Developing Ontologies withing Decentralized Settings

This chapter addresses two research questions: “How should a well-engineered methodology facilitate the development of ontologies within communities of practice?” and “What methodology should be used?” If ontologies are to be developed by communities then the ontology development life cycle should be better understood within this context. This chapter presents the Melting Point (MP), a proposed new methodology for developing ontologies within decentralised settings. It describes how MP was developed by taking best practices from other methodologies, provides details on recommended steps and recommended processes, and compares MP with alternatives. The methodology presented here is the product of direct first-hand experience and observation of biological communities of practice in which some of the authors have been involved. The Melting Point is a methodology engineered for decentralised communities of practice for which the designers of technology and the users may be the same group. As such, MP provides a potential foundation for the establishment of standard practices for ontology engineering

Influence of endophytic fungi isolated from symptomless weeds on cherry plants

In standard pathogenicity tests of Fusarium strains isolated from symptomless weeds of agricultural fields it was determined that several isolates have significant positive influence on growth and development of cultivated plants and act as beneficial endophytes. The aim of this research was to investigate the influence of these isolates on several parameters of cherry plants grown in tissue culture. For this purpose two treatments with fungal inocula were used. The first treatment involved the addition of fungal inoculum into the tissue culture growing media. Cherry shoots were placed on the media and multiplied by tissue culture methods. The second treatment included root dipping of cherry explants into the fungal media. Plants were grown in the greenhouse for two months and after that growth parameters were recorded. Our results showed significant positive influence of the isolates on leaf width and length, stem length and plant fresh weight of cherry. There was almost no influence on number of leaves and root length of inoculated plants was lower as compared to the control. Identification of fungal secondary metabolites produced revealed several major compounds: beauverin, cyclosporines, enniatins, equisetin, fusaric acid, integracide A and trichosetin. Our conclusion is that endophytic Fusarium sp. isolated from weeds have a positive influence on growth and development of axenic cherry plants

Exploiting Natural Language Definitions and (Legacy) Data for Facilitating Agreement Processes

peer reviewe

The Semantic Web – ISWC 2014

We present the Dutch Ships and Sailors Linked Data Cloud. This heterogeneous dataset brings together four curated datasets on Dutch Maritime history as five-star linked data. The individual datasets use separate datamodels, designed in close collaboration with maritime historical researchers. The individual models are mapped to a common interoperability layer, allowing for analysis of the data on the general level. We present the datasets, modeling decisions, internal links and links to external data sources. We show ways of accessing the data and present a number of examples of how the dataset can be used for historical research. The Dutch Ships and Sailors Linked Data Cloud is a potential hub dataset for digital history research and a prime example of the benefits of Linked Data for this field

On the semantics of SPARQL queries with optional matching under entailment regimes

We study the semantics of SPARQL queries with optional matching features under entailment regimes. We argue that the normative semantics may lead to answers that are in conflict with the intuitive meaning of optional matching, where unbound variables naturally represent unknown information. We propose an extension of the SPARQL algebra that addresses these issues and is compatible with any entailment regime satisfying the minimal requirements given in the normative specification. We then study the complexity of query evaluation and show that our extension comes at no cost for regimes with an entailment relation of reasonable complexity. Finally, we show that our semantics preserves the known properties of optional matching that are commonly exploited for static analysis and optimisation