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Press Release - Immediate<br>
Paris, France, September, 3rd 2009<br>
<br>
Distribution Agreement signed for BioLexicon<br>
<br>
ELRA together with the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI, Hinxton,
UK), Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale-Consiglio Nazionale
Ricerche (ILC-CNR, Pisa, Italy), and the National Centre for Text
Mining (NaCTeM, University of Manchester, UK) has signed a Language
Resources distribution agreement for a large-scale English language
terminological resource in the biomedical domain: <b>BioLexicon.</b><br>
<br>
Biological terminology is a frequent cause of analysis errors when
processing literature written in the biology domain, due largely to the
high degree of variation in term forms, to the frequent mis-matches
between labels of controlled vocabularies and ontologies on the one
hand and the forms actually occurring in text on the other, and to the
lack of detailed formal information on the linguistic behaviour of
domain terms. For example, "retro-regulate" is a terminological verb
often used in molecular biology but it is not included in conventional
dictionaries. BioLexicon is a linguistic resource for the biology
domain, tailored to cope with these problems. It contains information
on:<br>
- terminological nouns, including nominalised verbs and proper
names (e.g., gene names)<br>
- terminological adjectives<br>
- terminological adverbs<br>
- terminological verbs<br>
- general English words frequently used in the biology domain<br>
<br>
Existing information on terms was integrated, augmented, complemented
and linked, through processing of massive amounts of biomedical text,
to yield inter alia over 2.2M entries, and information on over 1.8M
variants and on over 2M synonymy relations. Moreover, extensive
information is provided on how verbs and nominalised verbs in the
domain behave at both syntactic and semantic levels, supporting thus
applications aiming at discovery of relations and events involving
biological entities in text.<br>
<br>
This comprehensive coverage of biological terms makes BioLexicon a
unique linguistic resource within the domain. It is primarily intended
to support text mining and information retrieval in the biomedical<br>
domain, however its standards-based structure and rich content make it
a valuable resource for many other kinds of application.<br>
<br>
On behalf of ELRA, ELDA will act as the distribution agency, by
incorporating the BioLexicon in the ELRA Language Resources catalogue.<br>
<br>
With these resources, ELRA is willing to extend the current catalogue,
by offering specialized resources and thus allow a better coverage of
the language.<br>
<br>
For more information on BioLexicon (catalogue reference: ELRA-S0373): <a
href="http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1113">http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1113</a><br>
<br>
For more information on the ELRA catalogue, please contact: <br>
Valérie Mapelli, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:mapelli@elda.org">mapelli@elda.org</a><br>
<br>
For more information on ELRA & ELDA, please contact:<br>
Khalid Choukri, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:choukri@elda.org">choukri@elda.org</a><br>
Hélène Mazo, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:mazo@elda.org">mazo@elda.org</a><br>
<br>
ELDA<br>
55-57, rue Brillat Savarin<br>
75013 Paris (France)<br>
<br>
Tel.: +33 1 43 13 33 33<br>
Fax: +33 1 43 13 33 30<br>
<br>
<br>
*** About ELRA ***<br>
The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) is a non-profit
making organisation founded by the European Commission in 1995, with
the mission of providing a clearing house for language resources and
promoting Human Language Technologies (HLT).<br>
<br>
To find out more about ELRA, please visit our web site: <a
href="http://www.elra.info">http://www.elra.info</a><br>
<br>
*** About ELDA ***<br>
The Evaluation and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) is
ELRA's operational body. ELDA identifies, collects, markets, and
distributes language resources, along with the dissemination of general
information in the field of HLT. ELDA also participates in some
evaluation projects and campaigns, has considerable knowledge and
skills in HLT applications and has participated in many French,
European and international projects.<br>
<br>
To find out more about ELDA, please visit our web site: <a
href="http://www.elda.org">http://www.elda.org</a><br>
<br>
*** About the partners: EBI, ILC-CNR and NaCTeM ***<br>
To find out more about BioLexicon partners, please visit the following
websites:<br>
EBI: <a href="http://www.ebi.ac.uk">http://www.ebi.ac.uk</a><br>
ILC-CNR: <a href="http://www.ilc.cnr.it">http://www.ilc.cnr.it</a><br>
NaCTeM: <a href="http://www.nactem.ac.uk/">http://www.nactem.ac.uk</a>
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