ComQA: A Community-sourced Dataset for Complex Factoid Question Answering with Paraphrase Clusters

To bridge the gap between the capabilities of the state-of-the-art in factoid question answering (QA) and what users ask, we need large datasets of real user questions that capture the various question phenomena users are interested in, and the diverse ways in which these questions are formulated. We introduce ComQA, a large dataset of real user questions that exhibit different challenging aspects such as compositionality, temporal reasoning, and comparisons. ComQA questions come from the WikiAnswers community QA platform, which typically contains questions that are not satisfactorily answerable by existing search engine technology. Through a large crowdsourcing effort, we clean the question dataset, group questions into paraphrase clusters, and annotate clusters with their answers. ComQA contains 11,214 questions grouped into 4,834 paraphrase clusters. We detail the process of constructing ComQA, including the measures taken to ensure its high quality while making effective use of crowdsourcing. We also present an extensive analysis of the dataset and the results achieved by state-of-the-art systems on ComQA, demonstrating that our dataset can be a driver of future research on QA.Comment: 11 pages, NAACL 201

Towards Query Logs for Privacy Studies: On Deriving Search Queries from Questions

Translating verbose information needs into crisp search queries is a phenomenon that is ubiquitous but hardly understood. Insights into this process could be valuable in several applications, including synthesizing large privacy-friendly query logs from public Web sources which are readily available to the academic research community. In this work, we take a step towards understanding query formulation by tapping into the rich potential of community question answering (CQA) forums. Specifically, we sample natural language (NL) questions spanning diverse themes from the Stack Exchange platform, and conduct a large-scale conversion experiment where crowdworkers submit search queries they would use when looking for equivalent information. We provide a careful analysis of this data, accounting for possible sources of bias during conversion, along with insights into user-specific linguistic patterns and search behaviors. We release a dataset of 7,000 question-query pairs from this study to facilitate further research on query understanding.Comment: ECIR 2020 Short Pape

An irrigated area map of the world (1999) derived from remote sensing

Remote sensing / Mapping / GIS / Irrigated sites / Estimation

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma and stressor-related disorder that occurs after exposure to a traumatic event. Veterans are at the greatest risk of developing PTSD. Although benzodiazepines are not recommended for the treatment of PTSD, they are still commonly prescribed to veterans. The overall distribution of therapies in the 1,134,201 cohort with PTSD is similar to that outlined in the 2010 Veterans Affairs Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Practice Guidelines. However, after the first-line psychotherapies and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the not recommended benzodiazepines (7.07%) and atypical antipsychotics (7.53%) have the highest prevalence. The third most frequent overlapping therapy includes benzodiazepines in conjunction with SSRIs, although this percentage is only 0.49. In order to evaluate the association between benzodiazepines and health outcomes, 1:2 propensity score (PS) matching was employed to create a balanced cohort. Plots of standardized differences and distributions of propensity scores indicated that 1:2 PS matching eliminated observable differences (in confounders and risk factors) between benzodiazepines users and nonusers. The final cohort included a total of 81,831 benzodiazepine users and 161,662 nonusers for a total size of 242,493 veterans with PTSD. Generalized linear models and Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess health outcomes. Other than substance abuse outpatient visits (which was higher but statistically insignificant), benzodiazepine users had significantly higher incidence rate ratios for all health care visits. This includes hospitalizations (1.27), ED (1.16), general outpatient (1.18), total mental outpatient (1.37), and mental outpatient visits (1.48). With an outcome of suicide as cause of death, the statistically significant hazard ratio between benzodiazepine users and nonusers is 2.73, thus demonstrating significant elevation in the risk of suicide. The overall evidence from this study reveals that benzodiazepines are not uncommonly prescribed for patients with PTSD and that they are associated with greater health care utilization and suicide outcomes. Most importantly, this study strengthens the evidence against the use of benzodiazepines in veterans with PTSD and that clinicians should consider the benefits and risks - especially the almost three-fold increase in suicide death - when ultimately prescribing this pharmacotherapy

Effects of a prophylactic knee sleeve on anterior cruciate ligament loading during sport specific movements

CONTEXT: Prophylactic knee bracing is extensively utilized in athletic populations, to reduce the high risk from knee injuries, but their role in the attenuation of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) pathologies is not well understood. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the current investigation was to investigate the effects of a prophylactic knee sleeve on ACL loading parameters linked to the aetiology of injury in recreational athletes. SETTING: Laboratory. DESIGN: Repeated measures. PARTICIPANTS: Thirteen healthy male recreational athletes. Intervention Participants performed run, cut and single leg hop movements under two conditions; prophylactic knee sleeve and no-sleeve. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Biomechanical data was captured using an eight-camera 3D motion capture system and a force platform. Peak ACL force, average ACL load rate and instantaneous ACL load rate were quantified using a musculoskeletal modelling approach. RESULTS: The results showed that both average and instantaneous ACL load rates were significantly reduced when wearing the knee sleeve in the hop (sleeve = 612.45/ 1286.39N/kg/s & no-sleeve = 743.91/ 1471.42 N/kg/s) and cut (sleeve = 222.55/ 1058.02 N/kg/s & no-sleeve = 377.38/ 1183.01 N/kg/s) movements. CONCLUSIONS: Given the biomechanical association between ACL loading and the aetiology of ACL injuries, it is proposed that athletes may be able to attenuate their risk from injury during cut and hop movements through utilization of a prophylactic knee sleeve

An exploration of the use of Inertial Measurement Units in the assessment of dynamic postural control of the knee and the effect of bracing and taping

Background: The Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) is a common clinical test that can provide information about dynamic movement, but does not reflect movement quality or postural-control strategies, and does not report kinematics of the lower limb. Purpose: To assess the dynamic postural control of healthy subjects using inertial measurement units (IMUs) and clinical SEBT scores to determine the effect of knee bracing and taping. Methods: Twenty-four healthy individuals performed the SEBT under three randomised conditions (patellar bracing, patellar taping, and control condition (no intervention). Clinical SEBT scores were recorded and normalised to leg length and angular velocities were measured using IMUs during SEBT. Composite scores were calculated as the sum of clinical scores in each direction divided by three. Descriptive statistics (mean ± sd) were calculated for each variable and repeated measures ANOVA were used to identify differences between limb (dominant, non-dominant) and condition. Main Results: Compared to the control condition, bracing and taping significantly improved dynamic postural control in the sagittal plane by 6% (1.5-10.5%) P=0.011 and 8% (2.9-13%) P=0.004 respectively. Bracing significantly improved coronal plane stability compared to the control condition by 9% (3.8-14.1%) P=0.002, and taping by 7% (1.6-12.6%) P=0.013. SEBT scores revealed small but statistically significant differences (P<0.05) between conditions in the anterior, posteromedial and composite scores, all showing a difference of between 1-2%. Principal Conclusions: Patellar soft bracing and taping can improve dynamic postural stability during SEBT. It is possible to detect clinically important changes in lower limb stability from angular velocity using IMUs