Philosophy of Blockchain Technology - Ontologies

About the necessity and usefulness of developing a philosophy specific to the blockchain technology, emphasizing on the ontological aspects. After an Introduction that highlights the main philosophical directions for this emerging technology, in Blockchain Technology I explain the way the blockchain works, discussing ontological development directions of this technology in Designing and Modeling. The next section is dedicated to the main application of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, with the social implications of this cryptocurrency. There follows a section of Philosophy in which I identify the blockchain technology with the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault and I interpret it in the light of the notational technology developed by Nelson Goodman as a notational system. In the Ontology section, I present two developmental paths that I consider important: Narrative Ontology, based on the idea of order and structure of history transmitted through Paul Ricoeur's narrative history, and the Enterprise Ontology system based on concepts and models of an enterprise, specific to the semantic web, and which I consider to be the most well developed and which will probably become the formal ontological system, at least in terms of the economic and legal aspects of blockchain technology. In Conclusions I am talking about the future directions of developing the blockchain technology philosophy in general as an explanatory and robust theory from a phenomenologically consistent point of view, which allows testability and ontologies in particular, arguing for the need of a global adoption of an ontological system for develop cross-cutting solutions and to make this technology profitable. CONTENTS: Abstract Introducere Tehnologia blockchain - Proiectare - Modele Bitcoin Filosofia Ontologii - Ontologii narative - Ontologii de intreprindere Concluzii Note Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24510.3360

An ontology to standardize research output of nutritional epidemiology : from paper-based standards to linked content

Background: The use of linked data in the Semantic Web is a promising approach to add value to nutrition research. An ontology, which defines the logical relationships between well-defined taxonomic terms, enables linking and harmonizing research output. To enable the description of domain-specific output in nutritional epidemiology, we propose the Ontology for Nutritional Epidemiology (ONE) according to authoritative guidance for nutritional epidemiology. Methods: Firstly, a scoping review was conducted to identify existing ontology terms for reuse in ONE. Secondly, existing data standards and reporting guidelines for nutritional epidemiology were converted into an ontology. The terms used in the standards were summarized and listed separately in a taxonomic hierarchy. Thirdly, the ontologies of the nutritional epidemiologic standards, reporting guidelines, and the core concepts were gathered in ONE. Three case studies were included to illustrate potential applications: (i) annotation of existing manuscripts and data, (ii) ontology-based inference, and (iii) estimation of reporting completeness in a sample of nine manuscripts. Results: Ontologies for food and nutrition (n = 37), disease and specific population (n = 100), data description (n = 21), research description (n = 35), and supplementary (meta) data description (n = 44) were reviewed and listed. ONE consists of 339 classes: 79 new classes to describe data and 24 new classes to describe the content of manuscripts. Conclusion: ONE is a resource to automate data integration, searching, and browsing, and can be used to assess reporting completeness in nutritional epidemiology

BIOLOGICAL TAXONOMY AND ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT: SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

The prospects of integrating full-blown biological taxonomies into an ontological reasoning framework are critically reviewed. The common usage of a static 'snapshot' hierarchy in ontological representations of taxonomy is contrasted with a more realistic situation that involves dynamic, piece-meal revisions of particular taxonomic groups and requires alignment with relevant preceding perspectives. Taxonomic practice is characterized by a range of phenomena that are orthogonal to the logical background from which ontological entities and relationships originate, and therefore pose special challenges to ontological representation and reasoning. Among these phenomena are: (1) the notion that there is a single phylogenetic hierarchy in nature which taxonomy can only gradually approximate; (2) the evolvability of taxa which means that taxon-defining features may be lost in subordinate members or independently gained across multiple sections of the tree of life; (3) the hybrid approach of defining taxa both in reference to properties (intensional) and members (ostensive) which undermines the individual/class dichotomy sustaining conventional ontologies; (4) the idiosyncratic yet inferentially valuable usage of Linnaean ranks; (5) the indelible and semantically complex 250-year legacy of nomenclatural and taxonomic changes that characterizes the current system; (6) the insufficient taxonomic exploration of large portions of the tree of life; and the need to use a sophisticated terminology for aligning taxonomic entities in order to integrate both (7) single and (8) multiple hierarchies. It is suggested that research along the taxonomy/ontology interface should focus on either strictly nomenclatural entities or specialize in ontology-driven methods for producing alignments between multiple taxonomies

