Web Based Semantic Communities – Who, How and Why We Might Want Them in the First Place

This paper describes an investigation undertaken as part of the FicNet Human-Computer Interaction project into the online amateur fiction community. By working with the community to determine current practices and areas of concern we consider how future technologies such as the semantic web might be used to design applications to support the community. As a first step in this process we gathered opinions both from members of the community and from those outside the community who had come into contact with it. Taking this information we consider the community as it is and what it might become

Freedom and Restraint: Tags, Vocabularies and Ontologies

The benefit of metadata is widely recognized. However, the nature of that information and the method of production remains a topic of some debate. This division is most noticeable between those who believe in ’free tagging’, and those who prefer the more formal construction of an ontology to define both the vocabulary of the domain and the relationships between the concepts within it. Looking at the community surrounding online amateur authors and the descriptive metadata they have developed over the last thirty years we consider what we can learn from a mature but amateur tagging community. This paper considers how these two systems might be used together to add the easy usability of free tagging to ontology descriptions and the conceptual richness of ontologies to free tags

Bringing Communities to the Semantic Web and the Semantic Web to Communities

In this paper we consider the types of community networks that are most often codified within the Semantic Web. We propose the recognition of a new structure which fulfils the definition of community used outside the SemanticWeb. We argue that the properties inherent in a community allow additional processing to be done with the described relationships existing between entities within the community network. Taking an existing online community as a case study we describe the ontologies and applications that we developed to support this community in the Semantic Web environment and discuss what lessons can be learnt from this exercise and applied in more general settings

Stronger inflammatory/cytotoxic T cell response in women identified by microarray analysis

Women develop chronic inflammatory autoimmune diseases like lupus more often than men. The mechanisms causing the increased susceptibility are incompletely understood, although estrogen is believed to contribute. Chronic immune stimulation characterizes many autoimmune disorders. We hypothesized that repeated stimulation may cause a different T cell immune response in women than men. Microarray approaches were used to compare gene expression in T cells from healthy men and women with and without repeated stimulation. Four days following a single stimulation only 25% of the differentially expressed, gender-biased genes were expressed at higher levels in the women. In contrast, following restimulation 72% were more highly expressed in women. Immune response genes were significantly over-represented among the genes upregulated in women, and among the immune response genes, the inflammatory/cytotoxic effector genes interferon gamma (IFNG), lymphotoxin beta (LTB), granzyme A (GZMA), interleukin-12 receptor beta2 (IL12RB2), and granulysin (GNLY) were among those overexpressed to the greatest degree. In contrast, IL17A was the only effector gene more highly expressed in men. Estrogen response elements were identified in the promoters of half of the overexpressed immune genes in women, and in <10% of the male biased genes. The differential expression of inflammatory/cytotoxic effector molecules in restimulated female T cells may contribute to the differences in autoimmune diseases between women and men

Annotation of Heterogenous Media Using OntoMedia

While ontologies exist for the annotation of monomedia, interoperability between these schemes is an important issue. The OntoMedia ontology consists of a generic core, capable of representing a diverse range of media, as well as extension ontologies to focus on specific formats. This paper provides an overview of the OntoMedia ontologies, together with a detailed case study when applied to video, a scripted form, and an associated short story

Boards in Information Governance

This Article focuses on the evolving role of boards of directors. It charts the decline of the two leading, twentieth-century conceptual frameworks shaping corporate boards’ roles: agency cost theory, which produced the limited “monitoring board,” and “separate realms” theory, which ceded board responsibility for matters other than profit maximization to government regulation. Hedge fund activism and wild stock market swings have exposed the limits of the board’s role in agency cost theory. The 2020 pandemic, economic crises, investors’ demands for socially responsible stewardship, and corporations’ own political activism have rendered separate realms thinking untenable. Although much theorizing in corporate law remains constrained by these two conceptual frameworks, technology, necessity, and law reform are moving boards beyond them, as we demonstrate. For example, by spring 2020, the economic shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic had sent many public company boards into high gear, forcing them to look beyond stock prices to engage their firm’s full capacity for information gathering, knowledge synthesis and communication. Yet, even before the global pandemic placed heightened demands on boards, a two-decade trend toward “information governance” was well underway. It has been catalyzed by new technology, legal requirements, industry best practices, committee charters, fiduciary duties, and investor demands. The trend is observable in the overhaul of frameworks compelling audit committees’ increased participation in financial reporting. It is evident in legal requirements compelling greater board participation in risk management, legal compliance, and ESG oversight. These changes foster boards’ capacities to collaborate in informed strategy formation—a prerequisite to their responding adeptly to activists’ interventions and stock price gyrations. We name this new model of board governance “information governance” to capture the board’s agency in knowledge synthesis, reporting oversight, and institutional deliberation constitutive of the firm’s identity. Information governance highlights a leadership role for boards in driving communicative action in firms—the active framing, synthesis, and deployment of the firm’s self-knowledge. In this respect, we discern and emphasize an affirmative, value-creating role for boards that has been suppressed by agency theory’s monitoring board conceit. We analyze areas of ongoing legal flux supporting the new, technologically enhanced, information-rich paradigm we identify

Board Governance for the Twenty-First Century

A decade after the global financial crisis, corporate governance is in a state of flux. A conceptual shift is underway. Years ago, in first wave governance, boards had a cozy relationship with the company C-suite. In second wave governance, which took hold in the 1970s, legal academics reimagined the board\u27s role, conceptualizing directors as monitors charged with limiting waste and abuse that can arise in agency relationships. Now, we find ourselves at the threshold of third wave governance, in which boards are asked to grapple immediately and candidly with both the financial aspects of business and new environmental, social, and governance ( ESG ) challenges that present themselves in governing globalized firms. This essay affirms the centrality of the board in corporate governance and the need for candor in addressing the pragmatic challenges that boards face. Nevertheless, we observe profound problems with BSP governance that merit caution in the adoption of Bainbridge and Henderson\u27s proposal. Our most fundamental objection is that board service cannot be conceived of as being essentially transactional. Construing the board\u27s role as a mere portfolio of tasks and formal judgments analogous to ones performed by consultants and advisors to the firm is a conceptual error. Certainly, there are distinct tasks that boards execute. But the goal of third wave governance, from the board\u27s perspective, will be to partner with the C-suite in accommodating ESG mandates and financial and operational goals to create long-term value. We view such corporate identity formation as a complex, informationally saturated, fiduciary responsibility incompatible with outsourcing to BSPs. In the alternative, we suggest a set of structurally modest board reforms which would promote the directors\u27 ability to make a greater contribution to governance

The Literary Style of Epifanij Premudryj "Pletenije sloves"

In der Reihe Slavistische Beiträge werden vor allem slavistische Dissertationen des deutschsprachigen Raums sowie vereinzelt auch amerikanische, englische und russische publiziert. Darüber hinaus stellt die Reihe ein Forum für Sammelbände und Monographien etablierter Wissenschafter/innen dar

Introduction to the Special Issue

We are pleased to share with you this special issue revisiting the research on the relationship between class size and student achievement, along with its implications for education policymakers and practitioners. For over half a century, researchers have struggled to identify those variables that contribute in significant ways to students’ academic success, and the resulting, voluminous literature is rife with contradictory results. At the same time, the positive results of class size research, which is part of the body of “production function” analysis, has received broad acceptance by policymakers, parents, and practitioners who believe “smaller is better.