Thesis (Ph.D. in Biostatistics) -- University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Free to UCD Anschutz Medical Campus. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed Sept. 23, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Biostatistics, Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics) -- University of Colorado Denver, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-93). Free to UCD affiliates. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Medicine, 1999. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 82-110.

Supervised machine learning models require a labeled data set of high quality in order to perform well. Available text data often exists in abundance, but it is usually not labeled. Labeling text data is a time consuming process, especially in the case where multiple labels can be assigned to a single text document. The purpose of this thesis was to make the labeling process of clinical reports as effective and effortless as possible by evaluating different multi-label active learning strategies. The goal of the strategies was to reduce the number of labeled documents a model needs, and increase the quality of those documents. With the strategies, an accuracy of 89% was achieved with 2500 reports, compared to 85% with random sampling. In addition to this, 85% accuracy could be reached after labeling 975 reports, compared to 1700 reports with random sampling.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FranciscoJCS_DISSERT.pdf: 3148033 bytes, checksum: 1d6e571d5bcd941b37b01b5a7eb6cb07 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-24 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This study is part of interactional perspective, focusing on Conversation Analysis theories, from the Textual Interactive Perspective and Text Linguistics . This research, from its guiding questions, aims at understanding the interaction between teacher and students in the process of the knowledge construction as well as at describing, analyzing and understanding aspects of topical organization speech in the classroom in elementary school, observing the opening and closing procedures of the speech topics in that particular space. Considering that the procedures for opening and closing of discursive topics occur through language marks, we tried to identify which speech marks are used in the opening and closing of the topics studied in the classroom, in interaction during the collaborative process of the discourse established between teacher and students. Therefore, this study is based on authors who analyze specific questions of the text in real context of language use: Koch (1993, 1999), Jubran et al (1991), Jubran (2006), Pine (2005), Penhavel (2010), Galembeck (2012), Barros (1991), Marcuschi (1986 , 1990, 1991 , 1998 , 1999, 2003 , 2004a), Kerbrat - Orecchioni (2006), Favero (1999, 2002) and Galv?o (2004, 2010). As a methodology of investigation, the study is focused on the postulates of ethnographic research in order to carry out data collection, through audio and video recordings which were transcribed, according to the NURC project proposal, with some adaptations. Data analysis showed that the procedures for opening and closing of the speech topics occurred by the use of discourse markers, in particular the marker "then", allowing us to understand that these elements are important in the topical organization speech, contributing to ensure textual cohesion and coherence. We conclude that the organization of the discursive topic in the classroom occurs through events that support the explicitness of the content of teaching and learning, considering the diverse necessity of an institutional academic plan, whose main objective is the construction of knowledge / Este trabalho se insere em perspectivas interacionais, com base nos pressupostos da An?lise da Conversa??o, da Perspectiva Textual Interativa e da Lingu?stica de Texto. A partir da quest?o norteadora que busca uma compreens?o acerca da intera??o entre professor e alunos no processo de constru??o do conhecimento, temos como objetivos: descrever, analisar e interpretar aspectos da organiza??o t?pica em sala de aula no Ensino Fundamental, observando os procedimentos de abertura e fechamento dos t?picos nesse espa?o espec?fico. Partindo da expectativa de que os procedimentos de abertura e fechamento dos t?picos discursivos ocorrem por meio de marcas lingu?sticas, buscamos identificar que marcas s?o usadas nas aberturas e fechamentos dos t?picos na sala de aula investigada, no transcurso das intera??es durante o processo colaborativo do discurso instaurado entre professora e alunos. Assim sendo, embasamo-nos em autores que analisam quest?es espec?ficas do texto em situa??o concreta de uso da linguagem, entre estes, Koch (1993, 1999), Jubran et al (1991), Jubran (2006), Pinheiro (2005), Penhavel (2010), Galembeck (2012), Barros (1991), Marcuschi (1986, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004a), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2006), F?vero (1999, 2002) e Galv?o (2004, 2010). Metodologicamente, orientamo-nos nos postulados da pesquisa etnogr?fica, a fim de realizar a coleta dos dados, atrav?s de grava??es em ?udio e v?deo, que foram transcritos, em seguida, conforme a proposta do projeto NURC, com algumas adapta??es. A an?lise dos dados ressaltados revelou que os procedimentos de abertura e de fechamento dos t?picos ocorreram pelo uso de marcadores discursivos, em especial o marcador ent?o , propiciando-nos ? compreens?o de que esses elementos s?o importantes na organiza??o t?pica, contribuindo para assegurar a coer?ncia e a coes?o textual. Conclu?mos que a organiza??o do t?pico discursivo em sala de aula acontece mediante ocorr?ncias que auxiliam a explicita??o do conte?do de ensino e aprendizagem, tendo em vista ?s diversas necessidades de um plano acad?mico institucional, cujo objetivo principal ? a constru??o do conhecimento

