PELS: a noble architecture and framework for a personal E-learning system (PELS)

This article presents a personal e-learning system architecture in the context of a social network environment. The main objective of a personal e-learning system is to develop individual skills on a specific subject and share resources with peers. The authors' system architecture defines the organisation and management of a personal learning environment that aids in creating, verifying and sharing learning artefacts, and making money at the same time. In their research, they also focus on one of the most interesting arenas in digital content or document management - digital rights management - and its application to e-learning.

Statistical comparisons of non-deterministic IR systems using two dimensional variance

Retrieval systems with non-deterministic output are widely used in information retrieval. Common examples include sampling, approximation algorithms, or interactive user input. The effectiveness of such systems differs not just for different topics, but also for different instances of the system. The inherent variance presents a dilemma - What is the best way to measure the effectiveness of a non-deterministic IR system? Existing approaches to IR evaluation do not consider this problem, or the potential impact on statistical significance. In this paper, we explore how such variance can affect system comparisons, and propose an evaluation framework and methodologies capable of doing this comparison. Using the context of distributed information retrieval as a case study for our investigation, we show that the approaches provide a consistent and reliable methodology to compare the effectiveness of a non-deterministic system with a deterministic or another non-deterministic system. In addition, we present a statistical best-practice that can be used to safely show how a non-deterministic IR system has equivalent effectiveness to another IR system, and how to avoid the common pitfall of misusing a lack of significance as a proof that two systems have equivalent effectiveness.

Responses and relationship dynamics of men and their spouses during active surveillance for prostate cancer: health literacy as an inquiry framework

BACKGROUND: Early stage prostate cancer patients may be allocated to active surveillance, where the condition is observed over time with no intervention. Living with a cancer diagnosis may impose stress on both the men and their spouses. In this study we explore whether the scores of and verbal responses to a Health Literacy Questionnaire can be used to identify individuals in need of information and support and to reveal differences in perception and understanding in health related situations within couples. METHODS: We used the nine-domain Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) as a framework to explore health literacy in eight couples where the men were on active surveillance for prostate cancer progression. Scores were calculated for each domain for both individuals. For each couple differences in scores were also calculated and related to the informants' self-reported experiences and reflections in relation to participating in an active surveillance program. Also an inductive analysis was performed to identify themes in the responses and these themes were compared to those of HLQ. RESULTS: The men tended to score higher than their spouses. There was no consistent relation between scores and the reported experiences and reflections. However, some interesting patterns emerged, e.g. in two of the three couples with the largest within couple differences in HLQ scores, responses revealed discrepancies in how the men and their spouses perceived their situation. Also, three themes emerged which related to six of the HLQ domains, i.e. involvement of spouses and other people around the men; support from and interaction with healthcare professionals; and use of the Internet for information retrieval. CONCLUSIONS: Using the HLQ as an interview framework provided insight into the differences within couples and provided new perspectives on their experiences, including their contact with health professionals and the patient-spouse interaction when dealing with prostate cancer. The HLQ used as a dialogue tool may be an adjunct to assist healthcare providers to understand the need for support and information of men with prostate cancer on active surveillance and the dynamics within couples.

Determinantes do desempenho em laudos de criminalística no Departamento de Polícia Federal: uma abordagem multinível

O Departamento de Polícia Federal, em particular sua Diretoria Técnico-Científica, tem buscado adotar ferramentas modernas de administração para a melhoria da eficiência de seus processos, dentre as quais o uso de indicadores de desempenho. No caso específico da Criminalística, cuja gestão está a cargo daquela diretoria, ainda faltam estudos básicos que permitam conhecer os processos que lá se desencadeiam, para então serem adotados indicadores confiáveis e de fácil compreensão. Nessa direção, um dos primeiros passos é conhecer o tempo que cada processo demora, dadas suas características. Neste trabalho são utilizadas técnicas estatísticas para extrair da base de dados existente na Diretoria Técnico-Científica esta informação. Com a obtenção dessas informações é possível propor indicadores de desempenho adequados e de fácil acompanhamento, permitindo então aos gestores verificar o resultado efetivo de ações e decisões gerenciais.

Cadastro positivo: a possibilidade de acesso ao crédito como um dos caminhos para o desenvolvimento social

A presente dissertação objetiva demonstrar que o Cadastro Positivo, como instrumento que permite o aumento do acesso ao crédito, pode ser considerado um dos fatores a proporcionar o desenvolvimento social. Nesse sentido, apresentaremos as posições que norteiam o instituto da privacidade como direito fundamental e como “valor intermediário”, tudo considerando o contexto dos bancos de dados de proteção ao crédito. Apresentaremos, ainda, dados obtidos em pesquisa que buscou conhecer as impressões dos consumidores da cidade do Rio de Janeiro em relação à criação Cadastro Positivo, bem como buscou verificar o nível de preferência desses consumidores em relação à possibilidade de aumento do acesso ao crédito e a privacidade, tendo em vista os limites jurídicos impostos ao tratamento das informações positivas pelos bancos de dados. Demonstrar-se-á que apesar de o Brasil viver um momento de transformação em relação ao tema por conta da criação da Lei 12.414/11, ainda, existem muitos desafios a serem superados por conta da nossa estrutura jurídica e costume social.

Documentação, terminologia e lingüística : uma interface produtiva

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo principal propor uma metodologia que agilize a construção de uma ferramenta no campo da Documentação. Trata-se da geração de uma base de dados terminológica com sustentação na terminologia utilizada pelo especialista em sua área de domínio. Ela se apóia nos pressupostos teóricos da Teoria da Enunciação, da Teoria Comunicativa da Terminologia e da Socioterminologia. Com esse referencial acredita-se ser possível assegurar a efetiva comunicação entre os Sistemas de Recuperação de Informação e os usuários, sendo o bibliotecário o mediador do processo comunicativo que tem origem no autor do texto indexado. Buscou-se o suporte da Terminografia e da Lingüística de Corpus pela possibilidade de coletar, tratar e armazenar um grande volume de informações de uma determinada área do saber.

