Sense and reference on the web

This thesis builds a foundation for the philosophy of theWeb by examining the crucial question: What does a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) mean? Does it have a sense, and can it refer to things? A philosophical and historical introduction to the Web explains the primary purpose of theWeb as a universal information space for naming and accessing information via URIs. A terminology, based on distinctions in philosophy, is employed to define precisely what is meant by information, language, representation, and reference. These terms are then employed to create a foundational ontology and principles ofWeb architecture. From this perspective, the SemanticWeb is then viewed as the application of the principles of Web architecture to knowledge representation. However, the classical philosophical problems of sense and reference that have been the source of debate within the philosophy of language return. Three main positions are inspected: the logicist position, as exemplified by the descriptivist theory of reference and the first-generation SemanticWeb, the direct reference position, as exemplified by Putnamand Kripke’s causal theory of reference and the second-generation Linked Data initiative, and a Wittgensteinian position that views the Semantic Web as yet another public language. After identifying the public language position as the most promising, a solution of using people’s everyday use of search engines as relevance feedback is proposed as a Wittgensteinian way to determine sense of URIs. This solution is then evaluated on a sample of the Semantic Web discovered by via using queries from a hypertext search engine query log. The results are evaluated and the technique of using relevance feedback from hypertext Web searches to determine relevant Semantic Web URIs in response to user queries is shown to considerably improve baseline performance. Future work for the Web that follows from our argument and experiments is detailed, and outlines of a future philosophy of the Web laid out

Web 2.0 for Reference Services: An Overview

This paper examines what the concept of web 2.0 is all about and it attributes by using an acronym SLATES to explain what web 2.0 entails and they are as follows: Search: this is the ease of finding information through keyword search which makes the platform valuable Links: guides to important pieces of information. The best pages are the most frequently linked to.Authoring: the ability to create constantly updating content over a platform that is shifted from being the creation of a few to being the constantly updated, interlinked work. In Wikis, the content is iterative in the sense that the people undo and redo each other’s work. In blogs, content is cumulative in that posts and comments of individuals are accumulated over time.Tags: categorization of content by creating tags that are simple, one-word descriptions to facilitate searching and avoid rigid, pre-made categories.Extensions: automation of some of the work and pattern matching by using algorithms e.g. amazon.com recommendations.Signals: the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology to notify users with any changes of the content by sending e-mails to them.” The various web 2.0 tools such as social networks, wiki, blogs, microblogging etc. it also talks about the application of these tools in the provision of effective and efficient reference services. The paper alsoaddressthe effects of web 2.0 application on library and information professionals and the library users. The constraints to the application of web 2.0 for reference services

ViralZone: a knowledge resource to understand virus diversity

The molecular diversity of viruses complicates the interpretation of viral genomic and proteomic data. To make sense of viral gene functions, investigators must be familiar with the virus host range, replication cycle and virion structure. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive resource bridging together textbook knowledge with genomic and proteomic sequences. ViralZone web resource (www.expasy.org/viralzone/) provides fact sheets on all known virus families/genera with easy access to sequence data. A selection of reference strains (RefStrain) provides annotated standards to circumvent the exponential increase of virus sequences. Moreover ViralZone offers a complete set of detailed and accurate virion picture

ViralZone: a knowledge resource to understand virus diversity

The molecular diversity of viruses complicates the interpretation of viral genomic and proteomic data. To make sense of viral gene functions, investigators must be familiar with the virus host range, replication cycle and virion structure. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive resource bridging together textbook knowledge with genomic and proteomic sequences. ViralZone web resource (www.expasy.org/viralzone/) provides fact sheets on all known virus families/genera with easy access to sequence data. A selection of reference strains (RefStrain) provides annotated standards to circumvent the exponential increase of virus sequences. Moreover ViralZone offers a complete set of detailed and accurate virion pictures

EvoIO: Community-driven standards for sustainable interoperability

Interoperability is the property that allows systems to work together independent of who created them, or how or for what purpose they were implemented. It is crucial for aggregating data from different online resources and for integrating different kinds of data. Interoperability is based on effective standards that become and remain broadly adopted. We argue that to develop and apply such standards for evolutionary and biodiversity data sustainably, we need a community-driven, open, and participatory approach. With the goal to build such an approach, the EvoIO collaboration emerged in 2009 from several NESCent-sponsored activities. EvoIO aims to be a nucleating center for developing, applying and disseminating interoperability technology that connects and coordinates between stakeholders, developers, and standards bodies.

