Knowledge publishing and access on the semantic Web: a sociotechnological analysis

The semantic Web extends the current Web with a semantic layer, which semantic-aware agents can use for reasoning. The idea is to enable a greater degree of task automation and user support than is possible with the current Web. Yet the semantic Web has implications for knowledge publishing and access. An ontology-driven world might lead to the imposition of dominant conceptual viewpoints on formal knowledge production, which might threaten the democratic nature of knowledge publishing on the Web. However, the author argue that this won't necessarily happen, if we fully exploit the inherent flexibility and "smartness" associated with semantic technologies, and we succeed in connecting the semantic Web's construction process to the social dynamics shaping the current Web.     

Adaptive systems in the era of the semantic and social web, a survey

In this paper we provide a classification of adaptive systems with respect to the kind of semantic technology they exploit to accomplish or improve specific adaptation and user modeling tasks. This classification is based on a distinction between strong semantic techniques and weak semantic techniques. The former are techniques based on the Semantic Web, while the latter regard technologies that, in different ways, annotate resources, enriching their meaning. This second category includes, in particular, Web 2.0 social annotations and mixed approaches between social annotations and Semantic Web techniques. While the impact of the Semantic Web on adaptive systems has been discussed in several survey papers, the potential of weak semantic technologies has, so far, received little attention. The aim of this analysis is to fill this gap. Therefore, we will discuss contributions and limits of both approaches, but we will focus special attention on weak semantic adaptive systems.     

PGSW-OS: a novel approach for resource management in a semantic web operating system based on a P2P grid architecture

A web operating system is an operating system that users can access from any hardware at any location. A peer-to-peer (P2P) grid uses P2P communication for resource management and communication between nodes in a grid and manages resources locally in each cluster, and this provides a proper architecture for a web operating system. Use of semantic technology in web operating systems is an emerging field that improves the management and discovery of resources and services. In this paper, we propose PGSW-OS (P2P grid semantic Web OS), a model based on a P2P grid architecture and semantic technology to improve resource management in a web operating system through resource discovery with the aid of semantic features. Our approach integrates distributed hash tables (DHTs) and semantic overlay networks to enable semantic-based resource management by advertising resources in the DHT based upon their annotations to enable semantic-based resource matchmaking. Our model includes ontologies and virtual organizations. Our technique decreases the computational complexity of searching in a web operating system environment. We perform a simulation study using the Gridsim simulator, and our experiments show that our model provides enhanced utilization of resources, better search expressiveness, scalability, and precision.     

Meta web service: building web-based open decision support system based on web services

Web services are currently one of the trends in network-based business services, which intuitively will be applied to build a semantic web-based decision support system (DSS). Since web services are self-contained, modular business process applications, based on open standards, enable integration models for facilitating program-to-program interactions. Decision modules in a semantic web-based DSS can be viewed as a web service. However, according to the current features, web services know only about themselves, they are neither autonomous, nor are they designed to use ontologies; they are passive until invoked, and they do not provide for composing functionalities. These lead to the motivation on building a sophisticated web service to contain these features and to utilize web services on behalf of the user. This paper aims to propose a new concept of Meta Web Service, a web service-based DSS. The meta web service understands the user's problem statement with ontology, performs web service discovery, web service composition, and automatically generates codes for composite web service execution. Case-based reasoning is applied to quickly find past histories of successful service compositions. A prototype of research web service has been developed to show the feasibility of the proposed idea.     

