Geographic knowledge extraction and semantic similarity in OpenStreetMap

In recent years, a web phenomenon known as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has produced large crowdsourced geographic data sets. OpenStreetMap (OSM), the leading VGI project, aims at building an open-content world map through user contributions. OSM semantics consists of a set of properties (called ‘tags’) describing geographic classes, whose usage is defined by project contributors on a dedicated Wiki website. Because of its simple and open semantic structure, the OSM approach often results in noisy and ambiguous data, limiting its usability for analysis in information retrieval, recommender systems and data mining. Devising a mechanism for computing the semantic similarity of the OSM geographic classes can help alleviate this semantic gap. The contribution of this paper is twofold. It consists of (1) the development of the OSM Semantic Network by means of a web crawler tailored to the OSM Wiki website; this semantic network can be used to compute semantic similarity through co-citation measures, providing a novel semantic tool for OSM and GIS communities; (2) a study of the cognitive plausibility (i.e. the ability to replicate human judgement) of co-citation algorithms when applied to the computation of semantic similarity of geographic concepts. Empirical evidence supports the usage of co-citation algorithms—SimRank showing the highest plausibility—to compute concept similarity in a crowdsourced semantic network.     

Study on reuse of metal oxide-promoted sulphated zirconia in acylation reactions

A series of sulphated zirconia samples (SZ) promoted with Al₂O₃, Ga₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃ were synthesized by co-precipitation at constant pH and aged under reflux conditions. Structural, surface and catalytic properties of the samples were investigated using N₂ adsorption/desorption, thermal analysis, in-situ FTIR spectroscopy, TPR–MS and EGA–MS measurements. The catalytic performance of promoted SZ in anisole acylation has been investigated. Promotion by either Fe₂O₃ or Ga₂O₃ was found to increase the catalytic activity (yield) after recycle of catalysts with respect un-promoted sample, whereas promotion by Al₂O₃ was observed to increase the conversion but not the yield. It is worth noting that all systems present high selectivity to the p-metoxyacetophenone product.     

Learning concurrently data and rule bases of Mamdani fuzzy rule-based systems by exploiting a novel interpretability index

Interpretability of Mamdani fuzzy rule-based systems (MFRBSs) has been widely discussed in the last years, especially in the framework of multi-objective evolutionary fuzzy systems (MOEFSs). Here, multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are applied to generate a set of MFRBSs with different trade-offs between interpretability and accuracy. In MOEFSs interpretability has often been measured in terms of complexity of the rule base and only recently partition integrity has also been considered. In this paper, we introduce a novel index for evaluating the interpretability of MFRBSs, which takes both the rule base complexity and the data base integrity into account. We discuss the use of this index in MOEFSs, which generate MFRBSs by concurrently learning the rule base, the linguistic partition granularities and the membership function parameters during the evolutionary process. The proposed approach has been experimented on six real world regression problems and the results have been compared with those obtained by applying the same MOEA, with only accuracy and complexity of the rule base as objectives. We show that our approach achieves the best trade-offs between interpretability and accuracy.     

Apoptotic DNA fragmentation can be revealed in situ: An ultrastructural approach

A common pattern of apoptotic death is DNA cleavage, initially producing large fragments (50 kbp), followed by the production of nucleosomic/oligonucleosomic fragments. Nevertheless, apoptosis without DNA fragmentation, at least of the nucleosomic type, has been reported. To investigate the spatial relationship between DNA cleavage and chromatin condensation, we applied the TUNEL technique to the ultrastructural analysis of apoptotic cells. A modified method, utilizing a gold‐conjugated antidigoxigenin antibody, was carried out on U937 versus Molt‐4 cells, both exposed to UVB radiation or staurosporine treatment. Gold particle density in the different domains of apoptotic cells was evaluated by a four‐way ANOVA test. Gold labelling was more strongly localised in condensed chromatin than in the diffuse chromatin. U937 cells, which evidenced in vitro oligonucleosomic fragmentation after both UVB and staurosporine treatments, revealed a significantly higher gold particle density, when compared with Molt‐4, which did not show, on the other hand, oligonucleosomic cleavage even in the presence of ≤50 kbp cleavage. Thus, a correlation between DNA fragment sizes and gold particle density appears. TUNEL applied to electron microscopy is an effective approach to study the relationship between apoptotic chromatin condensation and DNA cleavage. Both these events indeed appear in the apoptotic nucleus, but their reciprocal correlation is still greatly unknown. Microsc. Res. Tech. 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Software engineering article types: An analysis of the literature

