User context and personalisation

The importance of user context as a means of delivering personalised and context-sensitive systems is discussed. Relevant aspects of personalisation and context technology are covered. The intention is to inspire those interested in Case-base reasoning and personalisation from background and experience in other disciplines such as information retrieval, adaptive user interfaces, user modelling and mobile computing. Descriptions of personalisation and context are followed by their use in information retrieval and their importance and use in ambient computing. Relevant literature that may be a motivating source for interested readers are provided. Various questions are also raised in initiating discussion on this topic

Content retrieval and mobile users: An outdoor investigation of an ambient travel guide

People's information needs change as they encounter new situations. The need for an ambient information environment becomes more evident in the case of the mobile traveller where situated information access is one of the main challenges. The motivation for this work has been to provide relevant information to the right situation and user in an ambient manner. Our way to solve this is to deliver personalised and context-aware information to the mobile user. To this end we have developed a platform, and prototype applications for travellers, and tourists. The system integrates our own tag technology with information from content service providers covering both general travel guide and local information. The development methodology is user-centred, iterative, and progressive in nature. It combines information retrieval (IR) test and evaluation techniques with iterative and user-centred development techniques at the test and evaluation phase. Combining the two disciplines gives us the ability to test and evaluate both the information aspects and the interaction aspects of any information system in parallel. Another advantage would be that one can develop content and software in parallel. This paper focuses on the IR test and evaluation framework that has been used in conjunction with the user-centred development. We emphasize the importance of performing IR test and evaluation for mobile systems in terms of users’ situations and tasks. The paper presents the results of some of the findings from a preliminary user test in an outdoor scenario. The test took place in a popular tourist destination in Spain

SocialSensor: sensing user generated input for improved media discovery and experience

SocialSensor will develop a new framework for enabling real-time multimedia indexing and search in the Social Web. The project moves beyond conventional text-based indexing and retrieval models by mining and aggregating user inputs and content over multiple social networking sites. Social Indexing will incorporate information about the structure and activity of the users‟ social network directly into the multimedia analysis and search process. Furthermore, it will enhance the multimedia consumption experience by developing novel user-centric media visualization and browsing paradigms. For example, SocialSensor will analyse the dynamic and massive user contributions in order to extract unbiased trending topics and events and will use social connections for improved recommendations. To achieve its objectives, SocialSensor introduces the concept of Dynamic Social COntainers (DySCOs), a new layer of online multimedia content organisation with particular emphasis on the real-time, social and contextual nature of content and information consumption. Through the proposed DySCOs-centered media search, SocialSensor will integrate social content mining, search and intelligent presentation in a personalized, context and network-aware way, based on aggregation and indexing of both UGC and multimedia Web content

