Semantic Web Technologies

Semantic Web in Comparison to Web2.0

by Parth Agarwal

TAGS: Semantic Web, Ontology, RDF, Twine, Metadata, Semantic Publishing

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined... more The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. It is also referred to as Web 3.0 and is an upcoming technology. The Semantic Web is a web of data. The Semantic Web is about two things: it is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources and about how the data relates to real world objects. Semantic Web can be considered a part of artificial intelligence as it puts into use Model theory, Web effect. Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Software AG, Mozilla and Yahoo! are some of the large corporations that have picked up this technology. This paper presents a comparison of Semantic Web and Web2.0 as well also discusses on the features and capabilities of Semantic Web.

Gathering, Translating, Enacting. A study of interdisciplinary research and development practices in Technology Enhanced Learning

by Sanna Rimpilainen

A PhD Thesis

This is an ethnographic case-study of research and development practices taking place in an interdisciplinary project... more This is an ethnographic case-study of research and development practices taking place in an interdisciplinary project between education and computer sciences. The Ensemble-project, part of the Technology Enhanced Learning programme (2008-12), has studied case-based learning in a number of diverse settings in Higher Education, working to develop semantic technologies for supporting that learning. Focussing on one of the six research settings, the discipline of archaeology, the current study has had three purposes. By opening up to scrutiny the practices of research and development, it has firstly sought to understand how a shared research question is answered in practice when divergent research approaches are brought to bear upon it. Secondly, the study has followed the emergence of a piece of semantic technology through these practices. The third aim has been to assess the advantages and disadvantages of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in studying unfolding, open-ended processes in real time. Through critical ethnographic participation, multiple ethnographic research methods, and by drawing on ANT as theoretical practice, the study has shown the precarious and unpredictable nature of research and development work, the political nature of research methods and how multiple realities can be produced using them, and the need for technology development to flexibly respond to changing circumstances. We have also seen the mutual adoption and extension of practices by the two strands of the project into each others’ domains, and how interdisciplinary tensions resolved, while they did not disappear, through pragmatic changes within the project. The study contributes to the interdisciplinary fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) where studies on the ‘soft sciences’, such as education, are few, and a new field of Studies in Social Science and Humanities (SSH) which is emerging alongside and from within the STS. Interdisciplinary endeavours between fields pertaining largely to the natural and the social sciences respectively have not been studied commonly within either field.

A data integration concept for an interdisciplinary research database

by Christian Willmes

WILLMES, C. and BARETH, G. (2012): A data integration concept for an interdisciplinary research database. In: Proceedings of the Young Researchers forum on Geographic Information Science - GI Zeitgeist, ifgiPrints 44, Münster, Germany, March 2012, ISBN: 978-3-89838-663-0, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft AKA, Heidelberg, pp. 67 - 72.

This paper presents an overview of the current state of development of an archaeological and a palaeoenvironmental... more This paper presents an overview of the current state of development of an archaeological and a palaeoenvironmental data model for an interdisciplinary research database. The models are constructed iteratively by integrating heterogeneous data and adjusting the model where necessary. The integration concept is an iterative approach which combines several techniques for data model development, including semantic and syntactic integration and alignment, as well as semantic data linkage with external knowledgebases and models. The goal is to provide integrated spatio-temporal access to an existing wealth of data to facilitate research on the integrated data basis.

Technically approaching the semantic web bottleneck

by Nikolaos Konstantinou

Co-authored with Dimitrios-Emmanuel Spanos, Periklis Stavrou and Nikolas Mitrou, in International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology (IJWET), 6(1): 83-111, 2010

After several years of research, the fundamental semantic web technologies have reached a high maturity level.... more After several years of research, the fundamental semantic web technologies have reached a high maturity level. Nevertheless, the average web user has not yet taken advantage of their full potential. In this paper, we introduce the semantic web bottleneck, analyse the main problems that preserve it and suggest ways to overcome it. In particular, we discuss the issues involved in deploying, maintaining and using semantically rich web applications, decomposing this process into two primal ones: publishing and exploiting semantic content. We analyse the role of key players such as the web industry, the search engines, the academia, the web user, and the web engineers that essentially materialise and use these technologies. A roadmap is provided in order for the semantic web to gain further acceptance, based on three major axes: simplicity, mainly entailed by automation, integration with the existing technologies and practices, and adoption by the web industry driving forces.