基于语义近似逼近技术的多代理协作

本体在多代理系统中起着重要的作用,它提供和定义了一个共享的语义词汇库。然而,在现实的多代理通讯的过程中,两个代理共享完全相同的语义词汇库是几乎不可能的。因为信息不完整以及本体的异构等特性,一个代理只能部分理解另外一个代理所拥有的本体内容,这使得代理间的通讯非常困难。本文就是探索利用近似逼近技术实现基于部分共享分布式本体的多代理通讯,从而实现多代理之间的协作查询。我们使用基于OWLweb本体语言的描述逻辑来描述分布式本体的近似查询技术。最终我们也开发了基于语义近似逼近方法的一个多代理协调查询系统。     

A structural-semantic web service selection approach to improve retrievability of web services

Service-Oriented Computing promotes building applications by consuming and reusing Web Services. However, the selection of adequate Web Services given a client application is still a major challenge. The effort of assessing and adapting candidate services could be overwhelming due to the “impedance” of Web Service interfaces expected by clients versus the actual interfaces of retrieved Web Services. In this work, we present a novel structural-semantic approach to help developers in the retrieval and selection of services from a service registry. The approach is based on a comprehensive structural scheme for service Interface Compatibility analysis, and WordNet as the semantic support to assess identifiers of operations and parameters. We also empirically analyze, compare and contrast the performance of three service selection methods: a pure structural approach, a pure semantic approach, and the structural-semantic (hybrid) approach proposed in this work. The experimental analysis was performed with two data-sets of real-world Web Services and a service discovery support already published in the literature. Results show that our hybrid service selection approach improved effectiveness in terms of retrievability of Web Services compared to the other approaches.     

Making agents secure on the semantic Web

Agents were designed to collaborate and share information. While highly desirable for interoperability, this feature is scary from the security perspective. Illegal inferences, supported by semantic Web technology and ontologies, might enable users to access unauthorized information. In addition to semantic associations and replicated data with different sensitivity, malicious agents could also exploit statistical inferences. Although each agent in a system might behave in a desired and secure way, their combined knowledge could be used to disclose sensitive data. The research community must therefore develop and implement techniques that allow control over released data. To answer the questions related to information availability (scalability), data correctness (integrity), and access control in the presence of illegal inferences and undesired collaborations (confidentiality), researchers in semantic Web technologies (XML, RDF, DAML, and multiagent systems) and information system security need to collaborate. Indeed, given the Web's openness, dynamic nature, and diverse user population, developing secure Web services will require the collaboration of experts in different fields from both industry and academia. In turn, the intelligent Web of the future will facilitate unheard of support for collaborations and information management.     

Graph visualization techniques for web clustering engines

One of the most challenging issues in mining information from the World Wide Web is the design of systems that present the data to the end user by clustering them into meaningful semantic categories. We show that the analysis of the results of a clustering engine can significantly take advantage of enhanced graph drawing and visualization techniques. We propose a graph-based user interface for Web clustering engines that makes it possible for the user to explore and visualize the different semantic categories and their relationships at the desired level of detail     

An Approach to User Interface Specification with Attribute Grammars

An approach to supporting user interfaces using an attribute grammar combined with an event model is described.The main emphasis is how to represent a multi-thread dialogue model in direct manipulation user interfaces.It is shown that control sequence within dialogues,communication with other dialogues, and some computations for applications can be specified with a syntactic and semantic notation.The attribute grammar specification can be implemented using an attribute grammar intepreter embedded in the run-time structure supporting communication,synchronization,and dialogue executon.     

基于语义距离度量模型的语义Web服务匹配排序机制

随着语义Web服务技术研究工作的不断深入,因特网上语义Web服务数量急剧增加。如何快速便捷地定位可用语义Web服务已经成为一个迫切且关键的问题。在语义Web服务匹配技术研究中,其中一个重要的研究主题就是语义Web服务匹配结果的排序机制。本文在综合概括和分析各种关于语义Web服务匹配结果排序机制的基础上,提出了一种基于语义距离度量模型的语义Web服务匹配结果排序机制,利用该排序机制,计算待匹配语义Web服务的语义相似度量,并依据此度量对语义Web服务匹配结果进行排序。该度量模型将语义Web服务引用概念间的语义关系转换成可精确比较的量化度量值,对属于相同语义匹配类型的匹配候选服务也能够分别计算语义距离,区分出相同匹配类型的候选服务与服务请求的匹配程度,从而达到改善用户对语义Web服务的搜索体验的目的。     

