Ontology Concepts Research Articles

Intelligent road transport flow management system: Basic ontology concepts

Intelligent road transport flow management system: Basic ontology concepts

Comprehensive Calculation Method of Semantic Similarity of Transport Infrastructure Ontology Concept Based on SHO-BP Algorithm

Semantic information interaction plays an important role in transportation infrastructure modeling and management. To ensure semantic consistency during information exchange and data integration, ontology technology is commonly employed to measure the semantic relevance between concepts. Ontology semantic similarity accurately expresses relationships among various concepts in the domain, and when combined with Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology, it improves the efficiency of information transmission and management in construction. However, the complex structure, diverse components, and strong attribute diversity of transportation infrastructure pose challenges for analysis and computation, leading to limited precision in existing ontology semantic similarity methods. Aimed at these issues, this paper proposes a transport infrastructure ontology concept semantic similarity measurement model based on the Back Propagation (BP) neural network algorithm improved by the Spotted Hyena Optimizer (SHO-BP). Firstly, a semantic network for transportation infrastructure is established, and an ontology-based semantic similarity calculation model is constructed with three approaches, including Edge-Counting method, Feature-based method, and Information-Content method. Then, the SHO-BP algorithm is employed to comprehensively weight the three similarity measure approaches above. Finally, using bridge BIM models as examples, the semantic similarity of transportation infrastructure concepts involved in the BIM models are computed based on the weighted model derived from the aforementioned processes. The experiments demonstrate that the SHO-BP algorithm achieves a higher Pearson correlation coefficient than other algorithms for the comprehensive semantic similarity results in the field of transportation infrastructure. This improvement effectively enhances the accuracy of ontology semantic similarity calculation, and it is conducive to the sharing and integration of BIM information in different systems.

An Ontology-Based Framework for Geospatial Integration and Querying of Raster Data Cube Using Virtual Knowledge Graphs

The integration of the raster data cube alongside another form of geospatial data (e.g., vector data) raises considerable challenges when it comes to managing and representing it using knowledge graphs. Such integration can play an invaluable role in handling the heterogeneity of geospatial data and linking the raster data cube to semantic technology standards. Many recent approaches have been attempted to address this issue, but they often lack robust formal elaboration or solely concentrate on integrating raster data cubes without considering the inclusion of semantic spatial entities along with their spatial relationships. This may constitute a major shortcoming when it comes to performing advanced geospatial queries and semantically enriching geospatial models. In this paper, we propose a framework that can enable such semantic integration and advanced querying of raster data cubes based on the virtual knowledge graph (VKG) paradigm. This framework defines a semantic representation model for raster data cubes that extends the GeoSPARQL ontology. With such a model, we can combine the semantics of raster data cubes with features-based models that involve geometries as well as spatial and topological relationships. This could allow us to formulate spatiotemporal queries using SPARQL in a natural way by using ontological concepts at an appropriate level of abstraction. We propose an implementation of the proposed framework based on a VKG system architecture. In addition, we perform an experimental evaluation to compare our framework with other existing systems in terms of performance and scalability. Finally, we show the potential and the limitations of our implementation and we discuss several possible future works.

What is the role of ‘theory’ in training GP trainers?

ABSTRACT A recent evaluation paper of the London General Practitioner Trainer Course by Knight et al questions the importance of educational theory in preparing GPs to become trainers and asks ‘how much educational theory do GP trainers need to know in order to train effectively?’ This paper places the authors’ question under consideration, arguing that before the relationship between the theory and practice of education can be considered, the nature of ‘educational practice’ needs examination. There then follows a discussion of the work of Della Fish which presents two conceptualisations of educational practice in the context of postgraduate medical education in order to shed light on the different inferences contrasting epistemological and ontological conceptions can have, and the implications for curricula. This discussion is illustrated by offering the reader connections to papers in the field as evidence. At the heart of the paper is a conclusion that curriculum development and enquiry need to be sensitive to epistemological and ontological positionality as well as experiences and perceptions.

Maize heat shock proteins—prospection, validation, categorization and in silico analysis of the different ZmHSP families

Among the plant molecular mechanisms capable of effectively mitigating the effects of adverse weather conditions, the heat shock proteins (HSPs), a group of chaperones with multiple functions, stand out. At a time of full progress on the omic sciences, they look very promising in the genetic engineering field, especially in order to conceive superior genotypes, potentially tolerant to abiotic stresses (AbSts). Recently, some works concerning certain families of maize HSPs (ZmHSPs) were published. However, there was still a lack of a study that, with a high degree of criteria, would fully conglomerate them. Using distinct but complementary strategies, we have prospected as many ZmHSPs candidates as possible, gathering more than a thousand accessions. After detailed data mining, we accounted for 182 validated ones, belonging to seven families, which were subcategorized into classes with potential for functional parity. In them, we identified dozens of motifs with some degree of similarity with proteins from different kingdoms, which may help explain some of their still poorly understood means of action. Through in silico and in vitro approaches, we compared their expression levels after controlled exposure to several AbSts' sources, applied at diverse tissues, on varied phenological stages. Based on gene ontology concepts, we still analyzed them from different perspectives of term enrichment. We have also searched, in model plants and close species, for potentially orthologous genes. With all these new insights, which culminated in a plentiful supplementary material, rich in tables, we aim to constitute a fertile consultation source for those maize researchers attracted by these interesting stress proteins.

THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL FACT:
 MAIN RESEARCH APPROACHES

Social fact is a complex multidimensional phenomenon that has recently attracted
 the attention of social scientists. The essence of social fact cannot be explained within the
 framework of only one theory. The article analyses the nature of social fact within the framework
 of classical and non-classical social knowledge, as well as modern theories of structuration by
 E. Giddens, communicative rationality by P. Bourdieu, the theory of speech acts by J. Searle,
 and the concept of social ontology by B. Epstein. The problem of hypostasising concepts and the
 phenomenon of relativistic social ontology are considered. It is concluded that it is necessary to
 develop intersubjective forms of explanation of social facts and to overcome psychologisation
 and individualisation of social theories.

Knowledge Graph Dataset for Semantic Enrichment of Picture Description in NAPS Database

This data description introduces a comprehensive knowledge graph (KG) dataset with detailed information about the relevant high-level semantics of visual stimuli used to induce emotional states stored in the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS) repository. The dataset contains 6808 systematically manually assigned annotations for 1356 NAPS pictures in 5 categories, linked to WordNet synsets and Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) concepts presented in a tabular format. Both knowledge databases provide an extensive and supervised taxonomy glossary suitable for describing picture semantics. The annotation glossary consists of 935 WordNet and 513 SUMO entities. A description of the dataset and the specific processes used to collect, process, review, and publish the dataset as open data are also provided. This dataset is unique in that it captures complex objects, scenes, actions, and the overall context of emotional stimuli with knowledge taxonomies at a high level of quality. It provides a valuable resource for a variety of projects investigating emotion, attention, and related phenomena. In addition, researchers can use this dataset to explore the relationship between emotions and high-level semantics or to develop data-retrieval tools to generate personalized stimuli sequences. The dataset is freely available in common formats (Excel and CSV).

Analysis of Muhammadiyah educational concepts: a historical and philosophical review

Developments and problems that arise in the community are the basis for Muhammadiyah to carry out reforms. This research uses a type of literature study research. It is used to find theories related to the history and philosophy of Muhammadiyah education and is analyzed descriptively by considering ontological, epistemological, and axiological concepts in philosophy then conclusions are drawn objectively. Analysis of Muhammadiyah's educational philosophy is: first, Ontological Philosophy, which is based on the implementation and rational understanding of Islam with recognition of potential reality and facts. Second Epistemological philosophy discusses the paradigm of Muhammadiyah education on the scientific plain is to unite science with Islamic Sharia, and is displayed in an anthology that places the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Messenger as guidelines. While on the operational plain through education Muslims are able to take part in all sectors of life and in all fields of expertise, and are in all strata of life and all strata of expertise. Third, Axiological Philosophy discusses the implementation of Muhammadiyah education carried out rationally, civilizationally, progressively or religiously scientific, which will produce generations with integrative-interconnective scientific characteristics, so that they can become Insan Kamil, namely humans with comprehensive and holistic insight.

