Month: October 2017

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Definition of a system

There are many definitions of what a system is, I like Mario Bunge’s definition:

“A system is a complex object every part or component of which is connected with other parts of the same object in such a manner that the whole possesses some features that its components lack – that is emergent properties” (Bunge 1996: 20).

Examples of emergent properties of a system: structure or history of social system. Examples of emergent properties of a component (i.e., part would not possess property if were independent or isolated): role, civil right, scarcity, price (Bunge 1996: 20).

quotes from: Bunge, Mario Augusto. Finding Philosophy in Social Science. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996.

In my understanding of open systems, its components are continuously changing with their environment. Open systems have the emergent property of continuous exchange (input/output) of their components with the environment. Ludwig von Bertalanffy argues that open systems reach states of equilibrium within and through this interaction with their environment. Closed systems are isolated from their environment. Is mathematics a closed system?

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jan 10, 2007]

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Systems intelligence and interdependent arising

The concept of systems intelligence has been described by Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Esa Saarinen, researchers at the Systems Intelligence Research Group, Systems Analysis Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology. It is an attempt to formulate an applied systems thinking.

Esa Saarinen and Raimo P. Hämäläinen, argue that systems intelligence is a set of higher-level cognitive capacities, that are not explained by Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, or Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence. Gardner provided others that are not explained: common sense, metaphorical capacity and wisdom. Saarinen and Hämäläinen define systems intelligence as

“
intelligent behaviour in the context of complex systems
involving interaction and feedback. A subject acting with Systems Intelligence engages
successfully and productively with the holistic
feedback mechanisms of her environment. She
perceives herself as part of a whole, the influence of
the whole upon herself as well as her own influence
upon the whole. By observing her own
interdependence in the feedback intensive
environment, she is able to act intelligently.

source: Systems Intelligence – Discovering a hidden competence in human action and organizational life (PDF)”

Systems Intelligence as described here seems to me to be an attempt at an industrial application of the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising, Pratītyasamutpāda, the belief that “phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect”.

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jan 10, 2007]

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von Bartalanffy and biological systems

Ludwig von Bartalanffy ponders on the difficulties in trying to apply the 2nd law of thermodynamics to living biological systems. This law implies that entropy increases over time in physical systems.

Biological systems, however, are recognized as maintaining a continual state of flux. Never stationary or fixed in chemical or thermodynamic equilibrium, its components are constantly altered by metabolic events.

A system compensates for its deterioration by importing and processing energy. It attains dynamic equilibrium– between its own improbable state and the surrounding environment (Bertalanffy, 1968b, pp. 46-48; General Systems Theory. New York: George Braziler, 1968.)

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jun 20, 2006  ]

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Allen Brain Atlas

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, funded the development of the Allen Brain Atlas, which lets you navigate visual and genetic information about the brain

“The Allen Brain Atlas is a web-based application that is designed to aid the expansion of brain science. Designed and developed in collaboration with an acclaimed group of scientists, the ABA enables users to access an extensive database of ISH images, ABA reference atlas, and gene expression masks. Future releases will allow users to search by gene expression pattern or level, and will contain an expanded gene data set.

source: Allen Brain Atlas, links added.
”

see also: NCBI, Wikipedia – Spatiotemporal gene expression

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jun 16, 2006   ]

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Metamaterials and invisibility

The recent article in Science, Controlling Electromagnetic Fields, by J. B. Pendry from Department of Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, D. Schurig and D. R. Smith from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University speculate on the use of metamaterials for creating invisibility cloaks

“Using the freedom of design that metamaterials provide, we show how electromagnetic fields can be redirected at will and propose a design strategy. The conserved fields–electric displacement field D, magnetic induction field B, and Poynting vector S–are all displaced in a consistent manner. A simple illustration is given of the cloaking of a proscribed volume of space to exclude completely all electromagnetic fields. Our work has relevance to exotic lens design and to the cloaking of objects from electromagnetic fields.

source: science
”

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from May 26, 2006  ]

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Science on television

Closer To Truth (PBS) is a television series that deals with “the fundamental questions of our times explored by creative and thoughtful scientists, scholars and artists.” The video archive contains past debates with scientists on everything from parapsychology, ESP, creativity, consciousness, music and art, etc…

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Mar 20, 2006   ]

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Library of Congress Call Number Sort in PHP

I needed a function that will compare Library of Congress call numbers. I found a function in PERL to do this on Joshua McGee’s site, but I needed it in PHP and our call numbers use a space instead of a period for some of the separators, for example: HA 1107 K49 2003.

