NOESIS: A Framework for Complex Network Data Analysis

Network data mining has attracted a lot of attention since a large number of real-world problems have to deal with complex network data. In this paper, we present NOESIS, an open-source framework for network-based data mining. NOESIS features a large number of techniques and methods for the analysis of structural network properties, network visualization, community detection, link scoring, and link prediction. ­e proposed framework has been designed following solid design principles and exploits parallel computing using structured parallel programming. NOESIS also provides a stand-alone graphical user interface allowing the use of advanced software analysis techniques to users without prior programming experience. ­is framework is available under a BSD open-source software license.The NOESIS project was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), under grant TIN2012–36951, and the Spanish Ministry of Education under the program “Ayudas para contratos predoctorales para la formación de doctores 2013” (predoctoral grant BES–2013–064699)

The ModelCC Model-Driven Parser Generator

Syntax-directed translation tools require the specification of a language by means of a formal grammar. This grammar must conform to the specific requirements of the parser generator to be used. This grammar is then annotated with semantic actions for the resulting system to perform its desired function. In this paper, we introduce ModelCC, a model-based parser generator that decouples language specification from language processing, avoiding some of the problems caused by grammar-driven parser generators. ModelCC receives a conceptual model as input, along with constraints that annotate it. It is then able to create a parser for the desired textual syntax and the generated parser fully automates the instantiation of the language conceptual model. ModelCC also includes a reference resolution mechanism so that ModelCC is able to instantiate abstract syntax graphs, rather than mere abstract syntax trees.Comment: In Proceedings PROLE 2014, arXiv:1501.0169

Knowledge-Based Systems. Overview and Selected Examples

The Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) project builds on IIASA's traditional strength in the methodological foundations of operations research and applied systems analysis, and its rich experience in numerous application areas including the environment, technology and risk. The ACA group draws on this infrastructure and combines it with elements of AI and advanced information and computer technology to create expert systems that have practical applications. By emphasizing a directly understandable problem representation, based on symbolic simulation and dynamic color graphics, and the user interface as a key element of interactive decision support systems, models of complex processes are made understandable and available to non-technical users. Several completely externally-funded research and development projects in the field of model-based decision support and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) are currently under way, e.g., "Expert Systems for Integrated Development: A Case Study of Shanxi Province, The People's Republic of China." This paper gives an overview of some of the expert systems that have been considered, compared or assessed during the course of our research, and a brief introduction to some of our related in-house research topics

Ars biographica poetica: Coleridgean Imagination and the Practical Value of Contemplation

This thesis begins by examining how Coleridge Romanticizes Platonism. I argue that Coleridge creatively recasts Plato’s Divided Line analogy, and thereby finds a higher role for a radically re-thought imagination. Through this recast imagination, Coleridge develops a Romantic Platonism by elevating imagination and modifying Plato’s linear scheme into a polarity that harmonizes sense and reason. I argue that Coleridge’s philosophy develops in response to the Empiricist philosophy that dominated the British practice, and transcendental idealism that flourished in Germany. I argue that Coleridge’s philosophy is neither Empiricist, nor a mere translation of German idealism, as critics have sometimes suggested, but that it is quintessentially Platonic. Unlike Plato, however, Coleridge elevates the status of imagination, separating it from fantasy (or fancy, as he calls it), which retains the subordinate position it has for Plato. Attacking Empiricist philosophy, Coleridge argues that reason and its Ideas (and not the understanding) constitute and indeed exceed the apex of human thought, a distinction corresponding to Plato’s between noesis and dianoia. I present a view, developing from Coleridge and answering Plato, of how the practical and the contemplative lives can bring each other nearer to fulfilment, such that, to use Plato’s terms, contemplation can be perfected in the return to the cave, rather than be prevented there, as is often feared. I examine how Coleridgean imagination and reason operate as the higher, ‘spiritual mind’, balancing the lower ‘mind of the body’. While the lower mind desires and consumes, with fancy restlessly moving through ever-shifting mental images, the higher mind yearns, and contemplates, finding stillness in beholding value. I propose what I call the contemplative ars biographica poetica, suggesting not only that we should live our lives as the poetic art of life-writing, but also that we already do so. Usually we shape our lives unawares of any poetic task, yet we manage nevertheless to retrieve moments of strikingly beautiful meaning despite decades-long disasters prolonged by deliberate blindness and a pathological obstinacy that values mere repetition above reason. This art at its best, however, relates to philosophy as the former seeks in the latter a satiating vision, a wisdom to answer profoundest yearning

