Marco Dussin

A NEW GENERATION OF PARSEC-COLIBRI STELLAR ISOCHRONES INCLUDING THE TP-AGB PHASE

We introduce a new generation of PARSEC-COLIBRI stellar isochrones that include a detailed treatment of the thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phase, and covering a wide range of initial metallicities (0.0001<Zi<0.06). Compared to previous releases, the main novelties and improvements are: use of new TP-AGB tracks and related atmosphere models and spectra for M and C-type stars; inclusion of the surface H+He+CNO abundances in the isochrone tables, accounting for the effects of diffusion, dredge-up episodes and hot-bottom burning; inclusion of complete thermal pulse cycles, with a complete description of the in-cycle changes in the stellar parameters; new pulsation models to describe the long-period variability in the fundamental and first overtone modes; new dust models that follow the growth of the grains during the AGB evolution, in combination with radiative transfer calculations for the reprocessing of the photospheric emission. Overall, these improvements are expected to lead to a more consistent and detailed description of properties of TP-AGB stars expected in resolved stellar populations, especially in regard to their mean photometric properties from optical to mid-infrared wavelengths. We illustrate the expected numbers of TP-AGB stars of different types in stellar populations covering a wide range of ages and initial metallicities, providing further details on the C-star island that appears at intermediate values of age and metallicity, and about the AGB-boosting effect that occurs at ages close to 1.6 Gyr for populations of all metallicities. The isochrones are available through a new dedicated web server.

Managing the knowledge creation process of large-scale evaluation campaigns

This paper discusses the evolution of large-scale evaluation campaigns and the corresponding evaluation infrastructures needed to carry them out. We present the next challenges for these initiatives and show how digital library systems can play a relevant role in supporting the research conducted in these fora by acting as virtual research environments.

A Digital Library of Grammatical Resources for European Dialects

The paper illustrates the methodology at the basis of the design of a digital library system that enables the management of linguistic resources of curated dialect data. Since dialects are rarely recognized as official languages, first of all linguists need a dedicated information management system providing the unambiguous identification of each dialect on the basis of geographical, administrative and geolinguistic parameters. Secondly, the information management system has to be designed to allow users to search the occurrences of a specific grammatical structure (e.g. a relative clause or a particular word order). Thirdly, user-friendly graphical interfaces must give easy access to language resources and make the building of the language resources easier and distributed. This work, which stems from a project named ASIt (Atlante Sintattico d’Italia), is a first step towards the creation of a European digital library for recording and studying linguistic micro-variation.

To re-rank or to re-query: can visual analytics solve this dilemma?

Evaluation has a crucial role in Information Retrieval (IR) since it allows for identifying possible points of failure of an IR approach, thus addressing them to improve its effectiveness. Developing tools to support researchers and analysts when analyzing results and investigating strategies to improve IR system performance can help make the analysis easier and more effective. In this paper we discuss a Visual Analytics-based approach to support the analyst when deciding whether or not to investigate re-ranking to improve the system effectiveness measured after a retrieval run. Our approach is based on effectiveness measures that exploit graded relevance judgements and it provides both a principled and intuitive way to support analysis. A prototype is described and exploited to discuss some case studies based on TREC data.

Direct: applying the DIKW hierarchy to large-scale evaluation campaigns

We describe the effort of designing and developing a digital library system able to manage the different types of information resources produced during a large-scale evaluation campaign and to support the different stages of it. In this context, we present DIRECT, the system which has been adopted to manage the CLEF evaluation campaigns since 2005.

Design of a Digital Library System for Large-Scale Evaluation Campaigns

This work describes the effort of designing and developing a Digital Library System (DLS) able to manage the different types of information resources produced during a large-scale evaluation campaign and to support the different stages of it. We discuss, in particular, the design of DIRECT, a DLS developed to assist the work of the actors of international evaluation campaigns.

ASIt: A Grammatical Survey of Italian Dialects and Cimbrian: Fieldwork, Data Management, and Linguistic Analysis

ASIt aims to observe, collect and analyse the linguistic variation displayed by the dialects of a language. The main theoretical hypothesis is that linguistic variation is not due to chance, but depends on the combination of a finite number of parameters. It is a first step towards the creation of a European digital library for recording and studying linguistic micro-variation.

The role of the dikw hierarchy in the design of a digital library system for the scientific data of large-scale evaluation campaigns

This paper exploit the DIKW hierarchy as a framework for modelling the scientific data produced during large-scale evaluation campaigns for information retrieval systems in order to design a digital library system able to manage and support the course of such evaluation campaigns.

PROMISE - Participative Research labOratory for Multimedia and Multilingual Information Systems Evaluation

Measuring is a key to scientific progress. This is particularly true for research concerning complex systems, whether natural or human-built. PROMISE will provide a virtual laboratory for conducting participative research and experimentation to carry out, advance and bring automation into the evaluation and benchmarking of complex multilingual and multimedia information systems.