OPR and its corruption of “publics”: A critique

This paper advances existing critiques of the organization-public relationship (OPR) research tradition by explicating the poor ontological conceptualization of publics in OPR research as well as related methodological concerns. The authors critically analyze the publics and OPR literature, furthering past criticisms and raising new questions about the heuristic value of OPR research. The paper points out three major weaknesses of the OPR tradition in its use of publics: (1) serious vacillation in terms resulting in conceptual inconsistencies, (2) inappropriate operationalization of variables and the use of probability sampling, and (3) a lack of insightful context and inclusion of relationship factors in OPR studies, to which publics are inextricably bound. The critique cautions scholars engaged in OPR research to improve their literature reviews and to enlarge their methodologies beyond a narrow scope of relational variables, which are theoretically fragile if not devoid of research value. Finally, the critique suggests the importance of conceptualizing publics in ways that acknowledge their agency.

Ontology-driven development of dialogue systems

A new technique and its software implementation are presented to create a deeply semantically structured ontology using plain natural language text as input, without regular structure or any previous tagging and markup. The new approach is primarily aimed at highly inflectional languages, and is implemented for Ukrainian. The automatically created ontologies (in OWL) could be easily converted to other graph databases formats, such as Neo4j, and were successfully evaluated as valid ontologies using Protégé, RDFlib and Neo4j environments. An integrated approach is proposed for the development of natural language dialogue systems driven by the ontologyrelated graph database using the Cypher language for the formal queries. The original phrases are subject to a special method of semantic analysis, which determines the type of formal query to the database. The essence of the analysis is that the text of the user’s phrase goes through a series of checks. Based on their results, a set of basic templates for the formal requests are determined, as well as additional constructions that are attached to the basic template. Some of the checks may also return the notion of substitution to certain specified positions of the formal query. Formal queries can return both contexts and lists of ontology concepts. In addition to concepts, queries can also return information about specific semantic predicates that connect them, which simplifies the synthesis of natural language responses. The synthesis of answers is based on special templates, the choice of which is directly related to the corresponding template of the formal query.

Emptying the Mind: Nothingness in Mahāyāna Buddhism and in the Chan Tradition

Abstract After an introductory overview of the treatment of nothingness in Western philosophy, nothingness is addressed from the perspectives of important doctrines of Mahāyāna Buddhism, espcially the ontological concept of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda; yuanqi 緣起) in its interpretation by Nāgārjuna as emptiness (śūnyatā; kong 空) and the five manifestations of nothingness in the saṃbhogakāya (baoshen 報身) aspect of the trikāya (sanshen 三身). In the Chan Buddhist tradition, these crucial elements of Mahāyāna teaching have been reinterpreted as meditative tools for emptying the mind. Finally, Daoist elements of the Chan Buddhist interpretation of nothingness/ emptiness are pointed out.

Ontology alignment with semantic and structural embeddings

Ontology alignment is essential for data integration and interoperability across multiple applications across diverse disciplines. In recent decades, significant advancements have been made in the development of advanced methods and systems for ontology alignment. Empirical results have suggested that ontological semantics can be effectively employed to enhance the alignment process. Besides, structural information is crucial for ontology alignment as it reflects the relations among adjacent concepts in the ontology. Previous works are mainly based on external lexicon and predefined rules based on ontological structure. Recently, deep learning has imposed positive impacts on ontology alignment and obtained substantial improvement.This paper proposes a new method based on ontology embedding incorporating the semantic and structural features. It utilizes the distance between the embedding of two ontological concepts to be aligned as the criterion for alignment. The proposed method is used to align two widely used food ontologies and three Chinese food classification ontologies. The experimental results show that our method enhances the performance compared to several state-of-the-art alignment systems, demonstrating the importance of learning semantic representation and structural representation. Furthermore, the proposed method is evaluated on several different tracks of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI), and experimental results show that our method outperforms other baselines in effectiveness. The data and code can be obtained from: https://github.com/haozhigang1111/Ontology-Alignment.git.

