Research on Mechanism and Challenges in Meta Search Engines

A Meta Search Engine (MSE) produces results gathered from other search engine (SE) on a given query. In brief MSEs have single interface corresponding to multiple searches. MSE employs their own algorithm to display search results. This paper reviews existing Meta Search Engines like Yippy, eTools.ch, Carrot2, qksearch and iBoogie commonly used for searching. This paper surveys and analysed the working of different result merging algorithms. Current research reviews MSE based on different approaches like clustering technique. Few MSEs are employing Neural networks for searching. Further it also discusses problem in existing MSEs.

A Study of Various Result Merging Strategies for a Meta Search Engine

As the amount of data is growing day by day, the sources for these data are also growing simultaneously and to search through this very data, we need the use of search engines. Since each search engine is limited to its confined set of data, it would be even better to make use of a Meta search engine which will give us more relevant results than the ones obtained from any single search engine. It acts as an interface that provides the user with a single view from the various underlying search engines. The data is collected from these underlying search engines after they are accessed with the processed query from the Meta search engine. The collected data is merged using an algorithm and the algorithm will be a major factor in giving the best possible results. In this paper, we are going to discuss about the various existing metasearch engines and the different merging techniques and their approaches.

Retrieving Vertical Air Velocity in Convective Cloud over the Tibetan Plateau from TIPEX-III Cloud Radar Doppler Spectra

In the summertime, convections occur frequently over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) because of the large dynamic and thermal effects of the landmass. Measurements of vertical air velocity in convective cloud are useful for advancing our understanding of the dynamic and microphysical mechanisms of clouds and can be used to improve the parameterization of current numerical models. This paper presents a technique for retrieving high-resolution vertical air velocity from convective cloud over the TP, by using Doppler spectra from a vertically pointing Ka-band cloud radar. The method is based on the development of a “small-particle-traced” idea and the necessary data processing and uses three modes of radar. Spectral broadening corrections, uncertainty estimations, and result merging are used to ensure accurate results. Qualitative analysis of two typical convective cases shows that the retrievals are reliable and agree with the expectant results inferred from other radar measurements. A quantitative retrieval of vertical air motion from a ground-based optical disdrometer is used to preliminarily validate our radar-derived results. The comparison illustrates that while the data trends from the two methods of retrieval are similar, with the updrafts and downdrafts coinciding, cloud radar has a much higher resolution and can reveal the small-scale variation of vertical air motion.

Improving Results Aggregation Strategies in Distributed Information Retrieval

The top-ranked documents from various information sources that are merged together into a unified ranked list may cover the same piece of relevant information, and cannot satisfy different user needs. Result diversification(RD) solves this problem by diversifying results to cover more information needs. In recent times, RD has attracted much attention as a means of increasing user satisfaction in general purpose search engines. A myriad of approaches have been proposed in the related works for the diversification problem. However, no concrete study of search result diversification has been done in a Distributed Information Retrieval(DIR) setting. In this paper, we survey, classify and propose a theoretical framework that aims at improving diversification at the result merging phase of a DIR environment.

Distributed Information Retrieval: Developments and Strategies

Opposed to centralized search where Websites are crawled and indexed, Distributed Information Retrieval (DIR), also known as Federated Search, is a powerful way to comprehensively search multiple databases in real-time simultaneously. DIR is preferred to centralized search environments in a number of ways, characteristically among them are: 1. the diversity of resources that are made available; 2. improving scalability and reducing server load and network traffic; 3. the leverage of accessing the hidden or deep Web.There are three major phases/tasks of a DIR (i) resource description or collection representation (ii) resource selection and (iii) result merging. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive review on the various phases of DIR and also some current strategies being recommended in enhancing and improving the smooth implementation of a DIR system.