Description Logic Research Articles

Under-specification as the source of ambiguity and vagueness in narrative phenotype algorithm definitions

IntroductionCurrently, one of the commonly used methods for disseminating electronic health record (EHR)-based phenotype algorithms is providing a narrative description of the algorithm logic, often accompanied by flowcharts. A challenge with this mode of dissemination is the potential for under-specification in the algorithm definition, which leads to ambiguity and vagueness.MethodsThis study examines incidents of under-specification that occurred during the implementation of 34 narrative phenotyping algorithms in the electronic Medical Record and Genomics (eMERGE) network. We reviewed the online communication history between algorithm developers and implementers within the Phenotype Knowledge Base (PheKB) platform, where questions could be raised and answered regarding the intended implementation of a phenotype algorithm.ResultsWe developed a taxonomy of under-specification categories via an iterative review process between two groups of annotators. Under-specifications that lead to ambiguity and vagueness were consistently found across narrative phenotype algorithms developed by all involved eMERGE sites.Discussion and conclusionOur findings highlight that under-specification is an impediment to the accuracy and efficiency of the implementation of current narrative phenotyping algorithms, and we propose approaches for mitigating these issues and improved methods for disseminating EHR phenotyping algorithms.

Spatial concept learning and inference on geospatial polygon data

Geospatial knowledge has always been an essential driver for many societal aspects. This concerns in particular urban planning and urban growth management. To gain insights from geospatial data and guide decisions usually authoritative and open data sources are used, combined with user or citizen sensing data. However, we see a great potential for improving geospatial analytics by combining geospatial data with the rich terminological knowledge, e.g., provided by the Linked Open Data Cloud. Having semantically explicit, integrated geospatial and terminological knowledge, expressed by means of established vocabularies and ontologies, cross-domain spatial analytics can be performed. One analytics technique working on terminological knowledge is inductive concept learning, an approach that learns classifiers expressed as logical concept descriptions. In this paper, we extend inductive concept learning to infer and make use of the spatial context of entities in spatio-terminological data. We propose a formalism for extracting and making spatial relations explicit such that they can be exploited to learn spatial concept descriptions, enabling ‘spatially aware’ concept learning. We further provide an implementation of this formalism and demonstrate its capabilities in different evaluation scenarios.

‘We don’t want to be governed like this anymore’: protest democracy as an expression of a crisis of governmentality in post-revolution Tunisia

ABSTRACT This article analyses the political significance of the protests that have arisen in Tunisia since the ‘revolution’ and the establishment of a parliamentary regime. This is what the protests studied have in common: they belong to neglected regions in the country’s hinterland; that they mobilize young local populations; they claim rights over their territories’ soil and subsoil resources exploitation; they occupy a strategic location for a relatively long period of time; and they set up democratic mechanisms for these locations’ self-management, in the form of ‘coordinations’. The description of social logics and the way populations resist, as well as the authoritarian rationality of government action and the inability of elected officials to mediate conflicts, reveal differences between protesters who seek autonomy from state control, while others refer to a rent-centred understanding of the claim. It also shows the emergence of a ‘protest democracy’, itself an expression of a crisis of ‘governmentality’. These two phenomena are symptomatic of a demand for integrating populations and new ways of governing that break with the reeks of past authoritarianism and current representative democracy.

A conditional, a fuzzy and a probabilistic interpretation of self-organizing maps

Abstract In this paper we establish a link between fuzzy and preferential semantics for description logics and self-organizing maps (SOMs), which have been proposed as possible candidates to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying category generalization. In particular, we show that the input/output behavior of a SOM after training can be described by a fuzzy description logic interpretation as well as by a preferential interpretation, based on a concept-wise multipreference semantics, which takes into account preferences with respect to different concepts and has been recently proposed for ranked and for weighted defeasible description logics. Properties of the network can be proven by model checking on the fuzzy or on the preferential interpretation. Starting from the fuzzy interpretation, we also provide a probabilistic account for this neural network model.

Transformational Challenge Reactor Safety Design and Radionuclide Retention Strategy

An integrated safety design and radionuclide (RN) retention strategy is developed to support the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) demonstration. This demonstration aims to showcase viability for rapid deployment of a novel reactor by leveraging the advances in materials, manufacturing, and computational sciences through a highly integrated and agile design and development approach. This strategy provides a logical description and understanding of how RNs are contained within the facility. Rather than discussing fission product barriers individually between separate design and safety basis reports, this paper provides a consistent description and narrative to better facilitate regulatory interactions and focus safety design efforts. The principal barriers credited include the various coating layers in the tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel particle, the silicon carbide (SiC) matrix hosting the particles within the fuel element, the helium pressure boundary, and the confinement system. The choice and assumed performance of the credited barriers are highly conservative, which is a direct reflection of the low hazard that the TCR demonstration presents and the need to simplify and focus the safety review process accordingly. However, the strategy and the associated framework are generalized and may be adopted and tailored to support other advanced reactor demonstration efforts.

Exploiting an Ontological Model to Study COVID-19 Contagion Chains in Sustainable Smart Cities

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deaths of millions of people around the world. The scientific community faces a tough struggle to reduce the effects of this pandemic. Several investigations dealing with different perspectives have been carried out. However, it is not easy to find studies focused on COVID-19 contagion chains. A deep analysis of contagion chains may contribute new findings that can be used to reduce the effects of COVID-19. For example, some interesting chains with specific behaviors could be identified and more in-depth analyses could be performed to investigate the reasons for such behaviors. To represent, validate and analyze the information of contagion chains, we adopted an ontological approach. Ontologies are artificial intelligence techniques that have become widely accepted solutions for the representation of knowledge and corresponding analyses. The semantic representation of information by means of ontologies enables the consistency of the information to be checked, as well as automatic reasoning to infer new knowledge. The ontology was implemented in Ontology Web Language (OWL), which is a formal language based on description logics. This approach could have a special impact on smart cities, which are characterized as using information to enhance the quality of basic services for citizens. In particular, health services could take advantage of this approach to reduce the effects of COVID-19.

CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN LEXICOGRAPHY: STATUS, TYPOLOGY, AND DEVELOPMENT TRENDS

The paper notes that at the turn of the 21st century, the lexicographic process is intensified worldwide due to the unique and advanced capabilities of dictionaries, namely: versatility, applied character, functional representation of the material, logic, harmony and simplicity of description, schematic, comprehensive presentation of the material, as well as scientists’ efforts to meet the requirements and challenges of today that are manifested in the improvement and development of innovative components, the involvement of modern computer technology, and so on. The drastic progress in a field of the dictionary-making is predetermined by dynamic scientific and technological developments, and hence by the demands of modern users that finds its reflection in the expansion of the object of research, the wealth of studies and its variety, etc. All this, in turn, is supported by many extralinguistic factors, such as: computerization, deepening and expanding the acquired knowledge, international collaboration, and the like. A lexical model allowing for lexicographic construction according to the given parameters proved to be the best one for presenting the results of research concerning not only all levels of the language structure, but also phenomena or facts of the surrounding reality. Currently, dictionaries continue to perform their traditional informative and normative function, and are seen as a systematic, comprehensive collection of various information presented in an adequate way, a means of recording human achievements, and a tool for their study, analyses, systematization, etc. Since recent decades in the modern Ukrainian lexicographical scope there have appeared a lot of encyclopedic, reference publications from various fields of knowledge, for general and special purposes, linguistic works like those of essential, borrowed words, neologisms; terminological, translated dictionaries; works of mixed type, educational works, etc.
 

Digital cultural heritage standards: from silo to semantic web

This paper is a survey of standards being used in the domain of digital cultural heritage with focus on the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) created by the Library of Congress in the United States of America. The process of digitization of cultural heritage requires silo breaking in a number of areas—one area is that of academic disciplines to enable the performance of rich interdisciplinary work. This lays the foundation for the emancipation of the second form of silo which are the silos of knowledge, both traditional and born digital, held in individual institutions, such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Disciplinary silo breaking is the key to unlocking these institutional knowledge silos. Interdisciplinary teams, such as developers and librarians, work together to make the data accessible as open data on the “semantic web”. Description logic is the area of mathematics which underpins many ontology building applications today. Creating these ontologies requires a human–machine symbiosis. Currently in the cultural heritage domain, the institutions’ role is that of provider of this open data to the national aggregator which in turn can make the data available to the trans-European aggregator known as Europeana. Current ingests to the aggregators are in the form of machine readable cataloguing metadata which is limited in the richness it provides to disparate object descriptions. METS can provide this richness.

