Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Text Analytics For Semantic Computing - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Cartic Ramakrishnan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This tutorial was give at the Second IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing Santa Clara, CA, USA - August 4-7, 2008.

Tcruzikb: Enabling Complex Queries For Genomic Data Exploration, Pablo N. Mendes, Bobby Mcknight, Amit P. Sheth, Jessica C. Kissinger

Kno.e.sis Publications

We developed a novel analytical environment to aid in the examination of the extensive amount of interconnected data available for genome projects. Our focus is to enable flexibility and abstraction from implementation details, while retaining the expressivity required for post-genomic research. To achieve this goal, we associated genomics data to ontologies and implemented a query formulation and execution environment with added visualization capabilities. We use ontology schemas to guide the user through the process of building complex queries in a flexible Web interface. Queries are serialized in SPARQL and sent to servers via Ajax. A component for visualization of the …

Mediatability: Estimating The Degree Of Human Involvement In Xml Schema Mediation, Karthik Gomadam, Ajith Harshana Ranabahu, Lakshmish Ramaswamy, Amit P. Sheth, Kunal Verma

Kno.e.sis Publications

Mediation and integration of data are significant challenges because the number of services on the Web, and heterogeneities in their data representation, continue to increase rapidly. To address these challenges we introduce a new measure, mediatability, which is a quantifiable and computable metric for the degree of human involvement in XML schema mediation. We present an efficient algorithm to compute mediatability and an experimental study to analyze how semantic annotations affect the ease of mediating between two schemas. We validate our approach by comparing mediatability scores generated by our system with user-perceived difficulty. We also evaluate the scalability of our …

An Xml-Based Approach To Handling Tables In Documents, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Trivikram Immaneni

Kno.e.sis Publications

We explore application of XML technology for handling tables in legacy semi-structured documents. Specifically, we analyze annotating heterogeneous documents containing tables to obtain a formalized XML Master document that improves traceability (hence easing verification and update) and enables manipulation using XSLT stylesheets. This approach is useful when table instances far outnumber distinct table types because the effort required to annotate a table instance is relatively less compared to formalizing table processing that respects table’s semantics. This work is also relevant for authoring new documents with tables that should be accessible to both humans and machines.

Description Logic 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 …

Boosting With Incomplete Information, Gholamreza Haffari, Yang Wang, Shaojun Wang, Greg Mori, Feng Jiao

Kno.e.sis Publications

In real-world machine learning problems, it is very common that part of the input feature vector is incomplete: either not available, missing, or corrupted. In this paper, we present a boosting approach that integrates features with incomplete information and those with complete information to form a strong classifier. By introducing hidden variables to model missing information, we form loss functions that combine fully labeled data with partially labeled data to effectively learn normalized and unnormalized models. The primal problems of the proposed optimization problems with these loss functions are provided to show their close relationship and the motivations behind them. …

Semantic Web: Promising Technologies, Current Applications & Future Directions, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Dependence Of Binary Associations On Co-Occurrence Granularity In News Documents, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Trivikram Immaneni, Mastan Vali Shaik

Kno.e.sis Publications

We describe and formalize an approach to correlate binary associations (such as between entities and events, between persons and events, etc.) implied by News documents on the co-occurrence granularity (such as document-level, paragraph-level, sentence-level, etc.) of the corresponding text phrases in the documents. Specifically, we present both qualitative and quantitative characterization of searching News documents: former in terms of the nature of the content and the queries, and latter in terms of a metric obtained by adapting the notions of precision and recall. Specifically, the approach tries to reduce the manual effort required to analyze the News documents to compare …

Achieving Participatory Privacy Regulation: Guidelines For Cens Urban Sensing, Katie Shilton, Jeffrey A. Burke, Deborah Estrin, Mark Hansen, Mani B. Srivastava

Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse

This technical report is intended to help CENS urban sensing researchers incorporate participation and respect privacy while conducting research about people. The goal is to provide a framework by which to assess an appropriate level of participation and meaningful policy and technical responses to privacy concerns. By keeping in mind the five guidelines outlined here, system developers can respond to participant needs and balance the benefits of data gathering with individual and group privacy.

The Introduction defines and describes participatory privacy regulation: the approach to privacy design taken at CENS. Sections I-V provide descriptions and planning tools for each …

A Framework For Trust And Distrust Networks, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

In this age of internet and electronic commerce it is becoming increasingly important to have and to manipulate information about the trustworthiness of the content or service providers in order to make informed decisions. This paper explores realistic models of trust and distrust based on partially ordered discrete values and proposes a framework, which is sensitive to local, relative ordering of values rather than their magnitudes. The framework distinguishes between direct and inferred trust, preferring direct information over possibly conflicting inferred information. It also represents ambiguity or inconsistency explicitly. The framework is capable of handling general trust and belief networks …

