3,114 research outputs found
On the Role of Context and Subjectivity on Scientific Information Systems
The explicit representation of context and subjectivity enables an information system to support multiple interpretations of the data it records. This is a crucial aspect of learning and innovation within scientific information systems. We present an ontology-based framework for context and subjectivity that integrates two lines of research: data provenance and ontological foundations of the Semantic Web. Data provenance provides a set of constructs for representing data history. We extend the definition of these constructs in order to describe multiple viewpoints or interpretations held within a domain. The W7 model, the Toulmin model, and the Proof Markup Language (PML) provide the Interlingua for creating multiple viewpoints of data in a machine-readable and sharable form. Example use cases in space sciences are used to demonstrate the feasibility and value of our approach
Viewpoints on emergent semantics
Authors include:Philippe Cudr´e-Mauroux, and Karl Aberer (editors),
Alia I. Abdelmoty, Tiziana Catarci, Ernesto Damiani,
Arantxa Illaramendi, Robert Meersman,
Erich J. Neuhold, Christine Parent, Kai-Uwe Sattler,
Monica Scannapieco, Stefano Spaccapietra,
Peter Spyns, and Guy De Tr´eWe introduce a novel view on how to deal with the problems of semantic interoperability in distributed systems. This view is based on the concept of emergent semantics, which sees both the representation of semantics and the discovery of the proper interpretation of symbols as the result of a self-organizing process performed by distributed agents exchanging symbols and having utilities dependent on the proper interpretation of the symbols. This is a complex systems perspective on the problem of dealing with semantics. We highlight some of the distinctive features of our vision and point out preliminary examples of its applicatio
Multi modal multi-semantic image retrieval
PhDThe rapid growth in the volume of visual information, e.g. image, and video can
overwhelm users’ ability to find and access the specific visual information of interest
to them. In recent years, ontology knowledge-based (KB) image information retrieval
techniques have been adopted into in order to attempt to extract knowledge from these
images, enhancing the retrieval performance. A KB framework is presented to
promote semi-automatic annotation and semantic image retrieval using multimodal
cues (visual features and text captions). In addition, a hierarchical structure for the KB
allows metadata to be shared that supports multi-semantics (polysemy) for concepts.
The framework builds up an effective knowledge base pertaining to a domain specific
image collection, e.g. sports, and is able to disambiguate and assign high level
semantics to ‘unannotated’ images.
Local feature analysis of visual content, namely using Scale Invariant Feature
Transform (SIFT) descriptors, have been deployed in the ‘Bag of Visual Words’
model (BVW) as an effective method to represent visual content information and to
enhance its classification and retrieval. Local features are more useful than global
features, e.g. colour, shape or texture, as they are invariant to image scale, orientation
and camera angle. An innovative approach is proposed for the representation,
annotation and retrieval of visual content using a hybrid technique based upon the use
of an unstructured visual word and upon a (structured) hierarchical ontology KB
model. The structural model facilitates the disambiguation of unstructured visual
words and a more effective classification of visual content, compared to a vector
space model, through exploiting local conceptual structures and their relationships.
The key contributions of this framework in using local features for image
representation include: first, a method to generate visual words using the semantic
local adaptive clustering (SLAC) algorithm which takes term weight and spatial
locations of keypoints into account. Consequently, the semantic information is
preserved. Second a technique is used to detect the domain specific ‘non-informative
visual words’ which are ineffective at representing the content of visual data and
degrade its categorisation ability. Third, a method to combine an ontology model with
xi
a visual word model to resolve synonym (visual heterogeneity) and polysemy
problems, is proposed. The experimental results show that this approach can discover
semantically meaningful visual content descriptions and recognise specific events,
e.g., sports events, depicted in images efficiently.
Since discovering the semantics of an image is an extremely challenging problem, one
promising approach to enhance visual content interpretation is to use any associated
textual information that accompanies an image, as a cue to predict the meaning of an
image, by transforming this textual information into a structured annotation for an
image e.g. using XML, RDF, OWL or MPEG-7. Although, text and image are distinct
types of information representation and modality, there are some strong, invariant,
implicit, connections between images and any accompanying text information.
