Automated Deduction – CADE 28

This open access book constitutes the proceeding of the 28th International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE 28, held virtually in July 2021. The 29 full papers and 7 system descriptions presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 76 submissions. CADE is the major forum for the presentation of research in all aspects of automated deduction, including foundations, applications, implementations, and practical experience. The papers are organized in the following topics: Logical foundations; theory and principles; implementation and application; ATP and AI; and system descriptions

Metarel, an ontology facilitating advanced querying of biomedical knowledge

Knowledge management has become indispensible in the Life Sciences for integrating and querying the enormous amounts of detailed knowledge about genes, organisms, diseases, drugs, cells, etc. Such detailed knowledge is continuously generated in bioinformatics via both hardware (e.g. raw data dumps from micro‐arrays) and software (e.g. computational analysis of data). Well‐known frameworks for managing knowledge are relational databases and spreadsheets. The doctoral dissertation describes knowledge management in two more recently‐investigated frameworks: ontologies and the Semantic Web. Knowledge statements like ‘lions live in Africa’ and ‘genes are located in a cell nucleus’ are managed with the use of URIs, logics and the ontological distinction between instances and classes. Both theory and practice are described. Metarel, the core subject of the dissertation, is an ontology describing relations that can bridge the mismatch between network‐based relations that appeal to internet browsing and logic‐based relations that are formally expressed in Description Logic. Another important subject of the dissertation is BioGateway, which is a knowledge base that has integrated biomedical knowledge in the form of hundreds of millions of network‐based relations in the RDF format. Metarel was used to upgrade the logical meaning of these relations towards Description Logic. This has enabled to build a computer reasoner that could run over the knowledge base and derive new knowledge statements

30th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases

Information modelling is becoming more and more important topic for researchers, designers, and users of information systems. The amount and complexity of information itself, the number of abstraction levels of information, and the size of databases and knowledge bases are continuously growing. Conceptual modelling is one of the sub-areas of information modelling. The aim of this conference is to bring together experts from different areas of computer science and other disciplines, who have a common interest in understanding and solving problems on information modelling and knowledge bases, as well as applying the results of research to practice. We also aim to recognize and study new areas on modelling and knowledge bases to which more attention should be paid. Therefore philosophy and logic, cognitive science, knowledge management, linguistics and management science are relevant areas, too. In the conference, there will be three categories of presentations, i.e. full papers, short papers and position papers

Formalizing graphical notations

The thesis describes research into graphical notations for software engineering, with a principal interest in ways of formalizing them. The research seeks to provide a theoretical basis that will help in designing both notations and the software tools that process them. The work starts from a survey of literature on notation, followed by a review of techniques for formal description and for computational handling of notations. The survey concentrates on collecting views of the benefits and the problems attending notation use in software development; the review covers picture description languages, grammars and tools such as generic editors and visual programming environments. The main problem of notation is found to be a lack of any coherent, rigorous description methods. The current approaches to this problem are analysed as lacking in consensus on syntax specification and also lacking a clear focus on a defined concept of notated expression. To address these deficiencies, the thesis embarks upon an exploration of serniotic, linguistic and logical theory; this culminates in a proposed formalization of serniosis in notations, using categorial model theory as a mathematical foundation. An argument about the structure of sign systems leads to an analysis of notation into a layered system of tractable theories, spanning the gap between expressive pictorial medium and subject domain. This notion of 'tectonic' theory aims to treat both diagrams and formulae together. The research gives details of how syntactic structure can be sketched in a mathematical sense, with examples applying to software development diagrams, offering a new solution to the problem of notation specification. Based on these methods, the thesis discusses directions for resolving the harder problems of supporting notation design, processing and computer-aided generic editing. A number of future research areas are thereby opened up. For practical trial of the ideas, the work proceeds to the development and partial implementation of a system to aid the design of notations and editors. Finally the thesis is evaluated as a contribution to theory in an area which has not attracted a standard approach