Um dos fenômenos mais investigados na literatura sintática recente sobre o português brasileiro (PB), dentro do quadro teórico gerativista e também de outras teorias linguísticas, é aquele que se refere ao que viria a ficar conhecido como tópico-sujeito. Este trabalho se debruçou sobre este fenômeno sintático, mais especificamente, o tópico-sujeito locativo, um tipo de tópico-sujeito em que um constituinte com interpretação locativa figura em posição pré-verbal. Os aspectos investigados mais de perto referem-se à grade argumental e à estrutura eventiva dos verbos envolvidos, bem como ao modo de licenciamento dos dois DPs participantes da estrutura eventiva que expressa a relação locativa. Depois de uma revisão da literatura relevante sobre o tópico-sujeito e as bases do gerativismo, a hipótese derivacional que assumimos neste trabalho considerou uma estrutura semelhante à das sentenças transitivas sem, no entanto, a projeção de Voice agentivo. Postulamos, em seu lugar, um núcleo aplicativo alto, com traços de pessoa, que identifica um evento apto a receber uma locação e introduz um novo participante afetado, com uma relação temática locativa entre ele e o VP. Do ponto de vista diacrônico, supomos que o parâmetro envolvido no aparecimento do tópico locativo na gramática do PB estaria na mesma rede paramétrica relacionada à mudança no parâmetro do sujeito nulo. Foi feita também uma pesquisa com corpora históricos abrangendo o período dos séculos XIX ao XXI, com o objetivo de rastrear um possível desenvolvimento das construções com sintagmas locativos em posição pré-verbal, em variação com os locativos em posição pós-verbal, na expectativa de poder encontrar ocorrências de construções que apresentem as propriedades que identifiquem o tópico-sujeito locativo. Foram utilizados anúncios, cartas pessoais e entrevistas, todos circunscritos ao estado de São Paulo. A metodologia utilizada foi quantitativa e buscou contabilizar variáveis presentes em todas as sentenças com sintagmas de interpretação locativa. / syntactic literature, inside the theoretical frame of the Generative Syntax program and also another linguistic theories, is the one that has come to be known as topic-subject. This work focused on this syntactic phenomenon, more specifically the locative topic, a subtype of topic-subject in which a constituent with locative interpretation appears in a pre-verbal position. The more closely investigated aspects refer to the argument structure and event structure of the verbs involved, as well as to the licensing mode of the two DPs participating in the event structure that expresses the locative relation. After a literature revision about the topic-subject and the foundations of the generative enterprise, the derivational hypothesis that we assume in this work considers a structure similar to that of the transitive sentences without, however, the agentive Voice projection. We consider instead a high applicative head, with person features, whose function is to identify an event capable of receiving a location and to introduce a new affected participant, with a locative thematic relation between it and the VP. From the diachronic point of view, we assume that the parameter involved in the implementation of the locative topic in the BP grammar would be in the same parametric network related to the change in the null subject parameter. Besides, a research was made with historical corpora spanning the period from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, aiming to track a probable development of the constructions with locative phrases in pre-verbal position, in variation with locatives in post-verbal position, waiting to find occurrences of constructions showing the topic-subject properties. We used ads, personal letters and interviews, all of which were limited to the state of São Paulo. The methodology used was quantitative and sought to account for variables present in all sentences with phrases associated to locative interpretation.

The aim of this work is to create a web application for automatic topic detection and segmentation of on-line courses. During playback of processed records, the application should be able to offer records from thematically consistent on-line courses. This document contains problem description, list of used instruments, description of implementation, the principle of operation and description of final user interface.

