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  Automaton

  An automaton ( ; pl.: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power or will, like a mechanical robot. The term has long been commonly associated with automated puppets that resemble moving humans or animals, built to impress and/or to entertain people. Animatronics are a modern type of automata with electronics, often used for the portrayal of characters or creatures in films and in theme park attractions. == Etymology == The word automaton is the latinization of the Ancient Greek automaton (αὐτόματον), which means "acting of one's own will". It was first used by Homer to describe an automatic door opening, or automatic movement of wheeled tripods. It is more often used to describe non-electronic moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions, such as the jacks on old public striking clocks, or the cuckoo and any other animated figures on a cuckoo clock. == History == === Ancient === There are many examples of automata in Greek mythology: Hephaestus created automata for his workshop; Talos was an artificial man of bronze; King Alkinous of the Phaiakians employed gold and silver watchdogs. According to Aristotle, Daedalus used quicksilver to make his wooden statue of Aphrodite move. In other Greek legends he used quicksilver to install voice in his moving statues. The automata in the Hellenistic world were intended as tools, toys, religious spectacles, or prototypes for demonstrating basic scientific principles. Numerous water-powered automata were built by Ktesibios, a Greek inventor and the first head of the Great Library of Alexandria; for example, he "used water to sound a whistle and make a model owl move. He had invented the world's first 'cuckoo clock'". This tradition continued in Alexandria with inventors such as the Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria (sometimes known as Heron), whose writings on hydraulics, pneumatics, and mechanics described siphons, a fire engine, a water organ, the aeolipile, and a programmable cart. Philo of Byzantium was famous for his inventions. Complex mechanical devices are known to have existed in Hellenistic Greece, though the only surviving example is the Antikythera mechanism, the earliest known analog computer. The clockwork is thought to have come originally from Rhodes, where there was apparently a tradition of mechanical engineering; the island was renowned for its automata; to quote Pindar's seventh Olympic Ode: The animated figures stand Adorning every public street And seem to breathe in stone, or move their marble feet. However, the information gleaned from recent scans of the fragments indicate that it may have come from the colonies of Corinth in Sicily and implies a connection with Archimedes. According to Jewish legend, King Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It is also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne. In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, believed to have originated around 400 BCE and compiled around the fourth century CE. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023–957 BCE) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a very realistic and detailed life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork: The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted. Other notable examples of automata include Archytas' dove, mentioned by Aulus Gellius. Similar Chinese accounts of flying automata are written of the 5th century BC Mohist philosopher Mozi and his contemporary Lu Ban, who made artificial wooden birds (ma yuan) that could successfully fly according to the Han Fei Zi and other texts. === Medieval === The manufacturing tradition of automata continued in the Greek world well into the Middle Ages. On his visit to Constantinople in 949 ambassador Liutprand of Cremona described automata in the emperor Theophilos' palace, including "lions, made either of bronze or wood covered with gold, which struck the ground with their tails and roared with open mouth and quivering tongue," "a tree of gilded bronze, its branches filled with birds, likewise made of bronze gilded over, and these emitted cries appropriate to their species" and "the emperor's throne" itself, which "was made in such a cunning manner that at one moment it was down on the ground, while at another it rose higher and was to be seen up in the air." Similar automata in the throne room (singing birds, roaring and moving lions) were described by Luitprand's contemporary the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his book De Ceremoniis (Perì tês Basileíou Tákseōs). In the mid-8th century, the first wind powered automata were built: "statues that turned with the wind over the domes of the four gates and the palace complex of the Round City of Baghdad". The "public spectacle of wind-powered statues had its private counterpart in the 'Abbasid palaces where automata of various types were predominantly displayed." Also in the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist, Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber), included recipes for constructing artificial snakes, scorpions, and humans that would be subject to their creator's control in his coded Book of Stones. In 827, Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun had a silver and golden tree in his palace in Baghdad, which had the features of an automatic machine. There were metal birds that sang automatically on the swinging branches of this tree built by Muslim inventors and engineers. The Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir also had a silver and golden tree in his palace in Baghdad in 917, with birds on it flapping their wings and singing. In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers invented a programmable automatic flute player and which they described in their Book of Ingenious Devices. Al-Jazari described complex programmable humanoid automata amongst other machines he designed and constructed in the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206. His automaton was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bump into little levers that operate the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. Al-Jazari constructed a hand washing automaton first employing the flush mechanism now used in modern toilets. It features a female automaton standing by a basin filled with water. When the user pulls the lever, the water drains and the automaton refills the basin. His "peacock fountain" was another more sophisticated hand washing device featuring humanoid automata as servants who offer soap and towels. Mark E. Rosheim describes it as follows: "Pulling a plug on the peacock's tail releases water out of the beak; as the dirty water from the basin fills the hollow base a float rises and actuates a linkage which makes a servant figure appear from behind a door under the peacock and offer soap.

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  Jump-and-Walk algorithm

  Jump-and-Walk is an algorithm for point location in triangulations (though most of the theoretical analysis were performed in 2D and 3D random Delaunay triangulations). Surprisingly, the algorithm does not need any preprocessing or complex data structures except some simple representation of the triangulation itself. The predecessor of Jump-and-Walk was due to Lawson (1977) and Green and Sibson (1978), which picks a random starting point S and then walks from S toward the query point Q one triangle at a time. But no theoretical analysis was known for these predecessors until after mid-1990s. Jump-and-Walk picks a small group of sample points and starts the walk from the sample point which is the closest to Q until the simplex containing Q is found. The algorithm was a folklore in practice for some time, and the formal presentation of the algorithm and the analysis of its performance on 2D random Delaunay triangulation was done by Devroye, Mucke and Zhu in mid-1990s (the paper appeared in Algorithmica, 1998). The analysis on 3D random Delaunay triangulation was done by Mucke, Saias and Zhu (ACM Symposium of Computational Geometry, 1996). In both cases, a boundary condition was assumed, namely, Q must be slightly away from the boundary of the convex domain where the vertices of the random Delaunay triangulation are drawn. In 2004, Devroye, Lemaire and Moreau showed that in 2D the boundary condition can be withdrawn (the paper appeared in Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications, 2004). Jump-and-Walk has been used in many famous software packages, e.g., QHULL, Triangle and CGAL.

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  List of information schools

  This list of information schools, sometimes abbreviated to iSchools, includes members of the iSchools organization. The iSchools organization reflects a consortium of over 130 information schools across the globe. == History == The first iSchools Caucus was formed in 1988 by Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Drexel and was called the Gang of Three (sometimes gang of four with Rutgers). Syracuse renamed the School of Library Science as the School of Information Studies in 1974, and is considered as the first “iSchool” in history. The group was formally named "the iSchools Caucus" or more casually, the iCaucus. By 2003, the group expanded to include the Universities of Michigan, Washington, Illinois, UNC, Florida State, Indiana, and Texas, and was called the Gang of Ten. The current iSchools Caucus organization was formalized by 2005, with additions of UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCLA, Penn State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Toronto, Carnegie Mellon and Singapore Management University. == iSchools organization == The iSchools promote an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the opportunities and challenges of information management, with a core commitment to concepts like universal access and user-centered organization of information. The field is concerned broadly with questions of design and preservation across information spaces, from digital and virtual spaces such as online communities, social networking, the World Wide Web, and databases to physical spaces such as libraries, museums, collections, and other repositories. "School of Information", "Department of Information Studies", or "Information Department" are often the names of the participating organizations. Degree programs at iSchools include course offerings in areas such as information architecture, design, policy, and economics; knowledge management, user experience design, and usability; preservation and conservation; librarianship and library administration; the sociology of information; and human-computer interaction and computer science. === Leadership === The executive committee of the iSchools is made up of the current chair (Ina Fourie, University of Pretoria, South Africa), past chair (Gillian Oliver, Monash University, Australia) and the chair elect (Javed Mostafa, University of Toronto Canada), plus representatives from the three regions (North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific). The current executive director is Slava Sterzer. == Member institutions == Between 2010 and 2026, the organization expanded globally beyond North America, growing to 133 member schools as of March 2026. For an updated and complete list of member schools, please visit the member database of the iSchools. == iConferences == Members of the iSchools organize a regular academic conference, known as the iConference, hosted by a different member institution each year. September 2005: Pennsylvania State University October 2006: University of Michigan February 2008: University of California, Los Angeles February 2009: University of North Carolina February 2010: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign February 2011: University of Washington, Seattle February 2012: University of Toronto February 2013: University of North Texas March 2014: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin March 2015: University of California, Irvine March 2016: Drexel University March 2017: Wuhan University March 2018: University of Sheffield and Northumbria University March 2019: University of Maryland March 2020: University of Borås (virtual only) March 2021: Renmin University of China (virtual only) February/March 2022: University of Texas at Austin, University College Dublin & Kyushu University (virtual only) March 2023: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya March 2024: Jilin University March 2025: Indiana University March/April 2026: Edinburgh Napier University 2027: Victoria University of Wellington == Other schools of information == Other information schools and programs include: Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore San Jose State University, School of Information University of Southern California Library Science Degree Ankara University, Department of Information and Records Management, Ankara/Turkey Marmara University, Department of Information and Records Management, Istanbul/Turkey University of Kelaniya, Department of Library and Information Science, Kelaniya/Sri Lanka University of Colombo, National Institute of Library and Information Science (NILIS), Colombo/Sri Lanka Chicago State University, Department of Information Studies

