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This paper presents an ontology-based framework for repurposing learning object components. Unlike the usual practice where learning object components are assembled manually, the proposed framework enables on-the-fly access and repurposing of learning object components. The framework supports two processes: the decomposition of learning objects into their components as well as the automatic assembly of these components in real-world applications. For now, the framework supports slide presentations. As an application, we will present in this paper the integration of this functionality in MS PowerPoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2003 Pires [9] published a study that compared the results from the study performed by David Mark and Barry Smithwww.tandf.co.uk.journals. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering , 15 (2): 442-456, 2003. with a similar study applied to Portuguese subjects. The paper concluded that the methodology of Mark and Smith, to establish ontologies from surveys of how users apply terminology, is applicable to identify conceptualization differences in GIS applications. This paper is an extension of that work, presenting the results of the study in terms of university background. In response to series of differently phrased elicitations, 533 subjects (university students from several parts of Portugal and several academic disciplines) were asked to give examples of geographical categories. By this we statistically counted the most mentioned terms and related these to the university background. The results were analysed in order to test the hypothesis: Students from different backgrounds have different conceptualizations of geographical categories due to their scholarly background. Our analysis refutes this hypothesis: students present the same examples for the presented categories and their disciplinary backgrounds cannot be shown to have an influence on the category choices. Ontology has been conceived as a branch of metaphysics that studies the theory of objects and their relationships [3]. In this paper we aim to explore the relation Ontology/Geographical Information Systems from the cognition perspective. We raise the question; does scholarly background influence geographic categorization? In order to answer this question we used a survey that studied a specific set of geographic concepts, water bodies. The main reason behind the choice of these specific entities is that Portugal is a country exposed to the Atlantic and where water has been considered as an important element since the time of the Discoverers. The survey is based on a similar approach taken in other parts of the world, such as England, Finland and others [11]. Keywords: Cognition, Geographical Information Systems, Semantics, Geographic Categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for evaluating the semantic similarity of GML elements (concepts). Due to the relevance of the Is-in relationship in the geographic context, it focuses on GML elements organized according to Part-of (meronymic) hierarchies. It also proposes the method's application to Part-of hierarchies, due to the semantics of the meronymic relationship within the geographic context, referred to as "place-area". This semantics essentially concerns parts which are similar to and inseparable from the whole. A further contribution refers to the modeling of the Part-of hierarchy in GML. In particular, from the perspective of applying the information content approach to Part-of hierarchies, this paper proposes a method to represent and distinguish the concepts involved in the meronymic relationship within the element hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing development of web-based reputation systems in the 21st century will have a powerful social and economic impact on both business entities and individual customers, because it makes transparent quality assessment on products and services to achieve customer assurance in the distributed web-based Reputation Systems. The web-based reputation systems will be the foundation for web intelligence in the future. Trust and Reputation help capture business intelligence through establishing customer trust relationships, learning consumer behavior, capturing market reaction on products and services, disseminating customer feedback, buyers' opinions and end-user recommendations. It also reveals dishonest services, unfair trading, biased assessment, discriminatory actions, fraudulent behaviors, and un-true advertising. The continuing development of these technologies will help in the improvement of professional business behavior, sales, reputation of sellers, providers, products and services. Given the importance of reputation in this paper, we propose ontology for reputation. In the business world we can consider the reputation of a product or the reputation of a service or the reputation of an agent. In this paper we propose ontology for these entities that can help us unravel the components and conceptualize the components of reputation of each of the entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web services have become the predominant paradigm for the development of distributed software systems. Web services provide the means to modularize software in a way that functionality can be described, discovered and deployed in a platform independent manner over a network (e.g., intranets, extranets and the Internet). The representation of web services by current industrial practice is predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinnings required to fulfill the goals of the emerging Semantic Web. This paper proposes a framework aimed at (1) modeling the semantics of syntactically defined web services through a process of interpretation, (2) scoping the derived concepts within domain ontologies, and (3) harmonizing the semantic web services with the domain ontologies. The framework was validated through its application to web services developed for a large financial system. The worked example presented in this paper is extracted from the semantic modeling of these financial web services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SEKT Project aims at developing and exploiting the knowledge technologies which underlie the Next Generation Knowledge Management, connecting complementary know-how of key European centers in three areas: Ontology Management Technology, Knowledge Discovery and Human Language Technology. This