PRoSPer: perceptual similarity queries in medical CBIR systems through user profiles

In this paper, we present a novel approach to perform similarity queries over medical images, maintaining the semantics of a given query posted by the user. Content-based image retrieval systems relying on relevance feedback techniques usually request the users to label relevant/irrelevant images. Thus, we present a highly effective strategy to survey user profiles, taking advantage of such labeling to implicitly gather the user perceptual similarity. The profiles maintain the settings desired for each user, allowing tuning of the similarity assessment, which encompasses the dynamic change of the distance function employed through an interactive process. Experiments on medical images show that the method is effective and can improve the decision making process during analysis.

Sensing presence (PreSense) ontology : user modelling in the semantic sensor web

Increasingly, people's digital identities are attached to, and expressed through, their mobile devices. At the same time digital sensors pervade smart environments in which people are immersed. This paper explores different perspectives in which users' modelling features can be expressed through the information obtained by their attached personal sensors. We introduce the PreSense Ontology, which is designed to assign meaning to sensors' observations in terms of user modelling features. We believe that the Sensing Presence ( PreSense ) Ontology is a first step toward the integration of user modelling and "smart environments". In order to motivate our work we present a scenario and demonstrate how the ontology could be applied in order to enable context-sensitive services. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Sensing presence (PreSense) ontology:user modelling in the semantic sensor web

Increasingly, people's digital identities are attached to, and expressed through, their mobile devices. At the same time digital sensors pervade smart environments in which people are immersed. This paper explores different perspectives in which users' modelling features can be expressed through the information obtained by their attached personal sensors. We introduce the PreSense Ontology, which is designed to assign meaning to sensors' observations in terms of user modelling features. We believe that the Sensing Presence ( PreSense ) Ontology is a first step toward the integration of user modelling and "smart environments". In order to motivate our work we present a scenario and demonstrate how the ontology could be applied in order to enable context-sensitive services. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Interaction paradigms versus age-related user profiles: an evaluation on content selection

Novel input modalities such as touch, tangibles or gestures try to exploit human's innate skills rather than imposing new learning processes. However, despite the recent boom of different natural interaction paradigms, it hasn't been systematically evaluated how these interfaces influence a user's performance or whether each interface could be more or less appropriate when it comes to: 1) different age groups; and 2) different basic operations, as data selection, insertion or manipulation. This work presents the first step of an exploratory evaluation about whether or not the users' performance is indeed influenced by the different interfaces. The key point is to understand how different interaction paradigms affect specific target-audiences (children, adults and older adults) when dealing with a selection task. 60 participants took part in this study to assess how different interfaces may influence the interaction of specific groups of users with regard to their age. Four input modalities were used to perform a selection task and the methodology was based on usability testing (speed, accuracy and user preference). The study suggests a statistically significant difference between mean selection times for each group of users, and also raises new issues regarding the “old” mouse input versus the “new” input modalities.

VIKI : a semiotic-based system for multilingual knowledge retrieval

Abstract Since its creation, the Internet has permeated our daily life. The web is omnipresent for communication, research and organization. This exploitation has resulted in the rapid development of the Internet. Nowadays, the Internet is the biggest container of resources. Information databases such as Wikipedia, Dmoz and the open data available on the net are a great informational potentiality for mankind. The easy and free web access is one of the major feature characterizing the Internet culture. Ten years earlier, the web was completely dominated by English. Today, the web community is no longer only English speaking but it is becoming a genuinely multilingual community. The availability of content is intertwined with the availability of logical organizations (ontologies) for which multilinguality plays a fundamental role. In this work we introduce a very high-level logical organization fully based on semiotic assumptions. We thus present the theoretical foundations as well as the ontology itself, named Linguistic Meta-Model. The most important feature of Linguistic Meta-Model is its ability to support the representation of different knowledge sources developed according to different underlying semiotic theories. This is possible because mast knowledge representation schemata, either formal or informal, can be put into the context of the so-called semiotic triangle. In order to show the main characteristics of Linguistic Meta-Model from a practical paint of view, we developed VIKI (Virtual Intelligence for Knowledge Induction). VIKI is a work-in-progress system aiming at exploiting the Linguistic Meta-Model structure for knowledge expansion. It is a modular system in which each module accomplishes a natural language processing task, from terminology extraction to knowledge retrieval. VIKI is a supporting system to Linguistic Meta-Model and its main task is to give some empirical evidence regarding the use of Linguistic Meta-Model without claiming to be thorough.

Structured ontology and information retrieval for email search and discovery

This paper discusses an document discovery tool based on formal concept analysis. The program allows users to navigate email using a visual lattice metaphor rather than a tree. It implements a virtual file structure over email where files and entire directories can appear in multiple positions. The content and shape of the lattice formed by the conceptual ontology can assist in email discovery. The system described provides more flexibility in retrieving stored emails than what is normally available in email clients. The paper discusses how conceptual ontologies can leverage traditional document retrieval systems.

Teachers’ knowledge and experiences of Information Advice and Guidance: some implications for the current policy context in England

Good information and career guidance about what post-compulsory educational routes are available and where these routes lead is important in ensuring that young people make choices that are most appropriate to their needs and aspirations. Yet the Association of School and College Leaders (2011) express fears that future provision will be inadequate. This paper reports the findings from an on-line survey of 300 secondary school teachers, and follow up telephone interviews with 18 in the South East of England which explored teachers’ experiences of delivering post-compulsory educational and career guidance and their knowledge and confidence in doing so. Results suggest that teachers lack confidence in delivering information, advice and guidance outside their own area of specialism and experience. In particular, teachers knew little in relation to alternative local provision of post-16 education and lacked knowledge of more non-traditional, vocational routes. This paper will therefore raises important policy considerations with respect to supporting teachers’ knowledge, ability and confidence in delivering information in relation to future pathways and career guidance.

A distributed, semiotic-inductive and human-Oriented approach to web-scale knowledge retrieval

Web-scale knowledge retrieval can be enabled by distributed information retrieval, clustering Web clients to a large-scale computing infrastructure for knowledge discovery from Web documents. Based on this infrastructure, we propose to apply semiotic (i.e., sub-syntactical) and inductive (i.e., probabilistic) methods for inferring concept associations in human knowledge. These associations can be combined to form a fuzzy (i.e.,gradual) semantic net representing a map of the knowledge in the Web. Thus, we propose to provide interactive visualizations of these cognitive concept maps to end users, who can browse and search the Web in a human-oriented, visual, and associative interface.

Nanoinformatics knowledge infrastructures: bringing efficient information management to nanomedical research

Nanotechnology represents an area of particular promise and significant opportunity across multiple scientific disciplines. Ongoing nanotechnology research ranges from the characterization of nanoparticles and nanomaterials to the analysis and processing of experimental data seeking correlations between nanoparticles and their functionalities and side effects. Due to their special properties, nanoparticles are suitable for cellular-level diagnostics and therapy, offering numerous applications in medicine, e.g. development of biomedical devices, tissue repair, drug delivery systems and biosensors. In nanomedicine, recent studies are producing large amounts of structural and property data, highlighting the role for computational approaches in information management. While in vitro and in vivo assays are expensive, the cost of computing is falling. Furthermore, improvements in the accuracy of computational methods (e.g. data mining, knowledge discovery, modeling and simulation) have enabled effective tools to automate the extraction, management and storage of these vast data volumes. Since this information is widely distributed, one major issue is how to locate and access data where it resides (which also poses data-sharing limitations). The novel discipline of nanoinformatics addresses the information challenges related to nanotechnology research. In this paper, we summarize the needs and challenges in the field and present an overview of extant initiatives and efforts.

Efficient knowledge retrieval to calibrate input variables in forest fire prediction

Forest fires are a serious threat to humans and nature from an ecological, social and economic point of view. Predicting their behaviour by simulation still delivers unreliable results and remains a challenging task. Latest approaches try to calibrate input variables, often tainted with imprecision, using optimisation techniques like Genetic Algorithms. To converge faster towards fitter solutions, the GA is guided with knowledge obtained from historical or synthetical fires. We developed a robust and efficient knowledge storage and retrieval method. Nearest neighbour search is applied to find the fire configuration from knowledge base most similar to the current configuration. Therefore, a distance measure was elaborated and implemented in several ways. Experiments show the performance of the different implementations regarding occupied storage and retrieval time with overly satisfactory results.