The software engineering (SE) community has recently recognized that the field lacks well-established research paradigms and clear guidance on how to write good research reports. With no comprehensive guide to the different article types in the field, article writing and reviewing heavily depends on the expertise and the understanding of the individual SE actors.In this work, we classify and describe the article types published in SE with an emphasis on what is required for publication in journals and conference proceedings. Theoretically, we consider article types as genres, because we assume that each type of article has a specific function and a particular communicative purpose within the community, which the members of the community can recognize. We draw on written sources available, i.e. the instructions to authors/reviewers of major SE journals, the calls for papers of major SE conferences, and previous research published on the topic.Despite the fragmentation and limitations of the sources studied, we are able to propose a classification of different SE article types. Such classification helps in guiding the reader through the SE literature, and in making the researcher reflect on directions for improvements.     

The many facets of the locomotor response to a novel environment test: Theoretical comment on Mitchell, Cunningham, and Mark (2005).

Several animal studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between locomotor activity in response to a novel environment and acquisition of drug self-administration behavior. This finding led to the assumption that animals with heightened reactivity to novel environments are more sensitive to the rewarding effects of drugs compared with animals with reduced reactivity. But are these individuals really more responsive to drugs, or could they have enhanced sensitivity to rewards in general or even simply be better learners? In the previous issue of this journal, J. M. Mitchell, C. L. Cunningham, and G. P. Mark (2005) (see record 2005-03585-010), investigated these important matters. They reported that the locomotor response to a novel environment does not predict responding for cocaine but reflects overall differences in the ability to learn operant tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of opiate manipulations on latent inhibition in rabbits: Sensitivity of the medial septal region to intracranial treatments.

Rabbits were exposed to an auditory stimulus that was later used as a conditioned stimulus (CS). Administration of the agonist levorphanol into the medial septal region either preceding or immediately following CS preexposure sessions attenuated latent inhibition of the conditioned response. This effect was observed in animals that showed no change in long-term retention of habituation. Administration of levorphanol into the central nucleus of the amygdala, a sensitive site for opiate manipulations on aversive conditioning tasks, were ineffective. Further analysis of the effect obtained within the septal region revealed pharmacological specificity. The effect of posttraining levorphanol was also time dependent and exhibited neuroanatomical specificity. Posttraining opiate antagonist administration into the medial septum produced a modest augmentation of latent inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking the von Kries model to Wien’s law for the estimation of an illuminant invariant image

Modeling the color variation due to an illuminant change is an important task for many computer vision applications, like color constancy, object recognition, shadow removal and image restoration. The von Kries diagonal model and Wien’s law are widely assumed by many algorithms for solving these problems. In this work we combine these two hypotheses and we show that under Wien’s law, the parameters of the von Kries model are related to each other through the color temperatures of the illuminants and the spectral sensitivities of the acquisition device. Based on this result, we provide a method for estimating some camera cues that are used to compute the illuminant invariant intrinsic image proposed by Finlayson and others. This is obtained by projecting the log-chromaticities of an input color image onto a vector depending only on the spectral cues of the acquisition device.     

Computer-aided detection of lung nodules based on decision fusion techniques

We adopted decision fusion techniques to develop a computer-aided detection (CAD) system for automatic detection of pulmonary nodules in low-dose CT images. Two distinct phases, aimed, respectively, at detecting volumes of interests (VOIs) within the CT scan, and at classifying VOIs into nodules and non-nodules, were considered. Three algorithms, namely thresholding, region growing and robust fuzzy clustering, were used as VOI detectors. For the classification phase, we built multi-classifier systems, which aggregate the decisions of three statistical classifiers, a neural network and a decision tree. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic convex hull method was used to build the final classifier, which results to be the aggregation of the best local behaviors of both classifiers and combiners. All the CAD modules were tested on CT scans analyzed by two expert radiologists. In the experiments, we achieved a sensitivity of 92.5% against a specificity of 83.5%.