The Role of the National Library in Preserving National Written Heritage

The first part presented at the meeting by A. Dipchikova is a brief report of the role of the National library as an institution in collecting, preserving and making accessible the national written heritage. Problems of digitization are examined from the point of view of the existing experience in cataloguing. Special attention is paid to the history and the significance of international standards, the experience in the field of development and maintenance of authority files on national and international level as well as in markup languages. Possibilities of using MARC and XML in the library are discussed. The second part presented here by E. Moussakova is giving an overview of the latest activities of the Library in the sphere of digitisation of the old Slavic manuscripts which are component of the national cultural heritage. It is pointed out that the current work is rather limited within the scope of preparation of metadata than being focused on digital products.

Representing human expertise by the OWL web ontology language to support knowledge engineering in decision support systems

Clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) often base their knowledge and advice on human expertise. Knowledge representation needs to be in a format that can be easily understood by human users as well as supporting ongoing knowledge engineering, including evolution and consistency of knowledge. This paper reports on the development of an ontology specification for managing knowledge engineering in a CDSS for assessing and managing risks associated with mental-health problems. The Galatean Risk and Safety Tool, GRiST, represents mental-health expertise in the form of a psychological model of classification. The hierarchical structure was directly represented in the machine using an XML document. Functionality of the model and knowledge management were controlled using attributes in the XML nodes, with an accompanying paper manual for specifying how end-user tools should behave when interfacing with the XML. This paper explains the advantages of using the web-ontology language, OWL, as the specification, details some of the issues and problems encountered in translating the psychological model to OWL, and shows how OWL benefits knowledge engineering. The conclusions are that OWL can have an important role in managing complex knowledge domains for systems based on human expertise without impeding the end-users' understanding of the knowledge base. The generic classification model underpinning GRiST makes it applicable to many decision domains and the accompanying OWL specification facilitates its implementation.

Discovering knowledge structures in mind maps of mental health risks

This thesis addressed the problem of risk analysis in mental healthcare, with respect to the GRiST project at Aston University. That project provides a risk-screening tool based on the knowledge of 46 experts, captured as mind maps that describe relationships between risks and patterns of behavioural cues. Mind mapping, though, fails to impose control over content, and is not considered to formally represent knowledge. In contrast, this thesis treated GRiSTs mind maps as a rich knowledge base in need of refinement; that process drew on existing techniques for designing databases and knowledge bases. Identifying well-defined mind map concepts, though, was hindered by spelling mistakes, and by ambiguity and lack of coverage in the tools used for researching words. A novel use of the Edit Distance overcame those problems, by assessing similarities between mind map texts, and between spelling mistakes and suggested corrections. That algorithm further identified stems, the shortest text string found in related word-forms. As opposed to existing approaches’ reliance on built-in linguistic knowledge, this thesis devised a novel, more flexible text-based technique. An additional tool, Correspondence Analysis, found patterns in word usage that allowed machines to determine likely intended meanings for ambiguous words. Correspondence Analysis further produced clusters of related concepts, which in turn drove the automatic generation of novel mind maps. Such maps underpinned adjuncts to the mind mapping software used by GRiST; one such new facility generated novel mind maps, to reflect the collected expert knowledge on any specified concept. Mind maps from GRiST are stored as XML, which suggested storing them in an XML database. In fact, the entire approach here is ”XML-centric”, in that all stages rely on XML as far as possible. A XML-based query language allows user to retrieve information from the mind map knowledge base. The approach, it was concluded, will prove valuable to mind mapping in general, and to detecting patterns in any type of digital information.

