The Information Management Group

Taverna 2 formal semantics paper accepted for publication

Our paper on the formal semantics of Taverna 2 has been accepted for publication in the Special Issue on Scientific Workflows of the Journal of Computer and System Sciences.

This is good news: the paper is a result of an ongoing collaboration between the myGrid people, Jan Hidders of the Technical University of Delft, NL, and Jacek Sroka, of the University of Warsaw, Poland.

Here is the temporary citation:

Jacek Sroka, Jan Hidders, Paolo Missier, and Carole Goble, Formal semantics for the Taverna 2 Workflow Model, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, Special Issue on Scientific Workflows, 2010, in press.

This is a relevant paper, in that it provides a formal foundation for the new version of the Taverna workflow management system. A similar "formal semantics" paper, which however follows a different modelling approach, described the original Taverna model and appears in the procs. of the IEEE e-science conference: DOI.

ISWC 2009 Best Poster Award

Congratulations to Matthew Horridge, Bijan Parsia and Uli Sattler, who won the "Best Poster & Demonstration Award" at the 8th International Semantic Web Conference for their joint poster "Understanding Justifications for Entailments in OWL". More information is available at the ISWC 2009 posters & demos page and in the related OWLED paper (PDF).

OWL 2 is now a recommendation!

Two years ago, the W3C started a working group to standardize the next generation of the Web Ontology Language (OWL). On Tuesday, OWL 2 was completed.

Professor Uli Sattler and Bijan Parsia of the IMG were significant participants in the working group. The main changes to the logical underpinnings of OWL are based on Sattler's research into the Description Logic SROIQ and Parsia was a co-editor of the Primer, the Structural Specification, and the XML Serialization.

OWL 2 is based on the OWL 1.1 member submission to the W3C. OWL 1.1 was developed in the OWL: Experiences and Directions (OWLED) workshop series (which was co-founded by Parsia).

The OWL working group also produced a "W3C note" describing the "Manchester Syntax" developed by Matthew Horridge.

Software developed by the University of Manchester (in both the IMG and the BHIG), including Protégége 4, FaCT++, and the OWL API played a key role in the standardization process. Significant features of OWL 2 were developed in response to application and user insight from Robert Stevens, Alan Rector, and the rest of the BHIG.

Further reading:

• The Manchester OWL page


• OWL 2: The next step for OWL


• The University of Manchester press release


• The W3C press release and testimonials

Labels: OWL, Semantic Web

IMG Seminar 11th November 2009

Title: Project Wonderland

Presenter: Bernard Horan, Sun Microsystems

Venue: 13.00 11th November 2009 in 1.3, Kilburn Building

Abstract:
Project Wonderland is an open-source toolkit for building 3D virtual worlds. The platform supports immersive audio, 2D and 3D shared applications, multi-user Java programs in 2D or 3D, and telephony integration. The environment, built on the Project Darkstar game server infrastructure, is open and extensible, allowing developers to create highly customized virtual worlds of all different types. Bernard will provide a description of Project Wonderland's features and show several different virtual worlds built by members of the Project Wonderland open source community. Each world highlights different aspects of the Wonderland platform and the wide range of possibilities open to developers.

Full paper accepted to the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

The researchers from the HCW lab had a journal paper accepted to the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. The journal covers interdisciplinary research in computing, artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, communication, design, engineering, and social organisation.

The paper, titled "What Input Error Do You Experience? Typing and Pointing Errors of Mobile Web Users", is written by Tianyi Chen, Dr. Yeliz Yesilada and Dr. Simon Harper. The paper presents a user study that
investigates the input errors of mobile Web users in both typing and pointing. The study identifies six types of typing errors and three types of pointing errors shared between motor-impaired desktop users
and mobile Web users. Results show that mobile Web users often confuse the different characters located on the same key, press keys that are adjacent to the target key, and miss certain key presses. When using a stylus, they also click in the wrong places, slide the stylus during multiple clicks, and make errors when dragging. Those results confirm that despite using different input devices, mobile Web users share common problems with motor-impaired desktop users; and it would be beneficial to transfer available solutions between these user domains in order to address their common problems. This work is part of the RIAM project funded by EPSRC (EP/E002218/1).