Communication and Category Structure: The Communicative Process as a Constraint on the Semantic Representation of information

Categorization is the process of dividing the world of experience into groups of entities whose members share one or more characteristics in common. Recognition of similarities across entities and the subsequent aggregation of similar entities into categories lead the individual to discover order in a complex environment that would otherwise consist of a multiplicity of unique entities. Medin (1989) has observed that, in the treatment of patients, the clinical psyhcologist cannot approach each individual as unique precisely because "absolute uniqueness imposes the prohibitive cost of ignorance" (p. 1469). Experience with patients who present common symptoms permit the clinician to cumulate and ysntesize information and thereby to expand professional knowledge of a diagnostic category. By grouping patients based upon observable similarities, the clinician treating an individual patient can apply knowledge accumulated through previous encounters with other patients

Classification and Categorization: Drawing the Line

It is the intent of this paper to demonstrate that the processes of classification and categorization are actually two separate and distinct processes. The classical theory of categories is described, the major arguments against it are reviewed, and alternative approaches to the structure of categories are discussed. The apparent failure of the classical theory to account for the instability observed in category membership is attributed to the underlying assumption that the terms "classification" and "categorization" refer to the same process. The possibility that an interactive functional relationship exists between classification and categorization is advanced on the basis of the individual's need to communicate

A graphical interface for faceted thesaurus design

This paper develops a formalization of faceted thesauri that is based on formal concept analysis. The formalization facilitates graphical displays of thesauri as line diagrams of mathematical lattices. Resulting strategies that can be employed to design a thesaurus in an , alternating top-down and bottom-up approach are described and demonstrated through an example

The role of virtual boundaries in knowledge sharing and organization

The concept of boundary is essential to investigations of knowledge organization and information sharing in the virtual world. With information and communication technologies playing an increasingly significant role in today's networked society, the idea of a boundary can no longer be tied to notions of geographical locale or intellectual domain. After reviewing traditional approaches to space and place, two concepts closely related to boundaries, we propose that it is the notion of place that both generates boundaries and provides for recognition of and distinctions between knowledge domains. In the online world, however, traditional concepts of space and place, and thus traditional understandings of boundary, are inadequate for explaining virtual boundaries because of the lack of physical embodiment in the digital environment. Rather, it is the individual's personal sense of belonging that creates an awareness of domains and facilitates the sharing of knowledge. The lack of embodiment in cyberspace shifts responsibility for the creation and recognition of boundaries to the individual, indicating that the idea of place in cyberspace -- "cyberplace" -- would best be characterized by a sense of "place-like" that is at once stable yet fluid, consistent yet dynamic

Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) For Integrating Social Tagging Data

Data integration and mediation have become central concerns of information technology over the past few decades. With the advent of the Web and the rapid increases in the amount of data and the number of Web documents and users, researchers have focused on enhancing the interoperability of data through the development of metadata schemes. Other researchers have looked to the wealth of metadata generated by bookmarking sites on the Social Web. While several existing ontologies have capitalized on the semantics of metadata created by tagging activities, the Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) emphasizes the structure of tagging activities to facilitate modeling of tagging data and the integration of data from different bookmarking sites as well as the alignment of tagging ontologies. UTO is described and its utility in modeling, harvesting, integrating, searching, and analyzing data is demonstrated with metadata harvested from three major social tagging systems (Delicious, Flickr, and YouTube)

No association between chronic musculoskeletal complaints and Val158Met polymorphism in the Catechol-O-methyltransferase gene. The HUNT study

BACKGROUND: The Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene contains a functional polymorphism, Val158Met, that has been found to influence human pain perception. In one study fibromyalgia was less likely among those with Val/Val genotype. METHODS: In the 1995–97 Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT), the association between Val/Met polymorphism at the COMT gene and chronic musculoskeletal complaints (MSCs) was evaluated in a random sample of 3017 individuals. RESULTS: The distribution of the COMT Val158Met genotypes and alleles were similar between controls and the twelve different chronic MSCs groups. Even when the Met/Met and Val/Met genotypes were pooled, the distribution of the Val/Val genotype and other genotypes were similar between controls and the chronic MSCs groups. CONCLUSION: In this population-based study, no significant association was found between Val/Met polymorphism at the COMT gene and chronic MSCs