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This paper takes an ontological approach to the subject of promising. Setting aside the typical concern over promissory obligations, I draw on recent work from the field of social ontology and develop a promissory schema that characterizes the functional role the practice of promising plays in our lives. This schema, put in terms of one agent's voluntary and intentional attempts to provide another agent with a specific kind of assurance, helps explain what we are doing when we make a promise, and what we desire when we ask that a promise be made. The promissory schema is explanatorily beneficial as it can help us understand why certain actions may be interpreted as promises, thereby reminding us that we need to be sensitive to the ways our actions can give rise to expectations in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we call for an ontological and reflexive turn in first‐year nursing education. An ontological turn focuses on formation, the 'being' and 'becoming' of a nurse, and emphasizes the value of nursing knowledge. First‐year nursing students often possess romanticized ideals about being a nurse that devalues the knowledge and expertise of nurses. We posit a thoughtful ontological orientation within nursing education that shifts the emphasis toward becoming skillful nurses, with expertise grounded in nursing perspectives. A focus on formation includes discussions regarding ideologies, dominant perspectives, and reflexive explorations of students' views of nursing juxtaposed with the realities of nursing practice. We propose ontologic reflexivity as an approach to consider what perspectives are prioritized (or not) within the nursing classroom. Within pedagogical dialogic spaces, ontologic reflexivity calls on educators to create opportunities for students to learn the value of nursing knowledge along with other forms of knowledge. We consider ways in which an ontological and reflexive turn within the first year of nursing education may contribute to the formation of nursing students who value nursing knowledge, are open‐minded to various forms of knowledge, and possess an intentional reflexive way of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large regression data sets are now commonplace, with so many predictors that they cannot or should not all be included individually. In practice, derived predictors are relevant as meaningful features or, at the very least, as a form of regularized approximation of the true coefficients. We consider derived predictors that are the sum of some groups of individual predictors, which is equivalent to predictors within a group sharing the same coefficient. However, the groups of predictors are usually not known in advance and must be discovered from the data. In this paper we develop a coefficient tree regression algorithm for generalized linear models to discover the group structure from the data. The approach results in simple and highly interpretable models, and we demonstrated with real examples that it can provide a clear and concise interpretation of the data. Via simulation studies under different scenarios we showed that our approach performs better than existing competitors in terms of computing time and predictive accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes an alternative approach to improve the performance of image retrieval. In this work, a framework for image retrieval based on machine learning and semantic retrieval is proposed. In the preprocessing phase, the image is segmented objects by using Graph‐cut, and the feature vectors of objects presented in the image and their visual relationships are extracted using R‐CNN. The feature vectors, visual relationships, and their symbolic labels are stored in KD‐Tree data structures which can be used to predict the label of objects and visual relationships later. To facilitate semantic query, the images use the RDF data model and create an ontology for the symbolic labels annotated. For each query image, after extracting their feature vectors, the KD‐Tree is used to classify the objects and predict their relationship. After that, a SPARQL query is built to extract a set of similar images. The SPARQL query consists of triple statements describing the objects and their relationship which were previously predicted. The evaluation of the framework with the MS‐COCO dataset and Flickr showed that the precision achieved scores of 0.9218 and 0.9370, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of the relations between emotions and personhood, with a view to advancing a critical realist account of the role of emotions in social life. It is argued that the constitution of persons has to be approached from an ontological perspective, and that this raises questions about how sociology has addressed the meaning and role of emotions. Margaret Archer's critical realist perspective on them as commentaries on human concerns is broadly endorsed, but some significant correctives are proposed, especially with respect to the important distinction between primary and secondary emotions. To this end, it is argued that the affect spectrum theory advanced by Warren TenHouten can be fruitfully appended to a critical realist theory of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering of structure‐rich heterogeneous information networks composed of multiple types of objects and relationships, which has become a challenge in data mining. Most of the existing clustering heterogeneous network methods focus on the internal information of the dataset while ignoring the domain knowledge outside the dataset. However, in real‐world scenarios, domain knowledge can often offer valuable information for clustering. In this study, we propose a three‐layer model OntoHeteClus, which is able to cluster multitype objects in star‐structured heterogeneous networks by considering both the dataset itself and the background information quantified via the ontology. OntoHeteClus first evaluates the similarity between central objects according to formalized domain ontology information, based on which central objects are subsequently clustered. Finally, attribute objects are clustered according to the central object clustering result. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the modeling concept and working principle of the proposed method, and experiments on a real‐world dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. This article is categorized under:Technologies > Structure Discovery and ClusteringAlgorithmic Development > Structure Discovery [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing interest in embedding the security in the design of digital enterprise architecture (EA) modeling platform to secure the digital assets. Access control management (ACM) is one of the key aspects of a secure digital enterprise architecture modeling platform design. Typical enterprise architecture modeling approaches mainly focus on the modeling of business, information, and technology elements. This draws our attention to this important question: how to model ACM for a secure digital EA modeling platform to ensure secure access to digital assets? This article aims to address this important research question in collaboration with our industry partner and developed an ontology‐based ACM metamodel that can be used by enterprises to model their ACM for a particular situation. This research has been conducted using the well‐known action‐design research (ADR) method to develop and evaluate the ACM metamodel for the secure digital EA modeling platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reliability challenge to ontology can be summarized as the complaint that no satisfying explanation is available of how one can have true ontological beliefs, given that the relevant belief‐forming methods are noncausal (for example, not perception based or memory based). This paper first presents a version of the reliability challenge against realist approaches to ontology, put forward by Jared Warren. It then explores a response to the challenge on behalf of the realist that appeals to the use of abduction. This response does not satisfactorily deal with the reliability challenge, though, and even leads to a further epistemic impasse. At this point, a version of ontological pluralism is presented, according to which all the competing theories in a certain ontological dispute can be true—in a sense of "true" to be articulated. The final step shows how this version of pluralism deals with the reliability challenge, especially with the complaint that we lack an explanation for our true ontological beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a form of remembering sufficiently overlooked that it has not yet been dignified with a name. I shall christen it Rilkean Memory. This form of memory is, typically, embodied and embedded. It is a form of involuntary, autobiographical memory that is neither implicit nor explicit, neither declarative nor procedural, neither episodic nor semantic, and not Freudian. While a discussion of the importance of Rilkean memory lies beyond the scope of this paper, I shall try to show that admitting Rilkean memory into our ontology does point us in the direction of a very different conception of the mind and mental processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the way in which Feuerbach's attempt to develop a naturalistic, realist remodeling of Hegel's relational ontology, which culminated in his own version of 'sensualism', led him to emphasize the vulnerability of the subject and the role of affectivity, thus making object-dependence a constitutive feature of subjectivity. We find in Feuerbach the first lineaments of a philosophical theory of object-relations, one that anticipates the well-known psychological theory of the same name, but one that also offers a broader metaphysical basis in which all types of 'essential objects' are shown to matter to subjectivity. This Feuerbachian theory of object-relations, the paper then argues, foreshadows a number of important developments in 20th century post-Hegelian philosophy. In it can be found an anticipation of Adorno's later theory of mimesis. Equally, this theory already emphasizes the 'libidinal' nature of intentionality, in a way that announces Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh. Finally, the last section of the article proposes a model with which we might reconstruct the way in which object-relations and self-relations can be brought together consistently. In this instance, Feuerbach uses concepts that announce Freud's notion of 'primary narcissism'. One contemporary philosopher who has proposed a sophisticated model of subjectivity, in which primary narcissism is shown to complement object-dependence, is Axel Honneth. The last section argues that Feuerbach's full image of subjective identity as reciprocal scaffolding of self- and object-relations reminds strongly of Honneth's core concept of 'positive self-relation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effort to categorize nature dates at least to Aristotle and is still ongoing. The study of categories is termed "ontology"-a field Whose use in the philosophy' of social science has most recently been revived. Last April 1998, the State University of New York at Buffalo hosted a conference on "Applied Ontology: A Marvin Farber Conference in Law and Institutions in Society." The following papers were selected from the group of papers presented at the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: John Searle's theory of social reality is among the most influential accounts in the history of philosophy. His theory also implicates concepts and issues of foundational interest to sociologists, including social structure, institutional differentiation and the relationship between linguistic performativity and institutional reality. Despite this overlap with sociological theory, and despite some sustained attention from sociologists (e.g., Lukes, ), no formal theoretical model of Searle's work exists within sociology. This paper reviews the core concepts of Searle's theory before concisely describing and then formally modelling their propositional structure. Though the overlap of Searle's approach with classical and contemporary sociological theory is discussed throughout, the paper concludes with a specific argument about his proper assimilation into sociological theory vis‐à‐vis Durkheim, Bourdieu and Giddens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Cloud is a multitenant architecture that allows the cloud users to share the resources via servers and is used in various applications, including data classification. Data classification is a widely used data mining technique for big data analysis. It helps the learners to discover hidden data patterns by training massive data collected from the real world. Because this trained model is the private asset of an entity, it should be protected from all other noncollaborative entities. Therefore, it is essential