CBR model for the intelligent management of customer support centers

[EN] In this paper, a new CBR system for Technology Management Centers is presented. The system helps the staff of the centers to solve customer problems by finding solutions successfully applied to similar problems experienced in the past. This improves the satisfaction of customers and ensures a good reputation for the company who manages the center and thus, it may increase its profits. The CBR system is portable, flexible and multi-domain. It is implemented as a module of a help-desk application to make the CBR system as independent as possible of any change in the help-desk. Each phase of the reasoning cycle is implemented as a series of configurable plugins, making the CBR module easy to update and maintain. This system has been introduced and tested in a real Technology Management center ran by the Spanish company TISSAT S.A.Financial support from Spanish government under grant PROFIT FIT-340001-2004-11 is gratefully acknowledgeHeras Barberá, SM.; Garcia Pardo Gimenez De Los Galanes, JA.; Ramos-Garijo Font De Mora, R.; Palomares Chust, A.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Botti, V. (2006). CBR model for the intelligent management of customer support centers. En Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Verlag (Germany). 663-670. https://doi.org/10.1007/11875581_80S663670Acorn, T., Walden, S.: SMART: SupportManagement Automated Reasoning Technology for Compaq Customer Service. In: Scott, A., Klahr, P. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2 International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS-92 Berlin, vol. 4, pp. 3–18. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1992)Simoudis, E.: Using Case-Based Retrieval for Customer Technical Support. IEEE Intelligent Systems 7, 10–12 (1992)Kriegsman, M., Barletta, R.: Building a Case-Based Help Desk Application. IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems and Their Applications 8, 18–26 (1993)Shimazu, H., Shibata, A., Nihei, K.: Case-Based Retrieval Interface Adapted to Customer-Initiated Dialogues in Help Desk Operations. In: Mylopoulos, J., Reiter, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 12th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1, pp. 513–518. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1994)Raman, R., Chang, K.H., Carlisle, W.H., Cross, J.H.: A self-improving helpdesk service system using case-based reasoning techniques. Computers in Industry 2, 113–125 (1996)Kang, B.H., Yoshida, K., Motoda, H., Compton, P.: Help Desk System with Intelligent Interface. Applied Artificial Intelligence 11, 611–631 (1997)Roth-Berghofer, T., Iglezakis, I.: Developing an Integrated Multilevel Help-Desk Support System. In: Proceedings of the 8th German Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, pp. 145–155 (2000)Goker, M., Roth-Berghofer, T.: The development and utilization of the case-based help-desk support system HOMER. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 12, 665–680 (1999)Roth-Berghofer, T.R.: Learning from HOMER, a case-based help-desk support system. In: Melnik, G., Holz, H. (eds.) Advances in Learning Software Organizations, pp. 88–97. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)Bergmann, R., Althoff, K.D., Breen, S., Göker, M., Manago, M., Traphöner, R., Wess, S.: Developing Industrial Case-Based Reasoning Applications. In: The INRECA Methodology, 2nd edn. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1612. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)eGain (2006), http://www.egain.comKaidara Software Corporation (2006), http://www.kaidara.com/Empolis Knowledge Management GmbH - Arvato AG (2006), http://www.empolis.com/Althoff, K.D., Auriol, E., Barletta, R., Manago, M.: A Review of Industrial Case-Based Reasoning Tools. AI Perspectives Report. Goodall, A., Oxford (1995)Watson, I.: Applying Case-Based Reasoning. Techniques for Enterprise Systems. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc. California (1997)empolis: empolis Orenge Technology Whitepaper. Technical report, empolis GmbH (2002)Tissat, S.A. (2006), http://www.tissat.esGiraud-Carrier, C., Martinez, T.R.: An integrated framework for learning and reasoning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 3, 147–185 (1995)Corchado, J.M., Borrajo, M.L., Pellicer, M.A., Yanez, J.C.: Neuro-symbolic system for Business Internal Control. In: Perner, P. (ed.) ICDM 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3275, pp. 1–10. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)Aamodt, A., Plaza, E.: Case-based reasoning: foundational issues, methodological variations and system approaches. AI Communications 7(1), 39–59 (1994)Tversky, A.: Features of similarity. Psychological Review 84(4), 327–352 (1997

Quality of life of palliative chemotherapy naive patients with advanced adenocarcinoma of the stomach or esophagogastric junction treated with irinotecan combined with 5-fluorouracil and folinic acid: results of a randomised phase III trial

41st Annual Meeting of the American-Society-of-Clinical-Oncology -- MAY 13-17, 2005 -- Orlando, FLWOS: 000268881000007PubMed ID: 19568958The quality of life (QL) of advanced gastric cancer patients receiving irinotecan, folinic acid and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) (IF arm) or cisplatin with 5-FU (CF arm) is presented. Patients with measurable or evaluable advanced gastric cancer received IF weekly for 6/7 weeks or CF q4 weeks. QL was assessed using the EORTC QLQ-C30 at baseline, subsequently every 8 weeks until progression and thereafter every 3 months until death. The QL data were analysed using several statistical methods including summary measures and pattern-mixture modelling. A total of 333 patients were randomised and treated (IF 170, CF 163). The time-to-progression for IF and CF was 5.0 and 4.2 months (P = 0.088), respectively. The overall compliance rates for QL questionnaire completion were 60 and 56% in the IF and CF arms, respectively. Significant treatment differences were observed for the physical functioning scale (P = 0.024), nausea\vomiting (P = 0.001) and EQ-5D thermometer (P = 0.020) in favour of the IF treatment arm. There was a trend in favour of IF over CF in time-to-progression. The IF group also demonstrated a better safety profile than CF and a better QL on a number of multi-item scales, suggesting that IF offers an alternative first-line platinum-free treatment option for advanced gastric cancer.Amer Soc Clin Onco

Complete genome sequence of the sulfate-reducing Firmicute Desulfotomaculum ruminis type strain (DLT)

Desulfotomaculum ruminis Campbell and Postgate 1965 is a member of the large genus Desulfotomaculum which contains 30 species and is contained in the family Peptococcaceae. This species is of interest because it represents one of the few sulfate-reducing bacteria that have been isolated from the rumen. Here we describe the features of D. ruminis together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. The 3,969,014 bp long chromosome with a total of 3,901 protein-coding and 85 RNA genes is the second completed genome sequence of a type strain of the genus Desulfotomaculum to be published, and was sequenced as part of the DOE Joint Genome Institute Community Sequencing Program 2009