Search System from UAEU Simplifies Life Science Research
December 21, 2017
Help is on hand for scientific researchers tired of being bogged down in databases in the form of a new platform called Biocarian. The Middle East’s ITP.net reports, “UAEU Develops New Search Engine for Life Sciences.” Semantic search is the key to the more efficient and user-friendly process. Writer Mark Sutton reports:
The UAEU [United Arab Emirages University] team said that Biocarian was developed to address the problem of large and complex data bases for healthcare and life science, which can result in researchers spending more than a third of their time searching for data. The new search engine users Semantic Web technology, so that researchers can easily create targeted searches to find the data they need in a more efficient fashion. … It allows complex queries to be constructed and entered, and offers additional features such as the capacity to enter ‘facet values’ according to specific criteria. These allow users to explore collated information by applying a range of filters, helping them to find what they are looking for quicker.
Project lead Nazar Zaki expects that simplifying the search process will open up this data to many talented researchers (who don’t happen to also be computer-science experts), leading to significant advances in medicine and healthcare. See the article for on the Biocarian platform.
Cynthia Murrell, December 21, 2017
If You Want Search Engines to Eliminate Fake News, Cautiously Watch Russia
December 21, 2017
There is a growing rallying cry for social media and search to better police fake news. This is an admirable plan, because nobody should be misled by false information and propaganda. However, as history has told us, those in charge of misinformation and propaganda can often use changes like this to their advantage. Take, for example, the recent Motherboard story, “How Russia Polices Yandex, Its Most Popular Search Engine,” which detailed how Russia aimed to get rid of its “fake news” but really only encourages more of it.
The story says,
This year, the “news aggregator law” came into effect in Russia. It requires websites that publish links to news stories with over one million daily users (Yandex.News has over six million daily users) to be responsible for all the content on their platform, which is an enormous responsibility.
‘Our Yandex.News team has been actively working to retain a high quality service for our users following new regulations that impacted our service this past year,’ Yandex told Motherboard in a statement, adding that to comply with new regulations, it reduced the number of sources that it aggregated from 7,000 to 1,000, which have official media licenses.’
In short, since the government oversees part of Yandex, the government can make it harder to publish stories that are not favorable to itself. It’s food for thought, especially to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world calling for more government oversight in social media. You might not get exactly what you hoped for when a third party starts calling the shots.
Patrick Roland, December 21, 2017
Analyze the JFK Files to Your Hearts Content
December 20, 2017
History buffs, especially those interested in the JFK assassination, may want to check this out—“Research the JFK Files for Free with Logikcull.” Since the National Archives’ release of previously classified documents on the matter, eDiscovery firm Logikcull has uploaded them to their platform. They invite anyone interested to delve into the data and help make sense of it, using their software. It is a crowd-sourced project around a matter of great public interest that happens to expose potential users to their platform’s abilities—well-played. The post specifies:
The files are, of course, a mess. They are disorganized, incomplete, voluminous, and cobbled together from dozens of different sources. That is, they’re just like the files you’d find in any other document-intensive investigation. And, thankfully, we have eDiscovery software that is designed to help you make order and insight out of just such a mess. … To help researchers, journalists, JFK enthusiasts, concerned members of the public, and the like, we’ve uploaded the documents from the JFK Files into Logikcull, allowing you to apply Logikcull’s state-of-the-art discovery technology to the nearly 3,000 records released by the government. You can use Logikcull to cull through the junk and focus in on the documents that most interest you, to build complex, powerful searches with ease, and flag documents with tags of your choosing. There’s no need to flip through the documents declassified page by declassified page.
To get in on the sleuthing, readers are told to send an email to marketing@logikcull.com with the subject, “JFK Research Account,” and to specify their name, title, and company. It will be interesting what connections and conclusions this project turns up.
Founded in 2004 and based in San Francisco, Logikcull serves organizations from the US Government to Fortune 500 companies. They also happen to be hiring as of this writing.
