Concept-based Interactive Query Expansion Support Tool (CIQUEST)

This report describes a three-year project (2000-03) undertaken in the Information Studies Department at The University of Sheffield and funded by Resource, The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. The overall aim of the research was to provide user support for query formulation and reformulation in searching large-scale textual resources including those of the World Wide Web. More specifically the objectives were: to investigate and evaluate methods for the automatic generation and organisation of concepts derived from retrieved document sets, based on statistical methods for term weighting; and to conduct user-based evaluations on the understanding, presentation and retrieval effectiveness of concept structures in selecting candidate terms for interactive query expansion. The TREC test collection formed the basis for the seven evaluative experiments conducted in the course of the project. These formed four distinct phases in the project plan. In the first phase, a series of experiments was conducted to investigate further techniques for concept derivation and hierarchical organisation and structure. The second phase was concerned with user-based validation of the concept structures. Results of phases 1 and 2 informed on the design of the test system and the user interface was developed in phase 3. The final phase entailed a user-based summative evaluation of the CiQuest system. The main findings demonstrate that concept hierarchies can effectively be generated from sets of retrieved documents and displayed to searchers in a meaningful way. The approach provides the searcher with an overview of the contents of the retrieved documents, which in turn facilitates the viewing of documents and selection of the most relevant ones. Concept hierarchies are a good source of terms for query expansion and can improve precision. The extraction of descriptive phrases as an alternative source of terms was also effective. With respect to presentation, cascading menus were easy to browse for selecting terms and for viewing documents. In conclusion the project dissemination programme and future work are outlined

Retrieving descriptive phrases from large amounts of free text

This paper presents a system that retrieves descriptive phrases of proper nouns from free text. Sentences holding the specified noun are ranked using a technique based on pattern matching, word counting, and sentence location. No domain specific knowledge is used. Experiments show the system able to rank highly those sentences that contain phrases describing or defining the query noun. In contrast to existing methods, this system does not use parsing techniques but still achieves high levels of accuracy. From the results of a large-scale experiment, it is speculated that the success of this simpler method is due to the high quantities of free text being searched. Parallels between this work and recent findings in the very large corpus track of TREC are drawn

Social, administrative and educational dimensions of the “human – subject of economic life” phenomenon under conditions of information society transition to a new level of development

Перехід інформаційного суспільства на новий рівень розвитку в тріаді генезисних процесів «становлення – формування – розвиток» спричинює численні зміни. Серед них: становлення суспільства знань; інтенсивний розвиток інформаційного простору задіянням ресурсів активного інформаційного простору, неактивного інформаційного простору майбутнього та неактивного інформаційного простору минулого; становлення рольового призначення людини як трудового потенціалу і людського капіталу. Ці зміни актуалізують процеси формування та розвитку людини-суб’єкта економічного життя. Розгляд цих процесів у суспільному, управлінському та освітньому вимірах дає можливість виокремити низку домінант сучасності. Це зростаючо-домінуюча роль комп’ютерної комунікації. Спрямування управління на поєднання інтересів окремих людей з інтересами організації та її стратегічними цілями. Задіяння соціального управління як менеджменту людських ресурсів. Розвиток людини як особистості. Формування та розвиток ІК-компетентності в системі неперервної освіти.Переход информационного общества на новый уровень развития в триаде генезисних процессов «становление – формирование – развитие» вызывает многочисленные изменения. Среди них: становление общества знаний; интенсивное развитие информационного пространства задействованием ресурсов активного информационного пространства, неактивного информационного пространства будущего и неактивного информационного пространства прошлого; становления ролевого назначения человека как трудового потенциала и человеческого капитала. Эти изменения актуализируют процессы формирования и развития человека-субъекта экономической жизни. Рассмотрение этих процессов в общественной, управленческом и образовательном измерениях дает возможность выделить ряд доминант современности. Это растущая и доминирующая роль компьютерной коммуникации. Направление управления на сосотнесение интересов отдельных людей с интересами организации и ее стратегическими целями. Задействования социального управления как менеджмента человеческих ресурсов. Развитие человека как личности. Формирование и развитие ИК-компетентности в системе непрерывного образования.The information society transition to a new level of development in the triad of genesis processes of "incipience – formation – development" causes a lot of changes: the formation of a knowledge society; intensive development of the information space by using the resources of the active information space, the inactive information space of the future and the inactive information space of the past; formation of person’s purpose as labor potential and human capital. These changes actualize the processes of formation and development of the human as subject of economic life. Consideration of these processes in the social, administrative and educational dimensions makes it possible to single out a number of dominant features of the present – it is the growing dominant role of computer communication; management focusing on combining the interests of individuals with the interests of the organization and its strategic goals is important; engaging social management as human resource management; personal development of human; formation and development of IСT competence in the system of continuous education

Automated Retrieval of Non-Engineering Domain Solutions to Engineering Problems

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityBiological inspiration for engineering design has occurred through a variety of techniques such as creation and use of databases, keyword searches of biological information in natural-language format, prior knowledge of biology, and chance observations of nature. This research focuses on utilizing the reconciled Functional Basis function and flow terms to identify suitable biological inspiration for function based design. The organized search provides two levels of results: (1) associated with verb function only and (2) narrowed results associated with verb-noun (function-flow). A set of heuristics has been complied to promote efficient searching using this technique. An example for creating smart flooring is also presented and discussed.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Natural Language Processing for Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a powerful technology for the vital tasks of information retrieval (IR) and knowledge discovery (KD) which, in turn, feed the visualization systems of the present and future and enable knowledge workers to focus more of their time on the vital tasks of analysis and prediction.published or submitted for publicatio