Competency Questions Research Articles

An Ontological Informatics on Development of Tablet Drug in Pharmaceutical Industry

In production enterprise like pharmaceutical, considerable time and money is spent in training new employee to be familiar with fundamental process of production and to master its complexity. Since the training does not guarantee trainees’ good understanding, the complex structure of production is retained. There is need for Pharmaceutical students to be familiar with industry based realities concerning production process. Therefore, a knowledge based system is needful to aid industrial training process and teaching, The knowledge based system, in this case, which is an ontology, will enable trainees and students to systematically learn at their pace in order to master the complexity of the production process. Thus, this paper develops a task oriented ontology which is explicit, expressive, and can naturally represent the production activities of tablet drugs. The ontology is built by formalizing the terminologies and constraints based on both Allen interval temporal logic and McDermott’s logic of time points. The axioms were written in first order logic and implemented using Prolog programming language. The competency of the ontology was tested using competency questions, which the ontology could answer, with the use of simple queries. The ontology developed can be reused in representing production activities of capsules, gels, injections and creams. Keywords:knowledge based system; tablet drugs; formalization; production process; ontology.

Representation of an Academic and Institutional Context using Ontologies

In this paper we describe an ontology model that was designed and implemented to represent academic and institutional contexts related with a research center in Mexico City. The ontology model aims at supporting logic- based query answering and reasoning regarding contexts such as geographical areas, time, persons, libraries, cultural and academic events, teaching and tutoring schedules. The type of questions that the ontology model is capable of answering range from academic issues such as tutoring and thesis supervision; those concerning the location of people, libraries, buildings, roads; those regarding time such as class schedules, event schedules; and even those about the food menu offered at the cafeteria of the institution. In order to evaluate the ontology model, a set of competency questions were translated into SQWRL rule-based query language. Results of queries show the feasibility of using ontological models as the supporting technology to implement ubiquitous and pervasive systems for academic environments.

Comparison of self-reported professional competency across pharmacy education programs: a survey of Thai pharmacy graduates enrolled in the public service program.

IntroductionThai pharmacy education consists of two undergraduate programs, a 5-year Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy (BScPsci and BScPcare) degree and a 6-year Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm D). Pharmacy students who wish to serve in the public sector need to enroll in the public service program. This study aims to compare the perception of professional competency among new pharmacy graduates from the three different pharmacy programs available in 2013 who enrolled in the public service program.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted among new pharmacy graduates in 2013 using a self-administered, structured, close-ended questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of respondents’ characteristics and perception of professional competencies. The competency questions consisted of 13 items with a 5-point scale. Data collection was conducted during Thailand’s annual health professional meeting on April 2, 2013 for workplace selection of pharmacy graduates.ResultsA total of 266 new pharmacy graduates responded to the questionnaire (response rate 49.6%). There were no significant differences in sex and admission modes across the three pharmacy programs. Pharm D graduates reported highest competency in acute care services, medication reconciliation services, and primary care services among the other two programs. BScPsci graduates reported more competence in consumer health protection and herbal and alternative medicines than BScPcare graduates. There were significant differences in three competency domains: patient care, consumer protection and community health services, and drug review and information, but no significant differences in the health administration and communication domain among three pharmacy programs.ConclusionDespite a complete change into a 6-year Pharm D program in 2014, pharmacy education in Thailand should continue evolving to be responsive to the needs of the health system. An annual survey of new pharmacy graduates should be continued, to monitor changes of professional competency across different program tracks and other factors which may influence their contribution to the health service system. Likewise, a longitudinal monitoring of their competencies in the graduate cohort should be conducted.

Evaluating the Good Ontology Design Guideline (GoodOD) with the ontology quality requirements and evaluation method and metrics (OQuaRE).

