Reification and Truthmaking Patterns

Reification is a standard technique in conceptual modeling, which consists of including in the domain of discourse entities that may otherwise be hidden or implicit. However, deciding what should be rei- fied is not always easy. Recent work on formal ontology offers us a simple answer: put in the domain of discourse those entities that are responsible for the (alleged) truth of our propositions. These are called truthmakers. Re-visiting previous work, we propose in this paper a systematic analysis of truthmaking patterns for properties and relations based on the ontolog- ical nature of their truthmakers. Truthmaking patterns will be presented as generalization of reification patterns, accounting for the fact that, in some cases, we do not reify a property or a relationship directly, but we rather reify its truthmakers

Canister for Producing TMA Trails in the Upper Atmosphere

Payload canister for producing trimethyl aluminum trails in upper atmosphere using Nike-Cajun or Nike-Apache rocke

Geographical information retrieval with ontologies of place

Geographical context is required of many information retrieval tasks in which the target of the search may be documents, images or records which are referenced to geographical space only by means of place names. Often there may be an imprecise match between the query name and the names associated with candidate sources of information. There is a need therefore for geographical information retrieval facilities that can rank the relevance of candidate information with respect to geographical closeness of place as well as semantic closeness with respect to the information of interest. Here we present an ontology of place that combines limited coordinate data with semantic and qualitative spatial relationships between places. This parsimonious model of geographical place supports maintenance of knowledge of place names that relate to extensive regions of the Earth at multiple levels of granularity. The ontology has been implemented with a semantic modelling system linking non-spatial conceptual hierarchies with the place ontology. An hierarchical spatial distance measure is combined with Euclidean distance between place centroids to create a hybrid spatial distance measure. This is integrated with thematic distance, based on classification semantics, to create an integrated semantic closeness measure that can be used for a relevance ranking of retrieved objects

Magpie: towards a semantic web browser

Web browsing involves two tasks: finding the right web page and then making sense of its content. So far, research has focused on supporting the task of finding web resources through ‘standard’ information retrieval mechanisms, or semantics-enhanced search. Much less attention has been paid to the second problem. In this paper we describe Magpie, a tool which supports the interpretation of web pages. Magpie offers complementary knowledge sources, which a reader can call upon to quickly gain access to any background knowledge relevant to a web resource. Magpie automatically associates an ontologybased semantic layer to web resources, allowing relevant services to be invoked within a standard web browser. Hence, Magpie may be seen as a step towards a semantic web browser. The functionality of Magpie is illustrated using examples of how it has been integrated with our lab’s web resources

Relationships and events: towards a general theory of reification and truthmaking.

We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge repre- sentation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and rela- tionships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge from the context (the scene) they occur in

Summa Contra Ontologiam

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11896548_37Revised Selected Papers of EDBT 2006 Workshops PhD, DataX, IIDB, IIHA, ICSNW, QLQP, PIM, PaRMA, and Reactivity on the Web, Munich, Germany, March 26-31, 2006This paper is a critical analysis of the concept of ontology thus as it is used in contemporary computing science. It identifies three main problems with such a concept, two of which are intrinsic to it and one of which is extrinsic, so to speak, being related to the use that of ontology is made in applications. The first problem with ontology is that the only accepted definition of its main artifact is teleological rather than structural as it would be proper in computing science. The second problem is that claiming that ontology is in any way a semantic discipline requires such a limited and outdated notion of semantic to be to all practical purposes useless. The third and final problem is that the limitations and misconceptions of ontology might make it a limiting factor, rather than a help, for many of the applications for which it is sought. The article concludes that a profound reconsideration of the relation between computers and semantics might be overdue

Rewiring strategies for changing environments

A typical pervasive application executes in a changing environment: people, computing resources, software services and network connections come and go continuously. A robust pervasive application needs adapt to this changing context as long as there is an appropriate rewiring strategy that guarantees correct behavior. We combine the MERODE modeling methodology with the ReWiRe framework for creating interactive pervasive applications that can cope with changing environments. The core of our approach is a consistent environment model, which is essential to create (re)configurable context-aware pervasive applications. We aggregate different ontologies that provide the required semantics to describe almost any target environment. We present a case study that shows a interactive pervasive application for media access that incorporates parental control on media content and can migrate between devices. The application builds upon models of the run-time environment represented as system states for dedicated rewiring strategies

