Rosa Gil

Towards an Ontology for Describing Emotions

The study of emotion in human beings has traditionally been a research interest area in disciplines such as psychology and sociology. The appearance of affective computing paradigm has made it possible to include findings from these disciplines in the development of affective interfaces. Still, there is a lack of applications that take emotion related aspects into account. This situation is mainly due to the great amount of proposed theoretical models and the complexity of human emotions. Besides, the importance that mobile computing area is acquiring has made necessary to bear context related aspects in mind. The proposal presented in this paper is based on a generic ontology for describing emotions and their detection and expression systems taking contextual and multimodal elements into account. The ontology is proposed as a way to develop a formal model that can be easily computerized. Moreover, it is based on a standard, the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which also makes ontologies easily shareable and extensible. Once formalized as an ontology, the knowledge about emotions is used in order to make computers more accessible, personalised and adapted to user needs.

A web ontologies framework for digital rights management

In order to improve the management of copyright in the Internet, known as Digital Rights Management, there is the need for a shared language for copyright representation. Current approaches are based on purely syntactic solutions, i.e. a grammar that defines a rights expression language. These languages are difficult to put into practise due to the lack of explicit semantics that facilitate its implementation. Moreover, they are simple from the legal point of view because they are intended just to model the usage licenses granted by content providers to end-users. Thus, they ignore the copyright framework that lies behind and the whole value chain from creators to end-users. Our proposal is to use a semantic approach based on semantic web ontologies. We detail the development of a copyright ontology in order to put this approach into practice. It models the copyright core concepts for creation, rights and the basic kinds of actions that operate on content. Altogether, it allows building a copyright framework for the complete value chain. The set of actions operating on content are our smaller building blocks in order to cope with the complexity of copyright value chains and statements and, at the same time, guarantee a high level of interoperability and evolvability. The resulting copyright modelling framework is flexible and complete enough to model many copyright scenarios, not just those related to the economic exploitation of content. The ontology also includes moral rights, so it is possible to model this kind of situations as it is shown in the included example model for a withdrawal scenario. Finally, the ontology design and the selection of tools result in a straightforward implementation. Description Logic reasoners are used for license checking and retrieval. Rights are modelled as classes of actions, action patterns are modelled also as classes and the same is done for concrete actions. Then, to check if some right or license grants an action is reduced to check for class subsumption, which is a direct functionality of these reasoners.

Facilitating business interoperability from the semantic web

Most approaches to B2B interoperability are based on language syntax standardisation, usually by XML Schemas. However, due to XML expressivity limitations, they are difficult to put into practice because language semantics are not available for computerised means. Therefore, there are many attempts to use formal semantics for B2B based on ontologies. However, this is a difficult jump as there is already a huge XML-based B2B framework and ontology based approaches lack momentum. Our approach to solve this impasse is based on a direct and transparent transfer of existing XML Schemas and XML data to the semantic world. This process is based on a XML Schema to web ontology mapping combined with an XML data to semantic web data one. Once in the semantic space, it is easier to integrate different business standards using ontology alignment tools and to develop business information systems thanks to semantics-aware tools.

Building a Usable and Accessible Semantic Web Interaction Platform

Semantic Web applications take off is being slower than expected, at least with respect to “real-world” applications and users. One of the main reasons for this lack of adoption is that most Semantic Web user interfaces are still immature from the usability and accessibility points of view. This is due to the novelty of these technologies, but this also motivates the exploration of alternative interaction paradigms, different from the “traditional” Web or Desktop applications ones. Our proposal is realized in the Rhizomer platform, which explores the possibilities of the object–action interaction paradigm at the Web scale. This paradigm is well suited for heterogeneous resource spaces such as those common in the Semantic Web. Resources, described by metadata, correspond to the objects in the paradigm. Semantic web services, which are dynamically associated to these objects, correspond to the actions. The platform is being put into practice in the context of a research project in order to build an open application for media distribution based on Semantic Web technologies. Moreover, its usability and accessibility have been evaluated in this real setting and compared to similar systems.

The Rhizomer Semantic Content Management System

The Rhizomer platform is a Content Management System (CMS) based on a Resource Oriented Approach (RESTful) and Semantic Web technologies. It achieves a great level of flexibility and provides sophisticated content management services. All content is described using semantic metadata semi-automatically extracted from multimedia content, which enriches the browsing experience and enables semantic queries. A usable user interface is built on top of the CMS in order to facilitate the interaction with content and enhance it with the information provided by the associated semantic metadata. As an application scenario of the platform, its use in a media company where audio content is managed and its speech transcript semantically annotated is described.

Ontology-Based Retrieval of Human Speech

As part of the general growth and diversification of media in different modalities, the presence of information in the form of human speech in the world-wide body of digital content is becoming increasingly significant, in terms of both volume and value. We present a semantic- based search model for human speech corpora, stressing the search for meanings rather than words. Our framework embraces the complete recognition/retrieval cycle, from word spotting to semantic annotation, query processing, and search result presentation.

Triplificating and linking XBRL financial data

One of the main ways of populating the Web of Data is by triplifying existing data sources. One interesting candidate for this approach is data based on the XML Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a standard for business and financial reporting. Many institutions are making available or requiring data in this format, e.g. the US SEC through the EDGAR program. However, XBRL data is loosely interconnected and it is difficult to mix and query it. Our contribution is a translation from XBRL filings to linked data, which we have applied to more than 1000 filings obtaining 3 million triples. The resulting semantic data is easier to integrate and cross query. Moreover, it can be interconnected with the rest of the Web of Data in order to extract its full potential.

The semantic web as a newspaper media convergence facilitator

Newspapers are evolving and this causes great changes in how newspapers reach their consumers, but also in how newspapers work internally. Advanced computerised support is needed in order to cope with the new needs, which require that machines are aware of a greater part of the underlying semantics. Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies are clear candidates for web-wide semantics. However, newspapers have made great investments in their current news management systems and their wish is to undertake a smooth transition. Our proposal is to build an ontological framework based on existing journalism and multimedia standards. These standards are based on XML technologies. Therefore, we have developed a generic XML Schema to OWL mapping, complemented with an XML to RDF one. Together, they allow reusing existing metadata that, once in a semantic space, facilitates data integration, news management and retrieval. The resulting ontological framework is being applied in the Diari Segre Media Group, which produces press, radio and television content.

A Web Ontology for Copyright Contract Management

Digitization and the Internet pose new opportunities and threats for content markets that cannot be adequately handled by traditional digital rights management. Lack of interoperability, ignorance of user rights, and implementation costs are the main problems. A Semantic Web ontology that conceptualizes the copyright domain is utilized to establish a common interoperability ground and means that incorporate user rights. The ontology provides building blocks for flexible machine-understandable copyright contracts that can readily be implemented because of the easy reusability of Semantic Web tools.

Content value chains modelling using a copyright ontology

Existing digital rights management (DRM) systems, initiatives like Creative Commons or research works as some digital rights ontologies provide limited support for content value chains modelling and management. This is becoming a critical issue as content markets start to profit from the possibilities of digital networks and the World Wide Web. The objective is to support the whole copyrighted content value chain across enterprise or business niches boundaries. Our proposal provides a framework that accommodates copyright law and a rich creation model in order to cope with all the creation life cycle stages. The dynamic aspects of value chains are modelled using a hybrid approach that combines ontology-based and rule-based mechanisms. The ontology implementation is based on Web Ontology Language and Description Logic (OWL-DL) reasoners, are directly used for license checking. On the other hand, for more complex aspects of the dynamics of content value chains, rule languages are the choice.