Improving the Representation and Conversion of Mathematical Formulae by Considering their Textual Context

Mathematical formulae represent complex semantic information in a concise form. Especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, mathematical formulae are crucial to communicate information, e.g., in scientific papers, and to perform computations using computer algebra systems. Enabling computers to access the information encoded in mathematical formulae requires machine-readable formats that can represent both the presentation and content, i.e., the semantics, of formulae. Exchanging such information between systems additionally requires conversion methods for mathematical representation formats. We analyze how the semantic enrichment of formulae improves the format conversion process and show that considering the textual context of formulae reduces the error rate of such conversions. Our main contributions are: (1) providing an openly available benchmark dataset for the mathematical format conversion task consisting of a newly created test collection, an extensive, manually curated gold standard and task-specific evaluation metrics; (2) performing a quantitative evaluation of state-of-the-art tools for mathematical format conversions; (3) presenting a new approach that considers the textual context of formulae to reduce the error rate for mathematical format conversions. Our benchmark dataset facilitates future research on mathematical format conversions as well as research on many problems in mathematical information retrieval. Because we annotated and linked all components of formulae, e.g., identifiers, operators and other entities, to Wikidata entries, the gold standard can, for instance, be used to train methods for formula concept discovery and recognition. Such methods can then be applied to improve mathematical information retrieval systems, e.g., for semantic formula search, recommendation of mathematical content, or detection of mathematical plagiarism.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

XML in Motion from Genome to Drug

Information technology (IT) has emerged as a central to the solution of contemporary genomics and drug discovery problems. Researchers involved in genomics, proteomics, transcriptional profiling, high throughput structure determination, and in other sub-disciplines of bioinformatics have direct impact on this IT revolution. As the full genome sequences of many species, data from structural genomics, micro-arrays, and proteomics became available, integration of these data to a common platform require sophisticated bioinformatics tools. Organizing these data into knowledgeable databases and developing appropriate software tools for analyzing the same are going to be major challenges. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) forms the backbone of biological data representation and exchange over the internet, enabling researchers to aggregate data from various heterogeneous data resources. The present article covers a comprehensive idea of the integration of XML on particular type of biological databases mainly dealing with sequence-structure-function relationship and its application towards drug discovery. This e-medical science approach should be applied to other scientific domains and the latest trend in semantic web applications is also highlighted

Neogeography: The Challenge of Channelling Large and Ill-Behaved Data Streams

Neogeography is the combination of user generated data and experiences with mapping technologies. In this article we present a research project to extract valuable structured information with a geographic component from unstructured user generated text in wikis, forums, or SMSes. The extracted information should be integrated together to form a collective knowledge about certain domain. This structured information can be used further to help users from the same domain who want to get information using simple question answering system. The project intends to help workers communities in developing countries to share their knowledge, providing a simple and cheap way to contribute and get benefit using the available communication technology

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings

The Application of the Montage Image Mosaic Engine To The Visualization Of Astronomical Images

The Montage Image Mosaic Engine was designed as a scalable toolkit, written in C for performance and portability across *nix platforms, that assembles FITS images into mosaics. The code is freely available and has been widely used in the astronomy and IT communities for research, product generation and for developing next-generation cyber-infrastructure. Recently, it has begun to finding applicability in the field of visualization. This has come about because the toolkit design allows easy integration into scalable systems that process data for subsequent visualization in a browser or client. And it includes a visualization tool suitable for automation and for integration into Python: mViewer creates, with a single command, complex multi-color images overlaid with coordinate displays, labels, and observation footprints, and includes an adaptive image histogram equalization method that preserves the structure of a stretched image over its dynamic range. The Montage toolkit contains functionality originally developed to support the creation and management of mosaics but which also offers value to visualization: a background rectification algorithm that reveals the faint structure in an image; and tools for creating cutout and down-sampled versions of large images. Version 5 of Montage offers support for visualizing data written in HEALPix sky-tessellation scheme, and functionality for processing and organizing images to comply with the TOAST sky-tessellation scheme required for consumption by the World Wide Telescope (WWT). Four online tutorials enable readers to reproduce and extend all the visualizations presented in this paper.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; accepted for publication in the PASP Special Focus Issue: Techniques and Methods for Astrophysical Data Visualizatio

