1,268 research outputs found
Where are your Manners? Sharing Best Community Practices in the Web 2.0
The Web 2.0 fosters the creation of communities by offering users a wide
array of social software tools. While the success of these tools is based on
their ability to support different interaction patterns among users by imposing
as few limitations as possible, the communities they support are not free of
rules (just think about the posting rules in a community forum or the editing
rules in a thematic wiki). In this paper we propose a framework for the sharing
of best community practices in the form of a (potentially rule-based)
annotation layer that can be integrated with existing Web 2.0 community tools
(with specific focus on wikis). This solution is characterized by minimal
intrusiveness and plays nicely within the open spirit of the Web 2.0 by
providing users with behavioral hints rather than by enforcing the strict
adherence to a set of rules.Comment: ACM symposium on Applied Computing, Honolulu : \'Etats-Unis
d'Am\'erique (2009
Pattern-based segmentation of digital documents: model and implementation
This thesis proposes a new document model, according to which any document can be segmented in some independent components and transformed in a pattern-based projection, that only uses a very small set of objects and composition rules. The point is that such a normalized document expresses the same fundamental information of the original one, in a simple, clear and unambiguous way. The central part of my work consists of discussing that model, investigating how a digital document can be segmented, and how a segmented version can be used to implement advanced tools of conversion. I present seven patterns which are versatile enough to capture the most relevant documents’ structures, and whose minimality and rigour make that implementation possible. The abstract model is then instantiated into an actual markup language, called IML. IML is a general and extensible language, which basically adopts an XHTML syntax, able to capture a posteriori the only content of a digital document. It is compared with other languages and proposals, in order to clarify its role and
objectives. Finally, I present some systems built upon these ideas. These applications are evaluated in terms of users’ advantages, workflow improvements and impact over the overall quality of the output. In particular, they cover heterogeneous content management processes: from web editing to collaboration (IsaWiki and WikiFactory), from e-learning (IsaLearning) to professional printing (IsaPress)
Open bibliographic data and the Italian National Scientific Qualification: measuring coverage of academic fields
The importance of open bibliographic repositories is widely accepted by the
scientific community. For evaluation processes, however, there is still some
skepticism: even if large repositories of open access articles and free
publication indexes exist and are continuously growing, assessment procedures
still rely on proprietary databases, mainly due to the richness of the data
available in these proprietary databases and the services provided by the
companies they are offered by. This paper investigates the status of open
bibliographic data of three of the most used open resources, namely Microsoft
Academic Graph, Crossref and OpenAIRE, evaluating their potentialities as
substitutes of proprietary databases for academic evaluation processes. We
focused on the Italian National Scientific Qualification (NSQ), the Italian
process for University Professor qualification, which uses data from commercial
indexes, and investigated similarities and differences between research areas,
disciplines and application roles. The main conclusion is that open datasets
are ready to be used for some disciplines, among which mathematics, natural
sciences, economics and statistics, even if there is still room for
improvement; but there is still a large gap to fill in others - like history,
philosophy, pedagogy and psychology - and a stronger effort is required from
researchers and institutions
Natural IgG antibodies to β amyloid are decreased in patients with Parkinson's disease
: Natural antibodies (nAbs) against aggregation-prone proteins have been found in healthy normal subjects. These proteins likely have a pathogenetic role in neurodegenerative diseases of ageing. They include the amyloid β (Aβ) protein which may play an important role in Alzheimer's dementia (AD), and α-synuclein, a major determinant of Parkinson's disease (PD). We measured nAbs to Aβ in a group of Italian patients with AD, vascular dementia, non-demented PD patients and healthy elderly controls. We found that Aβ antibody levels in AD were similar to age- and sex-matched controls, but contrary to our expectations, they were significantly reduced in PD. This may identify patients that could be more prone to amyloid aggregation
Do open citations inform the qualitative peer-review evaluation in research assessments? An analysis of the Italian National Scientific Qualification
In the past, several works have investigated ways for combining quantitative
and qualitative methods in research assessment exercises. Indeed, the Italian
National Scientific Qualification (NSQ), i.e. the national assessment exercise
which aims at deciding whether a scholar can apply to professorial academic
positions as Associate Professor and Full Professor, adopts a quantitative and
qualitative evaluation process: it makes use of bibliometrics followed by a
peer-review process of candidates' CVs. The NSQ divides academic disciplines
into two categories, i.e. citation-based disciplines (CDs) and
non-citation-based disciplines (NDs), a division that affects the metrics used
for assessing the candidates of that discipline in the first part of the
process, which is based on bibliometrics. In this work, we aim at exploring
whether citation-based metrics, calculated only considering open bibliographic
and citation data, can support the human peer-review of NDs and yield insights
on how it is conducted. To understand if and what citation-based (and,
possibly, other) metrics provide relevant information, we created a series of
machine learning models to replicate the decisions of the NSQ committees. As
one of the main outcomes of our study, we noticed that the strength of the
citational relationship between the candidate and the commission in charge of
assessing his/her CV seems to play a role in the peer-review phase of the NSQ
of NDs
Constrained wiki: the Wikiway to validating content
The "WikiWay" is the open editing philosophy of wikis meant to foster open collaboration and continuous improvement of their content. Just like other online communities, wikis often introduce and enforce conventions, constraints, and rules for their content, but do so in a considerably softer way, expecting authors to deliver content that satisfies the conventions and the constraints, or, failing that, having volunteers of the community, the WikiGnomes, fix others' content accordingly. Constrained wikis is our generic framework for wikis to implement validators of community-specific constraints and conventions that preserve the WikiWay and their open collaboration features. To this end, specific requirements need to be observed by validators and a specific software architecture can be used for their implementation, that is, as independent functions (implemented as internal modules or external services) used in a nonintrusive way. Two separate proof-of-concept validators have been implemented for MediaWiki and MoinMoin, respectively, providing an annotated view functions, that is, presenting content authors with violation warnings, rather than preventing them from saving a noncompliant text
Identifying Citation Contexts: a Review of Strategies and Goals.
