Spatial information retrieval and geographical ontologies: an overview of the SPIRIT project

A large proportion of the resources available on the world-wide web refer to information that may be regarded as geographically located. Thus most activities and enterprises take place in one or more places on the Earth's surface and there is a wealth of survey data, images, maps and reports that relate to specific places or regions. Despite the prevalence of geographical context, existing web search facilities are poorly adapted to help people find information that relates to a particular location. When the name of a place is typed into a typical search engine, web pages that include that name in their text will be retrieved, but it is likely that many resources that are also associated with the place may not be retrieved. Thus resources relating to places that are inside the specified place may not be found, nor may be places that are nearby or that are equivalent but referred to by another name. Specification of geographical context frequently requires the use of spatial relationships concerning distance or containment for example, yet such terminology cannot be understood by existing search engines. Here we provide a brief survey of existing facilities for geographical information retrieval on the web, before describing a set of tools and techniques that are being developed in the project SPIRIT : Spatially-Aware Information Retrieval on the Internet (funded by European Commission Framework V Project IST-2001-35047)

A Geographical Analysis of Canadian Students Taking Independent Music Lessons: The Rural Experience

The engagement of students taking private music lessons is affected by a range of factors, one of which is the geographic location of the student’s family. This is a geographical analysis of 6,500 questionnaire responses completed by Canadian music teachers, students, and parents, including 819 responses (12.6%) from participants living in ‘rural’ areas, as defined by Statistics Canada. Participants’ home locations were categorized on a five-point ordinal scale from ‘rural’ to ‘very large urban population center’, data-matched with further geospatial data relating to deprivation and road distances, and assessed for strength and direction of association with questionnaire items. Results revealed that students living in more rural areas performed more regularly than those in more urban areas, with parents and teachers in more rural areas taking greater part in collective music making events. Whilst they derived a smaller proportion of their household income from music, teachers in more rural areas garnered greater respect from parents. Parents also reported increasing pleasure in children’s musical progress as population centers decreased in size. The results offer tentative support to the view that in more rural situations, where there are potentially fewer students and teachers, closer intergenerational bonds are possible, and more aspects of private music lessons might reflect locally-valued traditions and resources

Characterising and mapping potential and experienced tranquillity: From a state of mind to a cultural ecosystem service

Tranquil places that induce a sense of calm and peacefulness are important for those seeking respite from their stressful everyday lives. Although tranquillity is a word commonly used in everyday English, we show that its definition is complex, most often encompassing sight and hearing, with strong cultural and historical influences. To shed light on the concept of tranquillity and related research in geography and other disciplines, we (i) trace how tranquillity has been conceptualised and characterised (ii) outline how the potential for tranquillity has been modelled in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and (iii) highlight methods capable of extracting individual experiences of tranquillity from interviews, public participation GIS and text analysis. We conclude by charting a research agenda for tranquillity that makes a case for theory development across disciplines including human geography, GIS, and environmental psychology, with interdisciplinary methodologies that should be implemented and developed to better reflect the importance of the combination of physical environment and lived human experience in shaping experienced tranquillity. Based on its importance for people's well‐being, we argue for the recognition of tranquillity as a cultural ecosystem service in its own right. Finally, we call for a more holistic inclusion of tranquillity in policy‐making and planning, where a focus on tranquillity and associated positive landscape and soundscape elements could help extend the focus beyond simply protection from noise, towards creating liveable and healthy environments for the future

Characterising and mapping potential and experienced tranquillity: from a state of mind to a cultural ecosystem service

Tranquil places that induce a sense of calm and peacefulness are important for those seeking respite from their stressful everyday lives. Although tranquillity is a word commonly used in everyday English, we show that its definition is complex, most often encompassing sight and hearing, with strong cultural and historical influences. To shed light on the concept of tranquillity and related research in geography and other disciplines, we (i) trace how tranquillity has been conceptualised and characterised (ii) outline how the potential for tranquillity has been modelled in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and (iii) highlight methods capable of extracting individual experiences of tranquillity from interviews, public participation GIS and text analysis. We conclude by charting a research agenda for tranquillity that makes a case for theory development across disciplines including human geography, GIS, and environmental psychology, with interdisciplinary methodologies that should be implemented and developed to better reflect the importance of the combination of physical environment and lived human experience in shaping experienced tranquillity. Based on its importance for people's well-being, we argue for the recognition of tranquillity as a cultural ecosystem service in its own right. Finally, we call for a more holistic inclusion of tranquillity in policy-making and planning, where a focus on tranquillity and associated positive landscape and soundscape elements could help extend the focus beyond simply protection from noise, towards creating liveable and healthy environments for the future

Phenolic compounds profiling in zero-tannin and tannin-containing lentil seeds

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Characterising and mapping potential and experienced tranquillity : From a state of mind to a cultural ecosystem service

Funding Information: Many thanks to Graeme Willis (Campaign to Protect Rural England) and Nick Groome (Ordnance Survey) for their help in accessing the National Tranquillity Mapping Data. We would like to thank all the contributors to Geograph British Isles (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License) whose contributions were used to map tranquil and silent locations in the Lake District.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Investigating sense of place as a cultural ecosystem service in different landscapes through the lens of language

We are grateful for the comments and feedback of three anonymous reviewers. We thank Olga Chesnokova for her help in calculating cosine similarity measures. The research on which this paper is based was financially supported by the cogito foundation through the project ‘How language shapes our sense of place’, grant no. 15-129-R.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A methodology to allow avalanche forecasting on an information retrieval system

This paper presents adaptations and tests undertaken to allow an information retrieval (IR) system to forecast the likelihood of avalanches on a particular day. The forecasting process uses historical data of the weather and avalanche conditions for a large number of days. A method for adapting these data into a form usable by a text-based IR system is first described, followed by tests showing the resulting system’s accuracy to be equal to existing ‘custom built’ forecasting systems. From this, it is concluded that the adaptation methodology is effective at allowing such data to be used in a text-based IR system. A number of advantages in using an IR system for avalanche forecasting are also presented

‘This is not the jungle, this is my barbecho’ : semantics of ethnoecological landscape categories in the Bolivian Amazon

This work was supported from the ‘Forschungskredit’ by the University of Zurich [grant number FK-13-104]; Hans Vontobel Foundation; Maya Behn-Eschenburg Foundation; Ormella Foundation; and Parrotia Foundation.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Serum alpha-feto-protein* III. Electrophoresis of sera from cases of primary cancer of the liver: an electrophoretic variant

No Abstrac