Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Data Processing In Space, Time, And Semantics Dimensions, Farshad Hakimpour, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This work presents an experimental system for data processing in space, time and semantics dimensions using current Semantic Web technologies. The paper describes how we obtain geographic and event data from Internet sources and also how we integrate them into an RDF store. We briefly introduce a set of functionalities in space, time and semantics dimensions. These functionalities are implemented based on our existing technology for main-memory based RDF data processing developed in the LSDIS Lab. A number of these functionalities are exposed as REST Web services. We present two sample client side applications that are developed using a combination …

Semi-Supervised Conditional Random Fields For Improved Sequence Segmentation And Labeling, Feng Jiao, Shaojun Wang, Chi-Hoon Lee, Russell Greiner, Dale Schuurmans

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present a new semi-supervised training procedure for conditional random fields (CRFs) that can be used to train sequence segmentors and labelers from a combination of labeled and unlabeled training data. Our approach is based on extending the minimum entropy regularization framework to the structured prediction case, yielding a training objective that combines unlabeled conditional entropy with labeled conditional likelihood. Although the training objective is no longer concave, it can still be used to improve an initial model (e.g. obtained from supervised training) by iterative ascent. We apply our new training algorithm to the problem of identifying gene and protein …

An Investigation Of Codon Usage Bias Including Visualization And Quantification In Organisms Exhibiting Multiple Biases, Douglas W. Raiford, Travis E. Doom, Dan E. Krane, Michael L. Raymer

Kno.e.sis Publications

Prokaryotic genomic sequence data provides a rich resource for bioinformatic analytic algorithms. Information can be extracted in many ways from the sequence data. One often overlooked process involves investigating an organism’s codon usage. Degeneracy in the genetic code leads to multiple codons coding for the same amino acids. Organism’s often preferentially utilize specific codons when coding for an amino acid. This biased codon usage can be a useful trait when predicting a gene’s expressivity or whether the gene originated from horizontal transfer. There can be multiple biases at play in a genome causing errors in the predictive process. For this …

A Semantic Future For Ai, Rudi Studer, Anupriya Ankolekar, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

In our modern information society, people need to manage ever-increasing numbers of personal devices and conduct more of their work and activities online, often making use of heterogeneous services. The amount of information to be processed by each individual is constantly growing, making it increasingly difficult to control, channel, share and make constructive use of it. To mitigate this, computing needs to become much more human-centered, e.g. by presenting personalised information to users and by respecting personal preferences in controlling multiple devices or invoking various services. Appropriate representation of the semantics of the information and functionality of devices and services …

Table Of Contents (V. 18, 2006)

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

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.

Using Query-Specific Variance Estimates To Combine Bayesian Classifiers, Chi-Hoon Lee, Russell Greiner, Shaojun Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

Many of today's best classification results are obtained by combining the responses of a set of base classifiers to produce an answer for the query. This paper explores a novel "query specific" combination rule: After learning a set of simple belief network classifiers, we produce an answer to each query by combining their individual responses, using weights based inversely on their respective variances around their responses. These variances are based on the uncertainty of the network parameters, which in turn depend on the training datasample. In essence, this variance quantifies the base classifier's confidence of its response to this query. …

Clustering Similarity Comparison Using Density Profiles, Eric Bae, James Bailey, Guozhu Dong

Kno.e.sis Publications

The unsupervised nature of cluster analysis means that objects can be clustered in many ways, allowing different clustering algorithms to generate vastly different results. To address this, clustering comparison methods have traditionally been used to quantify the degree of similarity between alternative clusterings. However, existing techniques utilize only the point memberships to calculate the similarity, which can lead to unintuitive results. They also cannot be applied to analyze clusterings which only partially share points, which can be the case in stream clustering. In this paper we introduce a new measure named ADCO, which takes into account density profiles for each …

An Online Discriminative Approach To Background Subtraction, Li Cheng, Shaojun Wang, Terry Caelli

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present a simple, principled approach to detecting foreground objects in video sequences in real-time. Our method is based on an on-line discriminative learning technique that is able to cope with illumination changes due to discontinuous switching, or illumination drifts caused by slower processes such as varying time of the day. Starting from a discriminative learning principle, we derive a training algorithm that, for each pixel, computes a weighted linear combination of selected past observations with time-decay. We present experimental results that show the proposed approach outperforms existing methods on both synthetic sequences and real video data.

