John F Sowa | 19 May 2013 20:51

[] What is the role of an upper level ontology?

The following slightly edited note to Ontolog Forum summarizes
an ongoing thread about the topic in the subject line.

Anyone who may be interested in the topic can extract any phrase
quoted below, enclose it in quotes, and use any search engine
to find the original note (and thread) in the Ontolog archive.

Another useful resource is the proceedings of the KI2003 Workshop
on Reference Ontologies and Application Ontologies.  The articles
are now 10 years old, but they are still good position papers
on the various issues.  Most of the topics they discussed are
still ongoing R & D issues today:

http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-94/

John Sowa

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Sun, 19 May 2013
To: ontolog-forum@...

My main point is that any upper-level ontology that claims to be
broadly applicable should avoid detailed axioms.  It should be
as neutral as possible with respect to any or all ontologies that
have proved to be useful for any practical purpose.

For complex reasoning, more detailed axioms are needed.  They can be
stored in a library of reusable modules that can be combined to form
more specialized ontologies or microtheories as needed.

(Continue reading)

Polovina, Simon | 27 Jan 2012 23:52
Picon

[] The 2nd CUBIST Workshop updated CfP

The 2nd CUBIST Workshop

In conjunction with ICFCA 2012 (6 - 10 May 2012, Leuven, Belgium)

CUBIST (Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies) is an EU-funded
research project that investigates the combination of semantic technologies for harvesting and
persisting data from a variety of data sources (both unstructured and structured) and FCA-based visual
analytics for exploring and analysing the data in a meaningful way.

This workshop provides a forum for both research and practice for CUBIST-related research topics and
technologies in order to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions. Related topics are:
• Business intelligence over unstructured and structured data
• Semantically enabled ETL processes
• Semantics of data cubes
• Graph stores as “information warehouses”
• Ontology-based data warehouse design
• Formal concept analysis for business intelligence
• Semantically enabled visual analytics
• Qualitative data analysis. 

Workshop chairs
Frithjof Dau (SAP AG, Germany)
Simon Andrews (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Program Committee
Cassio Melo (Centrale Recherche S.A. (CRSA) - Laboratoire MAS, France)
Constantinos Orphanides (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
Emre Sevinc (Space Applications Services NV, Belgium)
Kenneth Mcleod (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
Marie-Aude Aufare (Centrale Recherche S.A. (CRSA) - Laboratoire MAS, France)
(Continue reading)

Frank Loebe | 27 Jan 2012 18:21
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Favicon

[] DEADLINE EXTENSION: new: Feb 12 for FOIS 2012 (Formal Ontology in Information Systems)

    (apologies for cross-posting)  ...  (please distribute)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

                      -------------
 Call for Papers     |  FOIS 2012  |    Jul 24-27, Graz, Austria
                      -------------

>>> DEADLINE EXTENDED <<<
   Conference paper submission:   Sunday, Feb 12, 2012  <-- NEW!

             [1]  http://purl.org/icbofois2012

------------------------------------------------
TITLE AND CO-LOCATION
------------------------------------------------

Seventh International Conference on
   Formal Ontologies in Information Systems (FOIS 2012)
                               July, 24-27, 2012 in Graz, Austria

               held together with the

Third International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2012)

------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT DATES
------------------------------------------------

We are calling for papers to be considered for inclusion
in FOIS 2012.
(Continue reading)

John F. Sowa | 22 Jan 2012 14:24

[] Drawing tool for dependency graphs

Many CG systems use dependency or link grammars because the resulting
graphs have a structure that has a close mapping to conceptual graphs.
Following is a note to Corpora List about a drawing tool that can
generate nicely drawn diagrams of dependency graphs.

If anybody has used these or other tools for similar purposes, please
send a note to CG list about your experiences, positive or negative.

John

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     [Corpora-List] [software release] TikZ-dependency 1.1
Date:     Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:44:58 +0100
From:     Daniele <daniele.pighin@...>
To:     Corpora@...

Hi all,

I am pleased to announce a new version of TikZ-dependency, downloadable

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/tikz-dependency/.

TikZ-dependency allows you to draw dependency graphs in LaTeX documents
with little or no effort.

The package has a very easy to learn, high level interface that can be
used to draw simple dependency trees, complex non projective graphs,
bubble parses, and in general any kind of graph which is based on a
sequence of nodes and edges among these.

(Continue reading)

Jack Park | 21 Jan 2012 07:44
Picon

[] LinkedIn releases Sensei database

http://senseidb.com/
and discussed here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489658

Open-source, distributed, realtime, semi-structured database
Apache license, Java
code at
https://github.com/senseidb/sensei

query language described at
http://senseidb.github.com/sensei/bql.html

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John F. Sowa | 18 Jan 2012 18:08

Re: [] CfP The 2nd CUBIST Workshop

I received an offline message in response to my recent note.
Following is a slightly edited version of my response.

John

-------- Original Message --------

> If I am going to move towards an SQL solution, then I want an SQL
> solution at least as robust as I've come to expect from MySQL.

I wasn't recommending an SQL solution.  What I recommended was
a solution that could be used with *any* DB implementation.

I wanted to emphasize the point that CUBIST should *not* repeat
the SemWeb mistake of ignoring mainstream IT.  For all its flaws
(and there are many of them), SQL is not going away.  Any project
that hopes to have any influence on mainstream IT must be
interoperable with mainstream IT.

> If that's the case, why go with Volt? It appears to be an "in memory"
> database - like Redis, so it's going to be faster, but who can afford
> monster servers?

I mentioned VoltDB as an example.  I said that there are many others,
and I recommended that the semantic layer be kept as independent as
possible from the underlying DB.

By "in memory", they mean in "virtual memory".  For all virtual memory
systems, starting with the earliest ones in the 1960s and '70s, paging
I/O has been the most highly optimized.  It's also the most scalable
(Continue reading)

Polovina, Simon | 17 Jan 2012 21:30
Picon

[] CfP The 2nd CUBIST Workshop

The 2nd CUBIST Workshop

In conjunction with ICFCA 2012 (6 - 10 May 2012, Leuven, Belgium, http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/ICFCA/)

 

CUBIST (Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies, www.cubist-project.eu) is an EU-funded research project that investigates the combination of semantic technologies for harvesting and persisting data from a variety of data sources (both unstructured and structured) and FCA-based visual analytics for exploring and analysing the data in a meaningful way.

 

This workshop provides a forum for both research and practice for CUBIST-related research topics and technologies in order to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions. Related topics are:

 

·        Business intelligence over unstructured and structured data

·        Semantically enabled ETL processes

·        Semantics of data cubes

·        Triple stores as “information warehouses”

·        Ontology-based data warehouse design

·        Formal concept analysis for business intelligence

·        Semantically enabled visual analytics

·        Qualitative data analysis. 

 

Workshop chairs

 

Frithjof Dau (SAP AG, Germany)

Simon Andrews (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

 

Program Committee

Anastasia Bezerianos (Centrale Recherche S.A. (CRSA) - Laboratoire MAS, France)

Cassio Melo (Centrale Recherche S.A. (CRSA) - Laboratoire MAS, France)

Constantinos Orphanides (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Emre Sevinc (Space Applications Services NV, Belgium)

Kenneth Mcleod (Heriot-Watt University, UK)

Marie-Aude Aufare (Centrale Recherche S.A. (CRSA) - Laboratoire MAS, France)

Simon Polovina (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Yuri Kudryavcev (PMSquare, Australia)

 

The proceedings will be published on-line (CEUR-proceedings) and printed in a separate volume by KULeuven with ISBN. The three best papers submitted before ICFCA deadline may be included in the Springer volume containing the papers published at the main conference.

 

Submission Procedure: Electronic version of full paper complete with authors’ affiliations should be submitted through the conference electronic submission system.

Papers are limited to 10 pages in Springer's LNCS format and are to be submitted via EasyChair at www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cubistws12

Important dates

Submission deadline: February 1, 2012

 

Dr. Simon Polovina

Senior Lecturer in Business Computing, Department of Computing

Principal Investigator: www.cubist-project.eu

Conceptual Structures Research Group, Communication and Computing Research Centre

Sheffield Hallam University, Cantor Building, 153 Arundel St, Sheffield, UK S1 2NU

Tel: +44 (0)114 225 6825; Web: www.polovina.me.uk

Frank Loebe | 10 Jan 2012 18:03
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Favicon

[] FOIS 2012: Call for Papers (7th Int. Conf. on Formal Ontology in Information Systems)

    (apologies for cross-posting)  ...  (please distribute)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

                      -------------
 CALL FOR PAPERS     |  FOIS 2012  |    Jul 24-27, Graz, Austria
                      -------------

