Construction of an ontology for intelligent Arabic QA systems leveraging the Conceptual Graphs representation

The last decade had known a great interest in Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. This interest is due to the prominent importance of this 6th most wide-spread language in the world with more than 350 million native speakers. Currently, some basic Arabic language challenges related to the high inflection and derivation, Part-of-Speech (PoS) tagging, and diacritical ambiguity of Arabic text are practically tamed to a great extent. However, the development of high level and intelligent applications such as Question Answering (QA) systems is still obstructed by the lacks in terms of ontologies and other semantic resources. In this paper, we present the construction of a new Arabic ontology leveraging the contents of Arabic WordNet (AWN) and Arabic VerbNet (AVN). This new resource presents the advantage to combine the high lexical coverage and semantic relations between words existing in AWN together with the formal representation of syntactic and semantic frames corresponding to verbs in AVN. The Conceptual Graphs representation was adopted in the framework of a multi-layer platform dedicated to the development of intelligent and multi-agents systems. The built ontology is used to represent key concepts in questions and documents for further semantic comparison. Experiments conducted in the context of the QA task show a promising coverage with respect to the processed questions and passages. The obtained results also highlight an improvement in the performance of Arabic QA regarding the c@1 measure.The work of the last author was carried out in the framework of the WIQ-EI IRSES project (Grant No. 269180) within the FP 7 Marie Curie, the DIANA APPLICATIONS - Finding Hidden Knowledge in Texts: Applications (TIN2012-38603-C02-01) project, and the VLC/CAMPUS Microcluster on Multimodal Interaction in Intelligent Systems.Abouenour, L.; Nasri, M.; Bouzoubaa, K.; Kabbaj, A.; Rosso, P. (2014). Construction of an ontology for intelligent Arabic QA systems leveraging the Conceptual Graphs representation. Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems. 27(6):2869-2881. https://doi.org/10.3233/IFS-141248S2869288127

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

An algorithmic definition of CG operations based on a bootstrap step

Complexity of morphism-based CG operations (maximal join, unification, subsumption, generalization) has been identified and studied by several authors. As a consequence, compromise have been proposed, either by assuming a restricted form of CG or by defining a simple or inefficient CG operation. Independently from this approach, this paper proposes to start a CG operation (like maximal join, unify and projection) by a bootstrap step. The bootstrap step is supplied by any information that specifies which concepts in the first CG should be mapped to corresponding concepts in the second CG. Three sources of information for the bootstrap are identified in this paper : a) entry concepts that are given to a CG operation, b) concepts with individual or set as referent and c) co-references that are used in compound CGs. Usin

A review & analysis of current IoT maturity & readiness models and novel proposal

Internet of Things (IoT) environments are characterized by a high level of diversity and heterogeneity as there are numerous standards and approaches. This adds complexity and raises questions concerning enterprises’ strategies, organizational structures, and technological capabilities. As a result, a tool is required to assist enterprises in their transition to IoT technologies and practices, as well as to guide them in improving their capabilities. Several Maturity Models (MM) have been developed for this purpose, to assist enterprises in understanding their current position and identifying the need for improvements based on guidelines and indicators. However, there are several gaps in current models due to the lack of IoT-specific assessment approaches and models. Therefore, existing models must be upgraded to take into consideration major gaps and recommendations. Our main goal, in this research, is to provide a structured methodology and a holistic model fitting to the IoT context. The main contributions of this paper are (i) firstly, it summarizes the current state of the art of IoT MM proposed by various initiatives in several countries while highlighting their origin, scope, objectives, and assessment approaches, and (ii) secondly it outlines the research gaps and limits of existing maturity models and (iii) thirdly it proposes a new IoT maturity assessment framework to better help companies to recognize their current situation regarding IoT transformation as well as undertaking the right improvement actions plans in a structured manner. The proposed framework includes a methodology and a maturity model with 5 levels, 5 dimensions, 13 sub-dimensions, and 62 assessment criteria. Afterward, a practical tool has been developed to provide a user-friendly self-assessment for companies