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The chemical and physical properties of 19th and 20th century Chinese papers were investigated using a variety of material characterisation methods. A reference collection of 178 Chinese papers, dating from 1799 to 1990 was used, and properties such as pH, degree of polymerisation (DP), lignin content, and tensile strength (zero-span) were determined. Most of the papers were of approximately neutral pH, had a low lignin content and DP similar to pre-19th century European rag paper. It was found that the high inhomogeneity and the typical paper thinness affected tensile testing and as a result, a modified method for zero-span tensile strength test was developed. Using near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), proof-of-concept partial least squares (PLS) applications were developed for determination of tensile strength, pH, DP and for dating of the samples. For the latter, using post-1900 papers, the error of cross validation was 13 years. The presence of lignin was modelled using linear discriminant analysis (LDA), where the model could distinguish between high and low lignin content with 88% accuracy. Using one or multiple sheets for transmission NIR spectroscopy led to PLS results of similar quality, which was attributed to material inhomogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alessandrina Library was founded in 1667 by pope Alexander VII Chigi and is nowadays housed in the Campus of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). Within its Ancient (mostly made of rag paper) and Modern (mostly made of contemporary paper) collections, it includes more than one million books produced from the XVI to the XXI century. In 2019, six thermo-hygrometers were deployed in its multi-storey repository to monitor temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH). Hourly T and RH data collected over 2 years allowed us to evaluate spatial and temporal thermo-hygrometric distributions and to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the climate-induced risks (mechanical, chemical, and biological deterioration mechanisms). Vertical temperature gradients associated with unstable conditions occurred in winter, resulting in upraising air flows up to the ceiling. The risky short-term RH fluctuations (EN 15757:2010) were determined to avoid mechanical stress in case of loans, relocation, and consultation. The Time Weighted Expected Lifetime (TWEL) index was used to evaluate the chemical risk for different paper-based collections as a function of their acidity and degree of polymerisation, also considering the typical response time of paper books to T and RH changes. The TWEL calculation estimated that the durability of acidic paper was around 300 years and highlighted that rag paper could be subject to cellulose hydrolysis only in summer and autumn, while contemporary paper was mostly at no risk. The risk of mould germination (Sedlbauer diagram) was possible on few days in Autumn, while the production of insect eggs (Brimblecombe empirical function) was favoured during approximately 42% of time over the year. In addition, illuminance and colorimetric measurements (performed on selected book covers) showed that light-sensitive objects could be exposed to the photodeterioration risk in the east-facing side of the repository. Although the investigation focussed on a specific case study, a similar approach could be effectively adapted to most library and archival repositories conserving paper-based collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some errors exist in the above paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archival boxes are used as a preventive measure to control the microenvironment in museums and archives storages. However, their efficiency in protecting valuable artefacts from fluctuations in relative humidity (RH) is not yet fully understood. In this study, the environmental performance of different archival boxes with different configurations (size, design, presence of holes/paper material, cardboard types, surface modification) was included in the evaluation of internal environment (RH). The effectiveness of archival boxes on reducing relative humidity fluctuations was investigated by testing various properties of boxes and boards, such as air exchange rates (AER), moisture sorption and water vapour transmission rates (WVTR). While most cardboard boxes showed only a limited buffering against the humidity ingress, strategies such as surface modification limited the interaction of a box with the external environment, resulting in a more stable internal environment. Material and box properties, such as moisture sorption, AER and WVTR proved to be useful quantitative tools for assessing the environmental performance of the selected archival boxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on efforts to make publications resulting from U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded (NIH) research available for free on the PubMed Central archive. Change was introduced to a House appropriations bill tha would requires NIH grantees to submit to PubMed within 12 months of scientific publication. The move is opposed by scientific societies and publishers.

