Clustering of tag-induced sub-graphs in complex networks

We study the behavior of the clustering coefficient in tagged networks. The rich variety of tags associated with the nodes in the studied systems provide additional information about the entities represented by the nodes which can be important for practical applications like searching in the networks. Here we examine how the clustering coefficient changes when narrowing the network to a sub-graph marked by a given tag, and how does it correlate with various other properties of the sub-graph. Another interesting question addressed in the paper is how the clustering coefficient of the individual nodes is affected by the tags on the node. We believe these sort of analysis help acquiring a more complete description of the structure of large complex systems

Mind the Gap: From Desktop to App

In this article we present a new mobile game, edugames4all MicrobeQuest!, that covers core learning objectives from the European curriculum on microbe transmission, food and hand hygiene, and responsible antibiotic use. The game is aimed at 9 to 12 year olds and it is based on the desktop version of the edugames4all platform games. We discuss the challenges and lessons learned transitioning from a desktop based game to a mobile app. We also present the seamless evaluation obtained by integrating the assessment of educa- tional impact of the game into the game mechanics

Automatic detection of accommodation steps as an indicator of knowledge maturing

Jointly working on shared digital artifacts – such as wikis – is a well-tried method of developing knowledge collectively within a group or organization. Our assumption is that such knowledge maturing is an accommodation process that can be measured by taking the writing process itself into account. This paper describes the development of a tool that detects accommodation automatically with the help of machine learning algorithms. We applied a software framework for task detection to the automatic identification of accommodation processes within a wiki. To set up the learning algorithms and test its performance, we conducted an empirical study, in which participants had to contribute to a wiki and, at the same time, identify their own tasks. Two domain experts evaluated the participants’ micro-tasks with regard to accommodation. We then applied an ontology-based task detection approach that identified accommodation with a rate of 79.12%. The potential use of our tool for measuring knowledge maturing online is discussed

FEMwiki: crowdsourcing semantic taxonomy and wiki input to domain experts while keeping editorial control: Mission Possible!

Highly specialized professional communities of practice (CoP) inevitably need to operate across geographically dispersed area - members frequently need to interact and share professional content. Crowdsourcing using wiki platforms provides a novel way for a professional community to share ideas and collaborate on content creation, curation, maintenance and sharing. This is the aim of the Field Epidemiological Manual wiki (FEMwiki) project enabling online collaborative content sharing and interaction for field epidemiologists around a growing training wiki resource. However, while user contributions are the driving force for content creation, any medical information resource needs to keep editorial control and quality assurance. This requirement is typically in conflict with community-driven Web 2.0 content creation. However, to maximize the opportunities for the network of epidemiologists actively editing the wiki content while keeping quality and editorial control, a novel structure was developed to encourage crowdsourcing – a support for dual versioning for each wiki page enabling maintenance of expertreviewed pages in parallel with user-updated versions, and a clear navigation between the related versions. Secondly, the training wiki content needs to be organized in a semantically-enhanced taxonomical navigation structure enabling domain experts to find information on a growing site easily. This also provides an ideal opportunity for crowdsourcing. We developed a user-editable collaborative interface crowdsourcing the taxonomy live maintenance to the community of field epidemiologists by embedding the taxonomy in a training wiki platform and generating the semantic navigation hierarchy on the fly. Launched in 2010, FEMwiki is a real world service supporting field epidemiologists in Europe and worldwide. The crowdsourcing success was evaluated by assessing the number and type of changes made by the professional network of epidemiologists over several months and demonstrated that crowdsourcing encourages user to edit existing and create new content and also leads to expansion of the domain taxonomy

Version Control in Online Software Repositories

Software version control repositories provide a uniform and stable interface to manage documents and their version histories. Unfortunately, Open Source systems, for example, CVS, Subversion, and GNU Arch are not well suited to highly collaborative environments and fail to track semantic changes in repositories. We introduce document provenance as our Description Logic framework to track the semantic changes in software repositories and draw interesting results about their historic behaviour using a rule-based inference engine. To support the use of this framework, we have developed our own online collaborative tool, leveraging the fluency of the modern WikiWikiWeb

