Information Guide: The EU Referendum, 23 June 2016. The United Kingdom and the European Union. A guide to information sources July 2016

A guide to information sources on the 'Brexit Debate' in the United Kingdom - the decision to hold a referendum in the United Kingdom on the 23 June 2016 as to whether the country should remain or leave the European Union. The guide is a structured listing of information sources from the EU, the UK government, UK Parliament, the main campaigning groups, think tanks, news sources and other sources on this important topic. Note that the images within the guide are all hyperlinks to the full text of the sources. The guides is being constantly updated during 2016.

Information Guide: The Brexit Debate

A guide to information sources on the 'Brexit Debate' in the United Kingdom - the decision to hold a referendum in the United Kingdom on the 23 June 2016 as to whether the country should remain or leave the European Union. The guide is a structured listing of information sources from the EU, the UK government, UK Parliament, the main campaigning groups, think tanks, news sources and other sources on this important topic. Note that the images within the guide are all hyperlinks to the full text of the sources. The guides is being constantly updated during 2016.

Optimized methods for extracting circulating small RNAs from long-term stored equine samples.

Circulating miRNAs in body fluids, particularly serum, are promising candidates for future routine biomarker profiling in various pathologic conditions in human and veterinary medicine. However, reliable standardized methods for miRNA extraction from equine serum and fresh or archived whole blood are sorely lacking. We systematically compared various miRNA extraction methods from serum and whole blood after short and long-term storage without addition of RNA stabilizing additives prior to freezing. Time of storage at room temperature prior to freezing did not affect miRNA quality in serum. Furthermore, we showed that miRNA of NGS-sufficient quality can be recovered from blood samples after >10 years of storage at -80 °C. This allows retrospective analyses of miRNAs from archived samples.

Making the processes of designing explicit within an information technology environment

In this paper, technology is described as involving processes whereby resources are utilised to satisfy human needs or to take advantage of opportunities, to develop practical solutions to problems. This study, set within one type of technology context, information technology, investigated how, through a one semester undergraduate university course, elements of technological processes were made explicit to students. While it was acknowledged in the development and implementation of this course that students needed to learn technical skills, technological skills and knowledge, including design, were seen as vital also, to enable students to think about information technology from a perspective that was not confined and limited to 'technology as hardware and software'. This paper describes how the course, set within a three year program of study, was aimed at helping students to develop their thinking and their knowledge about design processes in an explicit way. An interpretive research approach was used and data sources included a repertory grid 'survey'; student interviews; video recordings of classroom interactions, audio recordings of lectures, observations of classroom interactions made by researchers; and artefacts which included students' journals and portfolios. The development of students' knowledge about design practices is discussed and reflections upon student knowledge development in conjunction with their learning experiences are made. Implications for ensuring explicitness of design practice within information technology contexts are presented, and the need to identify what constitutes design knowledge is argued.

Clinical outcomes from skin screening clinics within a community-based melanoma screening program

Background : Within a randomized trial of population screening for melanoma, primary care physicians conducted whole-body skin examinations and referred all patients with suspect lesions to their own doctor for further treatment. Objective: Our aim was to describe characteristics of skin screening participants, clinical screening diagnoses, management following referral, and specificity and yield of screening examinations. Methods: Information collected from consent forms, referral forms, and histopathological reports of lesions that had been excised or undergone biopsy was analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 16,383 whole-body skin examinations resulted in 2302 referrals (14.1% overall; 15.5% men, 18.2% >= 50 years of age) for 4129 suspect lesions (including 222 suspected melanoma, 1101 suspected basal cell carcinomas [BCCs], 265 suspected squamous cell carcinomas [SCCs]). Histopathologic results were available for 94.8% of 1417 lesions excised and confirmed 33 melanomas (23 in men; 24 in participants ? 50 years of age), 259 BCCs, and 97 SCCs. The probability of detecting skin cancer of any type within the program was 2.4%. The estimated specificity of whole-body skin examinations for melanoma was 86.1% (95% confidence interval = 85.6-86.6). The positive predictive value (number of confirmed/number of lesions excised or biopsied x 100) for melanoma was 2.5%, 19.3% for BCC, and 7.2% for SCC (overall positive predictive value for skin cancer, 28.9%). Limitations: Follow-up of participants with a negative screening examination has not been conducted for the present investigation. Conclusions: The rate of skin cancer detected per 100 patients screened was higher than previously reported and men and attendees older than 50 years more frequently received a referral and diagnosis of melanoma. The specificity for detection of melanoma through whole-body skin examination by a primary care physician was comparable to that of other screening tests, including mammography.

Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping

The Leximancer system is a relatively new method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in an unsupervised manner. It employs two stages of co-occurrence information extraction-semantic and relational-using a different algorithm for each stage. The algorithms used are statistical, but they employ nonlinear dynamics and machine learning. This article is an attempt to validate the output of Leximancer, using a set of evaluation criteria taken from content analysis that are appropriate for knowledge discovery tasks.

How do world-class cricket batsmen anticipate a bowler's intention?

Four experiments are reported that examine the ability of cricket batsmen of different skill levels to pick up advance information to anticipate the type and length of balls bowled by swing and spin bowlers. The information available upon which to make the predictive judgements was manipulated through a combination of temporal occlusion of the display and selective occlusion or presentation of putative anticipatory cues. In addition to a capability to pick up advance information from the same cues used by intermediate and low-skilled players, highly skilled players demonstrated the additional, unique capability to pick up advance information from some specific early cues (especially bowling hand and arm cues) to which the less skilled players were not attuned. The acquisition of expert perceptual-motor skill appears to involve not only refinement of information extraction but also progression to the use of earlier, kinematically relevant sources of information.

Linking riparian vegetation spatial structure in Australian tropical savannas to ecosystem health indicators: semi-variogram analysis of high spatial resolution satellite imagery

Government agencies responsible for riparian environments are assessing the combined utility of field survey and remote sensing for mapping and monitoring indicators of riparian zone health. The objective of this work was to determine if the structural attributes of savanna riparian zones in northern Australia can be detected from commercially available remotely sensed image data. Two QuickBird images and coincident field data covering sections of the Daly River and the South Alligator River - Barramundie Creek in the Northern Territory were used. Semi-variograms were calculated to determine the characteristic spatial scales of riparian zone features, both vegetative and landform. Interpretation of semi-variograms showed that structural dimensions of riparian environments could be detected and estimated from the QuickBird image data. The results also show that selecting the correct spatial resolution and spectral bands is essential to maximize the accuracy of mapping spatial characteristics of savanna riparian features. The distribution of foliage projective cover of riparian vegetation affected spectral reflectance variations in individual spectral bands differently. Pan-sharpened image data enabled small-scale information extraction (< 6 m) on riparian zone structural parameters. The semi-variogram analysis results provide the basis for an inversion approach using high spatial resolution satellite image data to map indicators of savanna riparian zone health.

Readability of selected breastfeeding information for mothers: Early twenty-first centure

The effectiveness of printed material depends on its clarity, layout, and appropriateness of its reading level to the target population. A person with 'functional illiteracy' is able to read at a basic level or below, but is confused by more complex material. Among Australian adults, the estimated functional illiteracy rate for prose is 44.1%. Consequently, it is recommended that health information literature for the general population be pitched at a grade 5 or 6 level of reading difficulty. This study is a ten-year follow-up to an earlier study by the author, which analysed printed information materials from the late twentieth century. The aim was to assess the

