APL-based on-line retrieval of financial data

FACTS is an APL-based interactive on-line system used for retrieval of budget and accounting data. The system provides selective retrieval and manipulation of financial data for management in a development laboratory. The terms “teilnehmer” and “teilhaber” are defined and it is argued that use of a teilnehmer system, such as APL, can considerably reduce the programming and monitary investment for information science systems applications. A brief discussion of APL's text editing facilities is also included to introduce this relatively unknown language to information scientists.     

The use of vocabulary files for on-line information retrieval

Online information retrieval systems continued to reach wider audiences. The authors discuss a particular text retrieval system and its techniques for helping the common unsophisticated user through both the search for and understanding of information based on the vocabular file concept. In addition methods for easy construction and maintenance of a suuitable data base organization are described.     

Current research into chemical and textual information retrieval at the department of information studies,University of Sheffield

This paper discusses research into chemical information and document retrieval systems at the Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield. The research includes the use of cluster analysis methods for document retrieval and drug design, the representation and searching of files of generic chemical structures, substructure searching and maximal common substructure identification in files of three-dimensional chemical structures, and the use of novel parallel computer hardware in all of these application areas.     

Relatedness,relevance and responsiveness in retrieval systems

The varying uses of the term “relevance” are considered by analyzing retrieval-related activities into three different processes (Formulation, Retrieval, and Utilization) and four sorts of entities (Enquiry, Attribute, Response, and Benefit).Three quite different sorts of “relevance” are identified (Responsiveness, Pertinence, and Beneficiality). It is argued that relevance in the sense of utility cannot properly be used to evaluate the performance of retrieval processes as retrieval processes. Any use of utility implies that the utilization is also being considered.     

Automatic,semantics-based indexing of natural language texts for information retrieval systems

The fundamental idea of the work reported here is to extract index phrases from texts with the help of a single word concept dictionary and a thesaurus containing relations among concepts. The work is based on the fact, that, within every phrase, the single words the phrase is composed of are related in a certain well denned manner, the type of relations holding between concepts depending only on the concepts themselves. Therefore relations can be stored in a semantic network. The algorithm described extracts single word concepts from texts and combines them to phrases using the semantic relations between these concepts, which are stored in the network. The results obtained show that phrase extraction from texts by this semantic method is possible and offers many advantages over other (purely syntactic or statistic) methods concerning preciseness and completeness of the meaning representation of the text. But the results show, too, that some syntactic and morphologic “filtering” should be included for effectivity reasons.     

A decision-theoretic approach to the evaluation of information retrieval systems

Evaluation research on information retrieval (IR) systems has thus far been narrowly focused and disjointed. This research attempts to narrow the gap by providing a comprehensive and integrated multiple criteria decision-theoretic approach for the evaluation of IR systems. The approach, which is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), is illustrated in the context of a domain-specific IR system. The novelty of this approach lies in the focus on the user aspect and the application of decision-making theories in the IR field.     

Frequency-shifting-based stable on-line algebraic parameter identification of linear systems

In this paper a new approach to algebraic parameter identification of the linear SISO systems is proposed. The standard approach to the algebraic parameter identification is based on the algebraic derivatives in Laplace domain as the main tool for algebraic manipulations like elimination of the initial conditions and generation of linearly independent equations. This approach leads to the unstable time-varying state-space realization of the filters for the on-line parameter estimation. In this paper, the finite difference and shift operators in combination with the frequency-shifting property of Laplace transform is applied instead of algebraic derivatives. Resulting state-space realization of the estimator filters is asymptotically stable and doesn’t require switch-of mechanism to prevent overflow of the estimator variables. The proposed method is especially suitable for applications in closed-loop on-line identification where the stable behavior of the estimators is a necessary requirement. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is illustrated on three simulation examples.     