-> DEADLINE:
   Conference paper submission:  Jan 31, 2012  (in ca. 3 weeks)

             [1]  http://purl.org/icbofois2012

------------------------------------------------
TITLE AND CO-LOCATION
------------------------------------------------

Seventh International Conference on
   Formal Ontologies in Information Systems (FOIS 2012)
                               July, 24-27, 2012 in Graz, Austria

               held together with the

Third International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2012)

------------------------------------------------
DEFINITION AND SCOPE
------------------------------------------------

Ontology, originally a fundamental part of philosophical enquiry,
is concerned with the analysis and categorization of what exists.
In recent years, however, a complementary focus of ontological
inquiry gained significant momentum fueled by the advent of
complex information systems which rely on robust and coherent
representations of their subject matter. The systematic study of
such representations, their reasoning techniques and their
relations to reality, are at the center of the modern discipline
of formal ontology.

Formal ontology in this modern sense is now a research focus in
such diverse domains as conceptual modeling, database design,
software engineering, organizational modeling, artificial
intelligence, computational linguistics, the life sciences,
bioinformatics, geographic information science, knowledge
engineering, information retrieval, and the semantic web.
Researchers in all these areas increasingly recognize the need
for serious engagement with ontology, understood as a general
theory of the types of entities and relations making up their
respective domains of enquiry, in providing a solid foundation
for their work. 

The FOIS conference is designed to provide a meeting point for
researchers from all disciplines with an interest in formal
ontology. The conference encourages submission of high quality
articles on both theoretical issues and concrete applications.
As in previous years, FOIS 2012 is intended as a nexus of
interdisciplinary research and communication [1].

The FOIS conference series [2] began with the first meeting in
Trento, Italy in June 1998 followed by meetings in 2001, 2004,
2006, 2008, and 2010.  The seventh FOIS conference will be held
in Graz, Austria July 24-27, 2012, in conjunction with the third
International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2012) [1]. 

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association
for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) [3], which is a
non-profit organization the purpose of which is to promote
interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the
intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic,
cognitive science, and computer science, as well as in the
applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling,
knowledge engineering, knowledge management,
information-systems development, library and information science,
scientific research, and semantic technologies in general.

------------------------------------------------
TOPICS OF INTEREST
------------------------------------------------

We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. While
authors may focus on fairly narrow and specific issues, all
papers should emphasize the relevance of the work described
to formal ontology and to information systems. Papers that
completely ignore one or the other of these aspects will be
considered as lying outside the scope of the meeting.
Topic areas of particular interest to the conference are:

Foundational Issues

* Kinds of entity:
  particulars/universals, continuants/occurrents,
  abstracta/concreta, dependent/independent entities,
  natural objects/artifacts
* Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence,
  constitution, subsumption, instantiation
* Vagueness and granularity
* Identity and change
* Formal comparison among ontologies
* Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, ...)
* Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells,
  organisms, ...)
* Ontology of artifacts, functions and roles
* Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions,
  emotions, ...)
* Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms,
  social relationships, artistic expressions, ...)
* Ontology of the information society (information, communication,
  meaning negotiation, ...)
* Ontology and Natural Language Semantics, Ontology and Cognition

Methodologies and Applications

* Top-level vs application ontologies
* Ontology integration and alignment; role of reference ontologies
* Ontology-driven information systems design
* Ontological foundations for conceptual modeling
* Ontology-based application systems
* Requirements engineering
* Knowledge engineering
* Knowledge management and organization
* Knowledge representation; Qualitative modeling
* Computational lexicons; Terminology
* Information retrieval; Question-answering
* Semantic Web; Web services; Grid computing
* Domain-specific ontologies, especially for:
  Biomedical science, E-business, Enterprise integration,
  Engineering, Geography, Law, Library science, Linguistics, ...

------------------------------------------------
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
------------------------------------------------

Steven R. Ray   (Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, California, USA)
Laure Vieu      (CNRS-IRIT, Toulouse, France)
Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University, California, USA)

------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT DATES
------------------------------------------------

We are calling for papers to be considered for inclusion
in FOIS 2012.

