Paris, 20 February 2006


EFITA newsletter / 247 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


Point of view: No new newsletter!
I could not agree with you more: no new newsletter in ICT in agriculture is needed. In fact it would only be detrimental. I'm very grateful about your consistent, no-hassle effort.
Contact: Gert Jan HOFSTEDE
E-mail: gertjan.hofstede(a)wur.nl


EU Traceability projects (January 2006)
See: http://www.acta-informatique.fr?d=6305
Contact: Sonia RAMONTEUX
E-mail: sonia.ramonteux(a)acta.asso.fr


IST-Africa 2006 Conference & Exhibition
3 - 5 May 2006 – PRETORIA - South Africa
> Advance Programme: 125 presentations from 34 countries (21 European, 10 African, Malaysia, Canada & USA)
See: http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2006/default.asp?page=programme-new
> Registration
See: http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2006/default.asp?page=registration
> Call for Exhibitors
IST-Africa 2006 features an Exhibition, which provides the opportunity to showcase research results and applications through technology demonstrations, whether funded commercially or at national, regional or European level. While some space will be offered for posters, most of the Exhibition will be reserved for innovative technology demonstrations.
Demonstration stands are reserved for live technology demonstrations, but can feature early prototypes or a pre-commercial launch to a highly targeted, knowledgeable community.
Participation in the Exhibition is rewarding, as it provides a valuable opportunity to make international contacts and to build relationships with potential partners or clients from around the world.
See: http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2006/default.asp?page=call4exhibitors
See: http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2006
Contact: Miriam CUNNINGHAM
E-mail: miriam@iimg.com


GI2006 – SYMPOSIUM
11 - 12 May 2006 - DRESDEN
Main themes: Sustainability of spatial information across euro-regional borders and interoperability of webserver, geocatalogue, geodata, and geoservice infrastructures for social, economic, and ecologic sustainable development in Europe of regions
See: http://www.IGN-SN.de/GI2006/GI-2006-CALL-FOR-PAPERS.doc
See: http://maps.kraj-lbc.cz/dokumenty/GI2006/GI-2006-CALL-FOR-PAPERS.doc
Contact: Dr Frank HOFFMANN
Email: doz.dr.frank.hoffmann(a)t-online.de


Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop on "Ontology-based knowledge discovery: Using metadata and ontologies for improving access to agricultural information
9 - 10 November 2006 – BANGALORE - India - in collaboration with the Fifth Conference of the Asian Federation for Information Technology in Agricultural (AFITA - 2006)


>>> Introduction
The goal of the Seventh AOS workshop is to provide a platform for implementers to demonstrate how ontologies can extract and acquire additional knowledge from existing agricultural information systems. It aims to bring together research communities, with special focus on agriculture, whose members are interested in efficiently capturing knowledge and in creating representations and formalizations that can be useful for reasoning and knowledge discovery.

>>> The topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
* Automatic and semi-automatic metadata generation
* Decision-support tools
* Knowledge acquisition methods
* Knowledge elicitation techniques
* Knowledge extraction techniques
* Knowledge representation techniques (in ontologies)
* Metadata and accurate knowledge mark-up
* Ontology application
* Ontology learning
* Ontology life cycle
* Ontology modelling
* Question-answering systems
* Rules in ontologies

>>> Background
The benefits of ontologies can only be fully exploited if they are used efficiently within information systems for extraction or discovery of 'embedded' knowledge. In today's exponentially growing information world, there is a mounting need to extract the most important information in the shortest possible time. It has become vital to have systems that are able to provide the most relevant results, while sieving through mushrooming information systems, websites, publications, forums, blogs etc. Although cataloguing and indexing resources are important steps, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish these tasks due to the lack of skilled personnel, the cost of cataloguing and the rapid growth of the available information resources.

Considerable work has been done to date in the area of knowledge capture through the use of subject and process ontologies in the agricultural domain. The AOS project covers, under its name, ontologies on Food and Nutrition, Food Safety, Animal and Plant Health, Fisheries, etc., each of which captures knowledge in a specific domain area of agriculture. The complete multilingual AGROVOC Thesaurus, in the process of being made available in the form of an ontology, is rich with translations, synonyms and relations. All of these ontologies have been used in information systems to provide improved access to information. However, much of this can be further enhanced through the efficient use of ontologies for extracting the unknown and hidden pieces of knowledge, not only for providing efficient search results to the users but also for iteratively improving the ontology itself. We can achieve this only through the explicit formalization of domain knowledge through its elicitation from experts and by linking the ontologies to actual or instance data.

The activities of the AOS initiative are documented at: http://www.fao.org/aims/.

>>> Important dates
* Paper submission deadline: March 31, 2006
* Announcement of paper acceptance: April 30, 2006
* Camera-ready paper submission deadline: June 26, 2006

>>> Paper submission
All papers should be written in English. Electronic version (MS Word) of the paper should be sent via email to: Johannes Keizer {Johannes.Keizer@fao.org}

>>> Publication
Accepted papers will be published within the AFITA 20006 conference proceedings. At least one author of an accepted paper must register for the AFITA 2006 conference before the deadline for camera-ready copies of the papers (26 June 2006). Otherwise the paper will not be published.

>>>Workshop programme committee
- Howard Beck, University of Florida, USA
- Jayantha Chaterjee, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
- Johannes Keizer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
- Gauri Salokhe, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
- Dagobert Soergel, University of Maryland, USA
- Zhong Wang, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural, China
Contact: Gauri SALOKHE
Email: Gauri.Salokhe(a)fao.org


Challenges for EU Agriculture Policy in 2006 by Commissioner Fischer Boel
See: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/3&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en


"Organic farming in the European Union - Facts and figures"…
…aims at providing an overview of the development in the organic farming sector over the last years. Based on Eurostat statistical information and other sources, it analyses certified organic and in-conversion area, number of certified organic and in-conversion holdings, breakdown of crop area, livestock, marketing channels and retail sales of organic products, farm-gate and consumer prices for organic and comparable conventional products and, finally, agri-environmental programmes which support organic farming.
See: http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/qual/organic/facts_en.pdf


Taoiseach = Prime Minister in Ireland

National Alert …..Taliban in Ireland ?

As we all know, the Taliban considers it a sin for a man to see a naked woman who is not his wife.

So, next Saturday at 2:00 PM GMT time all Irish women are asked to walk out of their house completely naked to help weed out neighbourhood terrorists. Circling your block for one hour, singing “Hail Glorious Saint Patrick” in Donegal Gaelic, is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort.

All men are requested to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their houses to prove they are not Taliban, to demonstrate that they think it's acceptable to see nude women other than their wives and to show support for all Irish women.

And since the Taliban also does not approve of alcohol, a cold six-pack at your side would provide further evidence of your anti-Taliban sentiment.

The Irish Government appreciates your efforts to root out terrorists and applauds your participation in this patriotic anti-terrorist activity.

God bless Ireland!

IT IS YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY TO PASS THIS ON!

WOMEN FROM MAYO, LEITRIM, KERRY AND LAOIS ARE NOT ASKED TO PARTICIPATE.

Bertie Ahern T.D; Taoiseach


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