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Loebe, Frank. "Ontological Semantics." Doctoral thesis, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2015. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-166326.
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The original and still a major purpose of ontologies in computer and information sciences is to serve for the semantic integration of represented content, facilitating information system interoperability. Content can be data, information, and knowledge, and it can be distributed within or across these categories. A myriad of languages is available for representation. Ontologies themselves are artifacts which are expressed in various languages. Different such languages are utilized today, including, as well-known representatives, predicate logic, subsuming first-order (predicate) logic (FOL), in particular, and higher-order (predicate) logic (HOL); the Web Ontology Language (OWL) on the basis of description logics (DL); and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We focus primarily on languages with formally defined syntax and semantics.
This overall picture immediately suggests questions of the following kinds: What is the relationship between an ontology and the language in which it is formalized? Especially, what is the impact of the formal semantics of the language on the formalized ontology? How well understood is the role of ontologies in semantic integration? Can the same ontology be represented in multiple languages and/or in distinct ways within one language? Is there an adequate understanding of whether two expressions are intensionally/conceptually equivalent and whether two ontologies furnish the same ontological commitments?
One may assume that these questions are resolved. Indeed, the development and adoption of ontologies is widespread today. Ontologies are authored in a broad range of different languages, including offering equally named ontologies in distinct languages. Much research is devoted to techniques and technologies that orbit ontologies, for example, ontology matching, modularization, learning, and evolution, to name a few. Ontologies have found numerous beneficial applications, and hundreds of ontologies have been created, considering solely the context of biomedical research. For us, these observations increase the relevance of the stated questions and close relatives thereof, and raise the desire for solid theoretical underpinnings. In the literature of computer and information sciences, we have found only few approaches that tackle the foundations of ontologies and their representation to allow for answering such questions or that actually answer them.
We elaborate an analysis of the subject as the first item of central contributions within this thesis. It mainly results in the identification of a vicious circularity in (i) the intended use of ontologies to mediate between formal representations and (ii) solely exploiting formal semantic notions in representing ontologies and defining ontology-based equivalence as a form of intensional/conceptual equivalence. On this basis and in order to overcome its identified limitations, we contribute a general model-theoretic semantic account, named \\\"ontological semantics\\\". This kind of semantics takes the approach of assigning arbitrary entities as referents of atomic symbols and to link syntactic constructions with corresponding ontological claims and commitments. In particular, ontological semantics targets the avoidance of encoding effects in its definition. Therefore we argue that this semantic account is well suited for interpreting formalized ontologies and for defining languages for the representation of ontologies. It is further proposed as a fundament for envisioned novel definitions of the intensional equivalence of expressions, in potential deviation from only being formally equivalent under set-theoretic semantics. The thesis is defended that a particular usage of a formalism and its respective vocabulary should be accompanied by establishing an ontological semantics that is tailored to that use of the formalism, in parallel to the formal semantics of the language, in order to capture the ontological content of the formal representation for adequate reuse in other formalisms. Accordingly, we advocate ontological semantics as a useful framework for justifying translations on an intensional basis. Despite all deviations of ontological semantics from its set-theoretic blueprint, close relationships between the two can be shown, which allow for using established FOL and DL reasoners while assuming ontological semantics.
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Callaghan, Joanna. "Ontological narratives." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2018. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/75134/.
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Mitchell, Kyle. "Ontological pragmatism." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/278191.
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Ontology is the study of what exists. Metaontology is the study of ontology. This dissertation is a work in metaontology. In particular, its goal is to develop, motivate, defend, and explore a distinctively pragmatist metaontology --- a pragmatist account of how to answer existence questions. To do this, I'll argue that pragmatists are entitled to a popular `deflationary' metaontology: one which claims that existence questions are so easy to answer that many recent ontological debates are misguided. I call the resulting position `ontological pragmatism' and argue for it over a variety of views in ontology and metaontology alike. In chapter 1, I characterise two opposing metaontological camps: the dominate metaontology --- what I call `mainstream ontology' --- and a deflationary alternative called `easy ontology'. I then present some motivations for exploring a central thesis of the dissertation: that pragmatism and easy ontology might be usefully put together. In chapter 2, I put these two views together by arguing that Amie Thomasson's (2015) easy ontology may be used to construct a pragmatist metaontology, resulting in the view I call `ontological pragmatism'. I then argue that mainstream ontology is misguided, from a distinctively pragmatist point of view. In chapter 3, I argue that ontological pragmatism is a plausible position for pragmatists and others to endorse by motiving the view and defending it from objections. In chapter 4, I compare ontological pragmatism to Stephen Yablo's (2005) fictionalist account of mathematics. I argue that pragmatism is more plausible than Yablo's account, establishing pragmatist approaches to mathematics as a new live option in these debates. Finally, in chapter 5, I use ontological pragmatism to respond to Sider's (2011) idea that there is a privileged meaning of `exists' said to `carve nature at the joints'. I focus on Sider's indispensability argument for this claim and argue that the pragmatist can diffuse his argument by showing that existential quantification is merely pragmatically indispensable for us, given our limitations. I conclude by highlighting some further lines of inquiry. By the end of the dissertation, I'll have (1) developed a pragmatist metaontology, (2) motivated and defended it, (3) applied it to the philosophy of mathematics, and (5) shown how it can defuse the idea that there is a metaphysically privileged meaning of `exists'. By doing this, I hope I'll have given pragmatists their own metaontology which may be fruitfully deployed in future debates.
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Sacks, M. D. "Investigating ontological talk." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.355678.
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Dieveney, Patrick. "Indispensable Ontological Commitments." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195662.
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Following Quine, some philosophers argue that insofar as we accept our best scientific theories as true, we are committed to the existence of the things these theories say 'there are'. And, we determine what things our theories say 'there are' by looking to the objects required to satisfy the existentially quantified sentences of these theories. In other words, existential quantification is the mark of ontological commitment.In my dissertation, I examine this relationship between quantification and ontology. Building on work from Peter Geach and Van McGee, I develop an account of quantification, what I call "unrestricted substitutional quantification". I argue that this is not only the appropriate understanding of the quantifiers, but it also allows for a robust science of ontology. With this understanding of the quantifiers, I consider the role they play in determining our ontological commitments by examining the paradigm example of this role--the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument.My analysis of the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument focuses on two central points. First, I argue that standard formulations of the argument include an unnecessary premise. Eliminating this superfluous premise significantly strengthens the argument as it has drawn a great deal of criticism. Second, the resulting argument serves as a blueprint for Quinean appeals to existential quantification in determining our ontological commitments. As a result, the argument helps clarify a necessary condition on such appeals. We are only committed to the objects required to satisfy existentially quantified sentences in formalizations of our accepted theories provided they occur in appropriate formalizations of the theories. Hence, appealing to existential quantification to determine ontological commitments requires an account of 'appropriateness' for formalizations. I conclude by offering such an account by drawing on work from Hartry Field, Mark Colyvan, and other areas of study (e.g., Kantian Ethics) where a similar problem of occurs.
