Combining Geospatial and Temporal Ontologies

Publicly available ontologies are growing in number at present. These ontologies describe entities in a domain and the relations among these entities. This thesis describes a method to automatically combine a pair of orthogonal ontologies using cross products. A geospatial ontology and a temporal ontology are combined in this work. Computing the cross product of the geospatial and the temporal ontologies gives a complete set of pairwise combination of terms from the two ontologies. This method offers researchers the benefit of using ontologies that are already existing and available rather than building new ontologies for areas outside their scope of expertise. The resulting framework describes a geospatial domain over all possible temporal granularities or levels, allowing one domain to be understood from the perspective of another domain. Further queries on the framework help a user to make higher order inferences about a domain. In this work, Protege, an open source ontology editor and a knowledge base tool, is used to model ontologies. Protege supports the creation, visualization and manipulation of ontologies in various formats including XML (Extensible Markup Language). Use of standard and extensible languages like XML allows sharing of data across different information systems, and thus supports reuse of these ontologies. Both the geospatial ontology and the temporal ontology are represented in Protege. This thesis demonstrates the usefulness of this integrated spatio-temporal framework for reasoning about geospatial domains. SQL queries can be applied to the cross product to return to the user different kinds of information about their domain. For example, a geospatial term Library can be combined with all terms from the temporal ontology to consider Library over all possible kinds of times, including those that might have been overlooked during previous analyses. Visualizations of cross product spaces using Graphviz provides a means for displaying the geospatial-temporal terms as well as the different relations that link these terms. This visualization step also highlights the structure of the cross product for users. In order to generate a more tractable cross product for analysis purposes, methods for filtering terms from the cross product are also introduced. Filtering results in a more focused understanding of the spatio-temporal framework

Role of environmental variables on spawning and recruitment of small pegalics in an upwelling system

The marine ecosystem is dynamic and the variations several abiotic and biotic factors directly and indirectly affect the fish stocks and their population structure. Spawning and recruitment success is to a large extent linked to these environmental variations. It is well known that resources occupy a particular habitat because of their preference to the environmental variables prevalent there and also due the availability of food. We have large shoal forming small pelagic fishes like the sardines and anchovies and the deep water large pelagic and demersals occupying the marine ecosystem from the upper pelagic zone to the benthic realms. Fishing is one of the major activities directly impacting the fish stocks and fishery records show several cases of overfishing leading to stock collapses. Definitely, fishery management tools have supported revival of several of these stocks but have failed to do so in few others. Almost equally important in inducing the biological changes that control maturation, spawning and recruitment are the some ocean atmospheric processes which change inter-annually in the tropics

Biodiversity of bivalves (Invertebrata: Mollusca)

Bivalves constitute an important component of many benthic ecological habitats. They are adapted to withstand the frequ e nt physical and chemical changes characteristic of the marine aquatic ecosystems and as a resul they form an integral part of the benthic community structure. In estuaries, intertidal zones and near shore coastal areas of Kerala, they are well distributed. Geological history records of Kerala havc indicated several transgressions and reg ressions of the sea along the coast resu lting in many standstills during the Pleistocene and Holocene periods

Edible oyster seed production and remote setting- Winter School on Recent Advances in Breeding and Larviculture of Marine Finfish and Shellfish

Throughout the world natural spat collection forms the basis of most oyster culture industries. Along the Pacific Northwest USA coast, hatchery produced seed are used in the cultivation of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas. Natural seed collection is cheaper when compared to the cost of seed produced in the hatchery but is unpredictable. However, in the recent years, more efficient methods of setting the oyster seed in remote areas have been developed and this method is widely practiced no

Measurement of the effectiveness of enhanced external counterpulsation on heart rate variability for patients with myocardial ischemia

This thesis is a study to measure the changes in heart rate variability due to the activity of the autonomic nervous system caused by the Enhanced External Counterpulsation treatment. The treatment is a non surgical, mechanical procedure that can reduce the symptoms of angina or Congestive Heart Failure, presumably by stimulating the opening, or formation of, small branches of blood vessels (collaterals) to create a natural bypass around narrowed or blocked arteries. It has been proved that rhythms can be markers of normal functional states. Even in the absence of external perturbations, the normal heartbeat is not characterized by clockwise regularity. This fluctuation around the mean heart rate is called heart rate variability. The study was conducted on patients who had myocardial ischemia and had been prescribed enhanced external counterpulsation treatment by the physician. One of the patients was a non-ischemic heart failure patient who had heart failure secondary to dilated cardiomyopathy. Myocardial ischemia is a condition in which oxygen deprivation to the heart muscle is accompanied by inadequate removal of metabolites because of reduced blood flow or perfusion. The study was conducted on three subject groups - 7 patients, 5 controls and 3 normals. Normals had no history of myocardial ischemia, but underwent the EECP treatment while controls were healthy and did not undergo the treatment. The subjects followed paced breathing at the rate of 12 breaths per minute. The data were collected during five minute paced breathing before and after the EECP treatment except for the controls. The waveforms of ECG, respiration and blood pressure were collected as data from the subjects. Frequency domain-power spectral analysis was performed on the data obtained using the LabVIEW 5.0 software. The time domain-SDNN analysis was also performed using MATLAB. The results of this study fail to indicate conclusively that the EECP treatment affects the heart rate variability of the patient in a significant way. This was evidenced by conducting Power Spectral Analysis and Standard Deviation of Normal to Normal intervals on the analyzed data for the research

A Circular Economy Approach to Improve E-waste Recycling in California: Economic Potential and Policy Options

The higher consumption rates of electronic devices along with their short life cycles and few repair options poses a huge challenge for E-waste industries to manage them effectively. E-waste comprises of hazardous materials and toxic constituents that can affect the environment and public health through improper disposal. However, they also contain few valuable materials that, if recovered, can reduce the dependence on virgin raw materials. Circular economy has the potential to utilize these valuable materials and gain environment and socio-economic benefits. The research explains how the adoption of a circular economy approach can help improve the E-waste recycling in California through evaluating its recovery economic potential and policy options. The economic analysis estimates the E-waste generation in California and evaluates the recovery potential of secondary resources embedded in E-waste which is estimated to be 0.31 billion dollars for CRT electronic waste. The analysis also identifies copper, silver, glass, plastics, and lead as the high potential materials that, if utilized, can reduce the burden on mining and importing them. The policy analysis of the California’s proposed EPR policy in Futures Project recommends CalRecycle to claim payments for recyclers based on their efficiency rates and not based on the weight of device. The comparative analysis of California’s E-waste recycling program with the Switzerland WEEE recycling program identifies the potential of manufacturers collaboration to manage E-waste effectively. I have reviewed the case studies of different organizations who have adopted the circular economy approach and it highlights mainly the giant tech companies who have initiated towards a circular electronics path implying a lot of work needs to be done by small and medium sized organizations

Book Review: Marine Mammal Species of India

The charismatic marine mammals of Indian waters which include the majestic whales, intelligent dolphins and endearing sea cows are among the least known of the marine living resources. Lack of appropriate literature on identification, nature of their habitat and restrictions on their capture under Wild Life protection Act are some of the constraints faced by researchers studying these spectacular endangered animals. The recent publication of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, “Marine Mammal species of India” is packed with vital information on all the 26 species recorded in the Indian Seas. The Institute has been studying marine mammals since 1947 and particularly from 2003 to 2012 as a programme funded by Ministry of Earth Sciences

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Edible oyster farming- Winter School on Recent Advances in Breeding and Larviculture of Marine Finfish and Shellfish

Oysters are one of the most valued seafood and are farmed extensively. Nearly eleven species of oysters are commercially popular and of these Crassostrea gigas is the most important. In Asia during the year 2003, 4.2 million tonnes of oysters were produced of which 3.6 million tonnes was from China contributing to 87% of the continents oyster production . Korea and Malaysia also produce significant quantities of oyster. Concerted efforts to develop the oyster farming technology have been made since 1970 ‘s at the Tuticorin Research Centre of CMFRI. Initially natural seed were used. The development of hatchery technology for large-scale oyster seed production in 1982 at the Shellfish Hatchery of CMFRI, Tuticorin gave further impetus for oyster culture. Several location testing programs for oyster culture have been taken up at many centres along the Indian coast, using both the natural and hatchery seed