Evaluating Feature Extraction Methods for Biomedical Word Sense Disambiguation

Evaluating Feature Extraction Methods for Biomedical WSD Clint Cuffy, Sam Henry and Bridget McInnes, PhD Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA Introduction. Biomedical text processing is currently a high active research area but ambiguity is still a barrier to the processing and understanding of these documents. Many word sense disambiguation (WSD) approaches represent instances of an ambiguous word as a distributional context vector. One problem with using these vectors is noise -- information that is overly general and does not contribute to the word’s representation. Feature extraction approaches attempt to compensate for sparsity and reduce noise by transforming the data from high-dimensional space to a space of fewer dimensions. Currently, word embeddings [1] have become an increasingly popular method to reduce the dimensionality of vector representations. In this work, we evaluate word embeddings in a knowledge-based word sense disambiguation method. Methods. Context requiring disambiguation consists of an instance of an ambiguous word, and multiple denotative senses. In our method, each word is replaced with its respective word embedding and either summed or averaged to form a single instance vector representation. This also is performed for each sense of an ambiguous word using the sense’s definition obtained from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). We calculate the cosine similarity between each sense and instance vectors, and assign the instance the sense with the highest value. Evaluation. We evaluate our method on three biomedical WSD datasets: NLM-WSD, MSH-WSD and Abbrev. The word embeddings were trained on the titles and abstracts from the 2016 Medline baseline. We compare using two word embedding models, Skip-gram and Continuous Bag of Words (CBOW), and vary the word vector representational lengths, from one-hundred to one-thousand, and compare differences in accuracy. Results. The overall outcome of this method demonstrates fairly high accuracy at disambiguating biomedical instance context from groups of denotative senses. The results showed the Skip-gram model obtained a higher disambiguation accuracy than CBOW but the increase was not significant for all of the datasets. Similarly, vector representations of differing lengths displayed minimal change in results, often differing by mere tenths in percentage. We also compared our results to current state-of-the-art knowledge-based WSD systems, including those that have used word embeddings, showing comparable or higher disambiguation accuracy. Conclusion. Although biomedical literature can be ambiguous, our knowledge-based feature extraction method using word embeddings demonstrates a high accuracy in disambiguating biomedical text while eliminating variations of associated noise. In the future, we plan to explore additional dimensionality reduction methods and training data. [1] T. Mikolov, I. Sutskever, K. Chen, G. Corrado and J. Dean, Distributed representations of words and phrases and their compositionality, Advances in neural information processing systems, pp. 3111-3119, 2013.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1278/thumbnail.jp

Multigenerational Trauma and the Canadian Black Woman: A Subjective Inquiry into the Enduring Black Slave Experience

Numerous recent studies argue that mental health is a primary determinant of a societys general wellbeing. However, as important as these studies are said to be insofar as the advancement in the treatment(s) of mental health problems, they all lack a focused attention on how Black women in Canada are affected by these problems. This research paper is primarily concerned with addressing this shortfall in the medical establishments appreciation for the majority of Black womens true position. The paper develops from the idea that this shortfall will be inevitable so long as researchers remain reluctant to explore the possibility that todays Black womans biopsychosocial constitution has been and continues to be shaped in profound ways by what has been called the slave experience. Today the slave experience finds resonance in the phenomenon known as multigenerational trauma, a trauma constitutive of a number of salient forces, with the most significant among these being the enduring negative patriarchal(/paternalistic) constructs of womens biological and psychological inferiority to men, institutionalized racism, and multiple instances of violence against women. This paper explores the ways in which these (and other) constructs contribute to the negative mental health status of Canadian Black women, as well as suggests methods to more effectively address their mental health concerns

The Importance of social media when developing a business

Social media is an important component when it comes to starting a business. It is essential because it provides new businesses with multiple cost effect ways to grow their brand without neglecting other aspects of usual company marketing such as SEO tactics, website development, and advertising through traditional channels. Social media platforms provides exposure for new businesses that don’t have access to a great deal of revenue. Presence on social media platforms allows brands to deliver valuable information to their potential customers. They will be able to reach potential clients easily, and also grow relationships with existing customers. Social media has been proven to be an incredibly effective promotional medium, it is also a channel for connecting with others and updating your status for the world. Success is measured on social media through different engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and retweets. You can also measure your brand’s success by analyzing the impressions and reach the post has. Engagement with your content is important because it lets you know who is interested in your brand. While having a social media presence is important for businesses, there can also be some disadvantages as well. You can run the risk of over exposing your brand and receiving negative feedback from customers. Competitors are also easily able to copy your marketing strategy since your social media handle will be public. Then there is the possibility of having your brand account hacked by cyber scammers. Although there are some disadvantages to having a social media presence, it is still way more important to be sure the brand is available on social media platforms for potential clients to learn more about

Principals\u27 Perceptions of the Bully Busters Program in Combating Cyberbullying in Elementary Schools

Over time and with both the increasing ubiquitousness of the Internet and children\u27s technological knowledge at young ages, cyberbullying has grown more widespread and acts of bullying have become more intense. However, little is known about the effectiveness of different antibullying programs for decreasing cyberbullying behaviors. This study addressed that gap in the literature by exploring one elementary school\u27s use of the Bully Busters program for combating cyberbullying. The decision-making model was used as the conceptual framework for this qualitative interview study. Participants were 3 principals from 3 schools using the program. Data were gathered from the participants via interviews and classroom observations. NVivo software was used to organize the data analysis processes through open coding to identify themes and patterns. Principals indicated the Bully Busters program was effective for preventing bullying and believed it would be effective for combating cyberbullying; they also demonstrated clear plans for implementing the program more widely to combat cyberbullying. As noted during observations, the principals effectively implemented the Bully Busters program. Results of this study may contribute to positive social change by providing school principals with insight into how the Bully Busters program may be implemented to deter cyberbullying in their schools. Decreased rates of cyberbullying in schools may result in improved school experiences for all children

Getting the message: a transcendental phenomenology of youth experiences of persuasive (partisan) and informative (non-partisan) campaigns during the 2019 Canadian and United Kingdom general elections.

