Using an ontology to improve the web search experience

The search terms that a user passes to a search engine are often ambiguous, referring to homonyms. The results in these cases are a mixture of links to documents that contain different meanings of the search terms. Current search engines provide suggested query completions in a dropdown list. However, such lists are not well organized, mixing completions for different meanings. In addition, the suggested search phrases are not discriminating enough. Moreover, current search engines often return an unexpected number of results. Zero hits are naturally undesirable, while too many hits are likely to be overwhelming and of low precision. This dissertation work aims at providing a better Web search experience for the users by addressing the above described problems.To improve the search for homonyms, suggested completions are well organized and visually separated. In addition, this approach supports the use of negative terms to disambiguate the suggested completions in the list. The dissertation presents an algorithm to generate the suggested search completion terms using an ontology and new ways of displaying homonymous search results. These algorithms have been implemented in the Ontology-Supported Web Search (OSWS) System for famous people. This dissertation presents a method for dynamically building the necessary ontology of famous people based on mining the suggested completions of a search engine. This is combined with data from DBpedia. To enhance the OSWS ontology, Facebook is used as a secondary data source. Information from people public pages is mined and Facebook attributes are cleaned up and mapped to the OSWS ontology. To control the size of the result sets returned by the search engines, this dissertation demonstrates a query rewriting method for generating alternative query strings and implements a model for predicting the number of search engine hits for each alternative query string, based on the English language frequencies of the words in the search terms. Evaluation experiments of the hit count prediction model are presented for three major search engines. The dissertation also discusses and quantifies how far the Google, Yahoo! and Bing search engines diverge from monotonic behavior, considering negative and positive search terms separately

Student Perceptions Of A Sixth Form College: A Case Study Of Yale College, Wrexham.

Research focusses upon an institution (Yale College, Wrexham) catering exclusively for Sixth Form students in the 16-19 age group. Content is based upon information collected from the selected student cohort, (240) over a two year attendance period. (1979-81). Its basic aims are: to identify student perception of the learning milieu; to monitor the consistency of attitudes over time and to examine the relative influences of internal (school based) or external (non-school based) factors. Only limited evidence was found of other sociological investigations exclusive to Sixth Form institutions and the nearest parallels were provided by research into Social processes within Secondary schools of the selective and non-selective variety. Research design seeks to establish whether identical processes, e.g. Differentiation and Polarisation, operate within a mixed. Comprehensive Sixth Form College, drawing its clientele primarily from seven contributory 11-16 schools. An attempt has been made to synthesise the Functionalist and Interactionist approaches to the study of Organisations. Objective measures of institutional attitudes were obtained from two separate essays written by each student at the 'entry' and 'departure' stage. These values indicated the spread of opinion within the pro/anti spectrum. Interviews with a selected sample,(32) post dated each essay and provided further subjective information, which added an illuminative dimension. Comprehensive student profiles, containing academic, socio-economic and other information, compiled from student record cards, formed the final raw data element. Finally, at the analytical stage, a mixture of interpretive and statistical techniques were employed to; describe the attitude and distribution pattern at each stage; assess the uniformity of results or pinpoint significant changes; clarify the role of contributory factors, and maintain the rigour and consistency of analysis

Higher education in Lebanon : management cultures and their impact on performance outcomes

This research study takes a close look at the higher education system in Lebanon. It attempts to identify the principal management cultures in seven institutes of higher education each adopting a different educational system – American, French, Egyptian and Lebanese. McNay’s quartet of collegium, bureaucracy, corporation and enterprise was used as a main reference, with positioning on the model determined by the two dimensions of policy definition and control over implementation each defined as either ‘loose’ or ‘tight’. The study describes and analyzes the organisational structures of the institutions in an attempt to determine the characteristics of the power and authority relationships of each culture and the modes of decision-making. The research study further investigates the degree of academic and institutional autonomy, the measures of accountability and the mechanisms of internal and external scrutiny adopted by the institutes. While McNay’s typology serves as a base to begin to categorise the management cultures of these institutes, no neat categorisation emerged from the combination of the various data sources used in the study. Elements of all four cultures exist in all universities, with dominance for features of the bureaucratic and the corporate cultures. Factors such as the degree of secularisation of the institutions and their cultural origins, whether Lebanese, Arab or Western, seem to impact on institutional culture and are manifested in a distinctive personalised mode of management that emphasises control, power and loyalty, which are deep seated cultural traits of the people of Lebanon and the region. In evaluating the changing environment of higher education, student views on ‘quality’ are also important. The study highlights the differences between institutional types in relation to student performance outputs based on students’ perceptions of their overall educational experience such as teaching and learning experiences. Students in all institutions expressed satisfaction with the education they were receiving; however students in American patterned universities seemed to be exposed to a more liberal form

