Weaving creativity into the Semantic Web: a language-processing approach

This paper describes a novel language processing ap- proach to the analysis of creativity and the development of a machine-readable ontology of creativity. The ontol- ogy provides a conceptualisation of creativity in terms of a set of fourteen key components or building blocks and has application to research into the nature of cre- ativity in general and to the evaluation of creative prac- tice, in particular. We further argue that the provision of a machine readable conceptualisation of creativity pro- vides a small, but important step towards addressing the problem of automated evaluation, ’the Achilles’ heel of AI research on creativity’ (Boden 1999)

A Tractable Extension of Linear Indexed Grammars

It has been shown that Linear Indexed Grammars can be processed in polynomial time by exploiting constraints which make possible the extensive use of structure-sharing. This paper describes a formalism that is more powerful than Linear Indexed Grammar, but which can also be processed in polynomial time using similar techniques. The formalism, which we refer to as Partially Linear PATR manipulates feature structures rather than stacks.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, uses eaclap.sty, to appear in EACL-9

UoS: a graph-based system for graded word sense induction

This paper presents UoS, a graph-based Word Sense Induction system which attempts to find all applicable senses of a target word given its context, grading each sense according to its suitability to the context. Senses of a target word are induced through use of a non-parameterised, linear-time clustering algorithm that returns maximal quasi-strongly connected components of a target word graph in which vertex pairs are assigned to the same cluster if either vertex has the highest edge weight to the other. UoS participated in SemEval-2013 Task 13: Word Sense Induction for Graded and Non-Graded Senses. Two system were submitted; both systems returned results comparable with those of the best performing systems

Using distributional similarity to organise biomedical terminology

We investigate an application of distributional similarity techniques to the problem of structural organisation of biomedical terminology. Our application domain is the relatively small GENIA corpus. Using terms that have been accurately marked-up by hand within the corpus, we consider the problem of automatically determining semantic proximity. Terminological units are dened for our purposes as normalised classes of individual terms. Syntactic analysis of the corpus data is carried out using the Pro3Gres parser and provides the data required to calculate distributional similarity using a variety of dierent measures. Evaluation is performed against a hand-crafted gold standard for this domain in the form of the GENIA ontology. We show that distributional similarity can be used to predict semantic type with a good degree of accuracy

Efficiency in ambiguity: two models of probabilistic semantics for natural language

This paper explores theoretical issues in constructing an adequate probabilistic semantics for natural language. Two approaches are contrasted. The first extends Montague Semantics with a probability distribution over models. It has nice theoretical properties, but does not account for the ubiquitous nature of ambiguity; moreover inference is NP hard. An alternative approach is described in which a sequence of pairs of sentences and truth values is generated randomly. By sacrificing some of the nice theoretical properties of the first approach it is possible to model ambiguity naturally; moreover inference now has polynomial time complexity. Both approaches provide a compositional semantics and account for the gradience of semantic judgements of belief and inference

Learning to distinguish hypernyms and co-hyponyms

This work is concerned with distinguishing different semantic relations which exist between distributionally similar words. We compare a novel approach based on training a linear Support Vector Machine on pairs of feature vectors with state-of-the-art methods based on distributional similarity. We show that the new supervised approach does better even when there is minimal information about the target words in the training data, giving a 15% reduction in error rate over unsupervised approaches

Large isotope effect on TcT_c in cuprates despite of a small electron-phonon coupling

We calculate the isotope coefficients $\alpha$ and $\alpha^\ast$ for the superconducting critical temperature $T_c$ and the pseudogap temperature $T^\ast$ in a mean-field treatment of the t-J model including phonons. The pseudogap phase is identified with the $d$-charge-density wave ($d$-CDW) phase in this model. Using the small electron-phonon coupling constant $\lambda_d \sim 0.02$ obtained previously in LDA calculations in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$, $\alpha^{\ast}$ is negative but negligible small whereas $\alpha$ increases from about 0.03 at optimal doping to values around 1 at small dopings in agreement with the general trend observed in many cuprates. Using a simple phase fluctuation model where the $d$-CDW has only short-range correlations it is shown that the large increase of $\alpha$ at low dopings is rather universal and does not depend on the existence of sharp peaks in the density of states in the pseudogap state or on specific values of the phonon cutoff. It rather is caused by the large depletion of spectral weight at low frequencies by the $d$-CDW and thus should also occur in other realizations of the pseudogap.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to be publ. in PR

An Integrated Oncology Data Warehouse for Clinical Decision Support and Complex Patient Cohort Identification in a Hybrid Cancer Center

