Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Discovering Fine-Grained Sentiment In Suicide Notes, Wenbo Wang, Lu Chen, Ming Tan, Shaojun Wang, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents our solution for the i2b2 sentiment classification challenge. Our hybrid system consists of machine learning and rule-based classifiers. For the machine learning classifier, we investigate a variety of lexical, syntactic and knowledge-based features, and show how much these features contribute to the performance of the classifier through experiments. For the rule-based classifier, we propose an algorithm to automatically extract effective syntactic and lexical patterns from training examples. The experimental results show that the rule-based classifier outperforms the baseline machine learning classifier using unigram features. By combining the machine learning classifier and the rule-based classifier, the hybrid system …

A Semantic Problem Solving Environment For Integrative Parasite Research: Identification Of Intervention Targets For Trypanosoma Cruzi, Priti Parikh, Todd Minning, Vinh Nguyen, Sarasi Lalithsena, Amir H. Asiaee, Satya S. Sahoo, Prashant Doshi, Rick L. Tarleton, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Background: Research on the biology of parasites requires a sophisticated and integrated computational platform to query and analyze large volumes of data, representing both unpublished (internal) and public (external) data sources. Effective analysis of an integrated data resource using knowledge discovery tools would significantly aid biologists in conducting their research, for example, through identifying various intervention targets in parasites, and in deciding the future direction of ongoing as well as planned projects. A key challenge in achieving this objective is the heterogeneity between the internal lab data, usually stored as flat files, Excel spreadsheets or custom-built databases, and the external …

Cognitive Approaches For The Semantic Web, Dedre Gentner, Frank Van Harmelen, Pascal Hitzler, Krzysztof Janowicz, Kai-Uwe Kuhnberger

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

A major focus in the design of Semantic Web ontology languages used to be on finding a suitable balance between the expressivity of the language and the tractability of reasoning services defined over this language. This focus mirrors the original vision of a Web composed of machine readable and understandable data. Similarly to the classical Web a few years ago, the attention is recently shifting towards a user-centric vision of the Semantic Web. Essentially, the information stored on the Web is from and for humans. This new focus is not only reflected in the fast growing Linked Data Web but …

Semantics Of Perception: Towards A Semantic Web Approach To Machine Perception, Cory Andrew Henson, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The acts of observation and perception provide the building blocks for all human knowledge (Locke, 1690); they are the processes from which all ideas are born; and the sole bond connecting ourselves to the world around us. Now, with the advent of sensor networks capable of observation, this world may be directly accessible to machines. Missing from this vision, however, is the ability of machines to glean semantics from observation; to apprehend entities from detected qualities; to perceive. The systematic automation of this ability is the focus of machine perception -- the ability of computing machines to sense and interpret …

A Scalable Distributed Syntactic, Semantic And Lexical Language Model, Ming Tan, Wenli Zhou, Lei Zheng, Shaojun Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents an attempt at building a large scale distributed composite language model that is formed by seamlessly integrating an n-gram model, a structured language model, and probabilistic latent semantic analysis under a directed Markov random field paradigm to simultaneously account for local word lexical information, mid-range sentence syntactic structure, and long-span document semantic content. The composite language model has been trained by performing a convergent N-best list approximate EM algorithm and a follow-up EM algorithm to improve word prediction power on corpora with up to a billion tokens and stored on a supercomputer. The large scale distributed composite …

Alignment-Based Querying Of Linked Open Data, Amit Krishna Joshi, Prateek Jain, Pascal Hitzler, Peter Z. Yeh, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth, Mariana Damova

Kno.e.sis Publications

The Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud is rapidly becoming the largest interconnected source of structured data on diverse domains. The potential of the LOD cloud is enormous, ranging from solving challenging AI issues such as open domain question answering to automated knowledge discovery. However, due to an inherent distributed nature of LOD and a growing number of ontologies and vocabularies used in LOD datasets, querying over multiple datasets and retrieving LOD data remains a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to querying linked data by using alignments for processing queries whose constituent data come from heterogeneous …

Extracting Diverse Sentiment Expressions With Target-Dependent Polarity From Twitter, Lu Chen, Wenbo Wang, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Shaojun Wang, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This study focuses on automatic extraction of sentiment expressions associated with given targets from Twitter. It addresses one of the key challenges in this work: Wide diversity and informal nature of sentiment expressions that cannot be trivially enumerated or captured using predefined lexical patterns.

