Semantic learning webs

By 2020, microprocessors will likely be as cheap and plentiful as scrap paper,scattered by the millions into the environment, allowing us to place intelligent systems everywhere. This will change everything around us, including the nature of commerce, the wealth of nations, and the way we communicate, work, play, and live. This will give us smart homes, cars, TVs , jewellery, and money. We will speak to our appliances, and they will speak back. Scientists also expect the Internet will wire up the entire planet and evolve into a membrane consisting of millions of computer networks, creating an “intelligent planet.” The Internet will eventually become a “Magic Mirror” that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race. Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the Twenty - First Century, 1998 If the semantic web needed a symbol, a good one to use would be a Navaho dream-catcher: a small web, lovingly hand-crafted, [easy] to look at, and rumored to catch dreams; but really more of a symbol than a reality. Pat Hayes, Catching the Dreams, 2002 Though it is almost impossible to envisage what the Web will be like by the end of the next decade, we can say with some certainty that it will have continued its seemingly unstoppable growth. Given the investment of time and money in the Semantic Web (Berners-Lee et al., 2001), we can also be sure that some form of semanticization will have taken place. This might be superficial - accomplished simply through the addition of loose forms of meta-data mark-up, or more principled – grounded in ontologies and formalised by means of emerging semantic web standards, such as RDF (Lassila and Swick, 1999) or OWL (Mc Guinness and van Harmelen, 2003). Whatever the case, the addition of semantic mark-up will make at least part of the Web more readily accessible to humans and their software agents and will facilitate agent interoperability. If current research is successful there will also be a plethora of e-learning platforms making use of a varied menu of reusable educational material or learning objects. For the learner, the semanticized Web will, in addition, offer rich seams of diverse learning resources over and above the course materials (or learning objects) specified by course designers. For instance, the annotation registries, which provide access to marked up resources, will enable more focussed, ontologically-guided (or semantic) search. This much is already in development. But we can go much further. Semantic technologies make it possible not only to reason about the Web as if it is one extended knowledge base but also to provide a range of additional educational semantic web services such as summarization, interpretation or sense-making, structure-visualization, and support for argumentation

Open Access and Digital Libraries: A Case Study of the Text Creation Partnership

Many people operate under the assumption that Open/Closed access is a binary proposition. Either the material is available to everyone on the web or it is closed to a limited number of subscribers. The reality, however, is much more complicated. What is the use of a digital library, no matter how open, if it is unable to sustain and maintain itself over time? What is the point of a well funded collection that is closed to the people who need it most? There are in fact many models for maintaining both open and closed access digital libraries. Though the conversation often focuses on the furthest ends of the spectrum (greedy publishers extorting money to content, or, conversely, benevolent academics making knowledge freely available to the world via grants), there are in fact many models that are in between these extremes that exhibit characteristics of both closed and open access models. In particular, the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) tries to work with commercial publishers to create a middle road between these extremes. By investigating the many types of open and closed access models, and seeing how models like the TCP fit in this landscape, it is possible to make better determinations on how to build digital libraries in the future. How should the community come together to find a more moderate path, and what will that road look like

Introduction to Open Access & Open Access Week 2020

Introduction to Open Access & Open Access Week 2020 Now in its thirteenth year, Open Access Week is a global event that celebrates the Open Access (OA) movement. It aims to bring awareness to OA and explore the benefits it brings to all. In addition, it is a time for institutions to highlight Open Access efforts and activities locally at their institution. At UCF Libraries, we will be exploring a variety of OA topics during this year’s Open Access Week through blog posts and social media posts to help you learn more about Open Access and what it means for universities, libraries, society, and your own published works. What is Open Access (OA)? “Open Access” is a term used to describe a reform movement that aims to make scholarly literature freely available on the web and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. It can also describe an item itself. For example, if a journal article is Open Access, then that means it is available for free access and, typically, unrestricted non-commercial use. How is Open Access Different from Traditional Publishing? To publish something “Open Access” is in contrast to traditional publishing. Where a traditional publisher of academic journals charges money to read those journal articles, an Open Access academic journal is free to read and access online. However, those interested in publishing will want to consider a variety of factors before deciding if OA is right for them. For instance, there may be other costs associated with publishing, such as Article Processing Charges — a fee charged to authors to make their work accessible in some Open Access journals. In addition, researchers will want to explore strategies for discerning reliable publishers and considerations for grant funding requirements. Is Open Access Only for Academic Journal Articles? Open Access does not just apply to academic journal articles. Books, textbooks, data-sets, and other works can also be Open Access. During Open Access Week, UCF Libraries will highlight some of these important OA resources and share how OA is important, not just in academia, but in everyday life. Follow us all week to learn about how Open Access. Meanwhile, check out the official Open Access Week website (http://www.openaccessweek.org/) and UCF Libraries’ Office of Scholarly Communication website for more information (https://library.ucf.edu/about/departments/scholarly-communication/)

