CONTEXTUALIZING LEARNING OBJECTS USING ONTOLOGIES

Educational research over the past three years has intensified such that the context of learning resources needs to be properly modeled. Many researchers have described and even mandated the use of ontologies in the research being conducted, yet the process of actually connecting one or more ontologies to a learning object has not been extensively discussed. This paper describes a practical model for associating multiple ontologies with learning objects while making full use of the IEEE LOM specification. The model categorizes these ontologies according to five major categories of context based on the most popular fields of study actively being pursued by the educational research community: Thematic context, Pedagogical context, Learner context, Organizational context, and Historical/Statistical context.     

Web-Based Semantic Similarity: An Evaluation in the Biomedical Domain

Computation of semantic similarity between concepts is a very common problem in many language related tasks and knowledge domains. In the biomedical field, several approaches have been developed to deal with this issue by exploiting the structured knowledge available in domain ontologies (such as SNOMED-CT or MeSH) and specific, closed and reliable corpora (such as clinical data). However, in recent years, the enormous growth of the Web has motivated researchers to start using it as the corpus to assist semantic analysis of language. This paper proposes and evaluates the use of the Web as background corpus for measuring the similarity of biomedical concepts. Several ontology-based similarity measures have been studied and tested, using a benchmark composed by biomedical terms, comparing the results obtained when applying them to the Web against approaches in which specific clinical data were used. Results show that the similarity values obtained from the Web for ontology-based measures are at least and even more reliable than those obtained from specific clinical data, showing the suitability of the Web as information corpus for the biomedical domain.     

Extended Reflexive Ontologies for the Generation of Clinical Recommendations

Decision recommendations are a set of alternative options for clinical decisions (e.g., diagnosis, prognosis, treatment selection, follow-up, and prevention) that are provided to decision makers by knowledge-based Clinical Decision Support Systems (k-CDSS) as aids. We propose to follow a “reasoning over domain” approach for the generation of decision recommendations by gathering and inferring conclusions from production rules. In order to rationalize our approach, we present a specification that will sustain the logic models supported in the knowledge bases we use for persistence. We introduce first the underlying knowledge model and then the necessary extensions that will convey toward the solution of the reported needs. The starting point of our approach is the proposition of Reflexive Ontologies (RO). Here, we go a step further, proposing an extension of RO that includes the handling and reasoning that production rules provide. Our approach speeds up the recommendation generation process.     

A novel approach to generate MCQs from domain ontology: Considering DL semantics and open-world assumption

Ontologies are structures, used for knowledge representation, which model domain knowledge in the form of concepts, roles, instances and their relationships. This knowledge can be exploited by an assessment system in the form of multiple choice questions (MCQs). The existing approaches, which use ontologies expressed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for MCQ generation, are limited to simple concept related questions — “What is C?” or “Which of the following is an example of C?” (where $C$ is a concept symbol) — or analogy type questions involving roles. There are no efforts in the literature which make use of the terminological axioms in the ontology such as existential, universal and cardinality restrictions on concepts and roles for MCQ generation. Also, there are no systematic methods for generating incorrect answers (distractors) from ontologies. Distractor generation process has to be given much importance, since the generated distractors determine the quality and hardness of an MCQ. We propose two new MCQ generation approaches, which generate MCQs that are very useful and realistic in conducting assessment tests, and the corresponding distractor generating techniques. Our distractor generation techniques, unlike other methods, consider the open-world assumption, so that the generated MCQs will always be valid (falsity of distractors is ensured). Furthermore, we present a measure to determine the difficulty level (a value between 0 and 1) of the generated MCQs. The proposed system is implemented, and experiments on specific ontologies have shown the effectiveness of the approaches. We also did an empirical study by generating question items from a real-world ontology and validated our results with the help of domain experts.     