ObjectiveTo (1) evaluate the GoodOD guideline for ontology development by applying the OQuaRE evaluation method and metrics to the ontology artefacts that were produced by students in a randomized controlled trial, and (2) informally compare the OQuaRE evaluation method with gold standard and competency questions based evaluation methods, respectively.BackgroundIn the last decades many methods for ontology construction and ontology evaluation have been proposed. However, none of them has become a standard and there is no empirical evidence of comparative evaluation of such methods. This paper brings together GoodOD and OQuaRE. GoodOD is a guideline for developing robust ontologies. It was previously evaluated in a randomized controlled trial employing metrics based on gold standard ontologies and competency questions as outcome parameters. OQuaRE is a method for ontology quality evaluation which adapts the SQuaRE standard for software product quality to ontologies and has been successfully used for evaluating the quality of ontologies.MethodsIn this paper, we evaluate the effect of training in ontology construction based on the GoodOD guideline within the OQuaRE quality evaluation framework and compare the results with those obtained for the previous studies based on the same data.ResultsOur results show a significant effect of the GoodOD training over developed ontologies by topics: (a) a highly significant effect was detected in three topics from the analysis of the ontologies of untrained and trained students; (b) both positive and negative training effects with respect to the gold standard were found for five topics.ConclusionThe GoodOD guideline had a significant effect over the quality of the ontologies developed. Our results show that GoodOD ontologies can be effectively evaluated using OQuaRE and that OQuaRE is able to provide additional useful information about the quality of the GoodOD ontologies.

Ontology of Aircraft Carrier Geographic Information

This paper aimed to build an ontology of aircraft carrier geographic information, defined ontology’s constants, predicates, functions about aircraft carrier geographic information, and proposed a series of competency questions which could be solved by this ontology. Paper presented disjoint axioms, simple axioms and complex axioms of this ontology around these competency questions, and proved the consistency of the carrier ontology by examples. Finally, paper gave the answers for competency questions.

In Search of the Legal Basis for Environmental and Energy Regulation at the EU Level: The Case of Unconventional Gas Extraction

The relation of the energy and environmental competences in the European Union (EU) in terms of renewable energy and its promotion and impact on climate change has been subject to intense academic discussion as well as to judicial review. The general tendency is for measures regarding renewable energy to be passed on both competences, depending on the specific content and objective. Other forms of energy, however, have not been included in this debate. The outcome outside the area of renewable energy is expected to be quite different. Shale gas extraction, for example, is associated with negative, or at least problematic, environmental impacts, alongside the benefits it offers to the security of the EU's energy supply. Consequently, the question of competence is not straightforward. This article analyzes the interplay and conflicts between the energy and environmental titles of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in the context of shale gas activities. The article further explores the importance of ‘significance’ in this setting, and how this concept is crucial in determining the appropriate decision‐making procedure to pass a legal measure on shale gas in practice.

Komunikologia – zarys teoretyczny i problemy praktyczne w świetle kształcenia kompetencji komunikacyjnych

Communicology – theoretical overview and practical problems, in the light of teaching of communication skills
 The article discusses communicology, a research discipline that has been gaining increasing popularity lately, both among scholars specializing in the problems of human communication (psychologists, philosophers, linguists), and among rhetoric and auto presentation coaches and trainers. The first part of the paper presents problems related to the definition of the term communicology, and gives a wider description of two models of communication: the code and the orchestral model. This part also introduces the axioms of communication proposed by the scholars of the Palo Alto school (Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson), as they are the foundation of the modern, pragmatic approach to communication as a feedback process in which the role of the receiver is no less important than that of the sender. The second part of the paper focuses on selected problems related to teaching of practical communication skills. It discusses the questions of communicative competence (as understood by Dell Hymes), non-verbal communication, development of assertiveness and empathy, and also the problem of communicative effectiveness and of the purpose of perfecting communicative skills (interpreted from the point of view of the ritual communication model of James Carey and Eric Rothenbuhler).

CQChecker: A Tool to Check Ontologies in OWL-DL using Competency Questions written in Controlled Natural Language

CQChecker: A Tool to Check Ontologies in OWL-DL using Competency Questions written in Controlled Natural Language

Survey questions about party competence: Insights from cognitive interviews

Voter assessments of party competence have become a key explanation of electoral decision-making. However, there are at least three important aspects to understanding responses to questions on issue-specific party competence: comprehension difficulties; a lack of well-formed attitudes and relevant information; and the use of response heuristics. We used 20 cognitive interviews carried out in Austria in 2011 to test competence questions. The interviews show us how respondents explain their responses. We find evidence that many people (1) may hold only weak opinions and have little information on issue-specific party competence and (2) may make use of distinct but related concepts, particularly salience and position, when answering questions about competence. We provide recommendations for researchers and survey designers based on our findings.

