The ontology of oncology ...

Oncology is the branch of life science that deals with the study of the cancer disease biology. Cancer is an old disease of the human and animal race, except has grown by 200% just in the last 100 years. People often blame it on the modern diet, but the factors responsible are numerous that include the environment, stress, genetic disposition and more. The study of various forms of cancer has been a daunting task for bio-researchers. About 1.5 million research papers have been published, there have been 200 approved drugs, 110,000 new treatment centers around the world, and a lot of different sophisticated treatment techniques have been invented. However, the disease is elusive and smart. Cancer is learning over time. It has learned to use our immune system to attack us. There is a ton of big-data about cancer, and this is precisely where categorization is critical for semantic correlation purposes. This is where ontology comes in. There are hundreds of ontologies published by various governmental and non-governmental organizations that attempt to classify the whole information base of cancer.

Research is the new media

Traditionally media has been about reporting news, perhaps BREAKING NEWS, sensationalism and most of all crime. Plenty of crime. Serial killers, murderers, terrorists, abductors. In the course of years, the media industry has lost track of who the consumers are. A large percentage of the news produced in the next generation media is driven through data and text analytics. News and entertainment industry is not only analyzing big data, but also researching it. They are able to analyze consumer sentiment (netflix) and behavior, profile audiences (news and sports). The future that we are looking at is large clouds of context specific data that allow millions of researchers to collaborate. This may include but is not limited to crime fighting, national security, cancer research, financial market analysis, space research, traffic analysis, weather models, sub-atomic physics research and more. The researchers of the future are not going to be the users of the media, but instead they will be the media itself. Why do we think so? The answer lies in where is the true value in knowledge being sought? What are consumers of this content or knowledge striving for? The credibility and authenticity of data justifies the need for a larger audience. Extensive research leads to better conclusions, and people feel less violated. After all, consumers pay for this experience.