On The Role Of Social Identity And Cohesion In Characterizing Online Social Communities, Hemant Purohit, Yiye Ruan, David Fuhry, Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Two prevailing theories for explaining social group or community structure are cohesion and identity. The social cohesion approach posits that social groups arise out of an aggregation of individuals that have mutual interpersonal attraction as they share common characteristics. These characteristics can range from common interests to kinship ties and from social values to ethnic backgrounds. In contrast, the social identity approach posits that an individual is likely to join a group based on an intrinsic self-evaluation at a cognitive or perceptual level. In other words group members typically share an awareness of a common category membership. In this work …

Role Of Semantic Web In Health Informatics, Satya S. Sahoo, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This tutorial weaves together three themes and the associated topics: [1] The role of biomedical ontologies [2] Key Semantic Web technologies with focus on Semantic provenance and integration [3] In-practice tools and real world use cases built to serve the needs of sleep medicine researchers, cardiologists involved in clinical practice, and work on vaccine development for human pathogens.

Semantics And Ontologies For Earthcube, Gary Berg-Cross, Isabel F. Cruz, Michael Dean, Timothy Finin, Mark Gahegan, Pascal Hitzler, Hook Hau, Krzysztof Janowicz, Naicong Li, Philip Murphy, Bryce Nordgren, Leo Obrst, Mark Schildhauer, Amit P. Sheth, Krishna Sinha, Anne Thessen, Nancy Wiegand, Ilya Zaslavasky

Kno.e.sis Publications

Semantic technologies and ontologies play an increasing role in scientific workflow systems and knowledge infrastructures. While ontologies are mostly used for the semantic annotation of metadata, semantic technologies enable searching metadata catalogs beyond simple keywords, with some early evidence of semantics used for data translation. However, the next generation of distributed and interdisciplinary knowledge infrastructures will require capabilities beyond simple subsumption reasoning over subclass relations. In this work, we report from the EarthCube Semantics Community by highlighting which role semantics and ontologies should play in the EarthCube knowledge infrastructure. We target the interested domain scientist and, thus, introduce the value …

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 …

Open And Transparent: The Review Process Of The Semantic Web Journal, Krzysztof Janowicz, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

While open access is established in the world of academic publishing, open reviews are rare. The Semantic Web journal goes further than just open review by implementing an open and transparent review process in which reviews are publicly available, and the assigned editors and reviewers are known by name, and are published together with accepted manuscripts. In this article we introduce the steps to realize such a process from the conceptual design, over the implementation, a overview of the results so far, and up to lessons learned.

The Ontology For Parasite Lifecycle (Opl): Towards A Consistent Vocabulary Of Lifecycle Stages In Parasitic Organisms, Priti Parikh, Jie Zheng, Flora J. Logan-Klumpler, Christian J. Stoeckert, Pantelis Topalis, Anna Protasio, Amit P. Sheth, Mark Carrington, Matthew Berriman, Satya S. Sahoo

Kno.e.sis Publications

Background

Genome sequencing of many eukaryotic pathogens and the volume of data available on public resources have created a clear requirement for a consistent vocabulary to describe the range of developmental forms of parasites. Consistent labeling of experimental data and external data, in databases and the literature, is essential for integration, cross database comparison, and knowledge discovery. The primary objective of this work was to develop a dynamic and controlled vocabulary that can be used for various parasites. The paper describes the Ontology for Parasite Lifecycle (OPL) and discusses its application in parasite research.

Results

The OPL is based on …

Towards Cloud Mobile Hybrid Application Generation Using Semantically Enriched Domain Specific Languages, Ajith Harshana Ranabahu, Amit P. Sheth, Ashwin Manjunatha, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

The advancements in computing have resulted in a boom of cheap, ubiquitous, connected mobile devices as well as seemingly unlimited, utility style, pay as you go computing resources, commonly referred to as Cloud computing. Taking advantage of this computing landscape, however, has been hampered by the many heterogeneities that exist in the mobile space as well as the Cloud space.

This research attempts to introduce a disciplined methodology to develop Cloud-mobile hybrid applications by using a Domain Specific Language (DSL) centric approach to generate applications. A Cloud-mobile hybrid is an application that is split between a Cloud based back-end and …

Resident Identification Using Kinect Depth Image Data And Fuzzy Clustering Techniques, Tanvi Banerjee, James M. Keller, Marjorie Skubic

Kno.e.sis Publications

As a part of our passive fall risk assessment research in home environments, we present a method to identify older residents using features extracted from their gait information from a single depth camera. Depth images have been collected continuously for about eight months from several apartments at a senior housing facility. Shape descriptors such as bounding box information and image moments were extracted from silhouettes of the depth images. The features were then clustered using Possibilistic C Means for resident identification. This technology will allow researchers and health professionals to gather more information on the individual residents by filtering out …

Overview Of Contrast Data Mining As A Field And Preview Of An Upcoming Book, Guozhu Dong, James Bailey

Kno.e.sis Publications

This report provides an overview of the field of contrast data mining and its applications, and offers a preview of an upcoming book on the topic. The importance of contrasting is discussed and a brief survey is given covering the following topics: general definitions and terminology for contrast patterns, representative contrast pattern mining algorithms, applications of contrast mining for fundamental data mining tasks such as classification and clustering, applications of contrast mining in bioinformatics, medicine, blog analysis, image analysis and subgroup mining, results on contrast based dataset similarity measure, and on analyzing item interaction in contrast patterns, and open research …

Computing Inconsistency Measure Based On Paraconsistent Semantics, Pascal Hitzler, Yue Ma, Guilin Qi

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Measuring inconsistency in knowledge bases has been recognized as an important problem in several research areas. Many methods have been proposed to solve this problem and a main class of them is based on some kind of paraconsistent semantics. However, existing methods suffer from two limitations: (i) they are mostly restricted to propositional knowledge bases; (ii) very few of them discuss computational aspects of computing inconsistency measures. In this article, we try to solve these two limitations by exploring algorithms for computing an inconsistency measure of first-order knowledge bases. After introducing a four-valued semantics for first-order logic, we define an …

Development Of A Simulation Tool For Analysis Of Freeway Crashes Due To Cell Phone Usage, Sourabh Sriom

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research shows that drivers are susceptible to numerous distractions while driving which can be held responsible as the reason of a crash. Usage of cell phones, i.e. talking or texting while driving is considered one of the prominent distractions which causes a crash. This dissertation aims to study the number of crashes occurring on the freeways and their relation with the drivers of these cars using cell phones while they are driving. Since crashes occur relatively less frequently, the study of crashes is done using what is called the "rare event" theory. Java based simulations are done to model a …

The Knowledge-Driven Exploration Of Integrated Biomedical Knowledge Sources Facilitates The Generation Of New Hypotheses, Vinh Nguyen, Olivier Bodenreider, Todd Minning, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Knowledge gained from the scientific literature can complement newly obtained experimental data in helping researchers understand the pathological processes underlying diseases. However, unless the scientific literature and experimental data are semantically integrated, it is generally difficult for scientists to exploit the two sources effectively. We argue that, in addition to the semantic integration of heterogeneous knowledge sources, the usability of the integrated resource by scientists is dependent upon the availability of knowledge visualization and exploration tools. Moreover, the integration techniques must be scalable and the exploration interfaces must be easy to use by bench scientists. The end goal of such …

Demonstration: Secure - Semantics Empowered Rescue Environment, Pratikkumar Desai, Cory Andrew Henson, Pramod Anantharam, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper demonstrates a Semantic Web enabled system for collecting and processing sensor data within a rescue environment. The real-time system collects heterogeneous raw sensor data from rescue robots through a wireless sensor network. The raw sensor data is converted to RDF using the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology and further processed to generate abstractions used for event detection in emergency scenarios.

Demonstration: Real-Time Semantic Analysis Of Sensor Streams, Harshal Patni, Cory Andrew Henson, Michael Cooney, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

The emergence of dynamic information sources – including sensor networks – has led to large streams of real-time data on the Web. Research studies suggest, these dynamic networks have created more data in the last three years than in the entire history of civilization, and this trend will only increase in the coming years [1]. With this coming data explosion, real-time analytics software must either adapt or die [2]. This paper focuses on the task of integrating and analyzing multiple heterogeneous streams of sensor data with the goal of creating meaningful abstractions, or features. These features are then temporally aggregated …

Sempush: Privacy-Aware And Scalable Broadcasting For Semantic Microblogging, Pavan Kapanipathi, Julia Anaya, Alexandre Passant

Kno.e.sis Publications

Users of traditional microblogging platforms such as Twitter face drawbacks in terms of (1) Privacy of status updates as a followee - reaching undesired people (2) Information overload as a follower - receiving uninteresting microposts from followees. In this paper we demonstrate distributed and user-controlled dissemination of microposts using SMOB (semantic microblogging framework) and Semantic Hub (privacy-aware implementation of PuSH3 protocol) . The approach leverages users' Social Graph to dynamically create group of followers who are eligible to receive micropost. The restrictions to create the groups are provided by the followee based on the hastags in the micropost. Both SMOB …

Semantic Annotation And Search For Resources In The Next Generation Web With Sa-Rest, Ajith H. Ranabahu, Amit P. Sheth, Maryam Panahiazar, Sanjaya Wijeratne

Kno.e.sis Publications

SA-REST, the W3C member submission, can be used for supporting a wide variety of Plain Old Semantic HTML (POSH) annotation capabilities on any type of Web resource. Kino framework and tools provide support of capabilities to realize SA-RESTs promised value. These tools include (a) a browser-plugin to support annotation of a Web resource (including services) with respect to an ontology, domain model or vocabulary, (b) an annotation aware indexing engine and (c) faceted search and selection of the Web resources. At one end of the spectrum, we present Kino^E (aka Kino for Enterprise) which uses NCBO formal ontologies and …

A Domain Specific Language For Enterprise Grade Cloud-Mobile Hybrid Applications, Ajith H. Ranabahu, E. Michael Maximilien, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

Cloud computing has changed the technology landscape by offering flexible and economical computing resources to the masses. However, vendor lock-in makes the migration of applications and data across clouds an expensive proposition. The lock-in is especially serious when considering the new technology trend of combining cloud with mobile devices.

In this paper, we present a domain specific language (DSL) that is purposely created for generating hybrid applications spanning across mobile devices as well as computing clouds. We propose a model-driven development process that makes use of a DSL to provide sufficient programming abstractions over both cloud and mobile features. We …

Personalized Filtering Of The Twitter Stream, Pavan Kapanipathi, Fabrizio Orlandi, Amit P. Sheth, Alexandre Passant

Kno.e.sis Publications

With the rapid growth in users on social networks, there is a corresponding increase in user-generated content, in turn resulting in information overload. On Twitter, for example, users tend to receive uninterested information due to their non-overlapping interests from the people whom they follow. In this paper we present a Semantic Web approach to filter public tweets matching interests from personalized user profiles. Our approach includes automatic generation of multi-domain and personalized user profiles, filtering Twitter stream based on the generated profiles and delivering them in real-time. Given that users interests and personalization needs change with time, we also discuss …

Semantic Computing In Real-World: Vertical And Horizontal Application Within Enterprise And On The Web, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Kino: A Generic Document Management System For Biologists Using Sa-Rest And Faceted Search, Ajith Harshana Ranabahu, Priti Parikh, Maryam Panahiazar, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Document management has become an important consideration for the scientific community over the last decade. Human knowledge is central to many scientific domains, thus it is not possible to completely automate the document management process. Managing scientific documents require a semi-automatic approach to overcome issues of large volume, yet support the human participation in the process. In this paper we present Kino, a set of tools that streamline the document management process in life science domains. Kino is integrated with National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), providing scientists access to quality domain models. Annotated documents are indexed using a faceted …

Evaluating And Implementing Web Scale Discovery Services: Part Two, Jason Vaughan, Tamera Hanken

Library Faculty Presentations

Part Four: Quick Tour of the Current Marketplace:

• "The Big 5"
• Similarities and differences

Part Five: It's Not All Sliced Bread:

• Shortcomings of web scale discovery

Part Six: Implementation (pre launch steps):

• Selecting and preparing implementation staff
• Preparing and communicating process/decisions with all staff
• Working with the vendor (roles, expectations, timeline)
• Workflow changes and implications (technical services)

Part Seven: Specific implementation tasks, issues, and considerations:

• Record loading and mapping (catalog content)
• Harvesting and mapping digital/local content
• Working with central index data (internal & external content)
• Web integration and customization
• Assessment and continuous improvement

Citizen Sensing: Opportunities And Challenges In Mining Social Signals And Perceptions, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Millions of persons have become 'citizens' of an Internet- or Web-enabled social community. Web 2.0 fostered the open environment and applications for tagging, blogging, wikis, and social networking sites that have made information consumption, production, and sharing so incredibly easy. An interconnected network of people who actively observe, report, collect, analyze, and disseminate information via text, audio, or video messages, increasingly through pervasively connected mobile devices, has led to what we term citizen sensing. In this talk, we review recent progress in supporting collective intelligence through intelligent processing of citizen sensing. Key issues we cover in this talk are: - …

Evaluating And Implementing Web Scale Discovery Services: Part One, Jason Vaughan, Tamera Hanken

Library Faculty Presentations

Preface: Before Web Scale Discovery

• A very brief overview

Part 1: What is Web Scale Discovery

• Content
• Technology

Part 2: Why is Web Scale Discovery important?

• What’s the need?
• How is it different from earlier attempts at broad discovery?

Part 3: A Framework for Evaluating Web Scale Discovery Services

• What we did at UNLV
• Other options