paper describes the development of PROTON, an upper-level ontology developed by Ontotext, and of the Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge (OPJK), modeled by a team of legal experts form the Institute of Law and Technology (IDT-UAB) for the Iuriservice prototype (a webbased intelligent FAQ for the Spanish judges on their first appointment designed by iSOCO). The paper focuses on the work done towards the integration of the OPJK built using a middle-out strategy into the system and top modules of PROTON, illustrating the flexibility of this independent upper-level ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distribution of multimedia copyrighted material is a hot topic for the music and entertainment industry. Piracy, peer to peer networks and portable devices make multimedia content easily transferable without respecting the associated rights and protection mechanisms. Standard and industry-led initiatives try to prevent this unauthorised usage by means of electronic protection and governance mechanisms. On the other hand, different organisations have been handling related legal issues by means of paper contracts. Now, the question is: How can we relate electronic protection measures with the paper contracts behind them? This paper presents an analysis of current contract clauses and an approach to generate, from them, standardised rights expressions, or licenses, in an as automatic as possible way. A mapping between those contract clauses and MPEG-21 REL (Rights Expression Language), the most promising rights expressions standard, is also proposed, including an initial relational model database structure. An ontology-based approach for the problem is also pointed out. If contract clauses could be expressed as part of an ontology, this would facilitate the automatic licenses generation. Generic contracts ontologies and specific intellectual property rights ontologies would be the starting point, together with the presented analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of IT project overspends and failures suggest that many IT projects do not conform to requirements. Despite decades of development the IT industry still seems to lack an effective method of ensuring that a project will be right first time. This paper outlines an ORM based requirements engineering process that aims to reduce the number of IT project failures. The main deliverable of the process is a formal description of WHAT a system is required to do without reference to HOW is to be done. Data or process, which comes first? This paper answers this question by showing how to define processes by starting with an object-role model. To use the approach in this paper you will need the Object-Role Modeling tool embedded within the database function of Microsoft Visual Studio for Enterprise Architects 2003 or later together with two referenced books [Halpin 01] and [Halpin 03]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently we have been developing a process-driven e-business service integration (BSI) system through functional extensions of the ebXML technology. And it is targeting on the process-driven e-business service integration markets, such as e-Logistics, e-SCM, e-Procurement, and e-Government, that require process-driven multi-party collaborations of a set of independent organizations. The system consists of three major components - Choreography Modeler, Runtime & Monitoring Client and EJB-based BSI Engine. This paper particularly focuses on the choreography modeler that provides the modeling functionality for ebXML-based choreography and orchestration among engaged organizations in a process-driven multiparty collaboration. Now, it is fully operable on an EJB-based framework environment (J2EE, JBOSS, and Weblogic), and also it is applied to e-Logistics process automation and B2B choreography models of a postal service company. This paper mainly describes the implementation details of the modeler, especially focusing on modeling features of the process-driven multi-party collaboration functionality. Keywords: Inter-organizational e-business service integration, B2B choreography and orchestration, Dual-party collaboration model, Process-driven multi-party collaboration model, Inter-organizational choreography modeling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a workflow process spans to multiple organizations, subprocess task model is an efficient way of representing remote services of other systems. The subprocess task usually represents a single service in conventional workflows. However, if a subprocess task comprises multiple services, and the number of services and the execution flow of the services cannot be decided until run-time, conventional ways of workflow design is not proper to handle such situations efficiently. All potentially reachable paths should be known at process build time in conventional workflow design. However, such an assumption does not always hold in real situations. In this paper, we propose a multi-subprocess task based framework for dynamic workflow interoperations. In the framework, we develop the multi-subprocess task model to handle a subprocess composed of multiple services that are unknown at process build time. In this paper, we also define and implement four components to support the dynamic workflow interoperation: Workflow engine, Adapter, Service Interface Repositories (SIRs), and XML messages. Adapter and SIR make a local WfMS transparent to the location and platform of the interoperating WfMSs by encapsulating external subprocesses and superprocesses. When an example scenario is implemented and evaluated in the proposed framework, the advantages of the framework are obvious in terms of automaticity, adaptability, and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the $\surd{{\rm N}}$ + ROWA model that is been develop at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid with the aim of replicating information in Grid environments and optimizing the number of messages to be exchanged in the process as well as their use to built Grid environments based on WSRF specifications. The model presented in this paper will be one of the pillars of a new Grid service (WS-ReplicationResource) that, in the near future, will provide Grid systems with a high level service of resource replication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caching can highly improve performance of query processing in distributed databases. In this paper we show how this technique can be used