Semantic information systems engineering: A query-based approach for semi-automatic annotation of web services

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.There has been an increasing interest in Semantic Web services (SWS) as a proposed solution to facilitate automatic discovery, composition and deployment of existing syntactic Web services. Successful implementation and wider adoption of SWS by research and industry are, however, profoundly based on the existence of effective and easy to use methods for service semantic description. Unfortunately, Web service semantic annotation is currently performed by manual means. Manual annotation is a difficult, error-prone and time-consuming task and few approaches exist aiming to semi-automate that task. Existing approaches are difficult to use since they require ontology building. Moreover, these approaches employ ineffective matching methods and suffer from the Low Percentage Problem. The latter problem happens when a small number of service elements - in comparison to the total number of elements – are annotated in a given service. This research addresses the Web services annotation problem by developing a semi-automatic annotation approach that allows SWS developers to effectively and easily annotate their syntactic services. The proposed approach does not require application ontologies to model service semantics. Instead, a standard query template is used: This template is filled with data and semantics extracted from WSDL files in order to produce query instances. The input of the annotation approach is the WSDL file of a candidate service and a set of ontologies. The output is an annotated WSDL file. The proposed approach is composed of five phases: (1) Concept extraction; (2) concept filtering and query filling; (3) query execution; (4) results assessment; and (5) SAWSDL annotation. The query execution engine makes use of name-based and structural matching techniques. The name-based matching is carried out by CN-Match which is a novel matching method and tool that is developed and evaluated in this research. The proposed annotation approach is evaluated using a set of existing Web services and ontologies. Precision (P), Recall (R), F-Measure (F) and Percentage of annotated elements are used as evaluation metrics. The evaluation reveals that the proposed approach is effective since - in relation to manual results - accurate and almost complete annotation results are obtained. In addition, high percentage of annotated elements is achieved using the proposed approach because it makes use of effective ontology extension mechanisms

Conceptual modelling and the quality of ontologies: A comparison between object-role modelling and the object paradigm

Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object Role Modelling (ORM) approach is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach

Conceptual Modelling and The Quality of Ontologies: Endurantism Vs. Perdurantism

Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach

Conceptual Modeling and the Quality of Ontologies: A Comparison between Object-Role Modeling and the Object Paradigm

Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object Role Modelling (ORM) approach is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach

Outdoor Activity in the Daytime, but Not the Nighttime, Predicts Better Mental Health Status During the COVID-19 Curfew in the United Arab Emirates

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infection prevention and control measures had a negative impact on the mental health of many people. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), infection control measures implemented after March 24th, 2020, placed necessary restrictions on people\u27s freedom of movement. This study aimed to assess the association between levels of daytime vs. nighttime outdoor activity and mental health among a sample of UAE residents during the lockdown period. An opportunity sample of 245 participants completed an online survey assessing levels of depression, somatic symptoms, daytime and nighttime activity levels. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that daytime activity, but not nighttime activity, was associated with a lower risk of clinically significant depressive and somatic symptomatology. The association of better mental health with daytime not nighttime outdoor activity could be possibly attributed to vitamin D, but further studies are needed to confirm this speculation

Predictive Modeling for Obesity and Overweight in Adolescents, Current Status and Application to the MENA Region

Obesity is a public health burden that impacts more than two billion people (30% of the world’s population) and approximately 340 million children and adolescents. Adolescent obesity has become a concern in most developing and developed countries, including Arab countries within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions. These countries are at greater risk due to recent urbanization, westernization, and socioeconomic development that has led to changes in dietary habits, lifestyle, and rapid nutrition transition, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. Addressing childhood and adolescent obesity is considered central to tackling obesity. Recent systematic reviews of obesity prevalence among adolescents in the MENA are scarce and old. This chapter highlights the multifactorial aspects of adolescent and childhood obesity and the associated prediction models within the MENA region. It also proposes an obesity prediction model based on a list of potential risk factors for suitable future implementation and validation. The search engines Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed were used to retrieve literature about adolescent obesity and predictive algorithms/ models between the years 2015 and 2020 in MENA adolescent populations and propose a list of potential predictors/risk factors for suitable future implementation and validation. The results demonstrated the lack of accurate population-based predictive algorithms for obesity for this target group. Based on a holistic approach of integrating relevant main risk factors, we proposed an obesity predictive model that could be valuable for informing policy-makers in the region and helping them set up effective national and regional surveillance systems

Semantic information systems engineering : a query-based approach for semi-automatic annotation of web services

There has been an increasing interest in Semantic Web services (SWS) as a proposed solution to facilitate automatic discovery, composition and deployment of existing syntactic Web services. Successful implementation and wider adoption of SWS by research and industry are, however, profoundly based on the existence of effective and easy to use methods for service semantic description. Unfortunately, Web service semantic annotation is currently performed by manual means. Manual annotation is a difficult, error-prone and time-consuming task and few approaches exist aiming to semi-automate that task. Existing approaches are difficult to use since they require ontology building. Moreover, these approaches employ ineffective matching methods and suffer from the Low Percentage Problem. The latter problem happens when a small number of service elements - in comparison to the total number of elements – are annotated in a given service. This research addresses the Web services annotation problem by developing a semi-automatic annotation approach that allows SWS developers to effectively and easily annotate their syntactic services. The proposed approach does not require application ontologies to model service semantics. Instead, a standard query template is used: This template is filled with data and semantics extracted from WSDL files in order to produce query instances. The input of the annotation approach is the WSDL file of a candidate service and a set of ontologies. The output is an annotated WSDL file. The proposed approach is composed of five phases: (1) Concept extraction; (2) concept filtering and query filling; (3) query execution; (4) results assessment; and (5) SAWSDL annotation. The query execution engine makes use of name-based and structural matching techniques. The name-based matching is carried out by CN-Match which is a novel matching method and tool that is developed and evaluated in this research. The proposed annotation approach is evaluated using a set of existing Web services and ontologies. Precision (P), Recall (R), F-Measure (F) and Percentage of annotated elements are used as evaluation metrics. The evaluation reveals that the proposed approach is effective since - in relation to manual results - accurate and almost complete annotation results are obtained. In addition, high percentage of annotated elements is achieved using the proposed approach because it makes use of effective ontology extension mechanisms.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Semantic information systems engineering : a query-based approach for semi-automatic annotation of web services

There has been an increasing interest in Semantic Web services (SWS) as a proposed solution to facilitate automatic discovery, composition and deployment of existing syntactic Web services. Successful implementation and wider adoption of SWS by research and industry are, however, profoundly based on the existence of effective and easy to use methods for service semantic description. Unfortunately, Web service semantic annotation is currently performed by manual means. Manual annotation is a difficult, error-prone and time-consuming task and few approaches exist aiming to semi-automate that task. Existing approaches are difficult to use since they require ontology building. Moreover, these approaches employ ineffective matching methods and suffer from the Low Percentage Problem. The latter problem happens when a small number of service elements - in comparison to the total number of elements – are annotated in a given service. This research addresses the Web services annotation problem by developing a semi-automatic annotation approach that allows SWS developers to effectively and easily annotate their syntactic services. The proposed approach does not require application ontologies to model service semantics. Instead, a standard query template is used: This template is filled with data and semantics extracted from WSDL files in order to produce query instances. The input of the annotation approach is the WSDL file of a candidate service and a set of ontologies. The output is an annotated WSDL file. The proposed approach is composed of five phases: (1) Concept extraction; (2) concept filtering and query filling; (3) query execution; (4) results assessment; and (5) SAWSDL annotation. The query execution engine makes use of name-based and structural matching techniques. The name-based matching is carried out by CN-Match which is a novel matching method and tool that is developed and evaluated in this research. The proposed annotation approach is evaluated using a set of existing Web services and ontologies. Precision (P), Recall (R), F-Measure (F) and Percentage of annotated elements are used as evaluation metrics. The evaluation reveals that the proposed approach is effective since - in relation to manual results - accurate and almost complete annotation results are obtained. In addition, high percentage of annotated elements is achieved using the proposed approach because it makes use of effective ontology extension mechanisms.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Outdoor Activity in the Daytime, but Not the Nighttime, Predicts Better Mental Health Status During the COVID-19 Curfew in the United Arab Emirates

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infection prevention and control measures had a negative impact on the mental health of many people. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), infection control measures implemented after March 24th, 2020, placed necessary restrictions on people's freedom of movement. Aim: This study aimed to assess the association between levels of daytime vs. nighttime outdoor activity and mental health among a sample of UAE residents during the lockdown period. Method: An opportunity sample of 245 participants completed an online survey assessing levels of depression, somatic symptoms, daytime and nighttime activity levels. Results: Multivariate logistic regression revealed that daytime activity, but not nighttime activity, was associated with a lower risk of clinically significant depressive and somatic symptomatology. Conclusion: The association of better mental health with daytime not nighttime outdoor activity could be possibly attributed to vitamin D, but further studies are needed to confirm this speculation