Unified Foundation Research Articles

A modus operandi for sustainable-tourism transformations

ABSTRACT In this article, we identify and discuss unifying principles to co-design transformational sustainable-tourism interventions through participatory methodologies. We conduct a meta-ethnographic synthesis of the emerging relevant tourism literature (14 articles), and we propose five methodological requirements that underpin effective interventions for sustainable tourism transformations. The requirements are (1) co-creating actionable knowledge, (2) establishing safe spaces, (3) challenging power structures and managing emerging tensions, (4) shaping systemic synergies and (5) blurring the lines. Together, these requirements constitute a modus operandi – that is, a way of thinking and acting collectively that provides a unified foundation for impact-led, practice-oriented research on transformational sustainability in tourism. This modus operandi is a meta-perspective containing a cohesive set of guiding principles that integrate and elevate transformational methods, approaches and techniques, and represents our contribution to accelerating the field’s expansion.

The BIAD Standards: Recommendations for Archaeological Data Publication and Insights From the Big Interdisciplinary Archaeological Database

Abstract This article presents a series of recommendations for the publication of archaeological data, to improve their usability. These 12 recommendations were formulated by archaeological data experts who mined thousands of publications for different data types (including funerary practices, accelerator mass spectrometry dating, stable isotopes, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany and pathologies) during the initial construction of the Big Interdisciplinary Archaeological Database (BIAD). We also include data harmonisation vocabularies utilised for the integration of data from different recording systems. The case studies we cite to illustrate the recommendations are grounded in examples from the published literature and are presented in a problem/solution format. Though practically oriented towards the facilitation of efficient databasing, these recommendations – which we refer to as the BIAD Standards – are broadly applicable by those who want to extract scientific data from archaeological information, those who work with a specific region or theoretical focus and journal editors and manuscript authors. We anticipate that the use of the BIAD Standards will increase the usability, visibility, interoperability and longevity of published data and also increase the citations of those publications from which data were mined. The Standards will also help frame a unified foundation to support the continued integration of the natural sciences with archaeological research in the future.

Dialogue agents 101: a beginner’s guide to critical ingredients for designing effective conversational systems

Abstract Sharing ideas through communication with peers is the primary mode of human interaction. Consequently, extensive research has been conducted in the area of conversational AI, leading to an increase in the availability and diversity of conversational tasks, datasets, and methods. However, with numerous tasks being explored simultaneously, the current landscape of conversational AI has become fragmented. Consequently, initiating a well-thought-out model for a dialogue agent can pose significant challenges for a practitioner. Toward highlighting the critical ingredients needed for a practitioner to design a dialogue agent from scratch, the current study provides a comprehensive overview of the primary characteristics of a dialogue agent, the supporting tasks, their corresponding open-domain datasets, and the methods used to benchmark these datasets. We observe that different methods have been used to tackle distinct dialogue tasks. However, building separate models for each task is costly and does not leverage the correlation among the several tasks of a dialogue agent. As a result, recent trends suggest a shift toward building unified foundation models. To this end, we propose Unit, a Unified dialogue dataset constructed from conversations of varying datasets for different dialogue tasks capturing the nuances for each of them. We then train a Unified dialogue foundation model, GPT-2 $^{\textrm{U}}$ and present a concise comparative performance of GPT-2 $^{\textrm{U}}$ against existing large language models. We also examine the evaluation strategies used to measure the performance of dialogue agents and highlight the scope for future research in the area of conversational AI with a thorough discussion of popular models such as ChatGPT.