Human Placental Arterial Distensibility, Birth Weight, and Body Size Are Positively Related to Fetal Homocysteine Concentration

Methionine demethylation during metabolism generates homocysteine (Hcy) and its remethylation requires folate and cobalamin. Elevated Hcy concentrations are associated with vascular-related complications of pregnancy, including increased vascular stiffness, predictive of clinical vascular disease. Maternal and fetal total Hcy (tHcy) concentrations are positively related, yet the influence of Hcy on fetoplacental vascular function in normal pregnancy has not been examined. We hypothesized that Hcy alters fetoplacental vascular characteristics with influences on fetal growth outcomes. We investigated (1) placental chorionic plate artery distensibility and neonatal blood pressure in relation to umbilical plasma tHcy; (2) relationships between cord venous (CV) and cord arterial (CA) plasma tHcy, folate, and cobalamin concentrations; and (3) tHcy associations with birth weight and anthropometric measurements of body size as indices of fetal growth in normal pregnancies with appropriate weight-for-gestational age newborns. Maternal plasma tHcy, folate, and cobalamin concentrations were consistent with published data. Placental chorionic plate artery distensibility index (β; measure of vessel stiffness) was inversely related to CA tHcy, yet neonatal blood pressure was not significantly affected. CV and CA tHcy concentrations were positively related and CV tHcy negatively related to CV cobalamin but not folate. CV tHcy concentration positively related to birth weight, corrected birth weight per-centile, length, head circumference, and mid-arm circumference of newborns. CV cobalamin was inversely related to fetal growth indices but not to folate concentration. Our study demonstrates a potential relationship between fetal tHcy and placental artery distensibility, placing clinical relevance to cobalamin in influencing Hcy concentration and maintaining low vascular resistance to facilitate nutrient exchange favorable to fetal growth

Evaluating the semantic web: a task-based approach

The increased availability of online knowledge has led to the design of several algorithms that solve a variety of tasks by harvesting the Semantic Web, i.e. by dynamically selecting and exploring a multitude of online ontologies. Our hypothesis is that the performance of such novel algorithms implicity provides an insight into the quality of the used ontologies and thus opens the way to a task-based evaluation of the Semantic Web. We have investigated this hypothesis by studying the lessons learnt about online ontologies when used to solve three tasks: ontology matching, folksonomy enrichment, and word sense disambiguation. Our analysis leads to a suit of conclusions about the status of the Semantic Web, which highlight a number of strengths and weaknesses of the semantic information available online and complement the findings of other analysis of the Semantic Web landscape

Relationship of dietary pattern with body composition and symptoms in patients with COPD

This study explored the relationship of dietary patterns with body composition and symptoms in patients with COPD. Data collection included: dietary pattern – n. meals/day; period of the day of highest food intake (morning [6 AM–12 PM], afternoon [12–18 PM], and evening [18 PM–6 AM]); the time interval between meals (3-4h, 5-6h, 9-10h), and daily energy and nutrient intake using a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire (last 12 months); body composition – body mass index (BMI), % fat mass (%FM), % fat-free mass (%FFM), % total muscle mass (%MM), fat-free mass index (FFMI) and visceral fat index (VAT) (SECA mBCA 525); symptoms – dyspnoea (modified Medical Research Council Dyspnea Scale, mMRC), fatigue (Checklist of Individual Strength, CIS20-P total score), impact of COPD (COPD Assessment Test, CAT). Pearson’s (r) or Spearman’s (ρ) correlations were conducted. 18 patients participated (16 males, 68±7 years old, FEV1 43±20% predicted, BMI 25±5kg/m2, FFMI 18±3kg/m2). Most participants reported having 3-4 meals/day (n=14, 78%) with a 3-4-hour interval (n=15, 83%). Moderate correlations were found between %FM and carbohydrates (ρ=-.501) and between FFMI and monosaturated fat (r=.476) (p.05). Energy and nutrient intake are related to COPD symptoms and body composition. The nature of these relationships should be explored.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio