Auf dem Gebiet der Klinischen Studien sind präzise Begriffsdefinitionen äußerst wichtig, um eine objektive Datenerfassung und -auswertung zu gewährleisten. Zudem ermöglichen sie externen Experten die Forschungsergebnisse korrekt zu interpretieren und anzuwenden. Allerdings weisen viele Klinische Studien Defizite in diesem Punkt auf: Definitionen sind oft ungenau oder werden implizit verwendet. Außerdem sind Begriffe oft uneinheitlich definiert, obwohl standardisierte Definitionen im Hinblick auf einen weitreichenderen Austausch von Ergebnissen wünschenswert sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund entstand die Idee des Data Dictionary, dessen Ziel zunächst darin besteht, die Definitionsalternativen von Begriffen zu sammeln und Klinischen Studien zur Verfügung zu stellen. Zusätzlich soll die Analyse der Definitionen in Bezug auf ihre Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede sowie deren Harmonisierung unterstützt werden. Standardisierte Begriffsdefinitionen werden jedoch nicht erzwungen, da die Unterschiede in Definitionen inhaltlich gerechtfertigt sein können, z.B. aufgrund der Verwendung in unterschiedlichen Fachgebieten, durch studienspezifische Bedingungen oder verschiedene Expertensichten. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Modell für das Data Dictionary entwickelt. Das entwickelte Modell folgt dem aus der Terminologie bekannten konzept-basierten Ansatz und erweitert diesen um die Möglichkeit der Repräsentation alternativer Definitionen. Insbesondere wird hierbei angestrebt, die Unterschiede in den Definitionen möglichst genau zu explizieren, um zwischen inhaltlich verschiedenen Definitionsalternativen (z.B. sich wider-sprechenden Expertenmeinungen) und konsistenten Varianten einer inhaltlichen Definition (z.B. verschiedene Sichten, Übersetzungen in verschiedene Sprachen) unterscheiden zu können. Mehrere Modellelemente widmen sich zudem der Explizierung von kontextuellen Informationen (z.B. der Gültigkeit innerhalb von Organisationen oder der Domäne zu der ein Konzept gehört), um die Auswahl und Wiederverwendung von Definitionen zu unterstützen. Diese Informationen erlauben verschiedene Sichten auf die Inhalte des Data Dictionary. Sichten werden dabei als kohärente Teilmengen des Data Dictionary betrachtet, die nur diejenigen Inhalte umfassen, die als relevant im ausgewählten Kontext spezifiziert sind.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Phenotyping definitions are essential in cohort identification when conducting clinical research, but they become an obstacle when they are not readily available. Developing new definitions manually requires expert involvement that is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and unscalable. Moreover, automated approaches rely mostly on electronic health records’ data that suffer from bias, confounding, and incompleteness. Limited efforts established in utilizing text-mining and data-driven approaches to automate extraction and literature-based knowledge discovery of phenotyping definitions and to support their scalability. In this dissertation, we proposed a text-mining pipeline combining rule-based and machine-learning methods to automate retrieval, classification, and extraction of phenotyping definitions’ information from literature. To achieve this, we first developed an annotation guideline with ten dimensions to annotate sentences with evidence of phenotyping definitions' modalities, such as phenotypes and laboratories. Two annotators manually annotated a corpus of sentences (n=3,971) extracted from full-text observational studies’ methods sections (n=86). Percent and Kappa statistics showed high inter-annotator agreement on sentence-level annotations. Second, we constructed two validated text classifiers using our annotated corpora: abstract-level and full-text sentence-level. We applied the abstract-level classifier on a large-scale biomedical literature of over 20 million abstracts published between 1975 and 2018 to classify positive abstracts (n=459,406). After retrieving their full-texts (n=120,868), we extracted sentences from their methods sections and used the full-text sentence-level classifier to extract positive sentences (n=2,745,416). Third, we performed a literature-based discovery utilizing the positively classified sentences. Lexica-based methods were used to recognize medical concepts in these sentences (n=19,423). Co-occurrence and association methods were used to identify and rank phenotype candidates that are associated with a phenotype of interest. We derived 12,616,465 associations from our large-scale corpus. Our literature-based associations and large-scale corpus contribute in building new data-driven phenotyping definitions and expanding existing definitions with minimal expert involvement.