‘Something Within Me Which Shines’: Knowing and Unknowing God and the Self

ABSTRACT Philosophers of the theory-of-mind have always grappled with how to describe and image human mental processes, given the impossibility of accessing a perspective outside consciousness from which to analyse it. This article considers the history of models of the mind before exploring in detail Meister Eckhart’s conception of psychology, epistemology and ontology. Eckhart’s German Sermons and Talks of Instruction are drawn on to tease out his understanding of the mind/brain and the sensible, rational and intellectual faculties. The article looks especially to Eckhart’s writings on union with the divine and the apophatic struggle to conceive or intelligibly communicate, from the human perspective, the transcendent, timeless and unrestricted knowledge which is the Godhead.

L’impact de la prise en charge des couches sémantiques sur la recherche d'information touristique : Cas des établissements et services touristiques digitalisés au Maroc

Tourism is an economic and a wealth-creating pillar that involves several volatile actors that are rich in dynamic, complex and heterogeneous information (Benckendorff et al., 2019). Therein, the continuous increase in the volume of information available on tourism offerings on the web has made user decision making a crucial task. As a result, the use of personalized and intelligent recommendation systems is essential for the satisfaction of tourism consumers (Grün et al., 2017). The objective of this article is to reveal the impact of the deployment of semantic techniques on the quality and accuracy of search results for tourism information, in the case of tourism in Morocco. This will be done through ontologies, which are a key component in the semantic web (Buhalis, 2020). To this end, we first presented the implementation of the semantic web and the use of ontologies in it. Then, we described the basic background of ontologies. Finally, we discussed the existing ontologies in the tourism domain in Morocco. The findings show that, the assumption of ontological conceptualization during the creation of digital content by tourism establishments, as a context-aware knowledge base, ensures the implementation of a semantic correspondence between users' preferences and the characteristics of tourism offers published, thus improving the quality and accuracy of the recommendations according to the user's context (Abbasi-Moud et al., 2022). Nevertheless, the evolution of tourism ontologies following changes in this sector is of major complexity. For this reason, the invention of an automatic approach, based on artificial intelligence techniques, NLP, Machine Learning or Deep Learning, can contribute to an evolutionary, reliable and easier maintenance of tourism ontologies, in the Moroccan context.

Transiting From the East to the ‘Core’ West of Europe: Slovakia’s Ontological Liminality After the Outbreak of 2022 Russia’s War on Ukraine

This article examines the effects of the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022 on the reconstruction of the notion of ‘Eastern Europe’ in Slovak political discourse and the subsequent re-definition of Slovakia’s political subjectivity vis-à-vis the contested notion of the ‘East’. It aims to advance the application of ontological liminality concept in international relations integrating it with post-structuralist and post-colonial insights on identity formation. I seek to shed light on how Slovakia negotiates its liminal position of being ‘the East of the Western Europe’ under the new geopolitical and discursive realities. Drawing on the concept of ontological liminality and post-colonial notion of master, my principal argument suggests that Slovakia aspired to demonstrate its capability to define the normative meaning of EUrope as one of its ‘core’ members positioning itself as a superior European state, a ‘master’ in relation to Ukraine. Although, on Slovakia’s mental map, the notion of ‘East’ assumes a far-away position it escaped long time ago, at the same time ‘East’ with the tinge of orientalism has been constructed as an indispensable subject position that the future newcomers to EUrope carry when they are pursuing their transition to the West. Based on hierarchically underpinned discursive self-positioning of Slovakia, ‘East’ is thus made a pre-liminal attribute which post-communist countries let go when beginning their transition to/through the Central Europe that ultimately emerges as an intermediary post-colonial spatial and discursive setting where liminals undergo the ritual of becoming genuinely EUropean.