普适计算中动态和语义的安全策略管理

普适计算环境是信息空间与物理空间的融合,存在着既要实现信息高度共享和协作,又要保证安全隐私之间的矛盾。该文提出普适计算环境中动态的、语义的安全策略管理机制。引入统一的本体知识库,根据上下文的变化,通过本体服务动态调整策略服务和事件服务,实现策略的动态执行。描述该机制的策略管理框架、策略动态执行和策略规范。通过普适计算的典型应用场景,分析和说明如何应用该机制。     

语义网服务中的本体综述

作为实现下一代Web的集成方案,语义网服务将语义Web技术和Web服务技术相结合,以支持Web服务的自动发现、选择、合成和执行.本体是语义网服务的理论基础.介绍了Web资源描述本体OWL和Web服务描述本体的概况,并对3种主流的Web服务语义描述框架进行对比分析,为语义网服务中本体的创建提供基础知识.研究了语义网服务中存在的各层次的本体异构问题,明确了语义网服务中本体集成的主要研究方向.     

社会网络信息的本体论建模与可视化

本体论是共享概念模型的明确的形式化规范说明,基于本体论对社会网络信息建模能够提供客观存在的本质认识,发挥本体论在信息表示与组织上的优势.提出一种针对社会网络信息的领域本体模型,将社会网络信息领域的客观存在抽象为3个主要本体:行动者、关系网络和群组,能够方便地定义各种社会网络分析与可视化方法,为社会网络信息可视化应用提供支持.着眼于社会网络结构分析中的需求,在上述模型框架下提出了基于规则对等组的群组分析方法和基于群组、角色分析的力导引布点算法.最后结合恐怖活动信息可视化实例,阐述了文中提出的领域模型与可视化方法的应用.     

Strategic reasoning about business models: a conceptual modeling approach

Strategic reasoning about business models is an integral part of service design. In fast moving markets, businesses must be able to recognize and respond strategically to disruptive change. They have to answer questions such as: what are the threats and opportunities in emerging technologies and innovations? How should they target customer groups? Who are their real competitors? How will competitive battles take shape? In this paper we define a strategic modeling framework to help understand and analyze the goals, intentions, roles, and the rationale behind the strategic actions in a business environment. This understanding is necessary in order to improve existing or design new services. The key component of the framework is a strategic business model ontology for representing and analyzing business models and strategies, using the i* agent and goal oriented methodology as a basis. The ontology introduces a strategy layer which reasons about alternative strategies that are realized in the operational layer. The framework is evaluated using a retroactive example of disruptive technology in the telecommunication services sector from the literature.     

语义驱动的集成化产品建模

针对复杂产品研发过程中多领域协同对产品知识共享和重用的需求,提出一种语义驱动的集成化产品建模方法.结合多本体技术,给出了集成化产品建模框架,该框架由概念层和模型层构成,概念层包括高层核心产品本体和领域本体,模型层由主模型和领域模型等一族模型构成;同时还给出了集成化产品模型的形式化语义描述,在构建高层核心产品本体的基础上建立主模型;基于多领域本体,进行由概念层语义驱动的领域模型快速重构,在语义理解基础上实现跨领域的产品知识重用.     

Augmented AVI video file for road surveying

This paper presents a novel video augmentation approach: a video recording of a real entity augmented by structured data. This augmented video is a self-contained entity integrating values of perceptible and non-perceptible attributes of the same real entity. It simplifies data search, storage and management. Streaming, sharing, collaboration and synchronization are also simplified by the fact that the structured data (so-called augmented data) are integrated in the video file and therefore only one file needs to be manipulated. Our approach was applied to address the issues which road engineers experience while using the ROad Measurement and Data Acquisition System (ROMDAS). The ROMDAS system collects and analyses the road-condition state through video recordings and the data corresponding acquired by specific measuring devices. Currently, however, road engineers have to search the videos manually in order to find details of interest provided by the analysis of the data measured due to the separation of the video from the data. The ROMDAS system manages a large collection of road-condition data. It does not offer history management of video recordings of the same road captured at different time. We present this hybrid video augmentation system: the Augmented Video stream Framework (AVF). It allows creation, search, history management and playback of such augmented video files for effective road surveying based on the discrete data recorded in parallel to the video recordings. The AVF provides road engineers with effective and more comfortable perceptible and non-perceptible data search, storage and history management to be used for (collaborative) road inspection and maintenance.