As data sharing has become more prevalent, three pillars - archives, standards, and analysis tools - have emerged as critical components in facilitating effective data sharing and collaboration. This paper compares four freely available intracranial neuroelectrophysiology data repositories: Data Archive for the BRAIN Initiative (DABI), Distributed Archives for Neurophysiology Data Integration (DANDI), OpenNeuro, and Brain-CODE. The aim of this review is to describe archives that provide researchers with tools to store, share, and reanalyze both human and non-human neurophysiology data based on criteria that are of interest to the neuroscientific community. The Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) and Neurodata Without Borders (NWB) are utilized by these archives to make data more accessible to researchers by implementing a common standard. As the necessity for integrating large-scale analysis into data repository platforms continues to grow within the neuroscientific community, this article will highlight the various analytical and customizable tools developed within the chosen archives that may advance the field of neuroinformatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital scholarship is ubiquitous, where even the most Luddite of scholars use some form of digital technology in their research. Differences in the level of technology use have become a question of degree not kind. Currently in the second wave of Digital Humanities, Presner (2010) argues that Digital Humanities 2.0 introduces entirely new-born digital paradigms, methodologies, and publication models not derived from print culture. This new wave is "deeply generative, creating the environments and tools for producing, curating, and interacting with knowledge that is 'born digital' and lives in various digital contexts" (Presner 2010, para. 13). Using the case study of a Digital Humanities project called "The Waterford Memories Project", this paper will consider both the role of born digital survivor testimony in confronting a difficult and disputed past in Ireland and, more broadly, how we create and access knowledge in this contested space. The Waterford Memories Project is an oral history driven study in digital humanities, publicly documenting survivor narratives of the Magdalene Laundries and Industrial Schools in the South-East of Ireland. The last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland closed in 1996. These institutions formed part of a system of coercive confinement, which incorporated a wide range of historical institutions used to confine both children and adults whose "crimes" were to act against the strict and punitive moral codes of the period, poverty, or mental illness. This paper will examine the role of born digital data in public humanities (in the form of the audio-recorded survivor oral histories), and frames the Waterford Memories digital humanities project in the technoculture and minimal computing literature, emphasising the overall need for a human-centred approach to technology at all stages of the research. Cultural stories can become fossilised and continue to perpetuate the silencing of survivors; it is therefore essential to consider how the openly available digital testimony contributes to the framing of cultural discourse around our history of coercive confinement in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unethical behavior by journal authors is rare, but some referees of manuscripts shirk their duties. Referees have ethical responsibilities to review manuscripts promptly, to write constructive comments for authors, to be tactful in their comments, and to avoid sectarian bias. An ethical question to which there is no agreed-upon answer is what to do when asked to review a paper that one has already reviewed for another journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary is organized into three parts. The first discusses the papers presented in this volume, notably divided into two themes: those that looked at past struggles and those that look at struggling in the present. The second part deals more critically with the unifying analytical theme of the papers: a dialectical approach to historical archaeology and how it can be implemented through the theory of internal relations. The final section of this commentary takes this idea and applies it to the archaeology of landscape and the production of social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the efforts of U.S. government to make scientific research available for all. It reports that the accessibility offered by the Internet has transformed science publishing over the past decade. The government of the U.S. is making efforts to make all federally funded research available for free. The new system will make huge numbers of scientific articles publicly available for all. It reports that such archives will basically contain the final versions of the manuscripts written by the authors. There was an increase in public access in late 2007 when the U.S. Congress passed a bill and made it compulsory for scientists funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to deposit their papers within 12 months of publication.

Email archives are important historical resources, but access to such data poses a unique archival challenge and many born-digital collections remain dark, while questions of how they should be effectively made available remain. This paper contributes to the growing interest in preserving access to email by addressing the needs of users, in readiness for when such collections become more widely available. We argue that for the content of email to be meaningfully accessed, the context of email must form part of this access. In exploring this idea, we focus on discovery within large, multi-custodian archives of organisational email, where emails' network features are particularly apparent. We introduce our prototype search tool, which uses AI-based methods to support user-driven exploration of email. Specifically, we integrate two distinct AI models that generate systematically different types of results, one based upon simple, phrase-matching and the other upon more complex, BERT embeddings. Together, these provide a new pathway to contextual discovery that accounts for the diversity of future archival users, their interests and level of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) are striving to retain audience attention to issues related to cultural heritage, by implementing various novel opportunities for audience engagement through technological means online. Although born-digital assets for cultural heritage may have inundated the Internet in some areas, most of the time they are stored in "digital warehouses," and the questions of the digital ecosystem's sustainability, meaningful public participation and creative reuse of data still remain. Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are used to bring born-digital archives to light, aiming to enhance the public's engagement and participation. At the core of this debate lies both the openness of data and issues of privacy. How open to the public should born-digital archives be? Should everything be open and available online, and what does it take to achieve balance between openness and privacy, especially through AI initiatives? The study is qualitative and builds on the rationale of grounded theory. The role of AI development is critically investigated in relation to opening up born-digital archives online, by considering privacy and ethics issues. Grounded in the context of the author's PhD research, the paper proposes a human-centred approach to AI development for democratising its development towards fairness and social inclusion, contrary to the stereotypical cliché of blackboxing, allowing space for the plurality of born-digital archives to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Records from a popular series at The National Archives were found to bear warning labels that they have been bound using a 'poisonous insecticidal solution'. Research into historic sources suggested that the agents used by bookbinders in the early twentieth century were mercuric chloride, copper sulphate, and beechwood creosote; these may have been replaced by organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) mid-century. Analysis by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy confirmed the presence of mercury in labelled, bound items. A number of OCPs were detected using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GCMS) including DDT, gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (Lindane, γ-HCH), Dieldrin, pentachlorophenol (PCP), dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), and 1-chloronaphthalene (1-CP). Tests confirmed the presence of these agents on all items tested regardless of format (e.g. tagged files and bound volumes) or period of creation, suggesting the OCPs were introduced to the items after the binding process. An occupational hygienist (OH) consultancy was engaged to carry out in-situ air monitoring during production, digitisation, and general handling of the items. Risk assessments were developed based on the results, allowing readers and staff to once again access the collection with safety measures including the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatially explicit data pose a series of opportunities and challenges for all the actors involved in providing data for long-term preservation and secondary analysis—the data producer, the data archive, and the data user. We report on opportunities and challenges for each of the three players, and then turn to a summary of current thinking about how best to prepare, archive, disseminate, and make use of social science data that have spatially explicit identification. The core issue that runs through the paper is the risk of the disclosure of the identity of respondents. If we know where they live, where they work, or where they own property, it is possible to find out who they are. Those involved in collecting, archiving, and using data need to be aware of the risks of disclosure and become familiar with best practices to avoid disclosures that will be harmful to respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  The creation of structured digital libraries from paper-based archives is an area of growing demand in many scientific and cultural fields, and is not satisfied either by off-the-shelf OCR or commercial form- processing systems. This paper describes and evaluates a configurable archive construction system, which integrates document image pre-processing and analysis with text post-processing tools and a standard OCR package to meet digital archiving requirements. The prototype system is currently being used in conjunction with the UK Natural History Museum to help convert more than 500,000 cards of Lepidoptera (Butterflies and Moths) and Coleoptera (Beetles) to searchable digital archives. Evaluation results covering different aspects of the system from card scanning to overall word recognition rates for different database fields are summarised for two datasets comprising over 5,000 cards selected from different parts of these archives. First-pass end-to-end word recognition rates of 70–90% are reported for key data fields, subject to availability of suitable electronic dictionaries. Further validation and correction is supported through web-editing of the online digital archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from the editor of the book "Sociological Methodology" about the book. Papers submitted for publication in Sociological Methodology 1971 have concentrated on various kinds of methodological topics, ranging from wide-ranging explorations of the philosophy of social science to specific devices for collecting data on particular variables. Of the 43 manuscripts submitted, 11 were accepted for publication in the 1971 volume. In making the final selections for publication, the editor has depended, not only on the assistance of the advisory editors, but also on the evaluations of 56 additional editorial consultants each selected for their special competence in the topic of the paper referred to them and each of whom responded with reviews. Although some of the chapters included in the 1971 volume are based on mathematical and statistical reasoning that may be difficult for many to follow, other chapters in this volume require very little mathematical or statistical expertise.

Co-authored by a Computer Scientist and a Digital Humanist, this article examines the challenges faced by cultural heritage institutions in the digital age, which have led to the closure of the vast majority of born-digital archival collections. It focuses particularly on cultural organizations such as libraries, museums and archives, used by historians, literary scholars and other Humanities scholars. Most born-digital records held by cultural organizations are inaccessible due to privacy, copyright, commercial and technical issues. Even when born-digital data are publicly available (as in the case of web archives), users often need to physically travel to repositories such as the British Library or the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to consult web pages. Provided with enough sample data from which to learn and train their models, AI, and more specifically machine learning algorithms, offer the opportunity to improve and ease the access to digital archives by learning to perform complex human tasks. These vary from providing intelligent support for searching the archives to automate tedious and time-consuming tasks. In this article, we focus on sensitivity review as a practical solution to unlock digital archives that would allow archival institutions to make non-sensitive information available. This promise to make archives more accessible does not come free of warnings for potential pitfalls and risks: inherent errors, "black box" approaches that make the algorithm inscrutable, and risks related to bias, fake, or partial information. Our central argument is that AI can deliver its promise to make digital archival collections more accessible, but it also creates new challenges - particularly in terms of ethics. In the conclusion, we insist on the importance of fairness, accountability and transparency in the process of making digital archives more accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's quick checklist for preparing manuscripts for submission to the journal "Biotechnology Letters." It suggests that authors whose first language is not English, and may be inexperienced in writing for an international journal to have their manuscript thoroughly checked before submission. It assumes that all authors have seen a copy of the paper and have approved its submission. Papers may be submitted electronically or by post. A second copy should be sent (electronically or by post) to one of the editorial board members who will then arrange for paper to be reviewed.