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  Lancichinetti–Fortunato–Radicchi benchmark

  Lancichinetti–Fortunato–Radicchi benchmark is an algorithm that generates benchmark networks (artificial networks that resemble real-world networks). They have a priori known communities and are used to compare different community detection methods. The advantage of the benchmark over other methods is that it accounts for the heterogeneity in the distributions of node degrees and of community sizes. == The algorithm == The node degrees and the community sizes are distributed according to a power law, with different exponents. The benchmark assumes that both the degree and the community size have power law distributions with different exponents, γ {\displaystyle \gamma } and β {\displaystyle \beta } , respectively. N {\displaystyle N} is the number of nodes and the average degree is ⟨ k ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle k\rangle } . There is a mixing parameter μ {\displaystyle \mu } , which is the average fraction of neighboring nodes of a node that do not belong to any community that the benchmark node belongs to. This parameter controls the fraction of edges that are between communities. Thus, it reflects the amount of noise in the network. At the extremes, when μ = 0 {\displaystyle \mu =0} all links are within community links, if μ = 1 {\displaystyle \mu =1} all links are between nodes belonging to different communities. One can generate the benchmark network using the following steps. Step 1: Generate a network with nodes following a power law distribution with exponent γ {\displaystyle \gamma } and choose extremes of the distribution k min {\displaystyle k_{\min }} and k max {\displaystyle k_{\max }} to get desired average degree is ⟨ k ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle k\rangle } . Step 2: ( 1 − μ ) {\displaystyle (1-\mu )} fraction of links of every node is with nodes of the same community, while fraction μ {\displaystyle \mu } is with the other nodes. Step 3: Generate community sizes from a power law distribution with exponent β {\displaystyle \beta } . The sum of all sizes must be equal to N {\displaystyle N} . The minimal and maximal community sizes s min {\displaystyle s_{\min }} and s max {\displaystyle s_{\max }} must satisfy the definition of community so that every non-isolated node is in at least in one community: s min > k min {\displaystyle s_{\min }>k_{\min }} s max > k max {\displaystyle s_{\max }>k_{\max }} Step 4: Initially, no nodes are assigned to communities. Then, each node is randomly assigned to a community. As long as the number of neighboring nodes within the community does not exceed the community size a new node is added to the community, otherwise stays out. In the following iterations the “homeless” node is randomly assigned to some community. If that community is complete, i.e. the size is exhausted, a randomly selected node of that community must be unlinked. Stop the iteration when all the communities are complete and all the nodes belong to at least one community. Step 5: Implement rewiring of nodes keeping the same node degrees but only affecting the fraction of internal and external links such that the number of links outside the community for each node is approximately equal to the mixing parameter μ {\displaystyle \mu } . == Testing == Consider a partition into communities that do not overlap. The communities of randomly chosen nodes in each iteration follow a p ( C ) {\displaystyle p(C)} distribution that represents the probability that a randomly picked node is from the community C {\displaystyle C} . Consider a partition of the same network that was predicted by some community finding algorithm and has p ( C 2 ) {\displaystyle p(C_{2})} distribution. The benchmark partition has p ( C 1 ) {\displaystyle p(C_{1})} distribution. The joint distribution is p ( C 1 , C 2 ) {\displaystyle p(C_{1},C_{2})} . The similarity of these two partitions is captured by the normalized mutual information. I n = ∑ C 1 , C 2 p ( C 1 , C 2 ) log 2 ⁡ p ( C 1 , C 2 ) p ( C 1 ) p ( C 2 ) 1 2 H ( { p ( C 1 ) } ) + 1 2 H ( { p ( C 2 ) } ) {\displaystyle I_{n}={\frac {\sum _{C_{1},C_{2}}p(C_{1},C_{2})\log _{2}{\frac {p(C_{1},C_{2})}{p(C_{1})p(C_{2})}}}{{\frac {1}{2}}H(\{p(C_{1})\})+{\frac {1}{2}}H(\{p(C_{2})\})}}} If I n = 1 {\displaystyle I_{n}=1} the benchmark and the detected partitions are identical, and if I n = 0 {\displaystyle I_{n}=0} then they are independent of each other.

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  ISLRN

  The ISLRN or International Standard Language Resource Number is Persistent Unique Identifier for Language Resources. == Context == On November 18, 2013, 12 major organisations (see list below) from the fields Language Resources and Technologies, Computational Linguistics, and Digital Humanities held a cooperation meeting in Paris (France) and agreed to announce the establishment of the International Standard Language Resource Number (ISLRN), to be assigned to each Language Resource. Among the 12 organisations, 4 institutions constitute the ISLRN Steering Committee (ST) ADHO ACL Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing ST COCOSDA, International Committee for the Coordination & Standardisation of Speech Databases and Assessment Techniques ICCL (COLING) European Data Forum ELRA ST IAMT, International Association for Machine Translation Archived 2010-06-24 at the Wayback Machine ISCA LDC ST Oriental COCOSDA ST RMA, Language Resource Management Agency == Size and Content == The Joint Research Centre(JRC), the [European Commission]'s in-house science service, was the first organisation to adopt the ISLRN initiative and requested. 2500 resources and tools have already been allocated an ISLRN. These resources include written data (Annotated corpus, Annotated text, List of misspelled word, Terminological database, Treebank, Wordnet, etc.) and speech corpora (Synthesised Speech, Transcripts and Audiovisual Recordings, Conversational Speech, Folk Sayings, etc.) == Objectives == Providing Language Resources with unique names and identifiers using a standardized nomenclature ensures the identification of each Language Resources and streamlines the citation with proper references in activities within Human Language Technology as well as in documents and scientific publications. Such unique identifier also enhances the reproducibility, an essential feature of scientific work.

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  Webometrics

  The science of webometrics (also referred to as cybermetrics) aims to quantify the World Wide Web to get knowledge about the number and types of hyperlinks, the structure of the World Wide Web, and using patterns. According to Björneborn and Ingwersen, the definition of webometrics is "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches." The term webometrics was coined by Almind and Ingwersen (1997). A second definition of webometrics has also been introduced, "the study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study", which emphasizes the development of applied methods for use in the wider social sciences. The purpose of this alternative definition was to help publicize appropriate methods outside the information-science discipline rather than to replace the original definition within information science. Similar scientific fields are: bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics, virtual ethnography, and web mining. One relatively straightforward measure is the "web impact factor" (WIF) introduced by Ingwersen (1998). The WIF measure may be defined as the number of web pages in a web site receiving links from other web sites, divided by the number of web pages published in the site that are accessible to the crawler. However, the use of WIF has been disregarded due to the mathematical artifacts derived from power law distributions of these variables. Other similar indicators using size of the institution instead of number of webpages have been proved more useful.

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  Cancer Likelihood in Plasma

  Cancer Likelihood in Plasma (CLiP) refers to a set of ensemble learning methods for integrating various genomic features useful for the noninvasive detection of early cancers from blood plasma. An application of this technique for early detection of lung cancer (Lung-CLiP) was originally described by Chabon et al. (2020) from the labs of Ash Alizadeh and Max Diehn at Stanford. This method relies on several improvements to cancer personalized profiling by deep sequencing (CAPP-Seq) for analysis of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). The CLiP technique integrates multiple distinctive genomic features of a cancer of interest findings within a machine-learning framework for cancer detection. For example, studies have shown that the majority of somatic mutations found in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) are not tumor derived, but instead reflect clonal hematopoeisis (also known as CHIP). Even though CHIP tends to target specific genes, it also involves many generally non-recurrent mutations that can be shed from leukocytes and detected in cfDNA, regardless of whether profiling patients with cancer and healthy adults. However, genuine tumor derived ctDNA mutations can be distinguished from CHIP-derived mutations. This is because unlike tumor-derived mutations, CHIP-derived mutations that are shed from leukocytes into plasma tend to occur on longer cfDNA fragments, and to lack specific mutational signatures such as those associated with tobacco smoking in lung cancer that are also found in tumor derived ctDNA molecules. CLiP integrates these features within hierarchical ensemble machine learning models that consider somatic mutations and copy number alternations, among other features. While the CLiP method is unique in relying exclusively on mutations and copy number alterations, it is related to a variety of other liquid biopsy methods being commercially developed for early cancer detection using ctDNA and proteins (e.g., CancerSEEK / DETECT-A ), cfDNA fragmentation patterns (e.g., DELFI), and DNA methylation (e.g., cfMeDIP-Seq, Grail). While the CLiP method has not yet been broadly applied for population-based cancer screening, it has been shown to distinguish discriminate early-stage lung cancers from risk-matched controls across multiple cohorts of patients enrolled across the US.

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  Information behavior

  Information behavior is a field of information science research that seeks to understand the way people search for and use information in various contexts. It can include information seeking and information retrieval, but it also aims to understand why people seek information and how they use it. The term 'information behavior' was coined by Thomas D. Wilson in 1982 and sparked controversy upon its introduction. The term has now been adopted and Wilson's model of information behavior is widely cited in information behavior literature. In 2000, Wilson defined information behavior as "the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information". A variety of theories of information behavior seek to understand the processes that surround information seeking. An analysis of the most cited publications on information behavior during the early 21st century shows its theoretical nature. Information behavior research can employ various research methodologies grounded in broader research paradigms from psychology, sociology and education. In 2003, a framework for information-seeking studies was introduced that aims to guide the production of clear, structured descriptions of research objects and positions information-seeking as a concept within information behavior. == Concepts of information behavior == === Information need === Information need is a concept introduced by Wilson. Understanding the information need of an individual involved three elements: Why the individual decides to look for information, What purpose the information they find will serve, and How the information is used once it is retrieved === Information-seeking behavior === Information-seeking behavior is a more specific concept of information behavior. It specifically focuses on searching, finding, and retrieving information. Information-seeking behavior research can focus on improving information systems or, if it includes information need, can also focus on why the user behaves the way they do. A review study on information search behavior of users highlighted that behavioral factors, personal factors, product/service factors and situational factors affect information search behavior. Information-seeking behavior can be more or less explicit on the part of users: users might seek to solve some task or to establish some piece of knowledge which can be found in the data in question, or alternatively the search process itself is part of the objective of the user, in use cases for exploring visual content or for familiarising oneself with the content of an information service. In the general case, information-seeking needs to be understood and analysed as a session rather than as a one-off transaction with a search engine, and in a broader context which includes user high-level intentions in addition to the immediate information need. === Information use === An information need is the recognition that a gap exists in one’s knowledge, prompting a desire to seek information to fill that gap. It often arises when a person encounters a problem or question they cannot resolve with their current understanding. === Information poverty and barriers === Introduced by Elfreda Chatman in 1987, information poverty is informed by the understanding that information is not equally accessible to all people. Information poverty does not describe a lack of information, but rather a worldview in which one's own experiences inside their own small world may create a distrust in the information provided by those outside their own lived experiences. == Metatheories == In Library and Information Science (LIS), a metatheory is described "a set of assumptions that orient and direct theorizing about a given phenomenon". Library and information science researchers have adopted a number of different metatheories in their research. A common concern among LIS researchers, and a prominent discussion in the field, is the broad spectrum of theories that inform the study of information behavior, information users, or information use. This variation has been noted as a cause of concern because it makes individual studies difficult to compare or synthesize if they are not guided by the same theory. This sentiment has been expressed in studies of information behavior literature from the early 1980s and more recent literature reviews have declared it necessary to refine their reviews to specific contexts or situations due to the sheer breadth of information behavior research available. Below are descriptions of some, but not all, metatheories that have guided LIS research. === Cognitivist approach === A cognitive approach to understanding information behavior is grounded in psychology. It holds the assumption that a person's thinking influences how they seek, retrieve, and use information. Researchers that approach information behavior with the assumption that it is influenced by cognition, seek to understand what someone is thinking while they engage in information behavior and how those thoughts influence their behavior. Wilson's attempt to understand information-seeking behavior by defining information need includes a cognitive approach. Wilson theorizes that information behavior is influenced by the cognitive need of an individual. By understanding the cognitive information need of an individual, we may gain insight into their information behavior. Nigel Ford takes a cognitive approach to information-seeking, focusing on the intellectual processes of information-seeking. In 2004, Ford proposed an information-seeking model using a cognitive approach that focuses on how to improve information retrieval systems and serves to establish information-seeking and information behavior as concepts in and of themselves, rather than synonymous terms. === Constructionist approach === The constructionist approach to information behavior has roots in the humanities and social sciences. It relies on social constructionism, which assumes that a person's information behavior is influenced by their experiences in society. In order to understand information behavior, constructionist researchers must first understand the social discourse that surrounds the behavior. The most popular thinker referenced in constructionist information behavior research is Michel Foucault, who famously rejected the concept of a universal human nature. The constructionist approach to information behavior research creates space for contextualizing the behavior based on the social experiences of the individual. One study that approaches information behavior research through the social constructionist approach is a study of the information behavior of a public library knitting group. The authors use a collectivist theory to frame their research, which denies the universality of information behavior and focuses on "understanding the ways that discourse communities collectively construct information needs, seeking, sources, and uses". === Constructivist approach === The constructivist approach is born out of education and sociology in which, "individuals are seen as actively constructing an understanding of their worlds, heavily influenced by the social world(s) in which they are operating". Constructivist approaches to information behavior research generally treat the individual's reality as constructed within their own mind rather than built by the society in which they live. The constructivist metatheory makes space for the influence of society and culture with social constructivism, "which argues that, while the mind constructs reality in its relationship to the world, this mental process is significantly informed by influences received from societal conventions, history and interaction with significant others". == Theories == A common concern among LIS researchers, and a prominent discussion in the field, is the broad spectrum of theories that inform LIS research. This variation has been noted as a cause of concern because it makes individual studies difficult to compare if they are not guided by the same theory. Recent studies have shown that the impact of these theories and theoretical models is very limited. LIS researchers have applied concepts and theories from many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, communication, organizational behavior, and computer science. === Wilson's theory of information behavior (1981) === The term was coined by Thomas D. Wilson in his 1981 paper, on the grounds that the current term, 'information needs' was unhelpful since 'need' could not be directly observed, while how people behaved in seeking information could be observed and investigated. However, there is increasing work in the information-searching field that is relating behaviors to underlying needs. In 2000, Wilson described information behavior as the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information-seeking, and information use. He described info

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  Tom's Planner

  Tom's Planner is a web-based tool and application service provider for project planning, management and collaboration. == History == Tom's Planner is based on Curaçao. In November 2009, it announced its public beta launch on TechCrunch and moved out of beta in August 2010. In 2013 Tom's Planner acquired its competitor Gantto. == Software == Tom's Planner is project management software that enables the creation of project schedules (Gantt charts) using a visual perspective. Tom's Planner uses the Freemium Business Model. Users can register for a free account or choose a paid version. Tom's Planner is available in five languages and is used by thousands of users on a daily basis in more than 100 countries worldwide. Customers range from fortune 500 companies to small mom-and-pop shops. == Reviews == Tom's Planner has been reviewed by PC World, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, and several other periodicals.

