Ontological Models Supporting Covariates Selection in Observational Studies

In the context of causal inference, biostatisticians use causal diagrams to select covariates in order to build multivariate models. These diagrams represent datasets variables and their relations but have some limitations (representing interactions, bidirectional causal relations). The MetBrAYN project aims at building an ontological-based process to tackle these issues. The knowledge acquired by the biostatistician during a methodological consultation for a research question will be represented in a general ontology. In order to aggregate various forms of knowledge the ontology will act as a wrapper. Ontology-based causal diagrams will be semi-automatically built. Founded on inference rules, the global system will help biostatisticians to curate it and to visualize recommended covariates for their research question.

A Supply Chain Information Pushing Method for Logistics Park Based on Internet of Things Technology

The existing push methods of supply chain information in logistics parks stay on the analysis of data surface, which leads to higher Mae value. Therefore, this paper proposes a push method of supply chain information in logistics parks based on the Internet of Things technology. Firstly, RFID structure is designed by introducing RFID, GPS, infrared, and other Internet of Things technologies to encode the materials in the logistics warehouse; secondly, the supply chain model of the logistics park is established to obtain the general ontology element model of the node enterprises in the supply chain of the park and the interaction business situation model between the node enterprises in the supply chain of the park. Finally, the average value of the node score is subtracted from the score of the node to calculate the information centralized scoring, as well as the establishment of Spark operation framework, to achieve the logistics park supply chain information pushing. In the simulation experiment, the international land port logistics park of a city is selected as a case to test. The experimental results show that the information pushing method of logistics information park supply chain based on Internet of Things technology has higher recommendation accuracy and better performance.

IrGO: Iranian traditional medicine General Ontology and knowledge base

Background Iranian traditional medicine, also known as Persian Medicine, is a holistic school of medicine with a long prolific history. It describes numerous concepts and the relationships between them. However, no unified language system has been proposed for the concepts of this medicine up to the present time. Considering the extensive terminology in the numerous textbooks written by the scholars over centuries, comprehending the totality of concepts is obviously a very challenging task. To resolve this issue, overcome the obstacles, and code the concepts in a reusable manner, constructing an ontology of the concepts of Iranian traditional medicine seems a necessity. Construction and content Makhzan al-Advieh, an encyclopedia of materia medica compiled by Mohammad Hossein Aghili Khorasani, was selected as the resource to create an ontology of the concepts used to describe medicinal substances. The steps followed to accomplish this task included (1) compiling the list of classes via examination of textbooks, and text mining the resource followed by manual review to ensure comprehensiveness of extracted terms; (2) arranging the classes in a taxonomy; (3) determining object and data properties; (4) specifying annotation properties including ID, labels (English and Persian), alternative terms, and definitions (English and Persian); (5) ontology evaluation. The ontology was created using Protégé with adherence to the principles of ontology development provided by the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) foundry. Utility and discussion The ontology was finalized with inclusion of 3521 classes, 15 properties, and 20,903 axioms in the Iranian traditional medicine General Ontology (IrGO) database, freely available at http://ir-go.net/. An indented list and an interactive graph view using WebVOWL were used to visualize the ontology. All classes were linked to their instances in UNaProd database to create a knowledge base of ITM materia medica. Conclusion We constructed an ontology-based knowledge base of ITM concepts in the domain of materia medica to help offer a shared and common understanding of this concept, enable reuse of the knowledge, and make the assumptions explicit. This ontology will aid Persian medicine practitioners in clinical decision-making to select drugs. Extending IrGO will bridge the gap between traditional and conventional schools of medicine, helping guide future research in the process of drug discovery.

Foundations of information technology based on Bunge’s systemist philosophy of reality

General ontology is a prominent theoretical foundation for information technology analysis, design, and development. Ontology is a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used ontology in information systems, especially for conceptual modeling, is the BWW (Bunge–Wand–Weber), which is based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, as synthesized by Wand and Weber. The ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy; however, many of Bunge’s ideas have evolved since then. An important question, therefore, is: do the more recent ideas expressed by Bunge call for a new ontology? In this paper, we conduct an analysis of Bunge’s earlier and more recent works to address this question. We present a new ontology based on Bunge’s later and broader works, which we refer to as Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO). We then compare BSO to the constructs of BWW. The comparison reveals both considerable overlap between BSO and BWW, as well as substantial differences. From this comparison and the initial exposition of BSO, we provide suggestions for further ontology studies and identify research questions that could provide a fruitful agenda for future scholarship in conceptual modeling and other areas of information technology.

Ontology Modelling and Standardized Information Exchange with Content Delivery Applications in Technical Communication

Ontologies are a technology recently used in technical communication (TC) to model information into a multidimensional net. They expand the modelling by taxonomy of metadata in TC. Any kind of relation between multiple classes and instances can be established. These ontologies can appear in the form of semantic correlation rules (SCR), which represent the connection between the metadata of the objects. SCR are used in connection with component content management systems (CCMS), semantic modelling systems (SMS) and content delivery portals (CDP) to deliver the appropriate amount of content in a more precise manner to the end user. In general, Ontology tools, CCMS and CDP are not based on the same ecosystem and therefore, they do not always work together effortlessly. A solution to this problem are exchange formats like the intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard (iiRDS), which enable a standardized information exchange between supported systems. Another solution would be compound information systems (CIS) like ONTOLIS, which combine a CCMS, CDP and SMS all in one. This paper aims to investigate the effect of SCR in the CDP of a CIS like ONTOLIS and to evaluate the use of exchange formats like iiRDS.

