Concept oriented biomedical information retrieval

Le domaine biomédical est probablement le domaine où il y a les ressources les plus riches. Dans ces ressources, on regroupe les différentes expressions exprimant un concept, et définit des relations entre les concepts. Ces ressources sont construites pour faciliter l’accès aux informations dans le domaine. On pense généralement que ces ressources sont utiles pour la recherche d’information biomédicale. Or, les résultats obtenus jusqu’à présent sont mitigés : dans certaines études, l’utilisation des concepts a pu augmenter la performance de recherche, mais dans d’autres études, on a plutôt observé des baisses de performance. Cependant, ces résultats restent difficilement comparables étant donné qu’ils ont été obtenus sur des collections différentes. Il reste encore une question ouverte si et comment ces ressources peuvent aider à améliorer la recherche d’information biomédicale. Dans ce mémoire, nous comparons les différentes approches basées sur des concepts dans un même cadre, notamment l’approche utilisant les identificateurs de concept comme unité de représentation, et l’approche utilisant des expressions synonymes pour étendre la requête initiale. En comparaison avec l’approche traditionnelle de "sac de mots", nos résultats d’expérimentation montrent que la première approche dégrade toujours la performance, mais la seconde approche peut améliorer la performance. En particulier, en appariant les expressions de concepts comme des syntagmes stricts ou flexibles, certaines méthodes peuvent apporter des améliorations significatives non seulement par rapport à la méthode de "sac de mots" de base, mais aussi par rapport à la méthode de Champ Aléatoire Markov (Markov Random Field) qui est une méthode de l’état de l’art dans le domaine. Ces résultats montrent que quand les concepts sont utilisés de façon appropriée, ils peuvent grandement contribuer à améliorer la performance de recherche d’information biomédicale. Nous avons participé au laboratoire d’évaluation ShARe/CLEF 2014 eHealth. Notre résultat était le meilleur parmi tous les systèmes participants.

Information communication technologies and distance education in Sri Lanka: a case study of two universities

Sri Lanka's participation rates in higher education are low and have risen only slightly in the last few decades; the number of places for higher education in the state university system only caters for around 3% of the university entrant age cohort. The literature reveals that the highly competitive global knowledge economy increasingly favours workers with high levels of education who are also lifelong learners. This lack of access to higher education for a sizable proportion of the labour force is identified as a severe impediment to Sri Lanka‟s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The literature also suggests that Information and Communication Technologies are increasingly relied upon in many contexts in order to deliver flexible learning, to cater especially for the needs of lifelong learners in today‟s higher educational landscape. The government of Sri Lanka invested heavily in ICTs for distance education during the period 2003-2009 in a bid to increase access to higher education; but there has been little research into the impact of this. To address this lack, this study investigated the impact of ICTs on distance education in Sri Lanka with respect to increasing access to higher education. In order to achieve this aim, the research focused on Sri Lanka‟s effort from three perspectives: policy perspective, implementation perspective and user perspective. A multiple case study research using an ethnographic approach was conducted to observe Orange Valley University‟s and Yellow Fields University‟s (pseudonymous) implementation of distance education programmes using questionnaires, qualitative interviewing and document analysis. In total, data for the analysis was collected from 129 questionnaires, 33 individual interviews and 2 group interviews. The research revealed that ICTs have indeed increased opportunities for higher education; but mainly for people of affluent families from the Western Province. Issues identified were categorized under the themes: quality assurance, location, language, digital literacies and access to resources. Recommendations were offered to tackle the identified issues in accordance with the study findings. The study also revealed the strong presence of a multifaceted digital divide in the country. In conclusion, this research has shown that iii although ICT-enabled distance education has the potential to increase access to higher education the present implementation of the system in Sri Lanka has been less than successful.

Knowledge Representation and Orthophemism: A Reflection Aiming to a Concept

Characteristics of speech, especially figures of speech, are used by specific communities or domains, and, in this way, reflect their identities through their choice of vocabulary. This topic should be an object of study in the context of knowledge representation once it deals with different contexts of production of documents. This study aims to explore the dimensions of the concepts of euphemism, dysphemism, and orthophemism, focusing on the latter with the goal of extracting a concept which can be included in discussions about subject analysis and indexing. Euphemism is used as an alternative to a non-preferred expression or as an alternative to an offensive attribution-to avoid potential offense taken by the listener or by other persons, for instance, pass away. Dysphemism, on the other hand, is used by speakers to talk about people and things that frustrate and annoy them-their choice of language indicates disapproval and the topic is therefore denigrated, humiliated, or degraded, for instance, kick the bucket. While euphemism tries to make something sound better, dysphemism tries to make something sound worse. Orthophemism (Allan and Burridge 2006) is also used as an alternative to expressions, but it is a preferred, formal, and direct language of expression when representing an object or a situation, for instance, die. This paper suggests that the comprehension and use of such concepts could support the following issues: possible contributions from linguistics and terminology to subject analysis as demonstrated by Talamo et al. (1992); decrease of polysemy and ambiguity of terms used to represent certain topics of documents; and construction and evaluation of indexing languages. The concept of orthophemism can also serves to support associative relationships in the context of subject analysis, indexing, and even information retrieval related to more specific requests.

Resolution 672(XXXIV): establishment of the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies of the Economic Commision for Latin America and the Caribbean

Incluye Bibliografía

Resolution 672(XXXIV) Establishment of the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

Spanish version available

Complexity and information technologies: an ethical inquiry into human autonomous action

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

"Making Sense of Figures": Statistics, Computing and Information Technologies in Agriculture and Biology in Britain, 1920s-1960s

Throughout the twentieth century statistical methods have increasingly become part of experimental research. In particular, statistics has made quantification processes meaningful in the soft sciences, which had traditionally relied on activities such as collecting and describing diversity rather than timing variation. The thesis explores this change in relation to agriculture and biology, focusing on analysis of variance and experimental design, the statistical methods developed by the mathematician and geneticist Ronald Aylmer Fisher during the 1920s. The role that Fisher’s methods acquired as tools of scientific research, side by side with the laboratory equipment and the field practices adopted by research workers, is here investigated bottom-up, beginning with the computing instruments and the information technologies that were the tools of the trade for statisticians. Four case studies show under several perspectives the interaction of statistics, computing and information technologies, giving on the one hand an overview of the main tools – mechanical calculators, statistical tables, punched and index cards, standardised forms, digital computers – adopted in the period, and on the other pointing out how these tools complemented each other and were instrumental for the development and dissemination of analysis of variance and experimental design. The period considered is the half-century from the early 1920s to the late 1960s, the institutions investigated are Rothamsted Experimental Station and the Galton Laboratory, and the statisticians examined are Ronald Fisher and Frank Yates.

SMARTDIAB: a communication and information technology approach for the intelligent monitoring, management and follow-up of type 1 diabetes patients

SMARTDIAB is a platform designed to support the monitoring, management, and treatment of patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), by combining state-of-the-art approaches in the fields of database (DB) technologies, communications, simulation algorithms, and data mining. SMARTDIAB consists mainly of two units: 1) the patient unit (PU); and 2) the patient management unit (PMU), which communicate with each other for data exchange. The PMU can be accessed by the PU through the internet using devices, such as PCs/laptops with direct internet access or mobile phones via a Wi-Fi/General Packet Radio Service access network. The PU consists of an insulin pump for subcutaneous insulin infusion to the patient and a continuous glucose measurement system. The aforementioned devices running a user-friendly application gather patient's related information and transmit it to the PMU. The PMU consists of a diabetes data management system (DDMS), a decision support system (DSS) that provides risk assessment for long-term diabetes complications, and an insulin infusion advisory system (IIAS), which reside on a Web server. The DDMS can be accessed from both medical personnel and patients, with appropriate security access rights and front-end interfaces. The DDMS, apart from being used for data storage/retrieval, provides also advanced tools for the intelligent processing of the patient's data, supporting the physician in decision making, regarding the patient's treatment. The IIAS is used to close the loop between the insulin pump and the continuous glucose monitoring system, by providing the pump with the appropriate insulin infusion rate in order to keep the patient's glucose levels within predefined limits. The pilot version of the SMARTDIAB has already been implemented, while the platform's evaluation in clinical environment is being in progress.