Background: Few environments have been developed or deployed to widely share biomolecular simulation data or to enable collaborative networks to facilitate data exploration and reuse. As the amount and complexity of data generated by these simulations is dramatically increasing and the methods are being more widely applied, the need for new tools to manage and share this data has become obvious. In this paper we present the results of a process aimed at assessing the needs of the community for data representation standards to guide the implementation of future repositories for biomolecular simulations. Results: We introduce a list of common data elements, inspired by previous work, and updated according to feedback from the community collected through a survey and personal interviews. These data elements integrate the concepts for multiple types of computational methods, including quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics. The identified core data elements were organized into a logical model to guide the design of new databases and application programming interfaces. Finally a set of dictionaries was implemented to be used via SQL queries or locally via a Java API built upon the Apache Lucene text-search engine. Conclusions: The model and its associated dictionaries provide a simple yet rich representation of the concepts related to biomolecular simulations, which should guide future developments of repositories and more complex terminologies and ontologies. The model still remains extensible through the decomposition of virtual experiments into tasks and parameter sets, and via the use of extended attributes. The benefits of a common logical model for biomolecular simulations was illustrated through various use cases, including data storage, indexing, and presentation. All the models and dictionaries introduced in this paper are available for download at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Sheridan talks with Clare L E Foster, sharing some wider observations about the challenges of the digital transformation of The National Archives. (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/our-role/executive-team/john-sheridan/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper addresses the information updating task which is to determine the most appropriate location in an existing document to place a new piece of related information. We propose a new learning-to-rank method for the information updating task. The updating task is formalized as a learning-to-rank problem, and in training, a heuristic method of automatically assigning labels for training examples is proposed to exploit structural information of documents. With the proposed formulation, state-of-the-art learning-to-rank algorithms can be applied to the task. We deal with the problem of the lack of semantic information by incorporating semantic features derived from word clusters to further improve the performance of information updating. The proposed method is applied in updating Wikipedia biographical articles and Legal documents. Experimental results achieved on both Wikipedia biographical data set and Legal data set showed that our proposed learning-to-rank method with cluster-based features outperforms previously reported methods for information updating task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing radiology studies has led to the emergence of new requirements for management medical information, mainly affecting the storage of digital images. Today, it is a necessary interaction between workflow management and legal rules that govern it, to allow an efficient control of medical technology and associated costs. Another important topic that is growing in importance within the healthcare sector is compliance, which includes the retention of studies, information security, and patient privacy. Previously, we conducted a series of extensive analysis and measurements of pre-existing operating conditions. These studies and projects have been described in other papers. The first phase: hardware and software installation and initial tests were completed in March 2006. The storage phase was built step by step until the PACS-INR was totally completed. Two important aspects were considered in the integration of components: (1) the reliability and performance of the system to transfer and display DICOM images, and (2) the availability of data backups for disaster recovery and downtime scenarios. This paper describes the high-availability model for a large-scale PACS to support the storage and retrieve of data using CAS and DAS technologies to provide an open storage platform. This solution offers a simple framework that integrates and automates the information at low cost and minimum risk. Likewise, the model allows an optimized use of the information infrastructure in the clinical environment. The tests of the model include massive data migration, openness, scalability, and standard compatibility to avoid locking data into a proprietary technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The images generated in modern IC laboratories are created with high-quality standard (1,024 × 1,024 pixels and 10-12 bits/pixel) enabling cardiologists to perform interventions in the best conditions. But these images are in most of the cases archived in a basic quality standard (512 × 512 pixels and 8 bits/pixel). The purpose of this work is to complete the research developed in a previous paper and analyze the influence of the matrix size and the bit depth reduction on the image quality acquired on a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) phantom with a test object. The variation in contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and high contrast spatial resolution (HCSR) were investigated when the matrix size and the bit depth were independently modified for different phantom thicknesses. These two image quality parameters did not suffer noticeable alterations under bits depth reduction from 10 to 8 bits. Such a result seems to imply that bits depth reduction could be used to reduce file sizes with a suitable algorithm and without losing perceptible image quality information. But when the matrix size was reduced from 1,024 × 1,024 to 512 × 512 pixels, a reduction from 17% to 25% in HCSR was noticed when changing phantom thickness, and an increase of 27% in CNR was observed. These findings should be taken into account and it would be wise to conduct further investigations in the field of clinical images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This paper shows the interest of imitating the perceptive vision to improve the recognition of the structure of ancient, noisy and low structured documents. The perceptive vision, that is used by human eye, consists in focusing attention on interesting elements after having detecting their presence in a global vision process. We propose a generic method in order to apply this concept to various problems and kinds of documents. Thus, we introduce the concept of cooperation between multiresolution visions into a generic method. The originality of this work is that the cooperation between resolutions is totally led by the knowledge dedicated to each kind of document. In this paper, we present this method on three kinds of documents: handwritten low structured mail documents, naturalization decree register that are archive noisy documents from the 19th century and Bangla script that requires a precise vision. This