Du TALN au LOD : Extraction d'entités, liage, et visualisation

National audienceDans un contexte de veille stratégique, nous avons développé un prototype prenant la forme d'un plugin de navigateur ayant pour principale ambition d'enrichir les connaissances des utilisateurs naviguant sur le Web. Au fur et à mesure de la navigation sur le Web, le système peuple la base de connaissance et tisse des liens avec le Web des données ouvertes que l'utilisateur peut parcourir. Ce prototype s'appuie et démontre en pratique des techniques d'extraction d'entités d'intérêts et de leurs relations dans une page Web couplées à une représentation des connaissances extraites au format du web sémantique et liées avec des données du Linked Open Data. Finalement le plugin propose une visualisation en temps réel de l'ensemble de ces données liées en regard des pages consultées

ProVoc : une ontologie pour décrire des produits sur le Web

National audienceDe nombreuses recherches ont depuis longtemps motivé l'utilisation d'ontologies pour répondre aux besoins de représentation du e-Commerce. Dans cet article, nous présentons ProVoc (Product Vocabulary), une ontologie ayant pour objectif de décrire des produits sur le Web. Complémentaire à GoodRelations (Hepp, 2008), l'ontologie au format du Web sémantique la plus utilisée dans le monde du e-Commerce, Provoc se concentre sur une représentation fine des produits et de leurs entités relatives (gammes des produits, composition des produits, etc.). L'utilisation conjointe des deux ontologies permet d'élargir l'espace des requêtes de l'utilisateur. Par exemple : « Quels sont les produits qui contiennent des ingrédients néfastes pour la santé ? Qui les vend ? ». Nous montrons par le biais de requêtes SPARQL que nos scénarios trouvent une formulation adéquate et une représentation pertinente avec ProVoc. Enfin, une application de veille stratégique dans le domaine de la cosmétique est présentée

SMILK, trait d'union entre langue naturelle et données sur le web

National audienceAs part of the SMILK Joint Lab, we studied the use of Natural Language Processing to: (1) enrich knowledge bases and link data on the web, and conversely (2) use this linked data to contribute to the improvement of text analysis and the annotation of textual content, and to support knowledge extraction. The evaluation focused on brand-related information retrieval in the field of cosmetics. This article describes each step of our approach: the creation of ProVoc, an ontology to describe products and brands; the automatic population of a knowledge base mainly based on ProVoc from heterogeneous textual resources; and the evaluation of an application which that takes the form of a browser plugin providing additional knowledge to users browsing the web.Le laboratoire commun SMILK avait pour double sujet d'étude l'utilisation du traitement automatique du langage naturel pour aider à la construction et au liage de données sur le web et, à l'inverse, l'utilisation de ces données liées du web sémantique pour aider à l'analyse des textes et venir en appui de l'extraction de connaissances et l'annotation de contenus textuels. L'évaluation de nos travaux s'est focalisée sur la recherche d'informations portant sur des marques, plus particulièrement dans le domaine de la cosmétique. Cet article décrit chaque étape de notre approche : la conception de ProVoc, une ontologie pour décrire les produits et marques ; le peuplement automatique d'une base de connaissances reposant notamment sur ProVoc à partir de ressources textuelles hétérogènes; et l'évaluation d'une application prenant la forme d'un plugin de navigateur proposant des connaissances supplémentaires aux utilisateurs naviguant sur le web

Indigenous Children’s Literature In Transformation

Children’s Literature makes a significant contribution to the diverse and dynamic cultural geographies which constitute contemporary Western society. Indigenous children’s literature, in particular, reflects both the way a society likes to see itself and the way it actually is. Not surprisingly, these two visions rarely coincide, although they are constantly under revision in response to the pressures of twenty-first century life. This is evident when a comparative approach is taken to Indigenous children’s literature in such countries as Australia and Canada, whose treatment of their Indigenous peoples is both strikingly similar and remarkably different. For example, movement from the early treatment in Australia of David Unaipon’s work to such recent picture-books as Henry Cook Jakamarra’s (Warlpirir) Dreaming narrative The Two Wallabies and Matingali Napanangka Mudgedell’s (Kukatja) The Cocky, The Crow and the Hawk is illuminated when considered alongside Susan Jeffers’ Brother Eagle, Sister Sky (Canada) and Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp’s Giving Thanks, A Native American Good Morning Message. Each of these texts engages with everyday life, mapping as it does so a diversity of cultural geographies and utilising the visual as well as written text in which a variety of voices can be heard in dialogue and dispute. As such, it can be argued that much children’s literature could also be described as a form of resistance literature. Possibly its greatest power derives from the fact that the process of communicating stories to children – whether in the spoken or written form – is integral to the development and continuation of ideology in any society. An understanding of this process provides valuable insight into the socio-cultural and political transformations that marked the latter part of the twentieth century and continue to mark the early years of the twenty-first

Investigating business' contribution to climate change governance in areas of limited statehood: the case of South Africa and Kenya

