263 research outputs found
Retrieving descriptive phrases from large amounts of free text
This paper presents a system that retrieves descriptive phrases of proper nouns from free text. Sentences holding the specified noun are ranked using a technique based on pattern matching, word counting, and sentence location. No domain specific knowledge is used. Experiments show the system able to rank highly those sentences that contain phrases describing or defining the query noun. In contrast to existing methods, this system does not use parsing techniques but still achieves high levels of accuracy. From the results of a large-scale experiment, it is speculated that the success of this simpler method is due to the high quantities of free text being searched. Parallels between this work and recent findings in the very large corpus track of TREC are drawn
Concept-based Interactive Query Expansion Support Tool (CIQUEST)
This report describes a three-year project (2000-03) undertaken in the Information Studies
Department at The University of Sheffield and funded by Resource, The Council for
Museums, Archives and Libraries. The overall aim of the research was to provide user
support for query formulation and reformulation in searching large-scale textual resources
including those of the World Wide Web. More specifically the objectives were: to investigate
and evaluate methods for the automatic generation and organisation of concepts derived from
retrieved document sets, based on statistical methods for term weighting; and to conduct
user-based evaluations on the understanding, presentation and retrieval effectiveness of
concept structures in selecting candidate terms for interactive query expansion.
The TREC test collection formed the basis for the seven evaluative experiments conducted in
the course of the project. These formed four distinct phases in the project plan. In the first
phase, a series of experiments was conducted to investigate further techniques for concept
derivation and hierarchical organisation and structure. The second phase was concerned with
user-based validation of the concept structures. Results of phases 1 and 2 informed on the
design of the test system and the user interface was developed in phase 3. The final phase
entailed a user-based summative evaluation of the CiQuest system.
The main findings demonstrate that concept hierarchies can effectively be generated from
sets of retrieved documents and displayed to searchers in a meaningful way. The approach
provides the searcher with an overview of the contents of the retrieved documents, which in
turn facilitates the viewing of documents and selection of the most relevant ones. Concept
hierarchies are a good source of terms for query expansion and can improve precision. The
extraction of descriptive phrases as an alternative source of terms was also effective. With
respect to presentation, cascading menus were easy to browse for selecting terms and for
viewing documents. In conclusion the project dissemination programme and future work are
outlined
Automatically organising images using concept hierarchies
In this paper we discuss the use of concept hierarchies, an approach to automatically organize a set of documents based upon a set of concepts derived from the documents themselves for image retrieval. Co-occurrence between terms associated with image captions and a statistical relation called subsumption are used to generate term clusters which are organized hierarchically. Previously, the approach has been studied for document retrieval and results have shown that automatically generating hierarchies can help users with their search task. In this paper we present an implementation of concept hierarchies for image retrieval, together with preliminary ad-hoc evaluation. Although our approach requires more investigation, initial results from a prototype system are promising and would appear to provide a useful summary of the search results
Spatio-textual indexing for geographical search on the web
Many web documents refer to specific geographic localities and many
people include geographic context in queries to web search engines. Standard
web search engines treat the geographical terms in the same way as other terms.
This can result in failure to find relevant documents that refer to the place of
interest using alternative related names, such as those of included or nearby
places. This can be overcome by associating text indexing with spatial indexing
methods that exploit geo-tagging procedures to categorise documents with
respect to geographic space. We describe three methods for spatio-textual
indexing based on multiple spatially indexed text indexes, attaching spatial
indexes to the document occurrences of a text index, and merging text index
access results with results of access to a spatial index of documents. These
schemes are compared experimentally with a conventional text index search
engine, using a collection of geo-tagged web documents, and are shown to be
able to compete in speed and storage performance with pure text indexing
Document frequency and term specificity
Document frequency is used in various applications in Information Retrieval and other related fields. An
assumption frequently made is that the document frequency represents a level of the term’s specificity. However,
empirical results to support this assumption are limited. Therefore, a large-scale experiment was carried out,
using multiple corpora, to gain further insight into the relationship between the document frequency and terms
specificity. The results show that the assumption holds only at the very specific levels that cover the majority of
vocabulary. The results also show that a larger corpus is more accurate at estimating the specificity. However,
the co-occurrence information is shown to be effective for improving the accuracy when only a small corpus is
available
Towards Quantitative Simulations of High Power Proton Cyclotrons
PSI operates a cyclotron based high intensity proton accelerator routinely at
an average beam power of 1.3MW. With this power the facility is at the
worldwide forefront of high intensity proton accelerators. The beam current is
practically limited by losses at extraction and the resulting activation of
accelerator components. Further intensity upgrades and new projects aiming at
an even higher average beam power, are only possible if the relative losses can
be lowered in proportion, thus keeping absolute losses at a constant level.