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  Berlekamp–Rabin algorithm

  In number theory, Berlekamp's root finding algorithm, also called the Berlekamp–Rabin algorithm, is the probabilistic method of finding roots of polynomials over the field F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} with p {\displaystyle p} elements. The method was discovered by Elwyn Berlekamp in 1970 as an auxiliary to the algorithm for polynomial factorization over finite fields. The algorithm was later modified by Rabin for arbitrary finite fields in 1979. The method was also independently discovered before Berlekamp by other researchers. == History == The method was proposed by Elwyn Berlekamp in his 1970 work on polynomial factorization over finite fields. His original work lacked a formal correctness proof and was later refined and modified for arbitrary finite fields by Michael Rabin. In 1986 René Peralta proposed a similar algorithm for finding square roots in F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} . In 2000 Peralta's method was generalized for cubic equations. == Statement of problem == Let p {\displaystyle p} be an odd prime number. Consider the polynomial f ( x ) = a 0 + a 1 x + ⋯ + a n x n {\textstyle f(x)=a_{0}+a_{1}x+\cdots +a_{n}x^{n}} over the field F p ≃ Z / p Z {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}\simeq \mathbb {Z} /p\mathbb {Z} } of remainders modulo p {\displaystyle p} . The algorithm should find all λ {\displaystyle \lambda } in F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} such that f ( λ ) = 0 {\textstyle f(\lambda )=0} in F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} . == Algorithm == === Randomization === Let f ( x ) = ( x − λ 1 ) ( x − λ 2 ) ⋯ ( x − λ n ) {\textstyle f(x)=(x-\lambda _{1})(x-\lambda _{2})\cdots (x-\lambda _{n})} . Finding all roots of this polynomial is equivalent to finding its factorization into linear factors. To find such factorization it is sufficient to split the polynomial into any two non-trivial divisors and factorize them recursively. To do this, consider the polynomial f z ( x ) = f ( x − z ) = ( x − λ 1 − z ) ( x − λ 2 − z ) ⋯ ( x − λ n − z ) {\textstyle f_{z}(x)=f(x-z)=(x-\lambda _{1}-z)(x-\lambda _{2}-z)\cdots (x-\lambda _{n}-z)} where z {\displaystyle z} is some element of F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} . If one can represent this polynomial as the product f z ( x ) = p 0 ( x ) p 1 ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)=p_{0}(x)p_{1}(x)} then in terms of the initial polynomial it means that f ( x ) = p 0 ( x + z ) p 1 ( x + z ) {\displaystyle f(x)=p_{0}(x+z)p_{1}(x+z)} , which provides needed factorization of f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} . === Classification of === F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} elements Due to Euler's criterion, for every monomial ( x − λ ) {\displaystyle (x-\lambda )} exactly one of following properties holds: The monomial is equal to x {\displaystyle x} if λ = 0 {\displaystyle \lambda =0} , The monomial divides g 0 ( x ) = ( x ( p − 1 ) / 2 − 1 ) {\textstyle g_{0}(x)=(x^{(p-1)/2}-1)} if λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is quadratic residue modulo p {\displaystyle p} , The monomial divides g 1 ( x ) = ( x ( p − 1 ) / 2 + 1 ) {\textstyle g_{1}(x)=(x^{(p-1)/2}+1)} if λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is quadratic non-residual modulo p {\displaystyle p} . Thus if f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} is not divisible by x {\displaystyle x} , which may be checked separately, then f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} is equal to the product of greatest common divisors gcd ( f z ( x ) ; g 0 ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \gcd(f_{z}(x);g_{0}(x))} and gcd ( f z ( x ) ; g 1 ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \gcd(f_{z}(x);g_{1}(x))} . === Berlekamp's method === The property above leads to the following algorithm: Explicitly calculate coefficients of f z ( x ) = f ( x − z ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)=f(x-z)} , Calculate remainders of x , x 2 , x 2 2 , x 2 3 , x 2 4 , … , x 2 ⌊ log 2 ⁡ p ⌋ {\textstyle x,x^{2},x^{2^{2}},x^{2^{3}},x^{2^{4}},\ldots ,x^{2^{\lfloor \log _{2}p\rfloor }}} modulo f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} by squaring the current polynomial and taking remainder modulo f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} , Using exponentiation by squaring and polynomials calculated on the previous steps calculate the remainder of x ( p − 1 ) / 2 {\textstyle x^{(p-1)/2}} modulo f z ( x ) {\textstyle f_{z}(x)} , If x ( p − 1 ) / 2 ≢ ± 1 ( mod f z ( x ) ) {\textstyle x^{(p-1)/2}\not \equiv \pm 1{\pmod {f_{z}(x)}}} then gcd {\displaystyle \gcd } mentioned below provide a non-trivial factorization of f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} , Otherwise all roots of f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} are either residues or non-residues simultaneously and one has to choose another z {\displaystyle z} . If f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} is divisible by some non-linear primitive polynomial g ( x ) {\displaystyle g(x)} over F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} then when calculating gcd {\displaystyle \gcd } with g 0 ( x ) {\displaystyle g_{0}(x)} and g 1 ( x ) {\displaystyle g_{1}(x)} one will obtain a non-trivial factorization of f z ( x ) / g z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)/g_{z}(x)} , thus algorithm allows to find all roots of arbitrary polynomials over F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} . === Modular square root === Consider equation x 2 ≡ a ( mod p ) {\textstyle x^{2}\equiv a{\pmod {p}}} having elements β {\displaystyle \beta } and − β {\displaystyle -\beta } as its roots. Solution of this equation is equivalent to factorization of polynomial f ( x ) = x 2 − a = ( x − β ) ( x + β ) {\textstyle f(x)=x^{2}-a=(x-\beta )(x+\beta )} over F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} . In this particular case problem it is sufficient to calculate only gcd ( f z ( x ) ; g 0 ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \gcd(f_{z}(x);g_{0}(x))} . For this polynomial exactly one of the following properties will hold: GCD is equal to 1 {\displaystyle 1} which means that z + β {\displaystyle z+\beta } and z − β {\displaystyle z-\beta } are both quadratic non-residues, GCD is equal to f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} which means that both numbers are quadratic residues, GCD is equal to ( x − t ) {\displaystyle (x-t)} which means that exactly one of these numbers is quadratic residue. In the third case GCD is equal to either ( x − z − β ) {\displaystyle (x-z-\beta )} or ( x − z + β ) {\displaystyle (x-z+\beta )} . It allows to write the solution as β = ( t − z ) ( mod p ) {\textstyle \beta =(t-z){\pmod {p}}} . === Example === Assume we need to solve the equation x 2 ≡ 5 ( mod 11 ) {\textstyle x^{2}\equiv 5{\pmod {11}}} . For this we need to factorize f ( x ) = x 2 − 5 = ( x − β ) ( x + β ) {\displaystyle f(x)=x^{2}-5=(x-\beta )(x+\beta )} . Consider some possible values of z {\displaystyle z} : Let z = 3 {\displaystyle z=3} . Then f z ( x ) = ( x − 3 ) 2 − 5 = x 2 − 6 x + 4 {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)=(x-3)^{2}-5=x^{2}-6x+4} , thus gcd ( x 2 − 6 x + 4 ; x 5 − 1 ) = 1 {\displaystyle \gcd(x^{2}-6x+4;x^{5}-1)=1} . Both numbers 3 ± β {\displaystyle 3\pm \beta } are quadratic non-residues, so we need to take some other z {\displaystyle z} . Let z = 2 {\displaystyle z=2} . Then f z ( x ) = ( x − 2 ) 2 − 5 = x 2 − 4 x − 1 {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)=(x-2)^{2}-5=x^{2}-4x-1} , thus gcd ( x 2 − 4 x − 1 ; x 5 − 1 ) ≡ x − 9 ( mod 11 ) {\textstyle \gcd(x^{2}-4x-1;x^{5}-1)\equiv x-9{\pmod {11}}} . From this follows x − 9 = x − 2 − β {\textstyle x-9=x-2-\beta } , so β ≡ 7 ( mod 11 ) {\displaystyle \beta \equiv 7{\pmod {11}}} and − β ≡ − 7 ≡ 4 ( mod 11 ) {\textstyle -\beta \equiv -7\equiv 4{\pmod {11}}} . A manual check shows that, indeed, 7 2 ≡ 49 ≡ 5 ( mod 11 ) {\textstyle 7^{2}\equiv 49\equiv 5{\pmod {11}}} and 4 2 ≡ 16 ≡ 5 ( mod 11 ) {\textstyle 4^{2}\equiv 16\equiv 5{\pmod {11}}} . == Correctness proof == The algorithm finds factorization of f z ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{z}(x)} in all cases except for ones when all numbers z + λ 1 , z + λ 2 , … , z + λ n {\displaystyle z+\lambda _{1},z+\lambda _{2},\ldots ,z+\lambda _{n}} are quadratic residues or non-residues simultaneously. According to theory of cyclotomy, the probability of such an event for the case when λ 1 , … , λ n {\displaystyle \lambda _{1},\ldots ,\lambda _{n}} are all residues or non-residues simultaneously (that is, when z = 0 {\displaystyle z=0} would fail) may be estimated as 2 − k {\displaystyle 2^{-k}} where k {\displaystyle k} is the number of distinct values in λ 1 , … , λ n {\displaystyle \lambda _{1},\ldots ,\lambda _{n}} . In this way even for the worst case of k = 1 {\displaystyle k=1} and f ( x ) = ( x − λ ) n {\displaystyle f(x)=(x-\lambda )^{n}} , the probability of error may be estimated as 1 / 2 {\displaystyle 1/2} and for modular square root case error probability is at most 1 / 4 {\displaystyle 1/4} . == Complexity == Let a polynomial have degree n {\displaystyle n} . We derive the algorithm's complexity as follows: Due to the binomial theorem ( x − z ) k = ∑ i = 0 k ( k i ) ( − z ) k − i x i {\textstyle (x-z)^{k}=\sum \limits _{i=0}^{k}{\binom {k}{i}}(-z)^{k-i}x^{i}} , we may transition from f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} to f ( x − z ) {\displaystyle f(x-z)} in O ( n 2 ) {\displaystyle O(n^{2})} time. Polynomial multiplication a