Against Infinite Nothingness: Ultimate Ground vs Metaphysical Nihilism in Indian Philosophy

Abstract The Idea of a unified foundation of all reality has long been core to many attempts at a fundamental ontology, as well as many arguments for the divine. In medieval India a cluster of arguments for metaphysical inheritance, causal entanglement, the impossibility of fundamental relations and more, were advanced together to show there must be an ultimate and unified ground. But foundationalism has been under attack in both recent metaphysics, and Buddhist philosophy. This article unpacks Vedānta’s defense of divine foundationalism against Madhyamaka Buddhism’s metaphysical nihilism. Firstly, we look at how inheritance arguments for ultimate ground aimed to circumvent the possibility of infinite regress. Secondly, we assess three arguments that this ground is a unified modal anchor, with entangled causal power, providing a connective medium for all phenomena. We address some caveats and limitations, but go on to argue that if they are right, they circumvent the Buddhists’ ‘dualistic’ assumption that if the empirical world is mere imagined convention, it needs no explanation. Monists and nihilists are allies against excessively realist ontologies, but these arguments make a compelling case for some unified fundamental nature from which, as the Upaniṣads put it, all things emerge like sparks from a fire.

Linking Health Terminologies: A Unified Approach to the WHO Family of International Classifications.

This paper presents an effort by the World Health Organization (WHO) to integrate the reference classifications of the Family of International Classifications (ICD, ICF, and ICHI) into a unified digital framework. The integration was accomplished via an expanded Content Model and a single Foundation that hosts all entities from these classifications, allowing the traditional use cases of individual classifications to be retained while enhancing their combined use. The harmonized WHO-FIC Content Model and the unified Foundation has streamlined the content management, enhanced the web-based tool functionalities, and provided opportunities for linkage with external terminologies and ontologies. This integration promises reduced maintenance cost, seamless joint application, complete representation of health-related concepts while enabling better interoperability with other informatics infrastructures.

SuperAnimal pretrained pose estimation models for behavioral analysis

Quantification of behavior is critical in diverse applications from neuroscience, veterinary medicine to animal conservation. A common key step for behavioral analysis is first extracting relevant keypoints on animals, known as pose estimation. However, reliable inference of poses currently requires domain knowledge and manual labeling effort to build supervised models. We present SuperAnimal, a method to develop unified foundation models that can be used on over 45 species, without additional manual labels. These models show excellent performance across six pose estimation benchmarks. We demonstrate how to fine-tune the models (if needed) on differently labeled data and provide tooling for unsupervised video adaptation to boost performance and decrease jitter across frames. If fine-tuned, SuperAnimal models are 10–100× more data efficient than prior transfer-learning-based approaches. We illustrate the utility of our models in behavioral classification and kinematic analysis. Collectively, we present a data-efficient solution for animal pose estimation.

THE ROLE OF THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF ETHNIC GROUPS OF THE REPUBLIC IN STRENGTHENING THE NATIONAL POLICY AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

The article analyzes the history of repressed peoples, which became the basis for the consolidation of Kazakhstan's society, the role and significance of the historical memory of the republic's population in the progressive development of the state. The study analyzes the reasons for the departure of representatives of different ethnic groups during the period of independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The paper considers the search of the state and scientists for those social and political basis that served as a unifying foundation in the construction of a new national policy and strengthening the citizenship of the population of the republic. The sources for the study and the evidence base of the study were the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, statistical materials reflecting the dynamics of emigration of people from the country in the 1990s, specific measures taken by the state leadership to unite the inhabitants of our country and stabilize ethno-demographic and ethno-political processes. It is concluded that the tragic pages of the history of ethnic groups of Kazakhstan, historical memory has become the basis for consolidating the citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the present stage.

Modeling competences in enterprise architecture: from knowledge, skills, and attitudes to organizational capabilities

Competence-based approaches have received increased attention, as the demand for qualified people with the right combination of competences establishes itself as a major factor of organizational performance. This paper examines how competences can be incorporated into Enterprise Architecture modeling: (i) we identify a key set of competence-related concepts such as knowledge, skills, and attitudes, (ii) analyze and relate them using a reference ontology (grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology), and (iii) propose a representation strategy for modeling competences and their constituent elements leveraging the ArchiMate language, discussing how the proposed models can fit in enterprise competence-based practices. Our approach is intended to cover two tasks relevant to the combined application of Enterprise Architecture and Competence Modeling: ‘zooming in’ on competences, revealing the relations between competences, knowledge, skills, attitudes and other personal characteristics that matter in organizational performance, and ‘zooming out’ of competences, placing them in the wider context of other personal competences and overall organizational capabilities. An assessment of the representation is offered in the form of an empirical survey.