BACKGROUND: A data warehouse is a repository that centralizes and integrates data from disparate systems to provide the ability to easily access historical, consistent data. Integration of disparate source systems into one centralized location can enable rapid identification of more robust research cohorts and enable data-driven decision making. The objective of the Miami Cancer Institute (MCI) Oncology Data Warehouse (ODW) is to collect and organize data from clinical records, research, and administrative systems to support information retrieval, business intelligence, and analytics for high-level decision making for oncology patients. The design, architecture, and implementation aligns with industry best practices which includes Data Governance, Enterprise Data Modeling, and Metadata Management. METHODS: We integrated structured and unstructured data from disparate sources into one centralized data model optimized for querying known as the ODW. The ODW is modeled as a star schema, with fact tables and conformed dimension tables, and expands to a galaxy schema with constellation facts and dimensions that can snowflake to other data models as needed. Each fact table represents a subject area (i.e. pathology), that is directly related to the conformed dimension tables using surrogate and foreign keys. Conformed dimensions represent the attributes associated to the subject area (i.e. date of encounter). The source data is extracted, transformed and loaded (ETL) automatically from different databases into a set of tables. The ETL code performs incremental loads at regular prescribed intervals into two parallel storage areas, a relational database management system (RDMS) as well as a Big Data file storage system. RESULTS: An interdisciplinary team of physicians, engineers, scientists, and subject matter experts at the Miami Cancer Institute of Baptist Health South Florida, has designed, developed, and implemented the ODW with information originating from different data sources which include: Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, Financial Systems, Clinical Trial Management Systems, Tumor Registries, Biospecimen Repositories, Pathology synoptic reports and archives, and Next Generation Sequencing services. Structurally it is a subject-oriented, integrated collection of data leveraging conformed dimensions. The ODW is capable of connecting most business intelligence (i.e. Tableau) or statistical (i.e. SAS) tools for automated or static report development. CONCLUSION: The growing ODW enables physicians, clinical management teams, and medical analysts to systematically mine and review the molecular, genomic, and associated clinical or administrative information of patients, and identify patterns that may influence treatment decisions and potential outcomes. By implementing an innovative combination of technology tools and methods, we were able to organize enterprise information about oncology patients which can be utilized for clinical decision support and precision medicine use cases

Arrive, survive and thrive: essential stages in the re-colonization and recovery of zooplankton in urban lakes in Sudbury, Canada

The recovery of lakes from severe, historical acid and metal pollution requires that colonists of extirpated species arrive, survive and subsequently thrive. We employed 40 year records from weekly to monthly crustacean zooplankton samples from Middle and Clearwater lakes near Sudbury, Canada, to identify the main mechanistic bottlenecks in this recovery process. While both lakes now have circum-neutral pH, acidity decreased more rapidly in Middle Lake because of past liming interventions, while Clearwater Lake, being larger and supporting more housing, likely receives more zooplankton colonists than Middle Lake. Community richness increased much faster in Middle Lake than in Clearwater Lake, at 1.6 vs 0.9 species decade-1, respectively. Richness has recovered in Middle Lake, when assessed against a target of 9-16 species collection-1 determined from regional reference lakes, but it has not yet recovered in Clearwater Lake. Species accumulation curves and a metric of annual persistence show that this difference is a product not of greater rates of species introduction into Middle Lake, but rather to their greater annual persistence once introduced. Greater annual persistence was associated with better habitat quality (i.e., lower acid and metal toxicity) in Middle Lake, particularly early in the record, and lower planktivore abundance, more recently. These results support a growing consensus that ecological recovery of zooplankton from acidification and metal pollution does not depend strongly on propagule introduction rates which are adequate, but rather on propagule persistence, in lake-rich, suburban landscapes such as those near Sudbury

Scaled-chrysophyte assemblage changes in the sediment records of lakes recovering from marked acidification and metal contamination near Wawa, Ontario, Canada

A remarkable example of point-source lake acidification and metal pollution, and subsequent recovery in limnological variables, has occurred in lakes near the former iron sintering plant at Wawa (Ontario, Canada). Surface water pH levels in some of these lakes have increased from 3 to 7 following local sulphur emission reductions with closure of industrial operations. Previous paleolimnological work documented striking successional changes in diatom species assemblages within dated sediment cores that could be related to past industrial activities. To gain additional insights into the chemical and biological recovery trajectories of the Wawa lakes, we used paleolimnological techniques to track euplanktonic scaled-chrysophyte (classes Chrysophyceae and Synurophyceae) species assemblage responses to historical water quality changes in five lakes. Coincident with the period of iron sintering from 1939 to 1998, striking successional changes were noted in the sedimentary profiles, with marked increases in the relative abundances of the acid- and metal-tolerant taxon Synura echinulata. The scaled chrysophyte changes pre-dated diatom responses, confirming the former’s status as reliable early warning indicators of lake acidification. Following closure of the sintering plant, species-specific chrysophyte responses to decreased emissions varied amongst the study lakes, perhaps reflecting differences in local bedrock geology and hydrological regime. Although some water chemistry variables may have recovered to near pre-industrial levels, similar to the diatom study, our data show that chrysophyte assemblages in the most recent sediments are now significantly different from pre-industrial assemblages