Ontology modelling methodology for temporal and interdependent applications

The increasing adoption of Semantic Web technology by several classes of applications in recent years, has made ontology engineering a crucial part of application development. Nowadays, the abundant accessibility of interdependent information from multiple resources and representing various fields such as health, transport, and banking etc., further evidence the growing need for utilising ontology for the development of Web applications. While there have been several advances in the adoption of the ontology for application development, less emphasis is being made on the modelling methodologies for representing modern-day application that are characterised by the temporal nature of the data they process, which is captured from multiple sources. Taking into account the benefits of a methodology in the system development, we propose a novel methodology for modelling ontologies representing Context-Aware Temporal and Interdependent Systems (CATIS). CATIS is an ontology development methodology for modelling temporal interdependent applications in order to achieve the desired results when modelling sophisticated applications with temporal and inter dependent attributes to suit today's application requirements

Implications for Research Methods When Conducting Studies With the Users of Online Health Communities

Bournemouth Universit

Utilising semantic technologies for decision support in dementia care

The main objective of this work is to discuss our experience in utilising semantic technologies for building decision support in Dementia care systems that are based on the non-intrusive on the non-intrusive monitoring of the patient’s behaviour. Our approach adopts context-aware modelling of the patient’s condition to facilitate the analysis of the patient’s behaviour within the inhabited environment (movement and room occupancy patterns, use of equipment, etc.) with reference to the semantic knowledge about the patient’s condition (history of present of illness, dependable behaviour patterns, etc.). The reported work especially focuses on the critical role of the semantic reasoning engine in inferring medical advice, and by means of practical experimentation and critical analysis suggests important findings related to the methodology of deploying the appropriate semantic rules systems, and the dynamics of the efficient utilisation of complex event processing technology in order to the meet the requirements of decision support for remote healthcare systems

Architecture in Sudan: The Post–Independence Era (1956-1970). Focus on the Work of Abdel Moneim Mustafa

This article is part of a study on the Sudanese social and political context during the formation of the Modern Movement and the manifestations in built form and spatial expression during the period 1900-1970. The study has been on–going for several years and includes a literature search, local surveys (of unpublished and undocumented information) as well as photographs taken by the authors, sourced from architects or published material. It is argued that the Sudanese response to the International Style was in fact early experimentation in critical regionalism. The most notable architectural heritage in Sudan are the archaeological remains at Kerma and Napata as well as the remains of ancient Meroe about 180 km north of Khartoum. These cultures demonstrated sophistication in building materials and construction techniques. Due to climate changes, political changes and religious changes over a large stretch of time (642AD with the signing of the Bagt Treaty–1898 at the demise of the Mahdist era) the qualities of the built environment became more transient and rudimentary in character with a greater focus on manifesting tradition through body images, clothing and rituals that were not necessarily tied to a particular physical location rather than through monuments. With foreign interest in the strategic location of the Sudan, and as a part of the scramble for Africa, came specific stylistic and technical manifestations

A Life Cycle Cost Model for Innovative Remediation Technologies

LCC analysis is a powerful tool for investigating the costs of competing systems. This thesis investigates the cost scaling methods to improve the traditional LCC modeling techniques. The motivation for this research is finding a good estimate for the remediation technologies when the contaminant volume is not exactly known. This specific case lead researcher to investigating the methods of cost scaling and effects of inflation in the cost estimation. As a result of study a generic LCC model is developed. Methods for considering inflation and scaling are recommended and embodied into the model. The developed model is applied the specific case and used to analyze the cost of alternative remediation technologies. Results of the research suggests that scaling can be accomplished with better accuracy if there is data and if the scaling can be performed at the level of cost elements in the cost breakdown structure. Inflation effects can be handle by ignoring or estimating the future inflation rates from the past rates. This study suggests that inflation rate should be investigated, before using general cost indices, for special elements which effects the cost of the system

Response of Banana "Williams Hybrid" to Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium Fertilization