Towards a Machine of a Process (MOP) ontology to facilitate e-commerce of industrial machinery

Adapting to user's requirements is a key factor for enterprise success. Despite the existence of several approaches that point in this direction, simplifying integration and interoperability among users, suppliers and the enterprise during product lifecycle, is still an open issue. Ontologies have been used in some manufacturing applications and they promise to be a valid approach to model manufacturing resources of enterprises (e.g. machinery and raw material). Nevertheless, in this domain, most of the ontologies have been developed following methodologies based on development from scratch, thus ontologies previously developed have been discarded. Such ontological methodologies tend to hold the interoperability issues in some level. In this paper, a method that integrates ontology reuse with ontology validation and learning is presented. An upper (top-level) ontology for manufacturing was used as a reference to evaluate and to improve specific domain ontology. The evaluation procedure was based on the systemic methodology for ontology learning (SMOL). As a result of the application of SMOL, an ontology entitled Machine of a Process (MOP) was developed. The terminology included in MOP was validated by means of a text mining procedure called Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF–IDF) which was carried out on documents from the domain in this study. Competency questions were performed on preexisting domain ontologies and MOP, proving that this new ontology has a performance better than the domain ontologies used as seed.

Ontology-Based CRM for Bank Customers

This paper introduces an ontology-based CRM for the commercial use, which specifically is for commercial bank customers. By using the ontology modeling method, which includes competency questions, intuitions, axioms and specific model, this ontology can share the information between the commercial banks and their customers. Ontology for the commercial banks domain is being developed as relationships and facts of the architecture. The steps of developing such an ontology model and a mapping mechanism between the commercial bank's customers and ability of consuming are discussed.

Governing from the bench: the Supreme Court of Canada and the judicial role

Introduction 1 Studying Judicial Behaviour 2 The Evolution of the Court and Its Justices 3 Setting the Stage: Exploring Court Processes Leading to Decisions 4 The Decision: Collegiality, Conflict, and Consensus 5 A Question of Competence: Examining Judicial Policy Making 6 The Court in Government and Society: Dialogue, Public Opinion, and the Media Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

KEEPING ABREAST OF TIME FOR FUTURE CHALLENGES

This year, the transformation of the Slovenian Armed Forces continues. Last year, the guidance on reduction of defence budget continued from the previous years. This required a thorough reflection, preparation of measures and constant upgrades in the defence system functioning. In the overall effort to apply cuts to defence budgets, NATO member states searched for various solutions and each of them tackled this challenge in a slightly different way. The term transformation is thus a very topical term. We have heard and read a lot about it. However, in the last year, Smart Defence was certainly the one most related to the reduction in defence budgets. And what is the essence of Smart Defence? It is no longer about how to achieve more with less, but how to use the given resources to maximise the efficiency. This also requires changes in thinking, approaches, and mainly solutions. NATO member states considered different options to achieve best results in the current situation. The synergy of effects is supposed to be the right option for everything, whereby all of the engaged entities should contribute to the best of their abilities and in a way to best build an effective whole. In the Slovenian Armed Forces, we have considered the given circumstances, studied our possibilities and with a new year we started a journey down the path of optimal functioning and changes. This process was called transformation of the Slovenian Armed Forces. It is just that topical issues from the domestic and inter- national security environment are also discussed in our contributions. Some of the authors thus present their works and findings developed recently during the transfor- mation process. In this issue, Vinko Vegič is publishing his article »NATO crisis interventions – lessons learned and challenges of the operation in Libya”. He describes what such a vast NATO operation means and what it brings in practice, i.e. in a situation where different doctrines and theoretic debates should provide appropriate solutions. Branimir Furlan wrote the article »Professional armed forces without professional autonomy – is this possible?” where he shares a view on the developmental phases of the professionalization of the armed forces and military profession as the final goal bringing to foreground the question of competence and responsibility of the military for its own professional development. Valter Bosotina and Branko Lavtar discuss “The renovation of uniform-supply system in the Slovenian Armed Forces”. In their article, they present the solutions for the improvement of the process used so far, which is necessary for the functioning of the Slovenian Armed Forces. The process is, at the same time, affected by various circumstances and influences, which require changes. In his article “New approach to prediction and decision-making in the targeting process” Jurij Jurtela presents a subject which deals with fire support systems. He acquaints readers with the dilemmas that occur during individual military operations and require decisions about a great variety of matters. He provides suggestions on how to tackle those dilemmas and what tools to use for the best effect and superiority. Erik Kopač and Janja Vuga from the Faculty of Social Sciences write about Individual’s choice to seek employment in the Slovenian Armed Forces contract reserve. They used socio-psychological approach to study, which factors are the most decisive for this type of employment, and established that economic stimula- tion plays an important role in this, while the essence lies in the personal attitude of each individual. More details are available in the article. Canadian anthropologist Donna Winslow studied modern defence forces. She authored a number of articles and reached many interesting findings. Two of the most famous include the findings about a scandal in Somalia and about the war in Chechnya. Maja Garb, Jelena Juvan and Uroš Svete honoured her memory with their article “From the questions of military culture to the analysis of anthropologi- sts’ role in the armed forces – the work of Donna Winslow”.