Semantic web reasoners and languages

Semantic web reasoners and languages enable the semantic web to function. Some of the latest reasoning models developed in the last few years are: DLP, FaCT, RACER, Pellet, MSPASS, CEL, Cerebra Engine, QuOnto, KAON2, HermiT and others. Some software tools such as Protégé, Jena and others also have been developed, which provide inferencing as well as ontology development and management environments. These reasoners usually differ in their inference procedures, supporting logic, completeness of reasoning, expressiveness and implementation languages. Various semantic web languages with increasing expressive power continue to be developed for describing web services. We survey the some of the more recent languages like OWL-S (Ontology Web Language-Schema), WSML (Web Service Modeling Language), SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) and others that have been tested in early use. We also survey semantic web reasoners and their relationship to these languages.     

Mining user access patterns with traversal constraint for predicting web page requests

The recent increase in HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) traffic on the World Wide Web (WWW) has generated an enormous amount of log records on Web server databases. Applying Web mining techniques on these server log records can discover potentially useful patterns and reveal user access behaviors on the Web site. In this paper, we propose a new approach for mining user access patterns for predicting Web page requests, which consists of two steps. First, the Minimum Reaching Distance (MRD) algorithm is applied to find the distances between the Web pages. Second, the association rule mining technique is applied to form a set of predictive rules, and the MRD information is used to prune the results from the association rule mining process. Experimental results from a real Web data set show that our approach improved the performance over the existing Markov-model approach in precision, recall, and the reduction of user browsing time. Mei-Ling Shyu received her Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN in 1999, and three Master's degrees from Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Restaurant, Hotel, Institutional, and Tourism Management from Purdue University. She has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Miami (UM), Coral Gables, FL, since June 2005, Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor in ECE at UM dating from January 2000. Her research interests include data mining, multimedia database systems, multimedia networking, database systems, and security. She has authored and co-authored more than 120 technical papers published in various prestigious journals, refereed conference/symposium/workshop proceedings, and book chapters. She is/was the guest editor of several journal special issues. Choochart Haruechaiyasak received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, in 2003 with the Outstanding Departmental Graduating Student award from the College of Engineering. After receiving his degree, he has joined the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), located in Thailand Science Park, as a researcher in Information Research and Development Division (RDI). His current research interests include data/ text/ Web mining, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Search Engines, and Recommender Systems. He is currently leading a small group of researchers and programmer to develop an open-source search engine for Thai language. One of his objectives is to promote the use of data mining technology and other advanced applications in Information Technology in Thailand. He is also a visiting lecturer for Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems courses in many universities in Thailand. Shu-Ching Chen received his Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA in December, 1998. He also received Master's degrees in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Civil Engineering from Purdue University. He has been an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS), Florida International University (FIU) since August, 2004. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor in SCIS at FIU dating from August, 1999. His main research interests include distributed multimedia database systems and multimedia data mining. Dr. Chen has authored and co-authored more than 140 research papers in journals, refereed conference/symposium/workshop proceedings, and book chapters. In 2005, he was awarded the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society's Outstanding Contribution Award. He was also awarded a University Outstanding Faculty Research Award from FIU in 2004, Outstanding Faculty Service Award from SCIS in 2004 and Outstanding Faculty Research Award from SCIS in 2002.     

有关智能Web服务问题的讨论

近几年，Internet已经深入企业，企业不仅仅是从Internet上获取信息，企业的许多业务也延伸其上，Web服务的概念应运而生，想了解和运用Web服务的呼声越来越高。该文结合当前实际，简要介绍了Web服务的概念和实现Web服务的两大框架体系——Microsoft公司的．NET和SUN公司提出的SUN ONE，并提出了一种基于SUN ONE的运用Servlet和Prolog相结合的智能Web服务解决方案，并列举一例，对Web服务这一新兴概念的具体实施进行了有益的探索。该文还介绍了知识表示、语义Web的概念并讨论了其在智能Web服务中的重要性，同时介绍了几种语义Web描述语言，并进行了比较。     