in grid architecture where data integration is implemented by means of updatable views. Views integrate data from heterogeneous sources and provide users with their integrated form. The whole process of integration is transparent, i.e. users need not be aware that data are not located at one place. In data grids caching can be used at different levels of architecture. We focus on caching at the middleware layer where the cache is stored in the database of the integrating unit. These results can be then used while answering queries from grid users, so there will be no need to reevaluate the whole queries. In such a way caching can highly increase performance of applications operating on grid. In the paper we also present an example how a query can be optimized by rewriting to make use of cached results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomic and Grid computing are complementary, in the sense that complex grid environments can take advantage of the features provided by autonomic computing and on the other hand, autonomic processes can be properly deployed by using grid technology. Besides, one of the most active fields in grid computing is the area of data grids, focusing on the data access. Our paper proposes a grid framework which provides autonomic characteristics in order to enhance the performance of the data access, predicting the future behaviour of the corresponding I/O system. The use of the autonomic system is transparent to the user. This paper also presents a study case of such system. Keywords: Autonomic computing, Grid computing, Data grids, future behaviour prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) defines a standard set of facilities which allow the creation of wide area distributed computing applications, i.e. applications which cross organisational and administrative boundaries. An earlier project demonstrated significant potential for OGSI to support mobile or remote sensors, which require the integration of devices which are wirelessly and therefore only intermittently connected to the fixed network. Further, there is significant potential for mobile clients, e.g. PDAs, to be used for data analysis. However, OGSI currently assumes the availability of a permanent network connection between client and service. This paper proposes the use of caching to provide improved access to the state of intermittently connected OGSI grid services. The paper also describes a prototype which has been implemented and tested to prove the viability of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we concentrate on conceptual modeling and semantics of service delegation and alignment in information systems. In delegation, a source company wishes to hand over parts of its functionality together with related responsibilities to a supplying party. From the side of the outsourcer the search for a suitable supplier mostly will be a manual process with all the consequences of a long time to market, as well as trial and error before a good fit is obtained between both related parties. This paper addresses an agent-based solution for improving this match-making process in B2B markets. Part of the match-making process will be the alignment of business processes on the side of the outsourcer as well on the side of the supplier. We will provide a formal means to ensure that the delegation relationship, determined by a ruling service level agreement (SLA), satisfies specific correctness criteria. These correctness criteria are defined in terms of consistency and completeness between the delegated operation and the associated operation offered by the supplier. Our correctness criterion will concern mappings between an existing delegator schema and an existing supplier schema, and will address both semantical and ontological aspects pertaining to delegation and alignment. Agent-based delegation together with formal specifications can prove their value in the process of constructing delegation contracts. Our analysis will be performed within the modeling framework based on the UML/OCL formalism. The concepts we discussed in this paper are illustrated by an example of companies delegating billing services to Billing Service Providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we identify trust relationships among users and systems. We try to adhere to simplicity principle in our modelling of the system. By using simple model and free lightweight technologies, we show that it is possible to implement secure Web applications/services. The paper also addresses some security problems and issues about implementing Web Services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indexing techniques have been developed for wireless data broadcast environments, in order to conserve the scarce power resources of the mobile clients. However, the use of interleaved index segments in a broadcast cycle increases the average access latency for the clients. In this paper, we present the broadcast-based spatial query processing algorithm for LBS. In this algorithm, we simply sort the data objects based on their locations, then the server broadcasts them sequentially to the mobile clients. The experimental results show that the proposed BBS scheme significantly reduces the Access latency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gazetteer services are an important component in a wide variety of systems, including geographic search engines and question answering systems. Unfortunately, the footprints provided by gazetteers are often limited to a bounding box or even a centroid. Moreover, for a lot of non-political regions, detailed footprints are nonexistent since these regions tend to have gradual, rather than crisp, boundaries. In this paper we propose an automatic method to approximate the footprints of crisp, as well as imprecise, regions using statements on the web as a starting point. Due to the vague nature of some of these statements, the resulting footprints are represented as fuzzy sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collinearity is a basic arrangement of regions in the plane. We investigate the semantics of collinearity in various possible meanings for three regions and we combine these concepts to obtain definitions for four and more regions. The aim of the paper is to support the formalization of projective properties for modelling geographic information and qualitative spatial reasoning. Exploring the semantics of collinearity will enable us to shed light on elementary projective properties