Result Pages Research Articles

Google vs. the Library (Part II): Student Search Patterns and Behaviors when Using Google and a Federated Search Tool

This study examines the information-seeking behavior of undergraduate students within a research context. Student searches were recorded while the participants used Google and a library (federated) search tool to find sources (one book, two articles, and one other source of their choosing) for a selected topic. The undergraduates in this study believed themselves to be skilled researchers, but their search queries and behaviors did not support this belief. Students did not examine their topics to identify keywords and related terms. They relied heavily on the language presented to them via the list of research topics and performed natural language or simple keyword or phrase queries. They did not reformulate or refine their research questions or search queries, did not move beyond the first page of results, and did not examine metadata to improve searches. When using Google, students frequently visited commercial sites such as Amazon; content farms such as About.com ; and subscription databases such as JSTOR. This study concludes by offering suggestions for search interface improvement and pedagogical opportunities on which librarians may wish to focus or refocus. This article is the second in a series that examines student use of Google and a library (federated) search tool.

P1-26-6 - Copings for Physical Appearance Symptoms of Cancer Treatment: Present Situations and Issues of Information on Internet

Background: Many patients get information about medical treatments by internet and its credibility seems to be greater than we expect.Purpose: This study examined the present situations and issues of information regarding copings for physical appearance symptoms of cancer treatment on internet. Method: The search engines of “Google” and “Yahoo! Japan” were used, and the top 20 pages of search results were examined. Search words were “a type of cancer OR a treatment,” “a physical appearance symptom OR a body part,” and “copings OR a glooming” that resulted in 26 combinations. After classifying contents, nine doctors, eight nurses, and four pharmacists at a special hospital for cancer (mean age: 35.9) evaluated the appropriateness of each content (1: very harmful, 5: EBM and appropriate).Results: The total number of websites about copings for physical appearance symptoms listed within the top 20 of all websites (the sum: 13,181,150) was 640, out of which 263 websites that were left after removing the duplicated websites were examined. Regardless of the source hosts of websites, there were the most numbers of copings for loss of hair. Unlike the public institutions' websites, the personal blogs mentioned many copings for loss of eyebrows and eyelashes. For edemas, inconsistent copings were introduced by different websites causing appropriate copings for edemas to be unclear. By excluding simple copings like covering affected parts, the total number of each coping was 35 for loss of hair, 29 for edemas, 36 for changes in skin, 14 for changes in nails, 6 for mastectomy, 10 for operation scars, and 1 for the other. Only 59.5% of these copings scored the appropriateness ratings higher than 3.0 (appropriate depend on the time and situations).Conclusions: There are many contradicting and even harmful information on internet. It is expected for health care providers to generate safe and scientifically evidenced information.

RLIMS-P: an online text-mining tool for literature-based extraction of protein phosphorylation information

Protein phosphorylation is central to the regulation of most aspects of cell function. Given its importance, it has been the subject of active research as well as the focus of curation in several biological databases. We have developed Rule-based Literature Mining System for protein Phosphorylation (RLIMS-P), an online text-mining tool to help curators identify biomedical research articles relevant to protein phosphorylation. The tool presents information on protein kinases, substrates and phosphorylation sites automatically extracted from the biomedical literature. The utility of the RLIMS-P Web site has been evaluated by curators from Phospho.ELM, PhosphoGRID/BioGrid and Protein Ontology as part of the BioCreative IV user interactive task (IAT). The system achieved F-scores of 0.76, 0.88 and 0.92 for the extraction of kinase, substrate and phosphorylation sites, respectively, and a precision of 0.88 in the retrieval of relevant phosphorylation literature. The system also received highly favorable feedback from the curators in a user survey. Based on the curators’ suggestions, the Web site has been enhanced to improve its usability. In the RLIMS-P Web site, phosphorylation information can be retrieved by PubMed IDs or keywords, with an option for selecting targeted species. The result page displays a sortable table with phosphorylation information. The text evidence page displays the abstract with color-coded entity mentions and includes links to UniProtKB entries via normalization, i.e. the linking of entity mentions to database identifiers, facilitated by the GenNorm tool and by the links to the bibliography in UniProt. Log in and editing capabilities are offered to any user interested in contributing to the validation of RLIMS-P results. Retrieved phosphorylation information can also be downloaded in CSV format and the text evidence in the BioC format. RLIMS-P is freely available.Database URL: http://www.proteininformationresource.org/rlimsp/

The Form of Search Tool Chosen by Undergraduate Students Influences Research Practices and the Type and Quality of Information Selected

A Review of:
 Asher, A. D., Duke, L. M., & Wilson, S. (2012). Paths of discovery: Comparing the search effectiveness of EBSCO Discovery Service, Summon, Google Scholar, and conventional library resources. College & Research Libraries, 74(5), p. 464-488.
 