Answering Fuzzy Queries over Fuzzy DL-Lite Ontologies

AbstractA prominent problem in knowledge representation is how to answer queries taking into account also the implicit consequences of an ontology representing domain knowledge. While this problem has been widely studied within the realm of description logic ontologies, it has been surprisingly neglected within the context of vague or imprecise knowledge, particularly from the point of view of mathematical fuzzy logic. In this paper, we study the problem of answering conjunctive queries and threshold queries w.r.t. ontologies in fuzzy DL-Lite. Specifically, we show through a rewriting approach that threshold query answering w.r.t. consistent ontologies remains in ${AC}^{0}$ in data complexity, but that conjunctive query answering is highly dependent on the selected triangular norm, which has an impact on the underlying semantics. For the idempotent Gödel t-norm, we provide an effective method based on a reduction to the classical case.

Semantic Architecture for Interoperability in Distributed Healthcare Systems

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) aggregate the entire patient’s data from different systems. Achieving interoperability for distributed EHR systems is expected to improve patient safety and care continuity, and therefore it improves the healthcare industry. However, achieving interoperability is challenging because of many standards, medical terminologies and ontologies, and different data formats. These formats make the integration of different systems an impossible process. If the hospital uses one standard to implement all of its medical systems, it will be no problem integrating them. However, hospitals usually depend on multiple standards and data formats to deliver different systems like hospital information systems, radiology information systems, laboratory information systems, etc. Semantic Web presents new technology for achieving EHRs interoperability. In this paper, we propose a novel ontological model to implement interoperability for distributed EHR environments. The proposed semantic ontology-based model can unify different EHRs data formats. In this study, We unify five different and popular healthcare data formats and standards. In addition, the framework could be extended straightforwardly to accept any other EHR data format. By implementing the proposed in real environments, we provide the physician with a single interface with a single terminology to query and interact with distributed healthcare systems that use different standards and data formats. This process is expected to help the physician to collect patient data from different systems quickly, completely, and correctly. The proposed ontological model has two stages. The first stage of the proposed converts each different input source to OWL ontology. In the second stage, it integrates all those ontologies into a merged crisp one. The integrated ontology includes 3753 axioms, 2606 logical axioms, 186 classes, 136 individuals, 126 datatype properties, and 257 object properties. We use SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) and Description Logic (DL) queries to evaluate the output ontology. The obtained results ensure that the proposed framework helps physicians and specialists make a centralized point for all patients’ data. It could aggregate data with any heterogeneous structures with high precision.

Hierarchy in Knowledge Systems

Hierarchies abound to help us organize our world. A hierarchy places items into a general order, where more ‘general’ is also more ‘abstract’. The etymology of hierarchy is grounded in notions of religious and social rank. This article, after a historical review, focuses on knowledge systems, an interloper of the term hierarchy since at least the 1800s. Hierarchies in knowledge systems include taxonomies, classification systems, or thesauri in information science, and systems for representing information and knowledge to computers, notably ontologies and knowledge representation languages. Hierarchies are the logical underpinning of inference and reasoning in these systems, as well as the scaffolding for classification and inheritance. Hierarchies in knowledge systems express subsumption relations that have flexible variants, which we can represent algorithmically, and thus computationally. This article dissects that variability, leading to a proposed typology of hierarchies useful to knowledge systems. The article argues through a perspective informed by Charles Peirce that natural hierarchies are real, can be logically determined, and are the appropriate basis for knowledge systems. Description logics and semantic language standards reflect this perspective, importantly through their open-world logic and vocabularies for generalized subsumption hierarchies. Recent research suggests possible mechanisms for the emergence of natural hierarchies.

АКСІОЛОГІЧНІ ОСНОВИ НАУКОВО-МЕТОДИЧНОГО АПАРАТУ ДЛЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОКЕРУЮЧИХ ЗАСОБІВ ІНТЕЛЕКТУАЛЬНИХ ТРАНСПОРТНИХ СИСТЕМ

