Linking named entities to Wikipedia

Natural language is fraught with problems of ambiguity, including name reference. A name in text can refer to multiple entities just as an entity can be known by different names. This thesis examines how a mention in text can be linked to an external knowledge base (KB), in our case, Wikipedia. The named entity linking (NEL) task requires systems to identify the KB entry, or Wikipedia article, that a mention refers to; or, if the KB does not contain the correct entry, return NIL. Entity linking systems can be complex and we present a framework for analysing their different components, which we use to analyse three seminal systems which are evaluated on a common dataset and we show the importance of precise search for linking. The Text Analysis Conference (TAC) is a major venue for NEL research. We report on our submissions to the entity linking shared task in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The information required to disambiguate entities is often found in the text, close to the mention. We explore apposition, a common way for authors to provide information about entities. We model syntactic and semantic restrictions with a joint model that achieves state-of-the-art apposition extraction performance. We generalise from apposition to examine local descriptions specified close to the mention. We add local description to our state-of-the-art linker by using patterns to extract the descriptions and matching against this restricted context. Not only does this make for a more precise match, we are also able to model failure to match. Local descriptions help disambiguate entities, further improving our state-of-the-art linker. The work in this thesis seeks to link textual entity mentions to knowledge bases. Linking is important for any task where external world knowledge is used and resolving ambiguity is fundamental to advancing research into these problems

Men’s health – the impact of stroke

Stroke is a leading cause of adult death and the most common cause of complex disability in the UK. This article discusses the incidence and impact of stroke, focusing on a range of issues from a male perspective, including stroke prevention, psychological needs, sexuality and return to work. There are some gender differences in modifiable risk factors for stroke, and women have better knowledge of stroke symptomatology. For men, the development of post-stroke depression is associated with greater physical disability. (c) Sherborne Gibbs Limite

The private versus public infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa: An empirical validation

The macroeconomics of the relationship between the private and public infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa has been very unpredictable due to the region’s ineffective planning and policy formulation for infrastructure and service delivery. This paper examines the relationship between public and private infrastructure in subSaharan Africa. It also demonstrates that sub-Saharan Africa consumes more and invests less when compared to the industrialised world and that the present domestic investments in sub-Saharan Africa are actually more in the hands of the private sector. Lastly, an inference relationship for measuring and comparing economic stability between countries and regions was formulated, with the industrialised countries as a reference value.N/

Aseptic Operations for Post DHMR Processing of MOMA Mass Spectrometer

Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer - Mass Spectrometer (MOMA-MS) is an instrument in the MOMA instrument suite for the European Space Agency (ESA) ExoMars 2020 Rover. The rover is Planetary Protection Mission Category IVb, the first IVb mission since the Viking missions in the 1970s. Within the sample path of the MOMA instrument suite, the hardware surfaces of the must be sanitized to a level of less than 0.03 spore/m sq. To meet this requirement, the MS sample path was subjected to Dry Heat Microbial Reduction (DHMR) to decrease the number of viable spores by 4 orders of magnitude from a measured 88 spores/m sq to 0.009 spores/m sq. Before DHMR, the hardware is handled using standard cleanroom practices. After DHMR, planetary protection filters protect the sample path for most of integration, but when sample path exposure is required, aseptic operations are instituted and exposure times are kept to an absolute minimum. The surface area of exposure is also taken into account to determine safe exposure times. Before work begins, the ISO class 5 aseptic workspace is cleaned and tested for surface and airborne bioburden, and all tools that will contact or be used near sample path surfaces are sterilized. During the exposure activity, sterile garments are worn, sterile gloves are changed as often as necessary, and the environment is monitored with active and passive fallout for bioburden and real time airborne particle counts. Sterile tools are handled by a two person team so that the operator touches only the tool and not the exterior surfaces of the sterilization pouch, and a sterile operating field is established as a safe place to organize tools or parts during the aseptic operations. In cases where aseptic operations are not feasible, localized DHMR is used after exposure. Any breach in the planetary protection cleanliness can necessitate repeating instrument level DHMR, which not only has significant cost and schedule implications, it also become a risk to hardware that is not rated for repeated long exposures to high temperatures