Conference paper submission:      Jan 31, 2012  <--
Conference paper notification:    Mar 08, 2012
Camera-ready conference papers:   Mar 24, 2012

>> For young scientists <<
Poster submission:           May 01, 2012
Poster notification:         Jun 01, 2012
Web publication of posters:  Jul 10, 2012

Conference dates:   Jul 24-27, 2012

Workshop paper submission:     Mar 15, 2012
Workshop paper notification:   Apr 15, 2012
Camera-ready workshop papers:  Jun 30, 2012

(note: Workshop CfPs will be distributed separately later)

------------------------------------------------
AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONFERENCE PAPERS
------------------------------------------------

Submitted papers must not exceed 14 pages, including the
bibliography and an abstract of no more than 300 words.
Papers should be submitted electronically as PDF files prepared
in accordance with the IOS formatting guidelines [4].

Submissions should be made via Easychair at the following address:

[5] https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=fois2012

Proceedings will be published by IOS Press and will be available
at the time of the conference. Please note that at least one
author must register for the conference in order for an accepted
paper to be published in the proceedings.

------------------------------------------------
CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
------------------------------------------------

Conference chair:
   Michael Gruninger   (University of Toronto, Canada)

Program chairs:
   Maureen Donnelly    (University at Buffalo, USA)
   Giancarlo Guizzardi (Fed. Univ. of Espirito Santo, Brazil)

Local organization:
   Stefan Schulz       (Graz University, Austria)

------------------------------------------------
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
------------------------------------------------

Achille Varzi   (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Alan Rector     (University of Manchester, UK) 
Albert Goldfain (University at Buffalo, USA)
Aldo Gangemi    (ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy)
Alessandro Lenci  (University of Pisa, Italy)
Antony Galton   (University of Exeter, UK)
Barry Smith     (University at Buffalo, USA)
Bill Andersen   (Highleet, Inc., USA)
Brandon Bennett (University of Leeds, UK)
Carola Eschenbach  (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Chris Menzel    (Texas A&M University, USA)
Chris Welty     (IBM Research, Hawthorne, USA)
Christiane Fellbaum  (Princeton University, USA)
Claudio Masolo  (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Colin Batchelor (Royal Society of Chemistry, UK)
Daniel Oberle   (SAP Research, CEC Karlsruhe, Germany)
David Mark      (University at Buffalo, USA)
Decio Krause    (Fed. Univ. of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil)
Fabian Neuhaus  (NIST, USA) 
Florian Probst  (SAP, Germany)
Frank Loebe     (University of Leipzig, Germany)
Fred Freitas    (Fed. Univ. of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil)
Frederico Fonseca  (Penn State University, USA)
Gerd Wagner     (Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany)
Heinrich Herre  (University of Leipzig, Germany)
Jan Dietz       (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Janna Hastings  (University of Geneva, Switzerland) 
Jeffrey Parsons (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)
Jerome Euzenat  (INRIA, Grenoble, France)
Jerry Hobbs     (University of Southern California, USA)
Johanna Seibt   (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
John Bateman    (University of Bremen, Germany)
John Mylopoulos (University of Toronto, Canada)
John Sowa       (Vivomind Intelligence Inc., USA)
Joost Breuker   (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Ken Kaneiwa     (National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan)
Krzysztof Janowicz,  (UCLA, USA)
Laure Vieu      (CNRS-IRIT, Toulouse, France)
Leo Obrst       (The Mitre Corporation, USA)
Leonardo Lesmo  (University of Torino, Italy)
Maria Luiza Machado Campos  (Fed. Univ. of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Mark Musen      (Stanford University, USA)
Martin Doerr    (Foundation for Research and Technology, Greece)
Mathias Brochhausen  (Univ. of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA)
Mathias Samwald    (Medical University of Vienna, Austria)
Matteo Cristani    (University of Verona, Italy)
Mauricio Barcelos de Almeida  (Fed. Univ. of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Michael F. Uschold (Semantic Arts, Canada)
Michael Gruninger  (University of Toronto, Canada)
Michael Sintek     (DFKI GmbH, Kaiserslautern, Germany)
Michel Dumontier   (Carleton University, Canada)
Natasha Noy        (Stanford University, USA)
Nicola Guarino     (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Olivier Bodenreider  (National Library of Medicine, USA)
Oscar Pastor       (Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain)
Paul Buitelaar     (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Peter Rittgen      (University College Boras, Sweden)
Pierdaniele Giaretta  (University of Verona, Italy)
Pierre Grenon      (Open University, UK)
Ricardo Falbo      (Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil)
Riichiro Mizoguchi (University of Osaka, Japan)
Robert Hoehndorf   (University of Cambridge, UK) 
Roberta Ferrario   (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Roberto Casati     (CNRS-EHSS, Paris, France)
Stefano Borgo      (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Terry Halpin       (LogicBlox, Australia)
Terry Langendoen   (University of Arizona, USA)
Thomas Bittner     (University at Buffalo, USA)
Tony Cohn          (School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK)
Ulrike Sattler     (University of Manchester, UK)
Veda Storey        (Georgia State University, USA)
Werner Ceusters    (University at Buffalo, USA)
Werner Kuhn        (University of Munster, Germany)
William McCarthy   (Michigan State University, USA)
Yair Wand          (University of British Columbia, Canada)