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: A Guide to Housing Related Opportunities for Making Connections Communities

Outlines stimulus funding for housing-related programs and coordinated strategies to help low-income communities benefit. Suggests policies to promote, including advancing green and healthy housing and addressing the foreclosure crisis. Lists resources

Following the Money: How the 50 States Rate in Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data

Grades states' efforts to provide public spending data through Web portals; lists the benefits of "transparency 2.0," including cost-efficient and targeted spending; and outlines best practices for comprehensive, one-stop, one-click searchable sites

Indian Microfinance Sector: A Case Study

In developing areas of the world with very little economic structure, many activities are not monetized. In other words, money is not used to carry out these tasks because the people in these areas do not have the expendable funds required. In order to combat this problem, micro financing has become increasingly more apparent in these areas of distress. Microfinance is an economic development strategy that allows for those in need to borrow actual money in order to start a business, go to school, or even gain access to everyday living requirements. Microfinance has made tremendous strides over the years, but still faces several obstacles including regulation, loan strategies, and loan consumption. This study will attempt to analyze the microfinance industry in India by challenging certain aspects of its use, as well as offer suggestions that could have beneficial effects upon the industry

Following the Money 2011: How the 50 States Rate in Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data

Grades states' progress in launching or enhancing transparency 2.0 Web sites that provide comprehensive, one-stop access to searchable and downloadable databases of government spending. Outlines benefits such as savings, challenges, and recommendations

Reframing the Work of Rural Community Development: Case Studies in Innovative Rural Business Strategies

Much of community development work in this country is understood in urban terms - densely populated areas with attendant economies of scale, housing issues that can be addressed largely in isolation of economic development and infrastructure issues, micro-level service area focus without the need to address regional economies and housing markets, even simple communications and relationship-building opportunities.None of this is terribly surprising. After all, the community development field grew out of urban activism and experience.The translation of urban revitalization strategies and lessons learned into a rural community development model inevitably highlights the challenges unique to highly varied rural markets. The service area is typically numerous communities, sparsely populated, covering great distances. Absent are highly visible corporate headquarters and other traditional opportunities for local private partnership. Smaller municipalities are less likely to offer a full range of services to complement any nonprofit service delivery system.At first glance the challenges facing rural development seem daunting. Needs -- or everything that seems to be so glaringly absent -- outweigh assets. However, rural markets are well worth a second look. In the few years since NeighborWorks America launched its Rural Initiative, we've uncovered astonishing examples of innovation with enormous community impact in some of the most challenging markets in America.We think these innovations are well worth sharing. Rural markets are often the emerging markets for expanding regional economies. The closer we look at the work being done by community based organizations, and in particular, chartered members of the NeighborWorks network, the more we realize that these organizations function as front line economic engines for increased homeownership, infrastructure improvements, job creation and retention.This report documents the compelling attributes of six business strategies that are successfully transforming diverse rural markets across America. Our hope is that this exciting new information, the first of a series, will stimulate numerous and varied adaptations within the community development field and spur additional investment in rural development by the private and public sectors

Adversarial behaviours knowledge area

The technological advancements witnessed by our society in recent decades have brought improvements in our quality of life, but they have also created a number of opportunities for attackers to cause harm. Before the Internet revolution, most crime and malicious activity generally required a victim and a perpetrator to come into physical contact, and this limited the reach that malicious parties had. Technology has removed the need for physical contact to perform many types of crime, and now attackers can reach victims anywhere in the world, as long as they are connected to the Internet. This has revolutionised the characteristics of crime and warfare, allowing operations that would not have been possible before. In this document, we provide an overview of the malicious operations that are happening on the Internet today. We first provide a taxonomy of malicious activities based on the attacker’s motivations and capabilities, and then move on to the technological and human elements that adversaries require to run a successful operation. We then discuss a number of frameworks that have been proposed to model malicious operations. Since adversarial behaviours are not a purely technical topic, we draw from research in a number of fields (computer science, criminology, war studies). While doing this, we discuss how these frameworks can be used by researchers and practitioners to develop effective mitigations against malicious online operations.Published versio

The Reconstruction of American Journalism

Explores the history and changing landscape of American journalism as well as the need to preserve independent, original, and credible print news reporting. Considers the roles of the Internet, collaborations among newspapers, and foundation support