164 research outputs found
Alignment of the UMLS semantic network with BioTop: Methodology and assessment
Motivation: For many years, the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) semantic network (SN) has been used as an upper-level semantic framework for the categorization of terms from terminological resources in biomedicine. BioTop has recently been developed as an upper-level ontology for the biomedical domain. In contrast to the SN, it is founded upon strict ontological principles, using OWL DL as a formal representation language, which has become standard in the semantic Web. In order to make logic-based reasoning available for the resources annotated or categorized with the SN, a mapping ontology was developed aligning the SN with BioTop. Methods: The theoretical foundations and the practical realization of the alignment are being described, with a focus on the design decisions taken, the problems encountered and the adaptations of BioTop that became necessary. For evaluation purposes, UMLS concept pairs obtained from MEDLINE abstracts by a named entity recognition system were tested for possible semantic relationships. Furthermore, all semantic-type combinations that occur in the UMLS Metathesaurus were checked for satisfiability. Results: The effort-intensive alignment process required major design changes and enhancements of BioTop and brought up s
Making AI Meaningful Again
Artificial intelligence (AI) research enjoyed an initial period of enthusiasm in the 1970s and 80s. But this enthusiasm was tempered by a long interlude of frustration when genuinely useful AI applications failed to be forthcoming. Today, we are experiencing once again a period of enthusiasm, fired above all by the successes of the technology of deep neural networks or deep machine learning. In this paper we draw attention to what we take to be serious problems underlying current views of artificial intelligence encouraged by these successes, especially in the domain of language processing. We then show an alternative approach to language-centric AI, in which we identify a role for philosophy
Dichotomies in Ontology-Mediated Querying with the Guarded Fragment
We study the complexity of ontology-mediated querying when ontologies are
formulated in the guarded fragment of first-order logic (GF). Our general aim
is to classify the data complexity on the level of ontologies where query
evaluation w.r.t. an ontology O is considered to be in PTime if all (unions of
conjunctive) queries can be evaluated in PTime w.r.t. O and coNP-hard if at
least one query is coNP-hard w.r.t. O. We identify several large and relevant
fragments of GF that enjoy a dichotomy between PTime and coNP, some of them
additionally admitting a form of counting. In fact, almost all ontologies in
the BioPortal repository fall into these fragments or can easily be rewritten
to do so. We then establish a variation of Ladner's Theorem on the existence of
NP-intermediate problems and use this result to show that for other fragments,
there is provably no such dichotomy. Again for other fragments (such as full
GF), establishing a dichotomy implies the Feder-Vardi conjecture on the
complexity of constraint satisfaction problems. We also link these results to
Datalog-rewritability and study the decidability of whether a given ontology
enjoys PTime query evaluation, presenting both positive and negative results
A semantic and agent-based approach to support information retrieval, interoperability and multi-lateral viewpoints for heterogeneous environmental databases
PhDData stored in individual autonomous databases often needs to be combined and
interrelated. For example, in the Inland Water (IW) environment monitoring domain,
the spatial and temporal variation of measurements of different water quality indicators
stored in different databases are of interest. Data from multiple data sources is more
complex to combine when there is a lack of metadata in a computation forin and when
the syntax and semantics of the stored data models are heterogeneous. The main types
of information retrieval (IR) requirements are query transparency and data
harmonisation for data interoperability and support for multiple user views. A
combined Semantic Web based and Agent based distributed system framework has
been developed to support the above IR requirements. It has been implemented using
the Jena ontology and JADE agent toolkits. The semantic part supports the
interoperability of autonomous data sources by merging their intensional data, using a
Global-As-View or GAV approach, into a global semantic model, represented in
DAML+OIL and in OWL. This is used to mediate between different local database
views. The agent part provides the semantic services to import, align and parse
semantic metadata instances, to support data mediation and to reason about data
mappings during alignment. The framework has applied to support information
retrieval, interoperability and multi-lateral viewpoints for four European environmental
agency databases.
An extended GAV approach has been developed and applied to handle queries that can
be reformulated over multiple user views of the stored data. This allows users to
retrieve data in a conceptualisation that is better suited to them rather than to have to
understand the entire detailed global view conceptualisation. User viewpoints are
derived from the global ontology or existing viewpoints of it. This has the advantage
that it reduces the number of potential conceptualisations and their associated
mappings to be more computationally manageable. Whereas an ad hoc framework
based upon conventional distributed programming language and a rule framework
could be used to support user views and adaptation to user views, a more formal
framework has the benefit in that it can support reasoning about the consistency,
equivalence, containment and conflict resolution when traversing data models. A
preliminary formulation of the formal model has been undertaken and is based upon
extending a Datalog type algebra with hierarchical, attribute and instance value
operators. These operators can be applied to support compositional mapping and
consistency checking of data views. The multiple viewpoint system was implemented
as a Java-based application consisting of two sub-systems, one for viewpoint
adaptation and management, the other for query processing and query result
adjustment
Is question answering fit for the Semantic Web? A survey
With the recent rapid growth of the Semantic Web (SW), the processes of searching and querying content that is both massive in scale and heterogeneous have become increasingly challenging. User-friendly interfaces, which can support end users in querying and exploring this novel and diverse, structured information space, are needed to make the vision of the SW a reality. We present a survey on ontology-based Question Answering (QA), which has emerged in recent years to exploit the opportunities offered by structured semantic information on the Web. First, we provide a comprehensive perspective by analyzing the general background and history of the QA research field, from influential works from the artificial intelligence and database communities developed in the 70s and later decades, through open domain QA stimulated by the QA track in TREC since 1999, to the latest commercial semantic QA solutions, before tacking the current state of the art in open userfriendly interfaces for the SW. Second, we examine the potential of this technology to go beyond the current state of the art to support end-users in reusing and querying the SW content. We conclude our review with an outlook for this novel research area, focusing in particular on the R&D directions that need to be pursued to realize the goal of efficient and competent retrieval and integration of answers from large scale, heterogeneous, and continuously evolving semantic sources
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