KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS (SOME)

DICTIONARY

Alphabetical list of words and their meanings as well as linguistic information or translations. Visual dictionaries offer detailed illustrations to explain the terms. In dictionary research, called lexicography, the term dictionary is used as a generic term for all kinds of reference books structured according to key-words. The most famous reference book of the 18th century is called Encyclopédie as well as "rational dictionary".

ENCYCLOPAEDIA

"short-term trends should not necessarily be given excessive space. In this context, relevance can also be understood as follows: From the viewpoint of a classical encyclopaedia, an article on Konrad Adenauer, Mozart or Albert Einstein, for example, deserves to be longer and more comprehensive than one on, say, Britney Spears.

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE
The aim is to record all 1.8 million known species on Earth by 2017. 100 million dollar project. It is to offer the opportunity of recognizing large scale patterns in biodiversitywhich specialized scientists frequently fail to notice in their narrow fields of research. A further aim is to enhance the documentation of connections between chan-ges in animal and plant populations and the climate. A further similarity is that here, too, the amount of knowledge that can be collected appears limitless. Nobody knows exactly how many animal and plant species actually exist on Earth. The long-term objective of EOL is to identify new, as yet unknown species.

ENCYCLOPEDIE

French reference book in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates published between 1751 and 1772. They structured the volums according to the figuratives system of human knowledge, a knowledge tree depicting the way knowledge is organized. The three main branches of the tree of knowledge are memory, reason and imagination. Science and religion are clearly seperated areas of knowledge.

GENOME
The complete set of genes of an organism and thus the entire hereditary information of a cell, in the form of desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
There are now companies that offer private DNA tests via the Internet, among others the U.S biotech startuo 23andMe Inc, in which Google has also invested. The company's name refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes a human has. Anyone can order a detailed DNA analysis from 23andMe by sending a saliva sample. After four weeks one receives access to a genetally comprehensible analysis of one's genetic make-up on the company's website. It reveals degrees of relationships and, in the future, the analysis of one's own risk of disease.

GOOGLE
Today Google is the most often used search engine in the world. It's success is owed to the PageRank technology that evaluates pages according to the number of links from the World Wide Web reffering to them. Revenue is also generated by various advertising concepts attached to all Google applications. Over the years, Google has expanded its free service to a complex knowledge tree. Google's most recent developments Have been in the field of collecting, storing and managing medical datasets. In Google Health any user can create his or her own personalised, digital medical file online. The tests were conducted with the medical files of 1,000 volunters at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States. Google most successfull product until now is the search engine of the same name which is meanwhile available in 117 languages including Zulu and Latin. All search requests are stored for 18 months

HUMAN GENOME PROJECT
An international research project, coordinated by the US Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. Project goals were to indentify all the genes in human DNA, and to determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. More than 1,000 scientists throughout the world participated in this research project that began in 1990. In 2001 the goal had been achieved with the complete sequencing of the human genome.

INDEX
Or reference list, a tabular list of important units, often words, of a text with associated pointers, referring to their location in the text document. In a traditional book index the words are selected by the author in regard to his concept marked with page numbers

INFOPLEASE
The world's largest free reference site. In addition to an online encyclopaedia it also offers a dictionnary, an atlas of the world and an almanac. The site belongs to Pearson plc., an English media conglomerate and the largest publisher in the UK;

INTERNET ARCHIVE
An American non-profit organization dedicated to the long-term archiving of digital data. At present up to 85 billion websites in their various versions are stored

ISOTYPE (INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF TYPOGRAPHIC PICTURE EDUCATION)
A universal pictogram language developed in Vienna in the 1920s