Tabular data is an abundant source of information on the Web, but remains mostly isolated from the latter's interconnections since tables lack links and computer-accessible descriptions of their structure. In other words, the schemas of these tables -attribute names, values, data types, etc. -are not explicitly stored as table metadata. Consequently, the structure that these tables contain is not accessible to the crawlers that power search engines and thus not accessible to user search queries. We address this lack of structure with a new method for leveraging the principles of table construction in order to extract table schemas. Discovering the schema by which a table is constructed is achieved by harnessing the similarities and differences of nearby table rows through the use of a novel set of features and a feature processing scheme. The schemas of these data tables are determined using a classification technique based on conditional random fields in combination with a novel feature encoding method called logarithmic binning, which is specifically designed for the data table extraction task. Our method provides considerable improvement over the wellknown WebTables schema extraction method. In contrast with previous work that focuses on extracting individual relations, our method excels at correctly interpreting full tables, thereby being capable of handling general tables such as those found in spreadsheets, instead of being restricted to HTML tables as is the case with the WebTables method. We also extract additional schema characteristics, such as row groupings, which are important for supporting information retrieval tasks on tabular data.
NewsStand is an example application of a general framework that we are developing to enable searching for information using a map query interface, where the information results from monitoring the output of over 8,000 RSS news sources and is available for retrieval within minutes of publication. The user interface of NewsStand was recently adapted so that NewsStand can execute on mobile and tablet devices with a gesturing touch screen interface such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. This action led to a discovery of some shortcomings of current mapping APIs as well as devising some interesting new widgets. These issues are discussed, and the realization can be seen by a demo at http:// newsstand.umiacs.umd.edu on any of the above Apple devices as well as other devices that support gestures such as an Android phone.
The Circular Economy (CE) is expected to accelerate the use of resources with bio-based origin. Cities have an important role in such an economy, not only as main consumers but also because vegetation provides numerous ecosystem services essential for the well-being of urban dwellers. Urban lands are, however, heavily burdened with both past and present activities and ongoing urbanization. Retrofitting obsolete and potentially contaminated brownfields provides an opportunity to engage with bio-based land uses within the city. At the same time, plants are an important part of Gentle Remediation Options (GROs), a more sustainable alternative for managing contamination risks and restoring soil health. This paper (1) provides a tentative selection of Urban Greenspaces (UGSs) relevant for brownfields, and a compilation of ecosystem services provided by the selected UGSs, and (2) presents a framework covering the 14 selected bio-based land uses on brownfields, including GRO interventions over time. This framework provides three practical tools: the conceptualization of linkages between GROs and prospective UGS uses, a scatter diagram for the realization of 14 UGS opportunities on brownfields, and a decision matrix to analyze the requirements for UGS realization on brownfields.
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