In the Beginning was the Word: Concepts, Perception, and Human Being

In this thesis, I argue that humans are differentiated from other animals through a faculty of linguistically-structured perception through which we directly perceive things in virtue of their higher-order, conceptually-articulated properties. Yet I also argue that we retain a non-conceptual form of awareness that we share with non-human animals. Through an investigation of the debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell, I explore a phenomenology of expertise in order to defend a Dreyfusian view that argues that the experiential content of our practical dealings must undergo a translation if it is to become the content of conceptual capacities. However, although I agree with Dreyfus that our untranslated experience is of a kind that is shared with other animals, I also argue that he plays down the interdependence of conceptual and non-conceptual content in humans. I articulate this interdependence through a discussion of phronesis, 'practical wisdom,' as it is used in the debate, as well as by Heidegger. Drawing on McDowell's assertion that our conceptual capacities develop with our acquisition of a language and our initiation into a second-nature 'world,' I argue that our practical coping is better described not as non-conceptual but as post-conceptual; that is to say, human coping involves navigating our second-nature 'worlds' in the same, direct way that animals navigate their first nature environments. In the second part, I argue that this 'world' is ultimately linguistic in the sense that our conceptual experience is drawn from a grammatically-structured perception that Heidegger called vernehmen, 'apprehension,' which he identified with noesis. This structure creates the object-subject relationship through which we directly perceive entities as being objects. Through noesis, we experience concepts as things, and our capacity to cope post-conceptually with language and ideas powers the exponential creativity of human thought and action in our rich, second-nature ‘worlds.’ However, the cultural contingency of many concepts indicates a potential discordance between concepts and their experiential source. I conclude that while such discordances are not incommensurable, and that knowledge of reality is not inaccessible to us, we must be careful about the faith we put in language to describe it, for as soon as we conceptualise, we enter a sphere as much created as perceived

Subject and Aesthetic Interface - an inquiry into transformed subjectivities

The present PhD-thesis seeks new definitions of human subjectivity in an age of technoscience and a networked, globalized, Information Society. The perspective presented relates to Philosophy of Science, which includes the Human, the Natural, the Social and the Life Sciences. The project is directed at addressing, and aims to participate in, the further development of Philosophy of Science, or rather, the philosophy of knowing, which leaves a perspective broader than that of science. Methodologically, I combine readings of technoetic artworks, which I approach from a hermeneutical-semiotic perspective, with transdisciplinary research into existing theory concerning the human subject. These readings form my case studies. I keep a particular focus on holistic biophysics (Mae Wan Ho, James Oschman, Marko Bischof). Furthermore, Søren Brier's cybersemiotic theory of communication, cognition and consciousness, which combines a cybernetic-autopoietic and a Peircean semiotic perspective, plays a central role in the project. The project has three parts. Part one contextualizes the study within philosophy of science. It discusses relevant epistemologies, and places the case studies in an art categorical context. It further discusses the philosophical problems involved in writing an academic thesis in the form of a linear, argumentative, critical style, and how it affects the process of meaning making in a way that has consequences to my research. The second part consists of four case studies, each under an overall theme, which applies to the question of human subjectivity. Here I build the concept Extended Sentience, and the concept of an Ideal User. The Ideal User functions as a conceptual frame, which allows me to gradually add more elements to a theory of an altered human subject and knower. The third part presents new ontologies under three basic themes: Time and Relativity, The Life Cycles of Metaphors, and Logos Philosophy and Virtual Grids. These ontologies strongly affect ways of interpretation made in part one and two. Part Three allows more space to my subjective thought processes, which will take precedence over the literature applied. Thus, I, as a post-objective subject observer, will become more transparent. Finally, I will seek an overall conclusion to the project, which should clarify areas where it is evident that the human subject must be reconsidered at a pre-scientific level. It is my thesis that the foundation for human knowledge generation is changing drastically today, and that it has become crucial to reconsider a common understanding of what constitutes the human knower

A structure for architectural innovation: Mindshaping

In the process of research, it is noticed that practice works are morphing from one design emphasis to another. It is speculated that we are inadvertently mindshaped by our activities and by our environment, and by our actions we reshape the environment and create a culture. Through concentrated practice, we convert these experiences into metaphors and through heightened combinatory cognitive skills we reassemble these metaphors to arrive at innovation. The process of innovation is developed from ordinary thinking. The PhD seeks to clarify the forces that shape our minds and ways to harness these forces through the avenue of practice in the following manner: - Wittgensteinian Background. It uses Wittgenstein’s later remarks to provide legitimacy to the thinking adopted for this submission. - The Topography of Innovation. This summarises the chain of selected contemporary scholarship and provide definitions to terminologies. - Changing the Mental Geography. It uses contemporary ideas to explain the structure of mental geography in the act of innovation, taking away the myths. - Creating Mental Contexts. This summarises the theoretical basis for mindshaping in individual practitioners, using Boden’s work to represent collective thinking behind the theories. - Changing the Mental Contexts. It summarises the role that experience plays in mindshaping. - Innovation in the Context of Practice. It summarises the theoretical position for innovation in practice. - Mindshaping in Practice. This section uses the examples of personal experiences to fortify the theoretical points made in the research: that if any innovation were to happen, it happens out of ordinary thinking and they are externally influenced and changes are incremental. - Mindshaping: Wittgenstein’s Perspective. A loop-back to the Wittgenstein’s perspective to further the discussion of mindshaping in practice. - Shaping the External Context. This discusses the necessity of shaping the external context and the ways it is done. - Conclusion. A picture of the findings in relation to present culture, a summary of what takes place in mindshaping, and calling upon of metaphors to reach beyond the mental limits

Mapping three-dimensional geological features from remotely-sensed images and digital elevation models.

Accurate mapping of geological structures is important in numerous applications, ranging from mineral exploration through to hydrogeological modelling. Remotely sensed data can provide synoptic views of study areas enabling mapping of geological units within the area. Structural information may be derived from such data using standard manual photo-geologic interpretation techniques, although these are often inaccurate and incomplete. The aim of this thesis is, therefore, to compile a suite of automated and interactive computer-based analysis routines, designed to help a the user map geological structure. These are examined and integrated in the context of an expert system. The data used in this study include Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and Airborne Thematic Mapper images, both with a spatial resolution of 5m, for a 5 x 5 km area surrounding Llyn Cow lyd, Snowdonia, North Wales. The geology of this area comprises folded and faulted Ordo vician sediments intruded throughout by dolerite sills, providing a stringent test for the automated and semi-automated procedures. The DEM is used to highlight geomorphological features which may represent surface expressions of the sub-surface geology. The DEM is created from digitized contours, for which kriging is found to provide the best interpolation routine, based on a number of quantitative measures. Lambertian shading and the creation of slope and change of slope datasets are shown to provide the most successful enhancement of DEMs, in terms of highlighting a range of key geomorphological features. The digital image data are used to identify rock outcrops as well as lithologically controlled features in the land cover. To this end, a series of standard spectral enhancements of the images is examined. In this respect, the least correlated 3 band composite and a principal component composite are shown to give the best visual discrimination of geological and vegetation cover types. Automatic edge detection (followed by line thinning and extraction) and manual interpretation techniques are used to identify a set of 'geological primitives' (linear or arc features representing lithological boundaries) within these data. Inclusion of the DEM data provides the three-dimensional co-ordinates of these primitives enabling a least-squares fit to be employed to calculate dip and strike values, based, initially, on the assumption of a simple, linearly dipping structural model. A very large number of scene 'primitives' is identified using these procedures, only some of which have geological significance. Knowledge-based rules are therefore used to identify the relevant. For example, rules are developed to identify lake edges, forest boundaries, forest tracks, rock-vegetation boundaries, and areas of geomorphological interest. Confidence in the geological significance of some of the geological primitives is increased where they are found independently in both the DEM and remotely sensed data. The dip and strike values derived in this way are compared to information taken from the published geological map for this area, as well as measurements taken in the field. Many results are shown to correspond closely to those taken from the map and in the field, with an error of < 1°. These data and rules are incorporated into an expert system which, initially, produces a simple model of the geological structure. The system also provides a graphical user interface for manual control and interpretation, where necessary. Although the system currently only allows a relatively simple structural model (linearly dipping with faulting), in the future it will be possible to extend the system to model more complex features, such as anticlines, synclines, thrusts, nappes, and igneous intrusions

