Using Crowdsourcing for Fine-Grained Entity Type Completion in Knowledge Bases

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of large-scale Knowledge Bases (KBs). However, many entities in KBs have incomplete type information, and some are totally untyped. Even worse, fine-grained types (e.g., BasketballPlayer) containing rich semantic meanings are more likely to be incomplete, as they are more difficult to be obtained. Existing machine-based algorithms use predicates (e.g., birthPlace) of entities to infer their missing types, and they have limitations that the predicates may be insufficient to infer fine-grained types. In this paper, we utilize crowdsourcing to solve the problem, and address the challenge of controlling crowdsourcing cost. To this end, we propose a hybrid machine-crowdsourcing approach for fine-grained entity type completion. It firstly determines the types of some “representative” entities via crowdsourcing and then infers the types for remaining entities based on the crowdsourcing results. To support this approach, we first propose an embedding-based influence for type inference which considers not only the distance between entity embeddings but also the distances between entity and type embeddings. Second, we propose a new difficulty model for entity selection which can better capture the uncertainty of the machine algorithm when identifying the entity types. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through experiments on real crowdsourcing platforms. The results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms by improving the effectiveness of fine-grained type completion at affordable crowdsourcing cost.Peer reviewe

Winter Bird Assemblages in Rural and Urban Environments: A National Survey

Urban development has a marked effect on the ecological and behavioural traits of many living organisms, including birds. In this paper, we analysed differences in the numbers of wintering birds between rural and urban areas in Poland. We also analysed species richness and abundance in relation to longitude, latitude, human population size, and landscape structure. All these parameters were analysed using modern statistical techniques incorporating species detectability. We counted birds in 156 squares (0.25 km2 each) in December 2012 and again in January 2013 in locations in and around 26 urban areas across Poland (in each urban area we surveyed 3 squares and 3 squares in nearby rural areas). The influence of twelve potential environmental variables on species abundance and richness was assessed with Generalized Linear Mixed Models, Principal Components and Detrended Correspondence Analyses. Totals of 72 bird species and 89,710 individual birds were recorded in this study. On average (±SE) 13.3 ± 0.3 species and 288 ± 14 individuals were recorded in each square in each survey. A formal comparison of rural and urban areas revealed that 27 species had a significant preference; 17 to rural areas and 10 to urban areas. Moreover, overall abundance in urban areas was more than double that of rural areas. There was almost a complete separation of rural and urban bird communities. Significantly more birds and more bird species were recorded in January compared to December. We conclude that differences between rural and urban areas in terms of winter conditions and the availability of resources are reflected in different bird communities in the two environments

Biodiversity on Broadway - Enigmatic Diversity of the Societies of Ants (Formicidae) on the Streets of New York City

Each year, a larger proportion of the Earth's surface is urbanized, and a larger proportion of the people on Earth lives in those urban areas. The everyday nature, however, that humans encounter in cities remains poorly understood. Here, we consider perhaps the most urban green habitat, street medians. We sampled ants from forty-four medians along three boulevards in New York City and examined how median properties affect the abundance and species richness of native and introduced ants found on them. Ant species richness varied among streets and increased with area but was independent of the other median attributes measured. Ant assemblages were highly nested, with three numerically dominant species present at all medians and additional species present at a subset of medians. The most common ant species were the introduced Pavement ant (Tetramorium caespitum) and the native Thief ant (Solenopsis molesta) and Cornfield ant (Lasius neoniger). The common introduced species on the medians responded differently to natural and disturbed elements of medians. Tetramorium caespitum was most abundant in small medians, with the greatest edge/area ratio, particularly if those medians had few trees, whereas Nylanderia flavipes was most abundant in the largest medians, particularly if they had more trees. Many of the species encountered in Manhattan were similar to those found in other large North American cities, such that a relatively small subset of ant species probably represent most of the encounters humans have with ants in North America

Audit quality, auditor behaviour and the psychological contract

The quality of the opinion provided by audit firms is an important determinant of their long-term survival. However, audit quality is difficult to gauge, which makes it particularly sensitive to the behaviour of the individuals who carry on audit work. Differences of interest between partners and other firm members can then have adverse consequences on the work motivation of field auditors. In particular, audit quality reduction behaviours are defined as actions taken by an auditor during an engagement that reduce evidence-gathering effectiveness inappropriately. These acts can threaten audit quality or damage the reputation of the profession. This paper, which is based on a survey of 170 audit seniors working in large audit firms in France, uses a model based on 'psychological contract' assessment and affective commitment to account for audit quality reduction behaviours by the respondents. The results show that the psychological contract elements dealing with the professional aspect of auditing are the most influential, and that affective commitment is correlated to social but not to technical quality reduction behaviours. The perception, by the respondents, of the quality of the review process is also significant. Some implications of these results for the future of auditing are drawn.