543 research outputs found

    Information retrieval (Part I):Introduction

    Get PDF

    How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?

    Get PDF
    Using detailed information on the nature of work done in over 800 BLS occupational codes, this paper ranks those occupations according to how easy/hard it is to offshore the work— either physically or electronically. Using that ranking, I estimate that somewhere between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs are or will be potentially offshorable within a decade or two. (I make no estimate of how many jobs will actually be offshored.) Since my rankings are subjective, two alternatives are presented—one is entirely objective, the other is an independent subjective ranking. It is found that there is little or no correlation between an occupation’s “offshorability” and the skill level of its workers (as measured either by educational attainment or wages). However, it appears that, controlling for education, the most highly offshorable occupations were already paying significantly lower wages in 2004.

    Developing Terra Nullius: colonialism, nationalism, and indigeneity in the Andaman Islands

    Get PDF
    This article explores in detail the legal structures and discursive framings informing the governance of one particular ‘backward’ region of India, the Andaman Islands. It traces the shifting patterns of occupation and development of the Islands in the colonial and post colonial periods, with a special focus on the changes wrought by independence in 1947 and the eventual history of planned development. It demonstrates how intersecting discourses of indigenous savagery/primitivism and the geographical emptiness was repeatedly mobilised in colonial era surveys and post-colonial policy documents. Post colonial visions of developing the Andaman Islands ushered in a settler-colonial governmentality, infused with genocidal fantasies of the ‘dying savage’. Laws professing to protect aboriginal Jarawas actually worked to unilaterally extend Indian sovereignty over the lands and bodies of a community clearly hostile to such incorporation. It questions the current exclusion of India from the global geographies of settler-colonialism and argues that the violent and continuing history of indigenous marginalisation in the Andaman Islands represents a de facto operation of a logic of terra nullius

    Closing Information Gaps with Need-driven Knowledge Sharing

    Get PDF
    Informationslücken schließen durch bedarfsgetriebenen Wissensaustausch Systeme zum asynchronen Wissensaustausch – wie Intranets, Wikis oder Dateiserver – leiden häufig unter mangelnden Nutzerbeiträgen. Ein Hauptgrund dafür ist, dass Informationsanbieter von Informationsuchenden entkoppelt, und deshalb nur wenig über deren Informationsbedarf gewahr sind. Zentrale Fragen des Wissensmanagements sind daher, welches Wissen besonders wertvoll ist und mit welchen Mitteln Wissensträger dazu motiviert werden können, es zu teilen. Diese Arbeit entwirft dazu den Ansatz des bedarfsgetriebenen Wissensaustauschs (NKS), der aus drei Elementen besteht. Zunächst werden dabei Indikatoren für den Informationsbedarf erhoben – insbesondere Suchanfragen – über deren Aggregation eine fortlaufende Prognose des organisationalen Informationsbedarfs (OIN) abgeleitet wird. Durch den Abgleich mit vorhandenen Informationen in persönlichen und geteilten Informationsräumen werden daraus organisationale Informationslücken (OIG) ermittelt, die auf fehlende Informationen hindeuten. Diese Lücken werden mit Hilfe so genannter Mediationsdienste und Mediationsräume transparent gemacht. Diese helfen Aufmerksamkeit für organisationale Informationsbedürfnisse zu schaffen und den Wissensaustausch zu steuern. Die konkrete Umsetzung von NKS wird durch drei unterschiedliche Anwendungen illustriert, die allesamt auf bewährten Wissensmanagementsystemen aufbauen. Bei der Inversen Suche handelt es sich um ein Werkzeug das Wissensträgern vorschlägt Dokumente aus ihrem persönlichen Informationsraum zu teilen, um damit organisationale Informationslücken zu schließen. Woogle erweitert herkömmliche Wiki-Systeme um Steuerungsinstrumente zur Erkennung und Priorisierung fehlender Informationen, so dass die Weiterentwicklung der Wiki-Inhalte nachfrageorientiert gestaltet werden kann. Auf ähnliche Weise steuert Semantic Need, eine Erweiterung für Semantic MediaWiki, die Erfassung von strukturierten, semantischen Daten basierend auf Informationsbedarf der in Form strukturierter Anfragen vorliegt. Die Umsetzung und Evaluation der drei Werkzeuge zeigt, dass bedarfsgetriebener Wissensaustausch technisch realisierbar ist und eine wichtige Ergänzung für das Wissensmanagement sein kann. Darüber hinaus bietet das Konzept der Mediationsdienste und Mediationsräume einen Rahmen für die Analyse und Gestaltung von Werkzeugen gemäß der NKS-Prinzipien. Schließlich liefert der hier vorstellte Ansatz auch Impulse für die Weiterentwicklung von Internetdiensten und -Infrastrukturen wie der Wikipedia oder dem Semantic Web

