Friday, October 17, 2003

Concept Analyser

Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom "How well computers truly make sense of what they are reading is, of course, highly questionable, and most of those who use text-mining software say that it works best when guided by smart people with knowledge of the particular subject."

"In one instance, a reference to a neural phenomenon called "spreading depression" caused him to look for articles with that term in their titles. Reading those pieces, he found that magnesium was often mentioned as preventing this spreading depression. Other connections to magnesium deficiencies started to appear, so he dug further. In a 1988 paper on his research, he wrote, "One is led to the conjecture that magnesium deficiency might be a causal factor in migraine."

Today, Dr. Swanson's work is considered significant both for migraine studies and for text mining. The link between the headaches and magnesium deficiency was soon backed up by actual experiments."

No comments: