“I’m pleased to write that the December 2007 issue of
Scientific
American contains an article titled “The
Semantic Web in Action”, coauthored by Ivan Herman, Tonya
Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann,
Susie Stephens,
and myself.

We were invited to write the article as a follow-up to the
original 2001 Scientific American Semantic Web
article by Tim Berners-Lee, Jim Hendler, and Ora Lassila. We
wanted to share some practical examples of problems currently being
solved with Semantic Web technologies, particularly in health care
and life sciences. The article presents two detailed case studies.
The first is the work of a team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Medical Center who use RDF in conjunction with PageRank-esque
algorithms to prioritize potential drug targets for cardiovascular
diseases. The second case focuses on the University of Texas Health
Science Center’s SAPPHIRE system. SAPPHIRE integrates information
from various health care providers to allow public health officials
to better assess potential emerging public health risks and disease
epidemics. The article also talks about the potential for Semantic
Web technologies and the work of companies such as Agfa and
Partners to help health care providers deal with the rate of
knowledge acquisition and change in their clinical decision support
(CDS) systems.

Aside from these case studies, the article takes somewhat of a
whirlwind tour across the current landscape of Semantic Web
applications. Along the way, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, GRDDL, and FOAF all get mentions. Science Commons and DBpedia are briefly touched on, and the
article acknowledges a variety of companies that are engaged in
Semantic Web application research, prototyping, or deployment:
British Telecom, Boeing, Chevron, MITRE, Ordnance Survey, Vodafone,
Harper’s Magazine, Joost, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Oracle,
Adobe, Aduna, Altova, @semantics, Talis, OpenLink, TopQuadrant,
Software AG, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Garlik. And there were loads that
couldn’t be included in the end due to space restrictions, all of
which is a testament to the continued growth in adoption of these
technologies.

Unfortunately, the article is not currently available for free
online. An electronic version is available (along with the rest of
the December 2007 issue) from Scientific American’s Web
site for US$7.95, and the issue should also be available at
newsstands in the US for a bit longer. I’m not sure when/if the
article is available on newsstands across the rest of the world.
I’ve been working with the copyright editors at Scientific
American in an attempt to procure the rights to publish the
article on my own Web site (and/or possibly on the W3C’s site), but
they haven’t yet responded to my application.

In any case, it was a fantastic experience working with my
colleagues to bring some information on the progress of the
Semantic Web to the readers of Scientific American. I’ve
gotten some great feedback family, friends, and colleagues who have
read the article. Several people in the Semantic Web community have
let me know that they’ve found the article to be useful material
for helping introduce people to the ideas and applications behind
Semantic Web technologies. So please check out the article if
you’re so inclined, and I’d love to hear what you think. I’ll also
be sure to update this space if I’m able to secure the rights to
publish the full text of the article here.“