    Mapping the late medieval and post medieval landscape of Cumbria

    Get PDF
    PhD ThesisThis study is an analysis of the development of rural settlement patterns and field systems in Cumbria from the later medieval period through to the late eighteenth century. It uses documentary, cartographic and archaeological evidence. This evidence is interpreted utilising the techniques of historic landscape characterisation (HLC), map regression and maps created by the author, summarising and synthesising historical and archaeological data. The mapped settlement data, in particular, has been manipulated using tools of graphic analysis available within a Graphical Information System (GIS). The initial product is a digital map of Cumbria in the late eighteenth century, based on the county-scale maps of that period, enhanced with information taken from enclosure maps and awards, and other post medieval cartographic sources. From this baseline, an interpretation of the late medieval landscape was developed by adding information from other data sources, such as place names and documentary evidence. The approach was necessarily top-down and broad brush, in order to provide a landscape-scale, sub-regional view. This both addresses the deficiencies within the standard historical approach to landscape development, and complements such approaches. Standard historical approaches are strong on detail, but can be weak when conclusions based on localised examples are extrapolated and attributed to the wider landscape. The methodology adopted by this study allows those local analyses to be set within a broader landscape context, providing another tool to use alongside more traditional approaches to historic landscape studies. The Introduction sets out in detail the broad philosophical approaches taken by this study. It then describes the methodological approach of developing a digitised eighteenth century map and using this as a baseline for analysing and partially reconstructing the late medieval landscape. Chapter 2 discusses in detail the historical cartographic background and the technical aspects of eighteenth century map making, with particular reference to Cumbria. Chapter 3 examines the eighteenth century landscape, and the processes of change which led to its development out of the medieval landscape. A characterisation of the late eighteenth century landscape is presented. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 present an interpretation of the late medieval landscape of Cumbria, examining it through its lordship and structure and with a concentration on those aspects which are mappable attributes. Finally, a characterisation of the late medieval landscape is presented in Chapter 6. The conclusion, in Chapter 7 provides a comparison of the late eighteenth century and medieval landscape characterisations, an explanation of ii difference, and an evaluation of the research approach to understanding landscape development. There are two major products resulting from this study. The first is a digitised and enhanced county-scale map of the late eighteenth century landscape. The second is an interpretation of the late medieval landscape, based on the late eighteenth century composite map. Together, these provide a greater appreciation of the viability and value of post medieval map resources as an indicator of the later medieval landscape