A Correlation Study Between Employee Perception And Customer Satisfaction In An Automotive Manufacturing Corporation, Jason Travis Felton

Masters Theses

Organizations may be able to utilize internal measures of customer and employee satisfaction in order to get a head start on potential customer satisfaction issues. Correlation analysis is employed to determine significance between measures of employee perception and the pulse of customer satisfaction. Employee perceptions and external customer satisfaction metrics are quantified across 3 manufacturing sites to determine relationships between key indicators. Validated survey questions are compiled statistically in composite groups in order to evaluate employee perceptions of customer satisfaction efforts and employee satisfaction efforts. Results are evaluated using Pearson product moment "r". Results indicate a positive correlation exists between …

A Study Of Knowledge Management Used For Managing Quality Systems In Selected Manufacturing Organizations In Coles And Effingham Counties, Merlin Haryati

Masters Theses

The globalization and information revolutions increase the complexity and competition resulting in a business environment that is no longer stable and static. Executives of all organizations face the challenge of adopting new management practices to keep their organizations vibrant in a rapidly changing technological business world. Knowledge management is one of the emerging fields that promise workplace improvements by putting the tacit knowledge of the company into use.

The emergence of knowledge management in the year 2000 caused organizations to realize that their intellectual assets are central to their survival. Managing and harvesting these assets is the focus of knowledge …

Electronic Privacy In Asia: What Is The Effect Of The Fantabulous Kawaii Gizmos, Wireless Privacy Daemons (Waveband: 2.4-Ghz) & Orientalism, Adrien David Cheok, Roger Thomas Tan

SWITCH

This article explores how attitudes towards digital privacy is different in Asia than it is in the West, especially as mobile devices are becoming increasingly part of everyday life.

Classification And Nomenclature Of Beads And Pendants, Horace C. Beck

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The year 2006 marks the 80th anniversary of the presentation of a "Classification and Nomenclature of Beads and Pendants" by Horace C. Beck to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1926. It was subsequently published in the society's journal Archaeologia in 1928 (vol. 77, pp. 1-76). While it is somewhat out of date, it nevertheless remains a classic in its field and is still the only comprehensive work that deals with the classification of beads of complex shapes and forms. Seeing the value of this work, George Shumway reprinted it in 1973. This edition is now out of print. …

Captions And Color Plates (V. 18, 2006)

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Driving Deep Semantics In Middleware And Networks: What, Why And How?, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Knowledge Modeling And Its Application In Life Sciences: A Tale Of Two Ontologies, Satya S. Sahoo, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth, William S. York, Samir Tartir

Kno.e.sis Publications

High throughput glycoproteomics, similar to genomics and proteomics, involves extremely large volumes of distributed, heterogeneous data as a basis for identification and quantification of a structurally diverse collection of biomolecules. The ability to share, compare, query for and most critically correlate datasets using the native biological relationships are some of the challenges being faced by glycobiology researchers. As a solution for these challenges, we are building a semantic structure, using a suite of ontologies, which supports management of data and information at each step of the experimental lifecycle. This framework will enable researchers to leverage the large scale of glycoproteomics …

Show Me What You Mean! Exploiting Domain Semantics In Ontology Visualization, Ravi Pavagada, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth, William S. York

Kno.e.sis Publications

Ontologies build the backbone for many life-sciences applications. These ontologies, however, are represented in XML based languages that are meant for machine-consumption and hence are difficult for humans to comprehend. For a meaningful visualization of these ontologies, it is important that the display of entities and relationships captures the cognitive representation of the domain as perceived by the domain experts. In this paper we present OntoVista, an ontology visualization tool that is adaptable to the needs of different domains, especially in the life sciences. While keeping the graph structures as the predominant model, we provide a semantically enhanced graph display …

Indicators For The Evolution Of The Academic Architecture Library, Jeanne M. Brown

Library Faculty Research

The future is not really something one can predict, which does not, of course, keep us from speculating. In fact, the rapid advance of technology in the last ten years has made talking about the future something of a sport and resulted in "future" becoming code for "changes in technology." The future as determined by technology is not the major thrust of this article, although changes in technology are a given to just about anyone's future. Instead, the future is more broadly considered by looking at what is happening around us and speculating on the implications. This article attempts to …

Openws-Transaction: Enabling Reliable Web Service Transactions, Ivan Vasquez, John A. Miller, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

OpenWS-Transaction is an open source middleware that enables Web services to participate in a distributed transaction as prescribed by the WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction set of specifications. Central to the framework are the Coordinator and Participant entities, which can be integrated into existing services by introducing minimal changes to application code. OpenWS-Transaction allows transaction members to recover their original state in case of operational failure by leveraging techniques in logical logging and recovery at the application level. Depending on transaction style, system recovery may involve restoring key application variables and replaying uncommitted database activity. Transactions are assumed to be defined in …

