Beyond information extraction: The role of ontology in military report processing

Information extraction tools like SMES transform natural language into formal representation, e.g. into feature structures. Doing so, these tools exploit and apply linguistic knowledge about the syntactic and morphological regularities of the language used. However, these tools apply semantic as well as pragmatic knowledge only partially at best. Automatic processing of military reports has to result in a visualization of the reports content by map as well as in an actualization of the underlying database in order to allow for the actualization of the common operational picture. Normally, however, the information provided by the result of the information extraction is not explicit enough for visualization processes and database insertions. This originates from the reports themselves that are elliptical, ambiguous, and vague. In order to overcome this obstacle, the situational context and thus semantic and pragmatic aspects have to be taken into account. In the paper at hand, we present a system that uses an ontological module to integrate semantic and pragmatic knowledge. The result of the completion contains all the specifications to allow for a visualization of the report’s content on a map as well as for a database actualization

Regional Financial Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa - An Empirical Examination of its Effects on Financial Market Development

This paper examines the effects of political agreements on regional financial integration (RFI) on financial market development and access to and cost of finance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that RFI positively affects financial development - measured very broadly as the size of the financial sector, including the liabilities of the central banks - when combined with a sufficient level of institutional quality. If institutional quality is below a threshold level, RFI apparently has negative effects on financial development. However, we can find no significant effects of RFI on the size of the private financial sector or on the efficiency of the banking sector. Regarding the effects of RFI on access to and costs of finance of enterprises in SSA, our results are mixed. We can find no significant effect of RFI on access to finance for all firms in the aggregate, but the results indicate that RFI actually impedes small firms' access to finance. Furthermore, there is a significant positive influence of foreign bank involvement on the severity of the credit constraint for small enterprises, while we don't find such an influence for large enterprises. These results provide some support for the foreign bank barrier hypothesis in the context of RFI. --Regional financial integration,Sub-Saharan Africa,financial development,access to finance

From Reports to Maps

In this paper, we will sketch a project in progress. The project aims at an application of a command and control system. The application is meant to process military reports written in natural language. It exploits computer linguistic techniques, especially information extraction and ontological augmentation. A prototype has already be completed. A real world application of report processing has to go beyond pure syntactic parsing. Semantic analysis is needed and the meaning of the report has to be constructed. Even more, the meaning has to be represented in a format such that it can be visualized within the so called ``common operational picture'' (COP). The COP is an interactive map displaying information. COP standards are provided by NATO. Since military operations of our days -- war operations as well as peace-keeping and nation building ones -- involve forces of many nations, the COP serves as main tool for synchronizing actions and plans. The paper at hand will provide some insights what kind of problems come along if language processing has to result in map visualization. It also will describe some solutions to overcome these problems

Framework for Electroencephalography-based Evaluation of User Experience

Measuring brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG) is mature enough to assess mental states. Combined with existing methods, such tool can be used to strengthen the understanding of user experience. We contribute a set of methods to estimate continuously the user's mental workload, attention and recognition of interaction errors during different interaction tasks. We validate these measures on a controlled virtual environment and show how they can be used to compare different interaction techniques or devices, by comparing here a keyboard and a touch-based interface. Thanks to such a framework, EEG becomes a promising method to improve the overall usability of complex computer systems.Comment: in ACM. CHI '16 - SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing System, May 2016, San Jose, United State

The silent epidemic of falls from buildings: analysis of risk factors

This study wanted to search for potential risk factors associated with falls from windows and balconies in order to eventually improve prevention. All children under the age of 16years suffering from head injuries/multiple trauma due to falls from windows or balconies treated over the last 7years at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the University Children's Hospital Zürich were analysed retrospectively (group A). Fifty patients out of all children suffering from head injuries/multiple trauma due to other types of accidents in the same period were selected at random as controls (group B). Out of a total of 241 children with head injury and/or multiple trauma, 31 (13%) fell out of a building. Twenty-seven of these victims (87%) fell from the third floor or lower. Twenty-one of the falls (68%) occurred at home. Fifteen children (49%) climbed on a piece of furniture before falling. In almost 20% of the accidents dangerous balcony or house constructions led to the fall. Parents did not witness the fall, except for three cases (10%) with direct parental involvement (one mother jumped out with her child, two mothers threw their child out of the window). Two children (6%) attempted suicide. Children aged 0-5years were predominantly represented (84%), and all six children who died were in this age group. There were significantly more patients with foreign nationalities and lower socio-professional categories in group A than in group B. In both groups, the accidents concerned the youngest child of the family in approximately 50% and happened mostly during summer evenings. There were no significant differences in injured systems and in injury severity between the two groups. This study identified young age, an immigrant family setting, low socio-professional category of the parents, dangerous house constructions, inappropriate furniture placement, and summertime evenings as risk factors for serious building falls in children. This information may foster focused preventio

Protein Expression During Murine Thymus Differentiation

Driven by our long-standing interest in identifying proteins of the immune system and in characterizing processes involved in lymphocyte differentiation, we studied protein expression in biosynthetically labeled fetal and newborn thymus by 2D gel electrophoresis. Autoradiographs of the gels were scanned with a densitometer and image analysis was performed using the Kepler system. Calibrated polypeptide spot abundances (volumes) were compared to assesses qualitative and quantitative changes of the spot volumes. Among over 300 proteins evaluated at GD (gestation day) 13,15, and 17, there were sets of proteins that increased and others that decreased in intensity. We could in addition recognize proteins that were completely absent at GD 13 and/or 15 and that appeared thereafter to gradually increase in intensity. Conversely, various polypeptide spots present at early stages (at GD 13 and 15) disappear later (at GD 17 or at birth). Among the proteins that increase in intensity prevail molecules with masses less than 35 kD, whereas a considerable portion of those that decrease in intensity are characterized by masses above 60 kD. Spots reported in this communication were not defined beyond tagging them with numbers, which is a prerequisite to follow them up in the proteinpaedia developed in our laboratory. The next step will be to retrieve the coding sequences from the existing partitioned cDNA library (BW 5147) as well as from thymocyte subtraction libraries. We predict that among those polypeptides with varying intensity, important regulatory proteins in thymus development will be found