Paris, 17 September 2007


EFITA newsletter / 328 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


Let me thank you for your interesting EFITA newsletter. It is always a good source of information and inspiration for my work AND I love the jokes! ;-)
Contact: Alfons DEITERMANN
E-mail:info(a)agrar.de


Online Discussion: Opening Access to CGIAR Research and Knowledge
From 12 September until 3 October, the CGIAR will hold an online discussion on its draft strategy "Global Public Goods (GPGs): From Data and Information to Food." The discussion will focus on priority areas of the strategy, users and their needs, and on obstacles and methodologies. The aim is to make it easier for CGIAR staff, partners and potential partners to access, use and add value to the research and outputs of the CGIAR.
To contribute to the discussion, you need to register on the e-agriculture.org platform. The various contributions and discussions are open to visit.
Participants in the e-agriculture week in Rome can follow these discussions in person on 28th September.
[if the embedded links do not work, the key web page is http://www.e-agriculture.org/18.html
The CGIAR needs your thoughts on how the knowledge and information it produces - and looks after - can be made more accessible.
Contact: Peter BALLANTYNE - President of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD)
E-mail: peter.ballantyne(a)iaald.org


Rural Tourism Training Network Meeting in Hungary
24 - 26 September 2007 – FÜZESGYARMAT - Hungary
Under the SYNERGY 2007 project, a Rural Tourism Training workshop will be held in Hungary (Gara Hotel, Füzesgyarmat).
The Organizers ( Rural Tourism International – Training Network (RTI-TN) (www.rti-tn.eu), the European association for rural tourism training and trainers in co-operation with: ECEAT-Projects, an internationally working NGO for the promotion and integration of tourism with rural development, sustainable land use and nature protection (www.eceat-projects.org)., Euragro, a Hungarian Agricultural Development and Consulting firm (www.euragro.hu). AGRIDEA, a Swiss organisation developing agriculture and rural areas (www.agridea.ch). SOL, Swiss Occidental Leonardo (www.s-o-l.ch), (www.leonardo-da-vinci.ch).
See: www.ruraltourisminternational.org
Contact: Carolien VAN DER LAAN
E-mail: c.vander.laan(a)eceat-projects.org


Call for participation: Special Session on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics MTSR'07 Conference
11 - 12 October 2007 - CORFU, Greece

Special Session Chairs:
* Johannes Keizer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy)
* Nikos Manouselis, Informatics Laboratory, Agricultural University of Athens (Greece)

The aim of the Special Session on Agricultural Metadata and Semantics of MTSR'07 is to bring together researchers and practitioners that are working on agricultural knowledge production, organization, and exchange from a Semantic Web perspective. It aims to serve as a discussion forum where interested experts will present the results of their work, and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects. In addition, it aims to outline the rich potential of the agricultural knowledge domain as an application field for advanced metadata- and semantic-driven systems and services.

The Special Session will include:

* 6 full paper presentations & 3 poster presentations
* 1 keynote presentation about the Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) initiative

The following papers have been accepted for oral or poster presentation:

* Sonia Bergamaschi, Antonio Sala, "Creating and Querying an Integrated Ontology for Molecular and Phenotypic Cereals Data"

* Stefka Kaloyanova, Gian Luigi Betti, Francesco Castellani, Johannes Keizer, "Achieving OAI PMH compliancy for CDS/ISIS Databases"

* Michael Malliapis, "Technological aspects of using agricultural ontologies"

* Nikos Manouselis, Kostas Kastrantas, Argiris Tzikopoulos, "An IEEE LOM application profile to describe training resources for agricultural & rural SMEs"

* Brahim Medjahed, William Grosky, "Sentinel: Intelligent Information Sharing for Controlling the Emerald Ash Borer Threat"

* Salvador Sanchez-Alonso, Miguel-Angel Sicilia, "Using an AGROVOC-based ontology for the description of learning resources on organic agriculture"

* Mario Schmitz, Daniel Martini, Martin Kunisch, Hans-Jurgen Mosinger, "agroXML: Enabling Standardized, Platform-Independent Internet Data Exchange in Farm Management Information Systems"

* Hilke Stuempel, Gauri Salokhe, Anne Aubert, Johannes Keizer, Andrew Nadeau, Stephen Katz, Stephen Rudgard, "Metadata Application Profile for Agricultural Learning Resources"

* Valeria Pesce, Ajit Maru, Gauri Salokhe, Johannes Keizer, "A Distributed Architecture for Harvesting Metadata Describing Organizations in the Agriculture Sector"
See: http://www.fao.org/aims/pub_mtsr07.jsp
See: http://infolab-dev.aua.gr/mtsr07/
Contact: Nikos MANOUSELIS
E-mail: nikosm(at)aua(dot)gr


Farm Computer Usage and Ownership in USA (2007)
See: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1062


The latest Google Map applications on Mapstars
The Google Map with all the stages of the Tour the France 2007 has been very successful with more then 900 visitors a day. As you can see - most of the applications are travel and leisure related. The item about the wildfires in Greece and the attached map had many visitors in the last weeks of the fires in Greece. In this newsletter you can also find the new tool "reversed geocoding ". It gives the opportunity to find coordinates (latitude and longitude) of specific places in the world. Also new: 700 hotels in Paris on Google Map.
See: http://www.mapstars.com/extern/maastricht-fotos-map
Contact: Rene HUSKEN
E-mail: r.husken(a)geo-t.nl


Refurbished Computers
The theme of the last edition of ICTUpdate is ‘Refurbished Computers’. Specialist charities and businesses, and increasingly computer manufacturers, are taking old computers and shipping them out to organizations in developing countries whose budgets do not stretch to the latest models. Some, such as Computer Aid, collect donated computers, refurbish them, and then ship them directly to their partners. Others, such as Computers for Schools Kenya or SchoolNet Namibia, buy old PCs and refurbish them, and then pass them on to schools and colleges where they can last another three or four years.
See: http://ictupdate.cta.int
Contact: Jim DEMPSEY
E-mail: jim(a)contactivity.com


Dakota Tribal Wisdom
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However in government, education, and in corporate America, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

and, of course...

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Contact: I. KITRON
E-mail: kitron1(a)terra.com.br


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