Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), 30 January 2012


EFITA newsletter / 551 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


The distribution of this efita newsletter is sponsored by vitisphere.com
Please, contribute to the content of your efita newsletter, and advertise your events, new publications, new products and new project in this newsletter. Without your support, it will not survive!
Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
E-mail: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net


OpenStreetMap
Seeing the mention of OpenStreetMap in last week’s newsletter, there is a similar project for the maritime community (e.g. fishermen, navigation, etc., both at sea and on inland lakes and waterways) that we are involved with, TeamSurv. You may want to look at www.teamsurv.eu, and if it is of interest mention it in your newsletter.
Contact: Tim THORNTON - TeamSurv Project Coordinator
E-mail : tt(a)smartcomsoftware.com


New developments in Google Maps
The current technology of Google Maps has many new features. In Google Maps version 3 you can make all kind of maps without the so-called "api-key". See for two examples:
http://www.2travel2.nl/English/google-maps-version-3-calculate-polylines-and-surface.html
http://www.2travel2.nl/Kaarten/route-vaststellen-met-google-maps-versie-3v-matrix.html
Visitors who are interested in the source code (html) can send me an e- mail.
Contact: Rene HUSKEN
E-mail: r.husken(a)geo-t.nl


Very nice to hear that you have manage to organize a continuation of this newsletter!!
Having a good friend in viticulture is beneficial: both for international ICT and (getting close to and/or drinking) good wines…
Lots of successes with this good work and best wishes for 2012!!
Contact: Jan KAMP
E-mail: jan.kamp(a)wur.nl


Happiness, Fortune & Money… for 2012 ‘(see EFITA Newsletter 549)
I understand that the position of "cashier for the 2012 MONEY" is vacant. I can do that job for you while you take care of the bottles!
Contact: Chika Mike JIDERE
E-mail: chika.jidere(a)unn.edu.ng


Call for Papers on Advances in Metadata & Semantics for Learning Infrastructures - A Special Issue of the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies
See: http://www.inderscience.com/ijmso/

>>> Guest editors
* Nikos Palavitsinis, University of Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain; Agro-Know Technologies, Athens, Greece
* Joris Klerkx, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
* Xavier Ochoa, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Guayaquil, Ecuador

>>> Overview
A growing body of learning infrastructures and aggregators is making digital learning resources available to any user searching for educational content on various topics, through federations of learning repositories. The fundamental reasons behind this trend lie within the growing educational demands in all countries, the limited capacity of face to face education as well as the effort and cost involved to build multimedia learning materials, and the new possibilities offered by the Internet. Although famous search engines can in fact retrieve successfully millions of documents that exist online, based on some keywords, the fact remains that there is no guarantee that the results will contain trustable material, exploitable in an educational setting. Such information can usually be found in a complete metadata record, which is not the case in many of the aforementioned search results. Through the vast number of existing repositories, millions of learning resources are being made available, a fact that brings forward various research topics, having to do amongst other things, with the technology that supports them, the standards being used to describe learning objects, the quality of learning as well as metadata within the repositories, etc. Openness of content and sharing of resources are also part of the ethical but also very technical issues that arise for learning repositories and learning infrastructures in general. The general aim of this special issue is to assess the current status and technologies, as well as to outline the major challenges and future perspectives, related to the development of learning repositories and wider infrastructures. It aims to provide an overview of the state of the art in this field, by including a wide range of interdisciplinary contributions. Overall, it aims to outline the rich potential of the repositories for learning as an application field for advanced metadata- and semantic-driven systems and services.

>>> Topics
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Information Standards & Specifications
* Metadata Schemas & Application Profiles
* Multilingual vocabularies, taxonomies, glossaries and thesauri
* (Semi-) automatic Metadata generation
* Visualization techniques for metadata, content, repositories
* Metadata Metrics
* Learning content search & exchange
* Infrastructures, systems and services for knowledge organization
* Learning content archives’ preservation & maintenance
* Ontology approaches, models, theories and languages
* Semantic representation of Learning materials
* Cloud facilities and supercomputing for learning infrastructures
* Attention, usage metadata and paradata for learning analytics
* Quality in metadata
* Multilingual metadata & semantics

>>> Important dates
. Submission of extended abstract (recommended): 1/4/2012
. Notification of appropriateness: 15/4/2012
. Manuscript submission: 15/6/2012
. Notification of acceptance/rejection: 1/9/2012
. Final manuscript due: 1/11/2012
. Tentative publication date: 1/5/2013

>>> Submission
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers will be refereed through a peer review process.

Potential contributors to the special issue are strongly encouraged to submit an extended abstract for feedback as to the suitability of proposed papers until 1/4/2012 to the following address:

More detailed information can be found online: www.inderscience.com/guidelines. Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the names of the Guest Editors

Contact: Nikos PALAVITSINIS
E-mail: palavitsinis(a)agroknow.gr


Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and asks the first man he meets, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

The man said, 'I do, Father..'

The priest said, 'Then stand over there against the wall.'

Then the priest asked the second man, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

'Certainly, Father,' the man replied.

'Then stand over there against the wall,' said the priest.

Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and asked, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

O'Toole said, 'No, I don't Father.'

The priest said, 'I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?'

O'Toole said, 'Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.'


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