Ontology: Towards a new synthesis

This introduction to the second international conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems presents a brief history of ontology as a discipline spanning the boundaries of philosophy and information science. We sketch some of the reasons for the growth of ontology in the information science field, and offer a preliminary stocktaking of how the term ‘ontology’ is currently used. We conclude by suggesting some grounds for optimism as concerns the future collaboration between philosophical ontologists and information scientists

The Irish Pharmaceutical Industry over the Boom Period and Beyond

The pharmaceutical industry has been one of the strongest performing sectors of the Celtic Tiger era. During the past two decades, employment growth in the sector has been strong and continuous, even when, in recent years, employment in other manufacturing sectors has been contracting. Although positive in itself, from a dynamic regional development perspective it is important to explore the qualitative changes in the types of activities that are conducted in Ireland. Adopting a global production network approach, the paper examines Ireland’s changing role in global production networks within the pharmaceutical industry, focussing on the different components of manufacturing and R&D. The analysis shows that Ireland’s involvement in manufacturing has shifted in the direction of relatively higher value generating activities. Within R&D, although the level of value creation has increased substantially, Ireland’s involvement remains concentrated in the (relatively) lower value generating activities of the global R&D network. In addition, the sector remains strongly dominated by foreign direct investment so that a large share of the created value is not captured within Ireland.

The Declining Number of Youth in Custody in the Juvenile Justice System

During the last decade, custody rates for youth in the US have declined significantly. This Focus describes this trend by race/ethnicity, gender, and state. Measured by arrest rates, juvenile crime, especially serious crime, has also decreased during this period, contrary to a prevalent misconception that young people pose a growing threat to society

Decision Making and Information Systems Development - A Conceptual Framework

A long-standing anomaly within information systems development (ISD) exists - claims made for the benefits of methodology usage and the actuality of practice are poles apart. While both academics and practitioners have been aware of this credibility gap, the information systems (IS) community continue to have difficulty reconciling it. Apparent breakthroughs such as structured and object-oriented methods fall well short of guaranteeing success. It is contended that neither methodological nor amethodical approaches fully explain or express the complexity of systems development and that a new perspective drawing on decision-making theory may yield fresh insights. A framework is developed, combining an analysis of decision-making within the systems development life cycle, key models of decision-making and the actors involved in the process of systems development. It is contented here that ISD is, in essence, a problem-solving and decision-making process and that systems development is neither deterministic or without structure - it is creative yet somewhat ordered, improvisational yet explicit, and both rational and political. The paper concludes that a deeper understanding of differing viewpoints on systems development held by actors and other phenomena can be illustrated with the framework

COMPASS: A general purpose computer aided scheduling tool

COMPASS is a generic scheduling system developed by McDonnell Douglas under the direction of the Software Technology Branch at JSC. COMPASS is intended to illustrate the latest advances in scheduling technology and provide a basis from which custom scheduling systems can be built. COMPASS was written in Ada to promote readability and to conform to potential NASA Space Station Freedom standards. COMPASS has some unique characteristics that distinguishes it from commercial products. These characteristics are discussed and used to illustrate some differences between scheduling tools

The Industrial Ontologies Foundry proof-of-concept project

The current industrial revolution is said to be driven by the digitization that exploits connected information across all aspects of manufacturing. Standards have been recognized as an important enabler. Ontology-based information standard may provide benefits not offered by current information standards. Although there have been ontologies developed in the industrial manufacturing domain, they have been fragmented and inconsistent, and little has received a standard status. With successes in developing coherent ontologies in the biological, biomedical, and financial domains, an effort called Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) has been formed to pursue the same goal for the industrial manufacturing domain. However, developing a coherent ontology covering the entire industrial manufacturing domain has been known to be a mountainous challenge because of the multidisciplinary nature of manufacturing. To manage the scope and expectations, the IOF community kicked-off its effort with a proof-of-concept (POC) project. This paper describes the developments within the project. It also provides a brief update on the IOF organizational set up

Driving Tests: Reliability and the Relationship Between Test Errors and Accidents

In the British practical driving test, serious or dangerous faults are those judged to involve potential or actual danger, and a single such fault results in test failure. As part of a wider project to review the driving test, TRL conducted a study of test-retest reliability. Test and retest outcomes differed for a substantial proportion of candidates. The paper argues that inconsistent performance on the part of the candidate is likely to explain much of this apparent unreliability. Faults that are less serious are also recorded during the test but few candidates make the 16 of them necessary to fail. Self-reported accidents during the first six months of post-test driving were analysed together with driving test records for approximately 30,000 drivers. Statistical modelling suggested that people who pass the driving test having made large numbers of the less serious faults may be intrinsically less safe as drivers, but that they also tend to drive less overall, and less often at night. This reduces (and for men removes) the association between test faults and the actual number of accidents reported

Colonising the Field ) Who,s Playing with Web-based Information Systems Development?

domain of systems and software development, in both practice and research. Surprisingly, while there would appear to be many common activities, the academic fields have traditionally had limited overlap or shared experience. The information systems school has largely focused on in-house systems, concentrating on the socio-technical approach toward systems development while software engineering attempts to apply engineering principles and formal methods to the production of software systems. However the fields collide where new, Web-based systems share both in-house usage and external commercial software characteristics. While it might be expected that practitioners would be informed by innovative development methods, research indicates that practitioners are not making use of new multimedia and web development method and techniques. The crossover between the fields of IS and SE resurrects up some old problems and new questions. This paper traces the roots of IS and SE; briefly contrasts education and research of each; and examines the differences and common areas of the fields. From a study of how each field is characterised an IS body of knowledge (ISBOK) is identified. How Web-based Information Systems relate to each field is discussed and from the analysis a simple classification framework is constructed, weighing a systems life cycle against quality. The paper concludes with a call for greater cross-fertilization between the fields. Finally the authors suggest important subjects that IS researchers should be studying and others that should be of interest to both SE and IS researchers