Knowledge Modelling and Learning through Cognitive Networks

One of the most promising developments in modelling knowledge is cognitive network science, which aims to investigate cognitive phenomena driven by the networked, associative organization of knowledge. For example, investigating the structure of semantic memory via semantic networks has illuminated how memory recall patterns influence phenomena such as creativity, memory search, learning, and more generally, knowledge acquisition, exploration, and exploitation. In parallel, neural network models for artificial intelligence (AI) are also becoming more widespread as inferential models for understanding which features drive language-related phenomena such as meaning reconstruction, stance detection, and emotional profiling. Whereas cognitive networks map explicitly which entities engage in associative relationships, neural networks perform an implicit mapping of correlations in cognitive data as weights, obtained after training over labelled data and whose interpretation is not immediately evident to the experimenter. This book aims to bring together quantitative, innovative research that focuses on modelling knowledge through cognitive and neural networks to gain insight into mechanisms driving cognitive processes related to knowledge structuring, exploration, and learning. The book comprises a variety of publication types, including reviews and theoretical papers, empirical research, computational modelling, and big data analysis. All papers here share a commonality: they demonstrate how the application of network science and AI can extend and broaden cognitive science in ways that traditional approaches cannot

Market Engineering

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals’ and organizations’ behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today’s society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society’s goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship

The drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility in the supply chain. A case study.

Purpose: The paper studies the way in which a SME integrates CSR into its corporate strategy, the practices it puts in place and how its CSR strategies reflect on its suppliers and customers relations. Methodology/Research limitations: A qualitative case study methodology is used. The use of a single case study limits the generalizing capacity of these findings. Findings: The entrepreneur’s ethical beliefs and value system play a fundamental role in shaping sustainable corporate strategy. Furthermore, the type of competitive strategy selected based on innovation, quality and responsibility clearly emerges both in terms of well defined management procedures and supply chain relations as a whole aimed at involving partners in the process of sustainable innovation. Originality/value: The paper presents a SME that has devised an original innovative business model. The study pivots on the issues of innovation and eco-sustainability in a context of drivers for CRS and business ethics. These values are considered fundamental at International level; the United Nations has declared 2011 the “International Year of Forestry”

Int j acctg

Title from cover.Published: Springer, 1995; Greenwich, Conn. : JAI Press, 1996-2000; New York, N.Y. : Pergamon, 2000-Latest issue consulted: Vol. 37, no. 2 (2002) (surrogate).Published for: Center for International Education and Research in Accounting, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0020706

Library websites popularity: does Facebook really matter?

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the utilization of social media (Facebook) is an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library site usage in Malaysian public universities. Nine top ranked Malaysian public universities involved in this research and number of Facebook followers for each library website is listed. Alexa software was used as the approach to study the issue of visibility. Alexa is able to determine web site usage, by showing the percentage of visitors of library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for each University website (domain) over a month. It is found that Universiti Utara Malaysia library website scored the highest percentage of visitors based on the library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for the University website in Alexa. To check such irregularities in access, this paper use EvalAccess 2.0 and it is found that Universiti Sains Malaysia’s library website scored higher irregularities. In term of number of Facebook followers, Univesity of Malaya library has the highest score. It is showed that the utilization of social media (Facebook) is not yet an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library websites. However, expectedly, top ranked universities’ library web sites, are more visible and popular. This research is limited to the situation in Malaysia where public universities are more noticeable and seldom face financial constraints rather than private universities. It is highly important for those universities’ library web sites that are not highly visible to initiate the necessary measures in improving the development of their web sites as the usage of the website is an indicator of online quality

Trading in chaos : analysis of active management in a fractal market.

Doctor of Philosophy in Finance. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2017.Many Nobel Laureates and thousands of academic papers have espoused the concept that risk is compensated by return. However, the low volatility anomaly - the phenomenon where low-risk stocks display markedly higher returns than the market portfolio on a risk-adjusted basis and vice versa - contradicts this basic finance principle of risk-return trade-off and is possibly one of the greatest anomalies in finance. Among the explanations for this anomaly are, the behavioural bias of overconfidence, agency problems and the type of manager compensation. This study investigates and confirms the low volatility anomaly on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) using the risk-adjusted return measure of the Sharpe ratio. According to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, this is not expected to happen and consequently offers no explanation for this phenomenon. This study applies the Fractal Market Hypothesis (FMH) formalised within the framework of Chaos Theory, to explain the existence of the low volatility anomaly on the JSE. Building upon the Fractal Market Hypothesis to provide evidence on the behaviour of returns time series of selected indices of the JSE, the BDS test is applied to test for non-random chaotic dynamics and further applies the rescaled range analysis to ascertain mean reversion, persistence or randomness on the JSE. The BDS test confirms that all the indices considered in this study are not independent and identically distributed. Applying the re-scaled range analysis, the FTSE/JSE Top 40 and the FTSE/JSE All Share Index appear relatively efficient and riskier than the FTSE/JSE Small Cap Index, which exhibits significant persistence and appears to be less risky and less efficient contrary to the popular assertion that small cap indices are riskier than large cap indices. The study further analyses the three fundamentals of the FMH namely, the impact of information, the role of liquidity and time horizon on the top 40 and small cap indices. Information is not uniformly distributed among the two indices as the FTSE/JSE Top 40 index receives more publications form sources such as newspapers, online publications and journals as well as JSE issued news and historical company news. The FTSE/JSE Top 40 also receives more analyst coverage than the FTSE/JSE Small Cap Index. Using the absolute and normalised volume of trade as a proxy for liquidity, the FTSE/JSE Top 40 index exhibits a relatively higher level of liquidity than the FTSE/JSE Small Cap index. The study finds that domestic equity fund managers in South Africa hold in their portfolios, a disproportionately greater percentage of FTSE/JSE Top 40 companies relative to other companies on the JSE and concludes that these managers contribute to the low volatility anomaly on the JSE. The study further concludes that in line with the FMH, lack of information and the illiquidity of the FTSE/JSE Small Cap attracts long-term investors who become the dominant class of investors on the index and are compensated for taking on the risk of illiquidity in the form of illiquidity premium and low volatility. The highly liquid FTSE/JSE Top 40, which has relatively high availability of information on the other hand attracts different classes of investors with differing horizons who take opposite sides of each trade as different classes of investors interpret the same set of information differently. The high liquidity and information leads to high volatility as investors continually adjust their holdings with the emergence of new information. The high volatility and subsequent underperformance of the FTSE/JSE Top 40 therefore is a cost of efficiency and liquidity (liquidity discount). Studies on the FMH are generally focused on market crashes. This study provides a novel approach by using the FMH to explain the low-volatility anomaly. This synthesis of the FMH and the low volatility anomaly provides an alternative technique of evaluating risk and also provides insights into the efficiency of financial markets and contributes to the literature on the FMH as well as the low volatility anomaly

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Time-dependent metabolic phenotyping of inflammatory dysregulation

A rich and functional description of a patient health status is the fundamental basis for the personalisation of treatment and the targeting of interventions. The function of inflammation in the healing process as well as its involvement in most major diseases is well established, yet the specific mechanism by which it contributes to the pathogenesis is still not fully understood. If conditions arising from a dysregulation of the inflammatory process are to be treated before they become irreversible, a novel understanding of these pathologies must be achieved and a stratification of patients based on their inflammatory status undertaken. The work presented in this thesis aims to deliver new analytical and statistical approaches to support the investigation of the time-dependent dysregulation of inflammation. Lipid mediators have been described as exerting a major role in the initiation and regulation of the inflammatory response, yet analytical platforms for their large-scale characterisation in human biofluids are lacking. This thesis reports the validation of an assay for the simultaneous quantification of pro- and anti-inflammatory signalling molecules in multiple human biofluids. The coverage of the assay in each biofluid is subsequently established, characterising inflammatory signalling across biological compartments. A second study explores the assay’s applicability in a clinical context; investigating the relationship between lipid mediators, current clinical markers of inflammation and post-operative complications. Characterising the interplay between signalling and regulatory networks is key to understanding a living system’s response to perturbations, yet few statistical approaches are suited for the detection of time-dependent patterns in short and irregularly sampled longitudinal datasets. This thesis reports the development of a statistical approach to support the identification of altered time-trajectories in such studies. The method’s wide applicability is subsequently demonstrated on two investigations covering the diversity of metabolic phenotyping data generation platforms. This thesis is a proof of concept for the characterisation of patient-specific inflammatory status in a clinical context and the identification of altered time-dependent patterns. Both analytical and statistical developments have been motivated by the needs of real world applications and provide a template for the characterisation and analysis of the molecular basis for treatment.Open Acces