James G. R. Cronin

[click on the title bar] The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across applications and community boundaries. It is based on the Resource Description Framework ( RDF ). Sir Tim Berners -Lee, Internet pioneer, and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), discusses the future of the Web. A characteristic of user engagement with the Semantic Web, noted by Berners-Lee, is the ability to apply different analytical lenses to data sets in order to "mine" that data. Data mining is a term used to uncover patterns in data samples. The challenge is to find cross domain semantic terms and to be able to communicate these both within and across disciplines. EXtensible Markup Language ( XML ) is now as important for the Web as HTML was to the foundation of the Web. It is the most common tool for data transmissions between all sorts of applications, and is becoming more popular in the area of storing and describing information. Wi...

[click on the title bar] Themes of vision and memory are central to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). This film asks the most troubling questions about artificial intelligence and cloning. What is a human? If it looks just like one, but is made by humans, can humans terminate it? This is Decker's job, as a “Blade Runner”. When Replicants, the pseudo clone slaves of human society, return to earth, which they are banned from, it’s the job of a Blade Runner to find and “retire” them. Towards the film's conclusion, Roy, the violent, yet thoughtful, leader of the replicant gang, speaks the memorable lines to Decker: “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain...” View . Is the ability to associate images with personal experience distilled in memory a mark of being human? In the past decade, the noti...