Expert Finding by Capturing Organisational Knowledge from Legacy Documents

Organisations capitalise on their best knowledge through the improvement of shared expertise which leads to a higher level of productivity and competency. The recognition of the need to foster the sharing of expertise has led to the development of expert finder systems that hold pointers to experts who posses specific knowledge in organisations. This paper discusses an approach to locating an expert through the application of information retrieval and analysis processes to an organization’s existing information resources, with specific reference to the engineering design domain. The approach taken was realised through an expert finder system framework. It enables the relationships of heterogeneous information sources with experts to be factored in modelling individuals’ expertise. These valuable relationships are typically ignored by existing expert finder systems, which only focus on how documents relate to their content. The developed framework also provides an architecture that can be easily adapted to different organisational environments. In addition, it also allows users to access the expertise recognition logic, giving them greater trust in the systems implemented using this framework. The framework were applied to real world application and evaluated within a major engineering company

Explaining anomalous responses to treatment in the Intensive Care Unit

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) provides treatment to critically ill patients. When a patient does not respond as expected to such treatment it can be challenging for clinicians, especially junior clinicians, as they may not have the relevant experience to understand the patient’s anomalous response. Datasets for 10 patients from Glasgow Royal Infirmary’s ICU have been made available to us. We asked several ICU clinicians to review these datasets and to suggest sequences which include anomalous or unusual reactions to treatment. Further, we then asked two ICU clinicians if they agreed with their colleagues’ assessments, and if they did to provide possible explanations for these anomalous sequences. Subsequently we have developed a system which is able to replicate the clinicians’ explanations based on the knowledge contained in its several ontologies; further the system can suggest additional explanations which will be evaluated by the senior consultant

Instrumentation and Measurements for Electron Emission from Charged Insulators

The electron was first discovered in 1898 by Sir John Joseph Thomson and has since been the subject of detailed study by nearly every scientific discipline. At nearly the same time Heinrich Rudolf Hertz conducted a series of experiments using cathode tubes, high potentials and ultraviolet light. When applying a large potential to a cathode he found that an arching event across the metal plates would occur. In addition, when shining an ultraviolet light on the metal he found that less potential was required to induce the spark. This result, taken together with other electrical phenomena brought about by the shining of light upon metal and was eventually termed the photoelectric effect. The work of Thomson and Hertz represent the beginning of electron emission studies and a body of ideas that pervade nearly all aspects of physics. In particular these ideas tell us a great deal about the nature of physical interactions within solids. In this thesis we will focus on the emission of electrons induced by an incident electron source over a range of energies, in which one can observe changes in emitted electron flux and energy distribution. In particular, when energetic particles impinge on a solid they can impart their energy, exciting electrons within the material. If this energy is sufficient to overcome surface energy barriers such as the work function, electron affinity or surface charge potential, electrons can escape from the material. The extent of electron emission from the material can be quantified as the ratio of incident particle flux to emitted particle flux, and is termed the electron yield

Commodity-industry classificationproxy: A correspondence table between SITC revision 2 and ISIC revision 3

The correspondence table is one of the important tools in categorizing existing records into different perspective. It helps to understand the pattern of various economic activities from single source of data. Nevertheless, most of the existing correspondence tables have been focusing more on the latest classification and neglect the correspondence for the older version. Since some analysis would require longer series of data, therefore it is necessary to create a correspondence table for the earlier version of classification. This paper devoted to create a correspondence table between SITC Revision 2 and ISIC Revision 3 using a proxy method. The proxy is done using the SITC Rev.2 – SITC Rev.3 correspondence table and the SITC Rev.3 – ISIC Rev.3 correspondence table. This method has capable to directly find an industrial match for more than 98 percent of commodities under SITC Rev.3. For remaining commodities which industrial category cannot be matched directly, the identification was done automatically based on the closest code.Commodity, Industry SITC Rev.2, SITC Rev.3, ISIC Rev.3, correspondence table

Type Ia Supernovae and Accretion Induced Collapse

Using the population synthesis binary evolution code StarTrack, we present theoretical rates and delay times of Type Ia supernovae arising from various formation channels. These channels include binaries in which the exploding white dwarf reaches the Chandrasekhar mass limit (DDS, SDS, and helium-rich donor scenario) as well as the sub-Chandrasekhar mass scenario, in which a white dwarf accretes from a helium-rich companion and explodes as a SN Ia before reaching the Chandrasekhar mass limit. We find that using a common envelope parameterization employing energy balance with alpha=1 and lambda=1, the supernova rates per unit mass (born in stars) of sub-Chandrasekhar mass SNe Ia exceed those of all other progenitor channels at epochs t=0.7 - 4 Gyr for a burst of star formation at t=0. Additionally, the delay time distribution of the sub-Chandrasekhar model can be divided in to two distinct evolutionary channels: the `prompt' helium-star channel with delay times < 500 Myr, and the `delayed' double white dwarf channel with delay times > 800 Myr spanning up to a Hubble time. These findings are in agreement with recent observationally-derived delay time distributions which predict that a large number of SNe Ia have delay times < 1 Gyr, with a significant fraction having delay times < 500 Myr. We find that the DDS channel is also able to account for the observed rates of SNe Ia. However, detailed simulations of white dwarf mergers have shown that most of these mergers will not lead to SNe Ia but rather to the formation of a neutron star via accretion-induced collapse. If this is true, our standard population synthesis model predicts that the only progenitor channel which can account for the rates of SNe Ia is the sub-Chandrasekhar mass scenario, and none of the other progenitors considered can fully account for the observed rates.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, to appear in proceedings for "Binary Star Evolution: Mass Loss, Accretion and Mergers

