Examining assessor attributes at HARD 2005

The TREC HARD (High accuracy Retrieval from Documents) track was motivated to investigate techniques for personalised retrieval of documents. Through the use of a limited dialogue with the TREC assessors, the track facilitated the gathering and exploitation of information about the assessors' personal search context (e.g. knowledge of search topic) which could be used to improve document retrieval. In this paper we describe experiments, run within the context of the 2005 HARD track, which indicate that assessor attributes such as familiarity, interest and confidence when searching a topic can help determine when the utilisation of automatic query expansion improves retrieval over the original document ranking

Persuasive, authorative and topical answers for complex question answering

The ciqa track investigates the role of interaction in answering complex questions: questions that relate two or more entities by some specified relationship. As in the ciqa 2006, our interest in ciqa 2007 was on contextual factors that may affect how answers are assessed. In ciqa 2006 we investigated factors such as topical knowledge or confidence in assessing answers through direct questioning – asking the ciqa assessors to directly estimate values for such variables using ordinal or categorical scales. In ciqa 2006 we found many useful relationships between personal contextual variables and how assessors judged answers. This year we were keen to follow this line of investigation, following a more specific research question: how do contextual variables affect the judgement of different types of information surrogate

Incipient ferralization and weathering indices along a soil chronosequence in Taiwan

The low hilly topography of Green Island, a volcanic island off southeastern Taiwan, includes an altitudinal sequence of sub-horizontal benches. We examined eight profiles along this sequence, ranging from pale brown loamy coral sand on the lowest bench that fringes the coast at an elevation of about 10 m to deep, intensely red and acid clay on the highest bench at about 240 m. Chemical analyses, differential Fe extractions, thin sections, X-ray diffraction of the clay minerals and indices of pedochemical weathering and strain indicated that soil development progressed by weathering of primary and secondary phyllosilicates through argilluviation in the intermediate stages to the generation of increasing quantities of free Fe. The Fe accumulates as free sesquioxides, which crystallize with age. Taxonomically the soil types progress from sandy coral Arenosol, through Eutric Cambisol, Hypereutric Lixisol and Acrisol to incipient Ferralsol (Udipsamment → Eutrudept → Udalf → Udultisol → Udox in Soil Taxonomy). The profiles are interpreted as a chronosequence, although this is complicated by minor and upwardly diminishing contributions of reef coral to the mainly igneous parent materials. There are also variations in the andesitic-basaltic bedrock, and minor aeolian inputs in the higher and older soil types. Regional eustatic sea-level correlations, 14C dating of carbonates on the two lowest benches and estimates of local tectonic uplift indicate that the incipient Ferralsols on the upper bench might date from about 150 ka. The transition through argilluvial Acrisols to incipient sesquioxide-dominated Ferralsols appears, therefore, to develop within 100–200 ka on Green Island, which is faster than usual

Folksonomic Tag Clouds as an Aid to Content Indexing

Social tagging systems have recently developed as a popular method of data organisation on the Internet. These systems allow users to organise their content in a way that makes sense to them, rather than forcing them to use a pre-determined and rigid set of categorisations. These folksonomies provide well populated sources of unstructured tags describing web resources which could potentially be used as semantic index terms for these resources. However getting people to agree on what tags best describe a resource is a difficult problem, therefore any feature which increases the consistency and stability of terms chosen would be extremely beneficial. We investigate how the provision of a tag cloud, a weighted list of terms commonly used to assist in browsing a folksonomy, during the tagging process itself influences the tags produced and how difficult the user perceived the task to be. We show that illustrating the most popular tags to users assists in the tagging process and encourages a stable and consistent folksonomy to form.Comment: SIGIR 2009 Workshop on Search in Social Media (SSM 2009

The East African contribution to the formalisation of the soil catena concept

The concept of the soil catena was first explicitly formalised by Geoffrey Milne and his colleagues in East Africa in the 1930s. It has been widely adopted and applied in soil survey and continues to be of great value in soil and other field sciences The concept characterises widespread patterns in which distinctive associations of soils and vegetation are consistently located in specific slope positions. The formalisation of the concept in an area well outside the mainstream of soil research appears to have been due to the combination of highly visible recurrent patterns of red slope soils overlooking dark valley clays in East Africa’s extensive savannahs, together with a group of receptive and collaborative soil scientists working in a supportive institutional environment. The concept is often attributed to Geoffrey Milne, the group’s coordinator, but we show that several colleagues and friends also contributed. We summarise some of the early soil catenas characterised by Milne and his colleagues in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania). Even at the beginning, it was appreciated that the catena was not universally applicable and that heterogeneity of parent materials can override catenary patterns. The catena was quickly and widely adopted in soil science, and this diffusion has led to some broadening of the definition, and several types of soil pattern are now designated as catenas. The concept has also spread beyond soil science and is used by ecologists, geomorphologists and hydrologists amongst others. It continues to be a paradigm of great explicative and educational power in soil science and ecology

Soil and transport factors in potential distribution systems for biofertilisers derived from palm oil mill residues in Malaysia

Oil palm provides an important source of edible oils and fats, accounting for >30% of total global production and >55% of the international trade in these foodstuffs. The palms produce fresh fruit bunches, comprising several hundreds of small fruitlets, which are compressed and steamed to extract the oil. Soil nutrients in oil palm estates become depleted after decades of heavy harvesting and require fertilisers. Liquid palm oil mill effluent, solid empty fruit bunches and other residues can have deleterious environmental impacts and require careful management. The problems of residue disposal and soil nutrient impoverishment can be linked and managed by composting the oil palm mill residues and distributing the biofertiliser produced back to the plantation. Using case studies from West Malaysia we present an early stage practical tool for the planning of the distribution component of such a cycle. The computer-based tool uses multiple field-based and remote sensing data sources to integrate the effects of local soil conditions, transport distances, environmental protection and management priorities and then models customised distribution plans. The tool operates at plantation level and can be augmented with detailed local data, but the approach is extensible and potentially applicable to regional or national planning

Stoichiometry of cationic nutrients in Phaeozems derived from skarn and Acrisols from other parent materials in lowland forests of Thailand

Some soils under tropical forests in western Thailand are derived from skarn complexes of hydrothermally metamorphosed granitic, calcareous and ultramafic rocks. We used data from six large, long-term forest ecological research plots to compare the soils derived from skarn with forest soils derived from granites and sedimentary parent materials elsewhere Thailand. The soils derived from skarn are Vermic Phaeozems and have deep, dark, worm-worked topsoils and bimodal particle size distributions of coarse sand and grit in clay or fine loam matrices. They are eutrophic with respect to both labile and non-labile forms of the mineral nutrients. The soils derived from other parent materials are mostly Acrisols. Analyses of variance for the cationic nutrients taken independently clearly distinguished the Phaeozems from the Acrisols. The two groups are also stoichiometrically distinct with respect to the main cationic nutrients, as depicted graphically by nutrient roses and as quantified as M+:TEB ratios. The cationic stoichiometric proportions also differentiated between the Acrisols on different plots and parent materials; and between the Phaeozems in our study and eutrophic soils in lowland forests elsewhere in the lowland tropics, with the Phaeozems having lower exchangeable Ca and Mg contents but higher exchangeable K. Subsoil cationic stoichiometric profiles appear to derive from parent materials, but those of the topsoil may be modified by selective biotic recycling. Nonetheless, inherited lithogenic stoichiometric ratios are still apparent in our topsoils. The forests on skarn in West Thailand are varied and overlap with those on Acrisols and other soils. This confirms earlier findings that climate and disturbance history have more influence than soils on the regional distribution of forest types in Thailand, although soils can be important at more local scales

Evaluating epistemic uncertainty under incomplete assessments

The thesis of this study is to propose an extended methodology for laboratory based Information Retrieval evaluation under incomplete relevance assessments. This new methodology aims to identify potential uncertainty during system comparison that may result from incompleteness. The adoption of this methodology is advantageous, because the detection of epistemic uncertainty - the amount of knowledge (or ignorance) we have about the estimate of a system's performance - during the evaluation process can guide and direct researchers when evaluating new systems over existing and future test collections. Across a series of experiments we demonstrate how this methodology can lead towards a finer grained analysis of systems. In particular, we show through experimentation how the current practice in Information Retrieval evaluation of using a measurement depth larger than the pooling depth increases uncertainty during system comparison

Energy dependence of {\rm K}S0^0_{\rm S} and hyperon production at CERN SPS

Recent results on K$^0_{\rm S}$ and hyperon production in Pb-Pb collisions at 40 and 158 $A$ GeV/$c$ beam momentum from the NA57 experiment at CERN SPS are presented. Yields and ratios are compared with those measured by the NA49 experiment, where available. The centrality dependence of the yields and a comparison with the higher collision energy data from RHIC are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of QM2004 conferenc

A769662 inhibits insulin-stimulated akt activation in human macrovascular endothelial cells independent of AMP-activated protein kinase

Protein kinase B (Akt) is a key enzyme in the insulin signalling cascade, required for insulin-stimulated NO production in endothelial cells (ECs). Previous studies have suggested that AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation stimulates NO synthesis and enhances insulin-stimulated Akt activation, yet these studies have largely used indirect activators of AMPK. The effects of the allosteric AMPK activator A769662 on insulin signalling and endothelial function was therefore examined in cultured human macrovascular ECs. Surprisingly, A769662 inhibited insulin-stimulated NO synthesis and Akt phosphorylation in human ECs from umbilical veins (HUVECs) and aorta (HAECs). In contrast, the AMPK activators compound 991 and AICAR had no substantial inhibitory effect on insulin-stimulated Akt phosphorylation in ECs. Inhibition of AMPK with SBI-0206965 had no effect on the inhibition of insulin-stimulated Akt phosphorylation by A769662, suggesting the inhibitory action of A769662 is AMPK-independent. A769662 decreased IGF1-stimulated Akt phosphorylation yet had no effect on VEGF-stimulated Akt signalling in HUVECs, suggesting that A769662 attenuates early insulin/IGF1 signalling. The effects of A769662 on insulin-stimulated Akt phosphorylation were specific to human ECs, as no effect was observed in the human cancer cell lines HepG2 or HeLa, as well as in mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs). A769662 inhibited insulin-stimulated Erk1/2 phosphorylation in HAECs and MEFs, an effect that was independent of AMPK in MEFs. Therefore, despite being a potent AMPK activator, A769662 has effects unlikely to be mediated by AMPK in human macrovascular ECs that reduce insulin sensitivity and eNOS activation