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Lin, Hsuan-Chih. "Propositions : an ontological inquiry." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2017. http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/296/.
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It is more or less agreed that propositions are the meanings of sentences, the fundamental truth-bearers, and the objects of propositional attitudes. Associated with these roles, there are the following three questions: the Composition Question, the Representation Question, and the Attitude Question. Roughly, the first concerns the metaphysical relation between propositions and propositional constituents, the second concerns the ability of representing things as being such-and-so, and the third concerns how propositions can be the objects of propositional attitudes. I examine three mainstream theories of propositions: the Russellian theories, the possible-world accounts, and the Neo-Russellian theories, and argue that each fails to answer at least one of the questions and thus is incapable of providing an account of these propositional roles. Therefore, if a theory of propositions is able to answer these questions in a uniform manner, it would be a better theory of propositions. For what can be explained by other theories can also be explained by this theory, and it can also answer more questions than any other theory. In this dissertation, I defend a broadly Fregean theory of propositions, according to which propositions are sui generis, multi-analysable, and necessary beings, and argue that with respect to these propositional roles, it can provide a better account than other theories of propositions.
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Williams, Gary S. "Reconciling representationalism : an ontological solution." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2008. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1149.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
History
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Byford, Christopher. "Ontological assumptions in film theory." Thesis, University of Kent, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.362308.
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Alalwan, Nasser Alwan. "Ontological approach for database integration." Thesis, De Montfort University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/5150.
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Database integration is one of the research areas that have gained a lot of attention from researcher. It has the goal of representing the data from different database sources in one unified form. To reach database integration we have to face two obstacles. The first one is the distribution of data, and the second is the heterogeneity. The Web ensures addressing the distribution problem, and for the case of heterogeneity there are many approaches that can be used to solve the database integration problem, such as data warehouse and federated databases. The problem in these two approaches is the lack of semantics. Therefore, our approach exploits the Semantic Web methodology. The hybrid ontology method can be facilitated in solving the database integration problem. In this method two elements are available; the source (database) and the domain ontology, however, the local ontology is missing. In fact, to ensure the success of this method the local ontologies should be produced. Our approach obtains the semantics from the logical model of database to generate local ontology. Then, the validation and the enhancement can be acquired from the semantics obtained from the conceptual model of the database. Now, our approach can be applied in the generation phase and the validation-enrichment phase. In the generation phase in our approach, we utilise the reverse engineering techniques in order to catch the semantics hidden in the SQL language. Then, the approach reproduces the logical model of the database. Finally, our transformation system will be applied to generate an ontology. In our transformation system, all the concepts of classes, relationships and axioms will be generated. Firstly, the process of class creation contains many rules participating together to produce classes. Our unique rules succeeded in solving problems such as fragmentation and hierarchy. Also, our rules eliminate the superfluous classes of multi-valued attribute relation as well as taking care of neglected cases such as: relationships with additional attributes. The final class creation rule is for generic relation cases. The rules of the relationship between concepts are generated with eliminating the relationships between integrated concepts. Finally, there are many rules that consider the relationship and the attributes constraints which should be transformed to axioms in the ontological model. The formal rules of our approach are domain independent; also, it produces a generic ontology that is not restricted to a specific ontology language. The rules consider the gap between the database model and the ontological model. Therefore, some database constructs would not have an equivalent in the ontological model. The second phase consists of the validation and the enrichment processes. The best way to validate the transformation result is to facilitate the semantics obtained from the conceptual model of the database. In the validation phase, the domain expert captures the missing or the superfluous concepts (classes or relationships). In the enrichment phase, the generalisation method can be applied to classes that share common attributes. Also, the concepts of complex or composite attributes can be represented as classes. We implement the transformation system by a tool called SQL2OWL in order to show the correctness and the functionally of our approach. The evaluation of our system showed the success of our proposed approach. The evaluation goes through many techniques. Firstly, a comparative study is held between the results produced by our approach and the similar approaches. The second evaluation technique is the weighting score system which specify the criteria that affect the transformation system. The final evaluation technique is the score scheme. We consider the quality of the transformation system by applying the compliance measure in order to show the strength of our approach compared to the existing approaches. Finally the measures of success that our approach considered are the system scalability and the completeness.
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Lamb, Richard Campbell. "The Substance of Ontological Disputes." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/71743.
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There is a large philosophical literature focused on what sorts of things can be said to exist. This field is called ontology. Ontological disputes have sometimes been accused of being merely verbal disputes: that they are concerned only with language and not with facts. Some think that if this accusation is correct, philosophers should give up doing ontology. However, whether the accusation is correct and whether it is so serious depends on what is meant by verbal dispute. Eli Hirsch in particular has argued that ontological disputes are merely verbal in one specific sense. In this paper, I first argue that his accusation fails to show that ontological disputes are not substantive. Even if we admit that ontological disputes are verbal in Hirsch's sense, they may still be substantive in a variety of other senses. Second, I argue that even though ontological disputes are substantive, the reason for this will not support stronger claims about the nature and role of ontological disputes.Master of Arts
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Rouzer, John Harvey. "Ontological metaphor in Chinese syntax /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487945320758437.
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Rana, Pravab Jung. "Ontological mediation for information agents /." Available to subscribers only, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1404354981&sid=11&Fmt=2&clientId=1509&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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PIETRA, CATERINA. "Healthy City: an ontological understanding." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Pavia, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/11571/1456604.
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Over the last few decades, the Healthy City (HC) concept has gained considerable attention by involving numerous research fields (sustainability, urban transformation and management, urban planning, health and social studies, etc.), and by establishing strategic objectives at a global level. The incessant and rapid growth of the urban population, together with the general deterioration of the environment caused by human activities, have implied the extreme need to guarantee and maintain the role of cities as
fundamental generators of good health.
