An Object-Oriented Approach to Knowledge Representation in a Biomedical Domain

An object-oriented approach has been applied to the different stages involved in developing a knowledge base about insulin metabolism. At an early stage the separation of terminological and assertional knowledge was made. The terminological component was developed by medical experts and represented in CORE. An object-oriented knowledge acquisition process was applied to the assertional knowledge. A frame description is proposed which includes features like states and events, inheritance and collaboration. States and events are formalized with qualitative calculus. The terminological knowledge was very useful in the development of the assertional component. It assisteed in understanding the problem domain, and in the implementation stage, it assisted in building good inheritance hierarchies

SCIF-IRIS Framework: A framework to facilitate interoperability in supply chains

One approach that allows improving the collaboration among all the enterprises within a supply chain is interoperability. Interoperability allows the enterprises in the supply chain to collaborate in an efficient manner while preserving their own identities and their own ways of doing business through mechanisms that act as facilitators. However, there are few real practical examples of supply chain interoperability that can be used as a reference. In this paper, we present a framework that can facilitate supply chain interoperability and an example of how it can be applied to a food supply chain

The Requirements for Ontologies in Medical Data Integration: A Case Study

Evidence-based medicine is critically dependent on three sources of information: a medical knowledge base, the patients medical record and knowledge of available resources, including where appropriate, clinical protocols. Patient data is often scattered in a variety of databases and may, in a distributed model, be held across several disparate repositories. Consequently addressing the needs of an evidence-based medicine community presents issues of biomedical data integration, clinical interpretation and knowledge management. This paper outlines how the Health-e-Child project has approached the challenge of requirements specification for (bio-) medical data integration, from the level of cellular data, through disease to that of patient and population. The approach is illuminated through the requirements elicitation and analysis of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA), one of three diseases being studied in the EC-funded Health-e-Child project.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Presented at the 11th International Database Engineering & Applications Symposium (Ideas2007). Banff, Canada September 200

A Conceptual Model for Gender-Inclusive Requirements

Gender equality is a fundamental human right. Empowering all women and girls means empowering half of the world’s population, and therefore it is essential to create a peaceful and sustainable future. However, there is still a great deal to be done to achieve full equality of rights and opportunities for everyone. Gender inequality persists and prevents the development and thriving of individuals and societies. Such is the case of girls’ and women’s under-representation in information, communication, and technology, where only 3% of the graduates worldwide are women. Consequently, technology development holds serious problems of inclusion and diversity. As technologies rapidly evolve and revolutionize the way we live, missing diverse perspectives during development produces a gender-biased technology that, instead of advancing gender equality, creates new barriers in achieving it. Technology can play a fundamental role in progressing gender equality and ensuring gender inclusion. Although considered neutral, the software does not equally serve everyone who depends on it. Software systems favor characteristics that are statistically more observed in majorities, ignoring or even attacking certain minorities. Concerning gender, existing systems favor characteristics that are statistically more observed in men over characteristics observed in other genders (e.g., trans, cis women, non-binary). The goal of this dissertation is to create awareness that the problem of non-inclusive software is real and investigate how to develop software that benefits everyone, regardless of their gender. As a first step, we performed a systematic mapping study to gather a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art on gender issues in software engineering. This study served as the groundwork for the development of a conceptual model for gender-inclusive requirements. The model aims to support requirements engineers by providing a representation of gender domain knowledge that can be used as a resource for eliciting gender-inclusive requirements. To integrate the conceptual model into the existing practices of requirements engineers, we propose a framework that offers a set of guidelines with concrete goals to ensure a focus on gender inclusion from the earliest phases and throughout the development process. We applied the framework to develop a gender-inclusive prototype tool that supports the process of using the framework. The developed model was empirically evaluated by a group of 31 participants and the results were positive. The conceptual model was published in a CORE A conferenceA igualdade de género é um direito humano fundamental. Empoderar todas asmulheres e raparigas significa empoderar metade da população do mundo, e como tal, é crucial para a criação de um futuro pacífico e sustentável. No entanto, há ainda um longo percurso a percorrer na conquista da total igualdade de direitos e oportunidades. A desigualdade de género ainda persiste, impedindo o desenvolvimento e prosperação de indivíduos e sociedades. Este é o caso da área da informação, comunicação e tecnologia que tem apenas 3% graduadas em todo omundo. Consequentemente, a tecnologia apresenta sérios problemas de inclusão e diversidade, desde o seu desenvolvimento à sua adoção e utilização. A tecnologia, e o software em particular, desempenham um papel cada vez mais central na vida de todos nós. Apesar de considerado neutro, o software não serve da mesma forma todos os que dependem dele. De facto, os sistemas de software privilegiam características estatisticamente mais observadas nas maiorias, ignorando ou mesmo atacando certas minorias. No que diz respeito ao género, os sistemas existentes privilegiam características estatisticamente mais observadas nos homens em detrimento das características observadas noutros géneros (por exemplo, trans, mulheres cis, pessoas não-binárias). O objetivo desta dissertação e tomar consciência que o problema de software nãoinclusivo é real e investigar como desenvolver software que beneficie todos os utilizadores, independentemente do seu género. Como primeiro passo, realizámos um mapeamento sistematico de literatura de modo a construir uma visão integrada sobre o estado da arte em questões de género em engenharia de software. Os resultados deste estudo serviram de base para o desenvolvimento de um modelo conceptual para requisitos inclusivos de genero. Este modelo visa apoiar a elicitacao de informacao inclusiva providenciando uma representacao do conhecimento dominio de genero como recurso para a formulacao de requisitos inclusivos. Para integrar o modelo conceptual nas praticas da engenharia de requisitos, desenvolvemos uma framework que oferece um conjunto de diretrizes com objetivos concretos para garantir um foco na inclusao de genero desde as fases iniciais e ao longo do processo de desenvolvimento. Aplicamos a framework na construcao de um prototipo de uma ferramenta inclusiva de genero que apoia o seu processo de uso. O modelo desenvolvido foi avaliado empiricamente por um grupo de 31 participantes e os resultados foram positivos. O modelo conceptual foi publicado numa conferência CORE A

