Complex adaptive systems based data integration : theory and applications

Data Definition Languages (DDLs) have been created and used to represent data in programming languages and in database dictionaries. This representation includes descriptions in the form of data fields and relations in the form of a hierarchy, with the common exception of relational databases where relations are flat. Network computing created an environment that enables relatively easy and inexpensive exchange of data. What followed was the creation of new DDLs claiming better support for automatic data integration. It is uncertain from the literature if any real progress has been made toward achieving an ideal state or limit condition of automatic data integration. This research asserts that difficulties in accomplishing integration are indicative of socio-cultural systems in general and are caused by some measurable attributes common in DDLs. This research’s main contributions are: (1) a theory of data integration requirements to fully support automatic data integration from autonomous heterogeneous data sources; (2) the identification of measurable related abstract attributes (Variety, Tension, and Entropy); (3) the development of tools to measure them. The research uses a multi-theoretic lens to define and articulate these attributes and their measurements. The proposed theory is founded on the Law of Requisite Variety, Information Theory, Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory, Sowa’s Meaning Preservation framework and Zipf distributions of words and meanings. Using the theory, the attributes, and their measures, this research proposes a framework for objectively evaluating the suitability of any data definition language with respect to degrees of automatic data integration. This research uses thirteen data structures constructed with various DDLs from the 1960\u27s to date. No DDL examined (and therefore no DDL similar to those examined) is designed to satisfy the law of requisite variety. No DDL examined is designed to support CAS evolutionary processes that could result in fully automated integration of heterogeneous data sources. There is no significant difference in measures of Variety, Tension, and Entropy among DDLs investigated in this research. A direction to overcome the common limitations discovered in this research is suggested and tested by proposing GlossoMote, a theoretical mathematically sound description language that satisfies the data integration theory requirements. The DDL, named GlossoMote, is not merely a new syntax, it is a drastic departure from existing DDL constructs. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated with a small scale experiment and evaluated using the proposed assessment framework and other means. The promising results require additional research to evaluate GlossoMote’s approach commercial use potential

Semantic enrichment of knowledge sources supported by domain ontologies

This thesis introduces a novel conceptual framework to support the creation of knowledge representations based on enriched Semantic Vectors, using the classical vector space model approach extended with ontological support. One of the primary research challenges addressed here relates to the process of formalization and representation of document contents, where most existing approaches are limited and only take into account the explicit, word-based information in the document. This research explores how traditional knowledge representations can be enriched through incorporation of implicit information derived from the complex relationships (semantic associations) modelled by domain ontologies with the addition of information presented in documents. The relevant achievements pursued by this thesis are the following: (i) conceptualization of a model that enables the semantic enrichment of knowledge sources supported by domain experts; (ii) development of a method for extending the traditional vector space, using domain ontologies; (iii) development of a method to support ontology learning, based on the discovery of new ontological relations expressed in non-structured information sources; (iv) development of a process to evaluate the semantic enrichment; (v) implementation of a proof-of-concept, named SENSE (Semantic Enrichment kNowledge SourcEs), which enables to validate the ideas established under the scope of this thesis; (vi) publication of several scientific articles and the support to 4 master dissertations carried out by the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from FCT/UNL. It is worth mentioning that the work developed under the semantic referential covered by this thesis has reused relevant achievements within the scope of research European projects, in order to address approaches which are considered scientifically sound and coherent and avoid “reinventing the wheel”.European research projects - CoSpaces (IST-5-034245), CRESCENDO (FP7-234344) and MobiS (FP7-318452

