Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Ontological Boundaries Between Humans And Computers And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Andrea L. Guzman

Human-Machine Communication

In human-machine communication, people interact with a communication partner that is of a different ontological nature from themselves. This study examines how people conceptualize ontological differences between humans and computers and the implications of these differences for human-machine communication. Findings based on data from qualitative interviews with 73 U.S. adults regarding disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (voice-based AI assistants, automated-writing software) show that people differentiate between humans and computers based on origin of being, degree of autonomy, status as tool/tool-user, level of intelligence, emotional capabilities, and inherent flaws. In addition, these ontological boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as technologies emulate …

Developing An Ontology For Representing The Domain Knowledge Specific To Non-Pharmacological Treatment For Agitation In Dementia, Zhenyu Zhang, Ping Yu, H.C. Chang, S K. Lau, Cui Tao, Ning Wang, Mengyang Yin, Chao Deng

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Introduction: A large volume of clinical care data has been generated for managing agitation in dementia. However, the valuable information in these data has not been used effectively to generate insights for improving the quality of care. Application of artificial intelligence technologies offers us enormous opportunities to reuse these data. For health data science to achieve this, this study focuses on using ontology to coding clinical knowledge for non-pharmacological treatment of agitation in a machine-readable format. Methods: The resultant ontology—Dementia-Related Agitation Non-Pharmacological Treatment Ontology (DRANPTO)—was developed using a method adopted from the NeOn methodology. Results: DRANPTO consisted of 569 concepts …

An Integrated View Of Data: Application Of Knowledge Modeling To Data Management, Sung-Kwan Kim, Wenjun Wang

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Data management has become an important challenge. Good data management requires an effective approach to collecting, storing, and accessing data across the enterprise. In this paper, a knowledge modeling approach to data management is introduced with an emphasis on data requirements analysis. A knowledge model can provide a high-level view of organizational data by specifying the structure and relationships of the knowledge contents used in business processes. The proposed knowledge modeling approach is business process oriented and decision oriented. The description of the knowledge contents in the model is based on ontological specification. The model is comprised of five elements: …

Empathi: An Ontology For Emergency Managing And Planning About Hazard Crisis, Manas Gaur, Kaeedeh Shekarpour, Amelia Gyrard, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

In the domain of emergency management during hazard crises, having sufficient situational awareness information is critical. It requires capturing and integrating information from sources such as satellite images, local sensors and social media content generated by local people.
A bold obstacle to capturing, representing and integrating such heterogeneous and diverse information is lack of a proper ontology which properly conceptualizes this domain, aggregates and unifies datasets. Thus, in this paper, we introduce empathi ontology which conceptualizes the core concepts describing the domain of emergency managing and planning of hazard crises.
Although empathi has a coarse-grained view, it considers the necessary …

Alternative Ontologies Of Number: Rethinking The Quantitative In Computational Culture, Elizabeth De Freitas, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román, Patti Lather

Ezekiel J Dixon-Román

Emerging Of Academic Information Search System With Ontology-Based Approach, Norasykin Mohd Zaid, Sim Kim Lau

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper describes the comparison of ontology development tools for development of academic information search system that assists inexperienced research students at a local university in Malaysia to search for academic resources in the local language context (Bahasa Malaysia). The cohort of inexperienced research students faces two main problems when using current system comprises of keyword search. Firstly the language barrier-limiting students' capabilities to conduct keyword search in foreign language (such as English). Secondly limited research experience in querying often results in obtaining irrelevant search results. The proposed semantic search system aims to apply ontology-based search to overcome the above …

Developing A Tool For Crowd-Sourced Verification Of A Radiation Oncology Ontology: A Summer Project, Joshua Pratt, Vishal Pandian, Evan Morrison, Andrew Alexis Miller

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We have been unable to nd a verifi ed, published Radiation Oncology Ontology. We undertook the process of verifying a Radiation Oncology Ontology with a mixture of crowd-sourcing and expert-based approaches to verify relationships in the ontology. We used a natural language based approach to portray concepts and relationships, surveying users to assess the relationships between concepts in the Radiation Oncology ontology. The work used a description of a patient's history expressed in XML.The natural language statements relating concepts are available on a website for veri cation, and readers are invited to complete the survey at http://coi-hs-survey.appspot.com/ to contribute.

A Revised Attack On Computational Ontology, Nir Fresco, Phillip J. Staines

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

There has been an ongoing conflict regarding whether reality is fundamentally digital or analogue. Recently, Floridi has argued that this dichotomy is misapplied. For any attempt to analyse noumenal reality independently of any level of abstraction at which the analysis is conducted is mistaken. In the pars destruens of this paper, we argue that Floridi does not establish that it is only levels of abstraction that are analogue or digital, rather than noumenal reality. In the pars construens of this paper, we reject a classification of noumenal reality as a deterministic discrete computational system. We show, based on considerations from …

Aligning Ontology-Based Development With Service Oriented Systems, Jun Shen, Ghassan Beydoun, Graham Low, Lijuan Wang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper argues for placing ontologies at the centre of the software development life cycle for distributed component-based systems and, in particular, for service-oriented systems. It presents an ontology-based development process which relies on three levels of abstraction using ontologies: architecture layer, application layer and domain layer. The paper discusses the key roles of ontologies with respect to the various abstraction layers and their corresponding impact on the concomitant workproducts. In addition, a peer-to-peer-based service selecting and composing tool is suggested as a way of supporting the process. The paper presents the architecture of the proposed tool and illustrates the …

Ontology-Based Search System Using Hierarchical Structure Design, Norasykin Mohd Zaid, Sim Kim Lau, Mohd Nihra Haruzuan Mohamad Said

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Major retrieval issues on conventional online database search systems faced by novice researchers are identified and described. An ontology-based search framework is proposed. The framework consists of five elements: (1) user, (2) query, (3) query interface, (4) search process, and (5) result. The query interface is designed based on the ontology hierarchical structure in the ontology datastore and is represented as keywords/sub-keywords structures in the query interface. Ontology enables relationships between keywords and terms to be defined. Ontology allows desired information to be retrieved by sharing common vocabularies with an understanding of meaning of terms in the domain. A prototype …

Advancing Data Reuse In Phyloinformatics Using An Ontology-Driven Semantic Web Approach, Maryam Panahiazar, Amit P. Sheth, Ajith Harshana Ranabahu, Rutger Vos, Jim Leebens-Mack

Kno.e.sis Publications

Phylogenetic analyses can resolve historical relationships among genes, organisms or higher taxa. Understanding such relationships can elucidate a wide range of biological phenomena, including, for example, the importance of gene and genome duplications in the evolution of gene function, the role of adaptation as a driver of diversification, or the evolutionary consequences of biogeographic shifts. Phyloinformaticists are developing data standards, databases and communication protocols (e.g. Application Programming Interfaces, APIs) to extend the accessibility of gene trees, species trees, and the metadata necessary to interpret these trees, thus enabling researchers across the life sciences to reuse phylogenetic knowledge. Specifically, Semantic Web …

A Hybrid Approach To Finding Relevant Social Media Content For Complex Domain Specific Information Needs, Delroy H. Cameron, Amit P. Sheth, Nishita Jaykumar, Gaurish Anand, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Gary Alan Smith

Kno.e.sis Publications

While contemporary semantic search systems offer to improve classical keyword-based search, they are not always adequate for complex, domain specific information needs. Some complex search situations require knowledge of both ontological concepts as well as 'intelligible constructs' not typically modeled in ontologies. Intelligible constructs convey essential information, which may be important to the holistic information needs of information seekers. Such constructs may include notions of intensity, frequency, interval, dosage, emotion, sentiment, equivalence, synonymy, negation, parts-of-speech, etc. However, few search systems utilize both structured background knowledge (ontologies) and the aforementioned knowledge for query interpretation in domain specific searches. Instead, there is …

Key Ingredients For Your Next Semantics Elevator Talk, Krzysztof Janowicz, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

2012 brought a major change to the semantics research community. Discussions on the use and benefits of semantic technologies are shifting away from the why to the how. Surprisingly this more in stakeholder interest is not accompanied by a more detailed understanding of what semantics research is about. Instead of blaming others for their (wrong) expectations, we need to learn how to emphasize the paradigm shift proposed by semantics research while abstracting from technical details and advocate the added value in a way that relates to the immediate needs of individual stakeholders without overselling. This paper highlights some of …

An Ontology Development Methodology To Integrate Existing Ontologies In An Ontology Development Process, Nelson K. Y Leung, Sim Kim Lau, Nicole Tsang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Ontology is defmed as an explicit specification of a conceptualization while a conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent for some purpose. To build high quality ontologies, developers are required to choose and follow a suitable ontology development methodology in which containing a series of steps, activities and guidelines that are put together in an organized and systematic manner. Literatures show that building ontologies by reusing existing ontologies is more cost effective than building from scratch. However, majority of the methodologies only provide a very limited discussion about how to perform integration or …

Biomedical Ontologies For Parasite Research, Vinh Nguyen, Satya S. Sahoo, Priti Parikh, Todd Minning, Brent Weatherly, Flora Logan, Amit P. Sheth, Rick Tarleton

Kno.e.sis Publications

Trypanosoma cruzi is a protozoan parasite that causes Chagas disease or American trypanosomiasis, which is the leading cause of death in Latin America. The primary objective of this study is to create an ontology-driven information infrastructure to support parasite researchers in identifying gene knockout, vaccination, or drug targets for T. cruzi. This involves querying across multiple datasets from diverse sources, such as proteome, pathway, internal lab data, etc. that are often represented in heterogeneous formats. To address this, a multi-ontology parasite knowledge repository (PKR) is being created with an intuitive graphical query interface called Cuebee. The PKR is underpinned by …

Provenance Management In Parasite Research, Vinh Nguyen, Priti Parikh, Satya S. Sahoo, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The objective of this research is to create a semantic problem solving environment (PSE) for human parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. As a part of the PSE, we are trying to manage provenance of the experiment data as it is generated. It requires to capture the provenance which is often collected through web forms used by biologists to input the information about experiments they conduct. We have created Parasite Experiment Ontology (PEO) that represents provenance information used in the project. We have modified the back end which processes the data gathered from biologists, generates RDF triples and serializes them into the triple …

Collaborative Management Of Web Ontology Data With Flexible Access Control, Jie Lu, Chao Wang, Guangquan Zhang, Jun Ma

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The creation and management of ontology data on web sites (e.g. instance data that is used to annotate web pages) is important technical support for the growth of the semantic web. This study identifies some key issues for web ontology data management and describes an ontology data management system, called robinet, to perform the management. This paper presents the structure of the system and introduces a Web ontology data management model that enables a flexible access control mechanism. This model adds rules into the robinet system to utilize the semantics of ontology for controlling the access to ontology data. The …

An Ontological Representation Of Time Series Observations On The Semantic Sensor Web, Cory Andrew Henson, Holger Neuhaus, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Rajkumar Buyya

Kno.e.sis Publications

Time series observations are a common method of collecting sensor data. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) provides a standard representation for time series observations within the Observations and Measurements language, and therefore is in heavy use on the Sensor Web. By providing a common model, Observations and Measurements (O&M) facilitates syntax-level integration, but lacks the ability to facilitate semantic-level integration. This inability can cause problems with interoperability between disparate sensor networks that may have subtle variations in their sensing methods. An ontological representation of time series observations could provide a more expressive model and resolve problems …

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 …

Supporting Complex Thematic, Spatial And Temporal Queries Over Semantic Web Data, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth, Farshad Hakimpour, Prateek Jain

Kno.e.sis Publications

Spatial and temporal data are critical components in many applications. This is especially true in analytical domains such as national security and criminal investigation. Often, the analytical process 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 metadata model for analysis of thematic, spatial and temporal relationships between named entities. We …

What, Where And When: Supporting Semantic, Spatial And Temporal Queries In A Dbms, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth, Farshad Hakimpour, Prateek Jain

Kno.e.sis Publications

Spatial and temporal data are critical components in many applications. This is especially true in analytical domains such as national security and criminal investigation. The outcome of the analytical process in these applications often hinges on uncovering and analyzing complex 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 in these applications. However, these analysis mechanisms are primarily intended for thematic relationships. We describe a framework built around the RDF metadata model for analysis of thematic, spatial and temporal relationships between …

Active Semantic Electronic Medical Record, Amit P. Sheth, Sangeeta Agrawal, Jonathan Lathem, Nicole Oldham, H. Wingate, K. Gallagher

Kno.e.sis Publications

The healthcare industry is rapidly advancing towards the widespread use of electronic medical records systems to manage the increasingly large amount of patient data and reduce medical errors. In addition to patient data there is a large amount of data describing procedures, treatments, diagnoses, drugs, insurance plans, coverage, formularies and the relationships between these data sets. While practices have benefited from the use of EMRs, infusing these essential programs with rich domain knowledge and rules can greatly enhance their performance and ability to support clinical decisions. Active Semantic Electronic Medical Record (ASEMR) application discussed here uses Semantic Web technologies to …

Predicting Domain Specific Entities With Limited Background Knowledge, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper proposes a framework for automatic recognition of domain-specific entities from text, given limited background knowledge, e.g. in form of an ontology. The algorithm exploits several lightweight natural language processing techniques, such as tokenization and stemming, as well as statistical techniques, such as singular value decomposition (SVD) to suggest domain relatedness of unknown entities.

Ontoqa: Metric-Based Ontology Quality Analysis, Samir Tartir, I. Budak Arpinar, Michael Moore, Amit P. Sheth, Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Kno.e.sis Publications

As the Semantic Web gains importance for sharing knowledge on the Internet this has lead to the development and publishing of many ontologies in different domains. When trying to reuse existing ontologies into their applications, users are faced with the problem of determining if an ontology is suitable for their needs. In this paper, we introduce OntoQA, an approach that analyzes ontology schemas and their populations (i.e. knowledgebases) and describes them through a well defined set of metrics. These metrics can highlight key characteristics of an ontology schema as well as its population and enable users to make an informed …

Ranking Complex Relationships On The Semantic Web, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Christian Halaschek-Wiener, I. Budak Arpinar, Cartic Ramakrishnan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Industry and academia are both focusing their attention on information retrieval over semantic metadata extracted from the Web, and it is increasingly possible to analyze such metadata to discover interesting relationships. However, just as document ranking is a critical component in today's search engines, the ranking of complex relationships would be an important component in tomorrow's semantic Web engines. This article presents a flexible ranking approach to identify interesting and relevant relationships in the semantic Web. The authors demonstrate the scheme's effectiveness through an empirical evaluation over a real-world data set.

Tontogen: A Synthetic Data Set Generator For Semantic Web Applications, Matthew Perry

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Meteor-S Wsdi: A Scalable P2p Infrastructure Of Registries For Semantic Publication And Discovery Of Web Services, Kunal Verma, Kaarthik Sivashanmugam, Amit P. Sheth, Abhijit Patil, Swapna Oundhakar, John Miller

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web services are the new paradigm for distributed computing. They have much to offer towards interoperability of applications and integration of large scale distributed systems. To make Web services accessible to users, service providers use Web service registries to publish them. Current infrastructure of registries requires replication of all Web service publications in all Universal Business Registries. Large growth in number of Web services as well as the growth in the number of registries would make this replication impractical. In addition, the current Web service discovery mechanism is inefficient, as it does not support discovery based on the capabilities of …

From Semantic Search & Integration To Analytics, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Semantics is seen as the key ingredient in the next phase of the Web infrastructure as well as the next generation of enterprise content management. Ontology is the centerpiece of the most prevalent semantic technologies and provides the basis of representing, acquiring, and utilizing knowledge. With the availability of several commercial products and many research tools, specifications and increasing adoption of Semantic Web standards such as RDF for metadata and OWL for ontology representation, ontology-driven techniques and systems have already enabled a new generation of industry strength semantic applications. In particular, Semagix's Freedom has powered applications in leading verticals such …

Sweto: Large-Scale Semantic Web Test-Bed, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Chris Halaschek, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar, Gowtham Sannapareddy

Kno.e.sis Publications

The emergent Semantic Web community needs a common infrastructure for testing the scalability and quality of new techniques and software which use machine processable data. Since ontologies are a centerpiece of most approaches, we believe that for an accurate evaluation of tools for quality, scalability and performance, the research community needs a freely available ontology with a large description base. If the use of tools is to be for advanced semantic applications, such as those in business intelligence and national security, then instances in the knowledge base should be highly interconnected. Thus, we propose and describe a Semantic WEb Technology …

Semantic Web Technology Evaluation Ontology (Sweto): A Test Bed For Evaluating Tools And Benchmarking Applications, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar, Chris Halaschek

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.