Metacognition, OSCE performance anxiety and OSCE performance

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A practitioner's guide to a low-carbon economy: lessons from the UK

Drawing primarily on the UK experience, five practical lessons are identified for policy makers who seek to decarbonize their economies. First, decarbonization needs a solid legal basis to give it credibility and overcome time inconsistency problems. Second, putting a price on carbon is essential, but low-carbon policies also have to address wider market, investment, and behavioural failures. This in turn raises issues of policy complexity and coordination. Third, the low-carbon economy is likely to be highly electrified. Clean electricity could be a cost-effective way of decarbonizing many parts of the economy, including transport, heating, and parts of industry. Decarbonization therefore starts in the power sector. Fourth, the low-carbon transition is primarily a revolution of production and not consumption. Both supply-side innovation and demand-side adjustments in lifestyle and behaviour are needed, though the former should dominate. Fifth, the transition to a low-carbon economy is economically and technologically feasible. Achieving it is a question of policy competence and having the political will to drive economic and social change. Policy relevance Practically all major GHG emitters now have climate change legislation on their statute books. Given what is at stake, and the complexity of the task at hand, it is important that policy makers learn from each other and establish a code of good low-carbon practice. The main lessons from the UK are distilled and presented. Carbon policy is considered for key sectors, such as electricity, buildings, and transport, and possible decarbonization paths are also outlined. It is shown that the transition to a low-carbon economy is economically and technologically feasible. Achieving it is primarily a question of policy competence and political will. This in turn means that climate change action needs a strong legislative basis to give the reforms statutory legitimacy. Low-carbon policies will have to address a wide range of market, investment and behavioural failures. Putting a price on carbon is an essential starting point, but only one of many policy reforms.

Automated Compliance Checking of Construction Operation Plans Using a Deontology for the Construction Domain

Automated compliance checking (ACC) in the construction domain continues to be a challenge. Current ACC systems do not provide the level of knowledge representation and reasoning that is needed to efficiently interpret applicable norms (e.g., laws, regulations, contractual requirements, advisory practices) and check conformance of designs and operations to those interpretations. In this paper, the authors explore a new approach to ACC and propose to apply theoretical and computational developments in the fields of deontology, deontic logic, and natural language processing to the problem of compliance checking in construction. Deontology is a theory of rights and obligations, and deontic logic is a branch of modal logic that deals with obligations, prohibitions, and permissions. This paper focuses on presenting a deontology for ACC in construction. The deontic model is composed of a hierarchy of normative concepts, interconcept relations, and deontic axioms (rules represented using deontic logic). The deontology was evaluated through formal competency questions, automated consistency checking, automated redundancy checking, expert evaluation, and application-oriented evaluation. The deontic model was manually applied in checking the compliance of storm-water pollution prevention plans with applicable norms.

Developing a semantically rich ontology for the biobank-administration domain.

