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

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

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

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

Effects of long-term livestock grazing and habitat on understory vegetation

The herbaceous understory stratum contains most of the plant diversity in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa P. & C. Lawson var. scopulorum Engelm.) forests of the American Southwest and provides critical food and habitat for many wildlife species. During the last century, this stratum has been affected by livestock grazing and by increased dominance of overstory trees. We sampled a unique grazing exclosure to examine the relative importance of long-term livestock grazing (grazed or ungrazed) and habitat (park or tree) on the understory community. We sampled 3 plots of 192 contiguous quadrats (each quadrat 0.5 m2) in each of the 4 treatment combinations, for a total of 2304 quadrats. Species-area curves were generated by aggregating quadrats into nonoverlapping areas at grain sizes of 0.5 to 576 m2. The effects of habitat and grazing on species density were evident at very different scales. Species density was higher in park than tree plots at scales ≤32 m2 but did not differ between habitats at larger scales. Species density differed minimally between grazed and ungrazed treatments at small grains, but grazed plots contained more species than ungrazed plots at larger grains. Grazing treatments differed at smaller grains (to 4–8 m2) than did habitats (to 32 m2), with respect to density of native species and graminoids. Grazed plots had more exotic species than ungrazed plots at all grain sizes, though few exotics were present. Twenty-two species were identified as indicator species associated with habitats and/or grazing treatments. Evaluations of plant community response to treatments would be improved by accounting for the grain at which data have been collected and analyzed and by identifying indicator species associated with various treatments. These data would enable more-informed conservation and management decisions