VIKI : a semiotic-based system for multilingual knowledge retrieval

Abstract Since its creation, the Internet has permeated our daily life. The web is omnipresent for communication, research and organization. This exploitation has resulted in the rapid development of the Internet. Nowadays, the Internet is the biggest container of resources. Information databases such as Wikipedia, Dmoz and the open data available on the net are a great informational potentiality for mankind. The easy and free web access is one of the major feature characterizing the Internet culture. Ten years earlier, the web was completely dominated by English. Today, the web community is no longer only English speaking but it is becoming a genuinely multilingual community. The availability of content is intertwined with the availability of logical organizations (ontologies) for which multilinguality plays a fundamental role. In this work we introduce a very high-level logical organization fully based on semiotic assumptions. We thus present the theoretical foundations as well as the ontology itself, named Linguistic Meta-Model. The most important feature of Linguistic Meta-Model is its ability to support the representation of different knowledge sources developed according to different underlying semiotic theories. This is possible because mast knowledge representation schemata, either formal or informal, can be put into the context of the so-called semiotic triangle. In order to show the main characteristics of Linguistic Meta-Model from a practical paint of view, we developed VIKI (Virtual Intelligence for Knowledge Induction). VIKI is a work-in-progress system aiming at exploiting the Linguistic Meta-Model structure for knowledge expansion. It is a modular system in which each module accomplishes a natural language processing task, from terminology extraction to knowledge retrieval. VIKI is a supporting system to Linguistic Meta-Model and its main task is to give some empirical evidence regarding the use of Linguistic Meta-Model without claiming to be thorough.

The Vaccine Formulation Laboratory: a platform for access to adjuvants.

Adjuvants are increasingly used by the vaccine research and development community, particularly for their ability to enhance immune responses and for their dose-sparing properties. However, they are not readily available to the majority of public sector vaccine research groups, and even those with access to suitable adjuvants may still fail in the development of their vaccines because of lack of knowledge on how to correctly formulate the adjuvants. This shortcoming led the World Health Organization to advocate for the establishment of the Vaccine Formulation Laboratory at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. The primary mission of the laboratory is to transfer adjuvants and formulation technology free of intellectual property rights to academic institutions, small biotechnology companies and developing countries vaccine manufacturers. In this context, the transfer of an oil-in-water emulsion to Bio Farma, an Indonesian vaccine manufacturer, was initiated to increase domestic pandemic influenza vaccine production capacity as part of the national pandemic influenza preparedness plan.

ViralZone: a knowledge resource to understand virus diversity.

The molecular diversity of viruses complicates the interpretation of viral genomic and proteomic data. To make sense of viral gene functions, investigators must be familiar with the virus host range, replication cycle and virion structure. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive resource bridging together textbook knowledge with genomic and proteomic sequences. ViralZone web resource (www.expasy.org/viralzone/) provides fact sheets on all known virus families/genera with easy access to sequence data. A selection of reference strains (RefStrain) provides annotated standards to circumvent the exponential increase of virus sequences. Moreover ViralZone offers a complete set of detailed and accurate virion pictures.

Assessing the sociology of sport: On sport organizations and critical knowledge

The purpose of this contribution is to analyse the trajectory, the challenges and the future of the sociology of sport on three levels: the internal dynamic within the specific sub-field of the sociology of sport, its interactions with sociology and sport sciences, and its relation with sport organizations. The paper notes that the changes of the trajectory of the sociology of sport, first leaning on the profession of physical education teacher and then to sport sciences, as important consequences. Because most of the sociologists specialized in sport are working in sport sciences departments, the most important consequence is the dependency on sport sciences rather than on sociology. Compared to other fields of sociology, it means challenging other sciences for recognition. The paper argues that to face the threat of a marginalization within the field of sport science, the future of sociology of sport could be to fight for an external recognition. Applying sociology could spread critical views that are necessary to sport organizations. It could also give sociologists access to very interesting data, which can help producing good research, and give it a greater legitimacy within sport sciences. However, it is a risky strategy because of the necessity for the sociologists to stay critical both on sporting organization and on their own work.