This year’s ESWC Semantic Web Evaluation Challenge track had a task on Schema-agnostic Queries over Linked Data: SAQ-2015. The idea is to support a SPARQL-like query language that does not require knowing the underlying graph schema nor the URIs to use for terms and individuals, as in the follwing examples.

 SELECT ?y {BillClinton hasDaughter ?x. ?x marriedTo ?y.}
    
     SELECT ?x {?x isA book. ?x by William_Goldman.
                ?x has_pages ?p. FILTER (?p > 300)}
    

We adapted our Schema Free Querying system to the task as described in the following paper.

Zareen Syed, Lushan Han, Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman, Tim Finin, James Kukla and Jeehye Yun, UMBC_Ebiquity-SFQ: Schema Free Querying System, ESWC Semantic Web Evaluation Challenge, Extended Semantic Web Conference, June 2015.

Users need better ways to explore large complex linked data resources. Using SPARQL requires not only mastering its syntax and semantics but also understanding the RDF data model, the ontology and URIs for entities of interest. Natural language question answering systems solve the problem, but these are still subjects of research. The Schema agnostic SPARQL queries task defined in SAQ-2015 challenge consists of schema-agnostic queries following the syntax of the SPARQL standard, where the syntax and semantics of operators are maintained, while users are free to choose words, phrases and entity names irrespective of the underlying schema or ontology. This combination of query skeleton with keywords helps to remove some of the ambiguity. We describe our framework for handling schema agnostic or schema free queries and discuss enhancements to handle the SAQ-2015 challenge queries. The key contributions are the robust methods that combine statistical association and semantic similarity to map user terms to the most appropriate classes and properties used in the underlying ontology and type inference for user input concepts based on concept linking.

Travis Wolfe, Mark Dredze, James Mayfield, Paul McNamee, Craig Harman, Tim Finin and Benjamin Van Durme, Interactive Knowledge Base Population, arXiv:1506.00301 [cs.AI], May 2015.

Most work on building knowledge bases has focused on collecting entities and facts from as large a collection of documents as possible. We argue for and describe a new paradigm where the focus is on a high-recall extraction over a small collection of documents under the supervision of a human expert, that we call Interactive Knowledge Base Population (IKBP).

New paper: Lushan Han, Tim Finin, Anupam Joshi and Doreen Cheng, Querying RDF Data with Text Annotated Graphs, 27th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, San Diego, June 2015.

Scientists and casual users need better ways to query RDF databases or Linked Open Data. Using the SPARQL query language requires not only mastering its syntax and semantics but also understanding the RDF data model, the ontology used, and URIs for entities of interest. Natural language query systems are a powerful approach, but current techniques are brittle in addressing the ambiguity and complexity of natural language and require expensive labor to supply the extensive domain knowledge they need. We introduce a compromise in which users give a graphical “skeleton” for a query and annotates it with freely chosen words, phrases and entity names. We describe a framework for interpreting these “schema-agnostic queries” over open domain RDF data that automatically translates them to SPARQL queries. The framework uses semantic textual similarity to find mapping candidates and uses statistical approaches to learn domain knowledge for disambiguation, thus avoiding expensive human efforts required by natural language interface systems. We demonstrate the feasibility of the approach with an implementation that performs well in an evaluation on DBpedia data.

Last week, country radio promoter Keith Hill made a controversial comment about female singers that many decried as an example of country music’s misogynistic politics. In an article for The Conversation, Clifford Murphy, an ethnomusicologist and adjunct lecturer of American studies, provides a broader context, writing that the comments show how the centralization of country music has helped create a misogynistic environment.

Murphy describes how women have had a long history in country music, but often have a difficult with the country music industry when they go against expectations of female country stars. “The popularity of female country stars threatens Nashville’s obsession with defining…what is country music, and what country music is,” he writes.

Murphy also points to the centralization of country music as contributing to the problem of misogyny as it gives a few industry insiders the power to silence outspoken artists. He gives the example of the backlash against the Dixie Chicks when they criticized then President George W. Bush. “Popular, powerful women in country music voiced a political opinion that may have resounded with many of their loyal fans, but ran counter to the conservative politics of country music’s brand. Their resulting disappearance from country radio was nothing short of political censorship,” he notes.

Click here to read “Keith Hill’s comments about women in country music cut far deeper than misogyny” in The Conversation.

Youth in Action is an annual youth-led event, hosted by UMBC’s Choice Program. This year’s Youth in Action aims to use art as a means of catharsis and a platform for the voices of youth to be heard in their communities.

This gallery and showcase event will feature artwork created and performed by Choice Program and local community youth. The event will be held on June 20, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Graffiti Warehouse (128 W. North Avenue Baltimore, MD 21201). Click here for more information.

Significant police/traffic activity on the Downtown A/B Route "Green St. & Russell St." For the latest updates, please call the Transit office at 410.455.2454

Editor’s note: Here at UMBC, our students are the heartbeat of campus, and we are committed to providing them the best possible education. We’re highlighting our amazing academic departments, some of their recent achievements, and ways that you can help fund their continued excellence.

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One of the things that makes UMBC great is how wonderful our alumni, students, faculty, and staff are. Because of these amazing people, UMBC often finds itself “in the news,” so each week, we’ll be sharing with you a round-up of the most newsworthy achievements from our community.

• American Studies and Media and Communication Studies Students Produce Radio Series for The Marc Steiner Show
• Shari Waldstein, Psychology, Named Lipitz Professor for 2015-2016
• CAHSS Faculty Research Awards and Fellowships Announced for 2015-2016
• John Rennie Short, School of Public Policy, Discusses Cities’ Impact on Climate Change in Citiscope
  

  Read more at UMBC Insights!