Demonstrating Dynamic Configuration And Execution Of Web Processes, Karthik Gomadam, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web processes are next generation workflows on the web, created using Web services. In this paper we demonstrate the METEOR-S Configuration and Execution Environment (MCEE) system. It will illustrate the capabilities of the system to a) Discover partners b) Optimize partner selection using constraint analysis, c) Perform interaction protocol and data mediation. A graphical execution monitor to monitor the various phases of execution will be used to demonstrate various aspects of the system.

A Look At 20 Academic Libraries Technical Services Web Pages, Deana Groves

DLTS Faculty Publications

The 21st century technical services librarian has access to a plethora of electronic and online work tools from which to choose to complete daily tasks. An assessment of the Western Kentucky University Libraries 19 benchmark institutions shows a great disparity of online work tools made available through university libraries technical services departmental web sites. Four areas (technical services, cataloging, serials, and acquisitions) are discussed. Outcomes indicate that 1) few of these institutions list online work tools and 2) of those that do, there is very little overlap. This paper investigates this phenomenon of inconsistent technical services online work tools.

Discovering Informative Connection Subgraphs In Multi-Relational Graphs, Cartic Ramakrishnan, William Milnor, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Discovering patterns in graphs has long been an area of interest. In most approaches to such pattern discovery either quantitative anomalies, frequency of substructure or maximum flow is used to measure the interestingness of a pattern. In this paper we introduce heuristics that guide a subgraph discovery algorithm away from banal paths towards more "informative" ones. Given an RDF graph a user might pose a question of the form: "What are the most relevant ways in which entity X is related to entity Y?" the response to which is a subgraph connecting X to Y. We use our heuristics to …

What Is The Ideal Consensus Conference, And How Would We Recognize It If We Saw One?, Jan R. Coe

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

The consensus conference is a participatory mechanism that envisages ordinary citizens engaging with experts (scientists and other knowledge producers) on issues of compelling social significance. It invites ordinary citizens to bring their life experience and values to the serious consideration of a technology that may have far-reaching consequences. Three selected examples of consensus conferences are examined in order to see how they match the ideal. The paper concludes with thoughts about the adequacy of evaluation frameworks and suggest that a more dynamic model of consensus conference evaluation (based on public understanding of science models) might invite more compelling reflections about …

The Internet And Civil Society: Environmental And Labour Organizations In Hong Kong, Yin-Wah Chu, James T. H. Tang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To what extent has the Internet strengthened civil society? In which ways have civil society organizations (CSOs) used the internet to communicate their missions, enhance the discussion of public issues, extend networks and mobilize collective actions? This article seeks to answer these and related questions by reporting on an empirical study in Hong Kong. The study involves an analysis of the web pages launched by 14 environmental groups and 22 labour organizations on the one hand, and in-depth interviews with representatives of five of these organizations on the other. Due to the lack of resources and low level of e-readiness …

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 …

Semantics For Scientific Experiments And The Web: The Implicit, The Formal And The Powerful, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Optimal Adaptation In Autonomic Web Processes With Inter-Service Dependencies, Kunal Verma, Prashant Doshi, Karthik Gomadam, John A. Miller, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present methods for optimally adapting Web processes to exogenous events while preserving inter-service dependencies. For example, in a supply chain process, orders placed by the manufacturer may get delayed in arriving. In response to this event, the manufacturer has the choice of either waiting out the delay or changing the supplier.

Dlp Isn't So Bad After All, Peter Haase, Markus Krotzsch, York Sure, Rudi Studer, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We discuss some of the recent controversies concerning the DLP fragment of OWL. We argue that it is a meaningful fragment and can serve as a basic interoperability layer between OWL and logic programming-based ontology languages.

Modeling Fuzzy Rules With Description Logics, Sudhir Agarwal, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

In real application scenarios, input data and knowledge is often vague. Likewise, it is often the case that exact reasoning over data is impossible due to complex dependencies between input data and target outputs. For practical applications, however, good approximations often suffice, and efficient calculation of an approximate answer is often preferable over complex processing which may take a long time to come up with an exact answer. Fuzzy logic supports both features by providing fuzzy membership functions and fuzzy IF-THEN rule bases. In this paper, we show how fuzzy membership functions and fuzzy rules can be modeled by means …