XML storage and retrieval using the semantic binary object -oriented database system (SEM-ODB)

Over the past five years, XML has been embraced by both the research and industrial community due to its promising prospects as a new data representation and exchange format on the Internet. The widespread popularity of XML creates an increasing need to store XML data in persistent storage systems and to enable sophisticated XML queries over the data. The currently available approaches to addressing the XML storage and retrieval issue have the limitations of either being not mature enough (e.g. native approaches) or causing inflexibility, a lot of fragmentation and excessive join operations (e.g. non-native approaches such as the relational database approach). ^ In this dissertation, I studied the issue of storing and retrieving XML data using the Semantic Binary Object-Oriented Database System (Sem-ODB) to leverage the advanced Sem-ODB technology with the emerging XML data model. First, a meta-schema based approach was implemented to address the data model mismatch issue that is inherent in the non-native approaches. The meta-schema based approach captures the meta-data of both Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and Sem-ODB Semantic Schemas, thus enables a dynamic and flexible mapping scheme. Second, a formal framework was presented to ensure precise and concise mappings. In this framework, both schemas and the conversions between them are formally defined and described. Third, after major features of an XML query language, XQuery, were analyzed, a high-level XQuery to Semantic SQL (Sem-SQL) query translation scheme was described. This translation scheme takes advantage of the navigation-oriented query paradigm of the Sem-SQL, thus avoids the excessive join problem of relational approaches. Finally, the modeling capability of the Semantic Binary Object-Oriented Data Model (Sem-ODM) was explored from the perspective of conceptually modeling an XML Schema using a Semantic Schema. ^ It was revealed that the advanced features of the Sem-ODB, such as multi-valued attributes, surrogates, the navigation-oriented query paradigm, among others, are indeed beneficial in coping with the XML storage and retrieval issue using a non-XML approach. Furthermore, extensions to the Sem-ODB to make it work more effectively with XML data were also proposed. ^

Linking Old Librarianship to New: Aligning 5-Steps of The Innovator's DNA in Creating Thematic Discovery Systems for the Everglades

This poster presentation from the May 2015 Florida Library Association Conference, along with the Everglades Explorer discovery portal at http://ee.fiu.edu, demonstrates how traditional bibliographic and curatorial principles can be applied to: 1) selection, cross-walking and aggregation of metadata linking end-users to wide-spread digital resources from multiple silos; 2) harvesting of select PDFs, HTML and media for web archiving and access; 3) selection of CMS domains, sub-domains and folders for targeted searching using an API. Choosing content for this discovery portal is comparable to past scholarly practice of creating and publishing subject bibliographies, except metadata and data are housed in relational databases. This new and yet traditional capacity coincides with: Growth of bibliographic utilities (MarcEdit); Evolution of open-source discovery systems (eXtensible Catalog); Development of target-capable web crawling and archiving systems (Archive-it); and specialized search APIs (Google). At the same time, historical and technical changes – specifically the increasing fluidity and re-purposing of syndicated metadata – make this possible. It equally stems from the expansion of freely accessible digitized legacy and born-digital resources. Innovation principles helped frame the process by which the thematic Everglades discovery portal was created at Florida International University. The path -- to providing for more effective searching and co-location of digital scientific, educational and historical material related to the Everglades -- is contextualized through five concepts found within Dyer and Christensen’s “The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the five skills of disruptive innovators (2011). The project also aligns with Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science, especially the 4th Law -- to "save the time of the user.”

Production and presence in the countries of Central America in Scopus on the theme of Documentation in Social Communication (1986-2013)

Describes and analyzes the results obtained after analysis of the publications present in Scopus data base and used that tool rankings generated by the research group Scimago on the production of the different countries of Central America on the issue of documentation the means of mass communication. Performed a comparative about different countries in the region and the scientific analyzes. Finally, and given and data analysis, a number of recommendations are made to improve the production and the presence in indexed database.

