20,860 research outputs found
Ontology mapping: the state of the art
Ontology mapping is seen as a solution provider in today's landscape of ontology research. As the number of ontologies that are made publicly available and accessible on the Web increases steadily, so does the need for applications to use them. A single ontology is no longer enough to support the tasks envisaged by a distributed environment like the Semantic Web. Multiple ontologies need to be accessed from several applications. Mapping could provide a common layer from which several ontologies could be accessed and hence could exchange information in semantically sound manners. Developing such mapping has beeb the focus of a variety of works originating from diverse communities over a number of years. In this article we comprehensively review and present these works. We also provide insights on the pragmatics of ontology mapping and elaborate on a theoretical approach for defining ontology mapping
Generic Strategies for Chemical Space Exploration
Computational approaches to exploring "chemical universes", i.e., very large
sets, potentially infinite sets of compounds that can be constructed by a
prescribed collection of reaction mechanisms, in practice suffer from a
combinatorial explosion. It quickly becomes impossible to test, for all pairs
of compounds in a rapidly growing network, whether they can react with each
other. More sophisticated and efficient strategies are therefore required to
construct very large chemical reaction networks.
Undirected labeled graphs and graph rewriting are natural models of chemical
compounds and chemical reactions. Borrowing the idea of partial evaluation from
functional programming, we introduce partial applications of rewrite rules.
Binding substrate to rules increases the number of rules but drastically prunes
the substrate sets to which it might match, resulting in dramatically reduced
resource requirements. At the same time, exploration strategies can be guided,
e.g. based on restrictions on the product molecules to avoid the explicit
enumeration of very unlikely compounds. To this end we introduce here a generic
framework for the specification of exploration strategies in graph-rewriting
systems. Using key examples of complex chemical networks from sugar chemistry
and the realm of metabolic networks we demonstrate the feasibility of a
high-level strategy framework.
The ideas presented here can not only be used for a strategy-based chemical
space exploration that has close correspondence of experimental results, but
are much more general. In particular, the framework can be used to emulate
higher-level transformation models such as illustrated in a small puzzle game
Bridging global divides with tracking and tracing technology
Product-tracking technology is increasingly available to big players in the value chain connecting producers to consumers, giving them new competitive advantages. Such shifts in technology don't benefit small producers, especially those in developing regions, to the same degree. This article examines the practicalities of leveling the playing field by creating a generic form of tracing technology that any producer, large or small, can use. It goes beyond considering engineering solutions to look at what happens in the context of use, reporting on work with partners in Chile and India and reflecting on the potential for impact on business and community well-being
Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems
The modelling, analysis, and visualisation of dynamic geospatial phenomena
has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation
Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged
paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises
fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational, and
(analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial
information theoretic underpinnings.
We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of
high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic
geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense
reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and
reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, and computational models of
narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that
accrue in the context of formal reasoning about `space, events, actions, and
change'. With this as a basis, and within the backdrop of an illustrated
scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address
specific problems and solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative
abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical
geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that
next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific
perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and
Cognitive Science.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer
interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics;
computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling;
ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance
systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964);
Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental
Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press
Toward an architecture for quantum programming
It is becoming increasingly clear that, if a useful device for quantum
computation will ever be built, it will be embodied by a classical computing
machine with control over a truly quantum subsystem, this apparatus performing
a mixture of classical and quantum computation.
This paper investigates a possible approach to the problem of programming
such machines: a template high level quantum language is presented which
complements a generic general purpose classical language with a set of quantum
primitives. The underlying scheme involves a run-time environment which
calculates the byte-code for the quantum operations and pipes it to a quantum
device controller or to a simulator.