Coupling semantic and statistical techniques for dynamically enriching web ontologies

With the development of the Semantic Web technology, the use of ontologies to store and retrieve information covering several domains has increased. However, very few ontologies are able to cope with the ever-growing need of frequently updated semantic information or specific user requirements in specialized domains. As a result, a critical issue is related to the unavailability of relational information between concepts, also coined missing background knowledge. One solution to address this issue relies on the manual enrichment of ontologies by domain experts which is however a time consuming and costly process, hence the need for dynamic ontology enrichment. In this paper we present an automatic coupled statistical/semantic framework for dynamically enriching large-scale generic ontologies from the World Wide Web. Using the massive amount of information encoded in texts on the Web as a corpus, missing background knowledge can therefore be discovered through a combination of semantic relatedness measures and pattern acquisition techniques and subsequently exploited. The benefits of our approach are: (i) proposing the dynamic enrichment of large-scale generic ontologies with missing background knowledge, and thus, enabling the reuse of such knowledge, (ii) dealing with the issue of costly ontological manual enrichment by domain experts. Experimental results in a precision-based evaluation setting demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.     

一种基于窗口机制的口语理解异构图网络

口语理解(spoken language understanding, SLU)是面向任务的对话系统的核心组成部分,旨在提取用户查询的语义框架.在对话系统中,口语理解组件(SLU)负责识别用户的请求,并创建总结用户需求的语义框架, SLU通常包括两个子任务:意图检测(intent detection, ID)和槽位填充(slot filling, SF).意图检测是一个语义话语分类问题,在句子层面分析话语的语义;槽位填充是一个序列标注任务,在词级层面分析话语的语义.由于意图和槽之间的密切相关性,主流的工作采用联合模型来利用跨任务的共享知识.但是ID和SF是两个具有强相关性的不同任务,它们分别表征了话语的句级语义信息和词级信息,这意味着两个任务的信息是异构的,同时具有不同的粒度.提出一种用于联合意图检测和槽位填充的异构交互结构,采用自注意力和图注意力网络的联合形式充分地捕捉两个相关任务中异构信息的句级语义信息和词级信息之间的关系.不同于普通的同构结构,所提模型是一个包含不同类型节点和连接的异构图架构,因为异构图涉及更全面的信息和丰富的语义,同时可以更好地交互表征不同粒度节点之间的信息.此...     

Process interoperability in healthcare systems with dynamic semantic web services

Healthcare systems are very complex due to extreme heterogeneity in their data and processes. Researchers and practitioner need to make systems interoperable and integrate for the benefit of all the stakeholders including hospitals, clinicians, medical support staff, and patients. The broader goal of interoperability can only be achieved when standards are practiced.Two different healthcare systems can earn HL7 conformance and compliance but at the same time can be incompatible for interoperability because of varying implementation of HL7 interaction model. This is mainly because workflows in healthcare systems are very complex. Interoperability on one hand requires flexible mechanism for the mapping of business processes to a standard, HL7 in our example. On the other hand it requires deeper understanding of the standard interaction model and gaps created by their incompatible implementations. In this paper we propose a novel technique of dynamically creating semantic web services as overlay on top of the existing services. We used Web Service Modeling Framework as an underlying architecture for HL7 process artifacts implementation as semantic web services. These semantic services are mapped to our proposed interaction ontology. Integrated reasoning mechanism provides necessary execution semantics for more effective and seamless end-to-end communication.The prototype we tested on different processes from the laboratory domain at a local diagnostic laboratory with uninterrupted process flow. The scenario of Result Query Placer interaction flow and its associated process artifacts are executed for the proof of concept.The proposed solution complements the existing data interoperability in HL7 and leads to semantic process interoperability. The achievement of semantic interoperability results in timely delivery of healthcare services to patients saving precious lives.     

The semantic web: yet another hip?

