Name Directory Research Articles

Ask Athena: How Do I Correctly Apply British vs. American Spelling?

Ask Athena is Science Editor’s advice column for your most challenging publishing and editing questions. Submit your questions to scienceeditor@councilscienceeditors.org Dear Athena, I have two questions, the answers for which I can’t locate in the AMA Manual of Style. Should we use the spelling Programme or Program in the following? UN Joint Global Programme on Cervical Cancer Prevention and Control Likewise, should we use Centres or Centers in the name Directory of Radiotherapy Centres? —Looking Across the Pond Dear Looking Across the Pond, When it comes to English-language spellings of institution names, a widely accepted rule of thumb is to follow the official spelling of that institution rather than impose house style on the spelling. The quickest and most accurate means of determining the official spelling is to consult the institution’s website. For the two institutions in question, an online search confirms that the British spellings Programme and Centres are used in the official names of these institutions—so these spellings should be applied whenever either institution is mentioned, even if your house style is to apply U.S. spelling. Similar exceptions should be made for published material, both in text and in an end reference. For example, if The Lancet article “Study of Mirtazapine for Agitated Behaviours in Dementia (SYMBAD): A Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial”1 were to be cited in a journal that prefers U.S. spelling, the British spellings Behaviours and Randomised would need to be retained in the citation nonetheless to preserve the accuracy of content that was formally […]

A Name Directory for the Ocean Floor

New Web resources enable scientists to standardize the naming of seamounts, trenches, and other undersea features, reducing ambiguity in identification and communication.

Personal name vocabularies as linked open data: A case study of jazz artist names

This article describes the process of constructing a vocabulary of personal names of jazz artists in the form of Linked Open Data (LOD). Created as a name directory to support the development of the Linked Jazz project, it provides a case study that demonstrates the value and the challenges of developing a domain-specific vocabulary tool that draws upon the semantics of DBpedia, a major LOD dataset. The article also addresses possible strategies for enhancing the directory to make it a more robust personal name vocabulary.

The role of ontology in improving gazetteer interaction

Gazetteers are more than basic place name directories containing names and locations for named geographic places. Most of them contain additional information, including a categorization of gazetteer entries using a typing scheme. This paper focuses on the nature of these categorization schemes. We argue that gazetteers can benefit from an ontological approach to typing schemes, providing a formalization that will better support gazetteer applications, maintenance, interoperability, and semi‐automatic feature annotation. We discuss the process of developing such an ontology as a modification of an existing feature type thesaurus; the difficulties in mapping from thesauri to ontologies are described in detail. To demonstrate the benefits of a categorization based on ontologies, a new gazetteer Web (and programming) interface is introduced and the impact on gazetteer interoperability is discussed.

The strange history and problematic future of the Australian census

When looking back into the first century of Australian history following white settlement we often rely on the records of musters, listings and censuses to provide information on individuals and communities. The first census of New South Wales in 1828 was little more than a directory of names of settlers and settlements, but both professional historians and genealogists regard it as invaluable. As the scientific principles of censuses were developed over the course of the nineteenth century the information collected became ever more important for social scientists and economists. In the twentieth century, professional historians in the UK and USA opened wholly new perspectives on society by looking to the census for records of common families who were not recorded in the newspapers or diaries of the time, and the community structures in which they lived. Unfortunately such innovations have not been possible in Australia. The individual records of most colonial and all Commonwealth censuses are not to be found in the libraries or archives. The destruction of original census records in Australia has been the result of misadventure and government policies reflecting great fear about the impact of popular privacy concerns on public compliance with the census operations. This paper explores the history behind the anomalous practice of destroying census records in Australia, and poses questions about the role of the census in the writing of histories of Australian people and Australian communities.

Classifying ethnicity utilizing the Canadian mortality data base

The study of ethnic differences in disease is a methodological challenge as ethnicity is often not identified in existing datasets and surrogate measures need to be used. We have developed a novel methodology combining last name and country of birth to study mortality patterns of Canadians of South Asian (SA) and Chinese (CH) ethnic origin and have compared death rates among SA, CH, and White (WH) Canadians. Methods. SA and CH were identified in the Canadian Mortality Data Base (CMDB) using the last name and country of birth of the deceased. Records of people who had been born in countries with large South Asian and Chinese populations (e.g. India, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong) were selected and manually screened by last name. A name directory was then created of distinct South Asian and Chinese names and this directory was used to search all other records in the CMDB for SA and CH deaths. Where necessary, other identifying characteristics such as first name and parents’ last name were also used. Population counts were obtained from the Census self‐reported question on ethnicity for SA and CH. WH were identified as non‐immigrant Canadians who were neither SA nor CH. The method of assigning ethnicity in the CMDB and Census were assessed for comparability and issues of validity and reliability were addressed. Results. Using this method, 10 989 SA and 21 548 CH deaths were identified. There was marked heterogeneity in birthplace, with only 56% of SA born in South Asia and only 74% of CH born in Greater China. Last names had high validity for self‐reported ethnicity in a population sample of SA and were highly reproducible. Mortality rates varied dramatically between groups studied. SA and WH had high rates of ischemic heart disease while stroke mortality was similar among all three groups. Cancer death rates were high in CH and WH and much lower in SA. Conclusion. Last names and country of birth can be used to determined ethnicity of SA and CH with validity and reliability, and leads to a more accurate classification than country of birth alone. The contrasting patterns observed in mortality from major causes of death suggest many interesting hypotheses for further study.

Speech recognition issues for directory assistance applications

Telephone companies in the United States handle over 6 billion Directory Assistance (DA) calls each year. Automation of even a portion of DA calls could significantly reduce the cost of DA services. This paper explores two factors affecting successful automation of DA: (a) the effect of directory size on speech recognition performance, and (b) the complexity of existing DA call interactions. Speech recognition performance for a set of 200 spoken names was measured for directories ranging from 200 to 1.5 million unique names. Recognition accuracy decreased from 82.5% for a 200-name directory to 16.5% for a 1.5 million name directory. In part because high recognition accuracy is not easily achievable for these very large, low-context directories, it is likely that initial implementations of DA automation will focus on a small percentage of calls, requiring a smaller vocabulary. To maximize potential savings, listings that are most frequently requested constitute the optimal vocabulary. To identify critical issues in automating frequent DA requests, approximately 13,000 DA calls from an office near a major metropolitan area in the United States were studied. In this sample, 245 listings covered 10% of the call volume, and 870 listings covered 20% of the call volume.

Interactive voice technology at work: The CSELT experience

This paper is a survey of the speech technologies and applications developed at CSELT, some of which are employed in real services deployed in the Italian telephone network. With the rise of significant speech recognition and text-to-speech applications, the activity of our lab encompasses now a broader set of activities, from new algorithmic approaches to speech product engineering and application development. In particular, the paper gives an overview of the products originated from our speech technology research. It describes two operative applications, namely a voice dialing service for large name directories, which is installed in the CSELT PABX, and an automated network service for directory assistance, which is now accessible to all the Italian telephone customers.

A 900-Year-Old Document Records the Occurrence of Urinary Bilharziasis in Saudi Arabia

Arab MedicineA 900-Year-Old Document Records the Occurrence of Urinary Bilharziasis in Saudi Arabia Fereydoun Arfaa, MD Ezzat Mahboubi, and MD M. Zuheir Al-KawiMD Fereydoun Arfaa From the Bilharziasis Control Project, Ministry of Health, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh Search for more papers by this author , Ezzat Mahboubi Address reprint requests and correspondence to Dr. Mahboubi: Department of Biological and Medical Research, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, P.O. Box 3354, Riyadh 11211, Saudi Arabia. From the Department of Biological and Medical Research, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh Search for more papers by this author , and M. Zuheir Al-Kawi From the Department of Medicine, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh Search for more papers by this author Published Online:24 Apr 2019https://doi.org/10.5144/0256-4947.1988.218SectionsPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload citationTrack citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail AboutABSTRACTABSTRACTWadi Al-Aghigh passes into a pond located in a cleft between two mountains. The wadi digs through the narrow passage in the mountain, which is named Suqf. The water flows into a pond called Rowwawa, described in poetry. The pond is never empty, so its bed has never been seen. The water then flows into the Tuffyatain pond, which has one of the freshest drinking waters, were it not for its causing bloody urine. The wadi continues to Al-Athabah, where there is another pond called Al-Athabah, after which the land was named. In this land there is property owned by Abbad bin Hamzah bin Abdullah bin Al-Zubair, which is rich in date trees. Beyond that is Rabigh, a cleft in the Suqf mountain, where the water of Al-Aghigh collects.IntroductionWhile collecting data to illustrate the progress achieved in the control of both urinary and intestinal schistosomiasis in recent years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we found a document that clearly indicates the occurrence of human infection with Schistosoma haematobium in parts of Medina in the 11th century ad. This document was written by Abi Obeid Abdullah ben Abdulaziz Al-Bekri Al-Andolossi, a well-known geographer. He died in the year 487 Hejira, which corresponds to 1094 ad. The title of the book is Mojam ma estaajam men asma elbilad walmawadea, which means "directory of names of countries and places" or "geographical directory." This book was reprinted in 1949 by Mustafa Al-Sagha, a professor at the Fouad I University in Cairo, Egypt.Abi Obeid describes a deep pond called Rowwawa in Wadi Aghigh around Medina; the water is sweet, but drinking it causes hematuria.It is interesting to note that even today we have found the snail-intermediate hosts of S. haematobium (Bulinus beccarri and B. wrighti) in some snail habitats in Wadi Aghigh, north of Makkah, which is a continuation of the same wadi in Medina.This interesting reference is not only the earliest documentation of urinary bilharziasis in the Arabian Peninsula, but also indicates that the association between the pond water and hematuria was common knowledge 900 years ago. Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 8, Issue 3May 1988 Metrics History Accepted18 August 1987Published online24 April 2019 InformationCopyright © 1988, Annals of Saudi MedicinePDF download

Reference Serials

“What above all marks out a reference book from other works is the way it is arranged: it must be deliberately designed for ease of consultation rather than for continuous reading.” “Ease of consultation,” an essential component for reference books, as stated by Gavin Higgens in his book Printed Reference Material, is a criterion that reference librarians often consider as they use reference books to answer questions. Reference book publishers have long used various special features designed to speed access to information in these sources. Thumb indexes for dictionaries come to mind immediately when one thinks of this type of special feature. Some publishers include printed index tabs listing sections or subject categories, as in The National Directory of Addresses and Telephone Numbers, where the tabs are on a separate sheet of paper to be attached to the appropriate pages by the librarian. Margin or edge indexes in the Washington Information Directory or in the Government Reports Announcements & Index provide quick identification of sections to turn to, and are easy to use for both patrons and librarians. Color can also be used as a device to distinguish different sections of a reference tool. Literary Market Place and Magazine Industry Market Place, for example, use yellow pages to separate the main body from the quick reference directory of names and telephone numbers. Of course, these devices are not substitutions for indexes or tables of contents, but are helpful to librarians and users who want to be more self‐sufficient. The editor of this column would like reference book publishers to consider including more of these devices in their publications. Readers are invited to write to this editor with other examples of special features which promote “ease of consultation” of reference serials.

An automated directory listing retrieval system based on recognition of connected letter strings

In this paper we describe a system which is capable of recognizing spoken spelled names from a directory of names. These names are spelled in a connected fashion, i.e., without any pause between letters, over a dialed-up telephone line. This system uses a level building dynamic time warping algorithm to perform a time registration between the input speech and a sequence of letters drawn from isolated word templates. The initial result of the matching procedure is a string of letter classes. Letter classes are formed by breaking the alphabet up into groups of acoustically similar letters. The directory of names is also sorted by letter classes. After the input string is classified into letter classes, a second pass is performed to determine the optimally matching name. This system was tested on four talkers each of whom spoke a given set of 50 names. The names were spoken at both a deliberate and at a normal talking rate. Recognition was performed in both a speaker-trained and a speaker-independent manner. The directory consisted of about 18 000 names drawn from the Bell Laboratories directory. Recognition accuracies of 99% and 91% were achieved for speaker-dependent recognition using the deliberate talking rate and the normal talking rate, respectively. Recognition accuracies of 94% and 88% were achieved for speaker-independent recognition for the two talking rates.