Framework for collaborative knowledge management in organizations

Nowadays organizations have been pushed to speed up the rate of industrial transformation to high value products and services. The capability to agilely respond to new market demands became a strategic pillar for innovation, and knowledge management could support organizations to achieve that goal. However, current knowledge management approaches tend to be over complex or too academic, with interfaces difficult to manage, even more if cooperative handling is required. Nevertheless, in an ideal framework, both tacit and explicit knowledge management should be addressed to achieve knowledge handling with precise and semantically meaningful definitions. Moreover, with the increase of Internet usage, the amount of available information explodes. It leads to the observed progress in the creation of mechanisms to retrieve useful knowledge from the huge existent amount of information sources. However, a same knowledge representation of a thing could mean differently to different people and applications. Contributing towards this direction, this thesis proposes a framework capable of gathering the knowledge held by domain experts and domain sources through a knowledge management system and transform it into explicit ontologies. This enables to build tools with advanced reasoning capacities with the aim to support enterprises decision-making processes. The author also intends to address the problem of knowledge transference within an among organizations. This will be done through a module (part of the proposed framework) for domain’s lexicon establishment which purpose is to represent and unify the understanding of the domain’s used semantic

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Dusting Tommy’s and Grace’s Portfolios: A Document Analysis of L2 English Learners’ Language Learning Strategies

In the field of language learning strategies, Griffiths and Oxford (2014) suggested that more qualitative studies need to be conducted as a supplement to the mainstream survey research. These qualitative methods might include interviews, think-aloud protocols, diaries, observation, and so on. Nevertheless, few studies use document analysis as a method. At best, it is marginalized as a supplement to other qualitative methods (Ahmed, 2010). This study intended to depict the process of L2 English learners’ strategy use by utilizing document analysis as a major method. In-depth interviews were conducted to corroborate the document analysis as a means of triangulation. In order to identify the learners’ strategies, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, R. L., 1990) was employed as the coding scheme. The data from the interviews and documents yielded major themes and case examples

Research on Knowledge Organization Process Based on Knowledge Unit

Data is exploding in the age of big data, and the users’ requirements for knowledge organization level are increasing day by day. Aimed to the characteristics of problem and the data to solve the problem which are multiple, redundant, complex, chaotic and new, the traditional first organizing mode could not solve the users’ problems effectively. Therefore, in this paper question driven construct the knowledge organization from the macro level, with the help of knowledge granularity and knowledge unit to design its process, and knowledge is stored on knowledge warehouse through the navigation of question to acquire, order, associate, regenerate and apply the knowledge unit. According to the different types of problems, the knowledge unit network is built oriented to the question based on node of knowledge unit and tie of knowledge relation. Mine the evolution rule from question to knowledge unit and question answered, promote the generation of the new knowledge unit. Ultimately knowledge service is provided for the application of water information efficiently and actively, with promoting the sharing, innovation and application of knowledge

The auditor's evaluation of other information accompanying financial statements: Qualitative expressions of magnitude describing corporate earnings: Working paper series--02-02

A significant portion of the annual reports issued by publicly traded firms contains non-numerical information (i.e., written expressions). AU Section 550 of the professional standards (AICPA, 2000) refers to this type of non-numerical information that accompanies the financial statements as (other information.) AU Section 550.04 clearly indicates that the auditor should read this other information and consider whether such information is materially inconsistent with information, or the manner of its presentation, appearing in the financial statements. This paper determines how the readers of the letter to shareholders that appears in the annual report numerically interpret the qualitative expressions of magnitude used by top management (e.g., how readers would numerically interpret the phrase “a significant increase in earnings”). The numerical interpretations of these qualitative expressions are then used to guide auditors in making the determination of when the use of a qualitative expression may be materially inconsistent with the information that appears in the accompanying financial statements