Testing English Collocations : Developing Receptive Tests for Use with Advanced Swedish Learners

The research reported in this thesis has two main aims. The first aim is to develop tests capable of yielding reliable and valid scores of receptive knowledge of English collocations as a single construct, for use with advanced L2 learners of English. Collocations are seen as conventionalized, recurring combinations of words, and the targeted types are adjective + NP and verb + NP. The second aim is to chart the levels of receptive collocation knowledge in advanced Swedish learners of English, and investigate the relationship between receptive collocation knowledge, vocabulary size, and learning level. In a series of seven empirical studies, involving students of English in Sweden as well as native speakers of English, the two main aims of the thesis are addressed through three research questions. The informants in Sweden are L2 learners of English at upper-secondary school and university level, who have had 8 and 11 years of classroom instruction in English. The results show that the two tests developed - called COLLEX and COLLMATCH - yield reliable scores, and show evidence of different types of validity, such as construct validity, concurrent validity, and face validity. Further investigation is needed in terms of content validity, and certain lingering problems are identified with regard to ceiling effects. It is furthermore shown that a) scores on COLLEX and COLLMATCH increase as a function of learning level, b) the two tests discriminate well between learners of different proficiency levels, and between learners and native speakers of English, and c) scores on COLLEX and COLLMATCH correlate highly with scores on a receptive vocabulary size test. The results suggest that there is a close relationship between advanced learners? vocabulary size and receptive collocation knowledge. The difference in receptive collocation knowledge between higher and lower proficiency learners is argued to stem from a dominating conceptual processing mediation of L2 forms through L1 forms for the lower proficiency learners, coupled with less exposure to the target language. The results also suggest that 4-6 months of full-time university-level studies are not enough for a measurable increase in receptive collocation knowledge to emerge. There is furthermore evidence to suggest that there is a progression in receptive collocation knowledge concomitant of learning level, overall language proficiency, and vocabulary size. This arguably favours a great deal of language exposure as an important factor for implicit acquisition of collocations, in addition to explicit instruction. COLLEX and COLLMATCH are quick to administer, hold appeal with test-takers, and so long as their limitations are noted they may be used as tests of receptive collocation knowledge, both as proficiency tests and as research tools

The structure and function of complex networks

Inspired by empirical studies of networked systems such as the Internet, social networks, and biological networks, researchers have in recent years developed a variety of techniques and models to help us understand or predict the behavior of these systems. Here we review developments in this field, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.Comment: Review article, 58 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables, 429 references, published in SIAM Review (2003

To Determin Whether or Not Significant Change in Spirituality Occurred in Persons Who Attended a Kubler-Ross Life, Death, and Transition Workshop During the Period June 1977 through February 1979

The Problem. The problem was to determine whether or not significant change in spirituality occurred in people who attended a Life, Death, and Transition workshop during the period June 1977 through February 1979. Procedures. To measure change in spirituality, an instrument, the Spirituality Change Survey, was designed and tested. The instrument, which contained seven open-ended items and eleven semantic differential items, was determined to have moderately high internal reliability, 0.759, based on Coefficient Alpha. Two forms of the instrument were used, Eighty-seven participants from two workshops responded to a pretest- posttest mode, while 157 participants from eleven additional workshops responded to a mailed version. The open-ended items asked respondents to subjectively evaluate their perception of change in attitudes toward death, life, spirituality, themselves, others, values, and the workshop. They were then requested to indicate on each of eleven scales a numerical perception of their relative position, both prior to, and after, the workshop. A jury of five qualified judges converted the open-ended responses into numerical values based on the degree of change indicated, The data were then analyzed based on frequency distribution, shift in central tendency, and one way analysis of variance based on each demographic variable available. Findings. It was determined that significant positive change did occur in persons attending the workshops. This was best illustrated by the total responses to open-ended items, with 1322 of 1613, or approximately 82 percent, being positive. No correlation between the time interval since attendance and response to the survey was found. A possible correlation between poor health and the degree of positive change in spirituality reported was indicated

Strategies for ESL Students in Community Colleges to Develop Their Public Speaking Skills

The purpose of this project was to identify strategies for ESL students in community colleges to develop their public speaking skills. Effective oral communication skills are commonly needed by employees in the workplace at all different levels. The project focused on three key areas: 1) ways to reduce the fear and anxiety associated with public speaking; 2) the role of small groups in planning and presenting oral presentations; and 3) the use of feedback and self-help strategies to improve public speaking skills. The project presented a handbook of strategies in each of these areas for students to use as a resource in developing these skills. With increased self-confidence and strengthened public speaking skills, community college ESL students will be better prepared to succeed in their further education and as employees in the workforce