Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Chapter One: Beneath The Spanish Moss: The World Of The Root Doctor, Jack G. Montgomery Jr.

DLTS Faculty Publications

The spiritual practice of the Shaman is most likely the oldest spiritual tradition on Earth. Shamanism is a way in which humanity has sought a psychic connection to the world of healing, life and death, as well as a sense of social and individual balance. It is a complex psychological grammar that allows the Shaman to function in both the conventional and an alternative "spirit" view of reality. Shamanisn has been a part of American culture since the colonial settlement and continues today despite technology and modern scientific rationalism. This chapter is a brief social history of the African-American shamanic …

On Teaching Tcp/Ip Protocol Analysis To Computer Forensics Examiners, Gary C. Kessler

Applied Aviation Sciences - Daytona Beach

Digital investigators have an increasing need to examine data network logs and traffic, either as part of criminal or civil investigations or when responding to information security incidents. To truly understand the contents of the logs and the data packets, examiners need to have a good foundation in the protocols comprising the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite. This paper introduces the use of protocol analyzers and packet sniffers for TCP/IP traffic, and provides examples of normal and suspect TCP/IP traffic. This paper also provides a basis for a discussion of intrusion detection and signature analysis.

Traveling The Semantic Web Through Space, Time, And Theme, Amit P. Sheth, Matthew Perry

Kno.e.sis Publications

In this installment of Semantics and Services, we further develop the idea of spatial, temporal, and thematic (STT) processing of semantic Web data and describe the Web infrastructure needed to support it. Starting from Ramesh Jain's vision of the EventWeb as a view of what's possible with a Web that better accommodates all three dimensions of event-related information (thematic, spatial, and temporal), we outline the architecture needed to support it and current research that aims to realize it.

On Teaching Tcp/Ip Protocol Analysis To Computer Forensics Examiners, Gary C. Kessler

Security Studies & International Affairs - Daytona Beach

Digital investigators have an increasing need to examine data network logs and traffic, either as part of criminal or civil investigations or when responding to information security incidents. To truly understand the contents of the logs and the data packets, examiners need to have a good foundation in the protocols comprising the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite. This paper introduces the use of protocol analyzers and packet sniffers for TCP/IP traffic, and provides examples of normal and suspect TCP/IP traffic. This paper also provides a basis for a discussion of intrusion detection and signature analysis.

Semantic Sensor Web, Amit P. Sheth, Cory Andrew Henson

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Approximate Owl Instance Retrieval With Screech, Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krotzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, Tuvshintur Tserendorj

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

With the increasing interest in expressive ontologies for the Semantic Web, it is critical to develop scalable and efficient ontology reasoning techniques that can properly cope with very high data volumes. For certain application domains, approximate reasoning solutions, which trade soundness or completeness for increased reasoning speed, will help to deal with the high computational complexities which state of the art ontology reasoning tools have to face. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of the SCREECH approach to approximate instance retrieval with OWL ontologies, which is based on the KAON2 algorithms, facilitating a compilation of OWL DL TBoxes …

Module 1.2: International Accountability, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

International-level mechanisms that hold researchers, research institutes, firms, or others accountable to society are often misunderstood or ignored in current science and engineering curricula. This module will discuss accountability in terms of innovation, self-regulation, scientific unions, corporate pressures, public and private standards, and corporation-specific campaigns and social movements.

Module 1.1: Workplace Ethics In Transnational Contexts, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

Professional codes of ethics are not consistent across countries. Scientists and engineers increasingly work in cross-cultural environments that necessitate skills to negotiate changes in ethical standards in a single, transnational workplace. This module discusses transnational aspects and applications of professional codes of ethics. Includes essays on the Roots of Interconnection: Communications, Transportation and Phases of the Industrial Revolution; the Transnational Aspects of the Ethical Debate, Multinational Corporations in Transnational Accountability; and Resolving Ethical Disagreements. As well as resources outlining the Sources and Extent of Environmental Harm, the UNESCO Description of Engineers’ Work, WFEO’s Model Code of Ethics, and Organizational Diagrams …

Multinational Corporations In Transnational Accountability, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

National and transnational effort to expand accountability in the development and application of science and technology focuses on multinational corporations (MNC). They are one of the primary channels for transnational diffusion and use of new developments in applied science.

Resolving Ethical Disagreements, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

Resolving ethical disagreements in scientific, technical, and/or engineering fields could be feasible or difficult depending on the state of the objective information, and the quality of the ethical reasoning behind it. Good ethical debate must bring the resources of both objective knowledge formation and ethical reasoning together to ensure that the situation in which the ethics will be applied is understood as accurately as possible.

Roots Of Interconnection: Communications, Transportation And Phases Of The Industrial Revolution, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

Broadening access to communication technology and transportation have increased the possibility of interconnection between societies. Until the Industrial Revolution, interconnection between societies were limited to education in foreign universities, occasional collaboration in labs or projects, and exchange of research outcomes through publications and conference presentations.