Such a highly multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach pushes the concept of HC into a complex system, within which it often appears difficult to effectively identify the set of correct and essential elements to be developed. With this in mind, the research aims to analyze HC from an ontological point of view. Ontologies represent efficient tools that allow for more accessible communication, and the integration of information between different sectors and actors. The main purposes consist, first of all,
in providing the thematic core of the general theory of HC, and subsequently in implementing the same through a structured ontological basis using, specifically, the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The articulation and interpretation of phenomena through the BFO tool are consistent and intuitive. For this reason, it has been chosen as a means of clarification and facilitation.
The thesis intends to define a preliminary ontological schema, in order to provide a valid formalization that can, at a later stage, outline the overall domain of the HC. The ontology will be able to accurately represent the HC dimension linked to reality, and to make the different users involved in healthy urban processes understand the concepts included in it and the concrete entities that these concepts represent.
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Wetherbee, James M. "An analysis of Plantinga's ontological argument." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1987. http://www.tren.com.
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Murphy, B. E. "The ontological commitments of theistic language." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.312923.
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Kramer, Stephan. "Second-order quantification and ontological commitment." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.539695.
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Panayiotou, Christiana. "Viewpoint discrepancies in ontological learning resources." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.531607.
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Cottam, Hugh. "An ontological framework for knowledge mapping." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.325709.
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Napier, Ian. "Ontological interpretation of network monitoring data." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2014. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/15762.
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Interpreting measurement and monitoring data from networks in general and the Internet in particular is a challenge. The motivation for this work has been to in- vestigate new ways to bridge the gap between the kind of data which are available and the more developed information which is needed by network stakeholders to support decision making and network management. Specific problems of syntax, semantics, conflicting data and modeling domain-specific knowledge have been identified. The methods developed and tested have used the Resource Descrip- tion Framework (rdf) and the ontology languages of the Semantic Web to bring together data from disparate sources into unified knowledgebases in two discrete case studies, both using real network data. Those knowledgebases have then been demonstrated to be usable and valuable sources of information about the networks concerned. Some success has been achieved in overcoming each of the identified problems using these techniques, proving the thesis that taking an ontological ap- proach to the processing of network monitoring data can be a very useful technique for overcoming problems of interpretation and for making information available to those who need it.
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Cichoski, Luiz Paulo da Cas. "The ontological structure of collective action." Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2017. http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/7448.
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Quando n?s falamos sobre entidades coletivas, a??o ? o tipo de atribui??o mais comum. N?s rotineiramente falamos coisas tais como: ?China suspende todas as importa??es de carv?o da Coreia do Norte?; ?Uber est? investigando acusa??es de ass?dio feitas por ex-funcion?rio?; ?A Suprema Corte estuda o caso de um tiro disparado nos E.U.A. que matou um adolescente no M?xico?; ?Mal?sia retira embaixador na Coreia do Norte?; ?SpaceX lan?a foguete a partir da hist?rica ?plataforma da lua? da NASA.?. S?o essas atribui??es verdadeiras? Com certeza todas elas poderiam ser meramente metaf?ricas. N?s poder?amos tomar entidades coletivas como agentes somente como uma maneira de falar. Neste trabalho, eu argumento em favor de uma posi??o realista a respeito de entidades coletivas e seu status de agente; tornando algumas dessas senten?as verdadeiras. Ultimamente, muitos fil?sofos t?m abordado esse t?pico, mas a discuss?o tende a ser guiada pelo problema da intencionalidade coletiva, o problema de como entidades coletivas podem possuir estados mentais. Meu trabalho tenta trazer mais elementos da filosofia da a??o para a investiga??o de a??es coletivas. Eu tomo como guia o problema da individua??o da a??o, porque esse t?pico aborda quest?es de central import?ncia para a??es coletivas. Especialmente a quest?o das a??es agregadas: a??es que s?o compostas de outras a??es, que parecem ser os casos paradigm?ticos de a??es coletivas, na medida em que a??es coletivas s?o, presumivelmente, compostas de a??es individuais. O problema da individua??o da a??o nos leva a dois conceitos centrais da natureza da a??o: a??o b?sica e inten??o. Neste trabalho, eu mostrarei como uma investiga??o sobre a??o b?sica pode nos ajudar a localizar o lugar das contribui??es individuais em a??es coletivas e como uma investiga??o sobre inten??o pode localizar um elemento fundamental da a??o que ? irredut?vel e distintivamente coletivo nos casos de a??es coletivas. Depois de explorar esses dois conceitos centrais, eu ofere?o uma defini??o de a??o que leva a s?rio o lugar da inten??o como guia para identificar quando um evento constitui uma a??o.
When we talk about collective entities, action is the most common kind of ascription. We regularly say things such as ?China suspends all coal imports from North Korea?; ?Uber is investigating harassment claims by ex-employee?; ?Supreme Court considers case of a shot fired in U.S. that killed a teenager in Mexico?; ?Malaysia recalls ambassador to North Korea?; ?SpaceX launches rocket from NASA?s historic moon pad.? Are those ascriptions true? For sure, they could all be metaphoric. We could take collective entities as agents just as a way of speaking. In this work, I argue in favor of a realist position regarding collective entities and their status of agent; rendering some of these sentences true. Recently, many philosophers are addressing this topic, but the discussion tends to be guided by the problem of collective intentionality, the problem of how collective entities can have mental states. My work tries to bring more elements of philosophy of action to the investigation of collective action. I take as a guide the problem of action individuation, because this topic addresses questions of central importance for collective action. Especially the question of aggregate actions, actions that are composed of other actions, which seems to be the paradigmatic case of collective action, insofar as they are presumably composed of individuals? actions. The problem of action individuation leads us to two central concepts on the nature of action: basic action and intention. In this work, I will show how an investigation on basic action can help us locate the place of individuals? contributions in collective action and how an investigation on intention can locate a fundamental element of action that is irreducible and distinctively collective in collective action cases. After exploring these two core concepts, I provide a definition of action that take seriously the place of intention as a guide to identify when an event constitutes an action.
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Song, Lihong. "Medical concept embedding with ontological representations." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2019. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/703.