Here is the function in PHP:

 

Code:
//is call number $a larger than call number $b?
function locsort ($a,$b)
{
$pattern =’/^([A-Z]+)\s?(\d+(?:\.\d+)?)\s?([A-Z]*)(\d*)\.?([A-Z]*)(\d*)( (?:\d{4})?)?(.*)?/’;

$i = preg_match($pattern, $a, $regsA);
$j = preg_match($pattern, $b, $regsB);

if (($i==0)||($j==0)) {
return($a > $b);
}
else {
//if first part greater then return that
//if first part equal, check second part, return that
if ($regsA[1] != $regsB[1]){
return($regsA[1] > $regsB[1]);
}
else {
if ($regsA[2] != $regsB[2]){
return ($regsA[2] > $regsB[2]);
}
else {
if ($regsA[3] != $regsB[3]){
return ($regsA[3] > $regsB[3]);
}
else{
if ($regsA[4] != $regsB[4]){
return ((“0.”.$regsA[4]) > (“0.”.$regsB[4]));
}
else {
if ($regsA[5] != $regsB[5]){
return ($regsA[5] > $regsB[5]);
}
else {
if ($regsA[6] != $regsB[6]){
return ($regsA[6] > $regsB[6]);
}
else {
if ($regsA[7] != $regsB[7]){
return ($regsA[7] > $regsB[7]);
}
else {
return ($regsA[8] > $regsB[8]);
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jan 17, 2012  ]

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information retrieval: relevance, pertinence, precision and recall

The relevance of information in relation to some question was defined in the late 1950s when the Cranfield test was developed at the Cranfield College of Aeronautics . The two measures that were developed are precision and recall.

 

“relevance
The extent to which information retrieved in a search of a library collection or other resource, such as an online catalog or bibliographic database, is judged by the user to be applicable to (“about”) the subject of the query. Relevance depends on the searcher’s subjective perception of the degree to which the document fulfills the information need, which may or may not have been
expressed fully or with precision in the search statement. Measures of the effectiveness of information retrieval, such as precision and recall, depend on the relevance of search results.

Compare with pertinence.

pertinence
In information retrieval, the extent to which a document retrieved in response to a query actually satisfies the information need, depending on the user’s current state of knowledge–a narrower concept than relevance. Although a document may be relevant to the subject of the inquiry, it may already be known to the searcher, written in a language the user does not read, available in a format the reseacher is unable or unwilling to use, or unacceptable for some other reason.

precision
In information retrieval, a measure of search effectiveness, expressed as the ratio of relevant records or documents retrieved from a database to the total number retrieved in response to the query;

Compare with recall.

recall In information retrieval, a measure of the effectiveness of a search, expressed as the ratio of the number of relevant records or documents retrieved in response to the query to the total number of relevant records or documents in the database;One of the main difficulties in using recall as a measure of search effectiveness is that it can be nearly impossible to determine the total number of relevant records in all but very small databases.

source: ODLIS: Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science
”

aboutness

Fairthorne, Robert A. in “The Symmetries of Ignorance” distinguishes between two kinds of aboutness, extensional and intentional:

“Robert Fairthorne writes: “The problem of helping those who are ignorant, in detail, of what people have said about things, is therefore solved by defining ‘aboutness’ in extension. That is by listing the things that are mentioned in a document. . . .” […]
(1) extensional “aboutness” takes into account the environment of the use and the production of a document (thus it is a relation, not an attribute);
and (2) intentional “aboutness,” which clearly cannot be determined from the study of the text alone: “It entails knowledge of how it is going to be used by what class of readers.”The Role of Classification in Subject Retrieval in the Future by Rolland-Thomas, Paule

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jan 13, 2007 ]

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Access 2006 Conference in Ottawa

I recently participated in the Access 2006 Conference in Ottawa

“
Common touchstones at the conference include:* customized web applications and search interfaces
* open source software
* national and provincial consortiae initiatives
* information policy
* digital media
* library catalogue innovations
* end user searching behaviours
* metadata

source: what is Access?

Some notes from the CARL Preconference on Institutional Repositories

Benefits of institutional repositories include: impact, visibility, and reputation.

