While current search-engine technology uses algorithms that rely on keywords to uncover pertinent information, the research of Huang and his colleagues uses algorithms with a capacity for natural-language processing and contextual understanding that can uncover more complex information. Rather than looking for instances of words, these elaborate algorithms can make sense of the words. The applications of the research are vast.

Right: Jimmy Huang

They can analyze, for instance, the text of blog postings and the feedback of its respondents and then make humanlike, intuitional assessments of the information. “The analysis could indicate changes in public mood on certain issues, or rising or diminishing support for a certain political leader,” says Huang.

His technology research seeks to improve the health-care system by reducing costs and improving services. Huang advocates the digitizing of all health-care records – texts, charts, X-rays and other image files – and making them securely accessible on the Internet.

How will this improve health care? “One of the reasons that health care is so expensive is due to the incentive for doctors and specialists to provide unnecessary or duplicate services, and to the inefficiencies of a system that creates multiple, proprietary medical records,” says Huang. He cites the example of a general practitioner drawing blood for a test, then referring a patient to a specialist who might perform the same procedure again due to the inaccessibility of the original GP’s files.

“If there were one comprehensive set of records for the patient, centrally and securely available on the Internet, practitioners wouldn’t have to resort to phone calls and courier services to exchange information,” says Huang. Improved access to information could reduce services and associated costs while maintaining the same level of care. “It would also allow for a more global perspective on a patient’s health as various practitioners wouldn’t be limited in the scope of information available to them and, with the assistance of algorithms, could uncover heretofore unseen conditions.”

Huang offers another example of the benefit of centralized resources by citing his own experience with a leg injury. His doctor referred him to a specialist near his home. However, the specialist couldn’t fit him into his schedule for two months. By then, the injury was repaired on its own, for better or worse. A centralized information system could analyze a patient’s surroundings in a more subtle way, not simply in terms of where the GP’s office is situated, but where the patient lives or works. An advanced algorithm could locate an available specialist in another area who might be available sooner.

The sphere of application is, likewise, immense: from opinion mining and sentiment analysis to context-aware computing and social networking or matchmaking.

The joint 2010 International Conferences on Active Media Technology and Brain Informatics will be on the Keele campus from Aug. 28 to 30, and the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology will take place at 91��ɫ from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The 19th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2010) will be held at the Fairmont Royal 91��ɫ from Oct. 26 to 30.

“Bringing these venerable, annual conferences to 91��ɫ for the first time represents quite a coup for the University. Among the list of sponsors are some of the major companies involved in the information technology industry and the competition for papers among prospective participants was extremely competitive,” says Huang. “I’m very grateful for the support of the Offices of the Vice-President Academic & Provost and the Vice-President Research & Innovation, and the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“It raises some serious questions,” says Martel, who holds the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History. “What did they do with the information?”

Martel, along with co-author , a history professor at Laval University, cover 400 years of language issues in Canada – since the arrival of the first non-native – in their recently released book, . About half of it deals with the last 100 years, including the Quiet Revolution and the Official Language Act. Martel and Pâquet received a two-year Language Policy & Minority Rights grant from the Official Languages Issues in Canada Strategic Grants Program to research material for the book, which, at the moment, is only available in French.

“One of the reasons we wrote the book was to give a sense of where we’re coming from when we talk about language in Canada. It has characterized the way the country has developed since the arrival of the first non-native. This is not only about Quebec, the whole country has had to deal with this issue and it’s a very divisive issue,” says Martel. It’s reassuring to know that language issues have been with us for a long time, he says. They have not just appeared in the last 50 or so years.

But what surprised him was that the federal government felt it necessary for the RCMP to keep files on anyone involved in either side of the bilingualism debate during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal was to assess whether any one person or group constituted a national threat, to prevent social chaos and to ascertain if there were foreign spies behind the scenes, Martel says. But it was also part of a larger stalling tactic by the government to keep the status quo, as were the use of royal commissions and committees to study the issue.

Even today, the RCMP won’t release many of the documents from that time period saying they could constitute a security risk or jeopardize the conduct of international affairs or the defence of Canada, says Martel. When a document is released, most of it is usually blacked out.

Left: Marcel Martel

What the authors found, despite the government’s wish that the language issue would disappear, is that change was instigated not by MPs and other government officials, but by individuals. “It is people that forced government to deal with the issue,” says Martel. “The citizen, through demonstrations and petitions, has played a large role in the development of language policy in Canada.” The extent of that role surprised Martel.

He gives the example of Georges Forest, a Manitoba man in the mid-1970s who received a parking ticket or something similar, in English only. He was so mad he decided to challenge not the ticket itself, but the fact that it was not also in French. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which .

Martel also outlines how French-speaking parents won the right to send their kids to French-speaking schools outside of Quebec, run by French-speaking administrators. In 1982, Section 23 of the Constitution came into existence, which guaranteed this right to parents no matter where in Canada they live.

The language rights issue, however, is still far from over, he says. This is clear by the latest struggle in Moncton, New Brunswick, over calls for store signs to be posted in both official languages. It will be an issue that continues to shape Canada well into the future.

In addition, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has recently asked the federal court to intervene in the ongoing census debate, arguing that the long-term census form should remain because governments need the data on languages spoken at home.

Martel has already begun researching his next project, which will deal with the RCMP’s surveillance activities and operations regarding French-speaking groups, natives and African Canadians from about 1945 to 1984 when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created and took over the surveillance and security intelligence job. He has already published a paper in the Canadian Historical Review in June 2009 that looks at the RCMP and hippies, titled '', which he says “will in part contribute to the growing literature on state repression.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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