 Objectives – To explore the effectiveness of different search tools (EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), Summon, Google Scholar and traditional library resources) in supporting the typical research queries faced by undergraduate students and gain an understanding of student research practices.
 
 Design – Mixed methods approach using quantitative data collected from grading of students’ selected resources combined with qualitative data from a search process interview with students.
 
 Setting – Two university libraries in the United States of America (Bucknell University (BU) and Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU)).
 
 Subjects – Eighty-seven undergraduate students across a range of disciplines.
 
 Methods – Participants were assigned to one of five test groups and required to find two resources for each of four standardised research queries using a specified tool: EDS; Summon; Google Scholar; Library catalogue/databases; or “no tool” where no specific tool was specified and participants were free to choose. The resources submitted by students for each of the four queries were rated on a scale of 0-3 by four librarians using a rubric, to produce average ratings for each tool. The interview comprised two parts: the search task, followed by a reflective interview based on open-ended questions relating to search practices and habits. The search process interview was recorded using Camtasia screen capture and audio software, and the URLs used by participants were also recorded.
 
 Main Results – Quantitative results indicated that students who used EDS selected slightly higher quality sources on average (scoring 2.54 out of 3), compared to all other groups. Those who used EDS also completed the queries in less time (747 seconds) than those using Summon (1,209 seconds), Google Scholar (968 seconds), library databases (963 seconds) or where no tool was specified (1,081 seconds). Academic journal articles also represented the relatively highest proportion of resources for this group (73.8% of resources chosen), whilst newspaper articles were chosen most frequently by those using Summon (20.6% of resources chosen). The qualitative findings suggest that students may over-rely on the top results provided by search systems, rather than using critical analysis and evaluation.
 
 Conclusion – Although EDS performed slightly better overall, in some cases the tools produced relatively similar results, and none of the tools performed particularly poorly. Indeed the reasonably strong performance of both Google Scholar and traditional library tools/databases in some aspects (such as the relative proportion of books and journal articles chosen by students), may raise questions regarding the potential benefit of acquiring a new discovery product, given the possibly significant costs involved. As the study finds that most students do not go beyond simple searches and the first page of results, regardless of the tool they are using, this suggests that discovery services do not substantially lessen the need for information literacy instruction, although it may provide some opportunity to redirect teaching time away from retrieval and towards higher-order skills such as evaluating information and critical thinking.

Asked to Help With a Survey? Get Ready

Asked to Help With a Survey? Get Ready

<i>AdWords</i>, imágenes y ceguera a los banners. Un estudio con <i>eye tracking</i>

Unlike most online advertising, Google opts for a purely textual model in the ads showed in its results pages. This paper presents an eye-tracking study conducted to determine if right-side graphic elements in Google AdWords affect users’ visual behavior. AdWords have been modified to contain logos and pictures. The analysis concludes that the appearance of images does not change user interaction with ads, which is attributed to the “banner blindness” effect.

A Study on the Relationship between Search Engine Optimization Factors and Rank on Google Search Result Page

Nowadays, Google has taken a role as a major platform for the Internet search; its search algorithm has been changed periodically, hence being positioned on the first page of the Google search result has a tremendous impact on the online marketing strategy of the organization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been considered as one of the most effective strategies to place the webpage at the top rank of the search engine result. This paper presents the relationship between various SEO factors and the rank in the Search Engine Result Page. The results unravel the key SEO factors, e.g. Backlinks, Keyword, Site structure, that have high degree of relationship with rank in the search engine result page (SERPs).

ModuleRole: a tool for modulization, role determination and visualization in protein-protein interaction networks.