from which all the others can be inferred. Collinearity is also used to find a qualitative classification of the arrangement of many regions in the plane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context-aware applications rely on implicit forms of input, such as sensor-derived data, in order to reduce the need for explicit input from users. They are especially relevant for mobile and pervasive computing environments, in which user attention is at a premium. To support the development of context-aware applications, techniques for modelling context information are required. These must address a unique combination of requirements, including the ability to model information supplied by both sensors and people, to represent imperfect information, and to capture context histories. As the field of context-aware computing is relatively new, mature solutions for context modelling do not exist, and researchers rely on information modelling solutions developed for other purposes. In our research, we have been using a variant of Object-Role Modeling (ORM) to model context. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences and outline some research challenges in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usually, ontologies are used to solve terminology problems or to allow automatic processing of information. They are also used to improve the development of software. One promising application area for ontologies is Virtual Reality (VR). Developing a VR application is very time consuming and requires skilled people. Introducing ontologies in the development process can eliminate these barriers. We have developed an approach, VR-WISE, which uses ontologies for describing a Virtual Environment (VE) at a conceptual level. In this paper we will describe the Behavior Ontology, which defines the modeling concepts for object behavior. Such an ontology has several advantages. It improves the intuitiveness; facilitates cross-platform VR development; smoothens integration with other ontologies; enhances the interoperability of VR applications; and allows for more intelligent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose is to extract RDF-style triples from text corpora in an unsupervised way and use them as preprocessed material for the construction of ontologies from scratch. We have worked on a corpus taken from Internet websites and describing the megalithic ruin of Stonehenge. Using a shallow parser, we select functional relations, such as the syntactic structure subject-verb-object. The selection is done using prepositional structures and frequency measures in order to select the most relevant triples. Therefore, the paper stresses the choice of patterns and the filtering carried out in order to discard automatically all irrelevant structures. At the same occasion, we are experimenting with a method to objectively evaluate the material generated automatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courseware increasingly consists of generic information and communication tools. These offer a plethora of functionalities, but their usefulness to a particular learning community is not easy to assess. The aim should be to develop comprehensive learning information systems tailored to the specific needs of a community. Design patterns are important instruments for capturing best practice design knowledge. Ontologies, in turn, can help to precisely capture and reason about these patterns. In this paper, we make the case for ontology-guided learning IS design, and sketch the ontological core of a potential design method. Such methods should enable communities to specify and access relevant best design practice patterns. Design knowledge can then be reused across communities, improving the quality of communication support provided, while preventing wheels from being reinvented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally performance support and e-Learning have been considered as two separate research fields. This paper integrates them by introducing the concept of context-aware product support systems, which utilizes the notions of context, information object and ontology. The context signifies whether learning or performing goals are pursued in different situations and defines the configuration of the domain knowledge accordingly. An information object is viewed as an enabler of a modular virtual documentation, advancing information reuse. The ontology formalizes the representation of the knowledge contained in the system, facilitates interoperability, and constitutes one of the main building blocks of context-aware product support systems. The prototype system developed illustrates the applicability of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geoportals (geographic portals) are entry points on the Web, where various geographic information resources can be easily discovered. They organize geospatial data and services through catalogs containing metadata records, which can be queried in order to give access to related resources. However, the current organization of geographic information in metadata catalogs is unable to capture the semantics of the data being described; therefore users often miss geographical resources of interest when searching for geospatial data in the World Wide Web. In this paper, we present an innovative approach in the development of geoportals, based on the next generation of the Web, called the Semantic Web. This approach relies in the organization of the geo-data at the semantic level through appropriate geographic ontologies, and the exploitation of this organization through the user interface of the geoportal. To the best of our knowledge, this approach is the first that combines the expressiveness of geo-ontologies in the context of geographic portals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than ten years MECOSIG has been used as a method for GIS design and implementation in various national and international projects achieved in our laboratory. During a decade, the method has been progressively improved and extended without modification of its basic principles. However the emergence of distributed GIS, implying several organizations capable to play various roles, requires the reappraisal of the methodology. New concerns are identified and a collection of new tools must be deployed. Taking the most of various recent researches completed for public authorities in Belgium, this paper presents some significant adaptations of the original MECOSIG method in order