work is validated on 86,291 documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This paper presents annotations needed for handwritten archive document retrieval by content. We propose two complementary ways of producing these annotations: automatically by using document image analysis and collectively by using the Internet and manual input by users. A platform for managing these annotations is presented as well as examples of automatic annotations on civil status registers, military forms (tested on 165,000 pages) and naturalization decrees, using a generic method for structured document recognition and handwriting recognition on names. Examples of collective annotations built on automatic annotations are also given. This platform is already open to the public in the reading room of the new building of the Archives dpartementales des Yvelines and on the Internet. About 1,450,000 images of civil status registers are available for collective annotation as well as 105,000 pages of military forms with automatic annotation of handwritten names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  In this paper, we propose a novel technique for word spotting in historical printed documents combining synthetic data and user feedback. Our aim is to search for keywords typed by the user in a large collection of digitized printed historical documents. The proposed method consists of the following stages: (1) creation of synthetic image words; (2) word segmentation using dynamic parameters; (3) efficient feature extraction for each word image and (4) a retrieval procedure that is optimized by user feedback. Experimental results prove the efficiency of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research on text categorization has focused on classifying text documents into a set of categories with no structural relationships among them (flat classification). However, in many information repositories documents are organized in a hierarchy of categories to support a thematic search by browsing topics of interests. The consideration of the hierarchical relationship among categories opens several additional issues in the development of methods for automated document classification. Questions concern the representation of documents, the learning process, the classification process and the evaluation criteria of experimental results. They are systematically investigated in this paper, whose main contribution is a general hierarchical text categorization framework where the hierarchy of categories is involved in all phases of automated document classification, namely feature selection, learning and classification of a new document. An automated threshold determination method for classification scores is embedded in the proposed framework. It can be applied to any classifier that returns a degree of membership of a document to a category. In this work three learning methods are considered for the construction of document classifiers, namely centroid-based, naïve Bayes and SVM. The proposed framework has been implemented in the system WebClassIII and has been tested on three datasets (Yahoo, DMOZ, RCV1) which present a variety of situations in terms of hierarchical structure. Experimental results are reported and several conclusions are drawn on the comparison of the flat vs. the hierarchical approach as well as on the comparison of different hierarchical classifiers. The paper concludes with a review of related work and a discussion of previous findings vs. our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extraction of sequences of events from news and other documents based on the publication times of these documents has been shown to be extremely effective in tracking past events. This paper addresses the issue of constructing an optimal information preserving decomposition of the time period associated with a given document set, i.e., a decomposition with the smallest number of subintervals, subject to no loss of information. We introduce the notion of the compressed interval decomposition, where each subinterval consists of consecutive time points having identical information content. We define optimality, and show that any optimal information preserving decomposition of the time period is a refinement of the compressed interval decomposition. We define several special classes of measure functions (functions that measure the prevalence of keywords in the document set and assign them numeric values), based on their effect on the information computed as document sets are combined. We give algorithms, appropriate for different classes of measure functions, for computing an optimal information preserving decomposition of a given document set. We studied the effectiveness of these algorithms by computing several compressed interval and information preserving decompositions for a subset of the Reuters-21578 document set. The experiments support the obvious conclusion that the temporal information gleaned from a document set is strongly dependent on the measure function used and on other user-defined parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a recently released, structural and composable modeling system called the Liberty Simulation Environment (LSE). LSE automatically constructs simulators from system descriptions that closely resemble the structure of hardware at the chosen level of abstraction. Component-based reuse features allow an extremely diverse range of complex models to be built easily from a core set of component libraries. This paper also describes the makeup and initial experience with a set of such libraries currently undergoing refinement. With LSE and these soon-to-be-released component libraries, students will be able to learn about systems in a more intuitive fashion, researchers will be able to collaborate with each other more easily, and developers will be able to rapidly and meaningfully explore novel design candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Cancer Institute (NCI), in conjunction with blinded university, provides a mechanism to enable public access to the study data, CT radiology images, and pathology images from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). Access to the data and images is through the NCI-sponsored, blinded university-hosted The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA), a repository of more than 40 study collections of cancer images. Once access to the NLST data has been granted by NCI, a Query Tool within TCIA is used to access the NLST data and images. The Query Tool is a simple-to-use menu-driven database application designed to quickly pose queries and retrieve/save results (from 53,452 NLST participants), download CT images (~20 million available), and view pathology images (~1200 available). NLST study data are contained in 17 Query Tool tables with ~370 variables to query. This paper describes Query Tool design, functionality, and usefulness for researchers, clinicians, and software developers to query data, save query results, and download/view images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the self-archiving of refereed science publications through a global virtual archive on the Internet. Comparison between royalty/fee-based literature and literature of refereed journal articles; Benefits of the free and accessible refereed literature for developing countries; Costs of refereeing or peer review; Ways to accelerate the rate of self-archiving in science disciplines.

Satellite range scheduling, a multi-constrained combinatorial optimization problem, is crucial to guaranteeing the normal operation and application of onboard satellites. Traditional methods are dedicated to finding one optimal schedule, having ignored the problem may process multiple high-quality schedules. To provide a set of alternative schedules while maintaining the solution quality, we propose a co-evolutionary algorithm with elite archive strategy (COEAS) in this article. In COEAS, two populations are evolved to solve the original and relaxed problem in terms of schedule quality and diversity, respectively. During the evolution, the populations maintain a weak cooperation and only share the information in offspring combination phase. Further, an elite archive strategy is derived to identify and preserve potential stagnated and optimal individuals. In this strategy, the promising individuals would further participate in parent mating and offspring replacement for the dual purpose of maintaining potential optima recovery and fine-tuning the population. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is better than comparison algorithms in terms of efficacy (obtaining higher quality schedule), diversity (locating more optimal schedules) and flexibility (providing better alternatives). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Institutes of Health have placed significant emphasis on sharing of research data to support secondary research. Investigators have been encouraged to publish their clinical and imaging data as part of fulfilling their grant obligations. Realizing it was not sufficient to merely ask investigators to publish their collection of imaging and clinical data, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) created the open source National Biomedical Image Archive software package as a mechanism for centralized hosting of cancer related imaging. NCI has contracted with Washington University in Saint Louis to create The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA)-an open-source, open-access information resource to support research, development, and educational initiatives utilizing advanced medical imaging of cancer. In its first year of operation, TCIA accumulated 23 collections (3.3 million images). Operating and maintaining a high-availability image archive is a complex challenge involving varied archive-specific resources and driven by the needs of both image submitters and image consumers. Quality archives of any type (traditional library, PubMed, refereed journals) require management and customer service. This paper describes the management tasks and user support model for TCIA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent healthcare policies have influenced the manner in which patient data is handled in research projects, and the regulations concerning protected health information have become significantly tighter. Thus, new procedures are needed to facilitate research while protecting the confidentiality of patient data and ensuring the integrity of clinical work in the expanding environment of electronic files and databases. We have addressed this problem in a university hospital setting by developing the Tampere Research Archival System (TARAS), an extensive data warehouse for research purposes. This dynamic system includes numerous integrated and pseudonymized imaging studies and clinical data. In a pilot study on asthma patients, we tested and improved the functionality of the data archival system. TARAS is feasible to use in retrieving, analyzing, and processing both image and non-image data. In this paper, we present a detailed workflow of the implementation process of the data warehouse, paying special attention to administrative, ethical, practical, and data security concerns. The establishment of TARAS will enhance and accelerate research practice at Tampere University Hospital, while also improving the safety of patient information as well as the prospects for national and international research collaboration. We hope that much can be learned from our experience of planning, designing, and implementing a research data warehouse combining imaging studies and medical records in a university hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits research procedures used to collect and analyze data for Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society (1988) to comment on methodological issues. The fifty years of change were conceptualized as having shifted the Southern Sociological Society from a disciplinary to a professional mode of organization. The shift occurred both from evolutionary processes and from deliberate revolutionary actions of officials and members. Data for the study came mainly from the Society’s Archives. It included personal accounts by presidents, secretary-treasurers’ and committee reports, annual programs and newsletters. Evolutionary processes of adapting the association to the growth of membership, to differentiation of fields of sociological study, along with the rationalization and formalization of the Society’s governance and operation, were extracted mainly from annual programs, the most continuous and objective body of archival information. Revolutionary changes, including adaptation to societal challenges including racial segregation, from the Society’s founding onward were inferred from personal accounts, committee reports, and newsletters, and were confirmed from interviews with long-standing members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  There is a huge amount of historical documents in libraries and in various National Archives that have not been exploited electronically. Although automatic reading of complete pages remains, in most cases, a long-term objective, tasks such as word spotting, text/image alignment, authentication and extraction of specific fields are in use today. For all these tasks, a major step is document segmentation into text lines. Because of the low quality and the complexity of these documents (background noise, artifacts due to aging, interfering lines), automatic text line segmentation remains an open research field. The objective of this paper is to present a survey of existing methods, developed during the last decade and dedicated to documents of historical interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Searching and indexing historical handwritten collections are a very challenging problem. We describe an approach called word spotting which involves grouping word images into clusters of similar words by using image matching to find similarity. By annotating “interesting” clusters, an index that links words to the locations where they occur can be built automatically. Image similarities computed using a number of different techniques including dynamic time warping are compared. The word similarities are then used for clustering using both K-means and agglomerative clustering techniques. It is shown in a subset of the George Washington collection that such a word spotting technique can outperform a Hidden Markov Model word-based recognition technique in terms of word error rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Effective indexing is crucial for providing convenient access to scanned versions of large collections of historically valuable handwritten manuscripts. Since traditional handwriting recognizers based on optical character recognition (OCR) do not perform well on historical documents, recently a holistic word recognition approach has gained in popularity as an attractive and more straightforward solution (Lavrenko et al. in proc. document Image Analysis for Libraries (DIAL’04), pp. 278–287, 2004). Such techniques attempt to recognize words based on scalar and profile-based features extracted from whole word images. In this paper, we propose a new approach to holistic word recognition for historical handwritten manuscripts based on matching word contours instead of whole images or word profiles. The new method consists of robust extraction of closed word contours and the application of an elastic contour matching technique proposed originally for general shapes (Adamek and O’Connor in IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Video Technol 5:2004). We demonstrate that multiscale contour-based descriptors can effectively capture intrinsic word features avoiding any segmentation of words into smaller subunits. Our experiments show a recognition accuracy of 83%, which considerably exceeds the performance of other systems reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computed radiography (CR) has many advantages such as filmless operations, efficiency, and convenience. Furthermore, it is easier to integrate with the picture archiving and communication systems. Another important advantage is that CR images generally have a wider dynamic range than conventional screen film. Unfortunately, grid artifacts and moiré pattern artifacts may be present in CR images. These artifacts become a more serious problem when viewing CR images on a computer monitor when a clinic grade monitor is not available. Images produced using a grid with higher frequency or a Potter–Bucky grid (i.e., a moving grid, Bucky for short) can reduce occurrence but cannot guarantee elimination of these artifacts [CR & PACS (2000); Detrick F (2001), pp 7–8]. In this paper, the formation of the artifacts is studied. We show that the grid artifacts occur in a narrow band of frequency in the frequency domain. The frequency can be determined, accurately located, and thus removed from the frequency domain. When comparing the results obtained from the proposed method against the results obtained using previous computer methods, we show that our method can achieve better image quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the use of steering groups and private consultants as sources of policy advice to local governments. More particularly, our research addresses the combined role of a government-appointed working party and consulting firm in the deliberation process precipitating from proposals to renovate/re-build a sports stadium. Through this New Zealand-based case, we explore the political tensions arising from the Working Party's mandates to consult and its role as vehicle to market policy solutions. Data is gleaned from interviews with working party members (and their consultants), observations of public consultations and analysis of documents (e.g., background papers, reports, and press releases). Implications of this institutional arrangement are discussed in light of recurring logics, tensions and paradoxes. We first consider the Carisbrook Working Party as an instrument of policy advice and distinguish its founding logic from other forms such as task forces or commissions of inquiry. We further discuss the paradoxes of the Working Party's procedural and political imperatives including its roles as facilitators of the process, advocates of the “problem,”and as authoritative proclaimers of certainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a complete methodology of printed text characterization for document labeling using texture features that have been inspired by a psychovisual approach. This approach considers visual human-based predicates to describe and identify text units according to their visual saliency and their perceptual attraction power on the reader?s eye. It supports a quick and robust process of functional labeling used to characterize text regions of document pages. The test databases are the Finland MTDB Oulu base J. Sauvola and H. Kauniskangas (1999) MediaTeam Document Database II, a CD-ROM document image collection, Oulu University, Finland that provides a great panel of document layouts and contents and our laboratory corpus that contains a large variety of composite documents (about 200 pages). The performance of the method gives very promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a system for processing documents that can be grouped into classes is illustrated. We have considered invoices as a case-study. The system is divided into three phases: document analysis, classification, and understanding. We illustrate the analysis and understanding phases. The system is based on knowledge constructed by means of a learning procedure. The experimental results demonstrate the reliability of our document analysis and understanding procedures. They also present evidence that it is possible to use a small learning set of invoices to obtain reliable knowledge for the understanding phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents guidelines for authors for submitting manuscripts to the journal "Instructional Science." It is reported that the journal's language is English. British English or American English spelling and terminology may be used, but either one should be followed consistently throughout the article. Manuscripts should be printed or typewritten on A4 or US Letter bond paper, one side only, leaving adequate margins on all sides to allow reviewers' remarks. Preference will be given to articles which in the opinion of the Editors and the Advisory Board constitute significant contributions to the science of instruction.

Disciplinary transgressions are necessary to generate newer understandings. However, such incursions are not always encouraged or acknowledged. As part of the special issue on post-structural perspectives on fisheries, this paper represents an engagement with Actor-Network Theory (ANT) while attempting to study scientific practices on fisheries in British India. Following Michel Callon's processes of translation to examine the effect of power in scientific practices of the past, I show not just the transformative promise of ANT for a study of history, but also how the act of doing history, rather, the engagement with texts as archives of actor-networks, could translate ANT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beeswax is a product of honeybees (Apis mellifera) and has been used extensively through time, especially as the primary component in medieval sealing wax for authenticating millions of documents. Today, these seals form large collections which, along with the historical information in the documents that the seals are attached to, could be a potential biomolecular archive for honeybees. Here, we investigate the possibility of obtaining biological information from medieval wax seals by performing a palynological and shotgun metagenomic analysis on eight medieval wax seal fragments. Our palynological results show that some pollen and fungal spores remain in the seals, albeit very little. Only one out of eight samples yielded enough DNA for sequencing. Moreover, only minor parts of the DNA reads could be taxonomically identified and were identified as plant and fungal DNA. These results demonstrate some potential for using wax seals as biological archives, but most importantly provides a framework for future studies, in addition to understanding further the degradation of seals as cultural heritage objects. We emphasize that future analyses should focus on other methodologies to retrieve data for historical context or alternatively improve molecular methods and screen sample collections broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that with ManuscriptCentral (MC), all processing of European Spine Journal manuscripts, from submittal to acceptance for publication, will be exclusively electronic and online. The publisher of the "European Spine Journal"has provided two online systems for some time now - online proof checking and online publication of each manuscript prior to paper publication. The new steps that we are announcing here will make the processing of a "European Spine Journal" manuscript, from submittal to publication, completely electronic.

