Multi-modality Search and Recommendation on Palestinian Cultural Heritage Based on the Holy-Land Ontology and Extrinsic Semantic Resources

The Cultural Heritage (CH) sector and its associated tourism services have been affected notably by the advancement of the Internet as well as the explosive growth of smartphones and other handheld devices. These days, visitors can access reliable CH content using Web and mobile-based interfaces. However, conventional CH systems still lack the ability to provide meaningful semantically overt results that precisely meet user information needs in this domain. In addition, they often ignore the user search context and experience, which hinders their ability to adapt their behavior to the preferences, tasks, interests, and other user functionalities. In this article, we aim to address the issue of designing a precision-oriented multilingual and multi-criteria semantic-based mobile recommender system specifically targeting Palestine's CH, a country with great historical and cultural importance. We aim to better facilitate users’ access to CH content by providing them with multiple search functionalities. In this context, a user can search for relevant information using keywords (a.k.a. tags) or sentence-like queries and the system retrieves all relevant documents based on their semantic similarity. A second option is to search using current location information to retrieve correlated historical places and events. Finally, starting from a picture of interest, a third option makes it possible to extract captions describing its content that can be used to search for additional contextually relevant information. Additionally, the proposed system aims at personalizing users’ experience through progressively delivering output that meets their information needs based on a number of parameters such as users' logging data, interests, previous searches, and location-based information. A prototype of the proposed system has been developed and tested using Android smartphones and a manually constructed ontology enriched with CH links to the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and DBpedia. By comparing our system with similar systems in this domain, findings demonstrate that it provides additional search features and functionalities to users. The proposed Holy-Land ontology is the first of its kind attempting to encode knowledge about Palestine's CH. It plays a crucial role in our proposal, serving as a pivotal entity in the combination of language-based, location-based, and visual-based retrieval strategies.

Why collaboration reduces suggestibility: The role of source-monitoring processes and retrieval strategies

Previous research found that collaboration reduces the tendency to yield to misleading questions. Here, the aim was to determine whether this occurs because collaboration induces a conservative change in response criterion or because it promotes more efficient error-checking strategies. To this purpose, we compared the performance of collaborative and nominal triads in the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Critically, we recorded conversations during retrieval, allowing us to compute inclusive scores and analyze retrieval strategies. Confirming previous evidence, results showed that collaborative groups yielded less to leading questions; however, the differences between collaborative and nominal groups in yield 1 were canceled when we took into account questions to which at least one participant in the collaborative group gave in but was corrected by collaborators during the discussion (the so-called inclusive scores). This was not the case for yield 2 and total suggestibility scores. Also, the analysis of retrieval strategies indicated that collaborative groups who used process-focused strategies (such as correction and cross-cueing) to a greater extent were less likely to change their responses after receiving the negative feedback and were less suggestible. We conclude that, while the use of error-checking and process-focused strategies played a role in reducing suggestibility in collaborative groups, the administration of negative feedback induced members of collaborative groups to adopt a more conservative response criterion. These results contribute to the understanding of the conditions that maximize the positive effects of collaborative retrieval. They have implications for policymakers and police practitioners, specifying when and how collaboration might be allowed.

Dominance style predicts differences in food retrieval strategies

In several species, rank predicts access to food, and subordinates may need specific behavioural strategies to get a share of resources. This may be especially important in despotic species, where resources are strongly biased in favour of dominants and subordinates may more strongly rely on specific tactics to maximize food intake. Here, we compared three macaque species with an experimental set-up reproducing feeding competition contest. Following our predictions, more tolerant species mostly retrieved food in the presence of others and were less dependent on specific tactics. Contrarily, subordinates in more despotic species more likely collected food (1) when dominants could not see food or (2) were attacking others, (3) while “dissimulating”, or (4) “storing food”. Our study reveals that dominance styles reliably predict the probability of using specific food retrieval tactics and provides important insights on the social conditions that might have led to the emergence of tactical deception.

Destabilizing Different Strengths of Fear Memories Requires Different Degrees of Prediction Error During Retrieval

Reactivation of consolidated memories can induce a labile period, in which these reactivated memories might be susceptible to change and need reconsolidation. Prediction error (PE) has been recognized as a necessary boundary condition for memory destabilization. Moreover, memory strength is also widely accepted as an essential boundary condition to destabilize fear memory. This study investigated whether different strengths of conditioned fear memories require different degrees of PE during memory reactivation in order for the memories to become destabilized. Here, we assessed the fear-potentiated startle and skin conductance response, using the post-retrieval extinction procedure. A violation of expectancy (PE) was induced during retrieval to reactivate enhanced (unpredictable-shock) or ordinary (predictable-shock) fear memories that were established the day before. Results showed that a PE retrieval before extinction can prevent the return of predictable-shock fear memory but cannot prevent the return of unpredictable-shock fear memory, indicating that a single PE is insufficient to destabilize enhanced fear memory. Therefore, we further investigated whether increasing the degree of PE could destabilize enhanced fear memory using different retrieval strategies (multiple PE retrieval and unreinforced CS retrieval). We found that spontaneous recovery of enhanced fear memory was prevented in both retrieval strategies, but reinstatement was only prevented in the multiple PE retrieval group, suggesting that a larger amount of PE is needed to destabilize enhanced fear memory. The findings suggest that behavioral updating during destabilization requires PE, and the degree of PE needed to induce memory destabilization during memory retrieval depends on the strength of fear memory. The study indicates that memory reconsolidation inference can be used to destabilize stronger memories, and the findings shed lights on the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders and anxiety disorders.

