Web readibility and computer-assisted language learning

Proficiency in a second language is of vital importance for many people. Today’s access to corpora of text, including the Web, allows new techniques for improving language skill. Our project’s aim is the development of techniques for presenting the user with suitable web text, to allow optimal language acquisition via reading. Some text found on the Web may be of a suitable level of difficulty but appropriate techniques need to be devised for locating it, as well as methods for rapid retrieval. Our experiments described here compare the range of difficulty of text found on the Web to that found in traditional hard-copy texts for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, using standard readability measures. The results show that the ESL text readability range fall within the range for Web text. This suggests that an on-line text retrieval engine based on readability can be of use to language learners. However, web pages pose their own difficulty, since those with scores representing high readability are often of limited use. Therefore readability measurement techniques need to be modified for the Web domain

Closing the gap in surveillance and audit of invasive mold diseases for antifungal stewardship using machine learning

Clinical audit of invasive mold disease (IMD) in hematology patients is inefficient due to the difficulties of case finding. This results in antifungal stewardship (AFS) programs preferentially reporting drug cost and consumption rather than measures that actually reflect quality of care. We used machine learning-based natural language processing (NLP) to non-selectively screen chest tomography (CT) reports for pulmonary IMD, verified by clinical review against international definitions and benchmarked against key AFS measures. NLP screened 3014 reports from 1 September 2008 to 31 December 2017, generating 784 positives that after review, identified 205 IMD episodes (44% probable-proven) in 185 patients from 50,303 admissions. Breakthrough-probable/proven-IMD on antifungal prophylaxis accounted for 60% of episodes with serum monitoring of voriconazole or posaconazole in the 2 weeks prior performed in only 53% and 69% of episodes, respectively. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy within 2 days of CT scan occurred in only 54% of episodes. The average turnaround of send-away bronchoalveolar galactomannan of 12 days (range 7-22) was associated with high empiric liposomal amphotericin consumption. A random audit of 10% negative reports revealed two clinically significant misses (0.9%, 2/223). This is the first successful use of applied machine learning for institutional IMD surveillance across an entire hematology population describing process and outcome measures relevant to AFS. Compared to current methods of clinical audit, semi-automated surveillance using NLP is more efficient and inclusive by avoiding restrictions based on any underlying hematologic condition, and has the added advantage of being potentially scalable

Histories of Australian Rock Art Research

Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage

The Nature of attachment:An Australian experience

Throughout the world, protected area management regimes typically separate cultural and natural heritage in legislation, policy, administrative structures, disciplinary expertise, and on-ground practice. Within settler colonial nations, including Australia, cultural heritage is itself habitually separated into indigenous heritage and 'historic' (or non-indigenous) heritage. A consequence of these multiple binaries and disconnected regimes is that they work across rather than with one another. In this chapter, I use the frame of place-attachment to consider issues arising from the separation of natural and cultural heritage in the management of protected areas. The case examples are homestead gardens within protected areas, and my concern is for the recognition of Anglo-Australian place-attachment to domestic gardens.</p

Cross-Platform Text Mining and Natural Language Processing Interoperability - Proceedings of the LREC2016 conference

No abstract available

Cross-Platform Text Mining and Natural Language Processing Interoperability - Proceedings of the LREC2016 conference

No abstract available