SSDOnt: an Ontology for representing Single-Subject Design Studies

Background: Single-Subject Design is used in several areas such as education and biomedicine. However, no suited formal vocabulary exists for annotating the detailed configuration and the results of this type of research studies with the appropriate granularity for looking for information about them. Therefore, the search for those study designs relies heavily on a syntactical search on the abstract, keywords or full text of the publications about the study, which entails some limitations. Objective: To present SSDOnt, a specific purpose ontology for describing and annotating single-subject design studies, so that complex questions can be asked about them afterwards. Methods: The ontology was developed following the NeOn methodology. Once the requirements of the ontology were defined, a formal model was described in a Description Logic and later implemented in the ontology language OWL 2 DL. Results: We show how the ontology provides a reference model with a suitable terminology for the annotation and searching of single-subject design studies and their main components, such as the phases, the intervention types, the outcomes and the results. Some mappings with terms of related ontologies have been established. We show as proof-of-concept that classes in the ontology can be easily extended to annotate more precise information about specific interventions and outcomes such as those related to autism. Moreover, we provide examples of some types of queries that can be posed to the ontology. Conclusions: SSDOnt has achieved the purpose of covering the descriptions of the domain of single-subject research studies.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEDER/TIN2013-46238-C4-1-R and FEDER/TIN2016-78011-C4-2-

Binding SNOMED-CT Terms to Archetype Elements: Establishing a Baseline of Results

Introduction: This article is part of the Focus Theme of METHODS of Information in Medicine on "Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems". Background: The proliferation of archetypes as a means to represent information of Electronic Health Records has raised the need of binding terminological codes - such as SNOMED CT codes - to their elements, in order to identify them univocally. However, the large size of the terminologies makes it difficult to perform this task manually. Objectives: To establish a baseline of results for the aforementioned problem by using off-the-shelf string comparison-based techniques against which results from more complex techniques could be evaluated. Methods: Nine Typed Comparison METHODS were evaluated for binding using a set of 487 archetype elements. Their recall was calculated and Friedman and Nemenyi tests were applied in order to assess whether any of the methods outperformed the others. Results: Using the qGrams method along with the 'Text' information piece of archetype elements outperforms the other methods if a level of confidence of 90% is considered. A recall of 25.26% is obtained if just one SNOMED CT term is retrieved for each archetype element. This recall rises to 50.51% and 75.56% if 10 and 100 elements are retrieved respectively, that being a reduction of more than 99.99% on the SNOMED CT code set. Conclusions: The baseline has been established following the above-mentioned results. Moreover, it has been observed that although string comparison-based methods do not outperform more sophisticated techniques, they still can be an alternative for providing a reduced set of candidate terms for each archetype element from which the ultimate term can be chosen later in the more-than-likely manual supervision task

Toward Semantic Interoperability of Electronic Health Records

Although the goal of achieving semantic interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) is pursued by many researchers, it has not been accomplished yet. In this paper, we present a proposal that smoothes out the way toward the achievement of that goal. In particular, our study focuses on medical diagnoses statements. In summary, the main contributions of our ontology-based proposal are the following: first, it includes a canonical ontology whose EHR-related terms focus on semantic aspects. As a result, their descriptions are independent of languages and technology aspects used in different organizations to represent EHRs. Moreover, those terms are related to their corresponding codes in well-known medical terminologies. Second, it deals with modules that allow obtaining rich ontological representations of EHR information managed by proprietary models of health information systems. The features of one specific module are shown as reference. Third, it considers the necessary mapping axioms between ontological terms enhanced with so-called path mappings. This feature smoothes out structural differences between heterogeneous EHR representations, allowing proper alignment of information.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under Project TIN2010-21387-C02-01. The work of I. Berges was supported by a grant of the Basque Government (Programa de Formacion de Investigadores del Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación

Informe Interno UPV/EHU/LSI/TR 8-99, Revisado

Los cursos de diseño de algoritmos y eficiencia algorítmica clásicos cubren temas y ejemplo similares todos ellos. Este documento es una colección de 66 problemas resueltos que complementan dichos cursos con enunciados alternativos a los clásicos. Primeramente, se enuncian los problemas, para que el lector los intente resolver, y a continuación se presentan las soluciones

The other Borges in Colombia. A universal poet's forgotten journey to four colombian cities in 1965

RESUMEN: En julio de 1965 viajó a Colombia el escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges, quien gozaba de un reconocimiento internacional bien ganado y refrendado por premios, doctorados honoris causa, y reconocimientos de los gobiernos de Estados Unidos, Francia, Inglaterra e Italia. En Colombia pocos intelectuales conocían su obra y se declaraban sus admiradores. Este artículo intenta comprender, desde un contexto político, cultural y diplomático, el viaje y el significado de la presencia del escritor en el país sudamericano, así como formular ciertas reflexiones acerca de su biografía, condicionada por la visión mítica posteriormente instaurada por sus seguidores y fanáticos. A partir de vestigios documentales se reconstruye el paso del otro Borges por Colombia, del humano, del hombre público con sentido de responsabilidad social, que cumplió agotadores itinerarios para ofrecer entrevistas y conferencias –a modo de contribución a los intereses de la diplomacia cultural argentina–, periplo que a mediano y largo plazo terminó repercutiendo, además, sobre la divulgación de su obra e imagen.ABSTRACT: In July 1965, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges visited Colombia; he enjoyed a welldeserved international recognition, endorsed by prizes, honorary degrees, and acknowledgements of the American, French, English and Italian governments. In Colombia, few scholars knew his work and declared themselves his admirers. This paper aims at understanding, from a political, cultural and diplomatic context, the journey and the significance of the writer's presence in such South-American country; it also aims atformulating some reflections on his biography, made conditional on the mythical view established afterwards by his followers and enthusiasts. From documentary remains, the passage of the other Borges through Colombia is reconstructed, that of the human, of the public man with a sense of social responsibility who carried out exhausting itineraries to hold interviews and lectures –as a contribution to the interests of Argentinian diplomacy–; such a tour had also a repercussion, in the medium and long term, on the spreading of his work and image

Informe Interno UPV/EHU/LSI/TR 8-99, Revisado

Los cursos de diseño de algoritmos y eficiencia algorítmica clásicos cubren temas y ejemplo similares todos ellos. Este documento es una colección de 66 problemas resueltos que complementan dichos cursos con enunciados alternativos a los clásicos. Primeramente, se enuncian los problemas, para que el lector los intente resolver, y a continuación se presentan las soluciones

A mechanism for discovering semantic relationships among agent communication protocols

One relevant aspect in the development of the Semantic Web framework is the achievement of a real inter-agent communication capability at the semantic level. Agents should be able to communicate with each other freely using different communication protocols, constituted by communication acts. For that scenario, we introduce in this paper an efficient mechanism that presents the following main features: (i) It promotes the description of the communication acts of protocols as classes that belong to a communication actsmontology, and associates to those acts a social commitment semantics formalized through predicates in the Event Calculus. (ii) It is sustained on the idea that different protocols can be compared semantically by looking to the set of fluents associated to each branch of the protocols. Those sets are generated using Semantic Web technology rules. (iii) It discovers the following types of protocol relationships: equivalence, specialization, restriction, prefix, suffix, infix and complement_to_infix.The work of Idoia Berges is supported by a grant of the Basque Government (Programa de Formación de Investigadores del Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación). This work is also supported by the Basque Country Government IT-427-07 and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science TIN2007-68091-C02-01

Towards a satisfactory conversion of messages among agent-based information systems

Over the last years, there has been a change of perspective concerning the management of information systems, since they are no longer isolated and need to communicate with others. However, from a semantic point of view, real communication is difficult to achieve due to the heterogeneity of the systems. We present a proposal which, considering information systems are represented by software agents, provides a framework that favors a semantic communication among them, overcoming the heterogeneity of their agent communication languages. The main components of the framework are a suite of ontologies – conceptualizing communication acts – that will be used for generating the communication conversion, and an Event Calculus interpretation of the communications, which will be used for formalizing the notion of a satisfactory conversion. Moreover, we present a motivating example in order to complete the explanation of the whole picture.The work of Idoia Berges was supported by a grant of the Basque Government (Programa de Formación de Investigadores del Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación). This work is also supported the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science TIN2010–21387-C02–01

On demand translation for querying incompletely aligned datasets

More and more users aim at taking advantage of the existing Linked Open Data environment to formulate a query over a dataset and to then try to process the same query over different datasets, one after another, in order to obtain a broader set of answers. However, the heterogeneity of vocabularies used in the datasets on the one side, and the fact that the number of alignments among those datasets is scarce on the other, makes that querying task difficult for them. Considering this scenario we present in this paper a proposal that allows on demand translations of queries formulated over an original dataset, into queries expressed using the vocabulary of a targeted dataset. Our approach relieves users from knowing the vocabulary used in the targeted datasets and even more it considers situations where alignments do not exist or they are not suitable for the formulated query. Therefore, in order to favour the possibility of getting answers, sometimes there is no guarantee of obtaining a semantically equivalent translation. The core component of our proposal is a query rewriting model that considers a set of transformation rules devised from a pragmatic point of view. The feasibility of our scheme has been validated with queries defined in well known benchmarks and SPARQL endpoint logs, as the obtained results confirm

Semantic Web Technology for Agent Communication Protocols.

Proceeding presentado a 5th European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2008, Tenerife, Canary Islands, SpainOne relevant aspect in the development of the Semantic Web framework is the achievement of a real inter-agents communication capability at the semantic level. The agents should be able to communicate and understand each other using standard communication protocols freely, that is, without needing a laborious a priori preparation, before the communication takes place. For that setting we present in this paper a proposal that promotes to describe standard communication protocols using Semantic Web technology (specifically, OWL-DL and SWRL). Those protocols are constituted by communication acts. In our proposal those communication acts are described as terms that belong to a communication acts ontology, that we have developed, called CommOnt. The intended semantics associated to the communication acts in the ontology is expressed through social commitments that are formalized as fluents in the Event Calculus. In summary, OWL-DL reasoners and rule engines help in our proposal for reasoning about protocols. We define some comparison relationships (dealing with notions of equivalence and specialization) between protocols used by agents from different systems.The work of Idoia Berges is supported by a grant of the Basque Government. This work is also supported by the University of the Basque Country, Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa (cosupported by the European Social Fund) and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science TIN2007-68091-C02-01