Aperfeiçoando a navegação hiperbólica em um repositório de documentos por meio das tecnologias da Web Semântica (Improving hyperbolic browsing in a document repository using Semantic Web technologies)

by Ivan Ricarte

Co-authored with Kadu ND Pereira. Published in Encontro dos Alunos e Docentes do Departamento de Engenharia de Computação e Automação Industrial, 2010. In Portuguese.

Access to a set of documents whose content was classified according to a hierarchical structure of topics can be... more Access to a set of documents whose content was classified according to a hierarchical structure of topics can be facilitated with the use of hyperbolic trees. However, this mechanism restricts the navigation to the topics selected for the organization of the hierarchy, eventually leaving to take for shipping other similarities or relationships between documents that have been classified into distinct branches of the hierarchy. The objective of this study is to explore this possibility, using for that purpose metadata associated with documents. Considering the particular case of documents on the Web, the appropriate mechanism for the organization of metadata is the use of Resource Description Framework (RDF), one of the key technologies of the Semantic Web. The adoption of such technology could allow, in future, the integration of this application to other Semantic Web.

Semantic Search and Browsing nei Beni Culturali

by Claudio Cortese

in "Bollettino del CILEA", 118, dicembre 2011, pp. 26-30

Il Semantic Web per i beni culturali: esperienze pratiche al CILEA

by Claudio Cortese

Atti del workshop "AI & Cultural Heritage" - Palermo - 15 settembre 2011
(co-authored with G. Mantegari)

Facilitating ontology development with continuous evaluation

by Dejan Lavbič

Published in Informatica journal and co-authored with Marjan Krisper.

In this paper we propose facilitating ontology development by constant evaluation of steps in the process of ontology... more In this paper we propose facilitating ontology development by constant evaluation of steps in the process of ontology development. Existing methodologies for ontology development are complex and they require technical knowledge that business users and developers don’t poses. By introducing ontology completeness indicator developer is guided throughout the development process and constantly aided by recommendations to progress to next step and improve the quality of ontology. In evaluating the ontology, several aspects are considered; from description, partition, consistency, redundancy and to anomaly. The applicability of the approach was demonstrated on Financial Instruments and Trading Strategies (FITS) ontology with comparison to other approaches.

Zu europäischen Völker-und Ortsnamen als Basis für osmanisch-türkische Phraseologismen

by Marek Stachowski

EIAH data model: Semantic interoperability among distributed digital repositories

by Emad Khazraee

Co-authored with Moaddeli, S., Sanjari, A., & Shakeri, S. (2011).
Aslib Proceedings, 63(1), 46-56.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a clear image of the information architecture used in the... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a clear image of the information architecture used in the Encyclopedia of Iranian Architectural History (EIAH) and to show how it was crafted to meet the need for accessibility, expressiveness and interoperability.

Design/methodology/approach – In order to assess the level of interoperability in the system, two essential concepts of the system are identified and traced in every level of the three-layer information architecture. Federated repositories are studied for the level of accessibility that they can offer. Knowledge representation level, mediator level and the semantic portal are studied for expressiveness capabilities.

Findings – EIAH information architecture is capable of establishing links among resources available in the information pools connected to the system by using EIAH metadata application profile (EMAP). Different modules in this architecture, which are localized for the Persian language, can work on similar environments for other languages, for example Arabic.

Originality/value – EIAH is the first example of a digital encyclopedia for the history of Iranian architecture, which is basically different from other digital encyclopedias in the way that it offers information to users. EIAH is aimed at domain experts and provides them not with pre-written and quality articles but with a wide range of resources and documents relative to what they are seeking.

