Fusing different information retrieval systems according to query-topics: a study based on correlation in information retrieval systems and TREC topics

To evaluate Information Retrieval Systems on their effectiveness, evaluation programs such as TREC offer a rigorous methodology as well as benchmark collections. Whatever the evaluation collection used, effectiveness is generally considered globally, averaging the results over a set of information needs. As a result, the variability of system performance is hidden as the similarities and differences from one system to another are averaged. Moreover, the topics on which a given system succeeds or fails are left unknown. In this paper we propose an approach based on data analysis methods (correspondence analysis and clustering) to discover correlations between systems and to find trends in topic/system correlations. We show that it is possible to cluster topics and systems according to system performance on these topics, some system clusters being better on some topics. Finally, we propose a new method to consider complementary systems as based on their performances which can be applied for example in the case of repeated queries. We consider the system profile based on the similarity of the set of TREC topics on which systems achieve similar levels of performance. We show that this method is effective when using the TREC ad hoc collection.     

Effects of 12 weeks of combined training without caloric restriction on inflammatory markers in overweight girls

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of combined training without caloric restriction on inflammatory markers in overweight girls. Thirty-three girls (13–17 years) were assigned into overweight training (n = 17) or overweight control (n = 16) groups. Additionally, a normal-weight group (n = 15) was used as control for the baseline values. The combined training programme consisted of six resistance exercises (three sets of 6–10 repetitions at 60–70% 1 RM) followed by 30 min of aerobic exercise (walking/running) at 50–80% VO_2peak, performed in the same 60 min session, 3 days/weeks, for 12 weeks. Body composition, dietary intake, aerobic fitness (VO_2peak), muscular strength (1 RM), glycaemia, insulinemia, lipid profile and inflammatory markers (C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, tumour necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-10, leptin, resistin and adiponectin) were measured before and after intervention. There was a significant decrease in body fat (P < 0.01) and increase in fat-free mass (P < 0.01), VO_2peak (P < 0.01), 1 RM for leg press (P < 0.01) and bench press (P < 0.01) in the overweight training group. Concomitantly, this group presented significant decreases in serum concentrations of C-reactive protein (P < 0.05) and leptin (P < 0.05), as well as in insulin resistance (P < 0.05) after the experimental period. In conclusion, 12 weeks of combined training without caloric restriction reduced inflammatory markers associated with obesity in overweight girls.     

Are we using Thyroid Function Tests Appropriately?

Thyroid function tests are very important for the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with thyroid dysfunction. The guidelines recommend serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) as the single most reliable test to diagnose all common forms of hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. The aim of this study was to analyze the ordering pattern for thyroid function tests by physicians and the analysis of results based on the clinical history. The mean age of the patients was 32.5 ± 6.5 years. Majority of samples (87.7% of total) were received from the departments of Medicine and Gynae. Thyroid profiles (47.5%) were ordered more frequently as compared to TSH only (46%). There was no significant difference in the percentage of normal reports for both types of tests. 77.8% of TFT and 76.6% of TSH samples had results within the reference range. The percentage of abnormal results was 13.7% in the patients who were screened for thyroid disorders. There is a need to redefine the case definition for thyroid dysfunction and order the appropriate test in a rational and cost effective manner.     

Electrocardiogram (ECG) patterns of left anterior fascicular block and conduction impairment in ventricular myocardium: a whole-heart model-based simulation study

Left anterior fascicular block (LAFB) is a heart disease identifiable from an abnormal electrocardiogram (ECG). It has been reported that LAFB is associated with an increased risk of heart failure. Non-specific intraventricular conduction delay due to the lesions of the conduction bundles and slow cell to cell conduction has also been considered as another cause of heart failure. Since the location and mechanism of conduction delay have notable variability between individual patients, we hypothesized that the impaired conduction in the ventricular myocardium may lead to abnormal ECGs similar to LAFB ECG patterns. To test this hypothesis, based on a computer model with a three dimensional whole-heart anatomical structure, we simulated the cardiac exciting sequence map and 12-lead ECG caused by the block in the left anterior fascicle and by the slowed conduction velocity in the ventricular myocardium. The simulation results showed that the typical LAFB ECG patterns can also be observed from cases with slowed conduction velocity in the ventricular myocardium. The main differences were the duration of QRS and wave amplitude. In conclusion, our simulations provide a promising starting point to further investigate the underlying mechanism of heart failure with LAFB, which would provide a potential reference for LAFB diagnosis. the angulation of impaction having little effect on facture risk.     