Parasitic Order Machine. A Sociology and Ontology of Information Securing

This study examines information security as a process (information securing) in terms of what it does, especially beyond its obvious role of protector. It investigates concepts related to ‘ontology of becoming’, and examines what it is that information securing produces. The research is theory driven and draws upon three fields: sociology (especially actor-network theory), philosophy (especially Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of ‘machine’, ‘territory’ and ‘becoming’, and Michel Serres’s concept of ‘parasite’), and information systems science (the subject of information security). Social engineering (used here in the sense of breaking into systems through non-technical means) and software cracker groups (groups which remove copy protection systems from software) are analysed as examples of breaches of information security. Firstly, the study finds that information securing is always interruptive: every entity (regardless of whether or not it is malicious) that becomes connected to information security is interrupted. Furthermore, every entity changes, becomes different, as it makes a connection with information security (ontology of becoming). Moreover, information security organizes entities into different territories. However, the territories – the insides and outsides of information systems – are ontologically similar; the only difference is in the order of the territories, not in the ontological status of entities that inhabit the territories. In other words, malicious software is ontologically similar to benign software; they both are users in terms of a system. The difference is based on the order of the system and users: who uses the system and what the system is used for. Secondly, the research shows that information security is always external (in the terms of this study it is a ‘parasite’) to the information system that it protects. Information securing creates and maintains order while simultaneously disrupting the existing order of the system that it protects. For example, in terms of software itself, the implementation of a copy protection system is an entirely external addition. In fact, this parasitic addition makes software different. Thus, information security disrupts that which it is supposed to defend from disruption. Finally, it is asserted that, in its interruption, information security is a connector that creates passages; it connects users to systems while also creating its own threats. For example, copy protection systems invite crackers and information security policies entice social engineers to use and exploit information security techniques in a novel manner.

Information and knowledge: the diffusion of information and communication technologies in the Argentine manufacturing sector

Includes bibliography

Test anxiety, self-control, and knowledge retrieval in secondary school students

Es wurde kürzlich gezeigt, dass die Stärke des Zusammenhangs zwischen Angst und Leistung von der momentan vorhandenen Selbstkontrollkraft abhängt. Wir untersuchten an einer Stichprobe aus Wirtschaftsschülern (N = 136), ob dieser Befund auf den Abruf von Wissen generalisierbar ist. Die Leistungsängstlichkeit der Teilnehmenden wurde erfasst und deren Selbstkontrollkraft experimentell manipuliert, woraufhin sie einen standardisierten Wortschatztest bearbeiteten. Während das Wissen nicht von der Leistungsängstlichkeit oder der Selbstkontrollkraft abhing, sagte die Interaktion aus beiden Variablen das gezeigte Wissen vorher. Übereinstimmend mit früheren Studien fiel die Leistung von Schülern mit niedriger Selbstkontrollkraft umso geringer aus, je leistungsängstlicher sie waren. Bei Schülern mit hoher Selbstkontrollkraft hingen die Leistungsängstlichkeit und die Wortschatzleistung hingegen nicht zusammen. Wir interpretieren dieses Muster dergestalt, dass Leistungsängstlichkeit den Wissensabruf nur dann behindert, wenn Selbstkontrolle nicht zur Kompensierung angstbezogener Aufmerksamkeitsdefizite herangezogen werden kann. Die Befunde implizieren, dass gründliche Vorbereitung keine guten Testnoten garantiert.

Multi-topic information filtering with a single user profile

In Information Filtering (IF) a user may be interested in several topics in parallel. But IF systems have been built on representational models derived from Information Retrieval and Text Categorization, which assume independence between terms. The linearity of these models results in user profiles that can only represent one topic of interest. We present a methodology that takes into account term dependencies to construct a single profile representation for multiple topics, in the form of a hierarchical term network. We also introduce a series of non-linear functions for evaluating documents against the profile. Initial experiments produced positive results.

A framework for supporting knowledge representation – an ontological based approach

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores