Towards two-stage service representation and reasoning: from lightweight annotations to comprehensive semantics

Semantics are used to mark up a wide variety of data-centric Web resources but are not used to annotate online functionality in significant numbers. That is despite considerable research dedicated to Semantic Web Services (SWS). This has led to the emergence of a new Linked Services approach with simplified and less costly to produce service models, which targets a wider audience and allows even non-SWS developers to annotate services. However, such models merely aim at enabling semantic search by humans or automated service clustering rather than automation of service tasks such as discovery or orchestration. Thus, more expressive solutions are still required to achieve automated discovery and orchestration of services. In this paper, we describe our investigation into combining the strengths of two distinct approaches to modeling semantic Web services – 'lightweight' Linked Services and 'heavyweight' SWS automation - into a coherent SWS framework. In our vision, such integration is achieved by means of model cross-referencing and model transformation and augmentation

The 18-fold way

I shall consider each of the 18 claims made by Mohrhoff, and explain, in each case, why I take the path opposite to the one by which he seeks to remove the effects of our thoughts on the activities of our quantum mechanically described brains.Comment: To be published in Foundations of Physics. This is a reply to an article (quant-ph/0105097) by Ulrich Mohrhof

Variations on S-fold CFTs

A local SL(2,Z) transformation on the Type IIB brane configuration gives rise to an interesting class of superconformal field theories, known as the S-fold CFTs. Previously it has been proposed that the corresponding quiver theory has a link involving the T(U(N)) theory. In this paper, we generalise the preceding result by studying quivers that contain a T(G) link, where G is self-dual under S-duality. In particular, the cases of G = SO(2N), USp'(2N) and G_2 are examined in detail. We propose the theories that arise from an appropriate insertion of an S-fold into a brane system, in the presence of an orientifold threeplane or an orientifold fiveplane. By analysing the moduli spaces, we test such a proposal against its S-dual configuration using mirror symmetry. The case of G_2 corresponds to a novel class of quivers, whose brane construction is not available. We present several mirror pairs, containing G_2 gauge groups, that have not been discussed before in the literature.Comment: v2: minor corrections and references adde

2-fold and 3-fold mixing: why 3-dot-type counterexamples are impossible in one dimension

V.A. Rohlin asked in 1949 whether 2-fold mixing implies 3-fold mixing for a stationary process indexed by Z, and the question remains open today. In 1978, F. Ledrappier exhibited a counterexample to the 2-fold mixing implies 3-fold mixing problem, the so-called "3-dot system", but in the context of stationary random fields indexed by ZxZ. In this work, we first present an attempt to adapt Ledrappier's construction to the one-dimensional case, which finally leads to a stationary process which is 2-fold but not 3-fold mixing conditionally to the sigma-algebra generated by some factor process. Then, using arguments coming from the theory of joinings, we will give some strong obstacles proving that Ledrappier's counterexample can not be fully adapted to one-dimensional stationary processes

Two-fold Semantic Web service matchmaking – applying ontology mapping for service discovery

Semantic Web Services (SWS) aim at the automated discovery and orchestration of Web services on the basis of comprehensive, machine-interpretable semantic descriptions. Since SWS annotations usually are created by distinct SWS providers, semantic-level mediation, i.e. mediation between concurrent semantic representations, is a key requirement for SWS discovery. Since semantic-level mediation aims at enabling interoperability across heterogeneous semantic representations, it can be perceived as a particular instantiation of the ontology mapping problem. While recent SWS matchmakers usually rely on manual alignments or subscription to a common ontology, we propose a two-fold SWS matchmaking approach, consisting of (a) a general-purpose semantic-level mediator and (b) comparison and matchmaking of SWS capabilities. Our semantic-level mediation approach enables the implicit representation of similarities across distinct SWS by grounding service descriptions in so-called Mediation Spaces (MS). Given a set of SWS and their respective grounding, a SWS matchmaker automatically computes instance similarities across distinct SWS ontologies and matches the request to the most suitable SWS. A prototypical application illustrates our approach