Recent Submissions

  • Which academic subjects have most online impact? A pilot study and a new classification process

    Thelwall, Mike; Vaughan, Liwen; Cothey, Viv; Li, Xuemei; Smith, Alastair G. (2013-06-28)
  • Web impact factors and search engine coverage

    Thelwall, Mike (MCB UP Ltd, 2002)
    Search engines index only a proportion of the web and this proportion is not determined randomly but by following algorithms that take into account the properties that impact factors measure. A survey was conducted in order to test the coverage of search engines and to decide whether their partial coverage is indeed an obstacle to using them to calculate web impact factors. The results indicate that search engine coverage, even of large national domains is extremely uneven and would be likely to lead to misleading calculations.
  • Automatic multidocument summarization of research abstracts: Design and user evaluation

    Ou, Shiyan; Khoo, Christopher S.G.; Goh, Dion H. (2013-06-28)
  • A High Precision Information Retrieval Method for WiQA

    Orasan, Constantin; Puşcaşu, Georgiana (Springer, 2007)
    This paper presents Wolverhampton University’s participation in the WiQA competition. The method chosen for this task combines a high precision, but low recall information retrieval approach with a greedy sentence ranking algorithm. The high precision retrieval is ensured by querying the search engine with the exact topic, in this way obtaining only sentences which contain the topic. In one of the runs, the set of retrieved sentences is expanded using coreferential relations between sentences. The greedy algorithm used for ranking selects one sentence at a time, always the one which adds most information to the set of sentences without repeating the existing information too much. The evaluation revealed that it achieves a performance similar to other systems participating in the competition and that the run which uses coreference obtains the highest MRR score among all the participants.
  • NP animacy identification for anaphora resolution

    Orasan, Constantin; Evans, Richard (American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 2007)
    In anaphora resolution for English, animacy identification can play an integral role in the application of agreement restrictions between pronouns and candidates, and as a result, can improve the accuracy of anaphora resolution systems. In this paper, two methods for animacy identification are proposed and evaluated using intrinsic and extrinsic measures. The first method is a rule-based one which uses information about the unique beginners in WordNet to classify NPs on the basis of their animacy. The second method relies on a machine learning algorithm which exploits a WordNet enriched with animacy information for each sense. The effect of word sense disambiguation on the two methods is also assessed. The intrinsic evaluation reveals that the machine learning method reaches human levels of performance. The extrinsic evaluation demonstrates that animacy identification can be beneficial in anaphora resolution, especially in the cases where animate entities are identified with high precision.
  • Refined Salience Weighting and Error Analysis in Anaphora Resolution.

    Evans, Richard (The Research Group in Computational Linguistics, 2002)
    In this paper, the behaviour of an existing pronominal anaphora resolution system is modified so that different types of pronoun are treated in different ways. Weights are derived using a In genetic algorithm for the outcomes of tests applied by this branching algorithm. Detailed evaluation and error analysis is undertaken. Proposals for future research are put forward.
  • Sleep Profiles and Mood States During an Expedition to the South Pole

    Pedlar, Charles R.; Lane, Andrew M.; Lloyd, Juliette C.; Dawson, Jean; Emegbo, Stephen; Whyte, Gregory P.; Stanley, Neil (2013-06-27)
  • Evidence of nationalistic bias in MuayThai

    Myers, Tony D.; Balmer, Nigel J.; Nevill, Alan M.; Thailand (Asist Group, 2006)
    MuayThai is a combat sport with a growing international profile but limited research conducted into judging practices and processes. Problems with judging of other subjectively judged combat sports have caused controversy at major international tournaments that have resulted in changes to scoring methods. Nationalistic bias has been central to these problems and has been identified across a range of sports. The aim of this study was to examine nationalistic bias in MuayThai. Data were collected from the International Federation of MuayThai Amateur (IFMA) World Championships held in Almaty, Kazakhstan September 2003 and comprised of tournament results from 70 A-class MuayThai bouts each judged by between five and nine judges. Bouts examined featured 62 competitors from 21 countries and 25 judges from 11 countries. Results suggested that nationalistic bias was evident. The bias observed equated to approximately one round difference between opposing judges over the course of a bout (a mean of 1.09 (SE=0.50) points difference between judges with opposing affilations). The number of neutral judges used meant that this level of bias generally did not influence the outcome of bouts. Future research should explore other ingroup biases, such as nearest neighbor bias and political bias as well as investigating the feasibility adopting an electronic scoring system.
  • Modeling longitudinal changes in maximal-intensity exercise performance in young male rowing athletes.

    Mikulic, Pavle; Blazina, Tomislav; Nevill, Alan M.; Markovic, Goran (Human Kinetics, 2013-06-27)
    he purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of age and body size upon maximal-intensity exercise performance in young rowing athletes. Male participants (n = 171) aged 12-18 years were assessed using an "all-out" 30-s rowing ergometer test, and reassessed after 12 months. The highest rate of performance development, which amounts to [mean(SD)] +34%(23%) and +32%(23%) for mean and maximal power output, respectively, is observed between the ages of 12 and 13, while this rate of development gradually declines as the athletes mature through adolescence. Performance increases with body size, and mass, stature and chronological age all proved to be significant (all p < .05) explanatory variables of mean power output, with respective exponents [mean(SE)] of 0.56(0.08), 1.84(0.30) and 0.07(0.01), and of maximal power output, with respective exponents of 0.54(0.09), 1.76(0.32) and 0.06(0.01). These findings may help coaches better understand the progression of rowing performance during adolescence.
  • Association of physical inactivity with increased cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

    Metsios, Giorgos S.; Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou, Antonios; Panoulas, Vasileios F.; Wilson, Mat; Nevill, Alan M.; Koutedakis, Yiannis; Kitas, George D. (2013-06-27)
  • Adjusting bone mass for differences in projected bone area and other confounding variables: an allometric perspective.

    Nevill, Alan M.; Holder, Roger L. (American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, 2007-01-25)
    The traditional method of assessing bone mineral density (BMD; given by bone mineral content [BMC] divided by projected bone area [Ap], BMD = BMC/Ap) has come under strong criticism by various authors. Their criticism being that the projected bone "area" (Ap) will systematically underestimate the skeletal bone "volume" of taller subjects. To reduce the confounding effects of bone size, an alternative ratio has been proposed called bone mineral apparent density [BMAD = BMC/(Ap)3/2]. However, bone size is not the only confounding variable associated with BMC. Others include age, sex, body size, and maturation. To assess the dimensional relationship between BMC and projected bone area, independent of other confounding variables, we proposed and fitted a proportional allometric model to the BMC data of the L2-L4 vertebrae from a previously published study. The projected bone area exponents were greater than unity for both boys (1.43) and girls (1.02), but only the boy's fitted exponent was not different from that predicted by geometric similarity (1.5). Based on these exponents, it is not clear whether bone mass acquisition increases in proportion to the projected bone area (Ap) or an estimate of projected bone volume (Ap)3/2. However, by adopting the proposed methods, the analysis will automatically adjust BMC for differences in projected bone size and other confounding variables for the particular population being studied. Hence, the necessity to speculate as to the theoretical value of the exponent of Ap, although interesting, becomes redundant.

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