BackgroundBiobanks are a critical resource for translational science. Recently, semantic web technologies such as ontologies have been found useful in retrieving research data from biobanks. However, recent research has also shown that there is a lack of data about the administrative aspects of biobanks. These data would be helpful to answer research-relevant questions such as what is the scope of specimens collected in a biobank, what is the curation status of the specimens, and what is the contact information for curators of biobanks. Our use cases include giving researchers the ability to retrieve key administrative data (e.g. contact information, contact's affiliation, etc.) about the biobanks where specific specimens of interest are stored. Thus, our goal is to provide an ontology that represents the administrative entities in biobanking and their relations. We base our ontology development on a set of 53 data attributes called MIABIS, which were in part the result of semantic integration efforts of the European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI). The previous work on MIABIS provided the domain analysis for our ontology. We report on a test of our ontology against competency questions that we derived from the initial BBMRI use cases. Future work includes additional ontology development to answer additional competency questions from these use cases.ResultsWe created an open-source ontology of biobank administration called Ontologized MIABIS (OMIABIS) coded in OWL 2.0 and developed according to the principles of the OBO Foundry. It re-uses pre-existing ontologies when possible in cooperation with developers of other ontologies in related domains, such as the Ontology of Biomedical Investigation. OMIABIS provides a formalized representation of biobanks and their administration. Using the ontology and a set of Description Logic queries derived from the competency questions that we identified, we were able to retrieve test data with perfect accuracy. In addition, we began development of a mapping from the ontology to pre-existing biobank data structures commonly used in the U.S.ConclusionsIn conclusion, we created OMIABIS, an ontology of biobank administration. We found that basing its development on pre-existing resources to meet the BBMRI use cases resulted in a biobanking ontology that is re-useable in environments other than BBMRI. Our ontology retrieved all true positives and no false positives when queried according to the competency questions we derived from the BBMRI use cases. Mapping OMIABIS to a data structure used for biospecimen collections in a medical center in Little Rock, AR showed adequate coverage of our ontology.

HuPSON: the human physiology simulation ontology.

BackgroundLarge biomedical simulation initiatives, such as the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), are substantially dependent on controlled vocabularies to facilitate the exchange of information, of data and of models. Hindering these initiatives is a lack of a comprehensive ontology that covers the essential concepts of the simulation domain.ResultsWe propose a first version of a newly constructed ontology, HuPSON, as a basis for shared semantics and interoperability of simulations, of models, of algorithms and of other resources in this domain. The ontology is based on the Basic Formal Ontology, and adheres to the MIREOT principles; the constructed ontology has been evaluated via structural features, competency questions and use case scenarios.The ontology is freely available at: http://www.scai.fraunhofer.de/en/business-research-areas/bioinformatics/downloads.html (owl files) and http://bishop.scai.fraunhofer.de/scaiview/ (browser).ConclusionsHuPSON provides a framework for a) annotating simulation experiments, b) retrieving relevant information that are required for modelling, c) enabling interoperability of algorithmic approaches used in biomedical simulation, d) comparing simulation results and e) linking knowledge-based approaches to simulation-based approaches. It is meant to foster a more rapid uptake of semantic technologies in the modelling and simulation domain, with particular focus on the VPH domain.

Number without language: comparative psychology and the evolution of numerical cognition

Number without language: comparative psychology and the evolution of numerical cognition

A knowledge based approach to matching human neurodegenerative disease and animal models

Neurodegenerative diseases present a wide and complex range of biological and clinical features. Animal models are key to translational research, yet typically only exhibit a subset of disease features rather than being precise replicas of the disease. Consequently, connecting animal to human conditions using direct data-mining strategies has proven challenging, particularly for diseases of the nervous system, with its complicated anatomy and physiology. To address this challenge we have explored the use of ontologies to create formal descriptions of structural phenotypes across scales that are machine processable and amenable to logical inference. As proof of concept, we built a Neurodegenerative Disease Phenotype Ontology (NDPO) and an associated Phenotype Knowledge Base (PKB) using an entity-quality model that incorporates descriptions for both human disease phenotypes and those of animal models. Entities are drawn from community ontologies made available through the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) and qualities are drawn from the Phenotype and Trait Ontology (PATO). We generated ~1200 structured phenotype statements describing structural alterations at the subcellular, cellular and gross anatomical levels observed in 11 human neurodegenerative conditions and associated animal models. PhenoSim, an open source tool for comparing phenotypes, was used to issue a series of competency questions to compare individual phenotypes among organisms and to determine which animal models recapitulate phenotypic aspects of the human disease in aggregate. Overall, the system was able to use relationships within the ontology to bridge phenotypes across scales, returning non-trivial matches based on common subsumers that were meaningful to a neuroscientist with an advanced knowledge of neuroanatomy. The system can be used both to compare individual phenotypes and also phenotypes in aggregate. This proof of concept suggests that expressing complex phenotypes using formal ontologies provides considerable benefit for comparing phenotypes across scales and species.