Standards:
> CARL Harvester, CARLCore is unqualified Dublin Core.
> OAI-PMH metadata protocol = Deposit -> metadata generation -> aggregations -> end user
> URI, OpenURL vs. DOI, Crossref (proprietary)
> International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) – search for institutional repositories

University of Toronto:
> University of Toronto’s Knowledge Media Design Institute – virtual institute
> Project Open Source | Open Access (open-utoronto.ca)
> tspace.library.utoronto.ca

Open Access Examples:
> Public Knowledge Project
> Data Liberation Initiative
> Anthrosource

“An online portal to full text anthropological resources, AnthroSource offers AAA members access to 40,661 articles in AAA journals, newsletters, bulletins, and monographs; a linked, searchable database containing past, present, and future AAA periodicals; centralized access to a wealth of other key anthropological resources, including text, sound, and video; and interactive services to foster communities of interest and practice throughout the discipline.
”

 

> Bioline International – a not-for-profit electronic publishing service committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries
> Journal of Medical Internet Research
> National e-Science Centre (UK)

Examples from Europe:
> University of Glasgow ePrints Service
> Queensland University of Technology
> CERN Document Server

Institutional Repository Software:
> Eprints
> DSpace
> Fedora – Fez (web interface to Fedora) and other tools
> CONTENTdm

notes from Access 2006

Canada and Ontario:
> Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries
> Ontario Scholars Portal
> OurOntario

Library Enterprise System vs. ILS
– refinement and knowledge discovery
> Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN)

Increase in cost, paying for publishing and access > Biomed Central

Europe:
>PrestoSpace – AV Materials
>Building resources for Integrated Cultural Knowledge Services (BRICKS)
>Calimera
>TEL (European Library)

Software:
> Lucene – indexing search engine, archives, multiple metadata (EAD, DC, Fulltext), good at merging indexes. Solr – open source search server based on Lucene. Example: National Adult Literacy Database.

> Endeca – NCSU catalog (Endeca for faceted browse, relevance ranking).

Search comforts: spell (did you mean?), stemming, sort options
Search + browse: layered facets, filter across multiple dimensions, facet deselection, relevance, speed, locally managed, persistent parameters

> Cocoon – XML publishing framework
> Ruby on Rails – agile web development
> LizardTech – for MrSID and JPEG 2000 images

> Collex –

“a set of tools designed to aid students and scholars working in networked archives and federated repositories of humanities materials: a sophisticated COLLections and EXhibits mechanism for the semantic web”

 

University of Victoria -> backup catalog using PHP – Yaz

> unapi.info

“a tiny HTTP API for the few basic operations necessary to copy discrete, identified content from any kind of web application”

 

XML Databases – alternative: SQL + Lucene
>TextML
>IPEDO

XML Catalogues / Library 2.0 – “an architecture of participation”
>eXtensible Catalog (XC) – an open-source online system that will unify access to traditional and digital library resources
>Talis, Keystone, resources, talk.talis.com, directory.talis.com, development network, Project Cenote
>Library Thing (beta)
>Library 2.0 Wiki

Mozilla:
>Greasemonkey
>LibX Firefox
>Zotero

Web services
> xISBN service
> Amazon API, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) – Limited Beta
> Google API
> findarticles.com

> Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – more enduring and flexible, reusable (sustainable?)
– BPEL (OASIS standard) for expression of complex processes. Active BPEL (Open Source), Active BPEL Designer (visual designer).
– services invoked with SOAP
– orchestration exposed with WSDL

Standards:
> UK -> Structured Vocabularies for IR (thesauri, ontologies, etc.) > British Standard – BS8723
Controlled Vocabularies: LCSH, Rameau (Fr), SWD (de)
> SRU – SRW
> e-Framework for Education and Research – an initiative by the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST)
> Digital Library Federation – DLF Service Framework for Digital Libraries
> NISO MetaSearch Initiative
> NISO RP-2006 – Best Practices for Designing Web Services in the Library Context (PDF)
> SOA in higher education
> DELOS – Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries

Discussion lists:
>Web4Lib
>Code4Lib
>NGC4Lib

Reference-bot:
>Bibliothek Hamburg

Book reference:
“Putting Content Online: a practical guide for libraries” by Mark Jordan

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Oct 18, 2006]

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Nondeterministic Turing Machines

In theoretical computer science, there is a theorem which states that all nondeterministic Turing machines (NTM) have an equivalent deterministic Turing machine (DTM). NTMs differ from DTMs in that the former allow for the possibility of more than one next state from a given configuration.

“
If there is more than one next move, we do not specify which next move the machine makes, only that it chooses one such move.

source: Computability and Complexity Theory, Steven Homer & Alan Selman, p.31
”

The proof for the theorem that NTMs have equivalent DTMs is through construction: the DTM builds NTM’s computation tree and then performs a breadth-first search on this tree. I was never convinced by this proof. If you take time into consideration, and the fact that NTM’s computation tree approaches infinity in size due to the size of the option set from which it ‘chooses’ at each step, you get a search that takes the DTM forever (or almost forever) to complete (which, to borrow Douglas Bridges’ expression, “does not extend to an assurance that you will find the desired term before the end of the universe”). I remain unconvinced that NTMs are equivalent to DTMs.

[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from Jun 20, 2006]