An ontology for human-like interaction systems

This report proposes and describes the development of a Ph.D. Thesis aimed at building an ontological knowledge model supporting Human-Like Interaction systems. The main function of such knowledge model in a human-like interaction system is to unify the representation of each concept, relating it to the appropriate terms, as well as to other concepts with which it shares semantic relations. When developing human-like interactive systems, the inclusion of an ontological module can be valuable for both supporting interaction between participants and enabling accurate cooperation of the diverse components of such an interaction system. On one hand, during human communication, the relation between cognition and messages relies in formalization of concepts, linked to terms (or words) in a language that will enable its utterance (at the expressive layer). Moreover, each participant has a unique conceptualization (ontology), different from other individual’s. Through interaction, is the intersection of both part’s conceptualization what enables communication. Therefore, for human-like interaction is crucial to have a strong conceptualization, backed by a vast net of terms linked to its concepts, and the ability of mapping it with any interlocutor’s ontology to support denotation. On the other hand, the diverse knowledge models comprising a human-like interaction system (situation model, user model, dialogue model, etc.) and its interface components (natural language processor, voice recognizer, gesture processor, etc.) will be continuously exchanging information during their operation. It is also required for them to share a solid base of references to concepts, providing consistency, completeness and quality to their processing. Besides, humans usually handle a certain range of similar concepts they can use when building messages. The subject of similarity has been and continues to be widely studied in the fields and literature of computer science, psychology and sociolinguistics. Good similarity measures are necessary for several techniques from these fields such as information retrieval, clustering, data-mining, sense disambiguation, ontology translation and automatic schema matching. Furthermore, the ontological component should also be able to perform certain inferential processes, such as the calculation of semantic similarity between concepts. The principal benefit gained from this procedure is the ability to substitute one concept for another based on a calculation of the similarity of the two, given specific circumstances. From the human’s perspective, the procedure enables referring to a given concept in cases where the interlocutor either does not know the term(s) initially applied to refer that concept, or does not know the concept itself. In the first case, the use of synonyms can do, while in the second one it will be necessary to refer the concept from some other similar (semantically-related) concepts...Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología InformáticaSecretario: Inés María Galván León.- Secretario: José María Cavero Barca.- Vocal: Yolanda García Rui

A Study of Chinese Named Entity and Relation Identification in a Specific Domain

This thesis aims at investigating automatic identification of Chinese named entities (NEs) and their relations (NERs) in a specific domain. We have proposed a three-stage pipeline computational model for the error correction of word segmentation and POS tagging, NE recognition and NER identification. In this model, an error repair module utilizing machine learning techniques is developed in the first stage. At the second stage, a new algorithm that can automatically construct Finite State Cascades (FSC) from given sets of rules is designed. As a supplement, the recognition strategy without NE trigger words can identify the special linguistic phenomena. In the third stage, a novel approach - positive and negative case-based learning and identification (PNCBL&I) is implemented. It pursues the improvement of the identification performance for NERs through simultaneously learning two opposite cases and automatically selecting effective multi-level linguistic features for NERs and non-NERs. Further, two other strategies, resolving relation conflicts and inferring missing relations, are also integrated in the identification procedure.Diese Dissertation ist der Forschung zur automatischen Erkennung von chinesischen Begriffen (named entities, NE) und ihrer Relationen (NER) in einer spezifischen Domäne gewidmet. Wir haben ein Pipelinemodell mit drei aufeinanderfolgenden Verarbeitungsschritten für die Korrektur der Fehler der Wortsegmentation und Wortartmarkierung, NE-Erkennung, und NER-Identifizierung vorgeschlagen. In diesem Modell wird eine Komponente zur Fehlerreparatur im ersten Verarbeitungsschritt verwirklicht, die ein machinelles Lernverfahren einsetzt. Im zweiten Stadium wird ein neuer Algorithmus, der die Kaskaden endlicher Transduktoren aus den Mengen der Regeln automatisch konstruieren kann, entworfen. Zusätzlich kann eine Strategie für die Erkennung von NE, die nicht durch das Vorkommen bestimmer lexikalischer Trigger markiert sind, die spezielle linguistische Phänomene identifizieren. Im dritten Verarbeitungsschritt wird ein neues Verfahren, das auf dem Lernen und der Identifizierung positiver und negativer Fälle beruht, implementiert. Es verfolgt die Verbesserung der NER-Erkennungsleistung durch das gleichzeitige Lernen zweier gegenüberliegenden Fälle und die automatische Auswahl der wirkungsvollen linguistischen Merkmale auf mehreren Ebenen für die NER und Nicht-NER. Weiter werden zwei andere Strategien, die Lösung von Konflikten in der Relationenerkennung und die Inferenz von fehlenden Relationen, auch in den Erkennungsprozeß integriert

