Taxonomies to the Rescue

MEDLINE citations are manually indexed at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), using as reference the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) controlled vocabulary. In the past, human indexers read the full text of the article to properly index. However, due to growth, the NLM is exploring automatic indexing options. 7th Space Interactive brought this topic to our attention in their article, “MeSH indexing based on automatically generated summaries.”

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The Search War

Apple recently purchased Topsy, a social media analytics company. This move left some folks wondering why. For some, the answer was clear – search, old search to be exact. In a move to challenge Google’s reign as the premier search engine, Apple’s $200 million dollar purchase is intended to provide new levels of recommendations based on Topsy’s data. Don’t scoff at the price, there are billions of dollar in play when you are talking about the game of search.

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The Ghosts of Concepts Future

As taxonomists, we have a responsibility to discern those future concepts, although they may still be invisible to most. We can save the various expressions of those concepts in search logs from being rejected from consideration for a vocabulary simply on account of their as yet infrequent appearance. In a taxonomy or thesaurus, we can provide labels that will consolidate the indexing for a concept whose researchers have not yet settled on a name. In some cases, especially with widely used vocabularies, we can perhaps determine the name by which a concept will be known on a standard basis.

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Mapping the Stars

Floating around the Milky Way galaxy is the most recent space observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). Gaia will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times over a period of five years – all unmanned.

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Semantic Learning App Launched

SemantiStar has launched Epsilon, the first semantically enabled eLearning application for iPad. This new product is designed to connect learners contextually with course material and real-world knowledge and events. This interesting news was brought to our attention by gnom.es in their article, “SemantiStar, Inc. Announces the Launch of Epsilon.”

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