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Learning representations of medical concepts from the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has been shown effective for predictive analytics in healthcare. The learned representations are expected to preserve the semantic meanings of different medical concepts, which can be treated as features and thus benefit a variety of applications. Medical ontologies have also been explored to be integrated with the EHR data to further enhance the accuracy of various prediction tasks in healthcare. Most of the existing works assume that medical concepts under the same ontological category should share similar representations, which however does not always hold. In particular, the categorizations in the categorical medical ontologies were established with various factors being considered. Medical concepts even under the same ontological category may not follow similar occurrence patterns in the EHR data, leading to contradicting objectives for the representation learning. In addition, these existing works merely utilize the categorical ontologies. Actually, it has been noticed that ontologies containing multiple types of relations are also available. However, studies rarely make use of the diverse types of medical ontologies. In this thesis research, we propose three novel representation learning models for integrating the EHR data and medical ontologies for predictive analytics. To improve the interpretability and alleviate the conflicting objective issue between the EHR data and medical ontologies, we propose techniques to learn medical concepts embeddings with multiple ontological representations. To reduce the reliance on labeled data, we treat the co-occurrence statistics of clinical events as additional training signals, which help us learn good representations even with few labeled data. To leverage the various domain knowledge, we also consider multiple medical ontologies (CCS, ATC and SNOMED-CT) and propose corresponding attention mechanisms so as to take the best advantage of the medical ontologies with better interpretability. Our proposed models can achieve the final medical concept representations which align better with the EHR data. We conduct extensive experiments, and our empirical results prove the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Keywords: Bio/Medicine, Healthcare-AI, Electronic Health Record, Representation Learning, Machine Learning Applications
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Ameri, Farhad. "Supply chain standardization an ontological approach." Saarbrücken VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2006. http://d-nb.info/987163078/04.
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Martin, Suzanne Michele. "Ontological knowledge structure of intuitive biology." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290010.
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It has become increasingly important for individuals to understand infections disease, as there has been a tremendous rise in viral and bacterial disease. This research examines systematic misconceptions regarding the characteristics of viruses and bacteria present in individuals previously educated in biological sciences at a college level. 90 pre-nursing students were administered the Knowledge Acquisition Device (KAD) which consists of 100 True/False items that included statements about the possible attributes of four entities: bacteria, virus, amoeba, and protein. Thirty pre-nursing students, who incorrectly stated that viruses were alive, were randomly assigned to three conditions. (1) exposed to information about the ontological nature of viruses, (2) Information about viruses, (3) control. In the condition that addressed the ontological nature of a virus, all of those participants were able to classify viruses correctly as not alive; however any items that required inferences, such as viruses come in male and female forms or viruses breed with each other to make baby viruses were still incorrectly answered by all conditions in the posttest. It appears that functional knowledge, ex. If a virus is alive or dead, or how it is structured, is not enough for an individual to have a full and accurate understanding of viruses. Ontological knowledge information may alter the functional knowledge but underlying inferences remain systematically incorrect.
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Gilson, Owen Timothy. "An ontological approach to information visualization." Thesis, Swansea University, 2008. https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42713.
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Visualization is one of the indispensable means for addressing the rapid explosion of data and information. Although a large collection of visualization techniques have been developed over the past three decades, the majority of ordinary users have little knowledge about these techniques. Despite there being many interactive visualization tools available in the public domain or commercially, producing visualizations remains a skilled and time-consuming task. One approach for cost-effective dissemination of visualization techniques is to use captured expert knowledge for helping ordinary users generate visualizations automatically. In this work, we propose to use captured knowledge in ontologies to reduce the parameter space, providing a more effective automated solution to the dissemination of visualization techniques to ordinary users. As an example, we consider the visualization of music chart data and football statistics on the web, and aim to generate visualizations automatically from the data. The work has three main contributions: Visualisation as Mapping. We consider the visualization process as a mapping task and assess this approach from both a tree-based and graph-based perspective. We discuss techniques for automatic mapping and present a general approach for Information Perceptualisation through mapping which we call Information Realisation. VizThis: Tree-centric Mapping. We have built a tree-based mapping toolkit which provides a pragmatic solution for visualising any XML-based source data using either SVG or X3D (or potentially any other XML-based target format). The toolkit has data cleansing and data analysis features. It also allows automatic mapping through a type-constrained system (AutoMap). If the user wishes to alter mappings, the system gives the users warnings about specific problem areas so that they can be immediately corrected. SeniViz: Graph-centric Mapping. We present an ontology-based pipeline to automatically map tabular data to geometrical data, and to select appropriate visualization tools, styles and parameters. The pipeline is based on three ontologies: a Domain Ontology (DO) captures the knowledge about the subject domain being visualized; a Visual Representation Ontology (VRO) captures the specific representational capabilities of different visualization techniques (e.g. Tree Map); and a Semantic Bridge Ontology (SBO) captures specific expert-knowledge about valuable mappings between domain and representation concepts. In this way, we have an ontology mapping algorithm which can dynamically score and rank potential visualizations. We also present the results of a user study to assess the validity and effectiveness of the SemViz approach.
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Kataria, Pavandeep. "Resolving semantic conflicts through ontological layering." Thesis, University of Westminster, 2011. https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/8zyx0/resolving-semantic-conflicts-through-ontological-layering.
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We examine the problem of semantic interoperability in modern software systems, which exhibit pervasiveness, a range of heterogeneities and in particular, semantic heterogeneity of data models which are built upon ubiquitous data repositories. We investigate whether we can build ontologies upon heterogeneous data repositories in order to resolve semantic conflicts in them, and achieve their semantic interoperability. We propose a layered software architecture, which accommodates in its core, ontological layering, resulting in a Generic ontology for Context aware, Interoperable and Data sharing (Go-CID) software applications. The software architecture supports retrievals from various data repositories and resolves semantic conflicts which arise from heterogeneities inherent in them. It allows extendibility of heterogeneous data repositories through ontological layering, whilst preserving the autonomy of their individual elements. Our specific ontological layering for interoperable data repositories is based on clearly defined reasoning mechanisms in order to perform ontology mappings. The reasoning mechanisms depend on the user‟s involvments in retrievals of and types of semantic conflicts, which we have to resolve after identifying semantically related data. Ontologies are described in terms of ontological concepts and their semantic roles that make the types of semantic conflicts explicit. We contextualise semantically related data through our own categorisation of semantic conflicts and their degrees of similarities. Our software architecture has been tested through a case study of retrievals of semantically related data across repositories in pervasive healthcare and deployed with Semantic Web technology. The extensions to the research results include the applicability of our ontological layering and reasoning mechanisms in various problem domains and in environments where we need to (i) establish if and when we have overlapping “semantics”, and (ii) infer/assert a correct set of “semantics” which can support any decision making in such domains.
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Peacock, Eve Christine. "eARTh : the dynamics of ontological representation." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2014. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/78686/1/Eve_Peacock_Thesis.pdf.