FALSE MEMORIES FOR SEMANTIC AND CATEGORY ASSOCIATES: COMPARING RETRIEVAL STRATEGIES AND RETENTION INTERVAL

False memories are memories that people believe indeed correspond to actual events from the past. Experimental investigation of false memories involves varied methodologies, including semantic and category associate technique. While the category method depends on the frequency of intra-list items, semantic associate measures semantic association of intra-list items. The present study compares false memory generation through category and semantic associates. Additionally, the mode of retrieval (recall, recognition) and retention interval (short, long) were manipulated to measure their effect on false memory generation. The result of the study suggests that retention interval and mode of retrieval did influence false memories generated using words (semantic associates) and line drawings (category associates).

Measurements of CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22 total columns in the atmosphere at the St. Petersburg site in 2009–2019

The retrieval strategies for deriving the atmospheric total columns (TCs) of CFC-11 (CCl3F), CFC-12 (CCl2F2), and HCFC-22 (CHClF2) from ground–based measurements of IR solar radiation have been improved. We demonstrate the advantage of using the Tikhonov-Phillips regularization approach for solving the inverse problem of the retrieval of these gases and give the optimized values of regularization parameters. The estimates of relative systematic and random errors amount to 7.61 % and 3.08 %, 2.24 % and 2.40 %, 5.75 % and 3.70 %, for CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22, respectively. We analyze the time series of the TCs and mean molar fractions (MMFs) of CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22 measured at the NDACC site St. Petersburg located near Saint Petersburg, Russia for the period of 2009–2019. Mean values of the MMFs for CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22 total 225, 493, and 238 pptv, respectively. Estimates of the MMFs trends for CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22 account for −0.40 ± 0.07 %/yr, -0.49 ±0.05 %/yr, and 2.12±0.13 %/yr, respectively. We have compared the mean values, trends and seasonal variability of CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22 MMFs measured at the St. Petersburg site in 2009–2019 to that of 1) near–ground volume mixing ratios (VMRs) measured at the observational site Mace Head, Ireland (GVMR); 2) the mean in the 8–12 km layer VMRs measured by ACE–FTS and averaged over 55–65° N latitudes (SVMR); and the MMFs of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model for the St. Petersburg site (WMMF). The means of the MMFs are less than that of the GVMR for CFC-11 by 9 pptv (3.8 %), for CFC-12 by 24 pptv (4.6 %); for HCFC-22, the mean MMFs does not differ significantly from the mean GVMR. The absolute value of the trend estimates of the MMFs is less than that of the GVMR for CFC-11 (−0.40 vs −0.53 %/yr) and CFC-12 (−0.49 vs −0.59 %yr); the trend estimate of the HCFC-22 MMFs does not differ significantly from that of the GVMR. The seasonal variability of the GVMR for all three gases is much lower than the MMFs variability. The means of the MMFs are less than that of the SVMR for CFC-11 by 10 pptv (4.3 %), for CFC-12 by 33 pptv (6.3 %), and for HCFC-22 by 2 pptv (0.8 %). The absolute value of the trend estimates of the MMFs is less than that of the SVMR for CFC-11 (−0.40 vs −0.63 %/yr) and CFC-12 (−0.49 vs −0.58 %/yr); the trend estimate of the HCFC-22 MMFs does not differ significantly from that of the SVMR. The MMF and SVMR values show nearly the same qualitative and quantitative seasonal variability for all three gases. The means of the MMFs are greater than that of the WMMF for CFC-11 by 22 pptv (10 %), for CFC-12 by 15 pptv (3.1 %), and for HCFC-22 by 23 pptv (10 %). The absolute value of the trend estimates of the MMFs is less than that of the WMMF for CFC-11 (−0.40 vs −1.68 %/yr), CFC-12 (−0.49 vs −0.84 %/yr), and HCFC-22 (2.12 %/yr vs 3.40 %/yr). The MMFs and WMMF values show nearly the same qualitative and quantitative seasonal variability for CFC-11 and CFC-12, whereas the seasonal variability of the WMMF for HCFC-22 is essentially less than that of the MMFs. In general, the comparison of the MMFs with the independent data shows a good agreement of their means within the systematic error of considered measurements. The observed trends over the St. Petersburg site demonstrate the smaller decrease rates for CFC-11 and CFC-12 TCs than that of the independent data, and the same decrease rate for HCFC-22. The suggested retrieval strategies can be used for analysis of the IR solar spectra measurements using Bruker FS125HR spectrometers, e.g. at other IRWG sites of the NDACC observational network.