Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Sempl: A Semantic Portal, Matthew Perry, Eric Stiles

Kno.e.sis Publications

Semantic Web technology is intended for the retrieval, collection, and analysis of meaningful data with significant automation afforded by machine understandability of data [1]. As one illustration of semantic web technology in action, we present SEMPL, a semantic web portal for the Large Scale Distributed Information Systems lab (LSDIS) at the University of Georgia. SEMPL, which is powered by a state of the art commercial system, Semagix Freedom [7], uses an ontology-driven approach to provide semantic browsing, linking, and contextual querying of content within the portal. By using the ontology based information integration technique, SEMPL can specify the context of …

Indexing Genomic Databases, Gina Cooper, Michael L. Raymer, Travis E. Doom, Dan E. Krane, Natsuhiko Futamura

Kno.e.sis Publications

Current biological sequence comparison tools utilize full database searches to find approximate matches between a database and a query. A new approach to sequence comparisons can be performed by indexing the database using a novel indexing scheme. An indexed scheme can immediately eliminate highly mismatched sequences thereby improving performance and accuracy. iBlast is proposed as an indexed version of BLAST. In its initial implementation, iBlast uses a sequence-based index to catalog genomic databases in an NCR Teradata RDBMS. Several types of indexes and querying methods are explored to determine the most efficient solution utilizing the parallel nature of the Teradata …

Independence Of Nations And The Role Of Libraries: The American Library System As The Stakeholder For Freedom Of Information, Lana Zink

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

The nations of the world community are independent of each other. There is no higher authority to bring together like and unlike nations for the betterment of world order. Each nation stands alone. It is realized, even in America, that international affairs dictate there is no one moral code common to all people and to all governments of the world. Political order in the world community depends upon an independence of nations, but an independence that recognizes a moral, reasoned mind. The so-called American library system plays a role in the assurances toward tempered, human behavior at the international …

A First In Africa: Implementation Of Metalib And Sfx At The Cape Technikon Library, Deborah Becker

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

The Cape Technikon was the first member of the CALICO consortium of five academic libraries in the Western Cape, South Africa to implement Metalib and SFX technology.

Metalib is a library portal that enables users to search multiple database sources simultaneously, while SFX provides “context-sensitive” linking. This article examines local technical and staffing issues, managing the implementation process using the traditional African principles of ubuntu and batho pele (putting “people first”), and the marketing campaign leading to the final launch of the product.

The use of questionnaires at various stages of the implementation process to evaluate users’ opinions and …

Quality Of Service For Workflows And Web Service Processes, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller, Jonathan Arnold, Krzysztof J. Kochut

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows or Web processes for e-commerce and Web service applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows or Web processes, the underlying workflow engine must accept …

In Medias Res: An Ordinary Revolution, Part Ii, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

A series of relatively recent events has forced me to reconsider the practice of publishing and the art of media-making. As Reconstruction approaches the completion of its fourth year of publication and begins a massive editorial reorganization [2], I have been undergoing a reorganization of my own -- a job search, manuscripts in search of publishers, a virtual conference to help plan, a dissertation defended, and a new baby at home. In addition to this, there are journal issues to complete, submissions to review, edits to make, reviews to write, and, now, an editorial to create. I am, …

The Photocopied Self: Perzines, Self-Construction, And The Postmodern Identity Crisis, Steve Bailey, Anita Michel

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Mike Gunderloy, creator of Factsheet 5, and co-author of The World of Zines, offers the following definition of perzines:

A personal zine, or perzine, is the most intimate kind of zine. It allows the editor/writer many freedoms, not the least of which is spouting off about anything or nothing-in-particular without worrying about editorial policies and other rules of regimented periodicals. It's also a way of corresponding with any number of people simultaneously while maintaining an aura of intimacy and friendship. And something else to remember when you're reading (or writing) a perzine -- because this intimacy …

From Butler To Buffy: Notes Towards A Strategy For Identity Analysis In Contemporary Television Narrative, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Given the increasing significance of questions of identity, subjectivity and selfhood in contemporary postmodern western cultures, it is important to begin acknowledging how these questions are reflected in contemporary media and television and to develop new strategies by which to analyse television characters in terms of identity and subjectivity. The scope for analysing television series' characterizations through recent postmodern and poststructuralist theories of non-essentialist, non-foundationalist subject/identity performativity has not yet been considerably explored. It is my contention here, however, that such a method both reflects the representation of self and identity transformation in new television series as well …

Courtroom Technology: For Trial Lawyers The Future Is Now, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Cultural Literacy And The Field Of The Media, Tony Schirato, Jen Webb

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This paper is concerned with the notion of cultural literacy, specifically with regard to the media, and focuses on two interrelated questions. First, what do we mean by the term cultural literacy, and how can this term be extended and applied to the field, texts and practices of the media? Second, what is it about the place and function of the media in the contemporary world that requires us (as citizens, educators or audiences) to be culturally and media literate?

