Introduction to the special issue on the International Web Rule Symposia 2012–2014

The annual International Web Rule Symposium (RuleML) is an international conference on research, applications, languages, and standards for rule technologies. It has evolved from an annual series of international workshops since 2002, international conferences in 2005 and 2006, and international symposia since 2007. It is the flagship event of the Rule Markup and Modeling Initiative (RuleML, http://ruleml.org), a nonprofit umbrella organization of several technical groups from academia, industry, and government working on rule technology and its applications. RuleML is the leading conference to build bridges between academia and industry in the field of rules and its applications, especially as part of the semantic technology stack. It is devoted to rule-based programming and rule-based systems including production rules systems, logic programming rule engines, and business rules engines/business rules management systems; Semantic Web rule languages and rule standards (e.g., RuleML, SWRL, RIF, PRR, SBVR, DMN, CL, Prolog); rule-based event processing languages and technologies; and research on inference rules, transformation rules, decision rules, production rules, and ECA rules

The opinions of some stakeholders on the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR): an analysis of secondary sources

The EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) is the most recent effort by the European Union (EU) to curb imports of illegally sourced timber. The regulation raises important questions concerning the international timber trade. In order to successfully implement this regulation it is of paramount importance to classify the actors concerned, and examine how they regard it. The current study collects and summarizes opinion statements of stakeholders as found in different online publications. Though the problem of illegal logging and its associated trade is acknowledged by all parties, there are concerns as to whether the EUTR is the proper instrument to address this issue. Whilst some stakeholders see the EUTR as advantageous for their businesses, others see it as an impediment. Law enforcement, lack of guidance, and bureaucracy were other issues raised. The trade-off between effective legislation and ease of trade was also highlighted. Transparent and consistent application of the EUTR, with clear guidelines for exerting due diligence, should diminish the degree of possible unwanted side-effects such as trade diversion and substitution of temperate timber for tropical timber

The pragmatic web: Putting rules in context

The Internet is more than a web of computers and more than a web of documents. From a pragmatic point of view it is interesting what people do with the Internet and how. Actions and events have a meaning in the context of a process or practice as enveloping a set of shared norms. The norms apply to behavior, but also to interpretation and evaluation, and can be represented and implemented using rule-based systems

The pragmatic web: Putting rules in context

The Internet is more than a web of computers and more than a web of documents. From a pragmatic point of view it is interesting what people do with the Internet and how. Actions and events have a meaning in the context of a process or practice as enveloping a set of shared norms. The norms apply to behavior, but also to interpretation and evaluation, and can be represented and implemented using rule-based systems

Siloed discourses: a year-long study of twitter engagement on the use of CRISPR in food and agriculture

Gene editing technologies are emerging as powerful tools for agricultural development, spurring both hopes and concerns in society. To understand emerging discourses and coalitions around the role of CRISPR gene editing in food and agriculture we map the main actors and themes emerging from English-speaking Twitter networks over the course of one year (2021). Scientific actors are the most active and best networked in the debate. They promote a positive image of CRISPR gene editing and actively work to strengthen their network. A smaller but equally distinct group comprises civil society actors, who voice skepticism towards the technology and sometimes questions scientists' claims, but without eliciting responses from the scientists. We conclude that emerging discourse coalitions forming around the topic of CRISPR in food and agriculture on Twitter are siloed, with limited interaction between contrasting perspectives

Programming

Abstract. In this paper, we analyze a recent trend in software engineering (SE), test driven development, and discuss how it can be adapted to define self validating rule bases. We argue that test cases can be used to specify the semantics of rules, and that the presence of these test cases safeguards the life cycle of rules. We introduce an abstract conceptual framework, in the tradition of Tarski, that allows us to cover a wide range of adequate logics for rule-based representation. We investigate how the concept of test coverage can be adapted to quantify the quality of test cases. We discuss the implementation of these ideas, which includes a discussion on how Semantic Web rule languages can be extended to serialize self validating sets of rules