A common interface for accessing document retrieval systems and DBMS for retrieval of bibliographic data

Due to their ready availability, database management systems are being applied to bibliographic databases with increasing frequency. This is being done in spite of the fact that although DBMS query languages tend to be very powerful, they are far too complex for the casual user. It is proposed that PSI, an existing virtual-system intermediary for document retrieval systems, be extended to include access to DBMS containing bibliographic data in order to circumvent the complexity problem or the casual user. PSI currently provides a common command language for access to multiple document retrieval systems. It is shown that PSI could be extended to provide this same command language to access DBMS, whether the DBMS are relational or network.     

关于大学计算机教学改革

本文主要论述了目前我国大学计算机基础课程教学存在的问题与改革的方向,就目前我国高校计算机教育面临的问题作了深刻剖析,并就如何提高教学效果、培养学生的实际动手操作的应用能力,对大学计算机教学模式提出了一些切实可行的探索方法。从教学目标、教改指导思想、新的教学模式的组成等几个方面论述了新的教学模式和改革,力争提高计算机基础课程的教学质量和教学效果。     

Automatic ranking of information retrieval systems using data fusion

Measuring effectiveness of information retrieval (IR) systems is essential for research and development and for monitoring search quality in dynamic environments. In this study, we employ new methods for automatic ranking of retrieval systems. In these methods, we merge the retrieval results of multiple systems using various data fusion algorithms, use the top-ranked documents in the merged result as the “(pseudo) relevant documents,” and employ these documents to evaluate and rank the systems. Experiments using Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) data provide statistically significant strong correlations with human-based assessments of the same systems. We hypothesize that the selection of systems that would return documents different from the majority could eliminate the ordinary systems from data fusion and provide better discrimination among the documents and systems. This could improve the effectiveness of automatic ranking. Based on this intuition, we introduce a new method for the selection of systems to be used for data fusion. For this purpose, we use the bias concept that measures the deviation of a system from the norm or majority and employ the systems with higher bias in the data fusion process. This approach provides even higher correlations with the human-based results. We demonstrate that our approach outperforms the previously proposed automatic ranking methods.     

The economic evaluation of information storage and retrieval systems

This paper describes a formal standardized procedure for the decision-making process for the purchase or rejection of an information storage and retrieval system. The interaction of both the purchaser of the system and its potential users with the various models of the system (such as cost-time-volume models and performance evaluation models) ensures that the purchase decision for a given system is affected by all possible constraints and is universally acceptable. If either purchaser or users find a particular system unacceptable, the procedure either rejects it or institutes modifications (within given constraints) until a generally acceptable system is determined, if one exists.     

Planning and design of on-line systems for the ultimate user of biomedical information

Following a general discussion on the philosophy and design of information systems, with particular attention to the definition, needs and psychology of the ultimate user of systems providing on-line access to biomedical information, the role of the documentalist, the differences between document retrieval and true information retrieval and the operational characteristics of on-line systems which affect their cost and hence their design and acceptability, the authors make some tentative predictions as to the future demand for such information retrieval services and their probable organizational form. A brief report is then presented on the principal findings and conclusions of a user's study of the Excerpta Medica system, the key features and history of which are briefly described. Based on the conclusions of this study, particularly as regards the complexity of the average search question, the role of the search formulators in determining the results of computer searching, the importance of secondary concepts for retrieval and the optimal level of specificity of a computer thesaurus, some of the changes in the Excerpta Medica system which are in the planning stage and will be incorporated into the system's Mark II version are outlined, as are the principal features of the two systems currently offering on-line access to the Excerpta Medica database in Western Germany and the U.S.A. Finally, attention is given to the planned partial hierarchic structuring of the Excerpta Medica thesaurus (Malimet), a project which is to be based largely on frequency counts of the existing database and the elimination of over-specific terms by posting under broader concepts. The results of some of the initial steps in this direction (i.e. frequency counts of portions of the database and the structuring of some of the terms used in the cancer field) are presented by way of illustration.