MASBIO 2008

This workshop is aimed at bringing together and creating synergies between researchers working on software agents, on the one hand, and bioinformatics and computational biology, on the other hand, to discuss relevant issues and approaches aimed at assessing and promoting the adoption of innovative technologies in such fields. Bioinformatics and computational biology are emerging disciplines that use information technology to organize, analyze, and distribute biological information in order to answer complex biological questions. As for bioinformatics, it typically refers to activities that involve researching, developing, or applying computational tools and techniques aimed at dealing with biological data –including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyse, or visualize them. As for Computational Biology, it refers to the development and use of analytical data and theoretical methods, mathematical modelling and simulation techniques aimed at studying biological, behavioural, and social systems. The amount of available information is constantly increasing, and it is difficult to exploit available data from all sources. Many of the available data are interrelated, but it is currently difficult to identify, select, clean, or use all relevant data, as different tools use different data formats with different semantics. There is a need to devise methods aimed at learning and discovering knowledge by “intelligently” combining these distributed data and information sources. In particular, after experiments are run, interpreting results requires gathering together potentially related data. Also, the context in which an experiment is run, such as the hypothesis to be tested or the legal constraints of the institution, may inform which resources are appropriately combined, again requiring “intelligence”. Moreover, some classical problems could be better tackled by resorting to a suitable computational paradigm using various interaction protocols, e.g., cooperation or competition.

TIR 2008

I sistemi robotici hanno incontrato considerevoli difficoltà per quanto riguarda il loro inserimento nella vita quotidiana di categorie anche molto diverse di utenti (disabili, operatori, bambini, adolescenti, single, gruppi familiari). Le ragioni di questa contrastata assimilazione dei sistemi dotati di intelligenza artificiale da parte degli utenti sono dovute a varie motivazioni riassumibili con: insufficiente capacità di calcolo; insufficiente capacità sensoristica e motoria; insufficiente autonomia e adattabilità; insufficiente capacità di essere percepiti dagli utenti come «personalità artificiale». È possibile individuare un tipo di architettura robotica in grado di esibire quelle caratteristiche che permettono una integrazione con la comunità degli esseri umani? E’ forse necessaria una nuova intersezione tra robotica, scienze cognitive, intelligenza artificiale e neuroscienze? Negli organismi biologici, quella parte dell’attività cognitiva nota come attività intenzionale corrisponde a quelle capacità, in termini di integrazione dell’informazione, autonomia, definizione di nuovi obiettivi, interazione con altri agenti, sviluppo di aspetti intenzionali del comportamento, che – negli esseri umani e negli organismi più complessi – sono reputate necessarie e sufficienti affinché un essere intelligente sia accettato dalla comunità degli esseri umani quale «agente intenzionale».

NLP 2008

This workshop aims at exploring new trends of research and development on the integration between ontologies and linguistic resources, where complementary levels of semantic specification meet.

In general, the actual practice of enhancing ontologies with linguistic content basically depends on the multifariousness of lexical resources and on the explicit linguistic information they expose. Multilingual scenarios also demand for a proper lexicalization of ontological content according to different idioms and languages. From simple vocabularies of terms to wordnet-like structures, distinct lexical models need a solid and comprehensive framework of representation to enable a full-operational integration with ontologies. The integration between frame-based lexical databases and ontologies complicates the overall scenario and constitutes another important aspect of the above-mentioned integration process and a relatively brand-new trend in the scientific community. These topics have recently become more and more important also in the challenge of combining Human-Language Technologies with Semantic Web technologies, towards the creation of next-generation knowledge systems.

DMBIO 2008

Bioinformatics and Life Science Informatics are emerging disciplines, which are concerned with the organization, modeling, analysis, and interpretation of data and information arising from research and development within the life sciences. A great deal of this work is directed towards understanding the structure and function of proteins, cells, the genome, and the process of natural evolution. The considerable algorithmic complexity of the underlying biological systems requires a huge amount of detailed information for their complete description. Very rapidly, vast amounts of biological information are becoming available in public information repositories, including DNA/RNA and protein sequence and structure databases, metabolic and signaling pathway databases, biomedical literature repositories, image databases, and many others. The key to advances in life science research and development lies in these information repositories and in future biological experiments and studies.

IABC 2008

Following a consolidated tradition, this new Workshop again aims to represent an opportunity for comparing possible contributions of artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies to conservation, valorisation and fruition of the cultural heritage. The main goal is to encourage possible interactions and aggregations between the different agents and to constitute a community of institutions able to tackle this new challenge. The proliferation of computer applications in the sphere of cultural assets renders the ascertainment of the state of the arts even more urgent. The workshop will provide the opportunity to present, share and discuss the experience of researchers in managing cultural heritage resources.

NETTAB 2006

NETTAB workshops are focused on the most promising and innovative ICT tools and their use in Bioinformatics. Participation is international and speakers are among the most known researchers in the field. July 10-13, 2006.

Dart 2006

DART 2006, International Workshop on Distributed Agent-Based Retrieval Tools is Kindly hosted by ISCC’06 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications. Cagliari, June 26, 2006. Download the flyer for further information.