Using Linguistic Patterns to Enhance Ontology Development

In this paper we describe how linguistic patterns can contribute to ontology development by enabling an easier reuse of some ontological resources. In particular, our research focuses on the reuse of ontology design patterns and ontology statements by relying on linguistic constructs at different stages of the reuse process. With this aim, we propose the employment of lexico-syntactic patterns with two objectives: 1) the reuse of ontology design patterns, and 2) the validation of ontology statements for their subsequent reuse in the ontology development. To illustrate the proposed approaches, we will present some examples of lexico-syntactic patterns and their employment in the reuse of ontology design patterns and in the validation of ontology statements

Ontology Enrichment from Free-text Clinical Documents: A Comparison of Alternative Approaches

While the biomedical informatics community widely acknowledges the utility of domain ontologies, there remain many barriers to their effective use. One important requirement of domain ontologies is that they achieve a high degree of coverage of the domain concepts and concept relationships. However, the development of these ontologies is typically a manual, time-consuming, and often error-prone process. Limited resources result in missing concepts and relationships, as well as difficulty in updating the ontology as domain knowledge changes. Methodologies developed in the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Information Extraction (IE), Information Retrieval (IR), and Machine Learning (ML) provide techniques for automating the enrichment of ontology from free-text documents. In this dissertation, I extended these methodologies into biomedical ontology development. First, I reviewed existing methodologies and systems developed in the fields of NLP, IR, and IE, and discussed how existing methods can benefit the development of biomedical ontologies. This previously unconducted review was published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. Second, I compared the effectiveness of three methods from two different approaches, the symbolic (the Hearst method) and the statistical (the Church and Lin methods), using clinical free-text documents. Third, I developed a methodological framework for Ontology Learning (OL) evaluation and comparison. This framework permits evaluation of the two types of OL approaches that include three OL methods. The significance of this work is as follows: 1) The results from the comparative study showed the potential of these methods for biomedical ontology enrichment. For the two targeted domains (NCIT and RadLex), the Hearst method revealed an average of 21% and 11% new concept acceptance rates, respectively. The Lin method produced a 74% acceptance rate for NCIT; the Church method, 53%. As a result of this study (published in the Journal of Methods of Information in Medicine), many suggested candidates have been incorporated into the NCIT; 2) The evaluation framework is flexible and general enough that it can analyze the performance of ontology enrichment methods for many domains, thus expediting the process of automation and minimizing the likelihood that key concepts and relationships would be missed as domain knowledge evolves

\u2018Ontology\u2019 and Terminological Frameworks: an Overview of Issues and Term(s)

This paper addresses the question of the protean nature of \u2018ontology\u2019, with special attention paid to its use within the domain of terminology theories and applications. This term is widely used nowadays within various disciplines for designating different types of organising relational frameworks. Yet, its designations remain unvaried and, in this way, it causes ambiguity. The multifaceted nature of the so-called \u2018ontology\u2019 hinders the possibility of providing an unambiguous defi nition. This is mainly due to the multi- and interdisciplinary dimension of this notion, which is outlined here through an overview of its application within philosophy, information science, and linguistic disciplines. The reference model of ontology that is applied nowadays in various disciplines corresponds to an object, or more precisely, to various types of objects which are all based on a relational framework, and are used for organising different types of knowledge units. This view differs from the original value of ontology that was shaped within philosophy as a purely theoretical model, a global and universally-valid abstract classifi cation of reality. Therefore, it seems appropriate that this term should acquire greater precision especially when it is used within the domain of terminology

Behavior change interventions: the potential of ontologies for advancing science and practice

A central goal of behavioral medicine is the creation of evidence-based interventions for promoting behavior change. Scientific knowledge about behavior change could be more effectively accumulated using "ontologies." In information science, an ontology is a systematic method for articulating a "controlled vocabulary" of agreed-upon terms and their inter-relationships. It involves three core elements: (1) a controlled vocabulary specifying and defining existing classes; (2) specification of the inter-relationships between classes; and (3) codification in a computer-readable format to enable knowledge generation, organization, reuse, integration, and analysis. This paper introduces ontologies, provides a review of current efforts to create ontologies related to behavior change interventions and suggests future work. This paper was written by behavioral medicine and information science experts and was developed in partnership between the Society of Behavioral Medicine's Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions SIG. In recent years significant progress has been made in the foundational work needed to develop ontologies of behavior change. Ontologies of behavior change could facilitate a transformation of behavioral science from a field in which data from different experiments are siloed into one in which data across experiments could be compared and/or integrated. This could facilitate new approaches to hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery in behavioral science