The MIROWeb Esprit project has developed a unique technology to integrate multiple data sources through an object-relational model with semistructured data types. It addresses the problem of integrating irregular Web sources and regular relational databases through a mediated architecture based on a hybrid model, supporting relational, object and semistructured features. The project data exchan...

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can provide effective instruction, but learners do not always use such systems effectively. In the present study, high school students’ action sequences with a mathematics ITS were machineclassified into five finite-state machines indicating guessing strategies, appropriate help use, and independent problem solving; over 90% of problem events were categorized....

We present a software tool that can help music tutors and students organize and search their musical digital library in an efficient way. Our system is based on fuzzy cmeans clustering and automatically organizes a collection of music files according to musical surface characteristics (e.g., zero crossings, short-time energy, etc.) and tempo. The system is complemented with semantic metadata, w...

• Source databases can be organized by using several different models, such as the relational model, the object-oriented model, or semistructured models (e.g., XML). • Information stored in a single table in one relational database can be stored in two or more tables in another. This problem is common when source databases show different levels of normalization and also occurs in nonrelational ...

XML is a widespread W3C standard used by several kinds of applications for data representation and exchange over the web. In the context of a system that provides semantic integration of heterogeneous XML sources, the same information at a semantic level may have different representations in XML. However, the syntax of an XML query depends on the structure of the specific XML source. Therefore,...

The foundational homomorphism techniques introduced by Chandra and Merlin for testing containment of conjunctive queries have recently attracted renewed interest due to their central role in information integration applications. We show that generalizations of the classical tableau representation of conjunctive queries are useful for computing query answers in information integration systems wh...

Learning about a new area of knowledge is challenging for novices partly because they are not yet aware of which topics are most important. The Internet contains a wealth of information for learning the underlying structure of a domain, but relevant sources often have diverse structures and emphases, making it hard to discern what is widely considered essential knowledge vs. what is idiosyncrat...

For the Clinical Decision Support Track of TREC 2014, we looked into the effect of modifying queries by adding or removing terms. We considered both automatic and manual query modifications that use either external data sources or a domain expert. While each method gave slightly different results, we discovered that the manual method still performed slightly better among the methods we consider...

What qualities lead some Internet videos to reach millions of viewers while others languish in obscurity? This question has been largely unexamined empirically. We addressed this issue by examining the role of emotional response and video source on the likelihood of spreading an Internet video by validating the emotional response to an Internet video and investigating the underlying mechanisms....

Roshan Weerasekera, Dinesh Pamunuwa, Matt Grange † †Centre for Microsystems Engineering, Faculty of Science & Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, UK. Email: {r.weerasekera,d.pamunuwa,m.grange}@lancaster.ac.uk Hannu Tenhunen, Li-Rong Zheng ∗ Department of Electronics, Computer, and Software Systems, KTH School of Information and Communication Technologies, ELECTRUM 229, 164 40 K...