A Study of Chinese Named Entity and Relation Identification in a Specific Domain

This thesis aims at investigating automatic identification of Chinese named entities (NEs) and their relations (NERs) in a specific domain. We have proposed a three-stage pipeline computational model for the error correction of word segmentation and POS tagging, NE recognition and NER identification. In this model, an error repair module utilizing machine learning techniques is developed in the first stage. At the second stage, a new algorithm that can automatically construct Finite State Cascades (FSC) from given sets of rules is designed. As a supplement, the recognition strategy without NE trigger words can identify the special linguistic phenomena. In the third stage, a novel approach - positive and negative case-based learning and identification (PNCBL&I) is implemented. It pursues the improvement of the identification performance for NERs through simultaneously learning two opposite cases and automatically selecting effective multi-level linguistic features for NERs and non-NERs. Further, two other strategies, resolving relation conflicts and inferring missing relations, are also integrated in the identification procedure.Diese Dissertation ist der Forschung zur automatischen Erkennung von chinesischen Begriffen (named entities, NE) und ihrer Relationen (NER) in einer spezifischen Domäne gewidmet. Wir haben ein Pipelinemodell mit drei aufeinanderfolgenden Verarbeitungsschritten für die Korrektur der Fehler der Wortsegmentation und Wortartmarkierung, NE-Erkennung, und NER-Identifizierung vorgeschlagen. In diesem Modell wird eine Komponente zur Fehlerreparatur im ersten Verarbeitungsschritt verwirklicht, die ein machinelles Lernverfahren einsetzt. Im zweiten Stadium wird ein neuer Algorithmus, der die Kaskaden endlicher Transduktoren aus den Mengen der Regeln automatisch konstruieren kann, entworfen. Zusätzlich kann eine Strategie für die Erkennung von NE, die nicht durch das Vorkommen bestimmer lexikalischer Trigger markiert sind, die spezielle linguistische Phänomene identifizieren. Im dritten Verarbeitungsschritt wird ein neues Verfahren, das auf dem Lernen und der Identifizierung positiver und negativer Fälle beruht, implementiert. Es verfolgt die Verbesserung der NER-Erkennungsleistung durch das gleichzeitige Lernen zweier gegenüberliegenden Fälle und die automatische Auswahl der wirkungsvollen linguistischen Merkmale auf mehreren Ebenen für die NER und Nicht-NER. Weiter werden zwei andere Strategien, die Lösung von Konflikten in der Relationenerkennung und die Inferenz von fehlenden Relationen, auch in den Erkennungsprozeß integriert

A multiagent architecture for semantic query access to legacy relational databases.

This thesis proposes a novel approach to accessing information stored in legacy relational databases (RDB), based on Semantic Web and multiagent systems technologies. It introduces an architectural model of the Semantic Report Generation System (SRGS), designed to address the rising demand for flexible access to information in decision support systems. SRGS is composed of server Database Subsystems (DBS) and client User Subsystems (US). In a DBS, an agent interacts with the administrator to build a reference ontology from the RDB schema, which enables semantic queries without modifying the database. In a US, the decision-making user accesses the system through a simplified natural language interface, using customized extensions to the reference ontology that was imported from DBS an agent helps build the custom ontology, and facilitates query formulation and report generation. The proposed approach is illustrated by several scenarios that highlight the key behavioral aspects of accessing information and developing ontologies. --P. ii.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b178456

A light-weight concept ontology for annotating digital music.

In the recent time, the digital music items on the internet have been evolving to an enormous information space where we try to find/locate the piece of information of our choice by means of search engine. The current trend of searching for music by means of music consumers' keywords/tags is unable to provide satisfactory search results; and search and retrieval of music may be potentially improved if music metadata is created from semantic information provided by association of end-users' tags with acoustic metadata which is easy to extract automatically from digital music items. Based on this observation, our research objective was to investigate how music producers may be able to annotate music against MPEG-7 description (with its acoustic metadata) to deliver meaningful search results. In addressing this question, we investigated the potential of multimedia ontologies to serve as backbone for annotating music items and prospective application scenarios of semantic technologies in the digital music industry. We achieved with our main contribution under this thesis is the first prototype of mpeg-7Music annotation ontology that establishes a mapping of end-users tags with MPEG-7 acoustic metadata as well as extends upper level multimedia ontologies with end-user tags. Additionally, we have developed a semi-automatic annotation tool to demonstrate the potential of the mpeg-7Music ontology to serve as light weight concept ontology for annotating digital music by music producers. The proposed ontology has been encoded in dominant semantic web ontology standard OWL1.0 and provides a standard interoperable representation of the generated semantic metadata. Our innovations in designing the semantic annotation tool were focussed on supporting the music annotation vocabulary (i.e. the mpeg-7Music) in an attempt to turn the music metadata information space to a knowledgebase

Designing Service-Oriented Chatbot Systems Using a Construction Grammar-Driven Natural Language Generation System

Service oriented chatbot systems are used to inform users in a conversational manner about a particular service or product on a website. Our research shows that current systems are time consuming to build and not very accurate or satisfying to users. We find that natural language understanding and natural language generation methods are central to creating an e�fficient and useful system. In this thesis we investigate current and past methods in this research area and place particular emphasis on Construction Grammar and its computational implementation. Our research shows that users have strong emotive reactions to how these systems behave, so we also investigate the human computer interaction component. We present three systems (KIA, John and KIA2), and carry out extensive user tests on all of them, as well as comparative tests. KIA is built using existing methods, John is built with the user in mind and KIA2 is built using the construction grammar method. We found that the construction grammar approach performs well in service oriented chatbots systems, and that users preferred it over other systems