Finding related sentence pairs in MEDLINE

We explore the feasibility of automatically identifying sentences in different MEDLINE abstracts that are related in meaning. We compared traditional vector space models with machine learning methods for detecting relatedness, and found that machine learning was superior. The Huber method, a variant of Support Vector Machines which minimizes the modified Huber loss function, achieves 73% precision when the score cutoff is set high enough to identify about one related sentence per abstract on average. We illustrate how an abstract viewed in PubMed might be modified to present the related sentences found in other abstracts by this automatic procedure.     

Book Distribution in the Arab World

Business opportunities in international markets are largely determined by accessibility, transparency, and legal frameworks fair to all parties concerned. Arab book markets in principle offer a tremendous potential with more than 300 million readers sharing one common language. Besides unsolved censorship issues, problems with money collection, and differing regulations, however, the lack of a uniform book distribution system is the most critical hurdle for the development of a common Arabic book market. Most importantly, there is no comprehensive database containing accurate content briefs, background information on authors, ISBN numbers, and publisher company information as well as all relevant commercial data such as book prices, weight, logistics terms, and availability. Authors and publishers are hard hit as they often need to organize book transportation, delivery, and invoice collection on their own. At present, “selling book fairs” in the Arab world—with the exception of Abu Dhabi International Book Fair—present themselves as crowded book bazaars rather than executive meeting points. The authors of the article, however, are anticipating change: New distribution initiatives will soon interlink regional Arabic markets and create unique growth and profit opportunities.     

A Look at Global Expansion for e-Books

Forecasts indicate a growing demand for digital content around the world. Converting to digital content can open up countless new revenue possibilities. Adding alternate channels may be worth consideration, but what are the options and what does it take to utilize them effectively? This article explores the opportunities that potentially exist for publishers with content that may be digitized and distributed to global markets. A brief review of the current marketplace is also incorporated, including current players and trends. Finally, an analysis of some of the potential issues, challenges and pitfalls is presented in context of delving into a new international digital content distribution strategy.     

Learning to rank with (a lot of) word features

In this article we present Supervised Semantic Indexing which defines a class of nonlinear (quadratic) models that are discriminatively trained to directly map from the word content in a query-document or document-document pair to a ranking score. Like Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), our models take account of correlations between words (synonymy, polysemy). However, unlike LSI our models are trained from a supervised signal directly on the ranking task of interest, which we argue is the reason for our superior results. As the query and target texts are modeled separately, our approach is easily generalized to different retrieval tasks, such as cross-language retrieval or online advertising placement. Dealing with models on all pairs of words features is computationally challenging. We propose several improvements to our basic model for addressing this issue, including low rank (but diagonal preserving) representations, correlated feature hashing and sparsification. We provide an empirical study of all these methods on retrieval tasks based on Wikipedia documents as well as an Internet advertisement task. We obtain state-of-the-art performance while providing realistically scalable methods.     

Students' perceptions of fairness in peer assessment: evidence from a problem-based learning course

This paper describes the experience of peer assessment in a problem-based learning course in a Portuguese university, and presents the results of a survey of 120 students who attended the course over seven semesters. Cluster analysis revealed that students group into two distinct clusters with significantly different experiences of peer assessment. Although the larger cluster (70%) expressed a positive experience, the other group perceived peer assessment results and final marks to be unfair, and reported incidents of friendship-marking and conflict arising from peer assessment. Results show that perceptions of fairness (both regarding peer assessment and final marks) are very much associated with those problems. We reflect on these findings to explore implications for practice as well as future research.     

The Hybrid Construction of Sexuality in Mexico and its Impact on Sex Education

As is now widely established, sexuality is a historically and culturally specific social construction. In Mexico, such construction has been dominated by different institutions and discourses at different times. From pre-Hispanic times to today, this article traces the ideas that main institutions, like the Catholic Church, have ingrained in Mexican sexual culture and shows how they have changed over time. At present, sexuality has become a contested arena?like never before?in which very diverse discourses contend for hegemony. Formal sex education has not been alien to this debate, in which religion, medicine, gender equity discourses and ethics seem to have a differential input in curricula and textbooks. This article discusses the expression of this tension in formal sex education in Mexico.     

Transferwirkungen künstlerischer Tätigkeiten. Ihre kritische Kommentierung durch eine umfassende Theorie ästhetischer Bildung

Transfer research examines how artistic activities can have an impact outside of the realm of art itself. The article concludes that this research can be carried out in a meaningful way, only within the framework of a comprehensive theory of aesthetic education. This theory would encompass the structural analysis of artistic activity, as well as biographical reports about artistic experiences. The elucidation of the concepts or themes relevant to the theory would include the notion of aesthetic experience, the understanding of immediate, aesthetic experiences, the analysis of artistic processes, and the outcomes of scientifically evaluated applications of aesthetic education.     

Wann kann Kompetenzdiagnostik negative Auswirkungen haben?

This paper addresses potential negative effects of systematic external competence assessment on different levels of the education system. We discuss possible sources of misinterpretations of competence assessment feedback, potential consequences of feedback and assessment for different education stakeholders (teachers, students, and educational administration) as well as negative effects of systematic competence assessment on the culture of teaching and learning. The paper concludes with some reflections on possibilities to prevent or reduce the discussed negative effects.