Learning from children’s voice in schools: Experiences from Ireland

In Ireland there is progressive legislation on children’s participation in the education system. The Education Act 1998 advocates that school boards should involve students in the school and establish student councils in second-level schools. Since the publication of this legislation progress on realising students’ participation in schools has been slow. In 2006 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Ireland strengthen its efforts to enable children to express their views in schools and other educational institutions. The National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-making (2015), the first to be produced internationally, commits to facilitating children and young people’s voice in the development of education policy, the running of schools and in other areas of school policy. This paper presents and discusses the results of qualitative participatory research with children and young people aged between 7 and 17 years, teachers and school principals, and parents, on their attitudes towards and opportunities for participation by students in schools in Ireland. The data reveal that students are keen to participate in school but recognise that their opportunities to do so are inadequate, that teachers understand participation very differently from students, and that parents have little knowledge of their children’s participatory experiences in school. It concludes that effective participation in schools requires policy, practical and cultural change.     

Why We Watch: Factors Affecting Exposure to Tragic Television News

This study explored the reasons people expose themselves to news depicting tragic events. A total of 376 undergraduates completed anonymous questionnaires about their responses to news coverage of the events of September 11. The study examined the extent to which individual differences in empathy gave rise to news viewing motives (surveillance, reassurance, curiosity), and how these variables, as well as negative emotional responses (anger, sadness, fear), were related to news interest and exposure. Both empathy and emotional responses were associated in predictable ways with interest in news coverage and selective exposure to specific types of news stories (e.g., casualty news, positive news). The results demonstrate that considering affective motivations can enrich our understanding of how and why people use news media. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

On rubrication of the division <Emphasis Type="Italic">spintronics</Emphasis> in a separate edition of the abstract journal of the VINITI RAS <Emphasis Type="Italic">solid-state physics</Emphasis> (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Electrical Properties</Emphasis>)

The necessity for publishing a separate abstract journal on spintronics, which is a new, rapidly developing branch of physics, is substantiated. The interest in spintronics, which is the study of fundamental processes involving the simultaneous transport of both electron charge and electron spins in solids, as well as the interaction of electrons with a magnetic grating, is determined not only by its fascinating prospects but also the results that have already achieved. The spin and charge “degrees of freedom” open possibilities for the creation of semiconducting devices with parameters that are much superior to the existing ones and also the construction of devices that do not have analogues at present. First of all, this will permit problems of information transmission and processing to be solved in a new way. A detailed rubrication on spintronics is given in order to discuss the possibility of publishing a separate edition of an abstract journal devoted to spintronics.     

A world-class archival achievement: the People’s Republic of China archivists’ success in opening the Ming-Qing central-government archives, 1949–1998

This article describes the first half century of the Communist government’s supervision and management of the central-government archives of the last two dynasties. Immediately with the Communist ascent to power in 1949, the new government took great interest in assembling and protecting the country’s archival documents, readying the Ming-Qing archives for access to scholars, and preparing for publication of selected materials. By the 1980s Beijing’s Number One Historical Archives, in charge of the largest holding of Ming-Qing documents, had become the first Chinese authority to complete a full sorting and preliminary catalogues for such a collection. Moreover, to facilitate searches, an attempt has recently begun to create a subject-heading system for these and other holdings in the country. In the first half century’s final decades, foreign researchers were admitted for the first time and tours and international exchanges began to take place.

Using word embeddings in Twitter election classification

Word embeddings and convolutional neural networks (CNN) have attracted extensive attention in various classification tasks for Twitter, e.g. sentiment classification. However, the effect of the configuration used to generate the word embeddings on the classification performance has not been studied in the existing literature. In this paper, using a Twitter election classification task that aims to detect election-related tweets, we investigate the impact of the background dataset used to train the embedding models, as well as the parameters of the word embedding training process, namely the context window size, the dimensionality and the number of negative samples, on the attained classification performance. By comparing the classification results of word embedding models that have been trained using different background corpora (e.g. Wikipedia articles and Twitter microposts), we show that the background data should align with the Twitter classification dataset both in data type and time period to achieve significantly better performance compared to baselines such as SVM with TF-IDF. Moreover, by evaluating the results of word embedding models trained using various context window sizes and dimensionalities, we find that large context window and dimension sizes are preferable to improve the performance. However, the number of negative samples parameter does not significantly affect the performance of the CNN classifiers. Our experimental results also show that choosing the correct word embedding model for use with CNN leads to statistically significant improvements over various baselines such as random, SVM with TF-IDF and SVM with word embeddings. Finally, for out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words that are not available in the learned word embedding models, we show that a simple OOV strategy to randomly initialise the OOV words without any prior knowledge is sufficient to attain a good classification performance among the current OOV strategies (e.g. a random initialisation using statistics of the pre-trained word embedding models).