to cope with a distributed GIS environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because moving objects usually moves on spatial networks, efficient trajectory index structures are required to gain good retrieval performance on their trajectories. However, there has been little research on trajectory index structure for spatial networks, like road networks. In this paper, we propose an efficient trajectory index structure for moving objects in Location-based Services (LBS). For this, we design our access scheme for efficiently dealing with the trajectories of moving objects on road networks. In addition, we provide both an insertion algorithm to store the initial information of moving object trajectories and one to store their segment information. We also provide a retrieval algorithm to find a set of moving objects whose trajectories match the segments of a query trajectory. Finally, we show that our trajectory access scheme achieves about one order of magnitude better retrieval performance than TB-tree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the idea of using an ORM model as a starting point to derive an activity model, essentially providing an activity view on the original ORM model. When producing an ORM model of an inherently active domain, the resulting ORM model can provide an appropriate base to start out from. We will illustrate this basic idea by means of a running example. Much work remains to be done, but the results so-far look promissing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial configurations have a meaning to humans. For example, if I am standing on a square in front of a building, and this building has a door, then this means to me that this door leads into the building. This type of meaning can be nicely captured by image schemata, patterns in our mind that help us making sense of what we perceive. Spatial configurations can be structured taxonomically and mereologically by means of image schemata in a way that is believed to be close to human cognition. This paper focuses on a specific application domain, train stations, but also tries to generalise to other levels of scale and other types of spaces, showing benefits and limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptual models provide powerful constructs for representing the semantics of real-world application domains. However, much of this semantics may be lost when translating a conceptual schema into a logical or a physical schema. The reason for this semantic loss is the limited expressive power of logical and physical models. In this paper we present a methodology that allows to transform conceptual schemas while preserving their semantics. This is realized with the help of integrity constraints that are automatically generated at the logical and physical levels. As a result, the semantics of an application domain is kept in the database as opposed to keeping it in the applications accessing the database. We present such a methodology using the MADS conceptual spatio-temporal model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose to enhance a schema integration process with a validation phase employing logic-based data models. In our methodology, we validate the source schemas against the data model; the inter-schema mappings are validated against the semantics of the data model and the syntax of the correspondence language. In this paper, we focus on how to employ a reasoning engine to validate spatio-temporal schemas and describe where the reasoning engine is plugged into our integration methodology. The validation phase distinguishes our integration methodology from other approaches. We shift the emphasis on automation from the a priori discovery to the a posteriori checking of the inter-schema mappings. By doing so, we take advantage of the expressive power of the common data model in the source schema description and inter-schema mapping definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geospatial conceptual data models represent semantic information about the real world that will be implemented in a spatial database. When linked to a repository, they offer a rich basis for formal ontologies. Several spatial extensions [5, 15, 17] have been proposed to data models and repositories in order to enrich the semantics of spatial objects, typically by specifying the geometry of objects in the schema and sometimes by adding geometric details in the repository. Considering the success of such 2D spatial extensions as well as the increased demand for 3D objects management, we defined a 3D spatial extension based on the concept of PVL already used in Perceptory and elsewhere. This paper presents 3D concepts and 3D PVL to help defining the geometry of 3D objects in conceptual data models and repositories. Their originality stems from the fact that no similar solution exists yet for real-life projects. The enrichment of the meaning of 3D objects geometries is discussed as well as its impact on costs, delays and acquisition specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe a clustering process selecting a set of typical instances from a document flow. These representatives are viewed as semi-structured descriptions of domain categories expressed in a standard semantic web format, such as OWL [15]. The resulting bottom-up ontology may be used to check and/or update existing domain ontologies used by the e-business infrastructure. Keywords: Knowledge Representation, Ontology Construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translating XML data into ontologies is the problem of finding an instance of an ontology, given an XML document and a specification of the relationship between the XML schema and the ontology. Previous study [8] has investigated the ad hoc approach used in XML data integration. In this paper, we consider to translate an XML web document to an instance of an OWL-DL ontology in the Semantic Web. We use the semantic mapping discovered by our prototype tool [1] for the relationship between the XML schema and the ontology. Particularly, we define the solution of the translation problem and develop an algorithm for computing a canonical solution which enables the ontology to answer queries by using data in the XML document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss aspects of cardinality constraints in schema matching. A new cardinality classification is proposed, emphasizing the challenges in schema matching that evolve from cardinality constraints. We also offer a