Drying kinetics, biochemical and functional properties of products in convective drying of anchovy (Engraulis Anchoita) fillets

The aim of this work was to study the convective drying of anchovy (Engraulis anchoita) fillets and to evaluate the final product characteristics through its biochemical and functional properties. The drying temperatures were of 50, 60 and 70°C, and the fillet samples were dried with the skins down (with air flow one or the two sides) and skins up (with air flow one side). The drying experimental data were analyzed by Henderson–Pabis model, which showed a good fit (R2 > 0.99 and REQM < 0.05). The moisture effective diffusivity values ranged from 4.1 10–10 to 8.6 10–10 m2 s−1 with the skin down and 2.2 10–10 to 5.5 10–10 m2 s−1 with the skin up, and the activation energy values were 32.2 and 38.4 kJ mol−1, respectively. The product characteristics were significantly affected (p < 0.05) by drying operation conditions. The lower change was in drying at 60°C with air flow for two sides of the samples and skin up. In this condition, the product showed solubility 22.3%; in vitro digestibility 87.4%; contents of available lysine and methionine 7.21 and 2.64 g 100 g−1, respectively; TBA value 1.16 mgMDA kg−1; specific antioxidant activity was 1.91 mMDPPH g−1 min−1, and variation total color was 10.72.

Playing with sound and gesture in digital audio games

This article introduces the genre of a digital audio game and discusses selected play interaction solutions implemented in the Audio Game Hub, a prototype designed and evaluated in the years 2014 and 2015 at the Gamification Lab at Leuphana University Lüneburg.1 The Audio Game Hub constitutes a set of familiar playful activities (aiming at a target, reflex-based reacting to sound signals, labyrinth exploration) and casual games (e.g. Tetris, Memory) adapted to the digital medium and converted into the audio sphere, where the player is guided predominantly or solely by sound. The authors will discuss the design questions raised at early stages of the project, and confront them with the results of user experience testing performed on two groups of sighted and one group of visually impaired gamers.

Assessment of exposure to the Penicillium glabrum complex in cork industry using complementing methods

Cork oak is the second most dominant forest species in Portugal and makes this country the world leader in cork export. Occupational exposure to Chrysonilia sitophila and the Penicillium glabrum complex in cork industry is common, and the latter fungus is associated with suberosis. However, as conventional methods seem to underestimate its presence in occupational environments, the aim of our study was to see whether information obtained by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a molecular-based method, can complement conventional findings and give a better insight into occupational exposure of cork industry workers. We assessed fungal contamination with the P. glabrum complex in three cork manufacturing plants in the outskirts of Lisbon using both conventional and molecular methods. Conventional culturing failed to detect the fungus at six sampling sites in which PCR did detect it. This confirms our assumption that the use of complementing methods can provide information for a more accurate assessment of occupational exposure to the P. glabrum complex in cork industry.

Creating Structured PDF Files Using XML Templates

This paper describes a tool for recombining the logical structure from an XML document with the typeset appearance of the corresponding PDF document. The tool uses the XML representation as a template for the insertion of the logical structure into the existing PDF document, thereby creating a Structured/Tagged PDF. The addition of logical structure adds value to the PDF in three ways: the accessibility is improved (PDF screen readers for visually impaired users perform better), media options are enhanced (the ability to reflow PDF documents, using structure as a guide, makes PDF viable for use on hand-held devices) and the re-usability of the PDF documents benefits greatly from the presence of an XML-like structure tree to guide the process of text retrieval in reading order (e.g. when interfacing to XML applications and databases).

Enhancing composite Digital Documents Using XML-based Standoff Markup

Document representations can rapidly become unwieldy if they try to encapsulate all possible document properties, ranging from abstract structure to detailed rendering and layout. We present a composite document approach wherein an XMLbased document representation is linked via a shadow tree of bi-directional pointers to a PDF representation of the same document. Using a two-window viewer any material selected in the PDF can be related back to the corresponding material in the XML, and vice versa. In this way the treatment of specialist material such as mathematics, music or chemistry (e.g. via read aloud or play aloud ) can be activated via standard tools working within the XML representation, rather than requiring that application-specific structures be embedded in the PDF itself. The problems of textual recognition and tree pattern matching between the two representations are discussed in detail. Comparisons are drawn between our use of a shadow tree of pointers to map between document representations and the use of a code-replacement shadow tree in technologies such as XBL.

Transactions and schema evolution in a persistent object-oriented programming system

Applications are subject of a continuous evolution process with a profound impact on their underlining data model, hence requiring frequent updates in the applications' class structure and database structure as well. This twofold problem, schema evolution and instance adaptation, usually known as database evolution, is addressed in this thesis. Additionally, we address concurrency and error recovery problems with a novel meta-model and its aspect-oriented implementation. Modern object-oriented databases provide features that help programmers deal with object persistence, as well as all related problems such as database evolution, concurrency and error handling. In most systems there are transparent mechanisms to address these problems, nonetheless the database evolution problem still requires some human intervention, which consumes much of programmers' and database administrators' work effort. Earlier research works have demonstrated that aspect-oriented programming (AOP) techniques enable the development of flexible and pluggable systems. In these earlier works, the schema evolution and the instance adaptation problems were addressed as database management concerns. However, none of this research was focused on orthogonal persistent systems. We argue that AOP techniques are well suited to address these problems in orthogonal persistent systems. Regarding the concurrency and error recovery, earlier research showed that only syntactic obliviousness between the base program and aspects is possible. Our meta-model and framework follow an aspect-oriented approach focused on the object-oriented orthogonal persistent context. The proposed meta-model is characterized by its simplicity in order to achieve efficient and transparent database evolution mechanisms. Our meta-model supports multiple versions of a class structure by applying a class versioning strategy. Thus, enabling bidirectional application compatibility among versions of each class structure. That is to say, the database structure can be updated because earlier applications continue to work, as well as later applications that have only known the updated class structure. The specific characteristics of orthogonal persistent systems, as well as a metadata enrichment strategy within the application's source code, complete the inception of the meta-model and have motivated our research work. To test the feasibility of the approach, a prototype was developed. Our prototype is a framework that mediates the interaction between applications and the database, providing them with orthogonal persistence mechanisms. These mechanisms are introduced into applications as an {\it aspect} in the aspect-oriented sense. Objects do not require the extension of any super class, the implementation of an interface nor contain a particular annotation. Parametric type classes are also correctly handled by our framework. However, classes that belong to the programming environment must not be handled as versionable due to restrictions imposed by the Java Virtual Machine. Regarding concurrency support, the framework provides the applications with a multithreaded environment which supports database transactions and error recovery. The framework keeps applications oblivious to the database evolution problem, as well as persistence. Programmers can update the applications' class structure because the framework will produce a new version for it at the database metadata layer. Using our XML based pointcut/advice constructs, the framework's instance adaptation mechanism is extended, hence keeping the framework also oblivious to this problem. The potential developing gains provided by the prototype were benchmarked. In our case study, the results confirm that mechanisms' transparency has positive repercussions on the programmer's productivity, simplifying the entire evolution process at application and database levels. The meta-model itself also was benchmarked in terms of complexity and agility. Compared with other meta-models, it requires less meta-object modifications in each schema evolution step. Other types of tests were carried out in order to validate prototype and meta-model robustness. In order to perform these tests, we used an OO7 small size database due to its data model complexity. Since the developed prototype offers some features that were not observed in other known systems, performance benchmarks were not possible. However, the developed benchmark is now available to perform future performance comparisons with equivalent systems. In order to test our approach in a real world scenario, we developed a proof-of-concept application. This application was developed without any persistence mechanisms. Using our framework and minor changes applied to the application's source code, we added these mechanisms. Furthermore, we tested the application in a schema evolution scenario. This real world experience using our framework showed that applications remains oblivious to persistence and database evolution. In this case study, our framework proved to be a useful tool for programmers and database administrators. Performance issues and the single Java Virtual Machine concurrent model are the major limitations found in the framework.

Stability of Reconstituted and Diluted Mitomycin C Solutions in Polypropylene Syringes and Glass VialsAbstract

International audience

A New Journal in the Field of Pharmaceutical Technology Is Born

International audience

Nanomedicines: are we lost in translation?

International audience