An unsupervised heuristic-based approach for bibliographic metadata deduplication

Digital libraries of scientific articles contain collections of digital objects that are usually described by bibliographic metadata records. These records can be acquired from different sources and be represented using several metadata standards. These metadata standards may be heterogeneous in both, content and structure. All of this implies that many records may be duplicated in the repository, thus affecting the quality of services, such as searching and browsing. In this article we present an approach that identifies duplicated bibliographic metadata records in an efficient and effective way. We propose similarity functions especially designed for the digital library domain and experimentally evaluate them. Our results show that the proposed functions improve the quality of metadata deduplication up to 188% compared to four different baselines. We also show that our approach achieves statistical equivalent results when compared to a state-of-the-art method for replica identification based on genetic programming, without the burden and cost of any training process.     

Contemporary discourses in Information Systems Research: Methodological inclusiveness in a sample of Information Systems Journals

We propose a framework to reflect on the development of four information systems (IS) paradigms, arguing that this field has followed a similar path to that of Management Sciences (MS). The framework comprises four IS paradigms/discourses: (1) positivist/normative; (2) soft/interpretive; (3) critical/pluralistic; and (4) constructivist/2nd order cybernetics. The paper characterizes these approaches to IS by using four key terms: System; Organisation; Management and Information, exploring the way these concepts are perceived through the lens of the four paradigms. The paper reports on the nature of current IS trends, from an initial survey of six top IS journals identifying articles adhering to the interpretive, critical and constructivist paradigms published between 1999 and 2009. Results indicate that IS is moving towards research practice in which interpretive, critical and constructivist discourses are utilised. Implications of the proposed framework and publication trends, together with some points for further research, are offered.     

The rating of perceived exertion predicts intermittent vertical jump demand and performance

The aims of this study were (a) to assess the ability of the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) to predict performance (i.e. number of vertical jumps performed to a fixed jump height) of an intermittent vertical jump exercise, and (b) to determine the ability of RPE to describe the physiological demand of such exercise. Eight healthy men performed intermittent vertical jumps with rest periods of 4, 5, and 6 s until fatigue. Heart rate and RPE were recorded every five jumps throughout the sessions. The number of vertical jumps performed was also recorded. Random coefficient growth curve analysis identified relationships between the number of vertical jumps and both RPE and heart rate for which there were similar slopes. In addition, there were no differences between individual slopes and the mean slope for either RPE or heart rate. Moreover, RPE and number of jumps were highly correlated throughout all sessions (r = 0.97-0.99; P < 0.001), as were RPE and heart rate (r = 0.93-0.97; P < 0.001). The findings suggest that RPE can both predict the performance of intermittent vertical jump exercise and describe the physiological demands of such exercise.     

学术简讯

常识的概念已经成为一种意识形态,在当代社会构建霸权主义、并将霸权主义作为道德与智力领导力的过程中起着重要作用。尽管在事实上新自由主义作为一种经济发展模式已经彻底失败,与新自由主义相关的文化政治仍然盛行于世,并在塑造现代政府和教育角色的理念中变成了新的常识。新自由主义全球化是全球化中最突出的模式,以市场相对于政府的主导地位和放松管制的治理模式为前提,在"学术资本主义"背景下深深地影响了高校。由此带来的改革通常以促进国际竞争力为合理借口,也被称为"竞争型改革"。市场力量日益渗透到高等教育领域,围绕学术资本主义"游戏"展开的大学治理模式的重构,均显示了新自由主义对高校影响的四个主要方面,即效率与问责制、认证与普及化、国际竞争力、私有化。通过引入以管理主义治理院校的新型模式,高校深化并扩大了自身的危机。虽然高校采纳并实施了这些改革措施,但是在不同领域,在自上而下地通过政策和重心调整强制改革时,全球化面临着越来越大的阻力。在许多情况下,新自由主义改革通过收取较高学费与减少政府对院校和个人的支持,限制了一些阶级和种族接受高等教育的机会。 更多还原     

Countering plutocracies: increasing autonomy and accountability through culturally relevant leadership

In urban school districts across the USA there are mandates to implement zero tolerance policies. As this occurs, there is an increasing number of students, specifically students of colour, who are being jettisoned out of the educative process. When school principals have little autonomy regarding how they handle disciplinary infractions within their schools, it becomes relatively easy for them to opt out of making tough decision. The authors assert that Culturally Relevant Leadership is a framework that, if applied correctly, can help school leaders reduce the multiple school suspensions and expulsions that are occurring among students of colour.     

What makes a landmark effective? Sex differences in a navigation task

In Experiment 1, two groups of female rats were trained in a triangular pool to find a hidden platform whose location was defined in terms of a single a landmark, a cylinder outside the pool. For one group, the landmark had only a single pattern (i.e., it looked the same when approached from any direction), while for the other, the landmark contained four different patterns (i.e., it looked different when approached from different directions). The first group learned to swim to the platform more rapidly than the second. Experiment 2 confirmed this difference when female rats were trained in a circular pool but found that male rats learned equally rapidly (and as rapidly as females trained with the single-pattern landmark) with both landmarks. This second finding was confirmed in Experiment 3. Finally, in Experiment 4a and 4b, male and female rats were trained either with the same, single-pattern landmark on all trials or with a different landmark each day. Males learned equally rapidly (and as rapidly as females trained with the unchanged landmark) whether the landmark changed or not. We conclude that male and female rats learn rather different things about the landmark that signals the location of the platform.