This language can compactly express existing quantum algorithms and reduce
them to sequences of elementary operations; it also easily lends itself to
automatic, hardware independent, circuit simplification. A publicly available
preliminary implementation of the proposed ideas has been realized using the
C++ language.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, A4paper. Final version accepted by EJPD ("swap"
replaced by "invert" for Qops). Preliminary implementation available at:
http://sra.itc.it/people/serafini/quantum-computing/qlang.htm
A very modern professional: the case of the IT service support worker
The IT profession has retained a reputation as a âprivileged area of the labour marketâ (Webster, 2005, p.4; Bannerji, 2011). Workers practicing IT skills have been at the forefront of the competitive drive for innovation and efficiency gains promoted by a neoliberal enterprise ideology (Blackler et al, 2003). In the last two decades, as systems thinking (e.g. Ackoff, 1999) and customer-centric practices (e.g. Levitt, 2006) have converged in a globally powerful IT service management (ITSM) âbest practiceâ discourse (Trusson et al, 2013), the IT service support worker has emerged to be a worker-type of considerable socio-economic importance. Aside from keeping organizational information systems operative, when such systems fail these workers are called upon to rapidly restore the systems and thus head-off any negative commercial or political consequences. Yet these workers are acknowledged only as objectified resources within the ITSM âbest practiceâ literature (e.g. Taylor, Iqbal and Nieves, 2007) and largely overlooked as a distinctive contemporary worker-type within academic discourse.
This paper, through analysis of salary data and qualitative data collected for a multiple case study research project, considers the extent to which these workers might be conceived of as being âprofessionalsâ. The project approached the conceptual study of these workers through three lenses. This paper focuses on the projectâs consideration of them as rationalised information systems assets within âbest practiceâ ITSM theory. It also draws upon our considerations of them as knowledge workers and service workers.
We firstly situate the IT service support worker within a broader model of IT workers comprising four overlapping groupings: managers, developers, technical specialists and IT service support workers. Three types of IT service support worker are identified: first-line workers who routinely escalate work; second-line workers; and âexpertâ single-line workers. With reference to close associations made with call centre workers (e.g. Murphy, 2011) the status of IT service support workers is explored through analysis of: (i) salary data taken from the ITJOBSWATCH website; and (ii) observational and interview data collected in the field. From this we challenge the veracity of the notion that the whole occupational field of IT might be termed a profession concurrently with the notion that a profession implies work of high status.
Secondly, the paper explores two forces that might be associated with the professionalization of IT as an occupation: (i) rationalisation of the field (here promoted by the British Computer Society); and (ii) formalisation of IT theoretical/vocational education. A tension is identified, with those IT service support workers whose work is least disposed to rationalisation and whose complex âstocks of knowledgeâ (Schutz, 1953) have been acquired through time-spent practice laying claim to greater IT professional status.
Thirdly, consideration is given to individualsâ personal career orientations: occupational, organizational and customer-centric (Kinnie and Swart, 2012). We find that whilst organizations expect IT service support workers to be orientated towards serving the interests of the organization and its clients, the most individualistically professional tend towards being occupationally orientated, enthusiastically (re)developing their skills to counter skills obsolescence in an evolving technological arena (Sennett, 2006)
Privacy self-regulation and the changing role of the state: from public law to social and technical mechanisms of governance
This paper provides a structured overview of different self-governance mechanisms for privacy and data protection in the corporate world, with a special focus on Internet privacy. It also looks at the role of the state, and how it has related to privacy self-governance over time. While early data protection started out as law-based regulation by nation-states, transnational self-governance mechanisms have become more important due to the rise of global telecommunications and the Internet. Reach, scope, precision and enforcement of these industry codes of conduct vary a lot. The more binding they are, the more limited is their reach, though they - like the state-based instruments for privacy protection - are becoming more harmonised and global in reach nowadays. These social codes of conduct are developed by the private sector with limited participation of official data protection commissioners, public interest groups, or international organisations. Software tools - technical codes - for online privacy protection can give back some control over their data to individual users and customers, but only have limited reach and applications. The privacy-enhancing design of network infrastructures and database architectures is still mainly developed autonomously by the computer and software industry. Here, we can recently find a stronger, but new role of the state. Instead of regulating data processors directly, governments and oversight agencies now focus more on the intermediaries - standards developers, large software companies, or industry associations. And instead of prescribing and penalising, they now rely more on incentive-structures like certifications or public funding for social and technical self-governance instruments of privacy protection. The use of technology as an instrument and object of regulation is thereby becoming more popular, but the success of this approach still depends on the social codes and the underlying norms which technology is supposed to embed. --
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