Phase Ii Florida’S Ocean And Coastal Economies Report, Judith T. Kildow Dr

Publications

Phase II of Florida’s Ocean and Coastal Economics Report was prepared for the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council and funded under contract #RM077 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The Phase I report of Florida’s Ocean and Coastal Economies provided basic information that the NOEP compiles for all coastal states about employment, wages and output of those activities located geographically along Florida’s shoreline (Coastal Economy) as well as those activities directly dependent upon the oceans (Ocean Economy). That information not only described the status and trends of Florida’s Coastal and Ocean Economy but allowed comparison to economies in other …

Institutional Repositories—Strategies For The Present And Future, Connie Foster

DLTS Faculty Publications

Institutional repositories can create exciting possibilities for scholarly communication with access, discovery, and permanency for the intellectual capital of a university. Digital research repositories capture student and faculty research and allow publishing opportunities for electronic journals in an open access environment. Western Kentucky University launched TopSCHOLARtm in May 2007 and is reaping benefits from the decision to contract with an established publishing platform, bepress' Digital Commons.

Institutional Repositories are intended to create an alternative publishing model, enhance scholarly communication, showcase an institution's intellectual output, and preserve and provide access to an institution's digital assets. What are strategies and challenges involved …

A Forgetting-Based Approach For Reasoning With Inconsistent Distributed Ontologies, Guilin Qi, Yimin Wang, Peter Haase, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

In the context of multiple distributed ontologies, we are often confronted with the problem of dealing with inconsistency. In this paper, we propose an approach for reasoning with inconsistent distributed ontologies based on concept forgetting. We firstly define concept forgetting in description logics. We then adapt the notions of recoveries and preferred recoveries in propositional logic to description logics. Two consequence relations are then defined based on the preferred recoveries.

Graph Summaries For Subgraph Frequency Estimation, Angela Maduko, Kemafor Anyanwu, Amit P. Sheth, Paul Schliekelman

Kno.e.sis Publications

A fundamental problem related to graph structured databases is searching for substructures. One issue with respect to optimizing such searches is the ability to estimate the frequency of substructures within a query graph. In this work, we present and evaluate two techniques for estimating the frequency of subgraphs from a summary of the data graph. In the first technique, we assume that edge occurrences on edge sequences are position independent and summarize only the most informative dependencies. In the second technique, we prune small subgraphs using a valuation scheme that blends information about their importance and estimation power. In both …

Defeasible Inference With Circumscriptive Owl Ontologies, Stephan Grimm, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) adheres to the openworld assumption and can thus not be used for forms of nonmonotonic reasoning or defeasible inference, an acknowledged desirable feature in open Semantic Web environments. We investigate the use of the formalism of circumscriptive description logics (DLs) to realise defeasible inference within the OWL framework. By example, we demonstrate how reasoning with (restricted) circumscribed OWL ontologies facilitates various forms of defeasible inference, also in comparison to alternative approaches. Moreover, we sketch an extension to DL tableaux for handling the circumscriptive case and report on a preliminary implementation.

Empowering Translational Research Using Semantic Web Technologies, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Sa-Rest: Using Semantics To Empower Restful Services And Smashups With Better Interoperability And Mediation, Karthik Gomadam, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

California Ocean And Coastal Investment Study Final Report, Kildow

Publications

The National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP), in cooperation with the California Coastal Conservancy and the Ocean Protection Council (OPC), completed this study to provide an inventory of state expenditures for the coast and ocean for fiscal years 2005-06 (FY 2006) and 2006-07 (FY 2007). The purpose of the study is to understand where current public investments are being made and whether further investments need to occur to be consistent with the OPC Strategic Plan as well as those of various state programs.

Dynamic And Agile Soa Using Sawsdl, Karthik Gomadam, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

A Framework To Support Spatial, Temporal And Thematic Analytics Over Semantic Web Data, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Spatial and temporal data are critical components in many applications. This is especially true in analytical applications ranging from scientific discovery to national security and criminal investigation. The analytical process often requires uncovering and analyzing complex thematic relationships between disparate people, places and events. Fundamentally new query operators based on the graph structure of Semantic Web data models, such as semantic associations, are proving useful for this purpose. However, these analysis mechanisms are primarily intended for thematic relationships. In this paper, we describe a framework built around the RDF data model for analysis of thematic, spatial and temporal relationships between …

Public Lecture: "Government's Role In Broadband", Sharon Gillet

Rural Broadband Research Group

In this talk Commissioner Gillett will focus on the different roles government plays in achieving universal broadband. She will relate her public sector experience to her academic understanding of this issue by reflecting on her 2006 paper on municipal wireless broadband through the lenses of her experience as a member of Boston’s wireless task force, and her first year of service as the Commonwealth’s Telecommunications and Cable Commissioner.