Low youth voter turnout has potentially negative implications for healthy democracies and is therefore a widely researched topic in political communications. The concern is that if young people experience alienation and disenfranchisement from political processes, and in particular, electoral participation, this may result in a future uninformed electorate, where voting is not incorporated as a habitual practice among adults (Plutzer, 2002; Henn and Foard, 2012; Muthoo, 2016). Paradoxically, despite feeling a strong sense of civic duty to vote, youth may lack trust in electoral campaigns within a “fake news” environment. Therefore, this study explored the central research question: “what experiences do youth have of partisan and non-partisan campaigns in electoral situations?” The rationale for researching this question is found within the field of campaign effects research, where myriad factors are explored, in order to understand how these integral facets of electoral politics may be better understood. To that extent, this study utilized a qualitative transcendental phenomenological theoretical framework and methodology—more often utilized in health sciences research—in order to elicit participant data in regards to how young people experience partisan and non-partisan campaigns, and the associated trustworthiness of each campaign type. This primarily descriptive methodology was applied within a cross-national context, eliciting responses from five Canadian and five British participants, aged 18-24 years during the general elections in each respective country between 2015 and 2019. The resulting data produced a cross-national “essence of the experience” for participants within both countries, where key themes of partisan campaigns feeling “pushy” and manipulative, as well as untrustworthy; were contrasted against non-partisan campaigns being experienced as trustworthy; and the importance of alignment with internal beliefs. Additional emergent themes indicated that despite uncertainty towards partisan campaign trustworthiness, participants experienced a sense of civic duty towards voting, felt that the information often contained in non-partisan campaigns was reassuring and empowering, and expressed a preference for policy-based campaigns. These significant cross-national participant narratives highlight the increasing importance of neutral, unbiased information that is relevant to the youth electorate and maintains professionalism through the avoidance of political opponent shaming and “Americanized” negative campaign tactics. Perhaps most importantly, participants felt a sense of maturity and social belonging, instilled through the empowering experience of informed decision-making at the ballot polls. Therefore, participants expressed a need for more access to trustworthy campaigns and unbiased, policy-based information, in order to facilitate this sense of empowerment. This research therefore makes an original contribution to the political communications scholarly literature through the creation of a novel partisan/non-partisan campaign trustworthiness perception framework, which serves to situate valuable participant narratives of partisan and nonpartisan campaigns—as experienced simultaneously, within a single electoral event—in relation to the persuasive and informative content perceived therein. Further to this, the study makes a methodological contribution to the qualitative transcendental phenomenological analysis framework, through the explication of participant outputs, in addition to streamlining data analysis, through minor adjustments to the procedural stages

No association between cortical lesions and leptomeningeal enhancement on 7-Tesla MRI in multiple sclerosis

Background: Autopsy data suggest a causative link between meningeal inflammation and cortical lesions (CLs) in multiple sclerosis (MS). Objective: To use leptomeningeal enhancement (LME) and CLs on 7-Tesla (7T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate associations between meningeal inflammation and cortical pathology. Methods: Forty-one participants with MS underwent 7T MRI of the brain. CLs and foci of LME were quantified. Results: All MS participants had CLs; 27 (65.8%) had >1 focus of LME. Except for hippocampal CL count (ρ = 0.32 with spread/fill-sulcal pattern LME, p = 0.042), no significant correlations were seen between LME and CLs. Mean cortical thickness correlated with the number of LME foci (ρ = –0.43, p = 0.005). Participants with relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) showed no correlation with neocortical CLs, but significant correlations were seen between LME and hippocampal lesion count (ρ = 0.39, p = 0.030), normalized cortical gray matter (GM) volume (ρ = –0.49, p = 0.005), and mean cortical thickness (ρ = –0.59, p < 0.001). Conclusion: This study supports a relationship between LME and cortical GM atrophy but does not support an association of LME and neocortical CLs. This may indicate that meningeal inflammation is involved with neurodegenerative inflammatory processes, rather than focal lesion development

FiND: Framework for IntelligeNt research Discovery

Computers are essential to research yet the different ways in which computers can automate or speed up research have not been fully explored. Researchers are publishing experimental results faster than ever before and the number of articles to read on a single subject now presents an overwhelming task. FiND aims to expedite this process through an extensible backbone infrastructure for the automated synthesizing of data. FiND includes a Web User Interface, Perl Core and MySQL Database developed using the software constraints of Perl, HTML, CSS, CGI and MySQL. FiND attempts to simplify this task by reducing time spent in exhaustive article searching and allow researchers to spend it perusing deeper in the article contents. In addition, a filtration system was also included so researchers can easily locate specific articles of interest. A remaining issue includes generation of specific author identification database values. The FiND infrastructure was developed to allow for the integration of automated text processing methods for the cataloguing of nanotechnology entities. This functionality would provide a more efficient search mechanism and enable the discovery of new relationships between entities. Nanotechnology based medicines can revolutionize the way we diagnose and treat diseases. Our ability to control matter at the nanoscale, which is 50 thousand times smaller than the diameter of a single strand of hair, opens new possibilities for targeted and personalized medicine. In order to fully harness the potential of nanotechnology, we need an automated system to collect and categorize data on nanotechnology.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1103/thumbnail.jp