Showing posts with label open source. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open source. Show all posts

Sunday, 28 September 2014

ERCIM News No. 99 Special theme: "Software Quality"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 99 has just been published at
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99

http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99Special Theme: "Software Quality"
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99/special/

And on the occasion of ERCIM’s 25th anniversary, we published a selection of articles on the future challenges of ICST:
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99/challenges-for-icst

Keynote by Willem Jonker, CEO EIT ICT Labs: "The Future of ICT: Blended Life"
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en99/keynote/the-future-of-ict-blended-life



This issue is also available for download as:
pdf:  http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN99/EN99-web.pdf
epub: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN99/EN99.epub

Next issue: No. 100, January 2015 - Special Theme: "Scientific Data Sharing"

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Best regards,
Peter Kunz
ERCIM News central editor

------------------------------------------------------------------------
ERCIM "Alain Bensoussan" Fellowship Programme
ERCIM offers fellowships for PhD holders from all over the world.
Next application deadline: 30 September 2014 http://fellowship.ercim.eu/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ERCIM News
is published quarterly by ERCIM, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics.
The printed edition will reach about 6000 readers.
This email alert reaches over 7300 subscribers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
About ERCIM
ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading European research institutes are members of ERCIM. ERCIM is the European host of W3C.
http://www.ercim.eu/

Follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/ercim_news
and join the open ERCIM LinkedIn Group http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ERCIM-81390

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

UK: Health Insights - how innovations support in health and care communities


Hi Peter

We are delighted to introduce our new series of Health Insights. These free to attend events for healthcare professionals feature interactive round table activities, news on how the latest innovations support the health and care community, and best practice experiences from NHS Trust colleagues.

CLICK HERE TO SEE NEW DATES AND LOCATIONS

Starting in Leeds and Newbury this October and held in association with NHS England, each one day conference will feature:

Digital Discovery Sessions

- facilitated round tables exploring procurement issues

An update from NHS England on Tech Funds and Open Source Programme
Host Roy Lilley, popular Healthcare Broadcaster, with lively panel debates

Speakers will include Rob Webster, CEO of NHS Confederation, Tim Straughan, Director of Health and Innovation at Leeds and Partners, and Clive Kay, Chief Executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals.

REGISTER FREE TODAY

We hope to see you at your local Health Insights.

Kind regards

Samantha Phillips
HIMSS UK

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Stanford offers new open access MOOC - Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning

Open source, open science, open data, open access, open education, open learning -- This fall Stanford faculty and librarians are working with international partners to offer the innovative free (no-cost) course Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning on the OpenEdX platform.



The course provides an introduction to the important concept of openness from a variety of perspectives, including library and information studies, education, publishing, economics, politics, and more. Open Knowledge is international and multi-institutional, bringing together instructors and students from Stanford University (USA), Fordham University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Simon Frasier University (Canada), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (Mexico), and the rest of the world.

Learn more about the concept of "open", develop your digital literacy skills, and connect with peers from around the world.

For more information and to register:
(https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Education/OpenKnowledge/Fall2014/about)

Lauren A Maggio, MS (LIS), MA
Lecturer, Department of Medicine
Director of Research and Instruction
Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center
Stanford University Medical Center
300 Pasteur Drive, L109, Stanford, CA 94305-5123
lmaggio AT stanford.edu
@laurenmaggio

HIFA profile: Lauren Maggio is Director of Research and Instruction at Stanford University in the USA. Professional interests: Information Literacy, Open Access, Open Data libraries.  lmaggio AT stanford.edu

[*Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): MOOC = Massive Open Online Course]

My source: HIFA2015

Saturday, 5 July 2014

CARE2X Integrated Hospital Information System


In learning we often look in turn for role models, exemplars then even some comparator or examples against which to compare and contrast to understand the context and our own knowledge, skills and potential.

In health and social care information systems it's useful for me to look at what is available in Drupal. A recent find is Care2X with a demo available. There are numerous plans to take these systems further:

 Care3g is seeking funding.

There is also Project Mtuha.

There's a post by Tim Schofield - Helping African hospitals with open source software that describes how the enterprise resource planning system KwaMoja @KwaMoja is being used to provide administration systems for hospitals in Africa.

Even though not on the same scale as commercial hospital systems in the USA and EU ... these are significant software projects compared with my purposes which are educational.

Care2X presentation

Friday, 13 June 2014

Books: The Geometry of Meaning, Gärdenfors & Geometry and Meaning, Widdows

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/geometry-meaning
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/coli.2006.32.1.155There are two additions to my library. They are technical in parts and beyond my math and technical abilities, but as background this is essential reading.

The module 1 study, still to be marked provided a prompt to install R and obtain some summary statistics. Widdow's Geometry and Meaning includes details of the software used in the text. See the companion website below. While Gärdenfors' book The Geometry of Meaning is new, Widdow's text is a decade old and so demands some checking of software. I notice there are broken links on the companion site. The book, both in fact are great resources even as they increase the permanence of the geometry upon my furrowed brow...

Dominic Widdows, Geometry and Meaning - Companion website

Related posts:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/conceptual%20spaces

Saturday, 1 March 2014

Drupalcamp London 2014: The Government Digital Service, Drupal 8 Multilingual features, Twig

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/23/flood-hack-developing-solutions/
Flood hack
DrupalCamp London today got underway with a keynote Delivering User-centred Digital Services by Mark O'Neill from the UK Government Digital Service.

Given the record of public and private sector led IT projects it was refreshing to hear of the GDS's approach being user-centred, the extension of 7 design principles and Mark's previous experience. It's clearly too late for the health care sector to coin and create the Needotron - GDS beat us to it.

Drupal 8 is looking formidable both in its potential and the (learning) stack it presents. Another great session to pick out was - A whole new world for multilingual sites in Drupal 8 by Gábor Hojtsy. The progress here is phenomenal and even though incomplete it is a major achievement and a credit to the Drupal community.

It's humbling as it reminds me to post some introductions to Hodges' model on W2tQ in several languages.

As to being user-centred, the Harmony Forum is a real tease. I know a forum will not moderate itself (is that the new Sorcerer's Apprentice?) and yet time is of the essence. Harmony is one for me to watch - so I'm signed up for the newsletter. Two sessions on Twig and Entities rounded up a busy few days.

This began on Thursday with Cutty Sark, the Royal Greenwich Observatory (learned much from their interactive designs), Turner and the Sea, The British Library - Beautiful Science (60-90 mins ample), and Ibsen's Ghosts at Trafalgar Studios.

I was also able to visit a university yesterday and meet a member of faculty who used Hodges' model many years ago. Here's hoping that some of the materials can be retrieved even though it seems unlikely. I hope to keep in touch with this nursing contact (and not just for the dinner!). I've met several other people here, the Drupal community is another great asset - and with thanks to the sponsors who make these events feasible for many of us.

Output from Needotron


I'll end this post back with Mr O'Neill and the GDS.

I wonder to what extent healthcare figured in the flood deliberations?

It seems that an output from the Needotron may not be so far removed from h2cm?

Happy St David's Day too - in the closing minutes here!


Monday, 24 February 2014

Drupal in Education: Richer experiences with Drupal 7 and H5P (HTML5 Package)!

The H5P module is finally available for Drupal 7! Now you can download H5P and H5P content types empowering you to create great rich experiences for your users to enjoy. Content like interactive videos, presentations, drag and drop, fill in the blanks questions and more are available from h5p.org.

We have received many enthusiastic requests for an H5P D7 module and we are proud to present the newly released version. You can find it available on the H5P project page.

You create the content with your web-browser and the content will work just as great on smartphones and tablets, as on you desktop computer.

Below is a summary of the H5P content types that are currently available for Drupal 7 (and all other platforms we support).

Interactive video ( see for additional media: https://groups.drupal.org/node/409763 )
Perhaps the most powerful tool in the H5P toolbox. Upload videos and animations, and make them interactive by adding quizzes, images and text along the way.

Presentation
Create a presentation slideshow with interactions along the way. Add text, images, video and various quiz tasks to your presentation.

Boardgame
A level based board game where the user must complete tasks in various levels to win. Depending on whether the user completes or fails, a video is shown at the end of each level. The game is fully customizable.

Flashcards
An image is displayed and the user has to insert a corresponding text by using the keyboard. The card turns to display the solution. Several cards can be added in a sequence.

Fill in the blanks
Create sentences and leave out words, adjectives, conjugations etc. for the user to complete by typing the missing text on the keyboard.

Question set
Your staple quiz question tool. Add a mix of multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks & drag and drop tasks.

Contact button
A simple widget that allows users of your website to get in touch with you using their preferred channel, such as email, Facebook or Twitter.

For those that are new to H5P, H5P is short for HTML5 Package, and is a simple way to create and share rich and interactive web content. H5P is modular and consists of several content types and applications, perfect for use in e-learning and advertising.

See all the content types in action on H5P.org

With H5P you can:
  • Export and import content types and applications between sites, e.g. from a Joomla site to a Drupal site.
  • Use existing content types and applications, and build on these to create your own content.
  • Create and edit rich web content directly in your browser. No technical skills are needed.
  • As a developer, build upon existing content types and applications, or create you own from scratch. Share your work with the rest of the world on the h5p.org!
Source: https://groups.drupal.org/node/409763

Looking forward this next weekend and London for DrupalCamp.

other Drupal posts on W2tQ.

Sunday, 22 December 2013

mEDucator 3.0 | Open Linked Education - Melina+ (Drupal)

http://www.meducator3.net/melinaplus/
Checking through links yesterday I came across the mEDucator initiative and Melina+ which is part and noticed it is built using Drupal.

There is a thread on Drupal.org on science applications:

https://groups.drupal.org/science-applications

I posted in 2009 about the Science Collaboration Framework - SCF (for creating biomedical resources).

The link to SCF no longer works; there is an archive of this and other work that was part of Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC).

So it's important to consider these initiatives at least in terms of their longevity, their scale and number of participants, as examples of funded research and as Drupal projects.

Saturday, 28 September 2013

Drupalcon Prague: sessions, missed ops, leaflets and old contacts - renewed

The structure of Drupalcons provide a range of sources for learning, networking and information. The main sessions are the most obvious source, plus there are many vendors providing and marketing various services from development, hosting to specialist services. Less formal there are the Birds of a Feather BoFs, core conversations. I did not get to any BoFs, it is always difficult when these things run concurrently.

I'll list here some things that stood out from leaflets left on the coffee tables to BoFs that clashed (I've revisited the program). First up is a BoF that points to a useful bundled project:

Creating Graphs and Maps with SearchAPI

BoFs, being informal are quite dynamic so the lesson for me is to check the program for additions and things you may have missed. I missed a BoF on e-learning in Drupal, the Quiz and related modules - H5P that I posted about last May. Gutted for sure, as I can envisage how I could use these tools beyond the old HTML multiple choice form.

The above BoF included a demo of Opigno an LMS - learning management system.

As to companies, the Semantic Web Company offers Drupal services. This lead was a flyer I picked up on the last day and another prompt to revisit Neologism a Drupal project I came across in Drupalcon Szeged, Hungary in 2008 and posted about. The introductory text from the DERI Neologism website reads:
Neologism is a vocabulary publishing platform for the Web of Data, with a focus on ease of use and compatibility with Linked Data principles. Neologism is free and Open Source.
With Neologism, you can create RDF classes and properties, which are needed to publish on the Web of Data. Neologism makes creating and publishing vocabularies easy and fast. It supports the RDFS standard, and a part of OWL.
Among a great many people, I met Alan Burke in Szeged back in '08 and he re-introduced himself this week in Prague. He is now full-time dedicated to Drupal and was pleased to learn that as an 'enthusiast' I am still engaged. I qualified this - with a website still to do; but yes, I'm very much still on-board. I really appreciate Alan's coming over during the break and hearing of his progress and that of his colleagues.

Scalability is a common discussion in software. Scale is an issue for new businesses also. One of the sessions in Prague (several probably) drew attention to the complexity of the 'Drupal stack'. Is it possible for an end-user to fully master it? In our quick chat it became apparent that this was partly why Alan was pleased to learn that I am still climbing the curve. Scalability can be a problem for individuals too, as in making sense of the commercial offerings, whether semantic services or hosting.

There was a BoF on data visualization too - but again I was elsewhere. Dataseed sounds an interesting fusion. I also followed sessions on creating multilingual sites, Drupal 8, Symfony, plus Twig the new templating system for Drupal 8. All in all it was a great event with some sight seeing last Monday. The greatest source though is the community!

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

Surveys, Nursing Education, Drupal and Webform

Just before heading to Drupalcon Prague I learned of a new paper by Gill et al.:

Using a web-based survey tool to undertake a Delphi study: Application for nurse education research

Background: The Internet is increasingly being used as a data collection medium to access research participants. This paper reports on the experience and value of using web-survey software to conduct an eDelphi study to develop Australian critical care course graduate practice standards.
Methods: The eDelphi technique used involved the iterative process of administering three rounds of surveys to a national expert panel. The survey was developed online using SurveyMonkey. Panel members responded to statements using one rating scale for round one and two scales for rounds two and three. Text boxes for panel comments were provided.
Collecting data and providing feedback: For each round, the SurveyMonkey's email tool was used to distribute an individualized email invitation containing the survey web link. The distribution of panel responses, individual responses and a summary of comments were emailed to panel members. Stacked bar charts representing the distribution of responses were generated using the SurveyMonkey software. Panel response rates remained greater than 85% over all rounds.
(in press)
The paper is interesting in combining surveys and an e-variant of the Delphi research method. Conclusions highlight the improved accessibility to experts and how ethics needs to keep pace with technical change and affordances.

Yesterday at Drupalcon there was a presentation on Webform:

Webform 4.0: Surveys in Drupal Improved




I've mocked up a enquiry form using Webform, but this session pointed to how the module can be extended for polls and contact forms. Based on Gill et al. and the eDelphi technique they explain this could be a really powerful combination.


Gill, F.J., et al., Using a web-based survey tool to undertake a Delphi study: Application for nurse education research, Nurse Education Today (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2013.02.016

Monday, 9 September 2013

Hodges' model - Website, Blog and the UK Web Archive

Early this morning the blog threw a wobbly, at least on Firefox. The sidebar was being displayed below the main content. I take this as a sign that it's time to move on digitally. This evening the problem seems to have corrected itself, but time is pressing.

Returning from holiday there was another sign, a tap on the shoulder. This was positive in that as I left for Italy (minus laptop) I had submitted the old website, first published online in 1998 to the UK web archive.

Well, they have accepted the proposal and would like to archive the website. I really appreciate this. I've to fill in a form and will also use this as an opportunity to do some Northerly autumnal cleaning. There may be some broken links and other edits to make.

This is quite apt then given the long winter of the website and this blog, especially as I prepare for Drupalcon Prague on the 22 September. As I've written here before one of the first 'menu options' of any new site will be to provide a new archive for Brian Hodges' original lecture notes.

If you are new to nursing, health and social care and reflection and are interested in using Hodges' model please let me know. There are contact options in that sidebar - if it's behaving itself...

Monday, 20 May 2013

H5P framework: rich content and applications in Drupal

If I ever get to create a new site devoted to Hodges' model it will be an enjoyable experience. A couple of weeks ago I learned of a framework H5P (also a file format) that can be integrated into Drupal to create content types for educational purposes.

In addition to the archive material on the model, it is important to offer students a means to test their knowledge. This might involve a trial of several modules, including H5P:
H5P is a framework for creating HTML5 content and applications that can be easily moved between web-sites. H5P facilitates sharing and reuse of code used in rich content and applications. H5P also includes an authoring tool so that H5P content may be created and edited using a web-browser.
Organizations and governments spend millions of dollars creating rich Internet content, games and applications. The code used may be shared here on h5p.org as libraries so that others may fill in their own content and reuse the code.
Drupalcon Portland is now underway and I'm looking forward to tuning in live and following sessions, starting with Dries' keynote. This should begin at 7.30pm here in the UK. Drupalcon Munich seems ages ago now (4.7 even longer ..! ) and suddenly Prague is on the horizon.

Additional link:

Quiz Questions Import for Drupal 7 released

Friday, 1 March 2013

Drupalcamp London Business Day: Mark Taylor keynote

In his keynote this morning Mark Taylor suggested three resources for Drupal business delegates to investigate and engage with:

G-Cloud:
Cloud computing has brought about a step change in the economics and sustainability of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Government is committed to the adoption of cloud computing and delivering computing resources. The G-Cloud is an iterative programme of work to achieve this which will deliver fundamental changes in the way the public sector procures and operates ICT. ...
GDS:

Government Digital Service
Putting the public first in delivering digital public services

- and a conference next month here in the UK:

http://opensourceconference.co.uk/


Monday, 10 September 2012

DrupalCamp North West November 24-25 Manchester

If your are based in the North West of England, or can travel to Manchester there are plans for a DrupalCamp in November 24-25th at Media City Salford.

You can sign up for news - .

For the next few months the North West Drupal User Group are having 'back to basics' sessions (Madlab, Manchester 1st Weds in the month). I'm really grateful to Phil who sorted VirtualBox and DrupalPro on my Macbook last Wednesday. I've been struggling with MAMP since Drupalcon in Munich, asking too much of the conference wifi and paying the price with 'MySQL server gone away' and PDO errors. DrupalPro is quite something behold.

Thanks to the NW gang, friends old and new. Before DrupalCamp there is also PHPNW 2012 to enjoy next month.

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

NHS Hack Day Past & Future + HANDI health

Whether it's web magazines, web design sites, Drupal, or Ruby presentations you cannot escape from the app.

Health is no different being a major field of development. I did not make the NHS Hack Day in May and I may be away for the next in September 22-23th which is planned at ADA Liverpool. If you can make it register now!

There is also HANDI and no doubt a multitude of other international groups working on innovative apps that can and already are making a real difference to people's health and social care outcomes.

Monday, 18 June 2012

Musings on a mixed and busy fortnight: Oxford Drupal Education Camp

There is a busy fortnight coming up here. If all goes according to plan it runs like this: Drupal, Visual Methodologies and Ruby.

On Thursday evening I will travel down to Oxford for Drupal Education Camp. My first Drupal effort is taking shape. There are five photos in a jCarousel. I think I'm almost there but after the five scroll through there are five empty placeholders or blanks. It's probably just a tweak to the settings. The enquiry form is completed. I'm not happy about the formatting which seems to characterise many Drupal pages: that of the long series of fields. Listening to discussion at Drupal NW this month also reminded me of the need for spam capture.

I'm hoping one or two Drupal mental health contacts from Cambridge in January may also attend. The accepted sessions for Oxford present a very useful mix (timing permitting), especially:

Drupal 7 Semantizer

How we built a virtual learning environment

There was a debate on the longevity of VLEs in Wolverhampton in 2008-09. As I tried to look up that event I noticed that variations on the theme of "The VLE is dead, long live the VLE" are still doing the rounds. Clearly a case of the undead.

So, three - four years on this should insightful: What is a VLE? Is there a hybrid form? How far can Drupal be pushed? Why do students use FB and by-pass the institutional 'tools'? Perhaps it's because the institutions are busy deliberating the existence of this TLA versus that?

Migrating data into Drupal using the migrate module

NeuroHub: The information environment for Neuroscientists

The content of a new h2cm website will (yes, I know....) combine archive material - Brian Hodges' notes - with new work. For student users a means to assess and measure understanding of the content makes sense. I implemented a crude multiple choice test. The questions were probably not too bad, but there was no log-in, administration. If assessment can be done in a standardised way then that would be a huge bonus. What a new site should be about though is facilitating students in developing their knowledge and application of Hodges' model. The context of that knowledge and application need not be wholly limited to nursing.

After Oxford, on Monday 25th and after work I'm heading east to Newcastle for two days. I'll reflect on that soon. The trick is going to be threading all these together.

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Reflections [VI] Conceptual Spaces At Work: Adams & Raubal - CSML

The final day of the CS@W conference started with a topic I was really anticipating as per a previous blog post. Ben Adams and Martin Raubal had indicated by email that CSML was a work in progress and a chat after their session emphasized the same. The existence of CSML and looking at some code examples holds great promise.

Direction in Lund, Sweden May 2012 by Peter Jones
The motivation for their work stems from geographical information systems [GIS] and how to formalise conceptual spaces. Palmer (1978) was cited as providing one form of representation. Palmer's mental model being matched with formal conceptual spaces. As per Gardenfors' book Minkowski's vector space is central to this work and informs a previous paper by Raubal (2004).

Way-finding provided an example: how there are different domains with semantic distances and weights that can change according to context. The facades of buildings and the contexts of day and night. What features stand out in terms of the shape, colour, visibility, area of buildings?

Adams and Raubal moved to differentiating topological relations that emphasise dynamic concepts. Piaget's contribution was noted in how we perceive conceptual change and the work of Torsten Hägerstrand whose time geography was illustrated (the geographical aspect of their work).

Behind CSML is a conceptual space algebra that is still being developed. On conceptual spaces and the semantic web, Adams and Raubal observed through their slides that:
Description logics are limited in ability to represent semantic content (RDF, OWL).
They fail to easily express
    Semantic similarity which plays an important role in cognitive categorization.
    Complex concept combinations.
Present Semantic Web technologies are restricted in their ability to answer queries and make inferences.
My BA(Philosophy and Computing Joint Hons.) project was on the application of semantic networks in nursing. The hard work was done for me in that it was directed by existing work in GRAIL. The dissertation I produced was essentially descriptive looking at nursing examples, identifying care issues and modelling them using is_a relationships. Among a great many slides and fascinating explanations Adams and Raubal note that:
Is-A, Instance-Of
Strong – based on topological relationships
Weak – based on similarity relationships
- so the advent of conceptual spaces, CSML and their efforts to engage with the existing semantic web community shows the ongoing dynamic of the semantic web's development. They are pursuing a reification of OWL 2 CS file to OWL 2:
Unique IRI for OWL classes, individuals, properties
Unique IRI for CS domains, concepts, and instances
There may be a future website to follow in addition to the CSML source. Questions followed about whole spaces, contrast classes and support vectors.

Reflecting back, my studies from 1996-97 and the examples produced - mobility... did not really even scratch the surface. Ben and Martin's work begs the question of trying to develop CSML examples that go beyond the surface(s) and enter the conceptual space (or spaces) that is Hodges' model.

Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.

(Photo: mine)

Monday, 30 April 2012

Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web

I'll start May hopefully in tune with plans towards the month's end and attending Conceptual Spaces at Work.

The SCIENCES domain page has included Markup Languages (ML) for a great many years.

In the early versions of the h2cm website there were just two 'resource' pages. When the ongoing four page format arrived then markup languages had a place.


Looking at the programme for next month's Conceptual Spaces at Work the first session listed includes this reference:
Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.
Abstract—CSML is a semantic markup language created for the publishing and sharing of conceptual spaces, which are geometric structures that represent semantics at the conceptual level. CSML can be used to describe semantics that are not captured well by the ontology languages commonly used in the Semantic Web. Measurement of the semantic similarity of concepts as well as the combination of concepts without shared properties are common human cognitive tasks. However, these operations present sources of difficulty for tools reliant upon set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning on symbolic ontologies. In contrast, these operations can be modeled naturally using conceptual spaces. This paper describes the design decisions behind CSML, introduces the key component elements of a CSML document, and presents examples of its usage.
This is an excellent source. CSML is a really significant development for me as Adams and Raubal highlight on the first page:
The computational foundation of the Semantic Web is the formal representation of concepts and their relationships using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) variants [5], [6]. These families of languages allow one to describe semantic relationships between concepts and ontologies, which can be queried using a first-order logic reasoner. An underlying assumption to these methods is the realist approach to semantics, which states that the meanings of concepts are in the real world. That is, there is a direct mapping between language terms and the world but there is no consideration of how individuals understand concepts differently. In contrast, cognitive semantics states that the meanings of terms are cognitive structures in people’s minds. This approach is of central importance for the Semantic Web, because web services interface with human users.

This isn't excellent or significant in the sense that the emergence of CSML demonstrates h2cm as a conceptual space.

Far from it.

Here and for h2cm CSML is obviously an essential tool to examine, understand and possibly extend. Anyone for PHP and XML (Drupal)? Reading the paper, it's clear that even thinking of applying CSML to Hodges' model demands answers to difficult and yet fascinating questions that involve nursing (theory, practice and values), informatics, philosophy and some maths too.

CSML project
http://virunga.sourceforge.net/

Image source:
http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/conceptual_spaces_wordl.png

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp 22 - 23 June 2012

I have booked a holiday for Friday 22 June because as their website announces -
 Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp is happening!

Venue: St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

I'm hoping to meet people from other Drupal events and specifically from Drupalcamp Cambridge. Although Drupal is far from a dedicated educational platform - either for authoring materials and managing learners / learning - there are many contributed modules that can be adapted and extended.

One of the three papers mentioned last week will be published by an online journal in June. News of the other two must wait, one is an end-of-year prospect. Although an abstract and preparation for the ICN Congress (if accepted!) is a non trivial undertaking, further writing must fit in with future web developments. This Drupalcamp will help bring several threads together.