Using philosophy to improve the coherence and interoperability of applications ontologies: A field report on the collaboration of IFOMIS and L&C

The collaboration of Language and Computing nv (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is guided by the hypothesis that quality constraints on ontologies for software ap-plication purposes closely parallel the constraints salient to the design of sound philosophical theories. The extent of this parallel has been poorly appreciated in the informatics community, and it turns out that importing the benefits of phi-losophical insight and methodology into application domains yields a variety of improvements. L&C’s LinKBase® is one of the world’s largest medical domain ontologies. Its current primary use pertains to natural language processing ap-plications, but it also supports intelligent navigation through a range of struc-tured medical and bioinformatics information resources, such as SNOMED-CT, Swiss-Prot, and the Gene Ontology (GO). In this report we discuss how and why philosophical methods improve both the internal coherence of LinKBase®, and its capacity to serve as a translation hub, improving the interoperability of the ontologies through which it navigates

Embodied cognition: A field guide

The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus

Open data and citizen engagement, Philippines

Benigno Aquino III ran for the position of President of the Philippines in 2010, with a campaign slogan of “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap" (when there is no corruption, there is no poverty). Following his win, his administration initiated reforms in government that focused on improving financial management, budget transparency, government procurement, and local government transparency. Key among these was in 2011 when the Philippines became one of the founding partners of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which aimed to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. This case study explores the introduction and implementation of open data by the Government of the Philippines. It first presents the government's enabling motivations and how the programme was conceived, then looks into the introduction and implementation of open data in the Philippines using Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration as the analytical lens. It focuses on the key policy, technology, data, and public engagement components of the ODP implementation, including significant milestones and critical issues. The study aims to show how these work streams and the programme itself dealt with aligning the supply and demand sides of open data. It then assesses how effective open data has been as an ICT tool to achieve transparency and accountability and make significant shifts in meaning, power, and norms in the context of citizen engagement. At the same time, it looks at how such signification, domination, and legitimation - or the lack of - impacted on the effectiveness of the ODP as well.DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

THESE HIPS DON’T LIE: EXAMINING THE ENGAGEMENT OF LATINA/O STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN HIGH-IMPACT PRACTICE SERVICE-LEARNING PROJECTS AT A HISPANIC SERVING INSTITUTION

While college access has been improved for Latina/o students, there is still the challenge of graduating Latina/o students with equitable academic outcomes (Bates et al., 2018). Hispanic-Serving Institutions are the sites that enroll the majority (67%) of Latina/o students in college; two out of three Latina/o students attend these broad-access, open-enrollment, minority-serving institutions known as HSIs (Excelencia, 2021). Universities across the United States are aware of the changing demographics of higher education but are slow to change policies and practices to become “student-ready” (McNair et al., 2016). Critical research on how Latina/o students experience higher education practices for student retention, more specifically, High-Impact Practices (HIPs) at HSIs, may hold the key to changing institutional cultures that directly impact improving outcomes for Latina/os in all different segments of higher education. Service-learning courses have been recognized in the research to have a higher impact on student success for Students of Color; this study will examine the experiences of Latina/o students in service-learning courses at a Hispanic Serving Institution or HSI. I introduce a framework titled the Student Engagement Ecosystem (SEE) Framework which examines the application of classroom practices beyond the binary of the course practice and the student. The SEE framework encourages leaders and practitioners to examine not only the student but their individual microsystem, which includes their family, access to resources, well-being, health, and their life and educational experiences, both positive and negative. Likewise, practitioners need to examine their role in the application of the classroom practices, I challenge them to examine the norms in the classroom, amongst the student’s peers, and at the university itself. Practitioners should identify institutional support and resources, as well as barriers and systemic inequity where possible. This framework is based on theoretical frameworks that informed my research, such as Critical Race Theory in Education (CRTE) (Solórzano,1998), Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) (Yosso, 2005), Validation Theory (Rendon, 1994, Rendon Linares & Muñoz, 2011), Transformational Leadership (Bensimon, 2007; Bensimon & Bishop, 2012), Hispanic Servingness (Garcia, 2017, 2018). Taken together this framework invites leaders and educational practitioners to see the whole student and their complex realities as individuals seeking belonging and validation in an educational system that may be foreign to them and their families

Distributed control of reconfigurable mobile network agents for resource coordination

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.Considering the tremendous growth of internet applications and network resource federation proposed towards future open access network (FOAN), the need to analyze the robustness of the classical signalling mechanisms across multiple network operators cannot be over-emphasized. It is envisaged, there will be additional challenges in meeting the bandwidth requirements and network management...The first objective of this project is to describe the networking environment based on the support for heterogeneity of network components..

Objects, worlds, and students: virtual interaction in education

The main aim of this study is to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that relate to the use of a virtual world for engaging learning experiences, when blended and hybrid learning methods are to be used. In order to investigate this topic more accurately and effectively, we distinguish four dimensions of interactions based on the context in which these occur, and the involved parts: in-world and in-class, user-to-user and user-to-world interactions. In order to conduct investigation into this topic and form a view of the interactions as clear as possible, we observed a cohort of 15 undergraduate Computer Science students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. Moreover, we ran a survey where 50 students were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about their in-world experience. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions, have stronger impact on students’ engagement when hybrid methods are used

Classification, Variation and Education: the making and Remaking of the Normal Child in England, c.1880-1914

This thesis seeks to reconstruct the making and remaking of the ‘normal child’ during the period 1880 to 1914 in England. It does so by foregrounding the contested and confused nature of various attempts to define and police the boundaries between the normal child and his or her abnormal counterpart. On the one hand, it highlights how the normal child, as it began to emerge during the late nineteenth century, was subject to multiple articulations, each of them drawing on and mobilizing different conceptions of the normal itself, whether as an assumed average, an explicit average, an average that was by definition inferior, or an optimal condition that was achievable; or again, as a condition that was more or less fixed, or one that was mutable and capable of being moulded. On the other hand – and partly by way of explanation for the above – it seeks to embrace the actions and agency of a wide variety of actors, including officials, professional experts, MPs, philanthropic and voluntary organizations, school boards, teachers, and local authorities. Certainly conceptions of the normal child were at stake; but this thesis does not seek to provide an intellectual history of the normal child during the period under consideration. Quite the contrary, though it acknowledges and affirms the importance of ideas and idioms, it also seeks to affirm the importance of practices, institutions, and professional interests, as well as considerations which extended much beyond the field of education, narrowly defined – considerations of finance; the health of the nation; and the practicalities of organizing a national education system. Of particular importance in this respect was the advent or a more or less universal system of elementary education during the 1870s and 1880s which provided something like the institutional conditions in which the problem of the ‘normal child’ could flourish and be posed as such. By 1914 – and in contrast to 1880 – the ‘normal child’ was a matter of routine discussion among all those interested in the governance of education; and yet, the problem of the normal child would remain just that: deeply problematic, and engulfed in differing professional-political perspectives