harm to both individual and community, and infringes fundamental individual rights and freedoms. The question is: how can society identify these situations so that the maltreatment can be interrupted, the child’s needs for security and safety, and health and other rehabilitation can be met, and the family’s needs can be addressed to reduce the likelihood of recurrence? This chapter proposes a theoretical framework applicable for any society that is considering justifiable and effective policy approaches to identify and respond to cases of serious child abuse and neglect. The core of the theoretical framework is based on major principles from both classical liberal political philosophy (Locke and Mill), and leading political philosophers from the twentieth century and the first part of the new millennium (Rawls, Rorty, Okin, Nussbaum), and is further situated within fundamental frameworks of civil and criminal law, and health and economics.

Accelerated strategies in the assessment of emergency patients with possible acute coronary syndromes

This thesis synthesises advancements made in the method of assessment of emergency patients with possible acute cardiac disease and has defined new assessment strategies that supports the safe early discharge of patients at low risk for acute coronary syndromes. These important findings have informed clinicians and health services about improvements that can be made at this current time in the process of care of ED patients, and the studies have had local, national and international influence.

The Bonsai Child: Why Modern Parenting Limits Children’s Potential and Practical Strategies to Turn It Around

The Bonsai Child will change the way you think about parenting. The book explains modern parenting trends and the impact on children. Most importantly, the book offers practical strategies to help your child become confident and resilient. These strategies have worked for thousands of parents: they will work for you, too.

Investigating how customer insights inform strategy leading to brand differentiation in the retail sector

Using qualitative research with case studies of firms in the Australian retail sector, this thesis explores the link between brand differentiation, customer insights, and strategy development to deliver a unique customer experience. The research focus is how brand expression is driven by customer insights. Findings indicate that customer experience is made tangible by the strategic design and alignment of the brand's expression and is crucial to retail success. A significant practical outcome is the development of the Brand Differentiated Model. Created as a tool to potentially assist retailers develop brands from the 'inside out' and confront future disruptions.

LED lighting design strategies to enhance window appearance and increase energy savings in daylit office spaces

Vertical windows are the most common and simplest method to introduce daylight to interior spaces of office buildings, while also providing a view and connection to the outside. However, high contrast ratios between windows and surrounding surfaces can cause visual discomfort for occupants and can negatively influence their health and productivity. Consequently, building occupants may try to adapt their working environment through closing blinds and turning on lights in order to improve indoor visual comfort. Such interventions defeat the purpose of daylight harvesting systems and can increase the forecast electric lighting consumption in buildings that include such systems. A simple strategy to prevent these problematic consequences is to reduce the luminance contrasts presented by the window wall by increasing the luminance of areas surrounding the window through the sparing use of energy-efficient supplementary lighting, such light emitting diodes (LEDs). This paper presents the result of a pilot study in typical office in Brisbane, Australia that tests the effectiveness of a supplementary LED lighting system. The study shows an improvement in the appraisal of the visual environment is achieved using the supplementary system, along with up to 88% reductions in luminance contrast at the window wall. Also observed is a 36% reduction in the likelihood of user interventions that would increase energy usage. These results are used as the basis of an annual energy simulation of the test office and indicate that supplementary systems could be used to save energy beyond what is typically realised in side lit office spaces.

Improving the impact of luminance contrast on the window appearance in a conventional office room: Using supplementary lighting strategies

High contrast ratios between windows and surrounding surfaces could cause reduced visibility or discomfort for occupants. Consequently, building users may choose to intervene in lighting conditions through closing blinds and turning on the lamps in order to enhance indoor visual comfort. Such interventions increase projected electric lighting use in buildings. One simple method to prevent these problematic issues is increasing the luminance of the areas surrounding to the bright surface of windows through the use of energy-efficient supplementary lighting, such Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). This paper reports on the results of a pilot study in conventional office in Brisbane, Australia. The outcomes of this study indicated that a supplementary LED system of approximately 18 W could reduce the luminance contrast on the window wall from values in the order of 117:1 to 33:1. In addition, the results of this experiment suggested that this supplementary strategy could increase the subjective scale appraisal of window appearance by approximately 33%, as well as reducing the likelihood of users’ intention to turn on the ceiling lights by about 27%. It could also diminish the likelihood of occupants’ intention to move the blind down by more than 90%.

New England Youth Speeding Project: A pilot study of young drivers and risky driving: Effective strategies for preventing speeding amongst young Australians aged 16-25 years in the New England Region

Young Australian drivers aged 17 – 25 years are overwhelmingly represented in road fatalities where speed is a factor. In the combined LGAs of Armidale Dumaresq, Guyra, Uralla and Walcha in the 5 years 1999-2003 inclusive, 43% of speeding related casualty crashes involved a young driver aged less than 25 years. This is despite the fact that the 17-25 age group account for only 25% of the driving population in this area. Young male drivers account for the majority of these crashes and also tend to have a higher number of driving offences and accrue more penalties for road traffic offences, especially speeding. By analysing data from questionnaires by male and female participants this research project has been able to evaluate road safety advertisements to determine which ones are most effective to young drivers, what features of these advertisements are effective, how males differ from females in their receptiveness and preferences for road safety advertisements and specifically how to target young people especially young men in conveying road safety messages. Finally this research project has identified factors that are important in the production of media road safety advertisements and has made recommendations for how best to convey effective road safety messages to young Australian drivers in rural areas.

Differentiation of cultivars of flos chrysanthemum with the use of high-performance liquid chromatography fingerprints and chemometrics

Flos Chrysanthemum is a generic name for a particular group of edible plants, which also have medicinal properties. There are, in fact, twenty to thirty different cultivars, which are commonly used in beverages and for medicinal purposes. In this work, four Flos Chrysanthemum cultivars, Hangju, Taiju, Gongju, and Boju, were collected and chromatographic fingerprints were used to distinguish and assess these cultivars for quality control purposes. Chromatography fingerprints contain chemical information but also often have baseline drifts and peak shifts, which complicate data processing, and adaptive iteratively reweighted, penalized least squares, and correlation optimized warping were applied to correct the fingerprint peaks. The adjusted data were submitted to unsupervised and supervised pattern recognition methods. Principal component analysis was used to qualitatively differentiate the Flos Chrysanthemum cultivars. Partial least squares, continuum power regression, and K-nearest neighbors were used to predict the unknown samples. Finally, the elliptic joint confidence region method was used to evaluate the prediction ability of these models. The partial least squares and continuum power regression methods were shown to best represent the experimental results.

Open innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): External knowledge sourcing strategies and internal organizational facilitators

In this paper we explore how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in external knowledge sourcing, a form of inbound open innovation. We draw upon a sample of 1,411 SMEs and empirically conceptualize a typology of strategic types of external knowledge sourcing, namely minimal, supply-chain, technology-oriented, application-oriented, and full-scope sourcing. Each strategy reflects the nature of external interactions and is linked to a distinct mixture of four internal practices for managing innovation. Both full-scope and application-oriented sourcing offer performance benefits and are associated with a stronger focus on managing innovation. However, they differ in their managerial focus on strategic and operational aspects.

Mimicking breast cancer-induced bone metastasis in vivo: Current transplantation models and advanced humanized strategies

Bone metastasis is a complication that occurs in 80 % of women with advanced breast cancer. Despite the prevalence of bone metastatic disease, the avenues for its clinical management are still restricted to palliative treatment options. In fact, the underlying mechanisms of breast cancer osteotropism have not yet been fully elucidated due to a lack of suitable in vivo models that are able to recapitulate the human disease. In this work, we review the current transplantation-based models to investigate breast cancer-induced bone metastasis and delineate the strengths and limitations of the use of different grafting techniques, tissue sources, and hosts. We further show that humanized xenograft models incorporating human cells or tissue grafts at the primary tumor site or the metastatic site mimic more closely the human disease. Tissue-engineered constructs are emerging as a reproducible alternative to recapitulate functional humanized tissues in these murine models. The development of advanced humanized animal models may provide better platforms to investigate the mutual interactions between human cancer cells and their microenvironment and ultimately improve the translation of preclinical drug trials to the clinic.

A framework for evaluating the impact of obesity prevention strategies on socioeconomic inequalities in weight

We developed a theoretical framework to organize obesity prevention interventions by their likely impact on the socioeconomic gradient of weight. The degree to which an intervention involves individual agency versus structural change influences socioeconomic inequalities in weight. Agentic interventions, such as standalone social marketing, increase socioeconomic inequalities. Structural interventions, such as food procurement policies and restrictions on unhealthy foods in schools, show equal or greater benefit for lower socioeconomic groups. Many obesity prevention interventions belong to the agento–structural types of interventions, and account for the environment in which health behaviors occur, but they require a level of individual agency for behavioral change, including workplace design to encourage exercise and fiscal regulation of unhealthy foods or beverages. Obesity prevention interventions differ in their effectiveness across socioeconomic groups. Limiting further increases in socioeconomic inequalities in obesity requires implementation of structural interventions. Further empirical evaluation, especially of agento–structural type interventions, remains crucial.

Integrating LED lighting design strategies with side daylighting systems to improve interior lighting design of office buildings

A high contrast ratio between windows and surrounding walls may lead to office workers visual discomfort that could negatively affect their satisfaction and productivity. Consequently, occupants may try to adapt their working environment by closing blinds and/ or turning on the lights to enhance indoor visual comfort, which can reduce predicted energy savings. The hypothesis of this study is that reducing luminance contrast ratio on the window wall will improve window appearance which potentially will reduce visual discomfort and decrease workers interventions. Thus, this PhD research proposes a simple strategy to diminish the luminance contrast on the window wall by increasing the luminance of the areas surrounding the windows using supplementary light emitting diode (LED) systems. To test the hypothesis, this investigation will involve three experiments in different office layouts with various window types and orientations in Brisbane, Australia. It will assess user preferences for different luminance patterns in windowed offices featuring flexible, lowpower LED lighting installations that allows multiple lighting design options on the window wall. Detailed luminance and illuminance measures will be used to match quantitative lighting design assessment to user preferences.

Integrated genome-wide chromatin occupancy and expression analyses identify key myeloid pro-differentiation transcription factors repressed by Myb

To gain insight into the mechanisms by which the Myb transcription factor controls normal hematopoiesis and particularly, how it contributes to leukemogenesis, we mapped the genome-wide occupancy of Myb by chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by massively parallel sequencing (ChIP-Seq) in ERMYB myeloid progenitor cells. By integrating the genome occupancy data with whole genome expression profiling data, we identified a Myb-regulated transcriptional program. Gene signatures for leukemia stem cells, normal hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and myeloid development were overrepresented in 2368 Myb regulated genes. Of these, Myb bound directly near or within 793 genes. Myb directly activates some genes known critical in maintaining hematopoietic stem cells, such as Gfi1 and Cited2. Importantly, we also show that, despite being usually considered as a transactivator, Myb also functions to repress approximately half of its direct targets, including several key regulators of myeloid differentiation, such as Sfpi1 (also known as Pu.1), Runx1, Junb and Cebpb. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that interaction with p300, an established coactivator for Myb, is unexpectedly required for Myb-mediated transcriptional repression. We propose that the repression of the above mentioned key pro-differentiation factors may contribute essentially to Myb's ability to suppress differentiation and promote self-renewal, thus maintaining progenitor cells in an undifferentiated state and promoting leukemic transformation. © 2011 The Author(s).