Improving Data Quality Through Effective Use of Data Semantics

Data quality issues have taken on increasing importance in recent years. In our research, we have discovered that many “data quality” problems are actually “data misinterpretation” problems – that is, problems with data semantics. In this paper, we first illustrate some examples of these problems and then introduce a particular semantic problem that we call “corporate householding.” We stress the importance of “context” to get the appropriate answer for each task. Then we propose an approach to handle these tasks using extensions to the COntext INterchange (COIN) technology for knowledge storage and knowledge processing.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Exemplifying Business Opportunities for Improving Data Quality From Corporate Household Research

Corporate household (CHH) refers to the organizational information about the structure within the corporation and a variety of inter-organizational relationships. Knowledge derived from this data is becoming increasingly important for improving data quality in applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), risk management, and sales and market promotion. Extending the concepts from our previous CHH research, we exemplify in this paper the importance of improved corporate household knowledge and processing in various business application areas. Additionally, we provide examples of CHH business rules that are often implicit and fragmented - understood and practiced by different domain experts across functional areas of the firm. This paper is intended to form a foundation for further research to systematically investigate, capture, and build a body of corporate householding knowledge across diverse business applications

Financialization and the household

Finance and the household are a pair that has not received sufficient attention. As a system, finance joins citizens, states, and global markets through the connections of kinship and residence. Householders use loans, investments, and assets to craft, reproduce, attenuate, and sever social connections and to elevate or maintain their class position. Householders’ social creativity fuels borrowing, making them the target of banks and other lenders. In pursuit of their own agendas, however, householders strategically deploy financial tools and techniques, sometimes mimicking and sometimes challenging their requirements. Writing against the financialization of daily life framework, which implies a one-way, top-down intrusion of the market into intimate relations, we explore how householders use finance within systems of obligation that structure lives. Financial and household value are not opposed, we argue. Acts of conversion between them produce care for the self and others and refashion inherited duties. Social aspiration for connection and freedom is an essential force in both financial lives and institutions

Addressing the Challenges of Aggregational and Temporal Ontological Heterogeneity

In this paper, we first identify semantic heterogeneities that, when not resolved, often cause serious data quality problems. We discuss the especially challenging problems of temporal and aggregational ontological heterogeneity, which concerns how complex entities and their relationships are aggregated and reinterpreted over time. Then we illustrate how the COntext INterchange (COIN) technology can be used to capture data semantics and reconcile semantic heterogeneities in a scalable manner, thereby improving data quality.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Data Quality Management in Corporate Practice

The 21st century is characterized by a rising quantity and importance of Data and Infor-mation. Companies utilize these in order to gain and maintain competitive advantages. Therefore, the Data and Information is required both in high quantity as well as quality. But while the amount of Data collected is steadily increasing, this does not necessarily mean the same is true for Data Quality. In order to assure high Data Quality, the concept of Data Quality Management (DQM) has been established, incorporating such elements as the assessment of Data Quality as well as its improvement. In order to discuss the issue of Data Quality Management, this paper pursues the following goals: (1) Systematic literature search for publications regarding Data Quality Management (Scientific contributions, Practice reports etc.) (2) Provision of a structured overview of the identified references and the research mate-rial (3) Analysis and evaluation of the scientific contributions with regards to methodology and theoretical foundation (4) Current expression of DQM in practice, differentiated by organization type and in-dustry (based upon the entire research material) as well as assessment of the situation (how well are the design recommendations based upon research results) (5) Summary of unresolved issues and challenges, based upon the research materia

Explaining Late Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Provisioning and Landscape Use in the Sacramento Valley, California

This study addresses how hunter-gatherers provision themselves when they have a large, dense population and are faced with constraints like small territories and reduced mobility. These conditions were present in the Sacramento Valley, California at the end of the Late Period (1,000 to 150 cal BP). The problem of provisioning is examined using intensification theory to hypothesize three solutions: diversification, specialization, and householding. Diversification entails a widening of the diet to include lower ranked, costlier to process resources acquired within constrained territories. Specialization includes a focus on anadromous fish as a commodity for trade to obtain resources not available in small, constrained territories. Householding places economic decision making at the smallest economic unit of the household instead of at the large scale of the group. Individual decisions contribute to the whole household. Each hypothesis has specific expectations for settlement patterns, technology assemblages, and economic patterns, the latter focusing on the zooarchaeological record.A database of regional site data including site locations and archaeological assemblages from CA-TEH-2203 and CA-TEH-2634 were examined to answer the question about provisioning that is driving this research. The regional database covered an approximately 435 km2 study area and included occupation sites with clearly defined chronological components dating from the Early Period (5,000 cal BP) through the Protohistoric Period (early 19th century), as well as other sites like hunting locations and lithic scatters. The site assemblages contain over 50,000 artifacts including formal tools like projectile points, edge-modified flakes, and groundstone; basalt, chert; and obsidian debitage; fire-affected rock, and a robust vertebrate and invertebrate faunal collection. The 6,000-year time span of the archaeological deposits at the two sites provided an opportunity to view macroeconomic changes at a large scale. The results of the study found a shift in economic patterns from a group aquatic specialization focused on salmon in the Early Period (5,000 to 2,500 cal BP) to a group intensified diversified diet with a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates in the Middle Period (2,500 to 1,300 cal BP). The introduction of the bow and arrow near the beginning of the Late Phase I Period (1,000 to 500 cal BP) changed the socioeconomic organization from the group to the household unit. This changed settlement patterns as larger groups fissioned into smaller ones, changed technology to include some highly specialized tools like the bow and hopper mortar, and changed diet from a broad diverse one to one reliant on a few staple foods supplemented by other resources as needed. This pattern of intensified householding was well developed by the Late Phase II Period (500 to 150 cal BP)

