125,340 research outputs found
Stabilizing knowledge through standards - A perspective for the humanities
It is usual to consider that standards generate mixed feelings among
scientists. They are often seen as not really reflecting the state of the art
in a given domain and a hindrance to scientific creativity. Still, scientists
should theoretically be at the best place to bring their expertise into
standard developments, being even more neutral on issues that may typically be
related to competing industrial interests. Even if it could be thought of as
even more complex to think about developping standards in the humanities, we
will show how this can be made feasible through the experience gained both
within the Text Encoding Initiative consortium and the International
Organisation for Standardisation. By taking the specific case of lexical
resources, we will try to show how this brings about new ideas for designing
future research infrastructures in the human and social sciences
Rerepresenting and Restructuring Domain Theories: A Constructive Induction Approach
Theory revision integrates inductive learning and background knowledge by
combining training examples with a coarse domain theory to produce a more
accurate theory. There are two challenges that theory revision and other
theory-guided systems face. First, a representation language appropriate for
the initial theory may be inappropriate for an improved theory. While the
original representation may concisely express the initial theory, a more
accurate theory forced to use that same representation may be bulky,
cumbersome, and difficult to reach. Second, a theory structure suitable for a
coarse domain theory may be insufficient for a fine-tuned theory. Systems that
produce only small, local changes to a theory have limited value for
accomplishing complex structural alterations that may be required.
Consequently, advanced theory-guided learning systems require flexible
representation and flexible structure. An analysis of various theory revision
systems and theory-guided learning systems reveals specific strengths and
weaknesses in terms of these two desired properties. Designed to capture the
underlying qualities of each system, a new system uses theory-guided
constructive induction. Experiments in three domains show improvement over
previous theory-guided systems. This leads to a study of the behavior,
limitations, and potential of theory-guided constructive induction.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for an online appendix and other files
accompanying this articl
Clinical guidelines as plans: An ontological theory
Clinical guidelines are special types of plans realized by collective agents. We provide an ontological theory of such plans that is designed to support the construction of a framework in which guideline-based information systems can be employed in the management of workflow in health care organizations.
The framework we propose allows us to represent in formal terms how clinical guidelines are realized through the actions of are realized through the actions of individuals organized into teams. We provide various levels of implementation representing different levels of conformity on the part of health care organizations.
Implementations built in conformity with our framework are marked by two dimensions of flexibility that are designed to make them more likely to be accepted by health care professionals than standard guideline-based management systems. They do justice to the fact 1) that responsibilities within a health care organization are widely shared, and 2) that health care professionals may on different occasions be non-compliant with guidelines for a variety of well justified reasons.
The advantage of the framework lies in its built-in flexibility, its sensitivity to clinical context, and its ability to use inference tools based on a robust ontology. One disadvantage lies in its complicated implementation
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