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The success of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has been due in large part to the technologies built around it for constraining, querying, styling and otherwise processing XML documents. Research carried out at Edinburgh has been instrumental in the creation and/or design of many of these core XML technologies, including XSLT, XML Schema, XInclude, XQuery and XProc. Edinburgh staff played key roles in bringing these technologies into widespread use in both the private and public sectors through participation in standards development work.
The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is a widely-adopted Python library for natural language processing. NLTK is run as an open source project. Three project leaders, Steven Bird (Melbourne University), Edward Loper (BBN, Boston) and Ewan Klein (University of Edinburgh) provide the strategic direction of the NLTK project.
NLTK has been widely used in academia, commercial / non-profit organisations and public bodies, including Stanford University and the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers widely-recognised tests across more than 180 countries. NLTK has played an important role in making core natural language processing techniques easy to grasp, easy to integrate with other software tools, and easy to deploy.
The specific impacts of this innovative research are two fold. Firstly, the research has resulted in the development of a novel intelligent framework called ALMIL (Adaptive Language Modelling Intermediate Layer) which acts as a communication layer between human and computer, to analyse noisy streams and provide disabled users with a better computer accessibility through prediction and corrections, speech and voice recognition. This has led to the development of an intelligent keyboard which provides a comprehensive solution for disabled people to help them to communicate more effectively with a computer. Secondly this research has produced 10 conference and journal papers so far and 1 significant paper is being reviewed in a highly ranked journal paper; also this research paves the way for the practical application development by providing theoretical basis of neural network approaches for noisy language modelling and reveals few directions in solving problems in specific areas such as biometrics.
RealVNC is a spin out company launched by the University of Cambridge researchers who developed Virtual Network Computing (VNC) remote access technology. VNC allows connection and control of devices from anywhere in the world, irrespective of operating system. VNC is now the default mechanism for remote sharing of graphical desktops across the internet. RealVNC has sold over 300 million licences across 175 countries. The company has won three Queen's Awards for Enterprise and the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Award, the UK's premier engineering prize.
Data-to-text utilises Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology that allows computer systems to generate narrative summaries of complex data sets. These can be used by experts, professional and managers to better, and quickly, understand the information contained within large and complex data sets. The technology has been developed since 2000 by Prof Reiter and Dr Sripada at the University of Aberdeen, supported by several EPSRC grants. The Impact from the research has two dimensions.
As economic impact, a spinout company, Data2Text (www.data2text.com), was created in late 2009 to commercialise the research. As of May 2013, Data2Text had 14 employees. Much of Data2Text's work is collaborative with another UK company, Arria NLG (www.arria.com), which as of May 2013 had about 25 employees, most of whom were involved in collaborative projects with Data2Text.
As impact on practitioners and professional services, case studies have been developed in the oil & gas sector, in weather forecasting, and in healthcare, where NLG provides tools to rapidly develop narrative reports to facilitate planning and decision making, introducing benefits in terms of improved access to information and resultant cost and/or time savings. In addition the research led to the creation of simplenlg (http://simplenlg.googlecode.com/), an open-source software package which performs some basic natural language generation tasks. The simplenlg package is used by several companies, including Agfa, Nuance and Siemens as well as Data2Text and Arria NLG.
The Software Systems Engineering Group at UCL developed and patented xlinkit, an approach that supports the validation of XML documents in general and over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions expressed in the Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) in particular. The widespread adoption of FpML (95% of financial market participants now use it for OTC transactions) has brought about a substantial reduction in market and credit risk for financial institutions, by reducing the time required to confirm derivative transactions from up to 10 days to at most one day. In the year to June 2012 about $440 trillion OTC transactions were executed worldwide. [text removed for publication]. Message Automation, which markets a product including tools based on that patent, has received £3 million revenue in the same period.
A spin-out company, Contemplate Ltd, is using advanced static analysis technology in global top-ten investment banks and other clients to discover previously undetected defects in enterprise-scale business-critical multi-threaded Java codebases. The impact is in terms of the benefits delivered to Contemplate's clients by this technology and in terms of the formation and growth of Contemplate as an employer and a successful business.
The global workplace means that the staff at your local hospital, the pilot of your aeroplane or your teacher may be operating in a foreign language. Establishing their foreign language proficiency is crucial to ensuring effective communication. Not only this, establishing what one knows and does not know enables appropriately targeted teaching. We have enabled institutions and individuals throughout Europe to better understand the nature of foreign language proficiency, and, moreover, provided the means of measuring it. Our research led to the production of an on-line language assessment system, DIALANG, made publically available from 2001 in 14 European languages.
The research findings have led directly to a decision by Cambridge English Language Assessment to change the assessment criteria in their examinations to include assessment of metaphor use. The availability of the research report on the Cambridge website widens the impact of the findings to English Language Teaching and Assessment more broadly, changing attitudes to the assessment of metaphor use at the crucial university-entry level in particular.
The findings have also led to change in the advice given by the British Council for those involved in communication with people from different linguistic backgrounds. The advice is available on their website, which receives several million hits per year (see below for details and exact numbers of hits). This advice has been amended to include information on metaphor. The website has been used by teachers to improve language teaching materials and enhance the way that students are helped to engage in academic courses in English.
Cambridge English Language Assessment is a sector leader and delivers assessment to just under 4 million students per year, including the 1.5 million candidates who take the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) for entry to English-speaking universities. Cambridge examinations are recognised by 13,000 institutions in 130 countries. The British Council is a global leader in English Language teaching and is a respected provider of impartial advice. The adoption by these agencies of these research findings can be expected in turn to lead to a greater focus on metaphor in language classrooms around the world.
Researchers working on endangered languages have an obligation to produce work of lasting value to the language community. International collaborative research by QMUL on Kiowa (fewer than 30 fluent speakers) has substantially contributed to preserving and revitalizing this native language of Oklahoma. Tribal elders, grassroots language-class participants, grassroots self- learners and Kiowa cultural institutions have benefitted from new language-learning resources: specially designed booklets and an online community via Facebook and YouTube. Over 200 people are now learning Kiowa using real oral literature rather than made-up sentences. A vast amount of linguistic and cultural knowledge, which would otherwise have been lost with the last fluent generation, is now made accessible to the tribe. Tribal members not fluent in Kiowa are now accessing previously inaccessible cultural capital lodged with tribal institutions whose mission is enhanced. Individual tribal elders also report a sense of fulfillment in being able to pass on their culture.