The thesis presents a type system for a substantial fragment of XML query language Xcerpt. The system is descriptive; the types associated with Xcerpt constructs are sets of data terms and approximate the semantics of the constructs. A formalism of Type Definitions, related to XML schema languages, is adopted to specify such sets. The type system is presented as typing rules which provide a basis for type inference and type checking algorithms, used in a prototype implementation. Correctness of the type system wrt. the formal semantics of Xcerpt is proved and exactness of the result types inferred by the system is discussed. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated by example runs of the prototype on Xcerpt programs. Given a non-recursive Xcerpt program and types of data to be queried, the type system is able to infer a type of results of the program. If additionally a type specification of program results is given, the system is able to prove type correctness of a (possibly recursive) program. Type correctness means that the program produces results of the given type whenever it is applied to data of the given type. Non existence of a correctness proof suggests that the program may be incorrect. Under certain conditions (on the program and on the type specification), the program is actually incorrect whenever the proof attempt fails. / <p>Report code: LiU-TEK-LIC-2006:9</p>

Technology is changing education. Just 30 years ago, instructors were using slow, inefficient technology such as projectors and reels of film, whereas today they have instant access to video from anywhere in the world. This capability has the potential to change the way that language is being taught and learned. Instead of students relying solely on their teacher and textbook for linguistic input, they have access to the Internet which holds a seemingly endless amount of information. This study was inspired by the belief that it is possible to maximize the potential benefit from that availability by implementing the theory that people learn language best when they have access to comprehensible input (Buri, 2012; Crossley, Allen, & McNamara, 2012; Krashen, 1985; Shintani, 2012; Zarei & Rashvand 2011). It also implements the belief of some second-language acquisitions theorists that subtitled video provides language learners with more comprehensible input than non-subtitled video alone (Borrás & Lafayette, 1994; Chun & Plass, 1996; Danan, 2004; Di Carlo, 1994). Thus, this study used interactive subtitled video to investigate the effects of three word definition types on participants' vocabulary comprehension and involved the selection of 120 Russian (L2)words of equal difficulty that were randomly sorted into one of four groups -- three treatments and a control group. Each treatment group contained 30 Russian words with a different type of definition in English (L1): dictionary definitions, which provided the viewers with the definition they would find in the bilingual dictionary; glosses which provided the viewers with the exact meaning of the word only as it pertains to the given context; and annotations which provided an explanation to clarify a word's use in different contexts or its non-traditional uses. Participants totaled 53 men and women ages 18-30 from 4 countries, US, Canada, Germany, and Sweden, who were advanced L2 learners of Russian. To control for the possible effects of a pretest, some of the subjects took a vocabulary pretest, and then all subjects watched a film in Russian with Russian subtitles, which was immediately followed by a vocabulary posttest. Results showed that annotations were most conducive to vocabulary gains, followed by glosses, dictionary definitions, and no definition, respectively. Although this was not the case for all participants, this outcome did hold for the majority, and several possible reasons for this outcome are discussed.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how African American female band directors create and utilize counterspaces for African American female musicians to share collective and individual experiences, maintain involvement, form positive self-definitions about themselves, and to counter intersecting forms of oppression in bands. In this study, I also examined the African American female band directors’ perceptions about counterspaces in bands. To illuminate the experiences of the 17 African American female band directors who participated in this study and their use of counterspaces as an activist response to resist intersecting forms of oppression perpetuated within the band world, Black feminist thought (BFT) as a framework was employed. The following research questions guided this study: (1) What are the African American female band directors’ perceptions and knowledge about counterspaces, and how do they utilize counterspaces to counter intersecting forms of oppression that African American female musicians face in bands?; (2) How do the African American female band directors utilize counterspaces to help the African American female band students form positive self-definitions about themselves, and to share their individual and collective experiences of involvement in bands?; and (3) How do counterspaces help African American female band directors understand common themes in the lives of African American female musicians that contribute to their sustained involvement in bands? The findings of this study revealed that counterspaces are essential for countering the perpetuation of intersecting forms of oppression and negative stereotypical images of African American females. This study further revealed that counterspaces functions as a mechanism where African American female band directors are able to foster the interconnected dimensions of self-definitions, collective and self-empowerment, and oppositional consciousness among their respective African American female band students. This study also provided insight into the current status of African American females within the field of instrumental music education in the U.S and dimensions of power structures that are continuously perpetuated to negate African American female’s equal stance within the field.

Today, more people have the opportunity to travel which means that more places need to raise awareness that they exist. In the global world that we live in today, competition among places are growing. This means that places need to work on their marketing to create a unique and special image that reaches out through all the noise. This study aims to investigate why a special image is chosen, in this case why the destination Swedish Lapland have chosen to market a region in north of Sweden as an artic destination. The study also aims to investigate what is included in the concept of an artic destination and what is comprehended in an artic lifestyle, which also is a theme that is used in the marketing of the region. Are there any challenges by using the artic and artic lifestyle concept in the marketing and what consequences can it entail? To answer these questions interviews where made with informants that have a professional work connection to the area. The result showed that the arctic region is complex phenomena to define also for those who use the expression in marketing. What is included in the artic concept and the lifestyle is connected to a lot of conceptions of the nature, culture, climate and experiences. The informants gave different viewpoints about challenges when marketing a large region and the consequences that can be registered. The hope with this study was to get a deeper understanding about the area and especially why a specific theme as the artic was used in marketing purpose for a region in north of Sweden.

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