Climate change and the related social and economic challenges present society with problems at multiple levels. There is a diverse range of actors who are contributing to climate change governance, including those who are going to be affected by the impacts. In areas of limited statehood were states have varying degrees of deficits in their abilities to steer effective climate change mitigation and adaptation, private actors such as business organisations are expected to step in. This research set to investigate how and why companies in South Africa and Kenya contribute to climate change governance. South Africa and Kenya are selected because they represent areas which have varying levels of limited statehood. The results from the content analysis and the case studies reveal that companies’ climate change governance contributions can be characterised into four configurations: laggards, emergent planners, efficiency drivers and visionaries. The laggards display very limited responses and if anything adopt cosmetic initiatives. The majority of Kenyan and South African firms are in this cluster. Emergent planners are in the early stages of implementing self-regulatory initiatives mostly at the firm level. The efficiency drivers which consist of mostly energy intensive companies engage in co-regulation which involves partnering with the state to set and implement rules in energy efficiency accords in both countries. The firms, in turn, self-regulate themselves by internally implementing the energy efficiency accord guidelines. The final configurations, the visionaries, make more comprehensive mitigation and adaptation governance contributions focusing on collective self-regulation and adopting the role of the “inspector” along their supply chain. On the basis of these empirical findings, the research identifies different ways in which the institutional, organisational and issue specific drivers interact to explain the variations in firms’ governance contributions between countries, sectors and different companies. First, corporate climate change governance contributions vary between South Africa and Kenya as a result of the countries’ different levels of statehood. South African firms are more responsive to climate change than Kenyan companies because they are more exposed to the shadow of hierarchy. Statehood is a significant factor in the context of possible alternative explanations. Second, the climate change governance contributions vary between sectors due to the combined effect of the shadow of anarchy and the task complexity associated with securing energy or water supply among “high salience” sectors. Furthermore, carbon intensive sectors have strong associations which enable them to address collective problems linked to climate change. Lastly, there are significant levels of variance in the governance contributions between the different types of companies, that is, between large, multinational companies and smaller, domestic firms. The large firms engage in more comprehensive mitigation and adaptation efforts due to organisational factors which include “asset specificity” and organisational resources

Brand Response to Consumer Backlash in Social Media: A Typology

The use of social media by consumers to admonish firms for their conduct has become increasingly common. Such backlash can take many forms and often occurs rapidly, spreads widely and is highly visible. The potential damage to brands can be severe if these situations are not dealt with effectively. To date, the issue has been examined relatively superficially in a range of disciplines without specific regard to the management of consumer-brand relationships in online environments. Our research examines the nature of company reactions to social media backlash and conceptualises a typology that categorises reputational damage and effective response. We present four typical reactionary scenarios and conclude that insufficient research exists in this domain proportionate to the level of consumer-brand social media discourse to the peril of practitioners operating via these channel

Ill. teach. home econ. (1973)

Description based on: Vol. 17, no. 2 (Nov.-Dec. 1973); title from cover.Education index 0013-1385 -1992Current index to journals in education 0011-3565Bibliography of agriculture 0006-153

Firm-level upgrading in low-and-medium-technology industries in emerging markets: the role of learning in networks

This thesis investigates how involvement in networks contributes to firm-level upgrading in emerging markets. In the 1990s, the international de-localisation of production and global integration has brought about a process of upgrading for firms in the transition and latecomer industrialising countries that allowed them to approach the technological frontier and enhance their competitive position. Hence, the firm-level upgrading became a process of improving technological and organisational deficiencies in the firms’ knowledge base, particularly through knowledge transfer and learning in networks they have involved in, enabling them to adjust to the new environment by doing things differently and/or better as well as doing different things. The literature on upgrading stresses the effects of value chains and production networks on industrial upgrading, while the role of various learning mechanisms is largely unexplored. Employing an evolutionary perspective, this thesis contributes to existing analyses by considering the role of knowledge networks and by using ‘learning in networks’ as a bridging concept, by which the interaction between inter- and intraorganisational knowledge transfer is demonstrated to have significant bearing on hastening the process of catching-up in emerging markets. Specifically, this thesis examines what characteristics of the networks of Polish food-processing and clothing firms affect learning mechanisms in an inter-organisational context and how these mechanisms combined with internal factors supporting internalisation of externally acquired knowledge (including firm strategy orientation) contribute to various types of firm-level upgrading during the period 1989-2001. Methodologically, this thesis proposes a dynamic model of firm-level upgrading with a novel unit of analysis: the relationships of the firm. So, rather than using firm case studies, it provides statistical evidence typically lacking in the upgrading research, while not sacrificing the in-depth nature of case studies, as each relationship of the firms studied has been investigated through face-to-face interviews that are translated into a dataset of relationships analysed using multinomial logistic regressions. First, the network-related characteristics of external learning mechanisms were identified and then used as a reference point in the upgrading analysis. The results for product upgrading largely confirm the previous findings in the literature. However, the upgrading of production processes is a function of learning from advances in science and technology through knowledge networks. Strikingly, learning-by-interacting in production networks actually appears to impede managerial (rather than functional) upgrading, a previously unexplored upgrading type, which is also shown to be a prerequisite for functional upgrading. While learning-by-training and research within the firm is a potent condition for external learning mechanisms to contribute to all of the upgrading types, for successful functional upgrading, it is a must. These findings show the importance of the use of an integrative approach to learning in research on upgrading