Information Retrieval Applications Research Articles

Dual Contrastive Learning for Cross-Domain Named Entity Recognition

Benefiting many information retrieval applications, named entity recognition (NER) has shown impressive progress. Recently, there has been a growing trend to decompose complex NER tasks into two subtasks (e.g., entity span detection (ESD) and entity type classification (ETC), to achieve better performance. Despite the remarkable success, from the perspective of representation, existing methods do not explicitly distinguish non-entities and entities, which may lead to ESD errors. Meanwhile, they do not explicitly distinguish entities with different entity types, which may lead to entity type misclassification. As such, the limited representation abilities may challenge some competitive NER methods, leading to unsatisfactory performance, especially in the low-resource setting (e.g., cross-domain NER). In light of these challenges, we propose to utilize contrastive learning to refine the original chaotic representations and learn the generalized representations for cross-domain NER. In particular, this article proposes a dual contrastive learning model (Dual-CL), which respectively utilizes a token-level contrastive learning module and a sentence-level contrastive learning module to enhance ESD, ETC for cross-domain NER. Empirical results on 10 domain pairs under two different settings show that Dual-CL achieves better performances than compared baselines in terms of several standard metrics. Moreover, we conduct detailed analyses to are presented to better understand each component’s effectiveness.

A novel Deep High-level Concept-mining Jointing Hashing Model for unsupervised cross-modal retrieval

Unsupervised cross-modal hashing has achieved great success in various information retrieval applications owing to its efficient storage usage and fast retrieval speed. Recent studies have primarily focused on training the hash-encoded networks by calculating a sample-based similarity matrix to improve the retrieval performance. However, there are two issues remain to solve: (1) The current sample-based similarity matrix only considers the similarity between image-text pairs, ignoring the different information densities of each modality, which may introduce additional noise and fail to mine key information for retrieval; (2) Most existing unsupervised cross-modal hashing methods only consider alignment between different modalities, while ignoring consistency between each modality, resulting in semantic conflicts. To tackle these challenges, a novel Deep High-level Concept-mining Jointing Hashing (DHCJH) model for unsupervised cross-modal retrieval is proposed in this study. DHCJH is able to capture the essential high-level semantic information from image modalities and integrate into the text modalities to improve the accuracy of guidance information. Additionally, a new hashing loss with a regularization term is introduced to avoid the cross-modal semantic collision and false positive pairs problems. To validate the proposed method, extensive comparison experiments on benchmark datasets are conducted. Experimental findings reveal that DHCJH achieves superior performance in both accuracy and efficiency. The code of DHCJH is available at Github.

Generating grating in cavity magnomechanics

Abstract We investigate the phenomenon of magnomechanically induced grating (MMIG) within a cavity magnomechanical system, comprising magnons (spins in a ferromagnet, such as yttrium iron garnet), cavity microwave photons, and phonons (Li et al 2018 Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 203601). By applying an external standing wave control, we observe modifications in the transmission profile of a probe light beam, signifying the presence of MMIG. Through numerical analysis, we explore the diffraction intensities of the probe field, examining the impact of interactions between cavity magnons, magnon-phonon interactions, standing wave field strength, and interaction length. MMIG systems leverage the unique properties of magnons, and collective spin excitations with attributes like long coherence times and spin-wave propagation. These distinctive features can be harnessed in MMIG systems for innovative applications in information storage, retrieval, and quantum memories, offering various orders of diffraction grating.

Comparative Evaluation of Pre-Trained Language Models for Biomedical Information Retrieval.

Finding relevant information in the biomedical literature increasingly depends on efficient information retrieval (IR) algorithms. Cross-Encoders, SentenceBERT, and ColBERT are algorithms based on pre-trained language models that use nuanced but computable vector representations of search queries and documents for IR applications. Here we investigate how well these vectorization algorithms estimate relevance labels of biomedical documents for search queries using the OHSUMED dataset. For our evaluation, we compared computed scores to provided labels by using boxplots and Spearman's rank correlations. According to these metrics, we found that Sentence-BERT moderately outperformed the alternative vectorization algorithms and that additional fine-tuning based on a subset of OHSUMED labels yielded little additional benefit. Future research might aim to develop a larger dedicated dataset in order to optimize such methods more systematically, and to evaluate the corresponding functions in IR tools with end-users.

A Comprehensive Survey on Relation Extraction: Recent Advances and New Frontiers

Relation extraction (RE) involves identifying the relations between entities from underlying content. RE serves as the foundation for many natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval applications, such as knowledge graph completion and question answering. In recent years, deep neural networks have dominated the field of RE and made noticeable progress. Subsequently, the large pre-trained language models (PLMs) have taken the state-of-the-art RE to a new level. This survey provides a comprehensive review of existing deep learning techniques for RE. First, we introduce RE resources, including datasets and evaluation metrics. Second, we propose a new taxonomy to categorize existing works from three perspectives, i.e., text representation, context encoding, and triplet prediction. Third, we discuss several important challenges faced by RE and summarize potential techniques to tackle these challenges. Finally, we outline some promising future directions and prospects in this field. This survey is expected to facilitate researchers’ collaborative efforts to address the challenges of real-world RE systems.

Evaluating LLMs on document-based QA: Exact answer selection and numerical extraction using CogTale dataset

Document-based Question-Answering (QA) tasks are crucial for precise information retrieval. While some existing work focus on evaluating large language model’s (LLMs) performance on retrieving and answering questions from documents, assessing the LLMs performance on QA types that require exact answer selection from predefined options and numerical extraction is yet to be fully assessed. In this paper, we specifically focus on this underexplored context and conduct empirical analysis of LLMs (GPT-4 and GPT-3.5) on question types, including single-choice, yes–no, multiple-choice, and number extraction questions from documents. We use the CogTale dataset for evaluation, which provide human expert-tagged responses, offering a robust benchmark for precision and factual grounding. We found that LLMs, particularly GPT-4, can precisely answer many single-choice and yes–no questions given relevant context, demonstrating their efficacy in information retrieval tasks. However, their performance diminishes when confronted with multiple-choice and number extraction formats, lowering the overall performance of the models on this task, indicating that these models may not yet be sufficiently reliable for the task. This limits the applications of LLMs on applications demanding precise information extraction and inference from documents, such as meta-analysis tasks. Our work offers a framework for ongoing dataset evaluation, ensuring that LLM applications for information retrieval and document analysis continue to meet evolving standards.

The digital lab manager: Automating research support

Laboratory management automation is essential for achieving interoperability in the domain of experimental research and accelerating scientific discovery. The integration of resources and the sharing of knowledge across organisations enable scientific discoveries to be accelerated by increasing the productivity of laboratories, optimising funding efficiency, and addressing emerging global challenges. This paper presents a novel framework for digitalising and automating the administration of research laboratories through The World Avatar, an all-encompassing dynamic knowledge graph. This Digital Laboratory Framework serves as a flexible tool, enabling users to efficiently leverage data from diverse systems and formats without being confined to a specific software or protocol. Establishing dedicated ontologies and agents and combining them with technologies such as QR codes, RFID tags, and mobile apps, enabled us to develop modular applications that tackle some key challenges related to lab management. Here, we showcase an automated tracking and intervention system for explosive chemicals as well as an easy-to-use mobile application for asset management and information retrieval. Implementing these, we have achieved semantic linking of BIM and BMS data with laboratory inventory and chemical knowledge. Our approach can capture the crucial data points and reduce inventory processing time. All data provenance is recorded following the FAIR principles, ensuring its accessibility and interoperability.

Text Summarization Based on Semantic Similarity

In the contemporary information age, the sheer volume of textual data poses a significant challenge for efficient comprehension and utilization. This project endeavors to address this challenge by developing a Text Summarization System grounded in semantic similarities. The primary goal is to create a robust and intuitive tool that extracts key information from large textual datasets, offering users a concise and meaningful summary. The proposed system employs advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze the semantic relationships within the text. Rather than relying solely on syntactic structures, the model identifies and leverages semantic similarities, such as shared concepts, themes, and contextual relationships, to distill the essential content. This approach enhances the summarization process by ensuring that the generated summaries reflect a deeper understanding of the underlying semantics, thereby capturing the core meaning of the text. Throughout the development of this project, the B.Tech student will delve into the intricacies of semantic analysis, exploring techniques to recognize and prioritize key concepts. The system's effectiveness will be evaluated through rigorous testing on diverse textual datasets, assessing its ability to generate coherent and relevant summaries across various domains. This project not only contributes to the field of NLP but also has practical applications in information retrieval, document summarization, and content curation. By providing an innovative solution to the challenges of information overload, the Text Summarization System based on semantic similarities offers a valuable tool for enhancing efficiency in information processing and decision-making. Index terms Text Summarization, Semantic Similarities, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Semantic Analysis, Information Retrieval, Document Summarization, Content Curation, Information Overload, Decision Making, Textual Data Analysis, Key Concept Recognition, Conceptual Relationships, Syntactic Structures, Semantic Understanding, Textual Datasets Evalution.