The article drives from the Israeli colonial archives and seeks to crack their structure, foundations and imagination. It wishes to establish a counter postcolonial/decolonial archive, based on colonial sources, while taking into consideration the specific condition of the Israeli colonialism and settler colonialism, and mainly the repressive administration of the colonial archives. While colonial bodies and archives erase the indigenous history and past, the counter archive aims to return them to their original population and to the pubic-sphere, calling for democratization processes. It will be established on the ruins of the Israeli colonial archive, will tell the story of the Palestinian villages that their population was uprooted and exiled (before and after exile), the story of the Palestinian population who remained in Palestine under military regime, strangers in the house; the erasure and attempt to control Palestinian historiography and culture to support official Israeli narrative. The decolonial archive will also gather indigenous materials in colonial archives, point out the physical and interpretative forces exerted on them, cleanse them of their biased interpretation and focus on structuring a reading that differs from the original colonial designation. It will restore them to indigenous history, enabling the construction of an alternative multi- layered database, different from the one-sided characteristic of colonial archives. The proposal then is to turn the Israeli colonial archive–corrupt, oppressive and destructive, into a more autonomous site–not only the materials themselves but also the way they are contextualized, read and interpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing interest in the use of pteropods as potential archives of past changes in ocean chemistry. However, pteropods have rarely been used in studies of millennial-scale sedimentary records, especially in shallow-marine environments. This study obtained core data for the last 16 kyr from the Northwest Shelf of Australia (NWS). Changes in the carbonate saturation state were assessed based on the carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) of shells and the Limacina dissolution index (LDX) measured on the planktonic pteropod species Heliconoides inflatus. In addition, the calcification depth of the pteropods was estimated based on oxygen isotope values (δ18O) of pteropod shells and seawater. Our findings indicate that H. inflatus calcifies at a depth of 95–140 m. This confirms that H. inflatus records a shallow-marine signal on the NWS. The δ13C values of the pteropods record a notable decrease in carbonate ion concentrations after 8.5 ka. This decrease is associated with the post-glacial onset of humid conditions on the NWS. The studied pteropod shells are pristine throughout the 16 kyr section and have low LDX values. Therefore, the LDX proxy appears to lack the sensitivity to be applicable in this highly supersaturated, shallow-marine environment. Until this study, proxies derived from H. inflatus have been exclusively utilized in open-marine settings. Our results indicate that the δ13C values of H. inflatus also represent a useful proxy for carbonate ion concentrations in shallow-marine environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linked data (LD) have the capability to open up and share materials, held in libraries, archives and museums (LAMs), in ways that are restricted by many existing metadata standards. Specifically, LD interlinking can be used to enrich data and to improve data discoverability on the Web through interlinking related resources across datasets and institutions. However, there is currently a notable lack of interlinking across leading LD projects in LAMs, impacting upon the discoverability of their materials. This research describes the Novel Authoritative Interlinking for Semantic Web Cataloguing in Libraries (NAISC-L) interlinking framework. Unlike existing interlinking frameworks, NAISC-L was designed specifically with the requirements of the LAM domain in mind. The framework was evaluated by Information Professionals (IPs), including librarians, archivists and metadata cataloguers, via three user-experiments including a think-aloud test, an online interlink creation test and a field test in a music archive. Across all experiments, participants achieved a high level of interlink accuracy, and usability measures indicated that IPs found NAISC-L to be useful and user-friendly. Overall, NAISC-L was shown to be an effective framework for engaging IPs in the process of LD interlinking, and for facilitating the creation of richer and more authoritative interlinks between LAM resources. NAISC-L supports the linking of related resource across datasets and institutions, thereby enabling richer and more varied search queries, and can thus be used to improve the discoverability of materials held in LAMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments with recognizing sensitive data in email message corpora have demonstrated the importance of context in such models. The temptation to use AI to perpetuate an obsolete principle Faced with the reality of the uncontrollable flow of born-digital records, archivists have pinned their hopes on AI-powered appraisal. It is high time we started developing humanity's long-term digital memory. [Extracted from the article]