The Next Step In Scholarly Communication: Is The Traditional Journal Dead?, Jeanne Galvin

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Electronic journals have been applauded as a solution to the serials pricing crisis, a step toward environmentally responsible behavior and a means for scholars to expedite and expand their modes of communication. On the other hand, until fairly recently some scholars regarded electronic journals as ephemeral and inaccessible to all but the technologically proficient. As rising prices force libraries to cancel subscriptions each year and publication delays slow scholarly communication and academic careers, electronic journals seem to offer some promise. The article will review the recent advances made by electronic journals and the current challenges remaining for scholarly communication.

Internet Research Methodology, Carol A. Watson

Presentations

Certainly the Internet has revolutionized our perception of information and information access. Information is everywhere on the Internet, existing in large quantities and continuously being created and revised. Finding information on the Internet has been described as drinking from a fire hose. As lawyers, how can we assess how much and what type of reliable information is available on the Internet for legal research? One of the most important tasks of this Internet Legal Research CLE is to inform you of exactly what types of major legal resources you can expect to find on the Internet and to equip you …

Investigating Terrorism: The Role Of The First Amendment, Amy E. Hooper

Duke Law & Technology Review

This iBrief discusses the constitutionality of a government policy enacted shortly after September 11, 2001 that denies public access to deportation hearings in cases allegedly bearing some connection to terrorism. This ibrief discusses two Circuit Courts of Appeals decisions on the issue and argues that this policy is unconstitutional.

Early Work In Database Research On Schema Mapping/Merging/Transformation, Semantic Heterogeneity, And Use Of Ontology And Description Logics For Schematic And Semantic Integration, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Exploiting Syntactic, Semantic And Lexical Regularities In Language Modeling Via Directed Markov Random Fields, Shaojun Wang, Shaomin Wang, Russell Greiner, Dale Schuurmans, Li Cheng

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Decidability Of The Termination Problem Of Active Database Systems, James Bailey, Guozhu Dong, K. Rammamohanarao

Kno.e.sis Publications

Active database systems enhance the functionality of traditional databases through the use of active rules or ‘triggers’. One of the principal analysis questions for such systems is that of termination—is it possible for the rules to recursively activate one another indefinitely, given an initial triggering event. In this paper, we study the decidability of the termination problem, our aim being to delimit the boundary between the decidable and the undecidable. We present results for two broad types of variations, variations in rule syntax and variations in meta level features. Within each of these, we identify members close to the …

Embedded Versus Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

A 2003 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that “Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports ... More than half—51%—say that the bias is ‘liberal,’ while 26% discerned a ‘conservative’ leaning. Fourteen percent felt neither phrase applied” (Harper, 2003). Now add to this that even some academicians are finally accepting the idea that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than the population as a whole. However, whether political or other biases (Hahn, 1998) affect news coverage …

Semantic Integration Of Glycomics Data And Information, William S. York, Amit P. Sheth, Krzysztof J. Kochut, John A. Miller, Christopher Thomas, Karthik Gomadam, X. Yi, Meenakshi Nagarajan

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Discovering And Ranking Semantic Associations Over A Large Rdf Metabase, Christian Halaschek-Wiener, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, I. Budak Arpinar, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Information retrieval over semantic metadata has recently received a great amount of interest in both industry and academia. In particular, discovering complex and meaningful relationships among this data is becoming an active research topic. Just as ranking of documents is a critical component of today's search engines, the ranking of relationships will be essential in tomorrow's semantic analytics engines. Building upon our recent work on specifying these semantic relationships, which we refer to as Semantic Associations, we demonstrate a system where these associations are discovered among a large semantic metabase represented in RDF. Additionally we employ ranking techniques to provide …

Internet-Mediated Communication: Publicly Interpersonal, Katharine A. Cannella

Theses and Dissertations

A thesis on communication between individuals as mediated by the Internet, concluding that certain types of messages are interpersonal as well as public in nature. Away messages and blogs are examined as evidence that Internet- mediated interpersonal communication is a new context. The researcher determines that Internet-mediated communication (IMC) results in several communicative adaptations unique to this medium and that significance lies within the development of extended interpersonal relationship through the creation and expansion of online social networks.

Service Oriented Architectures And Semantic Web Processes, Francisco Cubera, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Semantic Visualization: Interfaces For Exploring And Exploiting Ontology, Knowledgebase, Heterogeneous Content And Complex Relationships, Amit P. Sheth, David Avant

Kno.e.sis Publications

Technology platforms and products for ontology-driven process of semantic applications that serve both Enterprise wide and pan-Web needs are both available and being deployed. Similar to the development of enterprise software applications, the creation of an ontology driven semantic application can be described as a set of distinct phases that compose a lifecycle. From conception to deployment, these phases involve human interaction with a broad variety of information, identified as heterogeneous data, metadata, knowledge and ontology. Based on experience spanning academic research at the LSDIS lab through deployed commercial semantic applications based on Semagix Freedom, this paper provides examples of …

Semantic Web Research Center Report: Lsdis Lab, Research In Semantic Bioinformatics, Semantic Analytics And Semantic Web Processes, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The LSDIS Lab advances the field of distributed information systems by researching semantic techniques for exploiting heterogeneous multimedia information and improving processes, encompassing the central promise of the Semantic Web initiative. It is pursuing cutting edge research in ontology development for demanding scientific domains, semantic heterogeneity and integration, complex relationships discovery and semantic analytics, and Semantic Web services and processes. Past work of the LSDIS lab can be characterized by keywords: semantic interoperability, syntactic and semantic metadata for text and digital media, metadata based integration of Web content, ontology-driven information systems, multi-ontology query processing, transactional workflows and workflow management. Significant …

"Two Guns, A Girl And A Playstation™": Gender In The Tomb Raider Series, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This article considers the combination of game play and narrative which combine to produce cross-gender identifications in video games, a previously underexamined potential for the production of alternate genders, one which calls into question the stability of gender, particularly masculinity, as a construct.

Reconstructing The Fables: Women On The Educational Cyberfrontier, Jim Dwight

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Computer technology and the Internet inspire narratives based upon modernist tropes. The frontier narrative stands out as one of the most intriguing tropes. Often the language for the Internet regulation and administration of computers, particularly in education, plays on tropes of the Wild, Wild West. Sojourners brave the untamed expanses of cyberspace laying claim to virgin territories. Often, writers represent the frontier as a pure form of woman, the object of masculine desires for conquest such as Natty Bumppo's symbolic marriage to the disappearing frontier in James Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1981 [1826]), Odysseus' conquest of …

Elderly American And The Internet: E-Mail, Tv News, And Entertainment Websites, Michael L. Hilt, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

Communication Faculty Publications

Older Americans, like other groups, vary in their use of the Internet. The participants for this study—elderly computer users from a Midwestern mid-size sample—used e-mail and considered it the most important Internet function. It was common for them to use e-mail with family and friends on a regular, if not daily, basis. When this group of older people did surf the Web, they were more likely to seek information about their special interests rather than visiting mass media sites. They were most likely to use Google.com or Yahoo.com to find sites dealing with weather, health, games, jokes, and entertainment. Additionally, …

New And Now: A Plea For Historiography And Technology, Haidee Wasson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the word new was persistently attached to the term technology, a coupling intended to reference a vast range of phenomena -- computers, the internet, wireless telecommunications, satellite cinema and so on. Throughout this period, these technologies were widely heralded as global panaceas. In the pages of glossy hi-tech magazines and academic annals alike, the obliteration of racism, homophobia, sexism, and the great class divide became subjunctive to the problem of connecting everybody everywhere to emergent digital networks. Decentering old-world imperial powers and creating alternative cultural formations became battle cries for the new …

Review Of G4m3rs, By Kiyash Monsef, Bryan-Mitchell Young

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Reading Over The Shoulder Of The Future At The Library Of Congress, Samuel Gerald Collins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It is 2003 and I am doing some research at the Library of Congress, the de facto national library for the United States and the largest library in the world. Next to me sit some articles I've printed off of online journals on the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Total Information Awareness Project, a plan, still in its formative stage, to throw a panopticon net of surveillance across the United States through a combination of language translation technologies, data search and pattern recognition technologies, and advanced collaborative and decision support tools (DARPA). But I am also doing research …

The Courtroom 21 Project: Creating The Courtroom Of The Twenty-First Century, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.