Ukraine, together with the world's leading countries, is actively promoting the development of intelligent transport systems (ITS). Target cycles are aimed at future forecast states, which are provided by the relevant strategic plans and programs for 2030-2050. Targeted resource-efficient satisfaction of society's needs in the form of expected services, products, goods according to new complex regulations, products, standards, safety criteria, functional stability, survivability, ecological economy is impossible without significant updating of technical and technological solutions (TTP). The interaction of sets of objects of complex dynamic systems (SDS) with heterogeneous contacts of the Air Force determines the desired paradigm of duality of direct and inverse, causal relations. Within the framework of complex dynamic systems (SDS) in advance, qualitatively complete, locally accurate modeling rules assess in advance their own actions and influences of factors of the interacting natural environment (APS). It is the predicative form of theoretical results and evidence on the facts of practice that determines the axiological basis of science. Known logical descriptions are immutable and decisive <if there is a specific fixed form of pair interaction of the Air Force → VTS, as a cause, then, as a consequence in these specific conditions, we have an accurate conclusion>. Similar facts of existence of the corresponding limited procedural result, effect of TTR, a condition of VDS and VPS are possible. For every constant, stationary, similar situation, a double, inverse statement is also valid. It is accurate based on multiple confirmations of the practice of scientific observations and comparisons in various fields of human activity. The article is devoted to the development of technologies for modeling integration processes that synergistically affect the level of road safety of vehicles under conditions of risk and uncertainty of nonstationary environmental factors. The mathematical description of the problem area and information space of interaction of the Air Force participants → VTS is formalized. The essence, peculiarity and specificity of situational modes of dynamic, continuous interaction in space-time discrete cells of the electronic map of the critical zone are substantiated on the basis of the frequency of previous accidents that are possible in the future.

Application of systems engineering to design the architecture of an enterprise of wind turbines inspection

The use of systems engineering techniques is presented in this work to design the architecture of an enterprise of wind turbines inspection. The motivation for this research is the possibility to acquire detailed data in order to make one improved technical and financial feasibility analysis. This way, it is considered that there will be lower risks and higher return of investment. The use of systems engineering included the problem definition, requirements specification, requirements validation, and definition of physical and logical architecture descriptions. All this information offered more data to perform more detailed calculus of investment needed to create this enterprise, and the price of the offered service.

Using Ontologies for the Formalization and Recognition of Criticality for Automated Driving

Knowledge representation and reasoning has a long history of examining how knowledge can be formalized, interpreted, and semantically analyzed by machines. In the area of automated vehicles, recent advances suggest the ability to formalize and leverage relevant knowledge as a key enabler in handling the inherently open and complex context of the traffic world. This paper demonstrates ontologies to be a powerful tool for a) modeling and formalization of and b) reasoning about factors associated with criticality in the environment of automated vehicles. For this, we leverage the well-known 6-Layer Model to create a formal representation of the environmental context. Within this representation, an ontology models domain knowledge as logical axioms, enabling deduction on the presence of critical factors within traffic scenarios. For executing automated analyses, a joint description logic and rule reasoner is used in combination with an a-priori predicate augmentation. We elaborate on the modular approach, present a publicly available implementation, and exemplarily evaluate the method by means of a large-scale drone data set of urban traffic scenarios.

Towards Zero Touch Networks: From the Perspective of Hierarchical Language Systems

With ever-increasing complexity and dynamicity of communication networks, intelligent network operation and maintenance has become more important to network operators. With the fast development of artificial intelligence, concepts such as "Zero Touch", "Intent-based", "Knowledge-defined" and "Self-driving" networks have become well-known in networking community for a great vision of making networks automatically manageable and responsive to user demands. This article discusses how to achieve Zero Touch Networks from the perspective of language-like systems. We propose a novel hierarchical 'language' framework dedicated for networks to enable the Zero Touch Network, which covers from symbolizing network components, a unified framework for understanding network systems, to the logical description with network semantics. A case study based on the proposed language framework is provided. Finally, we discuss the challenges and open issues of intelligence models for zero touch networks.

Design of green office buildings to promote green occupants

Few studies focus on researching the potential of sustainable buildings to promote the sustainability of their occupants. Therefore, this study aims at analyzing the use of LEED credits, with the intention of promoting pro-environmental behaviors. The methodology is exploratory in nature, with a descriptive logic, and comparatively analyzes LEED-certified office buildings [Argentina (n = 351); Chile (n = 494); Colombia (n = 432); and Peru (n = 282)], between 2012 and 2020. The results revealed that the most used credits were: "Access to Public Transportation", (99.34%); “Surrounding Density”; (98.34%); and, “Tenant construction and design guidelines”, (96.53%); and the least used ones were: “Enhanced commissioning”, (44.30%); "Daylight" (31.31%); and, "Controllability of systems", (7.53%). It is concluded that those who choose to include the occupant in the design, choose to intervene in the culture, while those who choose not to include them, choose technology.