    Data Mining in Promoting Flight Safety

    Get PDF
    The incredible rapid development to huge volumes of air travel, mainly because of jet airliners that appeared to the sky in the 1950s, created the need for systematic research for aviation safety and collecting data about air traffic. The structured data can be analysed easily using queries from databases and running theseresults through graphic tools. However, in analysing narratives that often give more accurate information about the case, mining tools are needed. The analysis of textual data with computers has not been possible until data mining tools have been developed. Their use, at least among aviation, is still at a moderate level. The research aims at discovering lethal trends in the flight safety reports. The narratives of 1,200 flight safety reports from years 1994 – 1996 in Finnish were processed with three text mining tools. One of them was totally language independent, the other had a specific configuration for Finnish and the third originally created for English, but encouraging results had been achieved with Spanish and that is why a Finnish test was undertaken, too. The global rate of accidents is stabilising and the situation can now be regarded as satisfactory, but because of the growth in air traffic, the absolute number of fatal accidents per year might increase, if the flight safety will not be improved. The collection of data and reporting systems have reached their top level. The focal point in increasing the flight safety is analysis. The air traffic has generally been forecasted to grow 5 – 6 per cent annually over the next two decades. During this period, the global air travel will probably double also with relatively conservative expectations of economic growth. This development makes the airline management confront growing pressure due to increasing competition, signify cant rise in fuel prices and the need to reduce the incident rate due to expected growth in air traffic volumes. All this emphasises the urgent need for new tools and methods. All systems provided encouraging results, as well as proved challenges still to be won. Flight safety can be improved through the development and utilisation of sophisticated analysis tools and methods, like data mining, using its results supporting the decision process of the executives.Lentoliikenne kasvoi huomattavasti 1950-luvulla pääasiassa suihkumatkustajakoneiden myötä, mikä aiheutti poikkeamatietojen järjestelmällisen keräämisen ja tutkimuksen tarpeen. Määrämuotoinen tieto voidaan helposti analysoida tietokantakyselyillä esittäen tulokset käyttäen graafisia työkaluja, mutta tekstianalyysiin, jonka avulla tapauksista saadaan usein tarkempia tietoja, tarvitaan louhintatyökaluja. Tekstimuotoisen tiedon automaattinen analysointi ei ole ollut mahdollista ennen louhintatyökalujen kehittämistä. Silti niiden käyttö, ainakin ilmailun piirissä, on edelleen vähäistä. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli havaita vaarallisia kehityskulkuja lentoturvallisuusraporteissa. 1 200 lentoturvallisuusraportin selostusosiot vuosilta 1994 –1996 käsiteltiin kolmella tekstinlouhintatyökalulla. Yksi näistä oli täysin kieliriippumaton, toisessa oli lisäosa, jossa oli mahdollisuus käsitellä suomen kieltä ja kolmas oli rakennettu alun perin ainoastaan englanninkielisen tekstin louhintaan, mutta espanjan kielellä saavutettujen rohkaisevien tulosten pohjalta päätettiin kokeilla myös suomenkielistä tekstiä. Lento-onnettomuuksien määrä liikenteeseen nähden on vakiintumassa maailmanlaajuisesti katsottuna ja turvallisuustaso voidaan katsoa tyydyttäväksi. Kuitenkin liikenteen kasvaessa myös onnettomuuksien määrä lisääntyy vuosittain, mikäli lentoturvallisuutta ei kyetä parantamaan. Turvallisuustiedon kerääminen ja raportointijärjestelmät ovat jo saavuttaneet huippunsa. Analysoinnin parantaminen on avain lentoturvallisuuden parantamiseen. Lentoliikenteen on ennustettu kasvavan 5 – 6 prosenttia vuodessa seuraavien kahden vuosikymmenen ajan. Samana aikana lentoliikenne saattaa kaksinkertaistua jopa vaatimattomimpien talouskasvuennusteiden mukaan. Tällainen kehitys asettaa lentoliikenteen päättäjille yhä kasvavia paineita kiristyvän kilpailun, polttoaineiden hinnannousun ja liikenteen kasvun aiheuttaman onnettomuuksien määrän vähentämiseksi. Tämä korostaa uusien menetelmien ja työkalujen kiireellistä tarvetta. Kaikilla louhintajärjestelmillä saatiin rohkaisevia tuloksia mutta ne nostivat samalla esille haasteita, jotka tulisi vielä voittaa. Lentoturvallisuutta voidaan vielä parantaa käyttämällä tässä esille tuotuja analyysimenetelmiä ja –työkaluja kuten tiedonlouhintaa ja soveltamalla näin saatuja tuloksia johdon päätöksenteon tukena.Siirretty Doriast

    Yavaa: supporting data workflows from discovery to visualization

    Get PDF
    Recent years have witness an increasing number of data silos being opened up both within organizations and to the general public: Scientists publish their raw data as supplements to articles or even standalone artifacts to enable others to verify and extend their work. Governments pass laws to open up formerly protected data treasures to improve accountability and transparency as well as to enable new business ideas based on this public good. Even companies share structured information about their products and services to advertise their use and thus increase revenue. Exploiting this wealth of information holds many challenges for users, though. Oftentimes data is provided as tables whose sheer endless rows of daunting numbers are barely accessible. InfoVis can mitigate this gap. However, offered visualization options are generally very limited and next to no support is given in applying any of them. The same holds true for data wrangling. Only very few options to adjust the data to the current needs and barely any protection are in place to prevent even the most obvious mistakes. When it comes to data from multiple providers, the situation gets even bleaker. Only recently tools emerged to search for datasets across institutional borders reasonably. Easy-to-use ways to combine these datasets are still missing, though. Finally, results generally lack proper documentation of their provenance. So even the most compelling visualizations can be called into question when their coming about remains unclear. The foundations for a vivid exchange and exploitation of open data are set, but the barrier of entry remains relatively high, especially for non-expert users. This thesis aims to lower that barrier by providing tools and assistance, reducing the amount of prior experience and skills required. It covers the whole workflow ranging from identifying proper datasets, over possible transformations, up until the export of the result in the form of suitable visualizations

    Self-love and self-liking : in the moral and political philosophy of Bernard Mandeville and David Hume

