Culture and E-Learning: Automatic Detection of a Users’ Culture from Survey Data

Knowledge about the culture of a user is especially important for the design of e-learning applications. In the experiment reported here, questionnaire data was used to build machine learning models to automatically predict the culture of a user. This work can be applied to automatic culture detection and subsequently to the adaptation of user interfaces in e-learning

Multilingual log analysis: LogCLEF

The current lack of recent and long-term query logs makes the verifiability and repeatability of log analysis experiments very limited. A first attempt in this direction has been made within the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum in 2009 in a track named LogCLEF which aims to stimulate research on user behaviour in multilingual environments and promote standard evaluation collections of log data. We report on similarities and differences of the most recent activities for LogCLEF

LogCLEF: Enabling research on multilingual log files

Interactions between users and information access systems can be analyzed and studied to gather user preferences and to learn what a user likes the most, and to use this information to adapt the search to users and personalize the presentation of results. The LogCLEF lab - ”A benchmarking activity on Multilingual Log File Analysis: Language identification, query classification, success of a query” deals with information contained in query logs of search engines and digital libraries from which knowledge can be mined to understand search behavior in multilingual context. LogCLEF has created the first long-term standard collection for evaluation purposes in the area of log analysis. The LogCLEF 2011 lab is the continuation of the past two editions: as a pilot task in CLEF 2009, and a workshop in CLEF 2010. The Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) promotes research and development in multilingual information access and is an activity of the PROMISE Network of Excellence

Effect of high glucose concentration on the synthesis of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 in human peritoneal mesothelial cells: Involvement of protein kinase C

Human peritoneal mesothelial cells (HMC) contribute to the activation and control of inflammatory processes in the peritoneum by their potential to produce various inflammatory mediators. The present study was designed to assess the effect of glucose, the osmotic active compound in most commercially available peritoneal dialysis fluids, on the synthesis of the C-C chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in cultured HMC. The MCP-1 concentration in the cell supernatants was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and the MCP-1 mRNA expression was examined using Northern blot analysis. Incubation of HMC with glucose (30-120 mM) resulted in a time- and concentration-dependent increase in MCP-1 protein secretion and mRNA expression. After 24 h the MCP-1 synthesis was increased from 2.8 +/- 0.46 to 4.2 +/- 0.32 ng/10(5) cells (n = 5, p 2001 S. Karger AG. Basel

Body like an idol: K-pop fitspiration on Tumblr – an analysis of texts and images

Eating disorders are a major health issue in societies today which oftentimes remain untreated. In social media, such as Tumblr, people build communities to exchange information and connect to each other using specific hashtags. Some of these trends which emerge around these hashtags, are related to eating disorders. This study in information science addresses how inspiration for fitness (Fitspiration) inspired by music fandom (in particular K-pop) can be characterized on Tumblr by automatically analyzing text and images of posts. Images are evaluated based on their colorfulness and emotional measures, texts undergo a sentiment and readability analysis, as well as an evaluation of their psycho-linguistic features. Furthermore, a qualitative content analysis of K-pop Fitspiration posts (n=119) is performed and they are compared to the K-pop Thinspiration posts, regular Thinspiration and control group posts. Results reveal, that K-pop Fitspiration posts are oftentimes more similar to posts from the control group than to Thinspiration posts, but that they also share psycho-linguistic features with posts of eating disordered users

Implementation and evaluation of a quality-based search engine

In this paper, an approach for the implementation of a quality-based Web search engine is proposed. Quality retrieval is introduced and an overview on previous efforts to implement such a service is given. Machine learning approaches are identified as the most promising methods to determine the quality of Web pages. Features for the most appropriate characterization of Web pages are determined. A quality model is developed based on human judgments. This model is integrated into a meta search engine which assesses the quality of all results at run time. The evaluation results show that quality based ranking does lead to better results concerning the perceived quality of Web pages presented in the result set. The quality models are exploited to identify potentially important features and characteristics for the quality of Web pages

Einsatz neuronaler Netze als Transferkomponenten beim Retrieval in heterogenen Dokumentbeständen

"Die zunehmende weltweite Vernetzung und der Aufbau von digitalen Bibliotheken führt zu neuen Möglichkeiten bei der Suche in mehreren Datenbeständen. Dabei entsteht das Problem der semantischen Heterogenität, da z.B. Begriffe in verschiedenen Kontexten verschiedene Bedeutung haben können. Die dafür notwendigen Transferkomponenten bilden eine neue Herausforderung, für die neuronale Netze gut geeignet sind." (Autorenreferat