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This Australian Indigenous creactive work and its Treatise promote ways of thinking about practice and research that extend well beyond the current discourse. It invites re-thinking on how research can be practice-led in new ways, and what that might mean for future students. When discussing the challenges of today, this work signifies how "Western Style" thinking and theory is wanting in so many ways. It engages a new dynamic and innovative way of theorising, encouraging future students to apply their full capacity of energy and wisdom. (Extract from examiners' reports.)
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Viswanathan, Venkatesh Subramaniam Lee Yugyung. "Automatic diagram generation based on ontological framework." Diss., UMK access, 2005.
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Thesis (M.S.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2005."A thesis in computer science." Typescript. Advisor: Yugyung Lee. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed March 13, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-175). Online version of the print edition.
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Fischer, Anja, and Zak Blacher. "An Ontological Approach to SIP DoS Detection." Thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Communication and IT, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-5100.
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Traditional public switched telephone networks (PSTN) are replaced more and more by VoIP services these days. Although it is good for saving costs, the disadvantage of this development is that VoIP networks are less secure than the traditional way of transmitting voice. Because VoIP networks are being deployed in open environments and rely on other network services, the VoIP service itself becomes vulnerable to potential attacks against its infrastructure or other services it relies on.
This thesis will present a discussion of security issues of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the signalling protocol for VoIP services. The main focus is on active attacks against the protocol that aim to reduce the service's availability -- so called Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
Existing countermeasures and detection schemes do not adequately differentiate between DoS attacks. However, the differentiation is important with respect to performance loss, as various protection schemes involve more computationally intensive processes.
Based on that discussion, this thesis attempts to provide an ontological approach to describing, and eventually preventing attacks from having their intended effects.
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Yaman, Cagla. "A Recommendation Framework Using Ontological User Profiles." Master's thesis, METU, 2011. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613745/index.pdf.
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In this thesis, a content recommendation system has been developed. The system makes recommendations based on the preferences of the users on some aspects of the content and also preferences of similar users. The preferences of a user are extracted from the choices of that user made in the past. Similarities between users are defined by the similarities of their preferences. Such a system requires both qualified content and user information. The proposed system uses semantic user and content profiles to more effectively define the relationships between the two and make better inferences. An ontology is defined using the existing domain ontologies and the semi-structured data on the web. The system is implemented mainly for the movie domain in which well-defined ontologies and user information are easier to access.
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Benis, Nirupama, and Rajaram Kaliyaperumal. "Corpus construction based on Ontological domain knowledge." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-71851.
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The purpose of this thesis is to contribute a corpus for sentence level interpretation of biomedical language. The available corpora for the biomedical domain are small in terms of amount of text and predicates. Besides that these corpora are developed rather intuitively. In this effort which we call BioOntoFN, we created a corpus from the domain knowledge provided by an ontology. By doing this we believe that we can provide a rough set of rules to create corpora from ontologies. Besides that we also designed an annotation tool specifically for building our corpus. We built a corpus for biological transport events. The ontology we used is the piece of Gene Ontology pertaining to transport, the term transport GO: 0006810 and all of its child concepts, which could be called a sub-ontology. The annotation of the corpus follows the rules of FrameNet and the output is annotated text that is in an XML format similar to that of FrameNet. The text for the corpus is taken from abstracts of MEDLINE articles. The annotation tool is a GUI created using Java.
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Fraser, Debra Jayne. "Mindfulness, stress and self: an ontological shift." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/5890.
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In this study a six week mindfulness programme is delivered to twenty nine health care professionals. Research questions address: what participants’ discourse can tell us about their experiences of stress over the course of the programme, what the changes in discourse suggest that is theoretically useful to the study of mindfulness, and what an exploration of ontological underpinnings can provide to develop our understanding? And finally, whether this exploration supports a useful theory on both mindfulness and stress? Daily diary, interview and email data is gathered on participants’ discourses on stress and mindfulness. A Social Constructionist epistemology and Grounded Theory methods are used to analyse the data. Most research and commentary on mindfulness is positivist and quantitative relating to health outcomes and psychological processes. This leaves a gap in the literature that this qualitative study addresses. A main theme in participants’ discourse on stress relates to feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Participants talk of the causes of and solutions to stress and of themselves and others as ‘bad and wrong’. This discourse reflects a ‘rational self’ view through the use of mechanistic, rationalistic and individualistic terms to convey experience. This ‘rational self’ view is grounded in a Cartesian ontology or worldview. In the discourse on stress, participants’ appear to view themselves ideally as rational, autonomous, non-emotional and in control. A core social process is that with mindfulness training participants’ discourse on stress changes from a disempowered to an empowered view of self. In mindfulness training participants are asked to adopt an alternative to the Cartesian conceptualisation of self. They are asked to practice I am not my thoughts and acceptance of all aspects of experience in the present moment. After mindfulness training, participants’ discourse is of more calmness, peace, insight, awareness, creativity and a sense of expanded time and space. These discourses reflect an empowered view of self and a sense of agency. The discourses are compared to those before mindfulness training, and to those of the non-finishers and the stress literatures. An alternative ontological view of the nature of ‘being’ or ‘reality’ and its resultant discourse has implications for stress research and mindfulness research and practice. The conceptualisation of ‘being’ evident in the Buddhist origins of mindfulness (concepts of ‘no self’ and experience as essentially ‘empty’) is not generally explored in the mainstream literature. Literatures on stress, mindfulness and self provide a framework from which to explore participants’ discourses. It appears that mindfulness programmes in the West have been uplifted and separated from their Eastern origins and rearticulated within a Cartesian ontology. It is important to address questions on mindfulness and stress ontologically to provide a broader range of options for future study, treatment approaches and practice.
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Nigro, Diego. "The ontological-epistemological becoming founded on thinking." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0028/NQ39294.pdf.
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Meral, Arzu. "An ontological inquiry in early Qur'ān commentaries /." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83194.
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This study examines the influence of Qur'anic teachings on the development of falsafa on the one hand, and the position of tafsirs in the intellectual history of Islam on the other. To do so, in the introduction it attempts to situate the place of falsafa and its connections with kalam and tafsir, and to explain the approach that will be followed in this research. In the first part it treats some of the ontological vocabulary of the Qur'an, while in the second, it concentrates on the questions raised by the Qur'an about the ontological status of pre-existing things as well as on the notions of creation and existence. To this purpose it surveys some early tafsirs in order to see how the debate over these issues evolved therein and how philosophical discussions were appropriated and naturalized by the mufassirun.