Currently, computers are changing from single, isolated devices into entry points to a worldwide network of information exchange and business transactions called the World Wide Web (WWW). For this reason, support in data, information, and knowledge exchange has become a key issue in current computer technology. The success of the WWW has made it increasingly difficult to find, access, present, and maintain the information required by a wide variety of users. In response to this problem, many new research initiatives and commercial enterprises have been set up to enrich available information with machine processable semantics. This semantic web will provide intelligent access to heterogeneous, distributed information, enabling software products (agents) to mediate between user needs and the information sources available. This paper summarizes ongoing research in the area of the semantic web, focusing especially on ontology technology.     

Evolving semantic web with social navigation

The Semantic Web (SW) is a meta-web built on the existing WWW to facilitate its access. SW expresses and exploits dependencies between web pages to yield focused search results. Manual annotation of web pages towards building a SW is hindered by at least two user dependent factors: users do not agree on an annotation standard, which can be used to extricate their pages inter-dependencies; and they are simply too lazy to use, undertake and maintain annotation of pages. In this paper, we present an alternative to exploit web pages dependencies: as users surf the net, they create a virtual surfing trail which can be shared with other users, this parallels social navigation for knowledge. We capture and use these trails to allow subsequent intelligent search of the web.People surfing the net with different interests and objectives do not leave similar and mutually beneficial trails. However, individuals in a given interest group produce trails that are of interest to the whole group. Moreover, special interest groups will be higher motivated than casual users to rate utility of pages they browse. In this paper, we introduce our system KAPUST1.2 (Keeper And Processor of User Surfing Trails). It captures user trails as they search the internet. It constructs a semantic web structure from the trails. The semantic web structure is expressed as a conceptual lattice guiding future searches. KAPUST is deployed as an E-learning software for an undergraduate class. First results indicated that indeed it is possible to process surfing trails into useful knowledge structures which can later be used to produce intelligent searching.     

Data-driven models for timing feedback responses in a Map Task dialogue system

Traditional dialogue systems use a fixed silence threshold to detect the end of users’ turns. Such a simplistic model can result in system behaviour that is both interruptive and unresponsive, which in turn affects user experience. Various studies have observed that human interlocutors take cues from speaker behaviour, such as prosody, syntax, and gestures, to coordinate smooth exchange of speaking turns. However, little effort has been made towards implementing these models in dialogue systems and verifying how well they model the turn-taking behaviour in human–computer interactions. We present a data-driven approach to building models for online detection of suitable feedback response locations in the user's speech. We first collected human–computer interaction data using a spoken dialogue system that can perform the Map Task with users (albeit using a trick). On this data, we trained various models that use automatically extractable prosodic, contextual and lexico-syntactic features for detecting response locations. Next, we implemented a trained model in the same dialogue system and evaluated it in interactions with users. The subjective and objective measures from the user evaluation confirm that a model trained on speaker behavioural cues offers both smoother turn-transitions and more responsive system behaviour.     

一种动态混合QoS语义的Web服务个性化推荐模型

服务推荐是服务计算中的主要问题之一,当前大多针对功能属性进行推荐,而在Web服务的QoS属性方面考虑较少,并且不支持动态变化的QoS属性。基于动态混合QoS的语义Web服务个性化推荐模型,把语义Web技术引入Web服务中,在QoS监控器下,有效监测Web服务的QoS属性变化并动态更新Web服务的QoS属性。根据建立的用户兴趣模型,向用户推荐具有个性化的Web服务。此外,在个性化推荐系统中使用最广泛的协同过滤推荐技术基础上,对数据进行了一系列的预处理填充,而且充分考虑了不同时间的项目评分对推荐的影响。结合用户兴趣度和用户评分的相似性计算方法,并通过不同的权值来表示它们的重要程度,综合计算目标用户的最近邻居集合,最终对用户u产生推荐。该系统在一定程度上提高了服务推荐的效率和准确度并满足用户查询需求。