The scholarly impact of TRECVid (2003-2009)

This paper reports on an investigation into the scholarly impact of the TRECVid (TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation) benchmarking conferences between 2003 and 2009. The contribution of TRECVid to research in video retrieval is assessed by analyzing publication content to show the development of techniques and approaches over time and by analyzing publication impact through publication numbers and citation analysis. Popular conference and journal venues for TRECVid publications are identified in terms of number of citations received. For a selection of participants at different career stages, the relative importance of TRECVid publications in terms of citations vis a vis their other publications is investigated. TRECVid, as an evaluation conference, provides data on which research teams ‘scored’ highly against the evaluation criteria and the relationship between ‘top scoring’ teams at TRECVid and the ‘top scoring’ papers in terms of citations is analysed. A strong relationship was found between ‘success’ at TRECVid and ‘success’ at citations both for high scoring and low scoring teams. The implications of the study in terms of the value of TRECVid as a research activity, and the value of bibliometric analysis as a research evaluation tool, are discussed

An overview of the linguistic resources used in cross-language question answering systems in CLEF Conference

The development of the Semantic Web requires great economic and human effort. Consequently, it is very useful to create mechanisms and tools that facilitate its expansion. From the standpoint of information retrieval (hereafter IR), access to the contents of the Semantic Web can be favored by the use of natural language, as it is much simpler and faster for the user to engage in his habitual form of expression. The growing popularity of Internet and the wide availability of web informative resources for general audiences are a fairly recent phenomenon, although man´s need to hurdle the language barrier and communicate with others is as old as the history of mankind. The World Wide Web, also known as WWW, together with the growing globalization of companies and organizations, and the increase of the non-English speaking audience, entails the demand for tools allowing users to secure information from a wide range of resources. Yet the underlying linguistic restrictions are often overlooked by researchers and designers. Against this background, a key characteristic to be evaluated in terms of the efficiency of IR systems is its capacity to allow users find a corpus of documents in different languages, and to facilitate the relevant information despite limited linguistic competence regarding the target language

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

An Overview of the Linguistic Resources used in Cross-Language Question Answering Systems in CLEF Conference

The development of the Semantic Web requires great economic and human effort. Consequently, it is very useful to create mechanisms and tools that facilitate its expansion. From the standpoint of information retrieval (hereafter IR), access to the contents of the Semantic Web can be favored by the use of natural language, as it is much simpler and faster for the user to engage in his habitual form of expression. The growing popularity of Internet and the wide availability of web informative resources for general audiences are a fairly recent phenomenon, although man´s need to hurdle the language barrier and communicate with others is as old as the history of mankind. The World Wide Web, also known as WWW, together with the growing globalization of companies and organizations, and the increase of the non-English speaking audience, entails the demand for tools allowing users to secure information from a wide range of resources. Yet the underlying linguistic restrictions are often overlooked by researchers and designers. Against this background, a key characteristic to be evaluated in terms of the efficiency of IR systems is its capacity to allow users find a corpus of documents in different languages, and to facilitate the relevant information despite limited linguistic competence regarding the target language

Conductor\u27s Guide to Mark Camphouse\u27s To Build A Fire

This thesis is a guide to understanding and performing Mark Camphouse’s composition, To Build A Fire. The thesis includes a biography of Jack London and a literary analysis of London’s short story “To Build A Fire,” upon which the composition is based. Musical analysis of the Camphouse composition, rehearsal considerations, and performance considerations are also discussed. The literary analysis provides background for the composition and a starting platform for the musical analysis. The musical analysis parallels the composition with the short story. This analysis also provides some technical considerations of the instrumental parts. The rehearsal considerations include a rehearsal plan, discussion of the conductor’s preparation, and some rehearsal guidelines. The performance consideration section includes ensemble seating and how to introduce the audience to the work. The conclusion of the thesis states that when the steps used for score study are applied to the Camphouse piece, the information uncovered is valuable to the performance

Multilingual Question-Answering System in Biomedical Domain on the Web: An Evaluation

Question-answering systems (QAS) are presented as an alternative to traditional systems of information retrieval, intended to offer precise responses to factual questions. An analysis has been made of the results offered by the QA multilingual biomedical system HONqa, available on the Web. The study has used a set of 120 biomedical definitional questions (What is...?), taken from the medical website WebMD, which were formulated in English, French, and Italian. The answers have been analysed using a serie of specific measures (MRR, TRR, FHS, precision, MAP). The study confirms that for all the languages analysed the functioning effectiveness needs to be improved, although in the multilingual context analysed the questions in the English language achieve better results for retrieving definitional information than in French and Italian

The Multifaceted Method of Comparative Law and Economics

As initially conceived of in the Eighties, Comparative Law and Economics provided legal scholars a neutral language for the exploration of similarities and differences across legal systems. Its value added is the theoretical rigour of its models and the possibility to engage in a scientific dialogue not hampered by jurisdiction-specific features. At a later stage, comparative approaches became fully embedded in economic research and its empirical methods. Possible synergies with comparative legal research abound, but the organization of academic structures has so far prevented to fully exploit them