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  Knowledge spillover

  Knowledge spillover is an exchange of ideas among individuals. Knowledge spillover is usually replaced by terminations of technology spillover, R&D spillover and/or spillover (economics) when the concept is specific to technology management and innovation economics. In knowledge management economics, knowledge spillovers are non-rival knowledge market costs incurred by a party not agreeing to assume the costs that has a spillover effect of stimulating technological improvements in a neighbor through one's own innovation. Such innovations often come from specialization within an industry. There are two kinds of knowledge spillovers: internal and external. Internal knowledge spillover occurs if there is a positive impact of knowledge between individuals within an organization that produces goods and/or services. An external knowledge spillover occurs when the positive impact of knowledge is between individuals outside of a production organization. Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR) spillovers, Porter spillovers and Jacobs spillovers are three types of spillovers. == Conceptualizations == === Marshall–Arrow–Romer === Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR) spillover has its origins in 1890, where the English economist Alfred Marshall developed a theory of knowledge spillovers. Knowledge spillovers later were extended by economists Kenneth Arrow (1962) and Paul Romer (1986). In 1992, Edward Glaeser, Hedi Kallal, José Scheinkman, and Andrei Shleifer pulled together the Marshall–Arrow–Romer views on knowledge spillovers and accordingly named the view MAR spillover in 1992. Under the Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR) spillover view, the proximity of firms within a common industry often affects how well knowledge travels among firms to facilitate innovation and growth. The closer the firms are to one another, the greater the MAR spillover. The exchange of ideas is largely from employee to employee, in that employees from different firms in an industry exchange ideas about new products and new ways to produce goods. The opportunity to exchange ideas that lead to innovations key to new products and improved production methods. Research on the Cambridge IT Cluster (UK) suggests that technological knowledge spillovers might only happen rarely and are less important than other cluster benefits such as labour market pooling. === Porter === Porter (1990), like MAR, argues that knowledge spillovers in specialized, geographically concentrated industries stimulate growth. He insists, however, that local competition, as opposed to local monopoly, fosters the pursuit and rapid adoption of innovation. He gives examples of Italian ceramics and gold jewellery industries, in which hundreds of firms are located together and fiercely compete to innovate since the alternative to innovation is demise. Porter's externalities are maximized in cities with geographically specialized, competitive industries. === Jacobs === Under the Jacobs spillover view, the proximity of firms from different industries affect how well knowledge travels among firms to facilitate innovation and growth. This is in contrast to MAR spillovers, which focus on firms in a common industry. The diverse proximity of a Jacobs spillover brings together ideas among individuals with different perspectives to encourage an exchange of ideas and foster innovation in an industrially diverse environment. Developed in 1969 by urbanist Jane Jacobs and John Jackson the concept that Detroit’s shipbuilding industry from the 1830s was the critical antecedent leading to the 1890s development of the auto industry in Detroit since the gasoline engine firms easily transitioned from building gasoline engines for ships to building them for automobiles. == Incoming and outgoing spillovers == Knowledge spillover has asymmetric directions. The focal entity and receives or outflows know-how to others, creating incoming and outgoing spillovers. Cassiman and Veugelers (2002) use survey data and estimate incoming and outgoing spillover and study the economic impacts. Incoming spillover increases growth opportunity and productivity improvements of receivers, while outgoing spillover leads to free rider problem in the technology competition. Chen et al. (2013) use econometric method to gauge incoming spillover, a way that applies for all companies without survey. They find that incoming spillover explains R&D profits of industrial firms. == Policy implications == As information is largely non-rival in nature, certain measures must be taken to ensure that, for the originator, the information remains a private asset. As the market cannot do this efficiently, public regulations have been implemented to facilitate a more appropriate equilibrium. As a result, the concept of intellectual property rights have developed and ensure the ability of entrepreneurs to temporarily hold on to the profitability of their ideas through patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and other governmental safeguards. Conversely, such barriers to entry prevent the exploitation of informational developments by rival firms within an industry. For example, Wang (2023) indicates that technology spillovers are reduced by 27% to 51% when trade secrets laws are implemented by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act in the US. On the other hand, when the research and development of a private firm results in a social benefit, unaccounted for within the market price, often greater than the private return of the firm's research, then a subsidy to offset the underproduction of that benefit might be offered to the firm in return for its continued output of that benefit. Government subsidies are often controversial, and while they might often result in a more appropriate social equilibrium, they could also lead to undesirable political repercussions as such a subsidy must come from taxpayers, some of whom may not directly benefit from the researching firm's subsidized knowledge spillover. The concept of knowledge spillover is also used to justify subsidies to foreign direct investment, as foreign investors help diffuse technology among local firms. == Examples == Business parks are a good specific example of concentrated businesses that may benefit from MAR spillover. Many semiconductor firms intentionally located their research and development facilities in Silicon Valley to take advantage of MAR spillover. In addition, the film industry in Los Angeles, California, and elsewhere relies on a geographic concentration of specialists (directors, producers, scriptwriters, and set designers) to bring together narrow aspects of movie-making into a final product. A general example of a knowledge spillover could be the collective growth associated with the research and development of online social networking tools like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Such tools have not only created a positive feedback loop, and a host of originally unintended benefits for their users, but have also created an explosion of new software, programming platforms, and conceptual breakthroughs that have perpetuated the development of the industry as a whole. The advent of online marketplaces, the utilization of user profiles, the widespread democratization of information, and the interconnectivity between tools within the industry have all been products of each tool's individual developments. These developments have since spread outside the industry into the mainstream media as news and entertainment firms have developed their own market feedback applications within the tools themselves, and their own versions of online networking tools (e.g. CNN’s iReport).