    Get PDF
    This work offers a novel interpretation of David Hume’s (1711–1776) conception of the conjectural development of civil society and artificial moral institutions. It focuses on the social elements of Hume’s Treatise of human nature (1739–40) and the necessary connection between science of man and politeness, civilised monarchies, social distance and hierarchical structure of civil society. The study incorporates aspects of intellectual history, history of philosophy and book history. In order to understand David Hume’s thinking, the intellectual development of Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) needs to be accounted for. When put into a historical perspective, the moral, political and social components of Treatise of human nature can be read in the context of a philosophical tradition, in which Mandeville plays a pivotal role. A distinctive character of Mandeville and Hume’s account of human nature and moral institutions was the introduction of a simple distinction between self-love and self-liking. The symmetric passions of self-interest and pride can only be controlled by the corresponding moral institutions. This is also the way in which we can say that moral institutions are drawn from human nature. In the case of self-love or self-interest, the corresponding moral institution is justice. Respectively, concerning self-liking or pride the moral institution is politeness. There is an explicit analogy between these moral institutions. If we do not understand this analogy, we do not understand the nature of either justice or politeness. The present work is divided into two parts. In the first part, ‘Intellectual development of Bernard Mandeville’, it is argued that the relevance of the paradigmatic change in Mandeville’s thinking has been missed. It draws a picture of Mandeville turning from the Hobbism of The Fable of the Bees to an original theory of civil society put forward in his later works. In order to make this change more apparent, Mandeville’s career and the publishing history of The Fable of the Bees are examined comprehensively. This interpretation, based partly on previously unknown sources, challenges F. B. Kaye’s influential decision to publish the two parts of The Fable of the Bees as a uniform work of two volumes. The main relevance, however, of the ‘Intellectual development of Mandeville’ is to function as the context for the young Hume. The second part of the work, ‘David Hume and Greatness of mind’, explores in philosophical detail the social theory of the Treatise and politics and the science of man in his Essays. This part will also reveal the relevance of Greatness of mind as a general concept for David Hume’s moral and political philosophy.Tämä väitöskirja tarjoaa uuden tulkinnan yhteiskunnan kehityksestä osana David Humen (1711–1776) filosofista järjestelmää. Työ kuuluu aatehistorian alaan, yhdistäen myös filosofian historian ja kirjahistorian näkökulmia ja metodeja. Keskeistä väitöskirjassa on Humen Treatise of human nature teoksen (1739–40) sosiaalisten elementtien uudelleenarviointi, kohteliaisuus moraalifilosofisena käsitteenä ja sivistyneen monarkian, sosiaalisen etäisyyden sekä yhteiskunnan hierarkkisen rakenteen merkitys. Ymmärtääksemme David Humen yhteiskuntateoriaa on meidän ymmärrettävä Bernard Mandevillen (1670–1733) ajattelua ja uus-augustinolaista moraalifilosofiaa. Väitöskirjan keskeisiä tuloksia on, että Mandevillen ja Humen poliittisen filosofian erityispiirre oli erottelu itserakkauden ja ylpeyden välillä. Itserakkaus ja ylpeys käsitettiin symmetrisinä passioina, joita voidaan kontrolloida ainoastaan niitä vastaavan moraali-instituution avulla. Itserakkauden kohdalla moraali-instituutio on oikeudenmukaisuus, joka on rajattu koskemaan omistamista. Täsmälleen samalla tavalla, ylpeyttä kontrolloi kohteliaisuus. Ajatus ei ole, että oikeudenmukaisuus kahlitsisi ihmisen oman edun tavoittelun, vaan päinvastoin auttaa sen viljelyssä. Kohteliaisuuden säännöistä keskeisin on, että omaa ylpeyttä ei saa näyttää. Tämä ei johda ylpeyden tai omanarvontunteen kaventumiseen vaan aiheuttaa positiivisen kierteen mahdollistaen kaikkien ylpeyden ja omanarvontunnon kasvamisen. Näiden perustavanlaatuisten moraali-instituutioiden johtamisessa ihmisluonnosta on selvä analogia, jonka ymmärtäminen on välttämätöntä ymmärtääksemme niin oikeudenmukaisuuden kuin kohteliaisuudenkin luonteen. Väitöskirjassa on kaksi osaa. Ensimmäinen käsittelee Bernard Mandevillen intellektuaalista kehitystä. Mandevillen kuuluisa The Fable of the Bees perustui ajatukselle, että kaikki teot voidaan palauttaa egoismiin. Mandevillen ajattelu muuttui hänen myöhemmissä teoksissaan ja hän lopulta myönsi myös luonnollisen hyveen mahdollisuuden. Ymmärtääksemme tämän muutoksen ja sen merkityksen, Mandevillen henkilöä, uraa ja erityisesti hänen teostensa julkaisuhistoriaa selvitetään perustuen osittain aikaisemmin tuntemattomaan lähdemateriaaliin. Väitöskirjan uusi tulkinta haastaa F. B. Kayen ratkaisun julkaista The Fable of the Beesin kaksi erillistä osaa myöhemmin yhtenäisenä teoksena. Mandevillen intellektuaalisen kehityksen tärkein merkitys on kuitenkin toimia kontekstina nuoren Humen ajattelun analysoimiseen väitöskirjan toisessa osassa. Lopputuloksena on uusi tulkinta yhteiskunnan kehityksestä osana Humen filosofista järjestelmää

    Claiming the Aboriginal Body in Tasmania

    Get PDF
    How do contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginals think of the body? How do they think of the dead body and of their human remains? This work examines the intersection of different cultural, biological and legal concepts of authenticity and belonging as these concepts come into focus as the stake of disputes over Aboriginal remains. In claiming remains, Tasmanians engage a complex set of discursive practices in which the aboriginal body is denoted, performed and negotiated in various ways as the sign of ancestral rights. Petrović-Šteger attends particularly to the language in which Tasmanian human remains are accounted for, appropriated and resignified in the context of the British policy on repatriation. Her work examines naturalist interpretations of both Tasmanian Aboriginal and Western ideas of biology, ancestry and kinship. Attending to a number of recalcitrant concepts—including those of the authority of science, purity of indigenous peoples and exclusive rights of descendants—Petrović-Šteger considers questions arising from contemporary data collection processes as they image and measure remains, and subject them to DNA and isotopic analysis. The collection also broaches the question of how contemporary understandings of Tasmanian indigeneity and ancestral rights are constituted and promoted through the use of various scientific, museological and representational technologies
    corecore