Neural Bookmarks: Information Retrieval with Deep Learning and EEG Data

In neural memory decoding, a concept being mentally recalled is identified using brain data. Recently, the feasibility of neural memory decoding with EEG data has been demonstrated. Here we propose a new application – neural information retrieval – that uses neural memory decoding to allow a document to be retrieved merely by thinking about it. In this paper we describe neural memory decoding, define the application of neural information retrieval, present experimental results related to the practicality of the application, and discuss issues of deployment and data privacy.

FFEC: Fast and forward-secure equivalence-based ciphertext comparability for multiple users in cloud environment

With the expansion of cloud computing, an increasing amount of sensitive data is being encrypted and stored in public clouds to alleviate storage and management burdens. Secure equivalence-based retrieval of ciphertexts for multiple users is crucial in a cloud environment where diverse user data resides for processing purposes. Public key encryption with equality test (PKEET) has been introduced as a cryptographic tool to verify if two ciphertexts under different public keys contain the same message. However, existing PKEET schemes often face misuse of trapdoors due to their unlimited lifespan, potentially leading to unauthorized disclosure of user privacy. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called fast and forward-secure equivalence-based comparability (FFEC) for multiple users by employing a forward-secure PKEET (FS-PKEET). This restricts the retrieval process only to ciphertexts generated prior to the most recent trapdoor update. We present a concrete FS-PKEET scheme based on bilinear pairing and demonstrate its security using Bilinear Diffie–Hellman (BDH) assumption in the random oracle model. Comprehensive performance evaluation shows that our work has much efficiency of decryption, trapdoor generation and test execution thanks to greatly reducing the cost of trapdoor generation and thus is practical for the application of secure ciphertext information retrieval in cloud environment.

Blockchain Technology Applications in Search and Information Retrieval in the Digital Environment for Libraries: An Analytical Study

Blockchain Technology Applications in Search and Information Retrieval in the Digital Environment for Libraries: An Analytical Study

An Optimal Algorithm for Finding Champions in Tournament Graphs

A tournament graph is a complete directed graph, which can be used to model a round-robin tournament between $n$ players. In this paper, we address the problem of finding a champion of the tournament, also known as Copeland winner, which is a player that wins the highest number of matches. In detail, we aim to investigate algorithms that find the champion by playing a low number of matches. Solving this problem allows us to speed up several Information Retrieval and Recommender System applications, including question answering, conversational search, etc. Indeed, these applications often search for the champion inducing a round-robin tournament among the players by employing a machine learning model to estimate who wins each pairwise comparison. Our contribution, thus, allows finding the champion by performing a low number of model inferences. We prove that any deterministic or randomized algorithm finding a champion with constant success probability requires $\Omega(\ell n)$ comparisons, where $\ell$ is the number of matches lost by the champion. We then present an asymptotically-optimal deterministic algorithm matching this lower bound without knowing $\ell$, and we extend our analysis to three variants of the problem. Lastly, we conduct a comprehensive experimental assessment of the proposed algorithms on a question answering task on public data. Results show that our proposed algorithms speed up the retrieval of the champion up to $13\times$ with respect to the state-of-the-art algorithm that perform the full tournament.

NNFSRR: Nearest Neighbor Feature Selection and Redundancy Removal Method for Nearest Neighbor Search in Microarray Gene Expression Data