Emergent Design

Explorations in Systems Phenomenology in Relation to Ontology, Hermeneutics and the Meta-dialectics of Design SYNOPSIS A Phenomenological Analysis of Emergent Design is performed based on the foundations of General Schemas Theory. The concept of Sign Engineering is explored in terms of Hermeneutics, Dialectics, and Ontology in order to define Emergent Systems and Metasystems Engineering based on the concept of Meta-dialectics. ABSTRACT Phenomenology, Ontology, Hermeneutics, and Dialectics will dominate our inquiry into the nature of the Emergent Design of the System and its inverse dual, the Meta-system. This is an speculative dissertation that attempts to produce a philosophical, mathematical, and theoretical view of the nature of Systems Engineering Design. Emergent System Design, i.e., the design of yet unheard of and/or hitherto non-existent Systems and Metasystems is the focus. This study is a frontal assault on the hard problem of explaining how Engineering produces new things, rather than a repetition or reordering of concepts that already exist. In this work the philosophies of E. Husserl, A. Gurwitsch, M. Heidegger, J. Derrida, G. Deleuze, A. Badiou, G. Hegel, I. Kant and other Continental Philosophers are brought to bear on different aspects of how new technological systems come into existence through the midwifery of Systems Engineering. Sign Engineering is singled out as the most important aspect of Systems Engineering. We will build on the work of Pieter Wisse and extend his theory of Sign Engineering to define Meta-dialectics in the form of Quadralectics and then Pentalectics. Along the way the various ontological levels of Being are explored in conjunction with the discovery that the Quadralectic is related to the possibility of design primarily at the Third Meta-level of Being, called Hyper Being. Design Process is dependent upon the emergent possibilities that appear in Hyper Being. Hyper Being, termed by Heidegger as Being (Being crossed-out) and termed by Derrida as Differance, also appears as the widest space within the Design Field at the third meta-level of Being and therefore provides the most leverage that is needed to produce emergent effects. Hyper Being is where possibilities appear within our worldview. Possibility is necessary for emergent events to occur. Hyper Being possibilities are extended by Wild Being propensities to allow the embodiment of new things. We discuss how this philosophical background relates to meta-methods such as the Gurevich Abstract State Machine and the Wisse Metapattern methods, as well as real-time architectural design methods as described in the Integral Software Engineering Methodology. One aim of this research is to find the foundation for extending the ISEM methodology to become a general purpose Systems Design Methodology. Our purpose is also to bring these philosophical considerations into the practical realm by examining P. Bourdieu’s ideas on the relationship between theoretical and practical reason and M. de Certeau’s ideas on practice. The relationship between design and implementation is seen in terms of the Set/Mass conceptual opposition. General Schemas Theory is used as a way of critiquing the dependence of Set based mathematics as a basis for Design. The dissertation delineates a new foundation for Systems Engineering as Emergent Engineering based on General Schemas Theory, and provides an advanced theory of Design based on the understanding of the meta-levels of Being, particularly focusing upon the relationship between Hyper Being and Wild Being in the context of Pure and Process Being