Designing Improved Sediment Transport Visualizations

Monitoring, or more commonly, modeling of sediment transport in the coastal environment is a critical task with relevance to coastline stability, beach erosion, tracking environmental contaminants, and safety of navigation. Increased intensity and regularity of storms such as Superstorm Sandy heighten the importance of our understanding of sediment transport processes. A weakness of current modeling capabilities is the ability to easily visualize the result in an intuitive manner. Many of the available visualization software packages display only a single variable at once, usually as a two-dimensional, plan-view cross-section. With such limited display capabilities, sophisticated 3D models are undermined in both the interpretation of results and dissemination of information to the public. Here we explore a subset of existing modeling capabilities (specifically, modeling scour around man-made structures) and visualization solutions, examine their shortcomings and present a design for a 4D visualization for sediment transport studies that is based on perceptually-focused data visualization research and recent and ongoing developments in multivariate displays. Vector and scalar fields are co-displayed, yet kept independently identifiable utilizing human perception\u27s separation of color, texture, and motion. Bathymetry, sediment grain-size distribution, and forcing hydrodynamics are a subset of the variables investigated for simultaneous representation. Direct interaction with field data is tested to support rapid validation of sediment transport model results. Our goal is a tight integration of both simulated data and real world observations to support analysis and simulation of the impact of major sediment transport events such as hurricanes. We unite modeled results and field observations within a geodatabase designed as an application schema of the Arc Marine Data Model. Our real-world focus is on the Redbird Artificial Reef Site, roughly 18 nautical miles offshor- Delaware Bay, Delaware, where repeated surveys have identified active scour and bedform migration in 27 m water depth amongst the more than 900 deliberately sunken subway cars and vessels. Coincidently collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, and side-scan sonar data from surface and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems along with complementary sub-bottom, grab sample, bottom imagery, and wave and current (via ADCP) datasets provide the basis for analysis. This site is particularly attractive due to overlap with the Delaware Bay Operational Forecast System (DBOFS), a model that provides historical and forecast oceanographic data that can be tested in hindcast against significant changes observed at the site during Superstorm Sandy and in predicting future changes through small-scale modeling around the individual reef objects

Enhancing Web-Based Configuration with Recommendations and Cluster-Based Help

In a collaborative project with Tacton AB, we have investigated new ways of assisting the user in the process of on-line product configuration. A web-based prototype, RIND, was built for ephemeral users in the domain of PC configuration

Urban evolution of Fafe in the XIX and XX centuries

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaThe movement of people from dispersed living to concentration in urban environments is a large change both for human civilization and for the environment. Urbanization is the process of changing from natural habitats to dense grey space made up primarily of buildings, roads, and accessory infrastructure accompanied by dense human populations. While many cities are well established, humans continue to build new cities or expand cities outward in a network of suburban environments. And urbanization is not simply about a transition from green to grey space, other abiotic changes such as changes in light regimens due to artificial lighting, increased pollution, and increased impervious surfaces leading to runoff are found in urban areas. The study of Urban Evolution of Fafe in the XIX and XX Centuries is an interesting theme not only because of the lack of works in this area but also because of the possibility of understanding the organization of the current city. The main problem that we faced it was that as the years go, the mapping and buildings of cities change. And the information of these changes is stored in texts, records, maps, etc. This fact made the study of urban evolution difficult because the information is widespread and hard to gather. So, in order to study Fafe urban evolution we needed to recover and gather information of the changes and new buildings in the city during the XIX and XX centuries. Given the inexistence of an exhaustive investigation of an urban history we had to seek to interpret from the present formation the successive processes of urbanization and respective extensions, juxtapositions and overlaps. More important is the diverse set of sources that allowed to characterize the urbanism of the city of Fafe. With that said it was important to create an integrated repository in digital format to enable its analysis and search of information, and visual exploration through a map. For that purpose, it was necessary to create ontologies related to urban evolution that allowed us to develop web-supported tools derived from these ontologies for the acquisition of the state and the location of the buildings and in order to analyze the changes as the years go by. The web-supported tools are available in http://www4.di.uminho.pt/∼gepl/UEF/.O movimento de pessoas de zonas rurais para zonas de concentração urbana é uma grande mudança tanto para a civilização humana quanto para o meio ambiente. A urbanização é o processo de transformação de zonas naturais em zonas densas e cinzas, compostas principalmente por edifícios, estradas e infraestruturas, acompanhadas por densas populações humanas. Embora muitas cidades estejam bem estabelecidas, os humanos continuam a construir novas cidades ou a expandi-Ias para fora em uma rede de ambientes suburbanos. E a urbanização não é simplesmente sobre a transição do espaço verde para o cinza, outras mudanças abióticas, como mudanças na luz devido à iluminação artificial, aumento da poluição e aumento das superfícies impermeáveis que levam ao escoamento são encontradas nas áreas urbanas. O estudo da Evolução Urbana de Fafe nos séculos XIX e XX é um tema interessante não só pela falta de trabalhos nesta área, mas também pela possibilidade de compreender a organização atual da cidade. O principal problema que nos enfrentamos foi que com o passar dos anos, o mapeamento e os edifícios das cidades mudam. E as informações dessas mudanças são armazenadas em textos, registos, mapas, etc. Esse fato dificultou o estudo do desenvolvimento urbano, pois a informação está difundida e é difícil de reunir. Para estudar a evolução urbana de Fafe, foi necessário recuperar e coletar informações sobre as mudanças e novos edifícios da cidade durante os séculos XIX e XX. Dada a inexistência de uma investigação exaustiva da história urbana, tivemos que procurar interpretar da formação atual os sucessivos processos de urbanização e respetivas extensões, justaposições e sobreposições. Mais importante é o conjunto diversificado de fontes que permitem caracterizar o urbanismo da cidade de Fafe. Com isso dito, foi importante criar um repositório integrado em formato digital para permitir sua análise, a pesquisa de informação e a exploração visual através de um mapa. Para esse efeito, foi necessário criar ontologias relacionadas com a evolução urbana que nos permitiram desenvolver ferramentas suportadas pela Web derivadas destas mesma ontologias, para a aquisições do estado e a localização dos edifícios e para analisar as mudanças á medida que os anos passam. As ferramentas suportadas pela Web estão disponíveis em http:www4.di.uminho.p/~gepl/UEF/