Title : OpenPHACTS: Lash-up Demo and challenges up ahead.
| Presenter | Antonis Loizou |
| Abstract | Open PHACTS (the Open Pharmacological Concepts Triple Store) will deliver a single view across available data resources, and will be freely available to users. Scientific text, difficult to analyse by computer, will have fact ual assertions extracted as semantic triples, allowing for the first time t he prospect of querying textual and database data together to give answers needed to identify new drug targets and pharmacological interactions. While the semantic approach has been delivered in small-scale and targeted appro aches so far, its promise for multiscale data integration has remained larg ely unfulfilled - Open PHACTS is a major project including many of the top semantic web experts, committed to deliver on this promise. The project has defined as a deliverable a 6-month prototype system - a `la sh-up=B4 of the relevant state of the art technologies. I will give a demon stration of this lash-up system and an overview of its' various components. I will then present the challenges in developing the full system along wit h our proposed solutions in terms of scalability, mapping between data sour ces and reasoning. |
Title : VOICES
| Presenter | Victor de Boer |
| Abstract | In rural areas in the Sahel (e.g. Burkina Faso and Mali), communication is voice-based, since many people cannot read or write. Mobile phone and community radio are the main channels for information and communication. To provide a voice-platform for local knowledge sharing, mobile voice services are currently being developed and deployed locally, as part of the EU-funded VOICES project. These services are developed in close dialogue with people from rural communities, local radio stations, and local ICT entrepreneurs, as to make them useful in the local context. The voice-services can be accessed by simple first-generation mobile phones, through inexpensive local phone-lines. In the WAI talk I will discuss the current state of the VOICES project and discuss the methodological and technical issues that arise from developing an information system in remote developement areas. I will present an overview of the current design of the RadioMarche system -our first voice-based system- and plans for the future. |