Rapidly increasing amounts of (physical and genetic) protein-protein interaction (PPI) data are produced by various high-throughput techniques, and interpretation of these data remains a major challenge. In order to gain insight into the organization and structure of the resultant large complex networks formed by interacting molecules, using simulated annealing, a method based on the node connectivity, we developed ModuleRole, a user-friendly web server tool which finds modules in PPI network and defines the roles for every node, and produces files for visualization in Cytoscape and Pajek. For given proteins, it analyzes the PPI network from BioGRID database, finds and visualizes the modules these proteins form, and then defines the role every node plays in this network, based on two topological parameters Participation Coefficient and Z-score. This is the first program which provides interactive and very friendly interface for biologists to find and visualize modules and roles of proteins in PPI network. It can be tested online at the website http://www.bioinfo.org/modulerole/index.php, which is free and open to all users and there is no login requirement, with demo data provided by “User Guide” in the menu Help. Non-server application of this program is considered for high-throughput data with more than 200 nodes or user’s own interaction datasets. Users are able to bookmark the web link to the result page and access at a later time. As an interactive and highly customizable application, ModuleRole requires no expert knowledge in graph theory on the user side and can be used in both Linux and Windows system, thus a very useful tool for biologist to analyze and visualize PPI networks from databases such as BioGRID.AvailabilityModuleRole is implemented in Java and C, and is freely available at http://www.bioinfo.org/modulerole/index.php. Supplementary information (user guide, demo data) is also available at this website. API for ModuleRole used for this program can be obtained upon request.

Identifying Sign Language Videos in Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing sites enable members of the sign language community to record and share their knowledge, opinions, and worries on a wide range of topics. As a result, these sites have formative digital libraries of sign language content hidden within their large overall collections. This article explores the problem of locating these sign language (SL) videos and presents techniques for identifying SL videos in such collections. To determine the effectiveness of existing text-based search for locating these SL videos, a series of queries were issued to YouTube to locate SL videos on the top 10 news stories of 2011 according to Yahoo!. Overall precision for the first page of results (up to 20 results) was 42%. An approach for automatically detecting SL video is then presented. Five video features considered likely to be of value were developed using standard background modeling and face detection. The article compares the results of an SVM classifier when given all permutations of these five features. The results show that a measure of the symmetry of motion relative to the face position provided the best performance of any single feature. When tested against a challenging test collection that included many likely false positives, an SVM provided with all five features achieved 82% precision and 90% recall. In contrast, the text-based search (queries with the topic terms and “ASL” or “sign language”) returned a significant portion of non-SL content---nearly half of all videos found. By our estimates, the application of video-based filtering techniques such as the one proposed here would increase precision from 42% for text-based queries up to 75%.

Non‐invasive prenatal testing for trisomy 21: a cross‐sectional survey of service users' views and likely uptake

To assess the views and likely uptake of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for trisomy 21 among potential service users in the UK. Cross-sectional survey. Four antenatal clinics in England and two websites. A total of 1131 women and partners. Questionnaire conducted with women (and partners) recruited through antenatal clinics, a random sample of members of the website Mumsnet, and viewers of the website and Facebook page of the support group Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC). Factors impacting decision-making towards prenatal testing; views on NIPT, including service delivery and likely uptake; hypothetical scenarios, focused on current screening, invasive testing, and NIPT offered to women with a high-risk screening result. The vast majority (95.7%; 1071/1119; 95% CI 94.4-96.8%) thought NIPT was a positive development in prenatal care, with 88.2% (972/1103; 95% CI 86.1-90%) indicating that they would use the test, including respondents who would currently decline trisomy 21 screening (P < 0.001). Of the respondents who would have NIPT, 30.7% (299/973; 95% CI = 27.8-33.7%) said that they were 'likely' to terminate an affected pregnancy (including those who would currently decline screening or invasive testing), and 36.5% (355/973; 95% CI 33.5-39.6%) were 'not likely' to terminate an affected pregnancy. Respondents overwhelmingly indicated that safety for the baby was the most important attribute of NIPT (70.1%; 712/1015; 95% CI 67.2-73%). Respondents were overwhelmingly positive towards the introduction of NIPT. Uptake is likely to be high, and includes women who currently decline screening as well as those who will use the test for information only. Pre-test counselling to ensure that women understand the implications of the test result is essential.

