Good Applications for Crummy Entity Linkers? The Case of Corpus Selection in Digital Humanities

Over the last decade we have made great progress in entity linking (EL) systems, but performance may vary depending on the context and, arguably, there are even principled limitations preventing a "perfect" EL system. This also suggests that there may be applications for which current "imperfect" EL is already very useful, and makes finding the "right" application as important as building the "right" EL system. We investigate the Digital Humanities use case, where scholars spend a considerable amount of time selecting relevant source texts. We developed WideNet; a semantically-enhanced search tool which leverages the strengths of (imperfect) EL without getting in the way of its expert users. We evaluate this tool in two historical case-studies aiming to collect a set of references to historical periods in parliamentary debates from the last two decades; the first targeted the Dutch Golden Age, and the second World War II. The case-studies conclude with a critical reflection on the utility of WideNet for this kind of research, after which we outline how such a real-world application can help to improve EL technology in general.Comment: Accepted for presentation at SEMANTiCS '1

Collaborating with Academic Affairs to Cultivate Environments that Support Student Integrity

Integrity development has been recognized as a common outcome at many colleges and universities (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2012; Chickering & Reisser, 1993; Dugan & Komives, 2007; Higher Education Research Institute, 1996). Thus, it is important to create academic and student affairs collaborations that promote the development of students’ integrity and values clarification. In this article, we briefly discuss existing and new integrity research that informs how practitioners and administrators can structure environments supportive of students’ value clarification and congruence with their actions on campus. We use student Honor Codes/Codes of Conduct as an example source of collaboration on campus

Those Hawaiian melodies

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/3740/thumbnail.jp

Optical coupling of bare optoelectronic components and flexographically printed polymer waveguides in planar optronic systems

Large scale, planar optronic systems allowing spatially distributed functionalities can be well used in diverse sensor networks, such as for monitoring the environment by measuring various physical quantities in medicine or aeronautics. In these systems, mechanically flexible and optically transparent polymeric foils, e.g. polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are employed as carrier materials. A benefit of using these materials is their low cost. The optical interconnections from light sources to light transmission structures in planar optronic systems occupy a pivotal position for the sensing functions. As light sources, we employ the optoelectronic components, such as edgeemitting laser diodes, in form of bare chips, since their extremely small structures facilitate a high integration compactness and ensure sufficient system flexibility. Flexographically printed polymer optical waveguides are deployed as light guiding structures for short-distance communication in planar optronic systems. Printing processes are utilized for this generation of waveguides to achieve a cost-efficient large scale and high-throughput production. In order to attain a high-functional optronic system for sensing applications, one of the most essential prerequisites is the high coupling efficiency between the light sources and the waveguides. Therefore, in this work, we focus on the multimode polymer waveguide with a parabolic cross-section and investigate its optical coupling with the bare laser diode. We establish the geometrical model of the alignment based on the previous works on the optodic bonding of bare laser diodes and the fabrication process of polymer waveguides with consideration of various parameters, such as the beam profile of the laser diode, the employed polymer properties of the waveguides as well as the carrier substrates etc. Accordingly, the optical coupling of the bare laser diodes and the polymer waveguides was simulated. Additionally, we demonstrate optical links by adopting the aforementioned processes used for defining the simulation. We verify the feasibility of the developed processes for planar optronic systems by using an active alignment and conduct discussions for further improvements of optical alignment. © 2016 SPIE.DFG/CRC/TR 12

Reproducibility of straylight measurement by C-Quant for assessment of retinal straylight using the compensation comparison method

Background: Straylight gives the appearance of a veil of light thrown over a person's retinal image when there is a strong light source present. We examined the reproducibility of the measurements by C-Quant, and assessed its correlation to characteristics of the eye and subjects' age. Participants and Methods: Five repeated straylight measurements were taken using the dominant eye of 45 healthy subjects (age 21-59) with a BCVA of 20/20: 14 emmetropic, 16 myopic, eight hyperopic and seven with astigmatism. We assessed the extent of reproducibility of straylight measures using the intraclass correlation coefficient. Results: The mean straylight value of all measurements was 1.01 (SD 0.23, median 0.97, interquartile range 0.85-1.1). Per 10years of age, straylight increased in average by 0.10 (95%CI 0.04 to 0.16, p < 0.01]. We found no independent association of refraction (range −5.25 dpt to +2 dpt) on straylight values (0.001; 95%CI −0.022 to 0.024, p = 0.92). Compared to emmetropic subjects, myopia reduced straylight (−.011; −0.024 to 0.02, p = 0.11), whereas higher straylight values (0.09; −0.01 to 0.20, p = 0.09) were observed in subjects with blue irises as compared to dark-colored irises when correcting for age. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of repeated measurements was 0.83 (95%CI 0.76 to 0.90). Conclusions: Our study showed that straylight measurements with the C-Quant had a high reproducibility, i.e. a lack of large intra-observer variability, making it appropriate to be applied in long-term follow-up studies assessing the long-term effect of surgical procedures on the quality of visio

Data Leakage and Loss in Biodiversity Informatics

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.The field of biodiversity informatics is in a massive, “grow-out” phase of creating and enabling large-scale biodiversity data resources. Because perhaps 90% of existing biodiversity data nonetheless remains unavailable for science and policy applications, the question arises as to how these existing and available data records can be mobilized most efficiently and effectively. This situation led to our analysis of several large-scale biodiversity datasets regarding birds and plants, detecting information gaps and documenting data “leakage” or attrition, in terms of data on taxon, time, and place, in each data record. We documented significant data leakage in each data dimension in each dataset. That is, significant numbers of data records are lacking crucial information in terms of taxon, time, and/or place; information on place was consistently the least complete, such that geographic referencing presently represents the most significant factor in degradation of usability of information from biodiversity information resources. Although the full process of digital capture, quality control, and enrichment is important to developing a complete digital record of existing biodiversity information, payoffs in terms of immediate data usability will be greatest with attention paid to the georeferencing challenge.JRS Biodiversity Foundatio

Time-Domain and Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography of Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer in MS Patients and Healthy Controls

Objective. The aim of this study was to compare retinal nerve fiber layer thickness (RNFLT) between spectral-domain (SD-) and time-domain optical coherence tomography (TD-OCT) in MS patients and healthy controls (HC). Furthermore, RNFLT between MS eyes with and without optic neuritis (ON) and HC should be explored. Finally, the relationship between RNFLT, disease duration, EDSS, and disease modifying therapy (DMT) should be established. Design. Prospective, cross-sectional study. Participants. 28 MS patients and 35 HC. Methods. Both groups underwent TD- and SD-OCT measurements. RFNLT was correlated between the two machines and between MS eyes with and without ON and HC. Furthermore, RNFLT was correlated to disease duration, EDSS and DMT. Results. A strong correlation (Pearson's r = 0.921, P < 0.001), but a statistically significant difference of 2 μm (P < 0.001), was found between the two devices. RNFLT was significantly different between MS eyes with history of ON (mean RFNLT (SD) 72.21 μm (15.83 μm)), MS eyes without history of ON 93.03 μm (14.25 μm), and HC 99.07 μm (7.23 μm) (P < 0.001). Conclusions. The measurements between different generation of OCT machines are not interchangeable, which should be taken into account if comparing results between different machines and switching OCT machine in longitudinal studies

On the security of REDOG

We analyze REDOG, a public-key encryption system submitted to the Korean competition on post-quantum cryptography. REDOG is based on rank-metric codes. We prove its incorrectness and attack its implementation providing an efficient message recovery attack. Furthermore, we show that the security of REDOG is much lower than claimed. We then proceed to mitigate these issues and provide two approaches to fix the decryption issue, one of which also leads to better security

Kinematics and rifting processes of the Liguro-Provençal Basin, Western Mediterranean

The Liguro-Provençal Basin, situated at the junction of the Northern Apennines and the Western Alps, formed due to the rollback subduction of the Adriatic-African plate underneath Europe and the subsequent upper plate extension in the Oligocene to early Miocene times. The opening of the basin was accompanied by the counter-clockwise rotation of the Corsica-Sardinia block relative to Europe until 16 Ma, with the basin widening towards the southwest. It remains controversial if the extension ever reached seafloor spreading with the production of oceanic crust, or whether it led to anomalously thin continental crust and/or to mantle exhumation. Although considered as tectonically inactive today, the Liguro-Provençal Basin shows active seismicity, indicating compression and possible basin inversion (Thorwart et al. 2021). Thus it is crucial to better understand the opening of the basin and the tectonic inheritance due to rifting in order to interpret the present-day seismicity. To this end, we compiled existing geological and geophysical data, including recent data from the 4DMB project (“Mountain Building Processes in Four Dimensions”), to constrain the crustal and sedimentary thicknesses throughout the basin. We focus specifically on two profiles in the NE (Corsica-Provence) and SW (Sardinia-Gulf of Lion) parts of the basin, along the opening direction of the basin. For each selected profile we calculated the average velocity using the kinematic reconstructions of Le Breton et al. (2021) and the amount of extension using an aerial balancing approach. We then compared these profiles and amounts of extension with results of coupled thermo-mechanical of asymmetric rifting and surface processes modelling using Aspect and Fastscape codes from Neuharth et al. (2022). The results of the thermo-mechanical modelling fit very well the present-day geometry of the rifted continental crust, with a wider hyper-extended rifted margin on the European and a narrower rifted margin on the Corsica-Sardinia side. Rifting migrated southeastward through time and seems to not have reached oceanic spreading nor mantle exhumation in the northeast part of the basin, as observed in the most recent seismic profile A401A-SMPL obtained within the 4DMB SPP project. Towards the southwest, the model confirms the presence of exhumed mantle, as proposed in previous study (Jolivet et al. 2015). The synthesis of geophysical data and thermomechanical modelling also fits very well in the existing kinematic reconstructions from 35 to 0 Ma of the Western Mediterranean, allowing us to infer the lateral extent of oceanic crust and exhumed mantle domains within the basin. Finally, present-day compressional seismicity seems to reactivate rift-related structures