Physics and the quest for transcendence: A Durkheimian approach

This essay aims to shed some light on the still common sense of a vocation among scientists. Taking its cue from Paul Forman’s analysis of twentieth-century disciplinary science and Emile Durkheim’s social view of religions, it suggests that modern scientific communities resemble religious communities in their penchant for transcendence. The essay aims to illustrate this perspective by looking at some developments within the physics discipline since its emergence in the late nineteenth century. One indication for this penchant is the tendency to distance oneself from the material conditions which allowed the discipline to flourish. These utilitarian conditions, industrial as well as material, were seen to pose a threat to the disinterested pursuit of truth. Another is the persistent tendency among theoretical physicists to search for otherworldly, immaterial and unifying foundations.

Toward an ontology for EA modeling and EA model quality

Models have long since been used, in different shapes and forms, to understand, communicate about, and (re)shape, the world around us; including many different social, economic, biological, chemical, physical, and digital aspects. This is also the case in the context of enterprise architecture (EA), where we see a wide range of models in many different shapes and forms being used as well. Researchers in EA modeling usually introduce their own lexicon, and perspective of what a model actually is, while accepting (often implicitly) the accompanying ontological commitments. Similarly, practitioners of EA modeling implicitly also commit to (different) ontologies, resulting in models that have an uncertain ontological standing. This is because, for the subject domain of enterprise architecture models (as opposed to the content of such models), no single ontology has gained major traction. As a result, studies into aspects of enterprise architecture models, such as “model quality” and “return on modeling effort”, are fragmented, and cannot readily be compared or combined. This paper proposes a comprehensive applied ontology, specifically geared to enterprise architecture modeling. Ontologies represent structured knowledge about a particular subject domain. It allows for study into, and reasoning about, that subject domain. Our ontology is derived from a theory of modeling, while clarifying concepts such as “enterprise architecture model”, and introduces novel concepts such as “model audience” and “model objective”. Furthermore, the relevant interrelations between these different concepts are identified and defined. The resulting ontology for enterprise architecture models is represented in OntoUML, and shown to be consistent with the foundational ontology for modeling, Unified Foundational Ontology.

The Formation of the Justice System in the Early Years of Soviet Power

The relevance of this article lies in the study of the formation and formation of the institution of the justice system in the nascent Soviet state, the factors that influenced the formation of courts, the selection of persons administering justice. This historical experience is unique in many respects, since simultaneously with the collapse of the monarchy, a new socialist state was born on its territory, the ideological and political foundations of which largely predetermined the foundations laid in the foundation of the future judicial system of the RSFSR and modern Russia.Purpose: disclosure of the features and distinctive features of the formation of courts during the formation of Soviet power.Objectives: identification of factors influencing the formation of the justice system on the territory of our state in the post-revolutionary period.Methodology. The article uses a complex of general scientific and special-legal research methods due to the historical-legal and partly interdisciplinary nature of the article.The results of the study are of a historical and legal nature and made it possible to identify factors influencing the formation and formation of the Soviet justice system in the post-revolutionary period, namely the class struggle, communist ideology, the need to win the Civil War and consolidate its results, the use of courts as another control body for citizens of the state, admission to the administration of justice of persons who do not have a special education.Conclusions. The studied period of the development and functioning of justice on the territory of our state was characterized by the elimination of the previous system of administration of justice, the reliance on revolutionary legal consciousness in the administration of justice, the subordination of courts to representative bodies elected by citizens, the presence and functioning of revolutionary tribunals.As a result of the initial reforms of the courts, the previously existing unified foundations for the administration of justice were eliminated, and new ones were just beginning to form; as a result of the reforms, judges began to be elected from representatives of the people, regardless of their professional knowledge, which significantly affected the quality of justice, but contributed to its openness.

