4,138 research outputs found

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

    Get PDF
    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

    After the An­thro­po­cene: Time and Mo­bil­ity

    Get PDF
    This book discusses the geological time that will follow the human-dominated epoch and ways to move there. In addition to an editorial, a total of five articles are published in this volume. The articles engage with a variety of social science disciplines—ranging from economics and sociology to philosophy and political science—and connect to natural science’s insights into the Anthropocene. The volume calls for going beyond anthropocentrism in sustainability theory and practice in order to exit the Anthropocene with applications and insights in the contexts of politics, energy, tourism, food and management. We hope that you will find this book interesting and helpful in contributing to sustainable change

    Hierarchy Theory of Evolution and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Some Epistemic Bridges, Some Conceptual Rifts

    Get PDF
    Contemporary evolutionary biology comprises a plural landscape of multiple co-existent conceptual frameworks and strenuous voices that disagree on the nature and scope of evolutionary theory. Since the mid-eighties, some of these conceptual frameworks have denounced the ontologies of the Modern Synthesis and of the updated Standard Theory of Evolution as unfinished or even flawed. In this paper, we analyze and compare two of those conceptual frameworks, namely Niles Eldredge’s Hierarchy Theory of Evolution (with its extended ontology of evolutionary entities) and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (with its proposal of an extended ontology of evolutionary processes), in an attempt to map some epistemic bridges (e.g. compatible views of causation; niche construction) and some conceptual rifts (e.g. extra-genetic inheritance; different perspectives on macroevolution; contrasting standpoints held in the “externalism–internalism” debate) that exist between them. This paper seeks to encourage theoretical, philosophical and historiographical discussions about pluralism or the possible unification of contemporary evolutionary biology

    Integration of Legacy Appliances into Home Energy Management Systems

    Full text link
    The progressive installation of renewable energy sources requires the coordination of energy consuming devices. At consumer level, this coordination can be done by a home energy management system (HEMS). Interoperability issues need to be solved among smart appliances as well as between smart and non-smart, i.e., legacy devices. We expect current standardization efforts to soon provide technologies to design smart appliances in order to cope with the current interoperability issues. Nevertheless, common electrical devices affect energy consumption significantly and therefore deserve consideration within energy management applications. This paper discusses the integration of smart and legacy devices into a generic system architecture and, subsequently, elaborates the requirements and components which are necessary to realize such an architecture including an application of load detection for the identification of running loads and their integration into existing HEM systems. We assess the feasibility of such an approach with a case study based on a measurement campaign on real households. We show how the information of detected appliances can be extracted in order to create device profiles allowing for their integration and management within a HEMS

    NSF-CNPq Collaborative Research on Integrating Geospatial Information

    Get PDF
    Under this project, researchers at the University of Maine and the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) are collaborating to study new models for integrating geographic information. The two research teams complement each other, providing a unique synergy in conceptual modeling and systems development. Long-term visits by Brazilian researchers assure a tight cooperation, and provide for integrated research and education. The work focuses on the semantics of spatial data collections that are stored in geographic information systems or spatial databases. Such collections often have diverse database schemas and lack conventions that would make them easily compatible, so that they could be combined to perform an integrated analysis. The goal of this research is to develop computational models that will allow us to compare, harmonize, and integrate geographic information across different ontologies and different spatial data models. The approach consists of a new integrated method to assess similarity based on common parts, functions, and attributes. In these similarity assessments, different contexts are considered through the operations a user intents to perform with the harmonized data. The results of this project will provide meaningful comparisons and integration of geospatial information, enabling better interoperation among geographic information systems. http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~max/CNPq.htm

    Product Service System Innovation in the Smart City

    Get PDF
    Product service systems (PSS) may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures. However, despite such potential, PSS implementation is highly uneven and limited. Drawing on an alternate socio-technical perspective of innovation, this paper provides fresh insights, on among other things the role of context in PSS innovation, to address this issue. Case study research is presented focusing on a use orientated PSS in an urban environment: the Copenhagen city bike scheme. The paper shows that PSS innovation is a situated complex process, shaped by actors and knowledge from other locales. It argues that further research is needed to investigate how actors interests shape PSS innovation. It recommends that institutional spaces should be provided in governance landscapes associated with urban environments to enable legitimate PSS concepts to co-evolve in light of locally articulated sustainability principles and priorities

    On data integration workflows for an effective management of multidimensional petroleum digital ecosystems in Arabian Gulf Basins

    Get PDF
    Data integration of multiple heterogeneous datasets from multidimensional petroleum digital ecosystems is an effective way, for extracting information and adding value to knowledge domain from multiple producing onshore and offshore basins. At present, data from multiple basins are scattered and unusable for data integration, because of scale and format differences. Ontology based warehousing and mining modeling are recommended for resolving the issues of scaling and formatting of multidimensional datasets, in which case, seismic and well-domain datasets are described. Issues, such as semantics among different data dimensions and their associated attributes are also addressed by Ontology modeling.Intelligent relationships are built among several petroleum system domains (structure, reservoir, source and seal, for example) at global scale and facilitated the integration process among multiple dimensions in a data warehouse environment. For this purpose, integrated workflows are designed for capturing and modeling unknown relationships among petroleum system data attributes in interpretable knowledge domains.This study is an effective approach in mining and interpreting data views drawn from warehoused exploration and production metadata, with special reference to Arabian onshore and offshore basins
    • …
    corecore