O PAPEL DO SINDICATO NA QUALIFICAÇÃO DA MÃO-DE-OBRA: SINDICATO-CIDADÃO

Este trabalho discute a importância de uma nova perspectiva em defesa dos interesses dos trabalhadores para os sindicatos no Brasil, o sindicato-cidadão. O sindicalismo no Brasil nasceu envolvido por um regime capitalista, sofrendo com isso um processo ideológico particular. Em um País em que o Estado por anos - atualmente também - manteve sob o seu controle indireto a maioria dos sindicatos, os embates mais significativos se fizeram de forma inexpressiva, causando em muitos casos a perda por parte dos trabalhadores na constante luta entre capital e trabalho. Essa perda não se reflete somente em questões financeiras, mas sim, e mais importante ainda, em perdas de desenvolvimento do trabalhador em seu nível técnico e mais preocupante em seu nível social. Procurando entender a participação das entidades sindicais na recuperação da força do trabalhador é que se propôs este trabalho, analisando os programas de qualificação do governo geridos por órgãos de caráter sindical. Foram examinados os dados do programa PLANFOR, PNQ e Caravana do Trabalho do Governo do Estado de São Paulo e também os dados disponibilizados pelo Instituto de Estudos e Pesquisas do Setor Energético IEPE, como órgão gerador dos programas de qualificação desenvolvidos e financiados pelo Estado com recursos do FAT. Esta análise visa detalhar, por meio de uma pesquisa qualitativa descritiva, as necessidades levantadas pelos programas do Governo e também dos programas de qualificação profissional aplicados pelo IEPE, além de uma entrevista em profundidade com três presidentes de entidades sindicais. A coleta de dados deu-se através de dados secundários provenientes de pesquisa documental e bibliográfica em fontes públicas. Com este levantamento buscou-se analisar se os programas atendem as reais necessidades dos indivíduos e mais, se além de qualificar tecnicamente estas pessoas, se estes programas fomentam noções de cidadania. Foi possível entender que existe divergência quanto ao real objetivo do sindicato-cidadão perante os entrevistados, tornando possivelmente vulneráveis as ações de capacitação aplicadas tanto pelo governo, quanto pelo sindicato, o que torna dificultoso alcançar o objetivo maior a que se propõe o sindicato-cidadão, de fomentar a inserção social através da qualificação.(AU)

Knowledge acquisition for knowledge management: position paper

With this paper, we propose a set of techniques to largely automate the process of KA, by using technologies based on Information Extraction (IE) , Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing. We aim to reduce all the impeding factors mention above and thereby contribute to the wider utility of the knowledge management tools. In particular we intend to reduce the introspection of knowledge engineers or the extended elicitations of knowledge from experts by extensive textual analysis using a variety of methods and tools, as texts are largely available and in them - we believe - lies most of an organization's memory.

Natural language processing as a foundation of the semantic Web

The main argument of this paper is that Natural Language Processing (NLP) does, and will continue to, underlie the Semantic Web (SW), including its initial construction from unstructured sources like the World Wide Web (WWW), whether its advocates realise this or not. Chiefly, we argue, such NLP activity is the only way up to a defensible notion of meaning at conceptual levels (in the original SW diagram) based on lower level empirical computations over usage. Our aim is definitely not to claim logic-bad, NLP-good in any simple-minded way, but to argue that the SW will be a fascinating interaction of these two methodologies, again like the WWW (which has been basically a field for statistical NLP research) but with deeper content. Only NLP technologies (and chiefly information extraction) will be able to provide the requisite RDF knowledge stores for the SW from existing unstructured text databases in the WWW, and in the vast quantities needed. There is no alternative at this point, since a wholly or mostly hand-crafted SW is also unthinkable, as is a SW built from scratch and without reference to the WWW. We also assume that, whatever the limitations on current SW representational power we have drawn attention to here, the SW will continue to grow in a distributed manner so as to serve the needs of scientists, even if it is not perfect. The WWW has already shown how an imperfect artefact can become indispensable.

A comparative evaluation of term recognition algorithms

Automatic Term Recognition (ATR) is a fundamental processing step preceding more complex tasks such as semantic search and ontology learning. From a large number of methodologies available in the literature only a few are able to handle both single and multi-word terms. In this paper we present a comparison of five such algorithms and propose a combined approach using a voting mechanism. We evaluated the six approaches using two different corpora and show how the voting algorithm performs best on one corpus (a collection of texts from Wikipedia) and less well using the Genia corpus (a standard life science corpus). This indicates that choice and design of corpus has a major impact on the evaluation of term recognition algorithms. Our experiments also showed that single-word terms can be equally important and occupy a fairly large proportion in certain domains. As a result, algorithms that ignore single-word terms may cause problems to tasks built on top of ATR. Effective ATR systems also need to take into account both the unstructured text and the structured aspects and this means information extraction techniques need to be integrated into the term recognition process.

Towards sea surface pollution detection from visible band images

This paper presents a novel approach to water pollution detection from remotely sensed low-platform mounted visible band camera images. We examine the feasibility of unsupervised segmentation for slick (oily spills on the water surface) region labelling. Adaptive and non adaptive filtering is combined with density modeling of the obtained textural features. A particular effort is concentrated on the textural feature extraction from raw intensity images using filter banks and adaptive feature extraction from the obtained output coefficients. Segmentation in the extracted feature space is achieved using Gaussian mixture models (GMM).