Especificação e implementação de um protótipo de serviço web para buscas baseadas em contextos compartilhados definidos a partir de sintagmas e relacionamentos

The popularization of the Internet has stimulated the appearance of Search Engines that have as their objective aid the users in the Web information research process. However, it s common for users to make queries and receive results which do not satisfy their initial needs. The Information Retrieval in Context (IRiX) technique allows for the information related to a specific theme to be related to the initial user query, enabling, in this way, better results. This study presents a prototype of a search engine based on contexts built from linguistic gatherings and on relationships defined by the user. The context information can be shared with softwares and other tool users with the objective of promoting a socialization of contexts

Simulação das temperaturas diárias na cidade de Natal-rn

Information retrieval is of paramount importance in all areas of knowledge. Regarding the temperatures of Natal, they were simulated and analyzed. Thus, it was possible to recover, with some accuracy, the temperatures of days they were not collected. For this we constructed a software that displays the temperature value at each moment in the city. The program was developed in Delphi using interpolated polynomial function of third degree. The equations were obtained in Excel and data were collected at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). These functions were changed from a correction factor in order to provide values to temperatures between those who were not collected. Armed with this program you can build tables and charts to analyze the temperatures for certain periods of time. The same analysis was done by developing mathematical functions that describes the temperatures. With the data provided by this software is possible to say which are the hours of highest and lowest temperatures in the city, as the months have indexes with the highest and lowest temperatures.

A situação atual da indexação nas tarefas bibliotecárias

Na atualidade a atribuição dos descritores de assuntos ou indexação do conteúdo dos livros, nem sempre está associada ao contexto concreto de cada biblioteca, provocando, em muitos casos, que a recuperação por assuntos não resulte adequada. Neste trabalho analisam-se os principais desafios e perspectivas da indexação dos livros, os avanços de análises de assuntos nos catálogos de bibliotecas, examinam-se procedimentos, instrumentos, regras e condutas utilizadas nas análises e representação do conteúdo dos livros. Também se mostra a interação entre o ensino, a pesquisa e a atuação profissional necessária para que os estudantes possam desenvolver competências na análise, na representação e na procura da informação, assim como os princípios - provavelmente menos evidentes- da organização do conhecimento. Este trabalho coloca em evidência que as políticas de gestão da informação, mais quantitativas que qualitativas, deixam num segundo plano o processamento intelectual do conteúdo prejudicando, desta maneira, a recuperação por assuntos através do catalogo da biblioteca. Finalmente, se recolhe uma serie de propostas docentes relacionadas com a atribuição de descritores de assuntos em contextos bibliotecários.

Estudos de avaliação quantitativa e qualitativa de linguagens documentárias: uma síntese bibliográfica

Este estudo apresenta uma síntese bibliográfica sobre as metodologias de avaliação que foram propostas por pesquisadores internacionais e nacionais e utilizadas por indexadores de instituições de ensino e/ou pesquisas atuantes em unidades de informação e/ou centros de documentação, bem como aquelas que foram analisadas pelas opiniões dos próprios usuários da informação registrada e disponibilizada em inúmeros sistemas de informações, com enfoques nas abordagens quantitativa, qualitativa e qualitativa/cognitiva, respectivamente.

Patrimônio histórico-cultural: critérios para tombamento de bibliotecas pelo IPHAN

Em razão do conteúdo informacional que preservam, as bibliotecas são consideradas grandes centros de memória. Tal fato motivou uma análise das bibliotecas tombadas pelo Iphan, com os seguintes objetivos: iniciar uma reflexão sobre suas peculiaridades enquanto patrimônio histórico-cultural, conhecer as justificativas oficiais que levaram ao tombamento, e discriminar o tombamento do prédio e/ou da coleção. Detectou-se que apenas o monumento arquitetônico das bibliotecas foi o critério priorizado, e que o tombamento delas foi apenas conseqüência do tombamento do edifício que as abrigava.

Desempenho de escolares com transtorno de déficit de atenção e hiperatividade em tarefas metalinguisticas e de leitura

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A SYSTEMIC CONCEPT OF THE GENE

The univocal correspondence between one gene and one polypeptide has been challenged by many examples of ambiguities. A rapidly expanding list of one-to-many or many-to-one correspondences includes: genomic rearrangements, alternative processing of transcripts, overlapping translation frames, RNA editing, alternative translation modes, and polyprotein cleavage.The genomic message requires interpretation through decoding by a sophisticated information retrieval system which should also carry some kind of information. The full meaning of the whole cell, as a unit, is emphasized.The gene is a combination of (one or more) nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) sequences, defined by the system (the whole cell, interacting with the environment, or the environment alone, in subcellular or pre-cellular systems), that gives origin to a product (RNA or polypeptide).

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.

ARISupport - Interaction support for augmented reality systems

The communication between user and software is a basic stage in any Interaction System project. In interactive systems, this communication is established by the means of a graphical interface, whose objective is to supply a visual representation of the main entities and functions present in the Virtual Environment. New ways of interacting in computational systems have been minimizing the gap in the relationship between man and computer, and therefore enhancing its usability. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to present a proposal for a non-conventional user interface library called ARISupport, which supplies ARToolKit applications developers with an opportunity to create simple GUI interfaces, and provides some of the functionality used in Augmented Reality systems. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.