Investigation in haemodynamic stability during intermittent haemodialysis in the critically ill

No abstract available

Estudi de la brioflora dels Ports de Beseit

A catalog of the 186 bryophytic taxa found in the calcareous mountain area of the Ports de Beseit is given, together with a short description of the bryological vegetation, and comments on interesting species such as Acaulon dertosense, Frullania muscicolu, Brachythecium olympicum, Rhynchostegiella compacta, Tortula solmsii, etc. Chorological and ecological spectra are also given.Presentem el catàleg dels 186 taxons briofítics trobats als Ports de Beseit, junt amb una succinta descripció de la vegetació briofítica i comentaris sobre certes especies interessants, com ara Acaulon dertosense, Frullania muscicola, Brachythecium olympicum, Rhynchostegiella compacta, Tortula solmsii, etc. Donem també els espectres corologies i de diversos factors ecologies

An investigation into the effects of commencing haemodialysis in the critically ill

&lt;b&gt;Introduction:&lt;/b&gt; We have aimed to describe haemodynamic changes when haemodialysis is instituted in the critically ill. 3 hypotheses are tested: 1)The initial session is associated with cardiovascular instability, 2)The initial session is associated with more cardiovascular instability compared to subsequent sessions, and 3)Looking at unstable sessions alone, there will be a greater proportion of potentially harmful changes in the initial sessions compared to subsequent ones. &lt;b&gt;Methods:&lt;/b&gt; Data was collected for 209 patients, identifying 1605 dialysis sessions. Analysis was performed on hourly records, classifying sessions as stable/unstable by a cutoff of &gt;+/-20% change in baseline physiology (HR/MAP). Data from 3 hours prior, and 4 hours after dialysis was included, and average and minimum values derived. 3 time comparisons were made (pre-HD:during, during HD:post, pre-HD:post). Initial sessions were analysed separately from subsequent sessions to derive 2 groups. If a session was identified as being unstable, then the nature of instability was examined by recording whether changes crossed defined physiological ranges. The changes seen in unstable sessions could be described as to their effects: being harmful/potentially harmful, or beneficial/potentially beneficial. &lt;b&gt;Results:&lt;/b&gt; Discarding incomplete data, 181 initial and 1382 subsequent sessions were analysed. A session was deemed to be stable if there was no significant change (&gt;+/-20%) in the time-averaged or minimum MAP/HR across time comparisons. By this definition 85/181 initial sessions were unstable (47%, 95% CI SEM 39.8-54.2). Therefore Hypothesis 1 is accepted. This compares to 44% of subsequent sessions (95% CI 41.1-46.3). Comparing these proportions and their respective CI gives a 95% CI for the standard error of the difference of -4% to 10%. Therefore Hypothesis 2 is rejected. In initial sessions there were 92/1020 harmful changes. This gives a proportion of 9.0% (95% CI SEM 7.4-10.9). In the subsequent sessions there were 712/7248 harmful changes. This gives a proportion of 9.8% (95% CI SEM 9.1-10.5). Comparing the two unpaired proportions gives a difference of -0.08% with a 95% CI of the SE of the difference of -2.5 to +1.2. Hypothesis 3 is rejected. Fisher’s exact test gives a result of p=0.68, reinforcing the lack of significant variance. &lt;b&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/b&gt; Our results reject the claims that using haemodialysis is an inherently unstable choice of therapy. Although proportionally more of the initial sessions are classed as unstable, the majority of MAP and HR changes are beneficial in nature

Postfledging Survival, Movements, and Dispersal of Ring Ouzels (Turdus torquatus)

We thank Invercauld Estate for cooperation with access to Glen Clunie. S. Redpath, J. Wilson, and S. Roos provided valuable comments on the manuscript. This study was funded by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Scottish Natural Heritage, and the Cairngorms National Park Authority. J.L.L. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Coherence in Machine Translation

Coherence ensures individual sentences work together to form a meaningful document. When properly translated, a coherent document in one language should result in a coherent document in another language. In Machine Translation, however, due to reasons of modeling and computational complexity, sentences are pieced together from words or phrases based on short context windows and with no access to extra-sentential context. In this thesis I propose ways to automatically assess the coherence of machine translation output. The work is structured around three dimensions: entity-based coherence, coherence as evidenced via syntactic patterns, and coherence as evidenced via discourse relations. For the first time, I evaluate existing monolingual coherence models on this new task, identifying issues and challenges that are specific to the machine translation setting. In order to address these issues, I adapted a state-of-the-art syntax model, which also resulted in improved performance for the monolingual task. The results clearly indicate how much more difficult the new task is than the task of detecting shuffled texts. I proposed a new coherence model, exploring the crosslingual transfer of discourse relations in machine translation. This model is novel in that it measures the correctness of the discourse relation by comparison to the source text rather than to a reference translation. I identified patterns of incoherence common across different language pairs, and created a corpus of machine translated output annotated with coherence errors for evaluation purposes. I then examined lexical coherence in a multilingual context, as a preliminary study for crosslingual transfer. Finally, I determine how the new and adapted models correlate with human judgements of translation quality and suggest that improvements in general evaluation within machine translation would benefit from having a coherence component that evaluated the translation output with respect to the source text