The Citation Contexts of a cited entity can be seen as little tesserae that, fit together, can be exploited to follow the opinion of the scientific community towards that entity as well as to summarize its most important contents. This mosaic is an excellent resource of information also for identifying topic specific synonyms, indexing terms and citers’ motivations, i.e. the reasons why authors cite other works. Is a paper cited for comparison, as a source of data or just for additional info? What is the polarity of a citation? Different reasons for citing reveal also different weights of the citations and different impacts of the cited authors that go beyond the mere citation count metrics. Identifying the appropriate Citation Context is the first step toward a multitude of possible analysis and researches. So far, Citation Context have been defined in several ways in literature, related to different purposes, domains and applications. In this paper we present different dimensions of Citation Context investigated by researchers through the years in order to provide an introductory review of the topic to anyone approaching this subject.Possiamo pensare ai Contesti Citazionali come tante tessere che, unite, possono essere sfruttate per seguire l’opinione della comunità scientifica riguardo ad un determinato lavoro o per riassumerne i contenuti più importanti. Questo mosaico di informazioni può essere utilizzato per identificare sinonimi specifici e Index Terms nonchè per individuare i motivi degli autori dietro le citazioni. Identificare il Contesto Citazionale ottimale è il primo passo per numerose analisi e ricerche. Il Contesto Citazionale è stato definito in diversi modi in letteratura, in relazione a differenti scopi, domini e applicazioni. In questo paper presentiamo le principali dimensioni testuali di Contesto Citazionale investigate dai ricercatori nel corso degli anni
Effectiveness of combined extracorporeal shock-wave therapy and hyaluronic acid injections for patients with shoulder pain due to rotator cuff tendinopathy: a person-centered approach with a focus on gender differences to treatment response
Background
Rotator cuff (RC) tendinopathy is a common shoulder pain condition. Extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) and hyaluronic acid peritendinous injection are viable treatment options for RC tendinopathy.
The aim of this study is to evaluate the response in two different therapeutic rehabilitative approaches, the combined treatment ESWT plus hyaluronic acid injections (E + Hy) compared to ESWT alone (ESWT-al), in a cohort of patients with RC tendinopathy according to gender differences.
Methods
This is a retrospective longitudinal cohort study of patients with painful RC tendinopathy. Patients that had received a clinical evaluation, a shoulder ultra sound examination, as well as the Shoulder Pain and Disability Index (SPADI) questionnaire, and the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) for pain at baseline, 1-month (T1) and 2-month follow-ups (T2) were included.
Results
Medical records of 53 patients were analyzed. In the comparison between baseline to T1 and similarly from baseline to T2, a statistically significant reduction has been reported in the NRS (p < 0.001) and in the SPADI (p < 0.001) in the entire study group. At T1, patients in the E + Hy compared to ESWT-al group, showed a slight but statistically significant reductions in both NRS and SPADI score, while these changes were more evident at T2 (p < 0.001). Interestingly, a gender dimorphism in NRS and in SPADI was found, with female patients that apparently responded better to the combined E + Hy compared to ESWT-al approach.
Conclusion
This retrospective cohort study suggests that the combination of ESWT plus HyA injections seems to be more effective than ESWT alone in RC tendinopathy in both genders. Moreover, in ESWT alone treatment, male patients reported better outcomes compared to females. However, further randomized controlled trials should be structured to confirm and enforce these conclusions
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