INTRODUCTION: Gene expression data analysis is a critical aspect of disease prediction and classification, playing a pivotal role in the field of bioinformatics and biomedical research. High-dimensional gene expression datasets hold a wealth of information, but their effective utilization is hindered by the presence of irrelevant dimensions and noise. The challenge lies in extracting meaningful features from these datasets to enhance the accuracy of disease prediction and classification while maintaining computational efficiency.
 Feature selection is a crucial step in addressing these challenges, as it aims to identify and retain only the most informative characteristics from large high-dimensional microarray datasets. In the context of microarray gene expression data, characterized by its substantial dimensionality, selecting relevant features is essential for efficient nearest neighbor search, a fundamental component of various analytical tasks in bioinformatics and data mining.
 Existing feature selection methods in high-dimensional data often face issues related to the trade-off between search accuracy and computational efficiency. This paper introduces a novel approach, the Nearest Neighbor Feature Selection with Symmetrical Uncertainty-based Redundancy Removal (NNFSRR) method, designed to enhance the classification of microarray gene expression data through feature selection. The NNFSRR method focuses on reducing the dimensionality of the dataset by identifying and removing redundant features, allowing subsequent searches to operate solely on relevant dimensions.
 OBJECTIVES: The primary goal is to evaluate the NNFSRR method's effectiveness in improving nearest neighbor search in microarray gene expression datasets by reducing dimensionality. This method utilizes Symmetrical Uncertainty-based correlation between dimensions for feature selection and aims to enhance accuracy and efficiency compared to existing methods.
 METHODS: The NNFSRR method uses Symmetrical Uncertainty to identify and remove redundant features from microarray gene expression datasets. Reduced datasets are used for nearest neighbor search, improving accuracy and efficiency. Experiments are conducted using real-world datasets, and comparisons with existing methods are made based on search time and accuracy.
 RESULTS: The NNFSRR method demonstrates improved nearest neighbor search performance, outperforming basic brute force methods and existing feature selection techniques. Selected feature sets exhibit strong class associations while minimizing feature correlations, enhancing classification precision.
 CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the NNFSRR method presents a promising approach to address the challenges posed by high-dimensional gene expression data. It effectively reduces dimensionality, improves search accuracy, and enhances the efficiency of nearest neighbor search. Our experimental results demonstrate that this method outperforms existing techniques in terms of search time and accuracy, making it a valuable tool for applications in bioinformatics, data mining, pattern recognition, and biological information retrieval. The NNFSRR method holds the potential to advance our understanding of complex biological processes and support more accurate disease prediction and classification.

Discovery and recognition of formula concepts using machine learning

Citation-based Information Retrieval (IR) methods for scientific documents have proven effective for IR applications, such as Plagiarism Detection or Literature Recommender Systems in academic disciplines that use many references. In science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, researchers often employ mathematical concepts through formula notation to refer to prior knowledge. Our long-term goal is to generalize citation-based IR methods and apply this generalized method to both classical references and mathematical concepts. In this paper, we suggest how mathematical formulas could be cited and define a Formula Concept Retrieval task with two subtasks: Formula Concept Discovery (FCD) and Formula Concept Recognition (FCR). While FCD aims at the definition and exploration of a ‘Formula Concept’ that names bundled equivalent representations of a formula, FCR is designed to match a given formula to a prior assigned unique mathematical concept identifier. We present machine learning-based approaches to address the FCD and FCR tasks. We then evaluate these approaches on a standardized test collection (NTCIR arXiv dataset). Our FCD approach yields a precision of 68% for retrieving equivalent representations of frequent formulas and a recall of 72% for extracting the formula name from the surrounding text. FCD and FCR enable the citation of formulas within mathematical documents and facilitate semantic search and question answering, as well as document similarity assessments for plagiarism detection or recommender systems.

Librarians’ ICT skills and service delivery in private universities in Nigeria

This paper examined the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills of librarians for service delivery in private universities with particular reference to Southern Nigeria. The study adopted the survey research method. Forty-five (45) private university libraries in Southern Nigeria and their librarians constituted the sample size for the study. The study’s samples consisted of 181 librarians in the private universities, hence, total enumeration was adopted. Questionnaire was used for data collection from the respondents. Out of the 181 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 173 were returned and found valid for analysis. Data gathered was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 21 and the results were presented in frequency count, percentage, mean and chart. Findings of the study revealed that librarians in private universities in Southern Nigeria delivered various library services to their users. The librarians have acquired basic ICT skills and were versatile in its application for Internet searches, information retrieval, social communication and Microsoft-office related activities with the exception of programming skills. Majority of the librarians acquired their ICT skills through self-learning. The finding revealed that the acquisition of ICT skills by librarians in Southern Nigeria private universities is relevant to their delivery of improved library services. The paper recommended that regular acquisition of relevant ICT skills is essential for librarians and university management should support librarians’ ICT capacity development at national and international levels as this would enhance their relevance and get them abreast of the latest development for effective service delivery.

Extraction and normalization of IR indexing terms and phrases in a highly inflectional language

Abstract Term-based indexing of documents is conventionally implemented by stemmers or their corpus-based improvements, both of which encode implicit linguistic information. Terms are directly derived from document content such that a unique indexing approach is available at indexing run-time. For highly inflectional languages where term variation is high, such techniques are more error-prone. The main focus of the current study is the extraction and normalization of single terms and phrases and the proposal of authenticated control of indexing. The proposed approach relies on the use of explicit linguistic knowledge, appropriately encoded in large language resources. Such control guarantees the highest possible expansion factor for indexing terms as well as indexing consistency. Moreover, it offers a framework where different and eventually contradicting indexing criteria can be practiced, conventional and Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based Information Retrieval (IR) applications can be served, while adaptations can be made for tuning to a specific domain or corpus.