Robot Consciousness: Physics and Metaphysics Here and Abroad

Interest has been renewed in the study of consciousness, both theoretical and applied, following developments in 20th and early 21st-century logic, metamathematics, computer science, and the brain sciences. In this evolving narrative, I explore several theoretical questions about the types of artificial intelligence and offer several conjectures about how they affect possible future developments in this exceptionally transformative field of research. I also address the practical significance of the advances in artificial intelligence in view of the cautions issued by prominent scientists, politicians, and ethicists about the possible dangers of such sufficiently advanced general intelligence, including by implication the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Lightweight community-driven approach to support ontology

The challenge for businesses today is to operate efficiently and effectively by ensuring the availability of updated information necessary for business activities. At situations where daily operations require collaborative communication among staff working in dispersed locations - characterised by different time zones and working conditions - it is essential that the staff have and share common knowledge, especially since staff members may have diverse understandings and perceptions of an issue.In order to overcome such challenge in business, using the oil and gas industry as a case study, this research proposes a platform based on a Lightweight Community-driven approach whereby staff are presented with opportunities to raise and discuss a particular issue in a systematic manner. In addition, ontology is used to support the representation of domain knowledge in which evolution is expected as human knowledge is not static. The fundamental principle of the Lightweight Community-driven approach is to involve organisation personnel in an exchange of ideas and opinions that lead to a higher quality of output. Staff are categorised in two groups, the Contributor Group and the Admin Group, each of which has a different role and responsibility in the whole process of communication. Members of the Contributor Group are those who are actively participating in the discussion by raising issues, providing feedback, and voting on an issue. This group is responsible for the quality of the discussion result which includes reliability of the ontology. The Admin Group are tasked with the managerial aspects of discussion to ensure the eligibility of every participant.Ontology evolution, subsequently, takes place to incorporate the result of the discussion. When there is a need to revise the intended ontology, the current ontology will be improved and archived ontology is created. Otherwise, ontology will remain the same as it is considered relevant by employees of the oil and gas industry. The proposed platform is explained and validated in detail in this thesis. The outcomes of the collective efforts to improve the quality of information within the domain are: a decrease of day-to-day work, cost saving, increased productivity and the availability of a communication forum

Technology Integration around the Geographic Information: A State of the Art

One of the elements that have popularized and facilitated the use of geographical information on a variety of computational applications has been the use of Web maps; this has opened new research challenges on different subjects, from locating places and people, the study of social behavior or the analyzing of the hidden structures of the terms used in a natural language query used for locating a place. However, the use of geographic information under technological features is not new, instead it has been part of a development and technological integration process. This paper presents a state of the art review about the application of geographic information under different approaches: its use on location based services, the collaborative user participation on it, its contextual-awareness, its use in the Semantic Web and the challenges of its use in natural languge queries. Finally, a prototype that integrates most of these areas is presented

Emergent Capabilities for Collaborative Teams in the Evolving Web Environment

This paper reports on our investigation of the latest advances for the Social Web, Web 2.0 and the Linked Data Web. These advances are discussed in terms of the latest capabilities that are available (or being made available) on the Web at the time of writing this paper. Such capabilities can be of significant benefit to teams, especially those comprised of multinational, geographically-dispersed team members. The specific context of coalition members in a rapidly formed diverse military context such as disaster relief or humanitarian aid is considered, where close working between non-government organisations and non-military teams will help to achieve results as quickly and efficiently as possible. The heterogeneity one finds in such teams, coupled with a lack of dedicated private network infrastructure, poses a number of challenges for collaboration, and the current paper represents an attempt to assess whether nascent Web-based capabilities can support such teams in terms of both their collaborative activities and their access to (and sharing of) information resources

Survey of tools for collaborative knowledge construction and sharing

The fast growth and spread of Web 2.0 environments have demonstrated the great willingness of general Web users to contribute and share various type of content and information. Many very successful web sites currently exist which thrive on the wisdom of the crowd, where web users in general are the sole data providers and curators. The Semantic Web calls for knowledge to be semantically represented using ontologies to allow for better access and sharing of data. However, constructing ontologies collaboratively is not well supported by most existing ontology and knowledge-base editing tools. This has resulted in the recent emergence of a new range of collaborative ontology construction tools with the aim of integrating some Web 2.0 features into the process of structured knowledge construction. This paper provides a survey of the start of the art of these tools, and highlights their significant features and capabilities