New Virtuality

Our multimedia website project, “The New Virtuality”, explores the implications of highly realistic images that interact and socialise with human users, often seemingly “live” in real‑time. Created with imaging technologies such as holographic projection or virtual reality (VR) and usually boosted by AI and machine learning, we argue that these images present unprecedented directions in understanding how reality, liveness and presence are discerned and believed. Radically breaking down differences between real and unreal, they point to an era of blurred boundaries, dematerialization and limbic spaces which converges visual media with twenty-first century politics of dis/misinformation, post-truth and deep fakery. In this project, we discuss this era as “the new virtuality.” These developments underpin the project’s research questions: how to understand this media that so freely and near-seamlessly mix virtual and actual realities? How to place this phenomenon in media’s long history of blurred environments, while still appreciating their distinctive newness and challenges? What are the impacts of the new virtuality on our apprehensions and constructions of realities? How might this mediated reality relate – as code, as language, as consciousness – to the wider contexts of information that colour contemporary times? In our methodology, we interwove theory, multimedia expression and fiction as multiple voices to articulate the project’s arguments across three frameworks of distinct approaches, media elements and genre features. The first framework is a historical context with which to understand the continuities and divergences of virtuality. The second is the connection of theory – particularly from film, screen and media studies – with textual readings drawn across multiple media, including paintings, cinema, performance, VR, apps and architecture. The third is the employment of fiction and multimedia. Inspired by the “scientific fiction” work of Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan (Lee and Chen, 2021), we intertwined a fictional story through the project for greater animation and accessibility – a creative warp to the academic weft. Multimedia via the essays’ image margins and a 33‑minute video essay function as audiovisual “mood boards” to provide elaboration, illustration, colour and setting for conveying the new virtuality’s poetics of fudged and adrift unsettling across this new reality. The result is a work of multiple voices and hybridity which identifies a new framework of reality through contemporary mixed media. This new virtuality is no longer about the questions of realism or illusion (e.g. Friedberg 2009; Grau 2003) from computer‑generated imagery (CGI) or even deepfakes. They are about new technical codes and information which give rise to revised conceptions of ontology, anthropology, epistemology, literacy, time and space. They are new systems of complex linkages between media, codes, expressions, consciousness, change and history. These ideas not only impact understanding of our world. They also revise orientations of truth values and identifications of moral spaces.

Systematic design and data-driven evaluation of social determinants of health ontology (SDoHO).

Social determinants of health (SDoH) play critical roles in health outcomes and well-being. Understanding the interplay of SDoH and health outcomes is critical to reducing healthcare inequalities and transforming a "sick care" system into a "health-promoting" system. To address the SDOH terminology gap and better embed relevant elements in advanced biomedical informatics, we propose an SDoH ontology (SDoHO), which represents fundamental SDoH factors and their relationships in a standardized and measurable way. Drawing on the content of existing ontologies relevant to certain aspects of SDoH, we used a top-down approach to formally model classes, relationships, and constraints based on multiple SDoH-related resources. Expert review and coverage evaluation, using a bottom-up approach employing clinical notes data and a national survey, were performed. We constructed the SDoHO with 708 classes, 106 object properties, and 20 data properties, with 1,561 logical axioms and 976 declaration axioms in the current version. Three experts achieved 0.967 agreement in the semantic evaluation of the ontology. A comparison between the coverage of the ontology and SDOH concepts in 2 sets of clinical notes and a national survey instrument also showed satisfactory results. SDoHO could potentially play an essential role in providing a foundation for a comprehensive understanding of the associations between SDoH and health outcomes and paving the way for health equity across populations. SDoHO has well-designed hierarchies, practical objective properties, and versatile functionalities, and the comprehensive semantic and coverage evaluation achieved promising performance compared to the existing ontologies relevant to SDoH.