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Rossberg, Marcus. "Second-order logic : ontological and epistemological problems." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6407.
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In this thesis I provide a survey over different approaches to second-order logic and its interpretation, and introduce a novel approach. Of special interest are the questions whether (a particular form of) second-order logic can count as logic in some (further to be specified) proper sense of logic, and what epistemic status it occupies. More specifically, second-order logic is sometimes taken to be mathematical, a mere notational variant of some fragment of set theory. If this is the case, it might be argued that it does not have the "epistemic innocence" which would be needed for, e.g., foundational programmes in (the philosophy of) mathematics for which second-order logic is sometimes used. I suggest a Deductivist conception of logic, that characterises logical consequence by means of inference rules, and argue that on this conception second-order logic should count as logic in the proper sense.
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Kim, Soon Bae. "Irony, Humor, and Ontological Relationality in Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2012. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149621/.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate ontological relationality in literary theory and criticism by critically reflecting on modern theories of literature and by practically examining the literary texts of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde. Traditional studies of literary texts have been oriented toward interpretative or hermeneutic methodologies, focusing on an independent and individual subject in literature. Instead, I explore how relational ontology uncovers the interactive structures interposed between the author, the text, and the audience by examining the system of how the author's creative positioning provokes the reader's reaction through the text. In Chapter I, I critically inquire into modern literary theories of "irony" in Romanticism, New Criticism, and Deconstructionism to show how they tend to disregard the dynamic dimension of interactive relationships between different literary subjects. Chapter II scrutinizes Wilde's humor in An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) in order to reveal the ontological relationships triggered by a creative positioning. In chapter III, I examine Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) and the laughter in "The Miller's Tale" in particular, to examine the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of its interactive relationships. In Chapter IV, I explore Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Othello (1603-4), and The Winter's Tale (1609-11) so as to show how artistic positioning creatively constructs a relational system of dynamic interactions to circulate social ideals and values. In so doing, this dissertation is aimed at revealing the aesthetic values of literature and the objective scope of literary discourse rather than providing yet another analytical paradigm dependent primarily on a single literary subject. Thus, the ontological study is proposed as an alternative, yet primary, dimension of literary criticism and theoretical practice.
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Moriarty, Siobhan. "Ontological categories, existence statements, and metaphysical modality." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/19043/.
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What is the content of the claim that tropes a and b are co-instantiated if there is no such thing as tropes? I begin this thesis by arguing that a sentence expressing such a claim would be deficient in content and would, therefore, not be truth-apt. I use this claim to set up a general presupposition problem for the truth-apt sentences of our language. I argue that all truth-apt sentences presuppose the existence of the kinds of things which are to serve as the semantic values of their terms. Understanding the content of such a presupposition requires understanding the content of a categorial existence claim. However, I argue, it is incredibly difficult to provide a construal of categorial existence claims which does not presuppose the existence of the very things that they would be used to assert the existence of. I argue that to provide a satisfactory construal, we need to appeal to the notion of an ontological category. I contend that the notion of an ontological category with which we can provide a satisfactory construal of existence claims is a broadly Lowean one. I show that, as it stands, Lowe’s construal is not adequate to the task but that it can be modified so that it is. Making use of such a modified construal, I defend a metalinguistic construal of categorial existence claims. In chapters five and six, I argue that if we fully appreciate the notion of an ontological category which has been introduced, the notion of that which I claimed we have to make use in answering the question of ontology and referring to things in the world, we will recognise that such ontological categories ground, or partially ground, de re modal truths, and through them, the truths of metaphysical modality.
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Stansbie, Adam. "The acousmatic musical performance : an ontological investigation." Thesis, City University London, 2013. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/2440/.
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This investigation provides an answer to the following ontological question: what is an acousmatic musical performance? Chapter 1 discusses acousmatic sound – a fundamental constituent of the acousmatic musical performance – and considers ways in which acousmatic sounds are determined in advance of, and during, a performance. Chapter 2 presents the acousmatic performance as an agent-centred, skilful enterprise that serves both composers and listeners through intentional communicative acts. Chapter 3 examines the nature of, and relations that hold between, acousmatic performances and acousmatic works. Chapter 4 considers interpretations of works and highlights some of the various ways in which interpretations are formulated, regulated and executed. Chapter 5 focuses upon the notion of performance authenticity and questions whether it is possible for an acousmatic performance to be considered inauthentic. Taken as a whole, these five chapters highlight the central constituents of the acousmatic musical performance, unravel the collective input of composers, performers, listeners and technologies, and explicate the complex network of relations that coalesce within the performance environment. The methods employed within this thesis relate to the practice of musical ontology, and have been significantly influenced by Richard Wollheim’s realist account of type and tokens (Wollheim 1980) and Stephen Davies’ notion of thick and thin musical works (Davies 2004). These ontological theories provided a method for identifying and discussing the relations that hold between acousmatic performances and acousmatic works, and were ultimately fundamental to the formulation of a bespoke type-theory that serves music of the acousmatic tradition. Accordingly, the research serves two distinct communities. On the one hand, it serves the ontological community; acousmatic music has received very little ontological attention and, as a result, this research broadens the investigative scope of the discipline whilst considering how existing theories may be applied to music of the acousmatic tradition. On the other hand, it serves the acousmatic community; by abstracting and explaining the central constituents of the acousmatic musical performance, this investigation clarifies the roles of composers, performers and listeners, and demonstrates how understanding of these roles may inform creative practice. A portfolio consisting of six original acousmatic compositions has been produced. This compositional research allowed theoretical ideas to be tested, and works in the portfolio are cited to contextualise key points.
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Peebles, Robert. "Ontological Liberation: Hybrid Infrastructures For The Anthropocene." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1623170118342559.
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Adán, Oscar. "Arete as Efficacy of Plato's Ontological Transit." Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú - Departamento de Humanidades, 2013. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/113104.
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The following paper outlines the contours of arete in the late Plato in association with the ontological transit from 'being' to genesis, starting from the Parmenides· second hypothesis and the Epinomis' mathematical excerpt. Nonetheless, by introducing the 'necessary reality of genesis' within the eidetic framework, Plato feels torced to postulate 'non-being' within the ontological economy -as may beread in the Sophist- and paradoxically to recognize in it the degree of absolute sameness. How does thisnon-being appear in the midst of the eide? The answer is surprising.El presente artículo esboza a partir de la segunda hipótesis del Parménides y del pasaje matemático del Epinomis, la figuración de areté enel último Platón, asociada a la efectividad del tránsito ontológico desde el 'ser' hacia la génesis. No obstante, al introducir la 'necesaria realidad de la génesis' en el marco eidético, Platón se ve obligado a postular la presencia del 'no-ser' dentro dela propia economía ontológica -como se puede leer en el Sofista- y a otorgarle paradójicamente el grado de mismidad absoluto. ¿Cómo se presenta este 'no-ser' en el centro de las eíde? La respuesta es sorprendente.
