sensemaking

mSpace is an interaction model designed to allow a user to navigate in a meaningful manner the multi-dimensional space that an ontology can provide. mSpace offers potentially useful slices through this space by selection of ontological categories.

Linked Data is a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data on the Semantic Web. The practice emphasizes Web access to data using existing Web technologies such as URIs and HTTP. It also emphasizes links between related Web resources.

Brad Bird would say that none of us are the best animator in the world, but collectively we are the best in the world. So that approach of spending your money wisely, or giving everyone a shot to do everything is a really wise approach. It also helps keep egos in check, and you do the best work with what you're given. Every shot can be great, I firmly believe that.

Special Section on Creating Bayesian Belief Network Models in Ecology

What Are "Bayesian Belief Network Models?" Bruce G. Marcot 24 April 2005 In short, a Bayesian belief network (BBN) is simply a way of showing how things interact and cause specific outcomes.

One facet of modeling wildlife-habitat relations and species-environment relations may pertain to depicting the ecological roles played by organisms. I have termed these "key ecological functions" or KEFs.

For my colleagues in wildlife biology and ecology ... The Ecology Plexus For my colleagues concerned with the nature of knowledge and their apostolic science ... The Knowledge Plexus And for friends who ponder the nature of nature ... The Arts Plexus

A new Species-Environment Relations (SER) modeling approach depicts key ecological functions (KEFs) and key environmental correlates (KECs) of terrestrial plant and animal species, as part of a regional assessment of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. Assessing KEFs of species is one facet of understanding management effects and ecological integrity of ecosystems. A relational database was developed that ties species' KEFs with their key habitats, KECs, and distribution maps. In this way, potential management activities can be evaluated for how they influence: habitats and environmental correlates; associated plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate species; the array of ecological functions associated with those species; geographic functional ecology; and potential effects on ecosystem productivity, diversity, and sustainability.

Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think?

Research funding decisions and research evaluation are currently almost exclusively based on peer-review. Peer-review is well suited to ensure quality, but helps little to achieve impact. ParticipatoryResearch adds the stakeholder dimension to research funding and evaluation. In an ideal world those research projects should get funded which will ultimately benefit its stakeholders most. Individuals (such as peer reviewers) can often hardly realistically access the potential benefit of a certain research proposal. Better results can be achieved by relying on the intelligence of a whole community by employing prediction markets (being the best general institutions we know for aggregating information). In such a prediction market for research ideas stakeholders bet or vote about which research results will benefit them most. The highest-ranked research ideas according to the stakeholder benefit should ultimately get funded.

Cofundos helps to realize open-source software ideas, by providing a platform for their discussion & enrichment and by establishing a process for organizing the contributions and interests of different stakeholders in the idea.

We propose a biologically and physically plausible model for ants and pheromones, and show this model to be sufficiently powerful to simulate the computation of arbitrary logic circuits. We thus establish that coherent deterministic and centralized computation can emerge from the collective behavior of simple distributed markovian processes as those followed by ants.

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

The World Federation of UN Associations is an independent, non-governmental organization with Category One Consultative Status at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and consultative or liaison links with many other UN organizations and agencies. The Millennium Project functions under the auspices of WFUNA. The Millennium Project of WFUNA is a global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities. The Millennium Project manages a coherent and cumulative process that collects and assesses judgements from its several hundred participants to produce the annual "State of the Future", "Futures Research Methodology" series, and special studies such as the State of the Future Index, Future Scenarios for Africa, Lessons of History, Environmental Security, Applications of Futures Research to Policy, and a 700+ annotated scenarios bibliography.

In this paper, we challenge the universality of three basic assumptions prevalent in organizational decision support and strategy: assumptions of order, of rational choice, and of intent. We describe the Cynefin framework, a sense-making device we have developed to help people make sense of the complexities made visible by the relaxation of these assumptions. The Cynefin framework is derived from several years of action research into the use of narrative and complexity theory in organizational knowledge exchange, decision-making, strategy, and policy-making. The framework is explained, its conceptual underpinnings are outlined, and its use in group sense-making and discourse is described. Finally, the consequences of relaxing the three basic assumptions, using the Cynefin framework as a mechanism, are considered.

Action research is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices, and knowledge of the environments within which they practice.

Sesat is an open sourced Search Middleware with federation capabilities and a built-in search portal framework. Sesat enables a single user query to be dispatched to multiple information sources. The result is analysed, weighted and presented to the user according to configurable business rules.

Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge NEPOMUK brings together researchers, industrial software developers, and representative industrial users, to develop a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations.

Integrate. Relate. Infer. Share. IRIS is a semantic desktop application framework that enables users to create a "personal map" across their office-related information objects. IRIS includes a machine-learning platform to help automate this process. It provides "dashboard" views, contextual navigation, and relationship-based structure across an extensible suite of office applications, including a calendar, web and file browser, e-mail client, and instant messaging client.