Evaluating Information Retrieval and Access Tasks

This open access book summarizes the first two decades of the NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research (NTCIR). NTCIR is a series of evaluation forums run by a global team of researchers and hosted by the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan. The book is unique in that it discusses not just what was done at NTCIR, but also how it was done and the impact it has achieved. For example, in some chapters the reader sees the early seeds of what eventually grew to be the search engines that provide access to content on the World Wide Web, today’s smartphones that can tailor what they show to the needs of their owners, and the smart speakers that enrich our lives at home and on the move. We also get glimpses into how new search engines can be built for mathematical formulae, or for the digital record of a lived human life. Key to the success of the NTCIR endeavor was early recognition that information access research is an empirical discipline and that evaluation therefore lay at the core of the enterprise. Evaluation is thus at the heart of each chapter in this book. They show, for example, how the recognition that some documents are more important than others has shaped thinking about evaluation design. The thirty-three contributors to this volume speak for the many hundreds of researchers from dozens of countries around the world who together shaped NTCIR as organizers and participants. This book is suitable for researchers, practitioners, and students—anyone who wants to learn about past and present evaluation efforts in information retrieval, information access, and natural language processing, as well as those who want to participate in an evaluation task or even to design and organize one

Global assessment of sand and dust storms

The specific objectives of the assessment are to: 1) Synthesise and highlight the environmental and socio-economic causes and impacts of SDS, as well as available technical measures for their mitigation, at the local, regional and global levels; 2) Show how the mitigation of SDS can yield multiple sustainable development benefits; 3) Synthesize information on current policy responses for mitigating SDS and 4) Present options for an improved strategy for mitigating SDS at the local, regional and global levels, building on existing institutions and agreements

Recent Advances in Social Data and Artificial Intelligence 2019

The importance and usefulness of subjects and topics involving social data and artificial intelligence are becoming widely recognized. This book contains invited review, expository, and original research articles dealing with, and presenting state-of-the-art accounts pf, the recent advances in the subjects of social data and artificial intelligence, and potentially their links to Cyberspace

Remoulding the Chinese mind : mental hygiene promotion in Republican Shanghai

In this thesis, I uncover the history of the Mental Hygiene Movement in Republican Shanghai. I show that it had a far-reaching role to play in the city, promoting mental hygiene throughout China and influencing other cities like Canton, Peking, and Chongqing. This movement could be dated from the 1910s but achieved a dramatic expansion in the 1930s before being attenuated in warfare in the 1940s and coming to an end with the foundation of the PRC. Chinese intellectuals and foreign missionaries and experts, despite their different aims, jointly promoted this movement, and it reached out to the Chinese populace through the public media. Mental hygiene arose from the conjuncture of a new understanding toward the mind and mental problems, the establishment of asylums and psychiatric hospitals, new tools of mass publicity available to the government and a range of non-governmental institutes. In addition, development in Shanghai was powerfully shaped by politics and ideology. Initially, mental hygiene emerged in relation to a colonial aim of regulating the unwanted on streets and creating public hygiene and order. Subsequently, Shanghai would increasingly see a strong revolutionary and political influence in remoulding the ‘national’ mind. In particular, nationalism and modernism were powerful factors in development. More generally, the progressive ideology of scienfication lay behind the development of disciplines and clinics. Shanghai was part of the international history of mental hygiene, but it also demonstrates the importance of locality. For both Chinese governments and the populace, the significance of the Mental Hygiene Movement was more symbolic than pragmatic. The ideological project of remoulding the mind outweighed medical research and the treatment of mental illnesses. I argue that the reason psychiatric policies were not facilitated in China on a large scale was due to the lack of a powerful government force. The acceptance of mind remoulding and self-improvement, however, was more pervasive. One reason for this was that it benefited from the inheritance of a tradition of self-introspection. The Chinese Mental Hygiene movement, therefore, reflected novelty and Western influence but also a convention. Intellectual radicalism was questioned in the process of popularisation and was modified to become more pragmatic in line with everyday practices. Traditional thinking about the mind, while under fierce critique from the modernisers, showed resilience in compromising and integrating new knowledge and ideologies

Geographic information extraction from texts

A large volume of unstructured texts, containing valuable geographic information, is available online. This information – provided implicitly or explicitly – is useful not only for scientific studies (e.g., spatial humanities) but also for many practical applications (e.g., geographic information retrieval). Although large progress has been achieved in geographic information extraction from texts, there are still unsolved challenges and issues, ranging from methods, systems, and data, to applications and privacy. Therefore, this workshop will provide a timely opportunity to discuss the recent advances, new ideas, and concepts but also identify research gaps in geographic information extraction

Communicating Science

Modern science communication has emerged in the twentieth century as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession—and it is a practice with deep historical roots. We have seen the birth of interactive science centres, the first university actions in teaching and conducting research, and a sharp growth in employment of science communicators. This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told

Making the Palace Machine Work

This volume brings the studies of institutions, labour, and material cultures to bear on the history of science and technology by tracing the workings of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu) in the Qing court and empire. An enormous apparatus that employed 22,000 men and women at its heyday, the Department operated a "machine" with myriad moving parts. The first part of the book portrays the people who kept it running, from technical experts to menial servants, and scrutinises the paper trails they left behind. Part two uncovers the working principles of the machine by following the production chains of some of its most splendid products: gilded statues, jade, porcelain, and textiles. Part three tackles the most complex task of all, managing living organisms in nature, including lotus plants grown in imperial ponds in Beijing, fresh medicines sourced from disparate regions, and tribute elephants from Southeast Asia

Communicating Science

Modern science communication has emerged in the twentieth century as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession—and it is a practice with deep historical roots. We have seen the birth of interactive science centres, the first university actions in teaching and conducting research, and a sharp growth in employment of science communicators. This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told