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Sun, Yi. "Querying with Ontological Terminologies And their Annotations." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1177653662.
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Yeung, Chung Kei. "Ontological model for information systems development methodology." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2006. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/702.
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Sidorkin, Alexander M. "An ontological understanding of dialogue in education /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7656.
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Lin, Winston Huairen. "Extracting ontological structures from collaborative tagging systems." Thesis, School of Information Technologies, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/12116.
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Hughes, Emily Joy. "Thrown Impossibility: The Ontological Structure of Despair." Thesis, Department of Philosophy, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9003.
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This thesis is a phenomenological analysis of the ontological structure of despair. It begins with an analysis of Heidegger’s work on ‘Affectedness’ whereby through the critique given by Ratcliffe it is seen that moods are primordial and condition the way the world can matter to the subject. It then expatiates the phenomenology of despair where despair is ‘lived impossibility as such.’ Explicating the phenomenology of despair then involves subjecting Freud’s essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ to a Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis as discussed by Kristeva and Foucault in particular and also Radden more generally. This phenomenology of despair is then drawn into comparison with Heideggerian ‘Anxiety’ and it is concluded that despair is comparable to Heideggerian anxiety when it is subject to a negative existential reduction as put forward by Dreyfus. The final section of this paper then maps the phenomenology of despair onto the temporality of Heidegger’s care structure, ultimately explicating the ontological structure of despair. This involves a close analysis of the radical diminishing of Heideggerian ‘Projection’ or ‘Understanding’ as is reflected in the radical disruption to temporality that occurs in despair, particularly the diminishing of the futural self- the most profound consequence of which is the loss of the capacity to project towards one’s ownmost possibility, that of death. It is argues that death becomes impossible which then means that life itself becomes impossible.
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Edwards, Natalia. "E-commerce website personalisation based on ontological profiling." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2015. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/92126/.
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Electronic commerce has become an important part of our consumer lives, and we increasingly choose to do more and more of our shopping online. Along with the growth of online sales, the number of e-commerce retailers has also increased. This has inevitably put additional demands on existing companies as well as new market entrants to ensure that their growth (if not just survival) as well as competitiveness are sustainable and evolving. Web personalisation has been adopted as a means to support business sustainability and competitiveness. It is now increasingly common and has been recognised by e-commerce businesses and consumers as a feature and functionality, expected to be offered as ‘standard’. Recent World Wide Web technology advances have greatly improved the way ecommerce websites are designed and deployed. However, the analysis of academic literature and professional practices shows that these advances are not used to their full potential. This research gap is an opportunity for this community to consider how techniques such as ontologies could be used to enhance personalisation of e-commerce websites. This thesis presents a novel approach to e-commerce website personalisation (PERSONTO), and in particular, personalisation of content presentation. Personalisation is achieved by means of an ontology-based e-shopper profiling. For this purpose, a reusable, extendible and Semantic Web compatible customer profiling ontology OntoProfi is designed and implemented. A ‘proof-of-concept’ prototype of PERSONTO confirmed the feasibility of the proposed approach. The analysis of achievements of the research objectives and outcomes showed that the approach is flexible, extendible and reusable, and that it was achieved by using systematic methods in the system design and implementation of the prototype. The evaluation of the acceptance of the proposed approach suggests there is a high level of acceptance of the approach by the prospective end users and e-commerce developers.
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Hemsley-Flint, Fiona Claire. "Broadening ontological horizons : constructing and recycling ecological ontologies." Thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.491306.
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An ontology provides an explicit description of the concepts and relationships within a particular domain. They are used within computer science with the aim of enabling more effective data integration between heterogeneous datasets. The principal goal of ontologies, that of fully automated knowledge interoperability between computers, has y.et to be achieved. Within ontological research, there is no standard approach for ontology development, and one of the main aspects - reuse of existing ontologies, is never fully described or evaluated. At present, ontologies are the forte ofthe logician due to the complex nature ofthe formal logic they are represented in. The increasing variety of domains using ontologies requires the domain expert to have a central role in the ontology development process, something that is rarely recognised within the literature. This research explores two avenues of potential benefit to the ontology development process: the reuse of existing ontologies; and the role ofthe domain expert. This required two new methodologies to be established for building conceptual. ontologies, either from first principles or through recycling components of an existing ontology. Conceptual ontologies provide a concise and less ambiguous representation which is an intermediary between natural language and the complex languages used for formal ontologies. These were used throughout this research as a means of enabling the domain expert to construct ontologies that they are able to understand and verify. A case study based on environmental statutory bodies was used to evaluate whether these methods could successfully be used by a domain expert to construct conceptual ontologies. The results showed that the domain expert was fully capable of building conceptual ontologies and can therefore be placed at the forefront of the ontology development process. The conceptual ontologies can then be transformed into a formal representation by an ontology engineer as required. The recycling aspects were also evalu'ated and it was found that improved efficiency in development will only be achieved when there is there is a good degree of correspondence between the concepts under consideration. There are, however, less tangi.ble benefits associated with recycling since there is more consistency between.the new and recycled ontology, which will improve interoperability between datasets based on these ontologies.
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Harrigan, Nicholas. "Ontological models and reference frames in quantum mechanics." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.486604.
