Distributed Web Resources Research Articles

SAMA: a real-time Web search architecture

ABSTRACT With the increasing number of information resources in the World Wide Web, how to retrieve real-time information is becoming very important. The resources include traditional databases, flat files, knowledge bases, topical content and programs. In this paper, we propose a new model for retrieving high-quality data from distributed Web resources over the Internet. Unlike traditional models which are web crawler-based algorithms and collect data prior to indexing, supposedly making the process going offline, the proposed algorithm embeds the crawling process with the searching process to make the process more realistic since data are collected and indexed in real-time fashion. We aim to get high-quality and refreshed results for every user’s query, as well as, for better query expansion and formulation. In our experiments, we found that the proposed approach was highly relevant for most recently searched queries, consisting in its performance and resilient to the drawbacks faced by other techniques.

DynaMus: A fully dynamic 3D virtual museum framework

Abstract The evolving technologies of the game engines and the Web have reached a level of maturity that enables them to contribute significantly to the long-celebrated blending of culture and education with gaming. In this work, we present DynaMus, an innovative fully dynamic Web-based virtual museum framework that relies entirely on users’ creativity and on the exploitation of the rich content in distributed Web resources. DynaMus is able to connect to popular repositories, such as Europeana and Google, and retrieve content that can be used in creating virtual exhibitions. It exploits modern Web technologies such as open linked data in an attempt to move towards the semantic Web by exploiting the abundance in data availability. DynaMus provides a complete authoring interface, in which anyone can easily create customised virtual exhibitions, while guaranteeing an engaging experience by relying on modern game engine technologies. The concept easily connects to educational settings as has been illustrated by case studies, one of which is presented in this paper.

Managing and querying gene expression data using Curray

BackgroundIn principle, gene expression data can be viewed as providing just the three-valued expression profiles of target biological elements relative to an experiment at hand. Although complicated, gathering expression profiles does not pose much of a challenge from a query language standpoint. What is interesting is how these expression profiles are used to tease out information from the vast array of information repositories that ascribe meaning to the expression profiles. Since such annotations are inherently experiment specific functions, much the same way as queries in databases, developing a querying system for gene expression data appears to be pointless. Instead, developing tools and techniques to support individual assignment has been considered prudent in contemporary research.ResultsWe propose a gene expression data management and querying system that is able to support pre-expression, expression and post-expression level analysis and reduce impedance mismatch between analysis systems. To this end, we propose a new, platform-independent and general purpose query language called Curray, for Custom Microarray query language, to support online expression data analysis using distributed resources. It includes features to design expression analysis pipelines using language constructs at the conceptual level. The ability to include user defined functions as a first-class language feature facilitates unlimited analysis support and removes language limitations. We show that Curray’s declarative and extensible features nimbly allow flexible modeling and room for customization.ConclusionsThe developments proposed in this article allow users to view their expression data from a conceptual standpoint - experiments, probes, expressions, mapping, etc. at multiple levels of representation and independent of the underlying chip technologies. It also allows transparent roll-up and drill-down along representation hierarchies from raw data to standards such as MIAME and MAGE-ML using linguistic constructs. Curray also allows seamless integration with distributed web resources through its LifeDB system of which it is a part.