The ontological approach to Internet knowledge portals design

The paper presents the approach to Internet knowledge portals design based on ontologies. Internet knowledge portals provide users with access to heterogeneous loosely coupled data and information resources of various subject domains. Using such portals as a single access point greatly simplifies the work with information presented on the Internet. In the case of Internet portals representing engineering subject domains information their environment concentrate not only information resources and data, but also a large number of computing resources and web-services that are used to perform certain calculation tasks of engineering subject domains. The ontological approach to Internet knowledge portals design allows to represent and integrate heterogeneous information and computing resources in the process of such portals data and knowledge structuring and systematizing. It is proposed to use ontology as portal knowledge representation model. The Internet knowledge portal general ontology is represented by a system of four interconnected components. The structure of such a system is described, the basic elements of its ontologies, as well as the relations between them, are distinguished. The ontology elements are formalized that allows to organize and optimize semantic search through the Internet knowledge portals information space.

Ontological model for evaluating the effectiveness of scientific institutions

The article presents an approach to assessing the quality of functioning of scientific institutions based on ontologies. Today, there are a large number of scientific institutions and specialized organizations whose efficiency depends on the quality of the services they provide. In the course of their operation, institutions accumulate a large amount of information (scientific articles, reports, employee ratings, economic indicators, etc.) that can be used to evaluate them automatically by national criteria. This study proposes to use an ontological model to store, present and manipulate with such information. Ontologies are new intelligent tools for finding resources on the Internet, new methods for representing and processing knowledge and queries. They are able to accurately and efficiently describe the semantics of data for a certain domain and solve the problem of incompatibility and inconsistency of concepts. The ontological approach allows the continuous improvement of the model based on basic ontologies by completing and developing them The ontology will allow not only to structure and systematize the data of scientific institutions, but also to perform the procedure of quality assessment through the mechanism of ontological logical inference. A general ontology for describing the activities of scientific institutions is represented by a system of five connected components. In the paper the structure of such a system is described, basic elements of its ontologies and the connections between them are highlighted. The ontology of the scientific institution activity is developed using specific technological platform TEDAOS - “Transdisciplinary Educational Dialogues of Applications’ Ontology Systems”.

Revisiting Temperaments with a Fine-Tuned Categorization Using Iranian Traditional Medicine General Ontology

Background: Iranian traditional medicine is a holistic school of medicine with a long prolific history. It describes numerous concepts and the relationships between them. However, no unified terminology has been proposed for the concepts of this medicine up to the present time. Considering the extensive use of concepts in the numerous textbooks written by the scholars over centuries, comprehending the totality of the terminology is obviously a very challenging task. To resolve this issue and overcome the obstacles, and code the concepts in a reusable manner, constructing an ontology of the concepts of Iranian traditional medicine seems a necessity.Methods: Makhzan al-Advieh, an encyclopedia of materia medica compiled by Mohammad Hossein Aghili Khorasani, was selected as the resource to create an ontology of Mizaj. The steps followed to accomplish this task included (1) compiling the list of classes for Mizaj; (2) arranging the classes in taxonomy; (3) determining object properties and their cardinalities; (4) specifying annotation properties including codes, labels, synonyms, and definitions for each concept; (5) reviewing the fields pertaining to Mizaj of all monographs in Makhzan al-Advieh. The ontology was created using Protégé with adherence to the principles of ontology development provided by the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) foundry. Results: Mizaj ontology was constructed with a final inclusion of 105 classes, three object properties, and 1078 axioms in the Iranian Traditional Medicine General Ontology database, IrGO, freely available at http://jafarilab.com/irgo/. An indented tree view and an interactive graph view using WebVOWL were used to visualize the ontology. All classes were linked to their instances in the UNaProd database to create a knowledge-base of Mizaj. Conclusion: We constructed an ontology-based knowledge base of ITM concepts of Mizaj in the domain of materia medica to help offer a shared and common understanding of this concept, enable reuse of the knowledge, and make the assumptions explicit. Extending IrGO will bridge the gap between traditional and conventional schools of medicine and help guide future research on new treatment options.

The Natural Complexes of Encounters

The totalizing and absolutizing tendencies of metaphysics can undermine our essential ethical relationality. Is there a metaphysics that is robust enough and conducive to preserving this intuition? In answer, this paper will draw upon Martin Buber and Justus Buchler. Buber’s seminal work, I and Thou (1923), explores the nature of the ethical encounter. Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (1966) develops a general ontology, which can be described as an ordinal metaphysics. Encounters are thoroughly relational for Buber. Buchler’s metaphysics is also thoroughly relational. A phenomenological approach to relationality establishes the medium for this dialogue and provides a common ground for these texts. Not only is there a way to account for Buber’s encounter, but there is also an inherent moral understanding in Buchler’s metaphysics that preserves and is conducive to ethical relationality. Buchler’s metaphysics avoids the totalizing and absolutizing tendencies derided by Buber, while simultaneously promotes a version of the encounter.