CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Cognitive Reserve and Its Effect in Older Adults on Retrieval of Proper Names, Logo Names and Common Nouns

Previous studies showed that high Cognitive Reserve (CR, years of education and experience and knowledge acquired in life) is correlated with language proficiency as measured with vocabulary size, verbal analogy, and semantic processing. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between CR and the ability in retrieving different categories of words: Proper Names, Logo Names, and Common Nouns. The hypothesis is that CR contributes more in retrieving Common Nouns and Logo Names which are highly semantically interconnected, than retrieving Proper Names which are pure referring expressions. Forty-six Italian healthy older adults underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and their performances spanned from low to high global cognitive profile. They were also administered a picture naming task for Proper Names, Logo Names and Common Nouns. Latency and Accuracy were recorded. CR was measured with the Cognitive Reserve Index (CRI) questionnaire which provides a measure of education, working time activities, and leisure time activities. Participants were significantly faster and more accurate in name retrieval when CR was high. CRI and MoCA as interaction terms predicted naming Latency with a stronger effect of CRI when the global cognitive profile was in the low range. The effect of CRI on Accuracy was lower for Proper Names than for Common Nouns and Logo Names, which did not differ from each other. Our results show that name retrieval Accuracy can be predicted by CR, significantly more in the case of Logo Names and Common Nouns than in the case of Proper Names. As Proper Names have scarce semantic interconnections and are arbitrarily assigned to unique individuals, they are not much influenced by CR. Although Logo Names are also arbitrarily assigned to their bearers, they can be conceptually categorized and thus influenced by reserve. The weak relationship between Proper Names and CR might suggest a proper name task as a useful tool to detect early signs of dementia, in particular for persons with high CR

Grand Challenges in Music Information Research

This paper discusses some grand challenges in which music information research will impact our daily lives and our society in the future. Here, some fundamental questions are how to provide the best music for each person, how to predict music trends, how to enrich human-music relationships, how to evolve new music, and how to address environmental, energy issues by using music technologies. Our goal is to increase both attractiveness and social impacts of music information research in the future through such discussions and developments

Multimedia Annotation Interoperability Framework

Multimedia systems typically contain digital documents of mixed media types, which are indexed on the basis of strongly divergent metadata standards. This severely hamplers the inter-operation of such systems. Therefore, machine understanding of metadata comming from different applications is a basic requirement for the inter-operation of distributed Multimedia systems. In this document, we present how interoperability among metadata, vocabularies/ontologies and services is enhanced using Semantic Web technologies. In addition, it provides guidelines for semantic interoperability, illustrated by use cases. Finally, it presents an overview of the most commonly used metadata standards and tools, and provides the general research direction for semantic interoperability using Semantic Web technologies

Organization and Usage of Learning Objects within Personal Computers

Research report of the ProLearn Network of Excellence (IST 507310), Deliverable 7.6To promote the integration of Desktop related Knowledge Management and Technology Enhanced Learning this deliverable aims at increasing the awareness of Desktop research within the Professional Learning community and at familiarizing the e-Learning researchers with the state-of-the-art in the relevant areas of Personal Information Management (PIM), as well as with the currently on-going activities and some of the regular PIM publication venues