National Green Finance Standard in Russia 2020 - a Breakthrough in Green Finance Regulations?

The article is devoted to the analysis of VEB.RF's Methodological Recommendations for Green Finance published on July 13, 2020, named by many Russian experts as the National Green Finance Standard of Russia. This document was in-tended to define the criteria for green projects and financial instruments for enterprises and banks and, ultimately, describe the architecture of the national sys-tem of such financing. A similar document - Taxonomy Regulation - was adopted in the European Union on June 18, 2020. In this regard, a comparative analysis of the above issues is of particular importance. The purpose of the article is to form the idea of the national standard of green finance in Russia based on the analysis of regulations and scientific sources. The applied methods are empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation, and theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. The following private scientific methods were used: legal-dogmatic and the method of interpretation of legal norms. The study showed that the main financial regulator in Russia is the Central Bank, and it is the regulatory documents of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation that should create a national standard for green financing. Without the approval of the Central Bank, VEB.RFs guidelines are turning into just another methodology of the rating agency.

Logic prototyping: approach and use cases

In this article, we present an approach to prototyping complex systems and processes using classical predicate logic. The prototype is built by the interpreter based on a logical description of the properties and/or behavior of the designed system. The description contains the definitions of the prototype elements and the constraints that the correct prototype must satisfy. Definitions are used to build a prototype, and constraints are used to analyze it and check the required properties. Definitions are interpreted using direct logic inference, constraints are only checked on the resulting model. A wider class of formulas is used than in well-known logical languages. Computable logical and denotational semantics are defined for them. In the process of building a prototype, logical errors of uncertainty, redefinition of functions, and contradictions are diagnosed. We are given examples of prototype descriptions used for semantic program analysis, space training, transport system design.

On decidability of concept satisfiability in Description Logic with product semantics

The aim of the present paper is to prove that concept validity and positive satisfiability with an empty ontology in the Fuzzy Description Logic IALE, under standard product semantics and with respect to quasi-witnessed models, are decidable. In our framework we are not considering reasoning tasks over ontologies. The proof of our result consists in reducing the problem to a finitary consequence problem in propositional product logic with Monteiro-Baaz delta operator, which is known to be decidable. Product FDL and first order logic are known not to enjoy the finite model property, so we cannot restrict to finite interpretations. Thus, in order to obtain our result, we need to codify infinite interpretations using a finite number of propositional formulas. Such result was conjectured in [10], but the proof given was subsequently found incorrect. In the present work an improved reduction algorithm is proposed and a proof of the same result is provided.

Strategy Management of Dakwah Education in the Era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0

challenges to the da'wah movement and da'wah education in the very complex industrial 4.0 era, including; Da'wah runs very normatively, does not pay attention to the actual situations that exist in society, da'wah runs stagnant and is unable to answer real problems in society, and there is still a lack of application of da'wah strategies, including da'wah that involves a da'wah organization. Therefore, there is a need for strategic management of da'wah and da'wah education, so that the existence of da'wah is not displaced in this 4.0 industrial era. The purpose of this research in general is to obtain an overview, describe, and reveal this research. The focus of the specific objectives is to obtain an overview of 1) environmental analysis, 2) strategy formulation, 3) strategy implementation, 4) evaluation and control, and 5) supporting and inhibiting factors of this research.
 The research procedure uses qualitative methods, through the process: 1) Observation; 2) Interview; 3) Documentation. Which was developed through the triangulation process, processed using descriptive logic analysis. The findings of this study include 1) environmental analysis carried out in two stages, namely: internal environmental analysis which includes components of strengths and weaknesses that are owned and faced, and external environmental analysis with two main components, namely opportunities and challenges/threats, 2) strategy formulation is carried out systematically. systematic with elements consisting of vision, mission, goals, policies, and main strategies in the application of this research. 3) strategy implementation is the process of realizing a strategy formulation which includes programs, budgets, and procedures, 4) evaluation and control of the program implementation of this research is a control measure from the start of the program being compiled, then implemented and the program ends, and 5) human resources (HR) is a factor supporting the implementation of this research and the mindset of the management who still doesn't understand is the obstacle.