Need and Importance of Nutrition Informatics in India: A Perspective

Nutrition informatics (NI) is the effective retrieval, organization, storage, and optimum use of information, data and knowledge for food-and-nutrition-related problem-solving and decision-making. There is a growing opportunity to facilitate technology-enabled behavioral change interventions to support NI research and practice. This paper highlights the changing landscape of food and nutrition practices in India to prepare a NI workforce that could provide some valuable tools to address the double burden of nutrition. Management and interpretation of data could help clarify the relationships and interrelationships of diet and disease in India on both national and regional levels. Individuals with expertise in food and nutrition may receive training in informatics to develop national informatics systems. NI professionals develop tools and techniques, manage various projects and conduct informatics research. These professionals should be well prepared to work in technological settings and communicate data and information effectively. Opportunities for training in NI are very limited in developing countries. Given the current progress in developing platforms and informatics infrastructure, India could serve as an example to other countries to promote NI to support achieving SDGs and other public health initiatives.

Evaluating Search Results in Exploratory Search

The volume of information available on the World Wide Web is quite significant. This plethora of information has, to a large extent constantly challenged researchers in seeking for ways of making the information easily accessible to end users in as convenient ways as possible. Characteristically, ensuring the accessibility of this large amount of information involves three all-encompassing processes of retrieval, organization and presentation. The World Wide Web offers a platform for sharing information from large database repositories globally. However, information needs to be searched with specialized tools commonly referred to as search engines. While a number of search engines does presently exist, most of these search engines are noted for their inability to retrieve information usable to the end user. It is therefore critical for the results generated from search engines to be intelligently organized for the optimal usefulness of the information to the searcher. Exploratory web technologies is capable of filing this gap. Therefore, this paper reviews exploratory search as a mechanism for conducting result-oriented search. It also reviews the ways of evaluating the search results obtained from an exploratory search.

The Servant as Information Center

This chapter explores the figure of the servant as an information center, both in connection with and as opposed to modern search engines. It proposes an analogy between the literary character Reginald Jeeves, the butler in P. G. Wodehouse's stories, and the search engine AskJeeves.com, which chose that literary figure as the prototype of its corporate identity. The idea is that the techniques of information retrieval, organization, and distribution which the classic butler or domestic employs already act as a search engine avant la letter. The claim will be further illustrated with the example of the library servant and his transformation from a subservient carrier and sorter of books to the powerful electronic library catalogue OPAC (online public access catalogue) of today.