Members of the EvoIO group have harnessed a variety of collaborative events to successfully build an initial stack of interoperability technologies that is owned by the community and open to participation. The stack addresses syntax, semantics, and programmable services, and at present includes the following components: NeXML (http://nexml.org), a NEXUS-inspired XML format that is validatable yet extensible; CDAO (http://www.evolutionaryontology.org), an ontology of comparative data analysis formalizing the semantics of evolutionary data and metadata; and PhyloWS (http://evoinfo.nescent.org/PhyloWS), a web- services interface standard for querying, retrieving, and referencing phylogenetic data on the web. Beyond demonstration prototypes, reference implementations of EvoIO stack technologies are starting to appear in production use. 

Aside from producing such information artefacts, EvoIO devotes much of its energy to applying principles of communication and organization that result in open and inclusive processes of community science. One of the key tools employed by EvoIO is the hackathon event format. Hackathons are highly collaborative, hands-on working meetings that catalyze practical innovation, train researchers, and foster cohesion as well as a sense of shared ownership in the results. In summary, we find that broad community participation, buy-in, and ownership are critical for developing interoperability in a sustainable fashion, and there are approaches and tools that can foster these effectively

Improving Collection Understanding for Web Archives with Storytelling: Shining Light Into Dark and Stormy Archives

Collections are the tools that people use to make sense of an ever-increasing number of archived web pages. As collections themselves grow, we need tools to make sense of them. Tools that work on the general web, like search engines, are not a good fit for these collections because search engines do not currently represent multiple document versions well. Web archive collections are vast, some containing hundreds of thousands of documents. Thousands of collections exist, many of which cover the same topic. Few collections include standardized metadata. Too many documents from too many collections with insufficient metadata makes collection understanding an expensive proposition. This dissertation establishes a five-process model to assist with web archive collection understanding. This model aims to produce a social media story – a visualization with which most web users are familiar. Each social media story contains surrogates which are summaries of individual documents. These surrogates, when presented together, summarize the topic of the story. After applying our storytelling model, they summarize the topic of a web archive collection. We develop and test a framework to select the best exemplars that represent a collection. We establish that algorithms produced from these primitives select exemplars that are otherwise undiscoverable using conventional search engine methods. We generate story metadata to improve the information scent of a story so users can understand it better. After an analysis showing that existing platforms perform poorly for web archives and a user study establishing the best surrogate type, we generate document metadata for the exemplars with machine learning. We then visualize the story and document metadata together and distribute it to satisfy the information needs of multiple personas who benefit from our model. Our tools serve as a reference implementation of our Dark and Stormy Archives storytelling model. Hypercane selects exemplars and generates story metadata. MementoEmbed generates document metadata. Raintale visualizes and distributes the story based on the story metadata and the document metadata of these exemplars. By providing understanding immediately, our stories save users the time and effort of reading thousands of documents and, most importantly, help them understand web archive collections

La videoeducazione per la formazione degli insegnanti: sviluppi e prospettive nel Web 2.0

Teacher Training Course Enhanced by Video: Developments and Perspectives in the Web 2.0 In the broadest sense, video-based education has a long history that dates back to the last century. The spread of television and later of the multimedia have profoundly marked the increased use of video in education and teaching. In recent years, digitization and broadband technology as well as the increasingly widespread availability of mobile technology, which is economical and easy-to-use, have transformed the web into a huge sphere for video production and sharing. The phenomenon now takes on a new aspect for education and looks set to significantly change teacher training methods. In this paper we describe the new prospects of video-based education brought by recent web developments, with particular reference to Web 2.0 with YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. We will present two training methods enhanced by videos, video-modeling and video-coaching, and we will analyze their potential problems with reference to teacher training

Effects of Goalball on Balance: A Systematic Review

Goalball has been highlighted as a reference disabled sport from educational levels to its participation in the Paralympic Games, where the effects of this sport on balance and its relevance have been investigated. The aim of the systematic review was to systematically review those studies that evaluated the effects of goalball on balance in goalball athletes. A systematic review of PubMed and FECYT (Web of Sciences, CCC, DIIDW, KJD, MEDLINE, RSCI, and SCIELO) was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The articles were included if they met the following inclusion criteria: (i) participants were goalball players; (ii) athletes playing goalball; (iii) outcomes were related to balance; and, (iv) original articles without language restriction. From the 85 studies initially identified, 7 were fully reviewed, and their outcome measures were extracted and analyzed. In conclusion, the levels of balance seem to be closely related to the success of competitions, leading coaches to consider its development during training sessions. In this sense, the general practice of goalball may be sufficient at children’s levels, while the practice of 2 days or 5 h per week seems to be an adequate reference. However, athletes with partial levels of visual loss should not be subjected to continuous blinding during training sessions because it could lead to an accelerated reduction in balance levels