Cynthia Murrell, December 20, 2017
Compare Two Devices Within Google Search Results
December 18, 2017
Is Google chasing Consumer Reports now? A very brief write-up at Android Police reveals, “Google Search Can Now Compare Specifications Between Devices and Highlight Differences.” Reporter Corbin Davenport writes:
Google occasionally adds new features to its web search or makes design changes, sometimes without a public announcement. Most recently, Google began rolling out a rounded interface to the mobile search. Now, the company appears to be testing a new comparison feature. For some users, searching for two devices with ‘vs’ in the middle (for example, ‘Pixel 2 vs Pixel 2 XL’) brings up a new comparison chart. A few rows are visible on the main results, and tapping the blue button expands it to show every detail. There’s even a mode to highlight differences between the two. It doesn’t seem to work with three or more devices, only two.
I cannot say whether the feature has been rolled out across the board as of this writing, but it did work on my Android phone. What else does Google have up its sleeve?
Cynthia Murrell, December 18, 2017
Personalizing a Chromebook Search Takes Some Elbow Grease
December 8, 2017
Chromebooks are a great laptop and cost a fraction of the price of an Apple or a Microsoft PC. There is a learning curve for new users to Chromebooks, because they lack the familiar PC and Apple interfaces. With a little elbow grease, however, and research any Chromebook user can become an expert. The Verge shares a how-to article, “How To Customize Your Google Chrome And Chromebook Searches” that can get new users started.
The Chromebook OS lacks customization options, especially when it comes to search. There is a little-known feature in Chrome OS that allows users to customize their search options. What is great about this option is that it syncs customization across all Chrome browser you use.
The article provides a step by step guide on how to activate the search customization option and also includes some tips on how to improve you search overall.
Those customizations aren’t just limited to the Google search bar on Chromebooks. Basically, as long as you’re logged into Chrome, your customizations for the search bar will sync across to any Chrome Browser you’re using. So whether you use a Chromebook or just use the Chrome browser, here’s how to supercharge your searches for the stuff you use most often.
Read the article and learn how your Chromebook functions with search. The learning curve is small and it will be well worth it.
Whitney Grace, December 8, 2017
Google and Amping the Pressure in the Ad Fire Hose
December 7, 2017
Screen real estate for mobile devices is limited. The number of queries on desktop boat anchor computers has flat lined, even for “real” researchers. What’s the fix?
A partial answer may appear in “Improving Search and Discovery on Google.” I learned from the write up:
- More related searches. Google helps a busy person consider alternative ways of obtaining needed information.
- Featured snippets. Google decides what’s important so a busy person does not have to think or assess too much.
- Knowledge panels. Google helps a user obtain “real” knowledge. No thinking required.
Each of these search boosters allow Google to line up and display more advertising. Each time one clicks or swipes, Google obtains another item of data to allow its system to “predict” what a user wants and needs.
Now that’s relevance. Ads and feedback.
Why? To the user, search is just “there.” To Google, it’s a way to consume that Adwords inventory in my opinion.
Relevance? What could be more relevant than information which makes thinking easy?
Keep the money flowing in I say.
Stephen E Arnold, December 7, 2017
Neural Network Revamps Search for Research
December 7, 2017
Research is a pain, especially when you have to slog through millions of results to find specific and accurate results. It takes time and lot of reading, but neural networks could cut down on the investigation phase. The Economist wrote a new article about how AI will benefit research: “A Better Way To Search Through Scientific Papers.”
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence developed Semantic Search to aid scientific research. Semantic Search’s purpose is to discover scientific papers most relevant to a particular problem. How does Semantic Scholar work?
Instead of relying on citations in other papers, or the frequency of recurring phrases to rank the relevance of papers, as it once did and rivals such as Google Scholar still do, the new version of Semantic Scholar applies AI to try to understand the context of those phrases, and thus achieve better results.
Semantic Scholar relies on a neural network, a system that mirrors real neural networks and learns by trial and error tests. To make Semantic Search work, the Allen Institute team annotated ten and sixty-seven abstracts. From this test sample, they found 7,000 medical terms with which 2,000 could be paired. The information was fed into the Semantic Search neural network, then it found more relationships based on the data. Through trial and error, the neural network learns more patterns.
The Allen Institute added 26 million biomedical research papers to the already 12 million in the database. The plan is to make scientific and medical research more readily available to professionals, but also to regular people.
Whitney Grace, December 7, 2017
No More International Google Searches
December 6, 2017
One of the better things about Google is that when you needed to search for results in a different country, all you needed to do was change the domain tag. Google has decided it does not want to do that anymore shares the Verge in the article, “Google No Longer Lets You Change Domains To Search Other Countries.”
Google, instead, will deliver localized results based on your location.
If you need to access international results, however, the option can be changed on the settings menu on the bottom of google.com. Yes, you have to look for it, but it is there. Why does Google want to do this?
Google says it’s making the change because one out of five searches “is related to location,” and the company feels it’s critical to offer local information to provide the best results. The feature seems to be tailored most toward travelers: Google says that if you visit another country, it’ll automatically serve results local to where you’re visiting, then switch back again as soon as you arrive home. Before, if a traveler had kept typing in their home country’s Google domain, they may not have gotten what Google sees as ideal search results.
Before you think this is another way Google is trying to control search content, apparently Alphabet Inc. has already been doing this with YouTube and Gmail. The procedure has just been carried over to search results, but at least there is a way out of the localized content.
Whitney Grace, December 6, 2017
Big Data and Search Solving Massive Language Processing Headaches
December 4, 2017
Written language can be a massive headache for those needing search strength. Different spoken languages can complicate things when you need to harness a massive amount of data. Thankfully, language processing is the answer, as software architect Federico Thomasetti wrote in his essay, “A Guide to Natural Language Processing.”
According to the story:
…the relationship between elements can be used to understand the importance of each individual element. TextRank actually uses a more complex formula than the original PageRank algorithm, because a link can be only present or not, while textual connections might be partially present. For instance, you might calculate that two sentences containing different words with the same stem (e.g., cat and cats both have cat as their stem) are only partially related.
The original paper describes a generic approach, rather than a specific method. In fact, it also describes two applications: keyword extraction and summarization. The key differences are:
- the units you choose as a foundation of the relationship
- the way you calculate the connection and its strength
Natural language processing is a tricky concept to wrap your head around. But it is becoming a thing that people have to recognize. Currently, millions of dollars are being funneled into perfecting this platform. Those who can really lead the pack here will undoubtedly have a place at the international tech table and possibly take over. This is a big deal.
Patrick Roland, December 4, 2017
Google Maps Misses the Bus
December 4, 2017
Google Maps is the preferred GPS system for millions of people. It uses real-time information to report accidents and stay updated on road conditions. It is great when you are driving or walking around a city, but when it comes to public transportation, especially to the airports, Google ignores it. City Lab discusses, “Why Doesn’t Google Maps Know The Best Way To the Airport?”
Speaking from personal experience on a recent trip to New York City, I had to get from Queens to LaGuardia airport. Google Maps took me the most roundabout way possible, instead of routing me to direct trains and buses. Google’s directions may have required less train switching, but it took me in the opposite direction of my destination.
Google Maps has a problem listing airport specific transportation in its app, but it really should not be a problem.
As Google describes things, putting those city-to-terminal routes into its mapping apps shouldn’t be that hard. A transit operator has to apply to be listed in Google Transit, publish its schedule in the standard General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format, and have Google run some quality tests on that feed before factoring it into directions.
But some smaller transit operations don’t get to the first step. They don’t even know it’s an option.
Transportation services may not know how to be added to Google, but Google also not reached out to them. Historically, Google has only reached out to large transportation entities, because it meant more business on their end. Google also has this weird clause transportation services need to sign before their information is added to Google Maps. It alleviates Google from “any defects in the data” and it sounds like Google does not want to be held responsible for misinformation displayed on Google Maps.
Whitney Grace, December 4, 2017
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