new research direction for automating schema matching to manage cardinality constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Semantic Web (SW) and the related technologies promise to make the web a meaningful experience. Yet, high level modeling, design and querying techniques proves to be a challenging task for organizations that are hoping utilize the SW paradigm for their industrial applications, which are still using traditional database techniques. To address such an issue, in this paper, we propose a view model for the SW (SW-View), to SW-enable traditional solutions. First we outline the view model, its properties and some modeling issues, followed by some discussions on modeling such views (at the conceptual level). We also provide a brief discussion on how this view model is utilized in the design and construction of materialized ontology views to support extraction of sub-ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Web Ontology Language OWL has been advocated as a suitable model for semantic data integration. Data integration requires expressive means to map between heterogeneous OWL schemas. This paper introduces SWQL (Semantic Web Query Language), a strictly typed query language for OWL, and shows how it can be used for mapping between heterogeneous schemas. In contrast to existing RDF query languages which focus on selection and navigation, SWQL also supports construction and user-defined functions to allow for instantiating integrated global schemas in OWL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we proposed a Protein Ontology to integrate protein data and information from various Protein Data Sources. Protein Ontology provides the technical and scientific infrastructure and knowledge to allow description and analysis of relationships between various proteins. Protein Ontology uses relevant protein data sources of information like PDB, SCOP, and OMIM. Protein Ontology describes: Protein Sequence and Structure Information, Protein Folding Process, Cellular Functions of Proteins, Molecular Bindings internal and external to Proteins, and Constraints affecting the Final Protein Conformation. We also created a database of 10 Major Prion Proteins available in various Protein data sources, based on the vocabulary provided by Protein Ontology. Details about Protein Ontology are available online at http://www.proteinontology.info/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge related to Shape Modelling is multi-faceted because of the complexity and heterogeneity of the involved resources and because different applications may cast different semantics on them. A fast evolution of the field is now conditioned by how research teams will be able to communicate and share resources and knowledge. The field needs to be formalized in order to achieve a shared conceptualization accessible by the whole scientific community and eventually to ensure an actual exploitation of its knowledge within the Semantic Web. In this context, the main objective of the Network of Excellence AIM@SHAPE is twofold: on the one hand to devise tools to capture the implicit semantics of digital shapes, and on the other hand to encode and formalize the domain knowledge into context-dependent ontologies. The paper describes the first results in the direction of developing an ontology for shape acquisition and reconstruction and its effective use in the Digital Shape Workbench, a searching framework for sharing resources (shapes, tools and publications) and their related knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile access to the Internet is increasing drastically, and this is raising the importance of information retrieval via mobile units. We have developed a task-oriented service navigation system [6] that allows a user to find the mobile contents desired from the viewpoint of the task that the user wants to do. However, the user is still faced with the problem of having to select the most appropriate task from among the vast number of task candidates; this is difficult due to the fact that mobile devices have several limitations such as small displays and poor input methods. This paper tackles this issue by proposing a framework for retrieving only those tasks that suit the abstraction level of the user's intention. If the user has settled on a specific object, the abstraction level is concrete, and tasks related to the handling of the specific object are selected; if not, tasks related to general objects are selected. Finally, we introduce two task retrieval applications that realize the proposed framework. By using this framework, we can reduce the number of retrieved tasks irrelevant to the user; simulations show that roughly 30% fewer tasks are displayed to the user as retrieval results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To remain competitive, enterprises have to mesh their business processes with their customers, suppliers and business partners. Increasing collaboration includes not only a global multi-national enterprise, but also an organization with its relationship to and business processes with its business partners. Standards and technologies permit business partners to exchange information, collaboration and carry out business transaction in a pervasive Web environment. There is however still very limited research activity on modeling multi-party Web-based business collaboration underlying semantics. In this paper, we demonstrate that an in-house business process has been gradually outsourced to third-parties and analyze how task delegations cause commitments between multiple business parties. Finally we provide process semantics for modeling multi-party Web-based collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic Web provides tools for expressing information in a machine accessible form where agents (human or software) can understand it. Ontology is required to describe the semantics of concepts and properties used in web documents. Ontology is needed to describe products, services, processes and practices in any e-commerce application. Ontology plays an essential role in recognizing the meaning of the information in Web documents. This paper attempts to deploy these concepts in an e-law application. E-laws ontology has been built using existing resources. It has been shown that extracting concepts is less hard than building relationships among them. A new algorithm has been proposed to reduce the number of relationships, so the domain knowledge expert (i.e. lawyer) can refine