The regulation of and through information technology: Towards a conceptual ontology for IS research

This special issue addresses a largely neglected area of Information Systems (IS) research – the regulation of and through Information Technology (IT). As with other human technologies, IT artefacts present risks and can harm individuals, groups, organisations, economies, and society: However, this remains a largely unexplored topic in IS research. Nevertheless, regulators, social commentators, the media, and the public have voiced their concerns about such risks, particularly those related to artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, privacy, digital assets (e.g. cryptocurrencies), and the market dominance of digital platforms. Accordingly, regulations have been instituted or proposed to regulate IT artefacts in and across several business sectors. Additionally, in response to the informational challenges posed by a complex web of laws and regulations, regulators and business organisations have implemented IT artefacts to transform regulatory and supervisory processes or to enhance organisational risk management and compliance reporting capabilities. This special issue addresses the research challenges related to emergent issues surrounding the regulation of and through IT. In this editorial, we take stock of where the field currently stands. We advance a conceptual ontology of IT regulation to guide future research by specifying several taken-for-granted core concepts. By rendering the concepts, categories, and their relationships explicit, the model and its related research questions provide a firm foundation to generate a cumulative body of research on the regulation of and through IT.

The future of critical interdisciplinary accounting research: Performative ontology and critical interventionist research

The matter of care in this thought piece is the future of the critical interdisciplinary accounting research (IPA) project. On the one hand, the need for critical IPA research is arguably increasing today, not least due to the very serious, complex and ‘wicked’ global problems – like climate change, decreasing biodiversity, over-population, global inequality and COVID-19. On the other hand, however, critical IPA research faces some severe challenges, such as the dominance of mono-disciplinary normal science, limitations of getting access to organisations, and a certain academic insularity. To discuss possibilities for furthering critical IPA research, we start from approaches to critical performativity and suggest to complement them with ideas from two very different research approaches. First, we suggest that the concept of performative ontology and the related diverse economies approach, introduced by Gibson-Graham (2008), goes a step further than previous conceptualizations of critical performativity in methodological as well as practical terms. Secondly, we argue that employing some of the inherent ideas and learning points of interventionist research in conjunction with performative ontology can inspire new ways of conducting critical IPA research that matters.

Clinician and patient perspectives on the ontology of mental disorder: a qualitative study.

Psychiatry may face an "identity crisis" regarding its very foundations. The lack of consensus regarding the theoretical grounds of psychiatry as a discipline has its epicenter in the discussion about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). A growing number of academics considers the manual broken and a growing number of patients voice concern. Despite the huge body of critique, 90% of Randomized Trials are based on DSM definitions of mental disorder. Therefore, the question regarding the ontology of mental disorder remains: what is a mental disorder, exactly? We aim to identify ontologies that live among patients and clinicians, evaluate the degree of consistency and coherence between clinician and patient views and contribute to the establishment of a novel ontological paradigm of mental disorder that is aligned with patients' and clinicians' perspectives. Eighty participants (clinicians/patients/clinicians with lived experience) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview, exploring their ideas on the ontology of mental disorder. This question was approached from different angles which led to comprising the interview schedule into different topics: "concept of disorder," "representation by DSM," "what is treated," "what is recovered," and "the right outcome measure." Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using inductive Thematic Analysis. From all subthemes and main themes, a typology was constructed in which six, not necessarily mutually exclusive, ontological domains were identified: mental disorder as (1) disease, (2) functional impairment, (3) loss of adaptation, (4) existential problem, (5) highly subjective phenomenon, and (6) deviation from social norms. Common ground for the sample groups was that mental disorder is about functional impairment. Although about a fourth of sample clinicians holds an ontological concept of disease, only a small percentage of patients and none of the clinicians with lived experience adhered to an ontological concept of disease. The sample clinicians most often understand mental disorder to be a highly subjective phenomenon, and individuals with lived experience (patients and clinicians) most often understand mental (dis)order to be adaptational in nature: an (im)balance of burden in relation to strengths, skills, and recourses. The ontological palette is more diverse than what is taught about mental disorder in dominant scientific and educational discourse. There is a need to diversify the current, dominant ontology and make room for other ontologies. Investment is required in the development, elaboration and coming of age of these alternative ontologies, allowing them to reach their full potential and act as drivers of a landscape of promising novel scientific and clinical approaches.