Extending the Digital Archives of the Italian Psychology with Semantic Data

by Claudio Cortese

presented at Semantic Digital Archives International Workshop, 29 September 2011, Berlin (co-authored with G. Mantegari)

Una Biblioteca Digitale Semantica per il Comune di Milano

by Claudio Cortese

Bollettino del CILEA, giugno 2009, pp. 4-13 (co-authored with M. Barbera, E. Groppo, R. Zitarosa)

Semantically Enabling the SEMAT Project: Extending Marine Sensor Networks for Decision Support and Hypothesis Testing

by Trina Myers

Graphity - A Generic Linked Data Framework

by Julius Šėporaitis

A position paper for W3C Linked Enterprise Data Patterns workshop (http://www.w3.org/2011/09/LinkedData/)

Co-authored with Martynas Jusevičius and Aleksandras Smirnovas

Before building the danish entertainment site HeltNormalt we were facing architectural and design decisions. As a... more Before building the danish entertainment site HeltNormalt we were facing architectural and design decisions. As a successor of the daily Wulffmorgenthaler comic strip, it had to include a dozen of content types, containing (one or more) images, plain text, XHTML, or a combination of these.

We chose Linked Data as the primary design principle, and this choice brought us a number of great advantages. We would like to share the knowledge we gathered during our development process and show that Linked Data can both be used to build mainstream websites, as well as serve as a platform for the next generation of innovative data-driven Web applications.

Mobilities, moorings and boundary-making in developing semantic technologies in educational practices

by Katy Jordan

Edwards, R., Tracy, F. and Jordan, K. (2011) Mobilities, moorings and boundary-making in developing semantic technologies in educational practices. Research in Learning Technology 19(3), 219-232.

While much attention has been given to the changing spaces of education introduced by new technologies, the impact of... more While much attention has been given to the changing spaces of education introduced by new technologies, the impact of spatial theory on the discussion of such education is less well developed. Drawing upon empirical evidence from the Ensemble research project, this article examines spatially some of the possibilities and constraints that arise in the introduction of semantic technologies into case-based learning in higher education. While the affordances of the semantic web provide a technological basis for the development of flexible tools and associated pedagogies in ways that could enhance case-based learning, there are many tensions in this process. In this article, we draw upon certain aspects of spatial theory to examine the ways in which the mobilities and openings made possible by the introduction of semantic technologies also entail mooring and boundary marking in order to give the technologies specifically educational purposes. We suggest how educational practices can be considered theoretically as spatial orderings and some of the implications.

959 Nematode Genomes: a semantic wiki for coordinating sequencing projects

by Sujai Kumar

co-authored with Philipp Schiffer and Mark Blaxter
published in NAR Database issue

Genome sequencing has been democratized by second-generation technologies, and even small labs can sequence metazoan... more Genome sequencing has been democratized by second-generation technologies, and even small labs can sequence metazoan genomes now. In this article, we describe ‘959 Nematode Genomes’—a community-curated semantic wiki to coordinate the sequencing efforts of individual labs to collectively sequence 959 genomes spanning the phylum Nematoda. The main goal of the wiki is to track sequencing projects that have been proposed, are in progress, or have been completed. Wiki pages for species and strains are linked to pages for people and organizations, using machine- and human-readable metadata that users can query to see the status of their favourite worm. The site is based on the same platform that runs Wikipedia, with semantic extensions that allow the underlying taxonomy and data storage models to be maintained and updated with ease compared with a conventional database-driven web site. The wiki also provides a way to track and share preliminary data if those data are not polished enough to be submitted to the official sequence repositories. In just over a year, this wiki has already fostered new international collaborations and attracted newcomers to the enthusiastic community of nematode genomicists. www.nematodegenomes.org.

Distributed and Reactive Query Planning In R-MAGIC: An Agent-Based Multimedia Retrieval System

by Hiranmay Ghosh

Ontology specification and integration for multimedia applications

by Hiranmay Ghosh

Using multimedia ontology for generating conceptual annotations and hyperlinks in video collections

by Hiranmay Ghosh

KnowBaSICS-M: An Ontology-Based System for Semantic Management of Medical Problems and Computerised Algorithmic Solutions

by Bratsas Charalampos