5575203
X-tract: structure extraction from botanical textual descriptions
Most available information today, both from printed books and digital repositories, is in the form of free-format texts. The task of retrieving information from these ever-growing repositories has become a challenge for information retrieval (IR) researchers. In some fields, such as botany and taxonomy, textual descriptions observe a set of rules and use a relatively limited vocabulary. This makes botanical textual descriptions an interesting area to explore IR techniques for finding structure and facilitating semantic analysis. This paper presents X-tract, a solution to the problem of text analysis and structure extraction in a specific application domain, namely floristic morphologic descriptions. The solution demonstrates the potential of using a grammar in the determination of information structure in a botanical digital library. We have developed a prototype based on this approach in which given an HTML or plain text, X-tract analyzes it and presents results to the user so he or she can verify the proposed structure before updating the database. This transformation is useful also in the process of storing morphologic descriptions in a database with a preestablished format. The solution is implemented in the context of the Floristic Digital Library (FDL), a large digital library project comprising a wide variety of botanical documents, formats and services.
46774
AGS: introducing agents as services provided by digital libraries
This paper presents an architecture for digital libraries that introduces user agents as one of the services available to publishers, librarians and patrons. User agents are the fundamental component of an emerging style of human-computer interaction based on the concept of delegation and indirect management of tasks. In the agent-enabled digital library architecture, termed “AGS”, service providers define classes of agents that describe helpful tasks for patrons. Patrons, in turn, delegate work by selecting agents from the available agent classes and assigning specific tasks to be performed. AGS enables the development of agents that rely on a wide variety of construction approaches while maintaining a unified view of an active environment. AGS is intended to serve as a testbed to investigate alternative user interfaces to digital libraries and, in particular, a host of unexplored issues raised by the introduction of user agents.
2132400
An environment for the collaborative revision of digital theses
We present Zeus, an environment designed to aid in the creation of a repository of digital theses. Zeus is an asynchronous cooperative toolset which allows the revision and annotation of digital theses over the Internet. With Zeus, students working on their theses (and their academic committees) are provided with a highly personalizable environment which simplifies the process of reviewing electronic documents. Participants of the process of producing and publishing a thesis can work together without regard of time and place constraints.
12404157
A Specific Domain Translator Application in a Floristic Digital Library
In this paper, SAVIA is introduced; a system for attaining automatic translation (English-to-Spanish) of morphological descriptions of plants. It was developed at Universidad de las Americas Puebla, as part of a collaborative research with the Flora of North America (FNA) project, currently under construction at the Missouri Botanical Garden [Schnase et al. 1994]. The system has been put forward as a potential solution to the problem of knowledge distribution and multilingual access to Digital Libraries.
589662
An agent-based approach to the construction of floristic digital libraries
This paper describes an agent-assisted approach to the construction of floristic digital libraries, which consist of very large botanical data repositories and related services. We propose an environment, termed Chrysalis, in which authors of plant morphologic descriptions can enter data into a digital library via a web-based editor. An agent that runs concurrently with the editor suggests potentially useful morphologic descriptions based on similar documents existing in the library. Benefits derived from the introduction of Chrysalis include reduced potential for errors and data inconsistencies, increased parallelism among descriptions, and considerable savings in the time regularly spent in visually checking for parallelism and manually editing data.
16679270
Collaborative environments for digital publishing
This work presents a software platform designed and implemented to support the creation of digital publishing organizations (DPOs) and to mediate the collaborative interaction among participants of the digital publishing process. We posit that as digital publications become the norm, the organization of publishing entities is expected to evolve and to differ significantly from current print-oriented publishers. Our major goal is to support the entire digital publishing process, which may vary from DPO to DPO. Distinctive features of our design include facilities for users to define the structure, participants and genres handled by DPOs, as well as tools to support the processes involved in authoring, reviewing, publishing and using digital materials.
7156344
A New Architecture for Deriving Dynamic Brain-Machine Interfaces
Great potential exists for future Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) to help paralyzed patients, and others with motor disabilities, regain (artificial) motor control and autonomy. This paper describes a novel approach towards the development of new design architectures and research test-beds for advanced BMIs. It addresses a critical design challenge in deriving the functional mapping between the subject’s movement intent and actuated behavior. Currently, adaptive signal processing techniques are used to correlate neuronal modulation with known movements generated by the subject. However, with patients who are paralyzed, access to the individual’s movement is unavailable. Inspired by motor control research, this paper considers a predictive framework for BMI using multiple adaptive models trained with supervised or reinforcement learning in a closed-loop architecture that requires real-time feedback. Here, movement trajectories can be inferred and incrementally updated using instantaneous knowledge of the movement target and the individual’s current neuronal activation. In this framework, BMIs require a computing infrastructure capable of selectively executing multiple models on the basis of signals received by and/or provided to the brain in real time. Middleware currently under investigation to provide this data-driven dynamic capability is discussed.
7626983
Intelligent Remote Monitoring
Intelligent monitoring facilities are of paramount importance in both service and network management as they provide the capability to monitor quality of service and utilisation parameters and notify degradations so that corrective action can be taken. By intelligent, we refer to the capability of performing the monitoring tasks in a way that has the smallest possible impact on the managed network, facilitates the observation and summarisation of information according to a number of criteria and, in its most advanced form, permits the specification of these criteria dynamically to suit the particular policy in hand. The OSI management metric monitoring and summarisation management functions provide models that only partially satisfy the above requirements. This paper describes our extensions to the proposed models to support further capabilities, with the intention to eventually lead to fully dynamically defined monitoring policies. The concept of distributing intelligence is also discussed, including the consideration of security issues and the applicability of the model in CORBA-based environments.