Maintaining beam losses at levels allowing hands-on maintenance is a primary
challenge in any high power proton machine design and operation. In
consequence, predicting beam halo at these levels is a great challenge and will
be addressed in this paper. High power hadron driver have being used in many
disciplines of science and, a growing interest in the cyclotron technology for
high power hadron drivers are being observed very recently. This report will
briefly introduce OPAL, a tool for precise beam dynamics simulations including
3D space charge. One of OPAL's flavors (OPAL-cycl) is dedicated to high power
cyclotron modeling and is explained in greater detail. We then explain how to
obtain initial conditions for our PSI Ring cyclotron which still delivers the
world record in beam power of 1.3 MW continuous wave (cw). Several crucial
steps are explained necessary to be able to predict tails at the level of
3\sigma ... 4\sigma in the PSI Ring cyclotron. We compare our results at the
extraction with measurements, obtained with a 1.18 MW cw production beam. Based
on measurement data, we develop a simple linear model to predict beam sizes of
the extracted beam as a function of intensities and confirm the model with
simulations.Comment: Corrections and new figur
Light maxillary expansion forces with the magnetic expansion device. A preliminary investigation
An active maxillary magnetic expansion device (MED) was developed to be used clinically. The aim was to show the effects of light and continuous forces producing less traumatic stimulation of maxillary sutural growth than a conventional rapid maxillary expansion device. In this study, two different types of appliances were used on six patients between 7 years 4 months and 16 years 2 months: the first type was bonded, the other one used bands. For better appreciation, four implants were placed on each patient: two apically between central and lateral incisors, and two between second premolars and molars. A standardized radio-graphic technique was used to take occlusal radiographs, and postero-anterior and lateral headplates. The results varied according to the age and the appliance used. The skeletal effect with the banded MED was between 16 and 77 per cent, and for the bonded MED 0 and 25 per cent in comparison to the overall expansion. It seems that 250-500 g of continuous magnetic forces can produce dental and skeletal movements in a light force expansion concept, but further studies with larger samples are needed to make firm conclusion
Knowledge on prevention and management of preeclampsia and eclampsia among nurses in primary health settings: baseline findings from an interventional study in Dodoma Region, Tanzania
Background: Preeclampsia and eclampsia are conditions which increase maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality worldwide.These conditions are ranked as the second leading cause of maternal deaths. Nurses have a critical role in preventing and managing preeclampsia. However, their knowledge has not been evaluated particularly among those working in primary health facilities, where opportunities for continue education is limited.Objective: To assess knowledge on prevention and management of preeclampsia and eclampsia among nurses working in the primary health care settings.Methods: Analysis of baseline data from an intervention study which test the effectiveness of simulation-based training on obstetric and neonatal emergencies among nurses in managing maternal and newborn emergencies in primary health care settings. A total of 39 primary health centres within 7 districts in Dodoma Region were selected to take part in the interventional study. Individual participants were nurses working in maternity units were involved. 172 nurses were selected using a simple random method. Nurses’ knowledge on prevention and management of PEE and its predictors were assessed using a self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics analysis was done to determine the distribution of the background characteristics of nurses and logistic regression analysis was performed to explore predictors of nurses’ knowledgeResults: Overall knowledge on preeclampsia and eclampsia was 88 (51.2%). Professional qualification was a predictor associated with a nurse’s knowledge about preeclampsia and eclampsia. Registered nurses were more knowledgeable compared to enrolled nurses (AOR3.311; CI, 1.62 to 6.768; P value =.001), years of working experience showed no association with knowledge on preeclampsia and eclampsia (AOR 0.98; CI: 0.39-2.47; P values = 0.970)Conclusion: This study showed there is a critical knowledge deficiency in the prevention and management of preeclampsia and eclampsia among nurses working in maternal units of primary health care setting. Effective regular training on prevention and management of preeclampsia and eclampsia for frontline nurses is required in order to improve maternal and neonatal survival
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