Computational model of learning

The program described learns to improve its performance in the playing of a game, from experience. The main objectives of the project are that the system should observe the following principles: 1) The program should not rely on any special evaluation functions, which would embody domain-specific information. 2) Initial knowledge of the domain should be minimal, and further knowledge gained should be assimilated in terms of prior knowledge 3) The system of representation employed should as far as possible be independent of the domain, again avoiding the incorporation of domain-specific information. In customary Artificial Intelligence terms, the program is referred to as existing in a domain or environment. The model has a goal within this domain and has available certain actions which it may take in order to achieve its goal. The goal is represented as a Structure. This term will be used throughout to denote a set of objects from the domain, constrained by various domain-pertinent relationships. The actions, goals and objects are the initial known facts of the environment. The program has an innate ability to plan simple sequences of actions to achieve its goals. Inevitably, these plans do not take into account enough of the nature of the domain and prove inadequate. In such events the descriptive abilities of the program are invoked to correct the deficiency, and the program's model of its environment is enriched

Research Review: Early Childhood and the ‘Intergenerational Cycle of Domestic Violence’

This rapid evidence review was commissioned by the NSPCC to increase our understanding of the complex surrounding the evidence about domestic violence and the potential for this to impact on children's own violent behaviour, and any evidence of effectiveness of targeted interventions aimed at young families

Water use and management in an arid region: Fort Collins, Colorado, and vicinity

Submitted to the Water Resources Planning Fellowship Steering Committee, Colorado State University, in fulfillment of requirements for AE 795, Special study in planning.Bibliography: page 105

Pressure and particle motion detection thresholds in fish: A re-examination of salient auditory cues in teleosts

The auditory evoked potential technique has been used for the past 30years to evaluate the hearing ability of fish. The resulting audiograms are typically presented in terms of sound pressure (dB re. 1Pa) with the particle motion (dB re. 1ms–2) component largely ignored until recently. When audiograms have been presented in terms of particle acceleration, one of two approaches has been used for stimulus characterisation: measuring the pressure gradient between two hydrophones or using accelerometers. With rare exceptions these values are presented from experiments using a speaker as the stimulus, thus making it impossible to truly separate the contribution of direct particle motion and pressure detection in the response. Here, we compared the particle acceleration and pressure auditory thresholds of three species of fish with differing hearing specialisations, goldfish (Carassius auratus, weberian ossicles), bigeye (Pempheris adspersus, ligamentous hearing specialisation) and a third species with no swim bladder, the common triplefin (Forstergyian lappillum), using three different methods of determining particle acceleration. In terms of particle acceleration, all three fish species have similar hearing thresholds, but when expressed as pressure thresholds goldfish are the most sensitive, followed by bigeye, with triplefin the least sensitive. It is suggested here that all fish have a similar ability to detect the particle motion component of the sound field and it is their ability to transduce the pressure component of the sound field to the inner ear via ancillary hearing structures that provides the differences in hearing ability. Therefore, care is needed in stimuli presentation and measurement when determining hearing ability of fish and when interpreting comparative hearing abilities between species

Silver diamine fluoride for managing carious lesions:an umbrella review

Background: This umbrella review comprehensively appraised evidence for silver diamine fluoride (SDF) to arrest and prevent root and coronal caries by summarizing systematic reviews. Adverse events were explored. Methods: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, PROSPERO register and Joanna Briggs Institute Database of Systematic Reviews were searched for systematic reviews investigating SDF for caries prevention or arrest (1970–2018) without language restrictions. Systematic reviews were selected, data extracted, and risk of bias assessed using ROBIS by two independent reviewers, in duplicate. Corrected covered area was calculated to quantify studies’ overlap across reviews. Results: Eleven systematic reviews were included; four focussing on SDF for root caries in adults and seven on coronal caries in children. These cited 30 studies (4 root caries; 26 coronal caries) appearing 63 times. Five systematic reviews were of “low”, one“unclear” and five “high” risk of bias. Overlap of studies was very high (50% root caries; 17% coronal caries). High overlap and heterogeneity, mainly comparators and outcome measures, precluded meta-analysis. Results were grouped by aim and outcomes to present an overview of direction and magnitude of effect. SDF had a positive effect on prevention and arrest of coronal and root caries, consistently outperforming comparators (fluoride varnish, Atraumatic Restorative Treatment, placebo). For root caries prevention, the prevented fraction (PF) was 25–71% higher for SDF compared to placebo (two systematic reviews with three studies) and PF=100–725% for root caries arrest (one systematic review with two studies). For coronal caries prevention, PF=70–78% (two systematic reviews with two studies) and PF=55–96% for coronal caries arrest (one systematic review with two studies) with arrest rates of 65–91% (four systematic reviews with six studies). Eight systematic reviews reported adverse events, seven of which reported arrested lesions black staining. Conclusion: Systematic reviews consistently supported SDF’s effectiveness for arresting coronal caries in the primary dentition and arresting and preventing root caries in older adults for all comparators. There is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions on SDF for prevention in primary teeth and prevention and arrest in permanent teeth in children. No serious adverse events were reported