Problems in the criminological characteristic of juvenile offender identity

Relevance. Insufficient attention of state bodies to the problem of juvenile crime also leads to the aggravation of antisocial manifestations in society, neglect of social and cultural norms, and increased manifestations of crime and cruelty. Child welfare and protection of children's rights are among the main tasks of every democratic, social, and legal state. Purpose. Despite the close attention to the problem of juvenile crimes, many of the relevant aspects are still understudied; they require scientific and theoretical interpretation and substantiation, including problems in the criminological characteristic of the juvenile criminal identity. Methodology. The study employed a variety of methodologies including dialectical analysis, historical legal method, comparative legal analysis, logical legal method, documentary analysis, statistical analysis, and sociological method to comprehensively examine and understand the criminological characteristics of juvenile criminal identity and develop proposals for enhancing prevention and intervention strategies. Results. The study covers doctrinal approaches to the criminological characteristic of the personality of juvenile criminals, to find out the variability of ideas and concepts aimed at identifying the essence and features of the juvenile criminal identity on the territory of various states, and also to conclude that the system of social prevention of offences, including crimes, that has developed in the past, which has practically ceased to exist in our time, requires a qualitative reform. Conclusions. The study has substantiated that there is currently an urgent need to reproduce such a system based on new principles and unified foundations of the criminological characteristic of the juvenile criminal identity, to create an appropriate legislative framework for this purpose and to widely involve the public in this activity.

Программа «Эразмус» в европейском и многополярном образовательном пространстве

This article delves into the role of the “Erasmus” Programme within the context of European and multipolar educational spaces. Recognized as a significant tool for international academic mobility, the “Erasmus” Programme serves as a catalyst for higher education cooperation between participating countries. The program has grown beyond its initial European scope, encompassing universities, youth organizations, and transnational corporations worldwide. The “Erasmus” is not only instrumental in fostering innovative approaches to education, encouraging knowledge exchange, and strengthening international partnerships, but also performs broader political functions. It contributes to socio-economic resources for European citizens, reinforces the EU's political stability, and promotes solidarity among the member states. The “Erasmus” Programme has become a unifying foundation for not only European countries but also a wide range of partner nations, making it an attractive model for regions worldwide and a successful instrument of the EU's foreign policy. The relevance of the “Erasmus” Program is enhanced from a practical point of view in the context of reforming the higher education system in Kazakhstan and closer integration with European educational models.

A taxonomy and ontology for digital platforms

In academic literature and in business communication digital platforms are categorized into different types including, but not limited to, multi-sided platform, digital marketplace, on-demand platform and sharing economy platform. Observing the substantial literature on these platform types, both in academia and professional contexts, there is lack of consensus on the definition of these digital platform types. On top of that, there is a lack of knowledge in the literature on the requirements and design of these digital platform types. We address the observed lack of shared conceptualizations by creating a taxonomy for digital platforms, by classifying digital platforms according to their distinctive features. Further, we address the lack of design knowledge with a digital platform reference ontology that describes the construction and operation of the different types of digital platform that are distinguished in the taxonomy. This reference ontology, developed using the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and several of its core ontologies, is organized into different ontology modules, allowing to describe functionalities that are common to any digital platform and more specific functionalities that have their origin in the distinctive features that were used to construct the taxonomy. The taxonomy that we contribute helps to clearly define the different types of digital platform that can be observed today. It also helps analysing further evolutions in the platform domain. The contribution of a well-founded digital platform reference ontology is a step towards a better understanding of digital platform functionality, better communication between stakeholders, and eventually may facilitate future research and development of new types of digital platform.

Thermoelastic deformation of geometries of double curvature due to anisotropic shrinkage

The earlier work of Radford [1] for prediction of the angular deformation of a body of single curvature due to thermal expansion, wherein the radial and circumferential coefficients of thermal expansion of the body are unequal, is extended to geometries of double curvature with two orthogonal radii of curvature. Predictions for a specific geometry of positive, double curvature are compared to experimental results and found to be favorable. Positive and negative curvature geometries are examined with predictions by finite-element analyses. Thermoelastic deformations in bodies of revolution are discussed to clarify the final geometry consequences of dividing the body of revolution into individual segments, often required for re-assembly. Finally, the conservation of Gaussian curvature, Ҡ, for an isometric deformation state will be developed and shown to bring a unifying foundation for thermoelastic deformation of simply-connected geometries of double curvature.

A FAIR catalog of ontology-driven conceptual models

Multi-domain model catalogs serve as empirical sources of knowledge and insights about specific domains, about the use of a modeling language’s constructs, as well as about the patterns and anti-patterns recurrent in the models of that language crosscutting different domains. They may support domain and language learning, model reuse, knowledge discovery for humans, and reliable automated processing and analysis if built following generally accepted quality requirements for scientific data management. More specifically, not unlike scientific (meta)data, models should be shared according to the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability). In this paper, we report on the construction of a FAIR model catalog for Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling research, a trending paradigm lying at the intersection of conceptual modeling and ontology engineering in which the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and OntoUML emerged among the most adopted technologies. The catalog, publicly available at https://w3id.org/ontouml-models, currently includes over one hundred and forty models, developed in a variety of contexts and domains.

From language development to language evolution: A unified view of human lexical creativity.

A defining property of human language is the creative use of words to express multiple meanings through word meaning extension. Such lexical creativity is manifested at different timescales, ranging from language development in children to the evolution of word meanings over history. We explored whether different manifestations of lexical creativity build on a common foundation. Using computational models, we show that a parsimonious set of semantic knowledge types characterize developmental data as well as evolutionary products of meaning extension spanning over 1400 languages. Models for evolutionary data account very well for developmental data, and vice versa. These findings suggest a unified foundation for human lexical creativity underlying both the fleeting products of individual ontogeny and the evolutionary products of phylogeny across languages.

Energy Efficient Routing Protocols for Mobile Robots: A Review

Many vital applications benefit from mobile multi-robot teams, including search and rescue, environmental monitoring, military, unmanned space exploration, hazard detection and analysis. Communication between robots is important for group coordination and information sharing in mobile multi-robot teams. Because many mobile robot applications involve scenarios where communication infrastructure is destroyed or unavailable, mobile robot teams must regularly connect with one another through ADHOC networking. In such situations, low over-head and energy efficient routing systems for sending information are essential. The most difficult task is to provide a unified foundation for robot communication. The framework of Mobile Robots is described in this paper, as well as a review and analysis of several research papers on Energy Efficient Routing in Robotic Wireless sensor networks (RWSN).

Actions, Agents, and Consequences

According to an appealing and common view, the moral status of an action – whether it is wrong, for example – is sometimes important in itself in terms of the moral status of other actions – especially those that respond to the original action. This view is especially influential with respect to the criminal law. It is accepted not only by legal moralists but also by adherents of the harm principle, for example. In this paper, I argue against this view. The main arguments emphasize the distinctions between the moral status of actions, consequences, and agents. I argue that what matters, in terms of other actions, is not the moral status of the original action but rather other factors that may be confused with it, such as the moral status of its consequences – whether they are good or bad – and the moral status of the agent – whether she is praiseworthy or blameworthy. The intuitive appeal of the common view is, I argue, at least partly due to a conflation of these factors. Most importantly, once we recall the distinctions between these factors, we can see more clearly that this view lacks a compelling rationale. Or, at least, that it is based on assumptions that, first, are much more controversial than their conclusion, and, second, do not support every aspect of this view – and thus do not offer a unified foundation for this view.

Outcome Logic: A Unifying Foundation for Correctness and Incorrectness Reasoning

Program logics for bug-finding (such as the recently introduced Incorrectness Logic) have framed correctness and incorrectness as dual concepts requiring different logical foundations. In this paper, we argue that a single unified theory can be used for both correctness and incorrectness reasoning. We present Outcome Logic (OL), a novel generalization of Hoare Logic that is both monadic (to capture computational effects) and monoidal (to reason about outcomes and reachability). OL expresses true positive bugs, while retaining correctness reasoning abilities as well. To formalize the applicability of OL to both correctness and incorrectness, we prove that any false OL specification can be disproven in OL itself. We also use our framework to reason about new types of incorrectness in nondeterministic and probabilistic programs. Given these advances, we advocate for OL as a new foundational theory of correctness and incorrectness.