these relationships. Keywords: Ontology, e-Laws, Semantic web, E-Commerce, Text-Mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In automated and unsupervised multi-agent environments, where agents act on behalf of their stakeholders, the measurement and computation of trust is a key building block upon which all business interaction scenarios rely. In environments, where the individual and independent calculation of trustworthiness values for future negotiation partners is desired, flexible algorithms and models imitating human reasoning are crucial. This paper introduces a trust evaluation model that imitates human reasoning by using fuzzy logic concepts. Furthermore, post-interaction processes such as business interaction reviews and credibility adjustment are used to continuously build and refine an information repository for future trust evaluation processes. Fuzzy logic offers a mathematical approach encompassing uncertainty and tolerance of imprecise data, and combined with our highly customizable model, it allows to meet the security needs of different stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we outline the architecture of a peer-to-peer Trust Layer that can be superimposed to metadata generators producing classifications, like our ClassBuilder and BTExact's iPHI tools. Different techniques for aggregating trust values are also discussed. Our ongoing experimentation is aimed at validating the role of a Trust Layer as a non-intrusive, peer-to-peer technique for improving quality of automatically generated metadata. Keywords: Knowledge Extraction, Metadata Validation, Trust, P2P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, ontology is applied as an integral part of many applications in several domains, especially in the world of law. The ontology based judicial support system is believed as a useful tool to support, for example, the legal argumentation assistant and legal decision taking in court. The privacy case analyzer is considered as one of the most interesting applications of ontology based privacy judicial support systems. The efficiency of privacy case analyzers depend on several factors such as how to tackle the problem of linking cases to legislations, how to imply the guidance of privacy principles, and how to improve the extraction of cases. This paper addresses those items and describes the research issues that will be investigated challenges of ontology based judicial support systems. Keywords: Privacy ontology, Woolf reforms, privacy principles, privacy directives, privacy ontology structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an overview of the PhD thesis with the same name will be presented. After an introduction of the subject and aim of the thesis, a couple of research questions will be asked. A brief overview of the state of the art in the domain will be done and then some problems that arise with it will be considered. Although the monolingual problematic is quite general and recurrent in most ontologies design tools, this thesis will focus on the approach used in DOGMA Studio. Some new terms and acronyms will be introduced : "onternationalization", "concepton" and IMMO. Finally, some work issues for the thesis will be sketched then some conclusions will come before ending this document with some considerations about further problems that will follow the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telemedicine, which is defined as providing healthcare and sharing of medical knowledge over distance using telecommunication means, is a promising approach to improve and enhance the healthcare provisioning process. However, only recently, technology has evolved (i.e. miniaturization of high power mobile devices that can use high bandwidth mobile communication mechanisms) such that feasible advanced telemedicine applications can be developed. Current telemedicine systems offer proprietary solutions that are used in specific disease domains. For the acceptation, rapid development and introduction of novel and advanced telemedicine applications, there is a need for architectural mechanisms that supports developers in rapidly developing such telemedicine applications. The research discussed in this paper, focuses on the development of such mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our current connected wireless world, mobile devices are enabled to use various networking facilities. Although this enables mobile users to communicate any time and any place, it may also be very intrusive. There is a high need to manage the information stream a user receives on his/her mobile device. Context-awareness seems to be a promising way to manage this information stream and to provide the means to communicate at the right time in the right way. Current context-aware applications benefit from the user context (e.g. location information), however, they do not consider the quality of service (QoS) offered by various networks (i.e. only best-effort QoS is considered). The research discussed in this paper focuses on a QoS- and context-aware service infrastructure supporting the development of mobile applications in a heterogeneous network environment. We argue that the use of context information helps to better capture the user's required QoS and improves the delivered QoS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we introduce some terminology for comparing the expressiveness of conceptual data modeling techniques, such as ER, NIAM, PSM and ORM, that are finitely bounded by their underlying domains. Next we consider schema equivalence and discuss the effects of the sizes of the underlying domains.This leads to the introduction of the concept of finite equivalence, which may serve as a means to a better understanding of the fundamentals of modeling concepts (utility). We give some examples of finite equivalence and inequivalence in the context of ORM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent evolution in the areas of artificial intelligence, database semantics and information systems is the advent of the Semantic Web that requires software agents and web services exchanging meaningful and unambiguous messages. A prerequisite for this kind of interoperability is the usage of an ontology. Currently, not many ontology engineering methodologies exist. This paper describes some basic issues to be taken into account when using the ORM methodology for ontology engineering from the DOGMA ontology framework point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]