Ws3: International Workshop On Context-Enabled Source And Service Selection, Integration And Adaptation, Quan Z. Sheng, Ullas Nambiar, Amit P. Sheth, Biplav Srivastava, Zakaria Maamr, Said Elnaffar

Kno.e.sis Publications

This write-up provides a summary of the International Workshop on Context enabled Source and Service Selection, Integration and Adaptation (CSSSIA 2008), organized in conjunction with WWW2008, at Beijing, China on April 22nd 2008. We outline the motivation for organizing the work-shop, briefly describe the organizational details and program of the workshop, and summarize each of the papers accepted by the workshop. More information about the workshop can be found at http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/∼csssia08/.

Participatory Privacy In Urban Sensing, Katie Shilton, Jeffrey A. Burke, Deborah Estrin, Mark Hansen, Mani B. Srivastava

Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse

Urban sensing systems that use mobile phones enable individuals and communities to collect and share data with unprecedented speed, accuracy and granularity. But employing mobile handsets as sensor nodes poses new challenges for privacy, data security, and ethics. To address these challenges, CENS is developing design principles based upon understanding privacy regulation as a participatory process. This paper briefly reviews related literature and introduces the concept of participatory privacy regulation. PPR reframes negotiations of social context as an important part of participation in sensing-supported research. It engages participants in ethical decision-making and the meaningful negotiation of personal boundaries and …

Rdb2rdf: Incorporating Domain Semantics In Structured Data, Satya S. Sahoo

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

The New Middle-Class, Technology And Modernity In Seelampur, Sreela Sarkar

National Center for Digital Government

From introduction: My paper studies a globally acclaimed experiment in computer literacy and cultural capital in Seelampur, located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh state border. In late 2003, Datamation, a prominent private, Delhi based Information Technology firm, with partial funding from UNESCO and the Delhi state government, established computer literacy and e-commerce development projects in Zaffarabad in Seelampur. Seelampur is a diverse community but like the rest of the area, Zaffarabad is largely a settlement of informal working class Muslims. State violence and dominant middle-class interests have historically colluded to create Seelampur. During the National Emergency years in 1975-1977, residents of …

Blessed Unrest: The Power Of Unreasonable People To Change The World, Stephanie Pace Marshall

Publications & Research

In her keynote address at the 2008 NCSSSMST Professional Conference, Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall addresses what work can be done with the collective resources of its Consortium members which beg to be shared and connected--and also explores what the source of "...our Blessed Unrest that will give us the courage to become unreasonable advocates for our children and for STEM transformation?"

Reminiscences: Impact Of Textiles And Apparel Technology On Our Lives, Ann Beth Presley, Martha C. Jenkins

Applied Human Sciences

Women's perceptions of technological changes in textiles and apparel and how the changes have affected daily life were examined using the transmissive reminiscence technique. Technological advances do contribute to use of less time and effort and offer a greater variety of products, but the products often have a shorter life expectancy or are kept in inventory for a shorter time because it is more expedient to replace rather than repair or recycle textile and clothing items. Care must be taken to cultivate cohesive relationships within the family and teach values that were once inherent in textiles/ apparel tasks. Otherwise advances …

The Making Of A Social Librarian: How Blogs, Wikis And Facebook Have Changed One Librarian And Her Job, Jennifer Kelley

Library Scholarship

This paper explores the evolution of the author’s identity as a librarian, from a tech-ignorant/tech-phobic library school graduate to a librarian teaching faculty, staff, students, community members and administrators the value of collaborative software.

According to Technorati, the blog search engine, there are 244 blogs that primarily concern themselves with libraries and so-called 2.0 technologies. The blogs range from the well known Tame the Web and Shifted Librarian to library students attempting to sort out the deluge of information on blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networking services and how these applications and services help, hinder, harm or haunt libraries and …

Oai/Pmh Metadata Conformance To Dlf/Aquifer Mods Guidelines, Colin J. Koteles

Library Scholarship

The DLF/Aquifer Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records were created to facilitate the creation of rich, sharable metadata for use in aggregated digital humanities collections. While guideline creators recognize most data providers do not meet criteria set forth in this document, this study attempts to quantify current levels of conformance to the base requirements set forth by DLF/Aquifer MODS guidelines. By analyzing collections for which MODS records are currently available to OAI-PMH service providers, predictions can be made as to both the nature and extent of future normalization processes required by service providers and the nature and extent of training …

Artist Ranking Through Analysis Of On-Line Community Comments, Julia Grace, Daniel Gruhl, Kevin Haas, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Christine Robson, Nachiketa Sahoo

Kno.e.sis Publications

We describe an approach to measure the popularity of music tracks, albums and artists by analyzing the comments of music listeners in social networking online communities such as MySpace. This measure of popularity appears to be more accurate than the traditional measure based on album sales figures, as demonstrated by our focus group study. We faced many challenges in our attempt to generate a popularity ranking from the user comments on social networking sites, e.g., broken English sentences, comment spam, etc. We discuss the steps we took to overcome these challenges and describe an end to end system for generating …