Opening up Magpie via semantic services

Magpie is a suite of tools supporting a ‘zero-cost’ approach to semantic web browsing: it avoids the need for manual annotation by automatically associating an ontology-based semantic layer to web resources. An important aspect of Magpie, which differentiates it from superficially similar hypermedia systems, is that the association between items on a web page and semantic concepts is not merely a mechanism for dynamic linking, but it is the enabling condition for locating services and making them available to a user. These services can be manually activated by a user (pull services), or opportunistically triggered when the appropriate web entities are encountered during a browsing session (push services). In this paper we analyze Magpie from the perspective of building semantic web applications and we note that earlier implementations did not fulfill the criterion of “open as to services”, which is a key aspect of the emerging semantic web. For this reason, in the past twelve months we have carried out a radical redesign of Magpie, resulting in a novel architecture, which is open both with respect to ontologies and semantic web services. This new architecture goes beyond the idea of merely providing support for semantic web browsing and can be seen as a software framework for designing and implementing semantic web applications

Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Study on the performance enhancement of biomedical implants: in vitro test under UV irradiation of titanium anodised in mixed electrolyte

Titanium (Ti) recently has widely been used in the biomedical applications due to its high performance. Therefore, surface modifications of titanium have attracted a lot of interest to provide better osseointegration. Ti was subjected to anodic oxidation process and in vitro testing to assess the bioactivity of titanium oxide (TiO2) coating. TiO2 coating has been anodised at room temperature in different electrolyte; in sulphuric acid (H2SO4); phosphoric acid (H3PO4); and a mixture of H2SO4 and H3PO4 acids. The parameters used in anodization were: concentration of the electrolytes, applied voltage and current density. The coated surface is then evaluated using different testing techniques; the microstructure using scanning electron microscope (SEM); the elemental analysis using Energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX); mineralogical and crystal structure using x-ray diffraction (XRD); absorption analysis using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR); and the hydrophilicity using water contact angle (WCA). TiO2 was then subjected in vitro testing to assess the bioactivity of TiO2 surface; that is the apatite formation ability. The apatite formation of the TiO2 coating was precipitated by using simulated body fluid (SBF) in the dark and under the ultraviolet (UV) irradiation to mimic the reactions that may occur with the human bone-like cells layer. The testing was done to evaluate the apatite’s microstructure, mineralogy, elements and absorption. From the results it was found that higher apatite was obtained with the increased of the immersion time; higher apatite formation and crystallization was found at earlier time of immersion for the TiO2 that was immersed in SBF under the UV; higher apatite was obtained on the TiO2 coatings that were anodised in H2SO4, H3PO4 and mixture electrolyte at lower electrolyte concentration. The increased apatite on these coatings can be related to the strong Ti-O- functional groups on the coating surface. The highest apatite was obtained on the TiO2 coating that was anodised in a mixture electrolyte that has obtained Ti-OH functional group. The UV has resulted in the increased Ti-O- and Ti-OH groups, thus higher apatite precipitation ability

Including the most vulnerable : social funds and people with disabilities

People with disabilities face many of the challenges that other vulnerable groups face, such as lack of adequate support services in their communities, lack of resources and economic opportunities, and physical and attitudinal barriers to their participating fully in society. One of the best-established World Bank instruments for targeting poor, and vulnerable groups is social funds. The authors review the extent of current disability activities within World Bank-financed social funds, and provide recommendations, and resources for increasing support for persons with disabilities in social fund subprojects. Among other initiatives, social funds can provide infrastructure, and services that people with disabilities can use, support organizations that help persons with disabilities formulate, and demand projects, and promote greater public understanding of disability issues.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Social Cohesion,Social Protections&Assistance,Community Development and Empowerment,ICT Policy and Strategies

Towards Model-Driven Development of Access Control Policies for Web Applications

We introduce a UML-based notation for graphically modeling systems’ security aspects in a simple and intuitive way and a model-driven process that transforms graphical specifications of access control policies in XACML. These XACML policies are then translated in FACPL, a policy language with a formal semantics, and the resulting policies are evaluated by means of a Java-based software tool

Introduction

This book brings together for the first time the collected wisdom of international leaders in the theory and practice in the emerging field of cultural heritage crowdsourcing. It features eight accessible case studies of groundbreaking projects from leading cultural heritage and academic institutions, and four thought-­‐provoking essays that reflect on the wider implications of this engagement for participants and on the institutions themselves

A Query Integrator and Manager for the Query Web

We introduce two concepts: the Query Web as a layer of interconnected queries over the document web and the semantic web, and a Query Web Integrator and Manager (QI) that enables the Query Web to evolve. QI permits users to write, save and reuse queries over any web accessible source, including other queries saved in other installations of QI. The saved queries may be in any language (e.g. SPARQL, XQuery); the only condition for interconnection is that the queries return their results in some form of XML. This condition allows queries to chain off each other, and to be written in whatever language is appropriate for the task. We illustrate the potential use of QI for several biomedical use cases, including ontology view generation using a combination of graph-based and logical approaches, value set generation for clinical data management, image annotation using terminology obtained from an ontology web service, ontology-driven brain imaging data integration, small-scale clinical data integration, and wider-scale clinical data integration. Such use cases illustrate the current range of applications of QI and lead us to speculate about the potential evolution from smaller groups of interconnected queries into a larger query network that layers over the document and semantic web. The resulting Query Web could greatly aid researchers and others who now have to manually navigate through multiple information sources in order to answer specific questions