Information extraction from large corpora can be a useful tool for many applications in industry and academia. For instance, political communication science has just recently begun to use the opportunities that come with the availability of massive amounts of information available through the Internet and the computational tools that natural language processing can provide. We give a linguistically motivated interpretation of topic modeling, a state-of-the-art algorithm for extracting latent semantic sets of words from large text corpora, and extend this interpretation to cover issues and issue-cycles as theoretical constructs coming from political communication science. We build on a dynamic topic model, a model whose semantic sets of words are allowed to evolve over time governed by a Brownian motion stochastic process and apply a new form of analysis to its result. Generally this analysis is based on the notion of volatility as in the rate of change of stocks or derivatives known from econometrics. We claim that the rate of change of sets of semantically related words can be interpreted as issue-cycles, the word sets as describing the underlying issue. Generalizing over the existing work, we introduce dynamic topic models that are driven by general (Brownian motion is a special case of our model) Gaussian processes, a family of stochastic processes defined by the function that determines their covariance structure. We use the above assumption and apply a certain class of covariance functions to allow for an appropriate rate of change in word sets while preserving the semantic relatedness among words. Applying our findings to a large newspaper data set, the New York Times Annotated corpus (all articles between 1987 and 2007), we are able to identify sub-topics in time, \\\\textit{time-localized topics} and find patterns in their behavior over time. However, we have to drop the assumption of semantic relatedness over all available time for any one topic. Time-localized topics are consistent in themselves but do not necessarily share semantic meaning between each other. They can, however, be interpreted to capture the notion of issues and their behavior that of issue-cycles.

Cette thèse aborde les problématiques liées à la construction de Topic Maps et à leur utilisation pour la recherche d’information dans le cadre défini par le Web sémantique (WS). Le WS a pour objectif de structurer les informations disponibles sur le Web. Pour cela, les ressources doivent être sémantiquement étiquetées par des métadonnées afin de permettre d'optimiser l'accès à ces ressources. Ces métadonnées sont actuellement spécifiées à l'aide des deux standards qui utilisent le langage XML : RDF et les Topic Maps. Un contenu à organiser étant très souvent volumineux et sujet à enrichissement perpétuel, il est pratiquement impossible d’envisager une création et gestion d’une Topic Map, le décrivant, de façon manuelle. Plusieurs travaux de recherche ont concerné la construction de Topic Maps à partir de documents textuels [Ellouze et al. 2008a]. Cependant, aucune d’elles ne permet de traiter un contenu multilingue. De plus, bien que les Topic Maps soient, par définition, orientées utilisation (recherche d’information), peu d’entre elles prennent en compte les requêtes des utilisateurs.Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous avons donc conçu une approche que nous avons nommée ACTOM pour « Approche de Construction d’une TOpic Map Multilingue ». Cette dernière sert à organiser un contenu multilingue composé de documents textuels. Elle a pour avantage de faciliter la recherche d’information dans ce contenu. Notre approche est incrémentale et évolutive, elle est basée sur un processus automatisé, qui prend en compte des documents multilingues et l’évolution de la Topic Map selon le changement du contenu en entrée et l’usage de la Topic Map. Elle prend comme entrée un référentiel de documents que nous construisons suite à la segmentation thématique et à l’indexation sémantique de ces documents et un thésaurus du domaine pour l’ajout de liens ontologiques. Pour enrichir la Topic Map, nous nous basons sur deux ontologies générales et nous explorons toutes les questions potentielles relatives aux documents sources. Dans ACTOM, en plus des liens d’occurrences reliant un Topic à ses ressources, nous catégorisons les liens en deux catégories: (a) les liens ontologiques et (b) les liens d’usage. Nous proposons également d’étendre le modèle des Topic Maps défini par l’ISO en rajoutant aux caractéristiques d’un Topic des méta-propriétés servant à mesurer la pertinence des Topics plus précisément pour l’évaluation de la qualité et l’élagage dynamique de la Topic Map. / The research work in this thesis is related to Topic Map construction and their use in semantic annotation of web resources in order to help users find relevant information in these resources. The amount of information sources available today is very huge and continuously increasing, for that, it is impossible to create and maintain manually a Topic Map to represent and organize all these information. Many Topic Maps building approaches can be found in the literature [Ellouze et al. 2008a]. However, none of these approaches takes as input multilingual document content. In addition, although Topic Maps are basically dedicated to users navigation and information search, no one approach takes into consideration users requests in the Topic Map building process. In this context, we have proposed ACTOM, a Topic Map building approach based on an automated process taking into account multilingual documents and Topic Map evolution according to content and usage changes. To enrich the Topic Map, we are based on a domain thesaurus and we propose also to explore all potential questions related to source documents in order to represent usage in the Topic Map. In our approach, we extend the Topic Map model that already exists by defining the usage links and a list of meta-properties associated to each Topic, these meta-properties are used in the Topic Map pruning process. In our approach ACTOM, we propose also to precise and enrich semantics of Topic Map links so, except occurrences links between Topics and resources, we classify Topic Map links in two different classes, those that we have called “ontological links” and those that we have named “usage links”.