Designing an automated FAQ answering system for farmers based on hybrid strategies

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an automated frequently asked question(FAQ) answering system for farmers. This paper presents an approach for calculating the similarity between Chinese sentences based on hybrid strategies.Design/methodology/approach: We analyzed the factors influencing the successful matching between a user's question and a question-answer(QA) pair in the FAQ database. Our approach is based on a combination of multiple factors. Experiments were conducted to test the performance of our method.Findings: Experiments show that this proposed method has higher accuracy. Compared with similarity calculation based on TF-IDF,the sentence surface forms and the semantic relations,the proposed method based on hybrid strategies has a superior performance in precision,recall and F-measure value.Research limitations: The FAQ answering system is only capable of meeting users' demand for text retrieval at present. In the future,the system needs to be improved to meet users' demand for retrieving images and videos.Practical implications: This FAQ answering system will help farmers utilize agricultural information resources more efficiently.Originality/value: We design the algorithms for calculating similarity of Chinese sentences based on hybrid strategies,which integrate the question surface similarity,the question semantic similarity and the question-answer similarity based on latent semantic analysis(LSA) to find answers to a user's question.

A comparative study of information visualization from the perspective of intellectual base: Using WoS and CSSCI

Purpose: Focusing on a comparative analysis of information visualization in library and information science(LIS) from the perspective of research subject and intellectual base, this paper aims to discover the difference and coherence between Chinese domestic studies on information visualization and those of other areas of the world so as to show their theoretical foundation and development trend in a more objective way.Design/methodology/approach: By using the social network analysis tool Ucinet, we have first constructed networks of key author collaboration for 651 articles retrieved from the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index(CSSCI) and 910 from the Web of Science(WoS),which were published on information visualization between 1998 and 2012 in library and information science, then we compared the intellectual base by mapping analysis from perspective of half-life, centrality and burst detection with CiteSpace II.Findings: Up to date, 51 countries and regions have contributed to the research of information visualization, and in total, we found 9 research clusters of author co-occurrence matrices,among which three are in China. Within Chinese co-author networks, most Chinese scholars have come from the same research institutions, that is to say, more international cooperation and exchange are still required for the research of information visualization across different disciplines and regions.Research limitations: This co-author network and co-citation analysis is mainly based on the research field of LIS with a focus of the WoS and CSSCI databases only, further samples are required for more generalized results to increase our understanding on the development trend of information visualization.Practical implications: This study could lead to a better understanding of the applications of information visualization technologies in discovering the development trend of a research field. Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative analysis of research subject and intellectual base on information visualization, specifically, from the perspective of contributions of Chinese scholars in this regard. By dividing most frequently cited Chinese literature into two categories(original and non-original research papers), this paper shows the extent of contributions that Chinese domestic scholars have made to the research of information visualization, by revealing the contributions of different types of Chinese domestic papers on information visualization.

电酶级联催化体系应用于手性环氧化催化

The chiral epoxidation of styrene and its derivatives is an important transformation that has attracted considerable scientific interest in the chemical industry.Herein,we integrate enzymatic catalysis and electrocatalysis to propose a new route for the chiral epoxidation of styrene and its derivatives.Chloroperoxidase(CPO)functionalized with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide(ILEMB)was loaded onto cobalt nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes(CoN@CNT)to form a biohybrid(CPO-ILEMB/CoN@CNT).H_(2)O_(2)species were generated in situ through a two-electron oxygen reduction reaction(2e–ORR)at CoN@CNT to initiate the following enzymatic epoxidation of styrene by CPO.CoN@CNT had high electroactivity for the ORR to produce H_(2)O_(2)at a more positive potential,prohibiting the conversion of FeⅢ to FeⅡ in the heme of CPO to maintain enzymatic activity.Meanwhile,CoN@CNT could serve as an ideal carrier for the immobilization of CPO-ILEMB.Hence,the coimmobilization of CPO-ILEMB and CoN@CNT could facilitate the diffusion of intermediate H_(2)O_(2),which achieved 17 times higher efficiency than the equivalent amounts of free CPO-ILEMB in bulk solution for styrene epoxidation.Notably,an enhancement(~45%)of chiral selectivity for the epoxidation of styrene was achieved.