Legal knowledge engineering: Computing, logic and law

The general problem approached in this thesis is that of building computer based legal advisory programs (otherwise known as expert systems or Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems). Such computer systems should be able to provide an individual with advice about either the general legal area being investigated, or advice about how the individual should proceed in a given case. In part the thesis describes a program (the ELl program) which attempts to confront some of the problems inherent in the building of these systems. The ELl system is seen as an experimental program (currently handling welfare rights legislation) and development vehicle. It is not presented as a final commercially implementable program. We present a detailed criticism of the type of legal knowledge contained within the system. The second, though in part intertwined, major subject of the thesis describes the jurisprudential aspects of the attempt to model the law by logic, a conjunction which is seen to be at the heart of the computer/law problem. We suggest that the conjunction offers very little to those who are interested in the real application of the real law, and that this is most forcefully seen when a working computer system models that conjunction. Our conclusion is that neither logic nor rule-based methods are sufficient for handling legal knowledge. The novelty and import of this thesis is not simply that it presents a negative conclusion; rather that it offers a sound theoretical and pragmatic framework for understanding why these methods are insufficient - the limits to the field are, in fact, defined

Towards More Nuanced Patient Management: Decomposing Readmission Risk with Survival Models

Unplanned hospital readmissions are costly and associated with poorer patient outcomes. Overall readmission rates have also come to be used as performance metrics in reimbursement in healthcare policy, further motivating hospitals to identify and manage high-risk patients. Many models predicting readmission risk have been developed to facilitate the equitable measurement of readmission rates and to support hospital decision-makers in prioritising patients for interventions. However, these models consider the overall risk of readmission and are often restricted to a single time point. This work aims to develop the use of survival models to better support hospital decision-makers in managing readmission risk. First, semi-parametric statistical and nonparametric machine learning models are applied to adult patients admitted via the emergency department at Gold Coast University Hospital (n = 46,659) and Robina Hospital (n = 23,976) in Queensland, Australia. Overall model performance is assessed based on discrimination and calibration, as measured by time-dependent concordance and D-calibration. Second, a framework based on iterative hypothesis development and model fitting is proposed for decomposing readmission risk into persistent, patient-specific baselines and transient, care-related components using a sum of exponential hazards structure. Third, criteria for patient prioritisation based on the duration and magnitude of care-related risk components are developed. The extensibility of the framework and subsequent prioritisation criteria are considered for alternative populations, such as outpatient admissions and specific diagnosis groups, and different modelling techniques. Time-to-event models have rarely been applied for readmission modelling but can provide a rich description of the evolution of readmission risk post-discharge and support more nuanced patient management decisions than simple classification models

Computational situation theory with baby-sit

Ankara : Department of Computer Engineering and Information Science and Institute of Engineering and Science, Bilkent Univ., 1995.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Bilkent University, 1995.Includes bibliographical references leaves 241-249Language is an integral part of our everyday experience and encompasses situated activities such as talking, listening, reading, and writing. These activities are situated because they occur in situations and they are about situations. Their primary function, on the other hand, is to convey information. With this vision, situation theory has been developed over the last decade or so and various versions of the theory have been applied to a number of linguistic issues. However, not much work has been done in regard to its computational aspects. Existing approaches towards 'computational situation theory' incorporate only some of the original features of situation theory and hence show conceptual and philosophical divergence from its ontology. This thesis presents a computational account of situation theory that embodies the essentials of the theory and adopts its ontological features. A medium (called BABY-SIT) which is based on the proposed computational foundation is described and its constructs are formally defined. The features of BABY-SIT are compared to those of the existing approaches. In order to demonstrate the appropriateness of BABY-SIT, some examples from the domain of artifical intelligence are given. Resolution of pronominal anaphora in Turkish , which has been chosen as a linguistic test-bed for BABY-SIT, is also demonstrated.Tin, ErkanPh.D

Programming Languages and Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 29th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2020, which was planned to take place in Dublin, Ireland, in April 2020, as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2020. The actual ETAPS 2020 meeting was postponed due to the Corona pandemic. The papers deal with fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems