TournaRank: When retrieval becomes document competition

Numerous feature-based models have been recently proposed by the information retrieval community. The capability of features to express different relevance facets (query- or document-dependent) can explain such a success story. Such models are most of the time supervised, thus requiring a learning phase. To leverage the advantages of feature-based representations of documents, we propose TournaRank, an unsupervised approach inspired by real-life game and sport competition principles. Documents compete against each other in tournaments using features as evidences of relevance. Tournaments are modeled as a sequence of matches, which involve pairs of documents playing in turn their features. Once a tournament is ended, documents are ranked according to their number of won matches during the tournament. This principle is generic since it can be applied to any collection type. It also provides great flexibility since different alternatives can be considered by changing the tournament type, the match rules, the feature set, or the strategies adopted by documents during matches. TournaRank was experimented on several collections to evaluate our model in different contexts and to compare it with related approaches such as Learning To Rank and fusion ones: the TREC Robust2004 collection for homogeneous documents, the TREC Web2014 (ClueWeb12) collection for heterogeneous web documents, and the LETOR3.0 collection for comparison with supervised feature-based models.     

Anonymity versus commitment: The dangers of education on the internet

I shall translate Kierkegaard's account of the dangers and opportunities of what he called the Press into a critique of the Internet so as to raise the question: what contribution -- for good or ill -- can the World Wide Web, with its ability to deliver vast amounts of information to users all over the world, make to educators trying to pass on knowledge and to develop skills and wisdom in their students? I will then use Kierkegaard's three-stage answer to the problem of lack of involvement posed by the Press -- his claim that to have a meaningful life the learner must pass through the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious spheres of existence -- to suggest that only the first two stages -- the aesthetic and the ethical -- can be implemented with Information Technology, while the final stage, which alone makes meaningful learning possible, is undermined rather than supported by the tendencies of the desituated and anonymous Net.     

Correlations between WISC-R subtests and verbal,performance, and full scale IQ scores for minority group children

The relationship between WISC-R subtest scores and Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs was investigated for a sample comprised of rural Appalachian children. The sample was comprised of both white and black children who might be described as culturally different by virtue of low family income and residence in the mountainous areas of Virginia and North Carolina. Data analysis consisted of computing product-moment correlations (rs) between each of the ten subtests and the Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs. Correlations between individual subtests and the FS IQ ranged from.49 through.63, but none of the differences between these rs were large enough to attain significance. Correlations between the verbal subtests and Verbal IQ ranged from.64 for Comprehension up to.78 for Vocabulary. For the performance subtest, the rs ranged from.54 between Coding and the Performance IQ up to.72 for Object Assembly.     

Discriminating between attitudes expressed by normal and disabled readers

The Survey of Reading Attitudes was administered to 84 normal and 116 disabled readers from the intermediate grades, and a discriminate function analysis was performed on their scores for the eight dimensions of reading attitudes measured by the Survey. The findings indicate that Expressed Reading Difficulty, Reading as Enjoyment, and Reading Group are the three variables that discriminate between these two groups. In comparison with normal readers, disabled readers are more likely to feel negatively about their reading group, less likely to see themselves as pursuing reading for its intrinsic value, and more likely to perceive of themselves as having difficulty with reading. However, the extent to which these findings can be generalized beyond the present sample of white Appalachian students must be established through future research.     

The cognitive levels test: Its relationship with reading and mathematics achievement

Any instrument designed to measure broad cognitive ability is expected to correlate substantially with valid measures of academic achievement. This report describes an investigation designed to evaluate the relationship between the Cognitive Levels Test, a newly available instrument, and two tests of academic achievement that have been widely used for nearly two decades: the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests and the KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test. The study included children in grades K-2 who were enrolled in a remedial summer school program. The results showed the Cognitive Levels Test (Cognitive Index) to be rather highly correlated with the KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test Total score (r=.72) and moderately correlated with the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests Total Reading score (r=.55). A repeated measures analysis of variance comparing standard scores for the Cognitive Levels Test with those of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests indicated few mean differences between the two sets of scores. Implications concerning the validity of the Cognitive Levels Test were discussed.     

Effect of physiological harvest stages on the composition of bioactive compounds in Cavendish bananas

The combined influence of maturation, ripening, and climate on the profile of bioactive compounds was studied in banana (Musa acuminata, AAA, Cavendish, cv. Grande Naine). Their bioactive compounds were determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu assay and high-performance thin layer chromatographic (HPTLC) method. The polyphenol content of bananas harvested after 400 degree days remained unchanged during ripening, while bananas harvested after 600 and 900 degree days exhibited a significant polyphenol increase. Although dopamine was the polyphenol with the highest concentration in banana peels during the green developmental stage and ripening, its kinetics differed from the total polyphenol profile. Our results showed that this matrix of choice (maturation, ripening, and climate) may allow selection of the banana (M. acuminata, AAA, Cavendish, cv. Grande Naine) status that will produce optimal concentrations of identified compounds with human health relevance.     

Triggered lightning in France and New Mexico

The possibility of triggering lightning by a rocket carrying a thin wire was demonstrated on a ship by M. M. Newman in 1965. Since 1973, this technique has been developed in France for operation above land. The same equipment was used successfully in New Mexico in 1981 and 1982. Triggered lightning is very attractive for many studies on lightning physics and for testing various kinds of equipment and protection devices. This explains the initiation of similar programmes in several other places.