ASK FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: PART I. BACKGROUND AND THEORY

We report the results of a British Library Research and Development Department funded design study for an interactive information retrieval system which will determine structural representations of the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs, and attempt to resolve the anomalies through a variety of retrieval strategies performed on a database of documents represented in compatible structural formats. Part I discusses the background to the project and the theory underlying it, Part II (next issue) presents our methods, results and conclusions. Basic premises of the project were: that information needs are not in principle precisely specifiable; that it is possible to elicit problem statements from information system users from which representations of the ASK underlying the need can be derived; that there are classes of ASKs; and, that all elements of information retrieval systems ought to be based on the user\u27s ASK. We have developed a relatively freeform interview technique for eliciting problem statements, and a statistical word co-occurrence analysis for deriving network representations of the problem statements and abstracts. Structural characteristics of the representations have been used to determine classes of ASKs, and both ASK and information structures have been evaluated by, respectively, users and authors. Some results are: that interviewing appears to be a satisfactory technique for eliciting problem statements from which ASKs can be determined; that the statistical analysis produces structures which are generally appropriate both for documents and problem statements; that ASKs thus represented can be usefully classified according to their structural characteristics; and, that of thirty-five subjects, only two had ASKs for which traditional \u27best match\u27 retrieval would be intuitively appropriate. The results of the design study indicate that at least some of our premises are reasonable, and that an ASK-based information retrieval system is at least feasible

ASK FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: PART II. RESULTS OF A DESIGN STUDY

In \u27ASK for Information Retrieval: Part P1, we discussed the theory and background to a design study for an information retrieval (IR) system based on the attempt to represent the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs. In Part 11, we report the methods and results of the design study, and our conclusions

Celebrating Stephen Robertson's retirement

Stephen Robertson retired from the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge during the summer of 2013 after a long career as one of the most influential, well-liked and eminent researchers in Information Retrieval throughout the world

User interfaces for information systems

This paper presents descriptions of four information-system interface projects in progress at ESRIN, each demonstrating a somewhat different approach to interface design, but ali sharing the commonality of responding to user goals, tasks and characteristics. It is suggested that next-generation scientific information systems will have to be designed for direct access by end users to a large variety of information sources, through a commom interface. Design of such systems, including their interfaces, should be based on a multi-level analysis of user goals, tasks and domain views.Se describen cuatro proyectos de interfaces de sistemas de información que se están desarrollando en ESRIN (establecimiento de la Agencia Espacial Europea, en Frascati). Cada uno de ellos muestra un enfoque diferente del diseño de interfaces, pero todos tienen en común el responder a los objetivos, tareas y características de los usuarios. Se sugiere que la próxima generación de sistemas de información científica se tendrá que diseñar para permitir el acceso directo de los usuarios finales a una gran variedad de fuentes de información a través de una interfaz común. El diseño de tales sistemas y de sus interfaces debería basarse en un análisis multinivel de objetivos, tareas y puntos de vista propios de la materia de trabajo de cada usuario

Semantic distillation: a method for clustering objects by their contextual specificity

Techniques for data-mining, latent semantic analysis, contextual search of databases, etc. have long ago been developed by computer scientists working on information retrieval (IR). Experimental scientists, from all disciplines, having to analyse large collections of raw experimental data (astronomical, physical, biological, etc.) have developed powerful methods for their statistical analysis and for clustering, categorising, and classifying objects. Finally, physicists have developed a theory of quantum measurement, unifying the logical, algebraic, and probabilistic aspects of queries into a single formalism. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to show that when formulated at an abstract level, problems from IR, from statistical data analysis, and from physical measurement theories are very similar and hence can profitably be cross-fertilised, and, secondly, to propose a novel method of fuzzy hierarchical clustering, termed \textit{semantic distillation} -- strongly inspired from the theory of quantum measurement --, we developed to analyse raw data coming from various types of experiments on DNA arrays. We illustrate the method by analysing DNA arrays experiments and clustering the genes of the array according to their specificity.Comment: Accepted for publication in Studies in Computational Intelligence, Springer-Verla

Nonmonotonic Decay of Nonequilibrium Polariton Condensate in Direct-Gap Semiconductors

Time evolution of a nonequilibrium polariton condensate has been studied in the framework of a microscopic approach. It has been shown that due to polariton-polariton scattering a significant condensate depletion takes place in a comparatively short time interval. The condensate decay occurs in the form of multiple echo signals. Distribution-function dynamics of noncondensate polaritons have been investigated. It has been shown that at the initial stage of evolution the distribution function has the form of a bell. Then oscillations arise in the contour of the distribution function, which further transform into small chaotic ripples. The appearance of a short-wavelength wing of the distribution function has been demonstrated. We have pointed out the enhancement and then partial extinction of the sharp extra peak arising within the time interval characterized by small values of polariton condensate density and its relatively slow changes.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX 2.09; in press in PR

Rhythmic dynamics and synchronization via dimensionality reduction : application to human gait

Reliable characterization of locomotor dynamics of human walking is vital to understanding the neuromuscular control of human locomotion and disease diagnosis. However, the inherent oscillation and ubiquity of noise in such non-strictly periodic signals pose great challenges to current methodologies. To this end, we exploit the state-of-the-art technology in pattern recognition and, specifically, dimensionality reduction techniques, and propose to reconstruct and characterize the dynamics accurately on the cycle scale of the signal. This is achieved by deriving a low-dimensional representation of the cycles through global optimization, which effectively preserves the topology of the cycles that are embedded in a high-dimensional Euclidian space. Our approach demonstrates a clear advantage in capturing the intrinsic dynamics and probing the subtle synchronization patterns from uni/bivariate oscillatory signals over traditional methods. Application to human gait data for healthy subjects and diabetics reveals a significant difference in the dynamics of ankle movements and ankle-knee coordination, but not in knee movements. These results indicate that the impaired sensory feedback from the feet due to diabetes does not influence the knee movement in general, and that normal human walking is not critically dependent on the feedback from the peripheral nervous system

A Regularized Graph Layout Framework for Dynamic Network Visualization

Many real-world networks, including social and information networks, are dynamic structures that evolve over time. Such dynamic networks are typically visualized using a sequence of static graph layouts. In addition to providing a visual representation of the network structure at each time step, the sequence should preserve the mental map between layouts of consecutive time steps to allow a human to interpret the temporal evolution of the network. In this paper, we propose a framework for dynamic network visualization in the on-line setting where only present and past graph snapshots are available to create the present layout. The proposed framework creates regularized graph layouts by augmenting the cost function of a static graph layout algorithm with a grouping penalty, which discourages nodes from deviating too far from other nodes belonging to the same group, and a temporal penalty, which discourages large node movements between consecutive time steps. The penalties increase the stability of the layout sequence, thus preserving the mental map. We introduce two dynamic layout algorithms within the proposed framework, namely dynamic multidimensional scaling (DMDS) and dynamic graph Laplacian layout (DGLL). We apply these algorithms on several data sets to illustrate the importance of both grouping and temporal regularization for producing interpretable visualizations of dynamic networks.Comment: To appear in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, supporting material (animations and MATLAB toolbox) available at http://tbayes.eecs.umich.edu/xukevin/visualization_dmkd_201