A Semantic Web of Know-How: Linked Data for Community-Centric Tasks

This paper proposes a novel framework for representing community know-how on the Semantic Web. Procedural knowledge generated by web communities typically takes the form of natural language instructions or videos and is largely unstructured. The absence of semantic structure impedes the deployment of many useful applications, in particular the ability to discover and integrate know-how automatically. We discuss the characteristics of community know-how and argue that existing knowledge representation frameworks fail to represent it adequately. We present a novel framework for representing the semantic structure of community know-how and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by providing a concrete implementation which includes a method for automatically acquiring procedural knowledge for real-world tasks.Comment: 6th International Workshop on Web Intelligence & Communities (WIC14), Proceedings of the companion publication of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW 2014

Perinatal maternal anxiety and the quality of mother-child interactions in IUGR dyads

openHuman development begins during pregnancy within the womb, where fetal programming occurs, shaping individual differences in health outcomes and diseases throughout life. Adverse experiences in pregnancy can have permanent effects on programming due to fetal adaptations aimed at survival, as in the case of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). IUGR is a complex obstetric problem defined by the inability of the fetus to reach its biologically determined growth potential in utero due to nutritional abnormalities, which makes the individual vulnerable to adverse outcomes in different areas of development. In the theoretical part, I defined the IUGR condition outlining its possible causes and consequences, focusing on social-emotional and behavioral development, illustrated the construct of perinatal maternal anxiety and the effects it can have on mother and child, and finally outlined the concept of the quality of dyadic interactions, dwelling on the construct of emotional availability. In the research part, instead, I devised four hypotheses: the first involves a comparison between IUGR mothers and those with physiological pregnancies regarding maternal perinatal anxiety, as measured through the STAI-Y-S during pregnancy and at 4 months post-partum. The second and third hypotheses aim to compare IUGR and non-IUGR mothers and children, respectively, on the quality of dyadic exchanges, measured through the EAS scales at 4 months. Finally, the fourth hypothesis aims to explore whether, respectively, IUGR condition and maternal anxiety are predictive of the scores obtained in the EAS scales.Human development begins during pregnancy within the womb, where fetal programming occurs, shaping individual differences in health outcomes and diseases throughout life. Adverse experiences in pregnancy can have permanent effects on programming due to fetal adaptations aimed at survival, as in the case of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). IUGR is a complex obstetric problem defined by the inability of the fetus to reach its biologically determined growth potential in utero due to nutritional abnormalities, which makes the individual vulnerable to adverse outcomes in different areas of development. In the theoretical part, I defined the IUGR condition outlining its possible causes and consequences, focusing on social-emotional and behavioral development, illustrated the construct of perinatal maternal anxiety and the effects it can have on mother and child, and finally outlined the concept of the quality of dyadic interactions, dwelling on the construct of emotional availability. In the research part, instead, I devised four hypotheses: the first involves a comparison between IUGR mothers and those with physiological pregnancies regarding maternal perinatal anxiety, as measured through the STAI-Y-S during pregnancy and at 4 months post-partum. The second and third hypotheses aim to compare IUGR and non-IUGR mothers and children, respectively, on the quality of dyadic exchanges, measured through the EAS scales at 4 months. Finally, the fourth hypothesis aims to explore whether, respectively, IUGR condition and maternal anxiety are predictive of the scores obtained in the EAS scales

The Chinese are coming – is Fiji ready? A study of Chinese tourists to Fiji

Many tourism destinations are diversifying to new markets, and specifically to the Chinese outbound market to sustain their tourism industry. China has also been the fastest growing emerging market for Fiji. However, China is not a homogenous market. Their motivations and expectations differ from people from Western countries or even those from other parts of Asia. There has been limited research carried out on the Chinese outbound tourists to Pacific Island Countries. This study employed a survey questionnaire to 149 Chinese visitors to Fiji to identify the socio-demographics of Chinese visitors to Fiji and to assess their perceptions of Fiji as a tourist destination following their visit. The results provided a basic understanding of the profile of the Chinese tourist to Fiji in terms of their gender, marital status, education, residence, previous outbound experience, destination attributes and perceptions of their visit to Fiji

Enhancement of rare-earth--transition-metal exchange interaction in Pr2_{2}Fe17_{17} probed by inelastic neutron scattering

The fundamental magnetic interactions of Pr$_{2}$Fe$_{17}$ are studied by inelastic neutron scattering and anisotropy field measurements. Data analysis confirms the presence of three magnetically inequivalent sites, and reveals an exceptionally large value of the exchange field. The unexpected importance of $J$-mixing effects in the description of the ground-state properties of Pr$_{2}$Fe$_{17}$ is evidenced, and possible applications of related compounds are envisaged.Comment: 4 RevTeX pages, 4 EPS figures. Accepted for publication by Appl. Phys. Lett. (will be found at http://apl.aip.org

Understanding informal volunteer behavior for fast and resilient disaster recovery: An application of entrepreneurial effectuation theory

Purpose. Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster. Design/methodology/approach. We examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures. Findings. We find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers. Practical implications. Informal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts. Social implications. Through their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communities Originality/value. This study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept

Attribution: a computational approach

Our society is overwhelmed with an ever growing amount of information. Effective management of this information requires novel ways to filter and select the most relevant pieces of information. Some of this information can be associated with the source or sources expressing it. Sources and their relation to what they express affect information and whether we perceive it as relevant, biased or truthful. In news texts in particular, it is common practice to report third-party statements and opinions. Recognizing relations of attribution is therefore a necessary step toward detecting statements and opinions of specific sources and selecting and evaluating information on the basis of its source. The automatic identification of Attribution Relations has applications in numerous research areas. Quotation and opinion extraction, discourse and factuality have all partly addressed the annotation and identification of Attribution Relations. However, disjoint efforts have provided a partial and partly inaccurate picture of attribution. Moreover, these research efforts have generated small or incomplete resources, thus limiting the applicability of machine learning approaches. Existing approaches to extract Attribution Relations have focused on rule-based models, which are limited both in coverage and precision. This thesis presents a computational approach to attribution that recasts attribution extraction as the identification of the attributed text, its source and the lexical cue linking them in a relation. Drawing on preliminary data-driven investigation, I present a comprehensive lexicalised approach to attribution and further refine and test a previously defined annotation scheme. The scheme has been used to create a corpus annotated with Attribution Relations, with the goal of contributing a large and complete resource than can lay the foundations for future attribution studies. Based on this resource, I developed a system for the automatic extraction of attribution relations that surpasses traditional syntactic pattern-based approaches. The system is a pipeline of classification and sequence labelling models that identify and link each of the components of an attribution relation. The results show concrete opportunities for attribution-based applications

Giant entropy change at the co-occurrence of structural and magnetic transitions in the Ni2.19Mn0.81Ga Heusler alloy

In this paper we report the existence of a giant magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in a intermetallic compound non-containing rare-earth. This effect is associated with the concomitant occurrence of a structural and a magnetic transition. The result has been compared with that obtained in a parent compound in which magnetic and structural transition occur separately.Comment: PDF file from MS-Word 2000 document, 13 pages (text) plus 6 figures; corrected typo