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On trying to describe quantum mechanics to a non-physicist, one often receives the response 'What does that really mean?' or alternatively 'What use is that?' Although these questions may seem naiVe, their answers are neither obvious nor even fully understood. In this thesis we present research aiming to help build answers to these questions. The first part of the thesis tries to shed some light on 'what quantum mechanics really means' by turning the question on its head and asking 'does quantum mechanics mean anything real?' The foundational issue of whether quantum mechanics is 'compatible with a realistic picture of our universe has puzzled some ofthe greatest physicists for over a hundred years. The approach we adopt is to begin by assuming a priori that objects in our universe can, at some level, be described by definite real states, and then ask what constraints experimental evidence (in agreement with quantum mechanics) will place on any such realistic theory. Regardless of the success of such a realistic description of our universe, our motivation for this 'reductio ad absurdum' approach is that it allows us to extract clues about how any successful description of our universe must fail to be realistic in a purely classical sense. The aim is that this will hint towards the key properties that must distinguishany successful description of our universe from our classical way of thinking. In order to quantitatively pursue this approach we build a generalized extension ofthe ontological model formalism, which allows one to compare and contrast a wide set ofrealistic theories within a single framework. We show how this formalism can clarify existing constraints placed on realism by quantum mechanics, such as non-locality, and then use it to derive a new requirement ofrealistic theories called deficiency. This is closely related to the property of contextuality, which was shown by Kochen and Specker to be necessary in any realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. After having discussed the possibilities for what quantum behaviour could mean, the second part of this thesis considers how one might be able to make practical use ofthis behaviour, regardless ofhow one interprets it. The fields of quantum computation and quantum information offer very promising applications ofquantum mechanics. However, despite the promise it holds, the transmission and manipulation ofinformation solely with quantum systems still faces challenges which must be overcome before the technology can reach fruition. We consider the problem ofhow, within a completely quantum mechanical architecture, one might use quantum information to provide reference frames for information transfers. Specifically, we discuss how one might produce quantum mechanical reference frames necessary in crucial quantum information tasks such as violating Bell inequalities.
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Saghafi, Arash. "Ontological and cognitive principles on information systems modelling." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/59427.
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Information systems are representations or models of real-world applications. Based on this premise, success of an information system is contingent on how effectively and faithfully the representations are generated and interpreted by analysts and designers. Prior research has suggested using ontology — a branch of philosophy that deals with the order and structure of reality in the broadest sense — as guidance for the modelling process. It is expected that by improving the ontological expressiveness of conceptual models, they will become more faithful and effective representations of the real world. This thesis focuses on information models that are rooted in ontology and users’ performance of cognitive tasks when using such models. Following the three-study structure of doctoral theses, my first study synthesized the prior work that had empirically evaluated the impact of ontological guidance on users’ understanding of conceptual models. The analysis indicated a strong effect of ontological guidance on improving users’ understanding of the “conceptual domain models”, particularly for tasks that required a deeper level of understanding. This provides scientific evidence in favour of incorporating ontological guidance in education and in practice of systems analysis. My second and third studies investigated a data modelling approach that is based on ontological principles, namely the instance-based paradigm, which is an alternative to the traditional data management method. Unlike the traditional approach, the instance-based paradigm requires neither imposing pre-defined structure over the data nor central control/planning. Study 2 evaluated users’ performance in (the cognitive task of) information retrieval. It indicated that users of instance-based representations are able to formulate queries more accurately compared with users of class-based representations. Study 3 broadened the scope and focused on knowledge discovery and exploration of information (that was not necessarily created for the intended application). Results of a laboratory experiment demonstrated that users of instance-based data were able to identify more potentially interesting patterns compared with users of class-based data. With the current emphasis on information analytics and importance of incorporating insights from organizational data into decision-making, the latter two studies show that the instance-based model is a promising approach to satisfy the emerging needs of information users.Business, Sauder School of
Graduate
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Almuhairi, Khamis. "Strategic Ontological Police Force Knowledge Management Framework (SOPFKMf)." Thesis, Kingston University, 2016. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/35590/.
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This study proposes the implementation of a Strategic Ontological Police Force Knowledge Management Framework with the Dubai Police Force. Recent research in knowledge management has reiterated the potential benefits of effective knowledge management in both public and private sector organisations. Effective knowledge management allows organisations to accrue rewards such as increased productivity, enhanced performance, and competitive advantage. However, the process of transitioning to new models and frameworks of knowledge management can pose a number of difficulties, particularly within organisations that have entrenched managerial practices. This study posits that the implementation of an effective knowledge management strategy must take into account the cultural and administrative specificity of the organisation, and the wider socio-cultural context in which it operates, in order to ensure that an appropriate framework is devised. The core characteristics of the proposed Knowledge Management framework of the Dubai Police Force must be one where the organisational structure first and foremost permits transparency and an avenue stream for sharing knowledge. This framework must enhance common understanding within the organisation hence ontology is utilised to capture this. New technology must be shared amongst all levels within the organisation and training at all levels is required to be homogenous. The thesis finds that knowledge sharing within the Dubai Police Force to be largely absent with a degree of apathy amongst staff members. Further, the findings show the staff to be unaware of the nature to which knowledge sharing could benefit the police force in the long run. There was also an attitude whereby staff members concentrated on their own particular tasks, goals and achievements and not those of other individuals, which if noted, would be to the benefit of the organisation. The thesis found that the entire infrastructure lacked cooperation at all levels to the detriment of the entire police force. In light of the knowledge framework and contribution, the recommendations serve to consider how people, cultures and technology interact to create a strategy for knowledge transfer within the institution rather than an environment consisting of workers the knowledge management technologies should ensure a process that includes personal development contributing to the overall organisation and training programmes.
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Iacucci, Ernesto. "Ontological characterization of high through-put biological data." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84102.
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A result of high-throughput experimentation is the demand to summarize and profile results in a meaningful and comparative form. Such experimentation often includes the production of a set of distinguished genes. For example, this distinguished set may correspond to a cluster of co-expressed genes over many conditions or a set of genes from a large scale yeast two-hybrid study. Understanding the biological relevance of this set will encompass annotation of the genes followed by investigation of shared properties found among these annotations. While the set of distinguished genes might have hundreds of annotations associated with them, only a portion of these annotations will represent meaningful aspects associated with the experiment. Identification of the meaningful aspects can be focused by application of a statistic to an annotation resource. One such annotation resource is Gene Ontology (GO), a controlled vocabulary which hierarchically structures annotation terms (classifications) onto which genes can be mapped. Given a distinguished set of genes and a classification, we wish to determine if the number of distinguished genes mapped to that classification is significantly greater or less than would be expected by chance. In estimating these probabilities, researchers have employed the hypergeometric model under differing frameworks. Assumptions made in these frameworks have ignored key issues regarding the mapping of genes to GO and have resulted in inaccurate p-values. Here we show how dynamic programming can be used to compute exact p-values for enrichment or depletion of a particular GO classification. This removes the necessity of approximating the statistics or p-values, as has been the common practice. We apply our methods to a dataset describing labour and compare p-values based on exact and approximate computations of several different statistics for measuring enrichment. We find significant disagreement between commonly employ