Field experiments were conducted at the National Institute for Promotion of Horticultural Exports (NIPHE) research farm during the period of 2001 to 2002 to determine the effects of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels on growth parameters, earliness, nutrient uptake, yield and yield components of "William's hybrid" banana cultivar. Treatments included 5 N levels (0, 69, 138, 207 and 276g N/mat/year), 2 P levels (0 and 20 g P/mat/year) and 2 K levels (0 and 41 g K/mat/year) . The treatments were arranged in a randomized complete block design with 3 replications. Banana growth, yield and yield components were significantly increased by N and K application. The highest vegetative growth parameters, yield and yield components were obtained with the application of 207 g N/mat/year in combination with 41 g K/mat/year. Application of N in combination with K also resulted in a significant reduction in the period from plant-ing to shooting and from shooting to fruit maturation. The shortest number of days to shooting were obtained with the application of 276 g N/mat/year. Application of N, P and K also resulted in increased leaf N, P and K contents. Application of P alone or in combinations with N and K had no significant effects on growth or yield parameters

Information systems evaluation methodologies

Due to the prevalent use of Information Systems (IS) in modern organisations nowadays, evaluation research in this field is becoming more and more important. In light of this, a set of rigorous methodologies were developed and used by IS researchers and practitioners to evaluate the increasingly complex IS implementation used. Moreover, different types of IS and different focusing perspectives of the evaluation require the selection and use of different evaluation approaches and methodologies. This paper aims to identify, explore, investigate and discuss the various key methodologies that can be used in IS evaluation from different perspectives, namely in nature (e.g. summative vs. formative evaluation) and in strategy (e.g. goal-based, goal-free and criteria-based evaluation). The paper concludes that evaluation methodologies should be selected depending on the nature of the IS and the specific goals and objectives of the evaluation. Nonetheless, it is also proposed that formative criteria-based evaluation and summative criteria-based evaluation are currently among the most and more widely used in IS research. The authors suggest that the combines used of one or more of these approaches can be applied at different stages of the IS life cycle in order to generate more rigorous and reliable evaluation outcomes

Evaluating Built-in ECC of FPGA on-chip Memories for the Mitigation of Undervolting Faults

Voltage underscaling below the nominal level is an effective solution for improving energy efficiency in digital circuits, e.g., Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). However, further undervolting below a safe voltage level and without accompanying frequency scaling leads to timing related faults, potentially undermining the energy savings. Through experimental voltage underscaling studies on commercial FPGAs, we observed that the rate of these faults exponentially increases for on-chip memories, or Block RAMs (BRAMs). To mitigate these faults, we evaluated the efficiency of the built-in Error-Correction Code (ECC) and observed that more than 90% of the faults are correctable and further 7% are detectable (but not correctable). This efficiency is the result of the single-bit type of these faults, which are then effectively covered by the Single-Error Correction and Double-Error Detection (SECDED) design of the built-in ECC. Finally, motivated by the above experimental observations, we evaluated an FPGA-based Neural Network (NN) accelerator under low-voltage operations, while built-in ECC is leveraged to mitigate undervolting faults and thus, prevent NN significant accuracy loss. In consequence, we achieve 40% of the BRAM power saving through undervolting below the minimum safe voltage level, with a negligible NN accuracy loss, thanks to the substantial fault coverage by the built-in ECC.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Looking to score: the dissociation of goal influence on eye movement and meta-attentional allocation in a complex dynamic natural scene

Several studies have reported that task instructions influence eye-movement behavior during static image observation. In contrast, during dynamic scene observation we show that while the specificity of the goal of a task influences observers’ beliefs about where they look, the goal does not in turn influence eye-movement patterns. In our study observers watched short video clips of a single tennis match and were asked to make subjective judgments about the allocation of visual attention to the items presented in the clip (e.g., ball, players, court lines, and umpire). However, before attending to the clips, observers were either told to simply watch clips (non-specific goal), or they were told to watch the clips with a view to judging which of the two tennis players was awarded the point (specific goal). The results of subjective reports suggest that observers believed that they allocated their attention more to goal-related items (e.g. court lines) if they performed the goal-specific task. However, we did not find the effect of goal specificity on major eye-movement parameters (i.e., saccadic amplitudes, inter-saccadic intervals, and gaze coherence). We conclude that the specificity of a task goal can alter observer’s beliefs about their attention allocation strategy, but such task-driven meta-attentional modulation does not necessarily correlate with eye-movement behavior