Top-Level Categories of Constitutively Organized Material Entities - Suggestions for a Formal Top-Level Ontology

Application oriented ontologies are important for reliably communicating and managing data in databases. Unfortunately, they often differ in the definitions they use and thus do not live up to their potential. This problem can be reduced when using a standardized and ontologically consistent template for the top-level categories from a top-level formal foundational ontology. This would support ontological consistency within application oriented ontologies and compatibility between them. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is such a foundational ontology for the biomedical domain that has been developed following the single inheritance policy. It provides the top-level template within the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry. If it wants to live up to its expected role, its three top-level categories of material entity (i.e., 'object', 'fiat object part', 'object aggregate') must be exhaustive, i.e. every concrete material entity must instantiate exactly one of them.By systematically evaluating all possible basic configurations of material building blocks we show that BFO's top-level categories of material entity are not exhaustive. We provide examples from biology and everyday life that demonstrate the necessity for two additional categories: 'fiat object part aggregate' and 'object with fiat object part aggregate'. By distinguishing topological coherence, topological adherence, and metric proximity we furthermore provide a differentiation of clusters and groups as two distinct subcategories for each of the three categories of material entity aggregates, resulting in six additional subcategories of material entity.We suggest extending BFO to incorporate two additional categories of material entity as well as two subcategories for each of the three categories of material entity aggregates. With these additions, BFO would exhaustively cover all top-level types of material entity that application oriented ontologies may use as templates. Our result, however, depends on the premise that all material entities are organized according to a constitutive granularity

Pilot-scale counter-current acid leaching process for Cu, Pb, Sb, and Zn from small-arms shooting range soil

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of a counter-current leaching process (CCLP) on 14 cycles with leachate treatment at the pilot scale for Pb, Cu, Sb, and Zn removal from the soil of a Canadian small-arms shooting range. The metal concentrations in the contaminated soil were 904 ± 112 mg Cu kg⁻¹, 8,550 ± 940 mg Pb kg⁻¹, 370 ± 26 mg Sb kg⁻¹, and 169 ± 14 mg Zn kg⁻¹. The CCLP includes three acid leaching steps (0.125 M H₂SO₄ + 4 M NaCl, pulp density (PD) = 10 %, t = 1 h, T = 20 °C, total volume = 20 L). The leachate treatment was performed using metal precipitation with a ₅₋M NaOH solution. The treated effluent was reused for the next metal leaching steps. The average metal removal yields were 80.9 ± 2.3 % of Cu, 94.5 ± 0.7 % of Pb, 51.1 ± 4.8 % of Sb, and 43.9 ± 3.9 % of Zn. Compared to a conventional leaching process, the CCLP allows a significant economy of water (24,500 L water per ton of soil), sulfuric acid (133 L H₂SO₄ t⁻¹), NaCl (6,310 kg NaCl t⁻¹), and NaOH (225 kg NaOH t⁻¹). This corresponds to 82 %, 65 %, 90 %, and 75 % of reduction, respectively. The Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure test, which was applied on the remediated soil, demonstrated a large decrease of the lead availability (0.8 mg Pb L⁻¹) in comparison to the untreated soil (142 mg Pb L⁻¹). The estimated total cost of this soil remediation process is 267 US$ t⁻¹. The CCLP process allows high removal yields for Pb and Cu and a significant reduction in water and chemical consumption. Further work should examine the extraction of Sb from small-arms shooting range

Firms' strategic behavior versus consumers' behavior: an explanation through the inoculation theory: Proceedings of the 2014 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) World Marketing Congress

International audienceOur paper sheds light on an unexplored link between consumer behavior and firm behavior. A netnographic study of Smartphone consumers reveals interesting results on a possible impact of the firm strategic behavior on consumer behavior. Our research uses the Inoculation Theory to suggest that the interaction between firms on the public scene can be a possible source of inspiration for consumers who react vertically to the firm and horizontally to its consumers by replicating the same firms interactional scheme with other consumers