YouTube as a source of information about retinitis pigmentosa

Sir, The internet is an increasingly important health-care resource, providing users with rapid, inexpensive access to medical information. Video streaming websites, such as YouTube, the third most visited website, are the key providers of this information.1, 2 Despite being a major source of health-care information, YouTube is not peer-reviewed and its content is not screened for scientific accuracy prior to being uploaded. The authors sought to categorise videos relating to retinitis pigmentosa on YouTube, both by factual accuracy and by source. The first 10 pages of results generated by searching ‘retinitis pigmentosa' were reviewed (1/6/2012). The sample consisted of 162 videos, which were watched by two independent researchers and categorised as ‘useful', ‘misleading', or ‘no information'. ‘Useful' videos contained scientifically accurate information and/or useful information on social aspects of the illness. ‘Misleading' videos contained scientifically unproven information, such as claims of acupuncture or faith-healing completely restoring vision. ‘No information' videos contained no content relevant to RP. Videos were also classified according to the source; charity, independent user, medical professional, popular media, university, and medical advertisement. We found 82 videos to be misleading; 78 of these were classified as medical advertisements. Only 51 videos provided useful, with scientifically accurate content (Table 1). In total, the videos received over 150 000 views annually. Charities, medical professionals, and universities were the most likely to upload useful videos (Table 2). Videos uploaded by independent users generally focused on the social impact of RP (Table 3). These results differ significantly from previous evaluations of medical content on YouTube, which found that <20% of the videos were misleading.3, 4 These studies employed similar methodology but investigated conditions with established medical treatments. Table 1 Categorisation according to value of content Table 2 Information provided by all videos stratified for source Table 3 Analysis of all useful videos stratified for video source The authors believe the high incidence of misleading videos regarding RP result from the lack of effective medical treatments for the condition. Patients frustrated at the lack of treatment available in the clinic turn to the internet, seeking potential treatments. Unfortunately, YouTube provides an excellent platform for the unregulated advertisement of unproven and often expensive alternative therapies. We therefore recommend that RP patients be directed towards reliable, peer-reviewed information sources and be advised that content on open-access websites is commonly misleading.

Efficient automatic search query formulation using phrase‐level analysis

Over the past decade, the volume of information available digitally over the Internet has grown enormously. Technical developments in the area of search, such as Google's Page Rank algorithm, have proved so good at serving relevant results that Internet search has become integrated into daily human activity. One can endlessly explore topics of interest simply by querying and reading through the resulting links. Yet, although search engines are well known for providing relevant results based on users' queries, users do not always receive the results they are looking for. Google's Director of Research describes clickstream evidence of frustrated users repeatedly reformulating queries and searching through page after page of results. Given the general quality of search engine results, one must consider the possibility that the frustrated user's query is not effective; that is, it does not describe the essence of the user's interest. Indeed, extensive research into human search behavior has found that humans are not very effective at formulating good search queries that describe what they are interested in. Ideally, the user should simply point to a portion of text that sparked the user's interest, and a system should automatically formulate a search query that captures the essence of the text. In this paper, we describe an implemented system that provides this capability. We first describe how our work differs from existing work in automatic query formulation, and propose a new method for improved quantification of the relevance of candidate search terms drawn from input text using phrase‐level analysis. We then propose an implementable method designed to provide relevant queries based on a user's text input. We demonstrate the quality of our results and performance of our system through experimental studies. Our results demonstrate that our system produces relevant search terms with roughly two‐thirds precision and recall compared to search terms selected by experts, and that typical users find significantly more relevant results (31% more relevant) more quickly (64% faster) using our system than self‐formulated search queries. Further, we show that our implementation can scale to request loads of up to 10 requests per second within current online responsiveness expectations (&lt;2‐second response times at the highest loads tested).

Student Searching with EBSCO Discovery: A Usability Study

The researchers conducted task-based usability testing of the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) with 20 students. While most participants felt positively about EDS, a few usability issues emerged. Confusion arose regarding source types and icons, facets/limiters, relevancy ranking, integrated search connectors, and more. Students encountered difficulty with spelling corrections and a failure to understand terminology, and they demonstrated an unwillingness to view additional pages of search results. Findings indicate the need for changes to the local implementation of EDS as well as to those features and structures under EBSCO's control.

Website Search Engine Optimization: Geographical and Cultural Point of View

The concept of Webpage visibility is usually linked to search engine optimization (SEO), and it is based on global in-link metric [1]. SEO is the process of designing Webpages to optimize its potential to rank high on search engines, preferably on the first page of the results page. The purpose of this research study is to analyze the influence of local geographical area, in terms of cultural values, and the effect of local society keywords in increasing Website visibility. Websites were analyzed by accessing the source code of their homepages through Google Chrome browser. Statistical analysis methods were selected to assess and analyze the results of the SEO and search engine visibility (SEV). The results obtained suggest that the development of Web indicators to be included should consider a local idea of visibility, and consider a certain geographical context. The geographical region that the researchers are considering in this research is the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan (HKJ). The results obtained also suggest that the use of social culture keywords leads to increase the Website visibility in search engines as well as localizes the search area such as google.jo, which localizes the search for HKJ.

Do cancer-specific websites meet patient's information needs?

ObjectiveTo evaluate commonly used cancer websites’ information provision, we developed and applied an Information Comprehensiveness Tool to breast and prostate cancer websites. MethodsWe first collated questions from a systematic literature review on patient information needs. We then classified the questions in terms of spectrum of care, theme, and nature of question. “Breast cancer” and “prostate cancer” were typed into Google, and websites listed on the first page of results were selected. Two researchers, blind to each others’ scores, assessed the same websites using the coding system. Each question was scored on a 3-point scale as not (0%), partially (50%) and fully (100%) answered by two researchers. Average scores were calculated across all questions. Inter-rater reliability was assessed. ResultsWe identified 79 general, 5 breast, and 5 prostate cancer questions. Inter-rater reliability was good, with an intraclass coefficient of 0.756 (95% CIs 0.729–0.781). 17 questions were not answered thoroughly by any website. Questions about “future planning”, “monitoring”, and “decision-making” were discussed least. Biomedical questions scored highest. ConclusionsMore comprehensive information needs to be provided on breast and prostate cancer websites. Practice implicationsThis ICT can improve cancer information online and enable patients to engage more actively regarding their information needs.

A Query-Level Examination of End User Searching Behaviour on the Excite Search Engine

This study presents an analysis of selected characteristics of a large set of queries submitted by end users to the Excite search service. Characteristics examined include the frequency distribution of queries, browsing persistence at the query level based on query size, and browsing persistence at the session level based on query session length. Findings reveal that users submit largely unique queries and engage in similar, non-persistent browsing habits. Users are not browsing much beyond the first one or two pages of results regardless of the effort they put into their queries or the number of queries submitted during a search session.

YONGSAN ZENG, WEIMIN YE, JIANGHUA HUANG, CHANGHUI LI &amp;amp; ROBIN M. GIBLIN-DAVIS (2013) Description of Schistonchus altissimus n. sp. (Nematoda: Aphelenchoididae), an associate of Ficus altissima in China. Zootaxa, 3700 (4), 561–572.

page 561): Line 11, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”. Introducton (page 561): Line 4, “in China?http://www.invasive.org./weeds/Asian/ficus.pdf).” should be changed to “in China (http://www.invasive.org./weeds/Asian/ficus.pdf).”. Line 6, “Kerr ().” should be changed to “Kerr (Chen 1987).”. Line 9, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”. Line 10, “Schistonchus” and “Ficus” should be changed to “Schistonchus” and “Ficus”. Line 11, “Anand, 2002;” should be changed to “Anand 2002;”. Line 12, “Reddy & Rao, 1984” should be changed to “Reddy & Rao 1984”. Line 14, “F. altissima” should be changed to “F. altissima”. Matetial and methods (page 562): Line 1, “F. altissima” should be changed to “F. altissima”. Line 5, “heat-killed at 65? for 2–3 min” should be changed to “heat-killed at 65 for 2–3 min”. Line 6, “(designed by the last author)” should be deleted. FIGURE 2. (page 564): Line 4 at the bottom, “5 changes” should not be omitted. Results (page 565): Line 2, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”. Line 3–4, “Ditylenchus halictus” should be changed to “Ditylenchus halictus”. Line 5, “Paraphelenchus” should be changed to “Paraphelenchus”. Line 6, “Aphelenchoides” and “Bursaphelenchus” should be changed to “Aphelenchoides” and “Bursaphelenchus”. Line 7, “Laimaphelenchus” and “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Laimaphelenchus” and “Schistonchus”. Line 7, 11, 26 “ S. altissimus n. sp.” should be changed to “Schistonchus altissimus n. sp.” Line 10, “Aphelenchoides blastophthorus” should be changed to “Aphelenchoides blastophthorus”. Line 14, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”. Line 15, “Aphelenchoides and Laimaphelenchus” should be changed to “Aphelenchoides and Laimaphelenchus”. Line 16, “Bursaphelenchus or Seinura” should be changed to “Bursaphelenchus or Seinura” Line 20, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”. Line 27, “iii) S.” should be changed to “iii) Schistonchus”. Line 32, “Schistonchus” should be changed to “Schistonchus”.

Dynamic bidding strategies in search-based advertising

Search-based advertising allows the advertisers to run special campaigns targeted to different groups of potential consumers at low costs. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft advertising programs allow the advertisers to bid for an ad position on the result page of a user’s query when the user searches for a keyword that the advertiser relates to its products or services. The expected revenue generated by the ad depends on the ad position, and the ad positions of the advertisers are concurrently determined after an instantaneous auction based on the bids of the advertisers. The advertisers are charged only when their ads are clicked by the users. To avoid excessive ad expenditures due to sudden surges in the keyword-search activities, each advertiser reserves a fixed finite daily budget, and the ads are not shown in the remainder of the day when the budget is depleted. Arrival times of keyword-search instances, ad positions, ad selections, and sales generated by the ads are random. Therefore, an advertiser faces a dynamic stochastic total net revenue optimization problem subject to a strict budget constraint. Here we formulate and solve this problem using dynamic programming. We show that there is always an optimal dynamic bidding policy. We describe an iterative numerical approximation algorithm that uniformly converges to the optimal solution at an exponential rate of the number of iterations. We illustrate the algorithm on numerical examples. Because dynamic programing calculations of the optimal bidding policies are computationally demanding, we also propose both static and dynamic alternative bidding policies. We numerically compare the performances of optimal and alternative bidding policies by systematically changing each input parameter. The relative percentage total net revenue losses of the alternative bidding policies increases with the budget loading, but were never more than 3.5 % of maximum expected total net revenue. The best alternative to the optimal bidding policy turned out to be a static greedy bidding policy. Finally, statistical estimation of the model parameters is visited.

Erratum to: Intensive glucose control and risk of cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes

Due to an error in a line of the statistical code used to analyse cancer deaths, the number of cancer deaths reported in our paper was lower than it should have been. As a result the incidence, hazard ratio and Kaplan–Meier curve for cancer death in our paper were not correct and have been reanalysed. The revised portions of the paper are listed below with the changes highlighted in bold font. Abstract (page 1608) The incidences of all solid cancers and cancer deaths were 1.25/100 PY and 0.55/100 PY in the intensive group and 1.15/100 PY and 0.63/100 PY in the standard group (HR 1.09 [95% CI 0.93–1.27] for solid cancers, and 0.88 [0.71–1.10] for cancer death). Results (page 1610) Cancer deaths were reported for 148 participants assigned to intensive glucose control and 168 participants assigned to standard glucose control. This corresponds to a cancer mortality rate of 0.55 per 100 PY in the intensive control group as compared with 0.63 per 100 PY in the standard control group (HR 0.88, 95% CI 0.71–1.10). The amended final row of Table 2 and Kaplan–Meier cumulative event-free survival curve for cancer mortality (Fig. 2) follow. We appreciate the opportunity to correct these errors. We would emphasise that a thorough check has confirmed the validity of the numbers published for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and total non-cardiovascular mortality, as have appeared in several previous papers from ADVANCE. This check also confirmed the accuracy of all other data presented in the Diabetologia paper, the conclusions of which remain unchanged – ‘More intensive glucose control achieved with a regimen that included greater use of gliclazide, insulin, metformin and other agents, did not affect the risk of cancer events or death in patients with type 2 diabetes.’

Do natural language search engines really understand what users want?

Purpose – The main purpose of this research is to determine whether the performance of natural language (NL) search engines in retrieving exact answers to the NL queries differs from that of keyword searching search engines. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 40 natural language queries were posed to Google and three NL search engines: Ask.com, Hakia and Bing. The first results pages were compared in terms of retrieving exact answer documents and whether they were at the top of the retrieved results, and the precision of exact answer and relevant documents. Findings – Ask.com retrieved exact answer document descriptions at the top of the results list in 60 percent of searches, which was better than the other search engines, but the mean value of the number of exact answer top list documents for three NL search engines (20.67) was a little less than Google's (21). There was no significant difference between the precision for Google and three NL search engines in retrieving exact answer documents for NL queries. Practical implications – The results imply that all NL and keyword searching search engines studied in this research mostly employ similar techniques using keywords of the NL queries, which is far from semantic searching and understanding what the user wants in searching with NL queries. Originality/value – The results shed light into the claims of NL search engines regarding semantic searching of NL queries.