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  Linguistic categories

  Linguistic categories include Lexical category, a part of speech such as noun, preposition, etc. Syntactic category, a similar concept which can also include phrasal categories Grammatical category, a grammatical feature such as tense, gender, etc. The definition of linguistic categories is a major concern of linguistic theory, and thus, the definition and naming of categories varies across different theoretical frameworks and grammatical traditions for different languages. The operationalization of linguistic categories in lexicography, computational linguistics, natural language processing, corpus linguistics, and terminology management typically requires resource-, problem- or application-specific definitions of linguistic categories. In Cognitive linguistics it has been argued that linguistic categories have a prototype structure like that of the categories of common words in a language. == Linguistic category inventories == To facilitate the interoperability between lexical resources, linguistic annotations and annotation tools and for the systematic handling of linguistic categories across different theoretical frameworks, a number of inventories of linguistic categories have been developed and are being used, with examples as given below. The practical objective of such inventories is to perform quantitative evaluation (for language-specific inventories), to train NLP tools, or to facilitate cross-linguistic evaluation, querying or annotation of language data. At a theoretical level, the existence of universal categories in human language has been postulated, e.g., in Universal grammar, but also heavily criticized. === Part-of-Speech tagsets === Schools commonly teach that there are 9 parts of speech in English: noun, verb, article, adjective, preposition, pronoun, adverb, conjunction, and interjection. However, there are clearly many more categories and sub-categories. For nouns, the plural, possessive, and singular forms can be distinguished. In many languages words are also marked for their case (role as subject, object, etc.), grammatical gender, and so on; while verbs are marked for tense, aspect, and other things. In some tagging systems, different inflections of the same root word will get different parts of speech, resulting in a large number of tags. For example, NN for singular common nouns, NNS for plural common nouns, NP for singular proper nouns (see the POS tags used in the Brown Corpus). Other tagging systems use a smaller number of tags and ignore fine differences or model them as features somewhat independent from part-of-speech. In part-of-speech tagging by computer, it is typical to distinguish from 50 to 150 separate parts of speech for English. POS tagging work has been done in a variety of languages, and the set of POS tags used varies greatly with language. Tags usually are designed to include overt morphological distinctions, although this leads to inconsistencies such as case-marking for pronouns but not nouns in English, and much larger cross-language differences. The tag sets for heavily inflected languages such as Greek and Latin can be very large; tagging words in agglutinative languages such as Inuit languages may be virtually impossible. Work on stochastic methods for tagging Koine Greek (DeRose 1990) has used over 1,000 parts of speech and found that about as many words were ambiguous in that language as in English. A morphosyntactic descriptor in the case of morphologically rich languages is commonly expressed using very short mnemonics, such as ncmsan for category = noun, type = common, gender = masculine, number = singular, case = accusative, animate = no. The most popular tag set for POS tagging for American English is probably the Penn tag set, developed in the Penn Treebank project. === Multilingual annotation schemes === For Western European languages, cross-linguistically applicable annotation schemes for parts-of-speech, morphosyntax and syntax have been developed with the EAGLES Guidelines. The "Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards" (EAGLES) was an initiative of the European Commission that ran within the DG XIII Linguistic Research and Engineering programme from 1994 to 1998, coordinated by Consorzio Pisa Ricerche, Pisa, Italy. The EAGLES guidelines provide guidance for markup to be used with text corpora, particularly for identifying features relevant in computational linguistics and lexicography. Numerous companies, research centres, universities and professional bodies across the European Union collaborated to produce the EAGLES Guidelines, which set out recommendations for de facto standards and rules of best practice for: Large-scale language resources (such as text corpora, computational lexicons and speech corpora); Means of manipulating such knowledge, via computational linguistic formalisms, mark up languages and various software tools; Means of assessing and evaluating resources, tools and products. The Eagles guidelines have inspired subsequent work on other regions, as well, e.g., Eastern Europe. A generation later, a similar effort was initiated by the research community under the umbrella of Universal Dependencies. Petrov et al. have proposed a "universal", but highly reductionist, tag set, with 12 categories (for example, no subtypes of nouns, verbs, punctuation, etc.; no distinction of "to" as an infinitive marker vs. preposition (hardly a "universal" coincidence), etc.). Subsequently, this was complemented with cross-lingual specifications for dependency syntax (Stanford Dependencies), and morphosyntax (Interset interlingua, partially building on the Multext-East/Eagles tradition) in the context of the Universal Dependencies (UD), an international cooperative project to create treebanks of the world's languages with cross-linguistically applicable ("universal") annotations for parts of speech, dependency syntax, and (optionally) morphosyntactic (morphological) features. Core applications are automated text processing in the field of natural language processing (NLP) and research into natural language syntax and grammar, especially within linguistic typology. The annotation scheme has it roots in three related projects: The UD annotation scheme uses a representation in the form of dependency trees as opposed to a phrase structure trees. At as of February 2019, there are just over 100 treebanks of more than 70 languages available in the UD inventory. The project's primary aim is to achieve cross-linguistic consistency of annotation. However, language-specific extensions are permitted for morphological features (individual languages or resources can introduce additional features). In a more restricted form, dependency relations can be extended with a secondary label that accompanies the UD label, e.g., aux:pass for an auxiliary (UD aux) used to mark passive voice. The Universal Dependencies have inspired similar efforts for the areas of inflectional morphology, frame semantics and coreference. For phrase structure syntax, a comparable effort does not seem to exist, but the specifications of the Penn Treebank have been applied to (and extended for) a broad range of languages, e.g., Icelandic, Old English, Middle English, Middle Low German, Early Modern High German, Yiddish, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese. === Conventions for interlinear glosses === In linguistics, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines (inter- + linear), such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When glossed, each line of the original text acquires one or more lines of transcription known as an interlinear text or interlinear glossed text (IGT)—interlinear for short. Such glosses help the reader follow the relationship between the source text and its translation, and the structure of the original language. There is no standard inventory for glosses, but common labels are collected in the Leipzig Glossing Rules. Wikipedia also provides a List of glossing abbreviations that draws on this and other sources. === General Ontology for Linguistic Description (GOLD) === GOLD ("General Ontology for Linguistic Description") is an ontology for descriptive linguistics. It gives a formalized account of the most basic categories and relations used in the scientific description of human language, e.g., as a formalization of interlinear glosses. GOLD was first introduced by Farrar and Langendoen (2003). Originally, it was envisioned as a solution to the problem of resolving disparate markup schemes for linguistic data, in particular data from endangered languages. However, GOLD is much more general and can be applied to all languages. In this function, GOLD overlaps with the ISO 12620 Data Category Registry (ISOcat); it is, however, more stringently structured. GOLD was maintained by the LINGUIST List and others from 2007 to 2010. The RELISH project created a mirro