Semantic Web technologies and bias in artificial intelligence: A systematic literature review

Bias in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a critical and timely issue due to its sociological, economic and legal impact, as decisions made by biased algorithms could lead to unfair treatment of specific individuals or groups. Multiple surveys have emerged to provide a multidisciplinary view of bias or to review bias in specific areas such as social sciences, business research, criminal justice, or data mining. Given the ability of Semantic Web (SW) technologies to support multiple AI systems, we review the extent to which semantics can be a “tool” to address bias in different algorithmic scenarios. We provide an in-depth categorisation and analysis of bias assessment, representation, and mitigation approaches that use SW technologies. We discuss their potential in dealing with issues such as representing disparities of specific demographics or reducing data drifts, sparsity, and missing values. We find research works on AI bias that apply semantics mainly in information retrieval, recommendation and natural language processing applications and argue through multiple use cases that semantics can help deal with technical, sociological, and psychological challenges.

An Efficient and Robust Semantic Hashing Framework for Similar Text Search

Similar text search aims to find texts relevant to a given query from a database, which is fundamental in many information retrieval applications, such as question search and exercise search. Since millions of texts always exist behind practical search engine systems, a well-developed text search system usually consists of recall and ranking stages. Specifically, the recall stage serves as the basis in the system, where the main purpose is to find a small set of relevant candidates accurately and efficiently. Towards this goal, deep semantic hashing, which projects original texts into compact hash codes, can support good search performance. However, learning desired textual hash codes is extremely difficult due to the following problems. First, compact hash codes (with short length) can improve retrieval efficiency, but the demand for learning compact hash codes cannot guarantee accuracy due to severe information loss. Second, existing methods always learn the unevenly distributed codes in the space from a local perspective, leading to unsatisfactory code-balance results. Third, a large fraction of textual data contains various types of noise in real-world applications, which causes the deviation of semantics in hash codes. To this end, in this paper, we first propose a general unsupervised encoder-decoder semantic hashing framework, namely MASH (short for Memory-bAsed Semantic Hashing), to learn the balanced and compact hash codes for similar text search. Specifically, with a target of retaining semantic information as much as possible, the encoder introduces a novel relevance constraint among informative high-dimensional representations to guide the compact hash code learning. Then, we design an external memory where the hashing learning can be optimized in the global space to ensure the code balance of the learning results, which can promote search efficiency. Besides, to alleviate the performance degradation problem of the model caused by text noise, we propose an improved SMASH (short for denoiSing Memory-bAsed Semantic Hashing) model by incorporating a noise-aware encoder-decoder framework. This framework considers the noise degree for each text from the semantic deviation aspect, ensuring the robustness of hash codes. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments in three real-world datasets. The experimental results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of MASH and SMASH in generating balanced and compact hash codes, as well as the superior denoising ability of SMASH.

Robustness of rank aggregation methods for malicious disturbance

Rank aggregation has widespread applications in social choice, information retrieval, and bioinformatics. Given the enormous social and economic implications of these applications and the consequent incentives for malicious users to disturb the aggregated ranking, evaluating the robustness of rank aggregation methods for malicious disturbance is a key challenge. In this article, we introduce an analytical framework for the robustness of rank aggregation for malicious disturbances, in which we generate rankings with imperfect information and observe the response of rank aggregation methods. Along with the analytical framework, we propose an experimental data generation method and a new robustness measure. Then we investigate the robustness of five common rank aggregation methods using our proposed method. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method can effectively compare the robustness of different rank aggregation methods for malicious disturbance. Moreover, the experimental results show that the performance of rank aggregation methods for malicious disturbance may be very different from that for random error.

Word Sense Disambiguation Based Sentiment Classification Using Linear Kernel Learning Scheme

Word Sense Disambiguation has been a trending topic of research in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Mining core features and performing the text classification still exist as a challenging task. Here the features of the context such as neighboring words like adjective provide the evidence for classification using machine learning approach. This paper presented the text document classification that has wide applications in information retrieval, which uses movie review datasets. Here the document indexing based on controlled vocabulary, adjective, word sense disambiguation, generating hierarchical categorization of web pages, spam detection, topic labeling, web search, document summarization, etc. Here the kernel support vector machine learning algorithm helps to classify the text and feature extract is performed by cuckoo search optimization. Positive review and negative review of movie dataset is presented to get the better classification accuracy. Experimental results focused with context mining, feature analysis and classification. By comparing with the previous work, proposed work designed to achieve the efficient results. Overall design is performed with MATLAB 2020a tool.