7,628 research outputs found

    Creating a Relational Distributed Object Store

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    In and of itself, data storage has apparent business utility. But when we can convert data to information, the utility of stored data increases dramatically. It is the layering of relation atop the data mass that is the engine for such conversion. Frank relation amongst discrete objects sporadically ingested is rare, making the process of synthesizing such relation all the more challenging, but the challenge must be met if we are ever to see an equivalent business value for unstructured data as we already have with structured data. This paper describes a novel construct, referred to as a relational distributed object store (RDOS), that seeks to solve the twin problems of how to persistently and reliably store petabytes of unstructured data while simultaneously creating and persisting relations amongst billions of objects.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

    The Requirements for Ontologies in Medical Data Integration: A Case Study

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    Evidence-based medicine is critically dependent on three sources of information: a medical knowledge base, the patients medical record and knowledge of available resources, including where appropriate, clinical protocols. Patient data is often scattered in a variety of databases and may, in a distributed model, be held across several disparate repositories. Consequently addressing the needs of an evidence-based medicine community presents issues of biomedical data integration, clinical interpretation and knowledge management. This paper outlines how the Health-e-Child project has approached the challenge of requirements specification for (bio-) medical data integration, from the level of cellular data, through disease to that of patient and population. The approach is illuminated through the requirements elicitation and analysis of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA), one of three diseases being studied in the EC-funded Health-e-Child project.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Presented at the 11th International Database Engineering & Applications Symposium (Ideas2007). Banff, Canada September 200

    Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

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    In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

    The Evolution of myExperiment

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    The myExperiment social website for sharing scientific workflows, designed according to Web 2.0 principles, has grown to be the largest public repository of its kind. It is distinctive for its focus on sharing methods, its researcher-centric design and its facility to aggregate content into sharable 'research objects'. This evolution of myExperiment has occurred hand in hand with its users. myExperiment now supports Linked Data as a step toward our vision of the future research environment, which we categorise here as '3rd generation e-Research'

    Sustainability and Food: a Text Analysis of the Scientific Literature

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    The paper analyses the evolution of the research debate related to sustainability and to the relation between food and sustainability. A number of text analysis techniques were combined for the investigation of scientific papers. The results stress how discourse analysis of sustainability in the pre-Rio period is mostly associated with agriculture and with a vision where the ecological and environmental aspects are dominant. In the post-Rio phase, the discussion about sustainability, though still strongly linked to environmental issues, enters a holistic dimension that includes social elements. The themes of energy and the sustainability of urban areas become central, and the scientific debate stresses the importance of indicators within an assessment approach linked to the relevance of planning and intervention aspects. The focus on the role of food within the debate on sustainability highlights a food security oriented approach in the pre-Rio phase, with a particular attention towards agriculture and third world Countries. In the post-Rio period, the focus of the analysis moves towards developed Countries. Even though food security remains a strongly significant element of the debate, the attention shifts towards consumers and food choices
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