Diagrams Of Scientific Organizations, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

Organizational diagrams of the International Council of Scientific Unions, UNESCO, and others.

Transnational Aspects Of Ethical Debate, M.J. Peterson

International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering

In today's globalized world, ethical theory and moral philosophy have to address the challenges of cultural moral relativism. The different ethical beliefs of many societies around the world deserve equal respect whatever and wherever the content rule is derived from.

Semantics And Services Enabled Problem Solving Environment For Trypanosoma Cruzi, Amit P. Sheth, Rick L. Tarleton, Mark Musen, Satya S. Sahoo, Prashant Doshi, Natasha Noy

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Semantic Sensor Web, Cory Andrew Henson

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Semantic Provenance For Escience: Managing The Deluge Of Scientific Data, Satya S. Sahoo, Amit P. Sheth, Cory Andrew Henson

Kno.e.sis Publications

Provenance information in eScience is metadata that's critical to effectively manage the exponentially increasing volumes of scientific data from industrial-scale experiment protocols. Semantic provenance, based on domain-specific provenance ontologies, lets software applications unambiguously interpret data in the correct context. The semantic provenance framework for eScience data comprises expressive provenance information and domain-specific provenance ontologies and applies this information to data management. The authors' "two degrees of separation" approach advocates the creation of high-quality provenance information using specialized services. In contrast to workflow engines generating provenance information as a core functionality, the specialized provenance services are integrated into a scientific workflow …

The Need For Speed (And Grace): Issues In A First-Inventor-To-File World, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.” This lyric applies to the United States which, since 1998, stands alone among the world’s patent systems in awarding patents to the first person to invent a claimed invention (first to invent, or “FTI”) as opposed to the first inventor to file an application claiming the invention (“FITF”). But its lonely days may soon be over: a provision in pending patent reform legislation will (if passed) move the United States from FTI to FITF and end its solitary stance.

Some argue that the U.S. already has a de facto FITF system, …

Users 2.0: Technology At Your Service, Darcy C. Del Bosque, Kimberly Chapman

Library Faculty Publications

It is exciting, as practicing librarians, to find a singular voice that stands out as a strong influence on the profession. Anne Grodzins Lipow provided one such voice, inspiring us to evaluate our philosophy of patron service and helping us define our professional values. Lipow’s body of work encompasses many contemporary library issues, involving myriad aspects of customer service. Lipow addressed issues including patron-friendly catalogs and reference service in both traditional face-to-face and newer virtual settings, recognized the importance of training staff as part of continuous improvement in customer service, and emphasized the power of using technology to improve delivery …

Learning Expressive Ontologies, Johanna Volker, Peter Haase, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Coherent Well-Founded Model For Hybrid Mknf Knowledge Bases, Matthias Knorr, Jose Julio Alferes, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

With the advent of the Semantic Web, the question becomes important how to best combine open-world based ontology languages, like OWL, with closed-world rules paradigms. One of the most mature proposals for this combination is known as Hybrid MKNF knowledge bases [11], which is based on an adaptation of the stable model semantics to knowledge bases consisting of ontology axioms and rules. In this paper, we propose a well-founded semantics for such knowledge bases which promises to provide better efficiency of reasoning, which is compatible both with the OWL-based semantics and the traditional well-founded semantics for logic programs, and which …

Expressive Tractable Description Logics Based On Sroiq Rules, Markus Krotzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We introduce description logic (DL) rules as a new rule-based formalism for knowledge representation in DLs. As a fragment of the Semantic Web Rule Language SWRL, DL rules allow for a tight integration with DL knowledge bases. In contrast to SWRL, however, the combination of DL rules with expressive description logics remains decidable, and we show that the DL SROIQ - the basis for the ongoing standardisation of OWL 2 - can completely internalise DL rules. On the other hand, DL rules capture many expressive features of SROIQ that are not available in simpler DLs yet. While reasoning in SROIQ …

Cheap Boolean Role Constructors For Description Logics, Sebastian Rudolph, Markus Krotzsch, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We investigate the possibility of incorporating Boolean role constructors on simple roles into some of today's most popular description logics, focussing on cases where those extensions do not increase complexity of reasoning. We show that the expressive DLs SHOIQ and SROIQ, serving as the logical underpinning of OWL and the forthcoming OWL 2, can accommodate arbitrary Boolean expressions. The prominent OWL-fragment SHIQ can be safely extended by safe role expressions, and the tractable fragments EL++ and DLP retain tractability if extended by conjunction on roles, where in the case of DLP the restriction on role simplicity can even be discarded.

Reasoning In Circumscriptive Alco, Stephan Grimm, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Non-monotonic extensions of description logics (DLs) allow for default and local closed-world reasoning and are an acknowledged desired feature for applications, e.g. in the Semantic Web. A recent approach to such an extension is based on McCarthy's circumscription, which rests on the principle of minimising the extension of selected predicates to locally close off dedicated parts of a domain model. While decidability and complexity results have been established in the literature, no practical algorithmisation for circumscriptive DLs has been proposed so far. In this paper, we present a tableaux calculus that can be used as a sound and complete decision …

The Multiple Discourses Of Science-Society Engagement, Judith Motion, S. R. Leitch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A meta-analysis of the changing science –society discourses that played out in New Zealand after the lifting of a moratorium on applications for the release of genetically modified organisms is provided in this article. It highlights the tension between the scientific focus on knowledge and societal values, beliefs and emotions and the need for a democratized discursive space for societal engagement with science. A key contribution of the article is identification of the role of altruistic discourses in societal considerations of controversial scientific innovations.

A Best-First Anytime Algorithm For Computing Optimal Coalition Structures, Chattrakul Sombattheera, Aditya K. Ghose

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This work presents a best-first anytime algorithm for computing optimal coalition structures. The approach is novel in that it generates coalition structures based on coalition values, while existing algorithms base their generation on the structure (members and configurations) of coalitions. With our algorithm, coalition structures are generated by repeatedly choosing the best coalition, as determined using a novel metric called agent's contribution to coalition structure that we define. We have compared the performance of our algorithm against that of Rahwan et al [5] using 20 data distributions. Our results show that our algorithm almost always converges on an optimal coalition …

Fitting Position Latent Cluster Models For Social Networks With Latentnet, Pavel N. Krivitsky, M Handcock

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

latentnet is a package to fit and evaluate statistical latent position and cluster models for networks. Hoff, Raftery, and Handcock (2002) suggested an approach to modeling networks based on positing the existence of an latent space of characteristics of the actors. Relationships form as a function of distances between these characteristics as well as functions of observed dyadic level covariates. In latentnet social distances are represented in a Euclidean space. It also includes a variant of the extension of the latent position model to allow for clustering of the positions developed in Handcock, Raftery, and Tantrum (2007). The package implements …

High Spatial Resolution Fibre -Optic Fizeau Interferometric Strain Sensor Based On An In-Fiber Spherical Microcavity, Enbang Li, Gang-Ding Peng, Xin Ding

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We present a fiber-optic Fizeau interferometric strain sensor consisting of an in-fiber spherical microcavity of 39um in diameter. The spherical microcavity was formed by splicing a normal single-mode fiber with a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. We demonstrate that strain sensing can be realized by using the interference between the light signals reflected by the front and rear surfaces of the sphere. Experiments have shown that the strain sensor has a strain sensitivity of 3.36um/ue and a temperature sensitivity of 1.35um/°C.

Fabrication And Characterisation Of Periodically Poled Lithium Niobate Waveguide Using Femtosecond Laser Pulses, Shuanggen Zhang, Jianghong Yao, Qing Shi, Yange Liu, Weiwei Liu, Zhangchao Huang, Fuyun Lu, Enbang Li

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We present in this letter the fabrication and characterization of thermally stable type II waveguides in Z-cut periodically poled lithium niobate crystals. The waveguides were fabricated by using a femtosecond laser and were utilized for second harmonic generation. Our experiments have shown that a quasiphase matching wavelength of 1548.2nm, a tuning bandwidth of 2nm, and a tuning temperature range of 150.4±1.6°C can be achieved.

Hydraulic Fracturing In Underground Coal Mines, Dennis John Black, Naj Aziz

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The success of hydraulic fracturing application in stimulating gas drainage from coal seams is influenced by the ground stress conditions and the effective installation of straddled packers. A total of five holes were drilled in the Bulli Seam in a mine (Mine A) and tested for increased gas stimulation by hydraulic fracturing. Parameters examined included casing material integrity for cutability and ability to resist the external collapse during grouting and hydraulic fracturing. Changes made to the injecti on pressure, casing wall thickness, slot orientation (circumferential instead of axial) and controlled pressure release rate post-treatment improved the hydraulic fracturing treatment. However, …

Gas Drainage Improvement In Underground Coal Mines, Dennis John Black, Naj Aziz

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Effective gas management is vital to the success of the longwall mining in the Bulli seam, in the Southern Coalfield, Sydney Basin, NSW, Australia. The evolution of gas drainage methods and practices are discussed with respect to gas type, gas drainage lead time and prevailing geological conditions. Both underground to inseam drilling and surface to inseam drilling techniques are described at both pre and post-drainage conditions. Post-drainage of gas from longwall is discussed for its effectiveness, practicability and efficiency. The long term benefit of the method selected is examined with respect to gas capture efficiency. An alternative method of surface …