ENRICHMENT AND POPULATION OF A GEOSPATIAL ONTOLOGY FOR SEMANTIC INFORMATION EXTRACTION

The massive amount of user-generated content available today presents a new challenge for the geospatial domain and a great opportunity to delve into linguistic, semantic, and cognitive aspects of geographic information. Ontology-based information extraction is a new, prominent field in which a domain ontology guides the extraction process and the identification of pre-defined concepts, properties, and instances from natural language texts. The paper describes an approach for enriching and populating a geospatial ontology using both a top-down and a bottom-up approach in order to enable semantic information extraction. The top-down approach is applied in order to incorporate knowledge from existing ontologies. The bottom-up approach is applied in order to enrich and populate the geospatial ontology with semantic information (concepts, relations, and instances) extracted from domain-specific web content

Gender differences in online collaborative learning groups promoting affective education and social capital

This paper reports the results of a study aimed to establish whether the amount and types of conflicts vary in all male, all female and mixed gender groups working in asynchronous collaborative learning online settings. Sixty psychology majors were divided into three groups conducted online by the same teacher. The study show that the levels of participation in the three groups varied in relation to gender composition. Further the results evidenced all female group did have more conflicts then male and mixed groups, but primarily they did not have interpersonal. The female groups´ conflicts seem to be related to goal-oriented process of work

Do difficulties in emotional processing predict procedure pain and shape the patient's colonoscopy experience?

Objectives Pain and fear of colonoscopy are inter-related; they make the colonoscopy experience unpleasant and impede adherence to colorectal cancer screening and prevention campaigns. According to previous research, fear and pain have been found to depend on patients' maladaptive cognitions and exaggerated emotional responses. The present study investigated whether emotional processing difficulties predicted colonoscopy pain and the associated catastrophising thoughts. Design Prospective, observational, blinded. Method A sample of 123 patients was assessed for specific emotional processing difficulties (ie, suppression of emotions, unprocessed emotions, failure to control emotions, avoidance of emotional triggers and impoverished emotional experience) and anxiety-related variables (ie, worry, anxiety and depression) before colonoscopy. A trained medical doctor rated patients' behavioural manifestations of pain during colonoscopy. After complete recovery from sedation, the patients rated the endoscopy experience using perceived pain and situation-specific pain catastrophising scales. Results About half of the patients were above the cut-off for anxiety before the procedure. Notwithstanding sedation, behavioural manifestations of pain during colonoscopy indicated probable or moderate pain for about one-third of the patients. Failure to control emotions, poor emotional experience and avoiding emotional triggers were positively correlated with behavioural manifestations of pain, self-reported pain and pain catastrophising. Regression analyses, controlling for gender, age, colonoscopy experience and sedation, revealed that avoidance of emotional triggers uniquely contributed to predicting pain outcomes. Conclusions Early identification of emotional processing difficulties associated with pain catastrophising can help define personalised psychological preparation paths to manage negative emotions in patients who fear colonoscopy pain

Atomistic origin of high-concentration Ce³⁺ in {100}-faceted Cr- substituted CeO₂ nanocrystals

Improving the potential of promising CeO2-based nanocatalysts in practical applications requires an atomic-scale analysis of the effects of active dopants on the distribution of Ce valence states and the formation of oxygen vacancies (VOs). In this study, a Cr dopant is introduced into the cubic {100}-faceted CeO2 nanocrystals (NCs) with an average size of 7.8 nm via supercritical water. The Cr dopants substitute Ce sites in the amount of approximately 3 mol%. Based on the aberration-corrected STEM-EELS, the effects of Cr dopant on the distribution of cation valence states in the Cr-doped CeO2 NCs are investigated layer by layer across the ultrafine Cr-substituted CeO2 NC perpendicular to the {100} exposed facet. It is found that an increased amount of Ce3+ cations is present in Cr-substituted CeO2 NCs, particularly in the internal atomic layers, compared to the pristine CeO2 NCs. The atomic-scale analysis of the local structure combined with theoretical calculations demonstrates that Cr dopant reduces the formation energy of VOs and increases mobility of oxygen atoms for the nano-sized CeO2. These effects, in principle, result in an improved oxygen storage capacity and provide a fundamental understanding of role of the dopant in the formation and distribution of VOs in the doped CeO2 NCs

The Role of the Receptor for Advanced Glycation End-Products in a Murine Model of Silicosis

Background: The role of the receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE) has been shown to differ in two different mouse models of asbestos and bleomycin induced pulmonary fibrosis. RAGE knockout (KO) mice get worse fibrosis when challenged with asbestos, whereas in the bleomycin model they are largely protected against fibrosis. In the current study the role of RAGE in a mouse model of silica induced pulmonary fibrosis was investigated. Methodology/Principal Findings: Wild type (WT) and RAGE KO mice received a single intratracheal (i.t.) instillation of silica in saline or saline alone as vehicle control. Fourteen days after treatment mice were subjected to a lung mechanistic study and the lungs were lavaged and inflammatory cells, protein and TGF-β levels in lavage fluid determined. Lungs were subsequently either fixed for histology or excised for biochemical assessment of fibrosis and determination of RAGE proteinand mRNA levels. There was no difference in the inflammatory response or degree of fibrosis (hydroxyproline levels) in the lungs between WT and RAGE KO mice after silica injury. However, histologically the fibrotic lesions in the RAGE KO mice had a more diffuse alveolar septal fibrosis compared to the nodular fibrosis in WT mice. Furthermore, RAGE KO mice had a significantly higher histologic score, a measure of affected areas of the lung, compared to WT silica treated mice. A lung mechanistic study revealed a significant decrease in lung function after silica compared to control, but no difference between WT and RAGE KO. While a dose response study showed similar degrees of fibrosis after silica treatment in the two strains, the RAGE KO mice had some differences in the inflammatory response compared to WT mice. Conclusions/Significance: Aside from the difference in the fibrotic pattern, these studies showed no indicators of RAGE having an effect on the severity of pulmonary fibrosis following silica injury. © 2010 Ramsgaard et al

Extracting invariant characteristics of sketch maps: Towards place query-by-sketch

In geography, invariant aspects of sketches are essential to study because they reflect the human perception of real-world places. A person's perception of a place can be ex-pressed in sketches. In this article, we quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed the characteristics of single objects and characteristics among objects in sketches and the real world to find reliable invariants that can be used to establish references/correspondences between sketch and world in a matching process. These characteristics include category, shape, name, and relative size of each object. Moreover, quantity and spatial relationships—such as topological, or-dering, and location relationships—among all objects are also analyzed to assess consistency between sketched and actual places. The approach presented in this study extracts the reliable invariants for query-by-sketch and prioritizes their relevance for a sketch-map matching process