Entity Ranking on Graphs: Studies on Expert Finding

Todays web search engines try to offer services for finding various information in addition to simple web pages, like showing locations or answering simple fact queries. Understanding the association of named entities and documents is one of the key steps towards such semantic search tasks. This paper addresses the ranking of entities and models it in a graph-based relevance propagation framework. In particular we study the problem of expert finding as an example of an entity ranking task. Entity containment graphs are introduced that represent the relationship between text fragments on the one hand and their contained entities on the other hand. The paper shows how these graphs can be used to propagate relevance information from the pre-ranked text fragments to their entities. We use this propagation framework to model existing approaches to expert finding based on the entity's indegree and extend them by recursive relevance propagation based on a probabilistic random walk over the entity containment graphs. Experiments on the TREC expert search task compare the retrieval performance of the different graph and propagation models

Ex Situ Conservation Of Holstein-Friesian Cattle - Comparing The Dutch, French And USA Germplasm Collections

The establishment of gene banks using cryopreservation to secure the genetic diversity of farm breeds have been widely assessed. France, the Netherlands and the USA were among the first countries to organize national cryobanks and these banks are now 10 to 20 years old. All three countries have started Holstein-Friesian (HF) collections to conserve as much genetic diversity as possible for this globally important breed. In order better understand the diversity captured in these collections, the genetic variability of HF collections within and between countries was assessed, and genetic variability of germplasm collections were compared with active bulls in each country. The overall aim of the project was to determine the breed’s security and to guide future collection activities

PFTijah: text search in an XML database system

This paper introduces the PFTijah system, a text search system that is integrated with an XML/XQuery database management system. We present examples of its use, we explain some of the system internals, and discuss plans for future work. PFTijah is part of the open source release of MonetDB/XQuery

Snowex 2017 Community Snow Depth Measurements: A Quality-Controlled, Georeferenced Product

Snow depth was one of the core ground measurements required to validate remotely-sensed data collected during SnowEx Year 1, which occurred in Colorado. The use of a single, common protocol was fundamental to produce a community reference dataset of high quality. Most of the nearly 100 Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin SnowEx ground crew participants contributed to this crucial dataset during 6-25 February 2017. Snow depths were measured along ~300 m transects, whose locations were determined according to a random-stratified approach using snowfall and tree-density gradients. Two-person teams used snowmobiles, skis, or snowshoes to travel to staked transect locations and to conduct measurements. Depths were measured with a 1-cm incremented probe every 3 meters along transects. In shallow areas of Grand Mesa, depth measurements were also collected with GPS snow-depth probes (a.k.a. MagnaProbes) at ~1-m intervals. During summer 2017, all reference stake positions were surveyed with <10 cm accuracy to improve overall snow depth location accuracy. During the campaign, 193 transects were measured over three weeks at Grand Mesa and 40 were collected over two weeks in Senator Beck Basin, representing more than 27,000 depth values. Each day of the campaign depth measurements were written in waterproof field books and photographed by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) participants. The data were later transcribed and prepared for extensive quality assessment and control. Common issues such as protocol errors (e.g., survey in reverse direction), notebook image issues (e.g., halo in the center of digitized picture), and data-entry errors (sloppy writing and transcription errors) were identified and fixed on a point-by-point basis. In addition, we strove to produce a georeferenced product of fine quality, so we calculated and interpolated coordinates for every depth measurement based on surveyed stakes and the number of measurements made per transect. The product has been submitted to NSIDC in csv format. To educate data users, we present the study design and processing steps that have improved the quality and usability of this product. Also, we will address measurement and design uncertainties, which are different in open vs. forest areas

Combining Document-and Paragraph-Based Entity Ranking

We study entity ranking on the INEX entity track and pro- pose a simple graph-based ranking approach that enables to combine scores on document and paragraph level. The com- bined approach improves the retrieval results not only on the INEX testset, but similarly on TREC’s expert finding task

Temporal Language Models for the Disclosure of Historical Text

Contains fulltext : 228230.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access

Complete synchronization of chaotic atmospheric models by connecting only a subset of state space

Connected chaotic systems can, under some circumstances, synchronize their states with an exchange of matter and energy between the systems. This is the case for toy models like the Lorenz 63, and more complex models. In this study we perform synchronization experiments with two connected quasi-geostrophic (QG) models of the atmosphere with 1449 degrees of freedom. The purpose is to determine whether connecting only a subset of the model state space can still lead to complete synchronization (CS). In addition, we evaluated whether empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) form efficient basis functions for synchronization in order to limit the number of connections. In this paper, we show that only the intermediate spectral wavenumbers (5–12) need to be connected in order to achieve CS. In addition, the minimum connection timescale needed for CS is 7.3 days. Both the connection subset and the connection timescale, or strength, are consistent with the time and spatial scales of the baroclinic instabilities in the model. This is in line with the fact that the baroclinic instabilities are the largest source of divergence between the two connected models. Using the Lorenz 63 model, we show that EOFs are nearly optimal basis functions for synchronization. The QG model results show that the minimum number of EOFs that need to be connected for CS is a factor of three smaller than when connecting the original state variables

Adolescent perceptions of parental privacy invasion and adolescent secrecy:An illustration of Simpson's paradox

Adolescents' secrecy is intertwined with perception of parents' behaviors as acts of privacy invasion. It is currently untested, however, how this transactional process operates at the within-person level-where these causal processes take place. Dutch adolescents (n = 244, Mage = 13.84, 38.50% boys) reported three times on perceived parental privacy invasion and secrecy. Cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) confirmed earlier findings. Privacy invasion predicted increased secrecy, but a reverse effect was found from increased secrecy to increased privacy invasion. Controlling for confounding positive group-level associations with a novel random intercept CLPM, negative within-person associations were found. Higher levels of secrecy predicted lower levels of privacy invasive behaviors at the within-person level. These opposing findings within- versus between-persons illustrate a Simpson's paradox