Prometheus – Fuzzy Information Retrieval for Semantic Homes and Environments

This paper introduces a novel vision for further enhanced Internet of Things services. Based on a variety of data – such as location data, ontology-backed search queries, in- and outdoor conditions – the Prometheus framework is intended to support users with helpful recommendations and information preceding a search for context-aware data. Adapted from artificial intelligence concepts, Prometheus proposes user-readjusted answers on umpteen conditions. A number of potential Prometheus framework applications are illustrated. Added value and possible future studies are discussed in the conclusion.

The German business and information technologies project

The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) project strives to reveal new insights into how modern IT impacts organizational structures and business practices using empirical methods. Due to its international scope, it allows for inter-country comparison of empirical results. Germany — represented by the European School of Management and Technologies (ESMT) and the Institute of Information Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — joined the BIT project in 2006. This report presents the result of the first survey conducted in Germany during November–December 2006. The key results are as follows: • The most widely adopted technologies and systems in Germany are websites, wireless hardware and software, groupware/productivity tools, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The biggest potential for growth exists for collaboration and portal tools, content management systems, business process modelling, and business intelligence applications. A number of technological solutions have not yet been adopted by many organizations but also bear some potential, in particular identity management solutions, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), biometrics, and third-party authentication and verification. • IT security remains on the top of the agenda for most enterprises: budget spending was increasing in the last 3 years. • The workplace and work requirements are changing. IT is used to monitor employees' performance in Germany, but less heavily compared to the United States (Karmarkar and Mangal, 2007).1 The demand for IT skills is increasing at all corporate levels. Executives are asking for more and better structured information and this, in turn, triggers the appearance of new decision-making tools and online technologies on the market. • The internal organization of companies in Germany is underway: organizations are becoming flatter, even though the trend is not as pronounced as in the United States (Karmarkar and Mangal, 2007), and the geographical scope of their operations is increasing. Modern IT plays an important role in enabling this development, e.g. telecommuting, teleconferencing, and other web-based collaboration formats are becoming increasingly popular in the corporate context. • The degree to which outsourcing is being pursued is quite limited with little change expected. IT services, payroll, and market research are the most widely outsourced business functions. This corresponds to the results from other countries. • Up to now, the adoption of e-business technologies has had a rather limited effect on marketing functions. Companies tend to extract synergies from traditional printed media and on-line advertising. • The adoption of e-business has not had a major impact on marketing capabilities and strategy yet. Traditional methods of customer segmentation are still dominating. The corporate identity of most organizations does not change significantly when going online. • Online sales channel are mainly viewed as a complement to the traditional distribution means. • Technology adoption has caused production and organizational costs to decrease. However, the costs of technology acquisition and maintenance as well as consultancy and internal communication costs have increased.

Spatial cognition, body representation and affective processes: the role of vestibular information beyond ocular reflexes and control of posture

A growing number of studies in humans demonstrate the involvement of vestibular information in tasks that are seemingly remote from well-known functions such as space constancy or postural control. In this review article we point out three emerging streams of research highlighting the importance of vestibular input: (1) Spatial Cognition: Modulation of vestibular signals can induce specific changes in spatial cognitive tasks like mental imagery and the processing of numbers. This has been shown in studies manipulating body orientation (changing the input from the otoliths), body rotation (changing the input from the semicircular canals), in clinical findings with vestibular patients, and in studies carried out in microgravity. There is also an effect in the reverse direction; top-down processes can affect perception of vestibular stimuli. (2) Body Representation: Numerous studies demonstrate that vestibular stimulation changes the representation of body parts, and sensitivity to tactile input or pain. Thus, the vestibular system plays an integral role in multisensory coordination of body representation. (3) Affective Processes and Disorders: Studies in psychiatric patients and patients with a vestibular disorder report a high comorbidity of vestibular dysfunctions and psychiatric symptoms. Recent studies investigated the beneficial effect of vestibular stimulation on psychiatric disorders, and how vestibular input can change mood and affect. These three emerging streams of research in vestibular science are—at least in part—associated with different neuronal core mechanisms. Spatial transformations draw on parietal areas, body representation is associated with somatosensory areas, and affective processes involve insular and cingulate cortices, all of which receive vestibular input. Even though a wide range of different vestibular cortical projection areas has been ascertained, their functionality still is scarcely understood.