The use of Web Ontology Language (OWL) to Combine Extant Controlled Vocabularies in Biodiversity Informatics Appears Redundant

Implementation of PESI requires data to be combined from multiple source databases. Some of the shared fields in the source databases used different controlled vocabularies of terms. OWL DL was investigated as a mechanism to build an extensible, shared ontology of species occurrence terms that permitted the source database to continue using and extending their own vocabularies whilst formally mapping to a more generic shared vocabulary. The merits of this approach were explored and it was concluded that the building of such a complex mapping ontology probably wasn't worthwhile. The level of semantic complexity involved outweighed the costs of simply imposing a flat list of well defined terms onto data suppliers. The main problem with exiting vocabularies appear to be the overloading of terms. A candidate list of terms was proposed

Ptolemy groupoids, shear coordinates and the augmented Teichmuller space

We start by describing how ideal triangulations on a surface degenerate under pinching of a multicurve. We use this process to construct a homomorphism from the Ptolemy groupoid of a surface to that of a pinched surface which is natural with respect to the action of the mapping class group. We then apply this construction to the study of shear coordinates and their extension to the augmented Teichm\"uller space. In particular, we give an explicit description of the action of the mapping class group on the augmented Teichm\"uller space in terms of shear coordinates.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures. v2: minor corrections, added the once-punctured torus as an exampl

A proof of the Baum-Connes conjecture for reductive adelic groups

Let F be a global field, A its ring of adeles, G a reductive group over F. We prove the Baum-Connes conjecture for the adelic group G(A).Comment: 9 page

Entire invariant solutions to Monge-Ampere equations

We prove existence and regularity of entire solutions to Monge-Ampere equations invariant under an irreducible action of a compact Lie group.Comment: version 2: 4 pages; a reference added; other minor changes; to appear in Proc. AM

The Thirty-Fifth Law Clerk

Review of:The Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the Rule of Law. By Lincoln Caplan. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 1987