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  Videotex

  Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typically to be displayed on a television or a dumb terminal. In a strict definition, videotex is any system that provides interactive content and displays it on a video monitor such as a television, typically using modems to send data in both directions. A close relative is teletext, which sends data in one direction only, typically encoded in a television signal. All such systems are occasionally referred to as viewdata. Unlike the modern Internet, traditional videotex services were highly centralized. Videotex in its broader definition can be used to refer to any such service, including teletext, the Internet, bulletin board systems, online service providers, and even the arrival/departure displays at an airport. This usage is no longer common. With the exception of Minitel in France, videotex elsewhere never managed to attract any more than a very small percentage of the universal mass market once envisaged. By the end of the 1980s its use was essentially limited to a few niche applications. == Initial development and technologies == === United Kingdom === The first attempts at a general-purpose videotex service were created in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s. In about 1970 the BBC had a brainstorming session in which it was decided to start researching ways to send closed captioning information to the audience. As the Teledata research continued the BBC became interested in using the system for delivering any sort of information, not just closed captioning. In 1972, the concept was first made public under the new name Ceefax. Meanwhile, the General Post Office (soon to become British Telecom) had been researching a similar concept since the late 1960s, known as Viewdata. Unlike Ceefax which was a one-way service carried in the existing TV signal, Viewdata was a two-way system using telephones. Since the Post Office owned the telephones, this was considered to be an excellent way to drive more customers to use the phones. Not to be outdone by the BBC, they also announced their service, under the name Prestel. ITV soon joined the fray with a Ceefax-clone known as ORACLE. In 1974, all the services agreed on a standard for displaying the information. The display would be a simple 40×24 grid of text, with some "graphics characters" for constructing simple graphics, revised and finalized in 1976. The standard did not define the delivery system, so both Viewdata-like and Teledata-like services could at least share the TV-side hardware, which was expensive at the time. The standard also introduced a new term that covered all such services, teletext. Ceefax first started operation in 1974 with a limited 30 pages, followed quickly by ORACLE and then Prestel in 1979. By 1981, Prestel International was available in nine countries, and a number of countries, including Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland and West Germany were developing their own national systems closely based on Prestel. General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) acquired an exclusive agency for the system for North America. In the early 1980s, videotex became the base technology for the London Stock Exchange's pricing service called TOPIC. Later versions of TOPIC, notably TOPIC2 and TOPIC3, were developed by Thanos Vassilakis and introduced trading and historic price feeds. === France === Development of a French teletext-like system began in 1973. A very simple 2-way videotex system called Tictac was also demonstrated in the mid-1970s. As in the UK, this led on to work to develop a common display standard for videotex and teletext, called Antiope, which was finalised in 1977. Antiope had similar capabilities to the UK system for displaying alphanumeric text and chunky "mosaic" character-based block graphics. A difference however was that while in the UK standard control codes automatically also occupied one character position on screen, Antiope allowed for "non spacing" control codes. This gave Antiope slightly more flexibility in the use of colours in mosaic block graphics, and in presenting the accents and diacritics of the French language. Meanwhile, spurred on by the 1978 Nora/Minc report, the French government was determined to catch up on a perceived falling behind in its computer and communications facilities. In 1980 it began field trials issuing Antiope-based terminals for free to over 250,000 telephone subscribers in Ille-et-Vilaine region, where the French CCETT research centre was based, for use as telephone directories. The trial was a success, and in 1982 Minitel was rolled out nationwide. === Canada === Since 1970, researchers at the Communications Research Centre (CRC) in Ottawa had been working on a set of "picture description instructions", which encoded graphics commands as a text stream. Graphics were encoded as a series of instructions (graphics primitives) each represented by a single ASCII character. Graphic coordinates were encoded in multiple 6 bit strings of XY coordinate data, flagged to place them in the printable ASCII range so that they could be transmitted with conventional text transmission techniques. ASCII SI/SO characters were used to differentiate the text from graphic portions of a transmitted "page". In 1975, the CRC gave a contract to Norpak to develop an interactive graphics terminal that could decode the instructions and display them on a colour display, which was successfully up and running by 1977. Against the background of the developments in Europe, CRC was able to persuade the Canadian government to develop the system into a fully-fledged service. In August 1978, the Canadian Department of Communications publicly launched it as Telidon, a "second generation" videotex/teletext service, and committed to a four-year development plan to encourage rollout. Compared to the European systems, Telidon offered real graphics, as opposed to block-mosaic character graphics. The downside was that it required much more advanced decoders, typically featuring Zilog Z80 or Motorola 6809 processors. === Japan === Research in Japan was shaped by the demands of the large number of Kanji characters used in Japanese script. With 1970s technology, the ability to generate so many characters on demand in the end-user's terminal was seen as prohibitive. Instead, development focussed on methods to send pages to user terminals pre-rendered, using coding strategies similar to facsimile machines. This led to a videotex system called Captain ("Character and Pattern Telephone Access Information Network"), created by NTT in 1978, which went into full trials from 1979 to 1981. The system also lent itself naturally to photographic images, albeit at only moderate resolution. However, the pages typically took two or three times longer to load, compared to the European systems. NHK developed an experimental teletext system along similar lines, called CIBS ("Character Information Broadcasting Station"). Based on a 388×200 pixel resolution, it was first announced in 1976, and began trials in late 1978. (NHK's ultimate production teletext system launched in 1983). == Standards == Work to establish an international standard for videotex began in 1978 in CCITT. But the national delegations showed little interest in compromise, each hoping that their system would come to define what was perceived to be going to be an enormous new mass-market. In 1980 CCITT therefore issued recommendation S.100 (later T.100), noting the points of similarity but the essential incompatibility of the systems, and declaring all four to be recognised options. Trying to kick-start the market, AT&T Corporation entered the fray, and in May 1981 announced its own Presentation Layer Protocol (PLP). This was closely based on the Canadian Telidon system, but added to it some further graphics primitives and a syntax for defining macros, algorithms to define cleaner pixel spacing for the (arbitrarily sizeable) text, and also dynamically redefinable characters and a mosaic block graphic character set, so that it could reproduce content from the French Antiope. After some further revisions this was adopted in 1983 as ANSI standard X3.110, more commonly called NAPLPS, the North American Presentation Layer Protocol Syntax. It was also adopted in 1988 as the presentation-layer syntax for NABTS, the North American Broadcast Teletext Specification. Meanwhile, the European national Postal Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) agencies were also increasingly interested in videotex, and had convened discussions in European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) to co-ordinate developments, which had been diverging along national lines. As well as the British and French standards, the Swedes had proposed extending the British Prestel standard with a new se

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  Information

  Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally) of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. The concept of information is relevant to and connected with various concepts, including constraint, communication, control, data, form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern, perception, proposition, representation, and entropy. Information is often processed iteratively: Data available at one step are processed into information to be interpreted and processed at the next step. For example, in written text each symbol or letter conveys information relevant to the word it is part of, each word conveys information relevant to the phrase it is part of, each phrase conveys information relevant to the sentence it is part of, and so on until at the final step information is interpreted and becomes knowledge in a given domain. In a digital signal, bits may be interpreted into the symbols, letters, numbers, or structures that convey the information available at the next level up. The key characteristic of information is that it is subject to interpretation and processing. The derivation of information from a signal or message may be thought of as the resolution of ambiguity or uncertainty that arises during the interpretation of patterns within the signal or message. Information may be structured as data. Redundant data can be compressed up to an optimal size, which is the theoretical limit of compression. The information available through a collection of data may be derived by analysis. For example, a restaurant collects data from every customer order. That information may be analyzed to produce knowledge that is put to use when the business subsequently wants to identify the most popular or least popular dish. Information can be transmitted in time, via data storage, and space, via communication and telecommunication. Information is expressed either as the content of a message or through direct or indirect observation. That which is perceived can be construed as a message in its own right, and in that sense, all information is always conveyed as the content of a message. Information can be encoded into various forms for transmission and interpretation (for example, information may be encoded into a sequence of signs, or transmitted via a signal). It can also be encrypted for safe storage and communication. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence. Uncertainty is proportional to the negative logarithm of the probability of occurrence. Information theory takes advantage of this by concluding that more uncertain events require more information to resolve their uncertainty. The bit is the standard unit of information. It is 'that which reduces uncertainty by half'. Other units such as the nat may be used. For example, the information encoded in one "fair" coin flip is log2(2/1) = 1 bit, and in two fair coin flips is log2(4/1) = 2 bits. A 2011 Science article estimates that 97% of technologically stored information was already in digital bits in 2007 and that the year 2002 was the beginning of the digital age for information storage (with digital storage capacity bypassing analogue for the first time). == Etymology and history of the concept == The English word "information" comes from Middle French enformacion/informacion/information 'a criminal investigation' and its etymon, Latin informatiō(n) 'conception, teaching, creation'. In English, "information" is an uncountable mass noun. References on "formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching" date from the 14th century in both English (according to Oxford English Dictionary) and other European languages. In the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity the use of the concept of information reflected a fundamental turn in epistemological basis – from "giving a (substantial) form to matter" to "communicating something to someone". Peters (1988, pp. 12–13) concludes: Information was readily deployed in empiricist psychology (though it played a less important role than other words such as impression or idea) because it seemed to describe the mechanics of sensation: objects in the world inform the senses. But sensation is entirely different from "form" – the one is sensual, the other intellectual; the one is subjective, the other objective. My sensation of things is fleeting, elusive, and idiosyncratic. For Hume, especially, sensory experience is a swirl of impressions cut off from any sure link to the real world... In any case, the empiricist problematic was how the mind is informed by sensations of the world. At first informed meant shaped by; later it came to mean received reports from. As its site of action drifted from cosmos to consciousness, the term's sense shifted from unities (Aristotle's forms) to units (of sensation). Information came less and less to refer to internal ordering or formation, since empiricism allowed for no preexisting intellectual forms outside of sensation itself. Instead, information came to refer to the fragmentary, fluctuating, haphazard stuff of sense. Information, like the early modern worldview in general, shifted from a divinely ordered cosmos to a system governed by the motion of corpuscles. Under the tutelage of empiricism, information gradually moved from structure to stuff, from form to substance, from intellectual order to sensory impulses. In the modern era, the most important influence on the concept of information is derived from the Information theory developed by Claude Shannon and others. This theory, however, reflects a fundamental contradiction. Northrup (1993) wrote: Thus, actually two conflicting metaphors are being used: The well-known metaphor of information as a quantity, like water in the water-pipe, is at work, but so is a second metaphor, that of information as a choice, a choice made by :an information provider, and a forced choice made by an :information receiver. Actually, the second metaphor implies that the information sent isn't necessarily equal to the information received, because any choice implies a comparison with a list of possibilities, i.e., a list of possible meanings. Here, meaning is involved, thus spoiling the idea of information as a pure "Ding an sich." Thus, much of the confusion regarding the concept of information seems to be related to the basic confusion of metaphors in Shannon's theory: is information an autonomous quantity, or is information always per SE information to an observer? Actually, I don't think that Shannon himself chose one of the two definitions. Logically speaking, his theory implied information as a subjective phenomenon. But this had so wide-ranging epistemological impacts that Shannon didn't seem to fully realize this logical fact. Consequently, he continued to use metaphors about information as if it were an objective substance. This is the basic, inherent contradiction in Shannon's information theory." (Northrup, 1993, p. 5). In their seminal book The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, Almach and Mansfield (1983) collected key views on the interdisciplinary controversy in computer science, artificial intelligence, library and information science, linguistics, psychology, and physics, as well as in the social sciences. Almach (1983, p. 660) himself disagrees with the use of the concept of information in the context of signal transmission, the basic senses of information in his view all referring "to telling something or to the something that is being told. Information is addressed to human minds and is received by human minds." All other senses, including its use with regard to nonhuman organisms as well to society as a whole, are, according to Machlup, metaphoric and, as in the case of cybernetics, anthropomorphic. Hjørland (2007) describes the fundamental difference between objective and subjective views of information and argues that the subjective view has been supported by, among others, Bateson, Yovits, Span-Hansen, Brier, Buckland, Goguen, and Hjørland. Hjørland provided the following example: A stone on a field could contain different information for different people (or from one situation to another). It is not possible for information systems to map all the stone's possible information for every individual. Nor is any one mapping the one "true" mapping. But peop

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  BRS/Search

  BRS/Search is a full-text database and information retrieval system. BRS/Search uses a fully inverted indexing system to store, locate, and retrieve unstructured data. It was the search engine that in 1977 powered Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) commercial operations with 20 databases (including the first national commercial availability of MEDLINE); it has changed ownership several times during its development and is currently sold as Livelink ECM Discovery Server by Open Text Corporation. == Early development == Development on what was to become BRS began as Biomedical Communications Network (BCN) at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNY). BCN, which went online in 1968, provided on-line access to nine databases, including MEDLINE and BIOSIS Previews, to large universities and medical schools primarily in the Northeast of the USA. State funding for the project was withdrawn in 1975, and Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) was formed as a non-profit concern the following year. It was incorporated in May 1976 as a for-profit corporation with Ron Quake as president, Jan Egeland as vice president in charge of marketing and training, and Lloyd Palmer as vice president of systems. == BRS commercial operations == In December 1976, the First BRS User Meeting was held in Syracuse, New York, and by January 1977 BRS started commercial operations with 20 databases (including the first national commercial availability of MEDLINE) and 9 million records, using modified IBM STAIRS (STorage And Information Retrieval System) software, Telenet for telecommunications, and timesharing mainframe computers of Carrier Corporation. In October 1980 BRS was sold by Egeland and Quake to Indian Head, Inc., a subsidiary of the Dutch company Thyssen-Bornemisza Group. == 1989–1993 == In 1989 Robert Maxwell acquired BRS and the BRS/Search software; he announced the planned incorporation of the ORBIT Search Service and BRS Information Technologies and renamed the whole group Maxwell Online, Inc. At that time BRS Information Technologies was serving the medical and academic library marketplace with over 150 databases. Maxwell later bought the publishing company Macmillan and put Maxwell Online under Macmillan. In the same year BRS/LINK (hypertext connection of databases; first application delivering full text) was announced. The initial BRS/LINK application "relates the citation in a bibliographic database to its full-text article in a second database," and "eliminates the need to re-execute a search strategy in the second database in order to find the corresponding full-text article." Initially BRS/LINK supported linking only selected bibliographic databases: MEDLINE, Health Planning and Administration, and MEDLINE References on AIDS to the full-text Comprehensive Core Medical Library. At the time of Robert Maxwell’s death in 1991, Macmillan brought in Andrew Gregory to represent the company during the 2 years that Maxwell’s affairs were being settled and to prepare Maxwell Online to be able to sell the components. Maxwell Online shortly thereafter underwent yet another name change, this time to InfoPro Technologies. == Dataware Technologies ownership of BRS/SEARCH == Early in 1994, InfoPro Technologies, a subsidiary of MHC Inc. (holding company for Macmillan Inc.), the former Maxwell Online service, sold off all its subsidiaries. ORBIT Search Services went to the French-owned Questel, the dial-up BRS Search Services to CD Plus Technologies (later to become OVID), and BRS Software Products (including BRS/SEARCH) to Dataware Technologies. Almost up to the end of InfoPro Technologies, BRS Software had been the fastest growing segment of the company. At the 14th BRS North American Users Group Conference in 1999, Dave Schubmehl of Dataware Technologies presented a paper in which he stated "The purpose of this presentation is to update BRS users on upcoming releases of BRS/Search, NetAnswer, and other Dataware products. BRS/Search 7.0 will include features specifically requested by customers, as well as other enhancements. Earlier this year, Dataware acquired Sovereign Hill Software, makers of InQuery. In light of that acquisition, and Dataware's other development projects, we'll look at Dataware's plans for all products, including BRS/Search and NetAnswer." == Open Text acquisition of BRS/Search == In 2001 BRS/Search was acquired by Open Text and became LiveLink ECM Discovery Server. It is now referred to as Open Text Discovery Server. Open Text still supports both BRS/Search and NetAnswer. The core BRS/Search technology in the Open Text portfolio was augmented with other capabilities through various acquisitions. For example, Dataware's acquisition of Sovereign-Hill brought InQuery, “a probabilistic information retrieval system using an inference network”, which was developed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval] out of the UMass CIIR and into the marketplace. A product re-branding table shows the range of products, their old names and their new names. InQuery is a concept search engine that uses noun phrases, parts of speech and other co-occurrence relationships in overlapping passages of text rather than single term inverted indexes of single words in documents. Open Text's portfolio has grown to include Hummingbird Content Management, and has always included BASIS. == 2003 == BRS/Search North America User's Group (BRSNAUG) website with a June 8, 2003 date listed the following features for BRS/Search. The BRSNAUG also disincorporated in 2003. Cross-references to BRS/Search on the World Wide Web point to Open Text Livelink. Engine features include: Rapid query response time. Numerical data handling and elementary statistical processing (sum, avg, min, max) Search results weighting and relevancy ranking Left- and right-truncation and expansion of search terms Superior data compression – loaded databases typically use only about 1.5 times the input stream size in disk space Large capacity databases – up to 100 million documents, each with up to 65,000 paragraphs Fine control of indexing and searching – right down to the word, sentence, and paragraph level Fine control over data security. Document access can be controlled at the database, document, and paragraph level International language support for all 7/8 bit characters sets and customizable language tables Flexible and customizable stop word lists ANSI-compatible thesauri Hypertext links within and between documents and databases (R6.x) Support for natural language parsing of queries Automatic document summarization tools Client/Server development Programming interfaces for World-Wide Web (HTTP, HTML) access to databases

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