Paris, 22 March 2010


EFITA newsletter / 453 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


To read this newsletter on the efita.net web site...
See: http://www.efita.net?d=6769


Wrong link?
Hello from New Zealand Guy,
This link to the Animal Welfare talk doesn't work down-under. Is it correct?
http://information.cabi.org/t/184726/276437/3062/0/
Many thanks, and I do like keeping in touch with the things you put out each week - thank you.
Contact: Keith BETTERIDGE
E-mail: keith.betteridge(a)agresearch.co.nz


My answer (GW): I think that the CABI web site was down


Internet in French Agriculture
I was interested to see the statistics on the number of French farmers connected to the internet.  We have the feeling that it would be lower in the UK, but would be interesting to find out.
Is there a report with more detail – is it possible to access the Gentilleau, 2010 document please?
Contact: Ken SMITH
E-mail: ken.smith(a)adas.co.uk


My answer (GW): You will find documents in French on the blog of Christian Gentilleau
See: http://www.blog-agri.com/ticagri/index.php/2010/02/24/evolution-de-lequipement-internet-des-agriculteurs/
On the ACTA Informatique web site see: http://www.acta-informatique.fr?d=6650


Workshop on Knowledge Discovery for Rural Systems (KDRS'2010), a workshop in conjunction with The 14th Pacific-Asia Conference
21 - 24 June, 2010 - HYDERABAD, India.
See: http://sites.google.com/site/kdforruralsystems/

>>> Workshop Overview
This workshop will examine the application of AI and Knowledge discovery techniques to improve the productivity and sustainability of rural and agricultural systems. The focus of the workshop will be a forum to discuss how these techniques are improving the productivity of rural and agricultural sectors . Such techniques can improve the delivery of information for decision making by farmers, extension officers, agricultural researchers to improve agricultural sustainability, selecting suitable varieties, managing pests and diseases and for land use planning on a local and regional basis.

A number of computer science and agricultural researchers are collaborating to examine how the use of such KD techniques can contribute to rural sustainability by effectively examining the government and research databases.  For example, AI techniques such as neural networks and data mining provided a better alternative to the use of traditional statistical techniques in choosing the best crop varieties or most appropriate management for pests and diseases, soil salinity. These techniques could also be used to predict the effects of changes in climate, rainfall and temperature as a result of climate change

>>> Workshop Scope
The Workshop on Knowledge Discovery for Rural Systems encourages the following topics (but is not limited to)
- Theoretical foundations in Data Mining
- Data models for rural management
- Farmer decision making
- Knowledge based farmer recommendation models
- Land use management
- Water catchment management planning
- Data mining techniques in agriculture
- Improving Data Quality of rural products and services
- Data collection and integration techniques
- Data cleaning and transformation
- Information visualization of agricultural data.
- Enhancing quality of tools available to rural systems.
- Pattern recognition in agricultural images and data.
 

>>> Workshop Submission
All papers must be submitted electronically to Workshop Organizers at l.armstrong@ecu.edu.au in PDF format only. Submitting a paper to the workshop means that if the paper is accepted, at least one author should attend the workshop to present the paper. Attendees are required to register at PAKDD 2010 website.

We are currently negotiating with a publisher to a selection of the workshop papers in a special issue of the International Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems.

>>> Workshop paper submission deadline: 2nd April 2010

Contact: Leisa ARMSTRONG
School of Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth Australia
Email: l.armstrong(a)ecu.edu.au


An English professor wrote the words…

"A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Punctuation is powerful!


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