Finding Answers to Complex Questions

In this chapter, we motivate one potential type of future QA system that deals with questions more complex than simple factoid questions and which provides answers with their supporting context. Our approach is based on the issues we faced when developing and delivering a QA system to deal with real time questions in the domain of RLVs within the larger field of aerospace engineering. This particular domain, the actual users of the system, and the questions asked, all demanded a change in our question-answering strategy. First, the chapter will present background on the project that provided the context and a description of the system that was deployed. Next, the chapter analyzes the questions put to the system by the users and discusses the implications that this analysis and the user evaluation study had on our design of a QA system of the future

The NSF/NIH Effect: Surveying the Effect of Data Management Requirements on Faculty, Sponsored Programs, and Institutional Repositories

The scholarly communication landscape is rapidly changing and nowhere is this more evident than in the field of data management. Mandates by major funding agencies, further expanded by executive order and pending legislation in 2013, require many research grant applicants to provide data management plans for preserving and making their research data openly available. However, do faculty researchers have the requisite skill sets and are their institutions providing the necessary infrastructure to comply with these mandates? To answer these questions, three groups were surveyed in 2012: research and teaching faculty, sponsored programs office staff, and institutional repository librarians. Survey results indicate that while faculty desire to share their data, they often lack the skills to do this effectively. Similarly, while repository managers and sponsored programs offices often provide the necessary infrastructure and knowledge, these resources are not being promoted effectively to faculty. The study offers important insights about services academic libraries can provide to support faculty in their data management efforts: providing tools for sharing research data; assisting with describing, finding, or accessing research data; providing information on copyright and ownership issues associated with data sets; and assisting with writing data management plans

Antimicrobial-drug use and changes in resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae to antimicrobial drugs is increasing. To investigate the relationship between antimicrobial use and susceptibility of S. pneumoniae isolates at 24 U.S. medical centers, we obtained data on outpatient antimicrobial-drug use for the regions surrounding 23 of these centers. We found an association between decreased penicillin susceptibility and use of beta-lactam antimicrobial drugs

Question Answering: CNLP at the TREC-2002 Question Answering Track

This paper describes the retrieval experiments for the main task and list task of the TREC-2002 question-answering track. The question answering system described automatically finds answers to questions in a large document collection. The system uses a two-stage retrieval approach to answer finding based on matching of named entities, linguistic patterns, keywords, and the use of a new inference module. In answering a question, the system carries out a detailed query analysis that produces a logical query representation, an indication of the question focus, and answer clue words

Rapid ertapenem susceptibility testing and Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase phenotype detection in Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates by use of automated microscopy of immobilized live bacterial cells

We evaluated detection of ertapenem (ETP) resistance and Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) in 47 Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates using a novel automated microscopy system. Automated microscopy correctly classified 22/23 isolates as ETP resistant and 24/24 as ETP susceptible and correctly classified 21/21 isolates as KPC positive and 26/26 as KPC negative

Question Answering: CNLP at the TREC-10 Question Answering Track

This paper describes the retrieval experiments for the main task and list task of the TREC-10 question answering track. The question answering system described automatically finds answers to questions in a large document collection. The system uses a two-stage retrieval approach to answer finding based on matching of named entities, linguistic patterns, and keywords. In answering a question, the system carries out a detailed query analysis that produces a logical query representation, an indication of the question focus, and answer clue words

Achieving an Optimal Childhood Vaccine Policy

Policies to remove parents' ability to opt-out from school immunization requirements on the basis of religious or personal beliefs (ie, nonmedical exemptions) may be a useful strategy to increase immunization rates and prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. However, there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of this strategy and the range of possible outcomes. We advocate for a more deliberative process through which a broad range of outcomes is scrutinized and the balance of values underlying the policy decision to eliminate nonmedical exemptions is clearly articulated. We identify 3 outcomes that require particular consideration before policies to eliminate nonmedical exemptions are implemented widely and outline a process for making the values underlying such policies more explicit

Deciding Together?:Best Interests and Shared Decision-Making in Paediatric Intensive Care

In the western healthcare, shared decision making has become the orthodox approach to making healthcare choices as a way of promoting patient autonomy. Despite the fact that the autonomy paradigm is poorly suited to paediatric decision making, such an approach is enshrined in English common law. When reaching moral decisions, for instance when it is unclear whether treatment or non-treatment will serve a child’s best interests, shared decision making is particularly questionable because agreement does not ensure moral validity. With reference to current common law and focusing on intensive care practice, this paper investigates what claims shared decision making may have to legitimacy in a paediatric intensive care setting. Drawing on key texts, I suggest these identify advantages to parents and clinicians but not to the child who is the subject of the decision. Without evidence that shared decision making increases the quality of the decision that is being made, it appears that a focus on the shared nature of a decision does not cohere with the principle that the best interests of the child should remain paramount. In the face of significant pressures toward the displacement of the child’s interests in a shared decision, advantages of a shared decision to decisional quality require elucidation. Although a number of arguments of this nature may have potential, should no such advantages be demonstrable we have cause to revise our commitment to either shared decision making or the paramountcy of the child in these circumstances