Twenty-five years of end-user searching, Part 1: Research findings

This is the first part of a two-part article that reviews 25 years of published research findings on end-user searching in online information retrieval (IR) systems. In Part 1 (Markey, 2007 ), the author seeks to answer the following questions: What characterizes the queries that end users submit to online IR systems? What search features do people use? What features would enable them to improve on the retrievals they have in hand? What features are hardly ever used? What do end users do in response to the system's retrievals? Are end users satisfied with their online searches? Summarizing searches of online IR systems by the search features people use everyday makes information retrieval appear to be a very simplistic one-stop event. In Part 2, the author examines current models of the information retrieval process, demonstrating that information retrieval is much more complex and involves changes in cognition, feelings, and/or events during the information seeking process. She poses a host of new research questions that will further our understanding about end-user searching of online IR systems.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56093/1/20462_ftp.pd

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Drug Repurposing: A Systematic Approach to Evaluate Candidate Oral Neuroprotective Interventions for Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis

Objective: To develop and implement an evidence based framework to select, from drugs already licenced, candidate oral neuroprotective drugs to be tested in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Design: Systematic review of clinical studies of oral putative neuroprotective therapies in MS and four other neurodegenerative diseases with shared pathological features, followed by systematic review and meta-analyses of the in vivo experimental data for those interventions. We presented summary data to an international multi-disciplinary committee, which assessed each drug in turn using pre-specified criteria including consideration of mechanism of action. Results: We identified a short list of fifty-two candidate interventions. After review of all clinical and pre-clinical evidence we identified ibudilast, riluzole, amiloride, pirfenidone, fluoxetine, oxcarbazepine, and the polyunsaturated fatty-acid class (Linoleic Acid, Lipoic acid; Omega-3 fatty acid, Max EPA oil) as lead candidates for clinical evaluation. Conclusions: We demonstrate a standardised and systematic approach to candidate identification for drug rescue and repurposing trials that can be applied widely to neurodegenerative disorders

Towards modeling the retailer as a brand: A social construction of the grocery store from the customer standpoint

As a highly customer-sensitive business, retailing is one of the most socially active industries. Nevertheless, when addressing retailers as brands, the retailing literature has failed to account for their unique social orientation, exposing a gap in the literature. This paper utilizes the sociological view of brands to socially construct a conceptual retail brand model from the customer standpoint. An ethnographic study of grocery retailing revealed that the store has, metaphorically, a tree-shaped culture, which can organically model the interplay between building the retailer brand as a culture and the phases constituting the social-self concept

Failed species, innominate forms, and the vain search for species limits: Cryptic diversity in dusky salamanders (Desmognathus) of eastern Tennessee

Cytochrome B sequences and allozymes reveal complex patterns of molecular variation in dusky salamander (Desmognathus) populations in eastern Tennessee. One group of allozymically distinctive populations, which we refer to as the Sinking Creek form (SCF), combines morphological attributes of Desmognathus fuscus with cytB sequences characteristic of Desmognathus carolinensis. This form is abruptly replaced by D. fuscus just north of Johnson City, TN with no evidence of either sympatry or gene exchange. To the south, allozymic markers indicate a broad zone of admixture with populations characterized by distinct cytB sequences and that may or may not be ultimately referable to Desmognathus conanti. A third distinctive group of populations, which we refer to as the Lemon Gap form (LGF), occurs in the foothills of the Great Smoky and southern Bald Mountains and exchanges genes with Desmognathus santeetlah along the escarpment of the Great Smokies, D. carolinensis in the southern Bald Mountains, and populations of a different haplotype clade in the Ridge and Valley. We treat all these as innominate forms that may represent “failed species,” recognizing that it may never be possible to reconcile species limits with patterns of phylogeny, morphology, and gene exchange in these salamanders

Banking and Financial Crises in United States History: What Guidance can History Offer Policymakers?

This paper assesses the validity of comparisons of the current financial crisis with past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, an antecedent to the modern investment bank. For the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which were less directly linked to the existing lender of last resort, similar to investment banks in 2008. The popular press has made numerous references to the banking crises (there were three main ones) of the Great Depression as relevant comparisons to the present crisis. This paper argues that such an analogy is inaccurate in general

Vocal Culture in the Age of Laryngoscopy

For several months beginning in 1884, readers of Life, Science, Health, the Atlantic Monthly and similar magazines would have encountered half-page advertisements for a newly patented medical device called the ‘ammoniaphone’ (Figure 2.1). Invented and promoted by a Scottish doctor named Carter Moffat and endorsed by the soprano Adelina Patti, British Prime Minister William Gladstone and the Princess of Wales, the ammoniaphone promised a miraculous transformation in the voices of its users. It was recommended for ‘vocalists, clergymen, public speakers, parliamentary men, readers, reciters, lecturers, leaders of psalmody, schoolmasters, amateurs, church choirs, barristers, and all persons who have to use their voices professionally, or who desire to greatly improve their speaking or singing tones’. Some estimates indicated that Moffat sold upwards of 30,000 units, yet the ammoniaphone was a flash in the pan as far as such things go, fading from public view after 1886

Opera and Hypnosis: Victor Maurel’s Experiments with Verdi’s Otello

One day in his private home on the avenue Bugeaud, in Paris’s sixteenth arrondissement, the famous baritone Victor Maurel hosted a meeting which combined music with hypnotism of a young woman