Reasoning about Temporal Context using Ontology and Abductive Constraint Logic Programming

The underlying assumptions for interpreting the meaning of data often change over time, which further complicates the problem of semantic heterogeneities among autonomous data sources. As an extension to the COntext INterchange (COIN) framework, this paper introduces the notion of temporal context as a formalization of the problem. We represent temporal context as a multi-valued method in F-Logic; however, only one value is valid at any point in time, the determination of which is constrained by temporal relations. This representation is then mapped to an abductive constraint logic programming framework with temporal relations being treated as constraints. A mediation engine that implements the framework automatically detects and reconciles semantic differences at different times. We articulate that this extended COIN framework is suitable for reasoning on the Semantic Web.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Renewing a Catholic Theology of Marriage through a Common Way of Life: Consonance with Vowed Religious Life-in-Community

Beginning with Vatican II\u27s call for constant renewal, in light of the council\u27s universal call to holiness, I analyze and critique modern theologies of Christian marriage, especially those identifying marriage as a relationship or as practice. Herein, need emerges for a new, ecclesial, trinitarian, and christological paradigm to identify purposes, ends, and goods of Christian marriage. The dissertation\u27s body develops the foundation and framework of this new paradigm: a Common Way in Christ. I find this paradigm by putting marriage in dialogue with an ecclesial practice already the subject of rich trinitarian, christological, ecclesial theological development: consecrated religious life. Chapter one outlines two paradigms for marriage (relationship and practice), noting their strengths and weaknesses, particularly their need for ecclesial, trinitarian, and Christological grounding. Chapter two treats contemporary scholarship relating consecrated and conjugal life, finding therein an adversarial narrative and dichotomization of the two states. Chapter three counteracts and complicates the adversarial narrative by recovering an Augustinian approach to shared ecclesio- nuptial goods of virginal and matrimonial life. Chapter four encompasses scriptural consideration of Christian life as domestic, as householding with God; it studies principles of Christian householding in a variety of Christian householding forms. Chapter five develops the theological loci missing from the principles of Christian householding, namely the evangelical counsels, the Trinity, and Christology. The final chapter constructs a framework for the paradigm of marriage as Common Way in Christ by integrating previous chapters\u27 insights that present marriage along with consecrated life as a practice, as ecclesial, as Christian householding, as trinitarian, and as lived according to a regula in Christ\u27s own virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The chapter provides examples for practicing these virtues and suggests a heuristic for marriage-preparation as novitiate. Major interlocutors are Augustine, Vatican II, John Paul II, Margaret Hogan, Bernard Lonergan, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Michael Lawler, Julie Hanlon Rubio, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Matzko McCarthy, Jana M. Bennett, Thomas Breidenthal, Francis Moloney, Sandra Schneiders, Hans urs von Balthasar, and Marc Cardinal Oullet. Future directions would develop the paradigm with focus on domestic church and parenthood as a church in light of emerging householding forms

Automated Social Hierarchy Detection through Email Network Analysis

We present our work on automatically extracting social hierarchies from electronic communication data. Data mining based on user behavior can be leveraged to analyze and catalog patterns of communications between entities to rank relationships. The advantage is that the analysis can be done in an automatic fashion and can adopt itself to organizational changes over time. We illustrate the algorithms over real world data using the Enron corporation's email archive. The results show great promise when compared to the corporations work chart and judicial proceeding analyzing the major players

Redistribution, Reciprocity, and Householding Recontextualized: An Interconnected Approach to Prevent Food Waste in Germany’s Retail and Homes

openLo spreco alimentare è un problema globale. Mentre in alcune regioni la sicurezza alimentare è insufficiente, quelle più prospere vedono le conseguenze della loro provvisoria abbondanza. Nonostante alcuni sforzi statali in Germania attraverso campagne e iniziative dei cittadini, si stima che ogni anno 11 milioni di tonnellate di cibo vadano sprecate. Quando si tratta di misure preventive e ridistributive nella vendita al dettaglio e nelle famiglie, una delle ragioni principali sembra essere la mancanza di coordinamento tra le parti interessate, come il governo, i 'foodsaver' e i consumatori abituali. Questo lavoro mette in luce alcuni dei principali ostacoli, esaminando innanzitutto gli sforzi formali e informali presenti in Germania. Ciò informa il sondaggio che è stato distribuito a quelli che vengono qui definiti "foodsavers" e "non-foodsavers". Il sondaggio evidenzia le differenze tra i gruppi e contestualizza le pratiche e gli ostacoli di conservazione e coinvolgimento. I risultati raccolti vengono poi ricontestualizzati, basandosi sui tre principi dell'organizzazione economica definiti da Karl Polanyi: ridistribuzione, reciprocità e householding. Applicandoli ai problemi e alle opportunità identificate, questa tesi si spera di contribuire al raggiungimento di un sistema alimentare composto da attori più interconnessi che si aiutano a vicenda.Food waste is a global problem. While in some regions food security is insufficient, wealthier ones see the consequences of their provisional abundance. Despite some state efforts in Germany through campaigns and citizen initiatives, an estimated 11 million tons of food go to waste every year. When it comes to preventative and redistributive measures in retail and households, a notable reason seems to be a lack of coordination between stakeholders like the government, foodsavers, and regular consumers. This work highlights some of the main obstacles by first reviewing formal and informal efforts present in Germany. This informs the survey that was distributed to what is here termed 'foodsavers' and 'non-foodsavers'. It highlights differences between the groups while contextualizing practices and obstacles of storage and involvement. The collected findings are then recontextualized, leaning on three principles of economic organization as defined by Karl Polanyi: redistribution, reciprocity, and householding. In applying them to the problems and opportunities identified, this thesis hopefully contributes to reaching a food system of more interconnected stakeholders that enable each other