------------------------------------------------
LINKS
------------------------------------------------

[1] http://purl.org/icbofois2012
 ==  http://www.kr-med.org/icbofois2012
    FOIS and ICBO 2012 website

[2] http://www.formalontology.org/
    FOIS conference series

[3] http://www.iaoa.org
    International Association for Ontology and Its Applications

[4] http://www.iospress.nl/authco/instruction_crc.html
    IOS Press formatting guidelines

[5] https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=fois2012
    Submission at EasyChair

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John F. Sowa | 9 Jan 2012 05:25

[] Free online NLP course from Stanford

Source: http://www.nlp-class.org/

Course Description

The course covers a broad range of topics in natural language 
processing, including word and sentence tokenization, text 
classification and sentiment analysis, spelling correction, information 
extraction, parsing, meaning extraction, and question answering, We will 
also introduce the underlying theory from probability, statistics, and 
machine learning that are crucial for the field, and cover fundamental 
algorithms like n-gram language modeling, naive bayes and maxent 
classifiers, sequence models like Hidden Markov Models, probabilistic 
dependency and constituent parsing, and vector-space models of meaning.

January 23rd - March 18th 2012, continuing Stanford's exciting forays 
into large scale online instruction. Students have access to screencast 
lecture videos, are given quiz questions, assignments and exams, receive 
regular feedback on progress, and can participate in a discussion forum. 
Those who successfully complete the course will receive a statement of 
accomplishment. Taught by Professors Jurafsky and Manning, the 
curriculum draws from Stanford's courses in Natural Language Processing. 
You will need a decent internet connection for accessing course 
materials, but should be able to watch the videos on your smartphone.

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John F. Sowa | 28 Dec 2011 17:17

[] Summly text summarizer

Summly is an iPhone app that summarizes web pages.  It was developed
by "16-year-old South Londoner Nick D'Aloisio" who said "I thought
that what I needed was a way of simplifying and summarising these
web searches. Google has Instant Preview but that is just an image
of the page. What I wanted was a content preview."

Following is an interview with Nick D'Aloisio:

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16306742

Following is an excerpt from that article:

> The app uses an algorithm to recognise what category of information
> a webpage contains by using "ontological detection" to identify
> its nature which in turn determines which set of instructions should
> be used to provide a consolidated summary of its text.
>
> Or to Summlyfy this in Mr D'Aloisio's own words: "It can detect
> different genres or topics of webpages and apply a specific set
> of metrics to them."

The Summly web site doesn't say much, but it is significant that
the algorithms are language independent.  See below.

Anybody who is looking for a project might consider developing
something similar.

John
_________________________________________________________________

Source: http://www.summly.com/en/technology.html

Summly’s patent pending technology has been evaluated by MIT Researchers 
and proven state-of-the-art. We utilise ontological detection and 
machine learning techniques in our summarisation processes.

Our core technology is language independent and produces great results 
out of the box for any language.  In addition, specific optimisations 
have been made for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, 
Swedish, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese and Finnish.

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John F. Sowa | 28 Dec 2011 16:40

[] Cheetah

Cheetah, the chimpanzee who starred in the Tarzan movies
from 1932 t0 1934, died at the age of 80.  That is a record
for chimpanzees.  In the wild, they can live to the age of 40,
and in captivity, they often live to 50.

Cheetah liked to smoke cigars, drink gin, and watch football on TV.
But he gave up booze and cigars when he was in his 70s.

What distinguished him from human "couch potatoes" was his strength.
Even in his 70s, he was far stronger than an athletic man.

Fundamental principle:  Human beings are apes with a larger
cerebral cortex and the ability to control their vocalization.
If we want to understand language, we need to build the language
processor on top of a system that can simulate a chimp.

For more info about Cheetah, see the following web pages:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16344309

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3561153/Cheeta-the-chimpanzee-Errol-Bogie-and-me.html

John

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Gmane