Semantic analysis of image captions can be used by image retrieval systems to
retrieve selected images more precisely. To do this, a Natural Language Processing
(NLP) is exploited firstly in order to extract concepts from image captions. Next, an
ontology-based knowledge model is deployed in order to resolve natural language
ambiguities. To deal with the accompanying text information, two methods to extract
knowledge from textual information have been proposed. First, metadata can be
extracted automatically from text captions and restructured with respect to a semantic
model. Second, the use of LSI in relation to a domain-specific ontology-based
knowledge model enables the combined framework to tolerate ambiguities and
variations (incompleteness) of metadata. The use of the ontology-based knowledge
model allows the system to find indirectly relevant concepts in image captions and
thus leverage these to represent the semantics of images at a higher level.
Experimental results show that the proposed framework significantly enhances image
retrieval and leads to narrowing of the semantic gap between lower level machinederived
and higher level human-understandable conceptualisation
Joint Video and Text Parsing for Understanding Events and Answering Queries
We propose a framework for parsing video and text jointly for understanding
events and answering user queries. Our framework produces a parse graph that
represents the compositional structures of spatial information (objects and
scenes), temporal information (actions and events) and causal information
(causalities between events and fluents) in the video and text. The knowledge
representation of our framework is based on a spatial-temporal-causal And-Or
graph (S/T/C-AOG), which jointly models possible hierarchical compositions of
objects, scenes and events as well as their interactions and mutual contexts,
and specifies the prior probabilistic distribution of the parse graphs. We
present a probabilistic generative model for joint parsing that captures the
relations between the input video/text, their corresponding parse graphs and
the joint parse graph. Based on the probabilistic model, we propose a joint
parsing system consisting of three modules: video parsing, text parsing and
joint inference. Video parsing and text parsing produce two parse graphs from
the input video and text respectively. The joint inference module produces a
joint parse graph by performing matching, deduction and revision on the video
and text parse graphs. The proposed framework has the following objectives:
Firstly, we aim at deep semantic parsing of video and text that goes beyond the
traditional bag-of-words approaches; Secondly, we perform parsing and reasoning
across the spatial, temporal and causal dimensions based on the joint S/T/C-AOG
representation; Thirdly, we show that deep joint parsing facilitates subsequent
applications such as generating narrative text descriptions and answering
queries in the forms of who, what, when, where and why. We empirically
evaluated our system based on comparison against ground-truth as well as
accuracy of query answering and obtained satisfactory results
Distributed First Order Logic
Distributed First Order Logic (DFOL) has been introduced more than ten years
ago with the purpose of formalising distributed knowledge-based systems, where
knowledge about heterogeneous domains is scattered into a set of interconnected
modules. DFOL formalises the knowledge contained in each module by means of
first-order theories, and the interconnections between modules by means of
special inference rules called bridge rules. Despite their restricted form in
the original DFOL formulation, bridge rules have influenced several works in
the areas of heterogeneous knowledge integration, modular knowledge
representation, and schema/ontology matching. This, in turn, has fostered
extensions and modifications of the original DFOL that have never been
systematically described and published. This paper tackles the lack of a
comprehensive description of DFOL by providing a systematic account of a
completely revised and extended version of the logic, together with a sound and
complete axiomatisation of a general form of bridge rules based on Natural
Deduction. The resulting DFOL framework is then proposed as a clear formal tool
for the representation of and reasoning about distributed knowledge and bridge
rules
The Semantic Grid: A future e-Science infrastructure
e-Science offers a promising vision of how computer and communication technology can support and enhance the scientific process. It does this by enabling scientists to generate, analyse, share and discuss their insights, experiments and results in an effective manner. The underlying computer infrastructure that provides these facilities is commonly referred to as the Grid. At this time, there are a number of grid applications being developed and there is a whole raft of computer technologies that provide fragments of the necessary functionality. However there is currently a major gap between these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and seamless automation and in which there are flexible collaborations and computations on a global scale. To bridge this practice–aspiration divide, this paper presents a research agenda whose aim is to move from the current state of the art in e-Science infrastructure, to the future infrastructure that is needed to support the full richness of the e-Science vision. Here the future e-Science research infrastructure is termed the Semantic Grid (Semantic Grid to Grid is meant to connote a similar relationship to the one that exists between the Semantic Web and the Web). In particular, we present a conceptual architecture for the Semantic Grid. This architecture adopts a service-oriented perspective in which distinct stakeholders in the scientific process, represented as software agents, provide services to one another, under various service level agreements, in various forms of marketplace. We then focus predominantly on the issues concerned with the way that knowledge is acquired and used in such environments since we believe this is the key differentiator between current grid endeavours and those envisioned for the Semantic Grid
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