to take effective measures to preserve the confidential data. The objective of this paper is to preserve the privacy of the confidential data in the cloud environment by introducing the medical data classification method. In view of that, this paper presents a method for medical data classification using a novel ontology and whale optimization‐based support vector machine (OW‐SVM) approach. Initially, privacy‐preserved data are developed adopting Kronecker product bat approach, and then, ontology is built for the feature selection process. Ontology and whale optimization‐based support vector machine is then proposed by integrating ontology and whale optimization algorithm into SVM, in which ontology and whale optimization algorithm is used for the feasible selection of kernel parameters. The experiment is done using 3 heart disease datasets, such as Cleveland, Switzerland, and Hungarian. In a comparative analysis, the performance of the OW‐SVM approach is compared with that of K‐nearest neighbor, Naive Bayes, decision tree, SVM, and OW‐SVM, using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and fitness, as the evaluation metrics. The OW‐SVM approach could achieve maximum performance with accuracy of 83.21%, the sensitivity of 91.49%, specificity of 73%, and fitness of 81.955, outperforming existing comparative techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Degree‐sentences, i.e. sentences that seem to refer to things that allow of degrees, are widely used both inside and outside of philosophy, even though the metaphysics of degrees is much of an untrodden field. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by addressing the following four questions: [A] Is there some one thing, such that it is degree sensitive? [B] Are there things x, y, and z that stand in a certain relation to each other, viz. the relation that x has more y than z? [C] In those cases in which degree sentences do not refer to phenomena that are degree sensitive, what is responsible for their prima facie seeming to do so? [D] If there are degree sensitive things, to which ontological categories do they belong? We answer each of these questions by arguing that there are, metaphysically speaking, different phenomena that degree sentences refer to: some refer to determinates that emanate from a certain determinable, others to tokens that are instantiations of a certain type, and yet others to what we call ‘complex, resultant properties that are constituted by stereotypical properties’. Finally, we show the relevance of our answers by applying them to the notions of freedom and belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) works perfectly well for all practical purposes. Once one admits, however, that a successful scientific theory is supposed not only to make predictions but also to tell us a story about the world in which we live, a philosophical problem emerges: in the specific case of QM, it is not possible to associate with the theory a unique scientific image of the world; there are several images. The fact that the theory may be compatible with distinct ontologies, and that those ontologies may themselves be associated with a plurality of metaphysical approaches, gives rise to the problem of metaphysical underdetermination. This paper concludes that the available metametaphysical criteria fail to deliver objectivity in theory choice, and it puts forward its own criterion based on a tension between two methods of metaphysical inquiry: one that is closely related to science and another that is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates ontological dimensions of the blockchain by asking what kind of socio-technical object bitcoin is. It discusses both blockchain's political qualities and the political forms enabled by its emergence. It first observes recent approaches to the ontology of money and the political qualities of the ledgers used by the current fractional reserve banking model. It then directs the same questions at blockchain technology. The paper discusses an ontology proposed by Ole Bjerg () and argues in favour of a mixed-ontology approach to blockchains. It then questions the political qualities of the distributed ledger as a digital object and highlights the apparent absence of authority figures in the model. Finally, it argues that the political ontology of the blockchain can be framed as the displacement of authority from institutional actors into instrumental control of trust, in a dynamically distributed environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophy of blockchain technology is concerned, among other things, with blockchain ontology, how it might be characterised, how it is being created, implemented, and adopted, how it operates in the world, and how it evolves over time. This paper concentrates on whether Bitcoin/blockchain can be considered a complex system and, if so, whether it is a chaotic one. Beyond mere academic curiosity, a positive response would raise concerns about the likelihood of Bitcoin/blockchain entering a 2010-Flash-Crash-type of chaotic regime, with catastrophic consequences for financial systems based on it. The paper starts by highlighting the relevant details of the Bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem formed by the blockchain itself, bitcoin end users (payers and payees), capital gains seekers, miners, full nodes maintainers, and developers, and their interactions. Then the Information Theory of Complex Systems is briefly discussed for later use. Finally, the blockchain is investigated with the help of Crutchfield's Statistical Complexity measure. The low non-null statistical complexity value obtained suggests that the blockchain may be considered algorithmically complicated but hardly a complex system and unlikely to enter a chaotic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the study `The Ontology of the Femoral Neck-Shaft Angle in Normal and Myelodysplastic Children' by D.L. Duren and C.O. Lovejoy.

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it take for a property to be a social property? This question is different from questions about what it takes for a property to be socially constructed. That is: it is one thing to be social, it is another to be socially constructed. Compared to questions about social construction, this question about sociality has received relatively little attention in social metaphysics. Here, I work from a very specific set of observations which arise from the social metaphysics literature to uncover a sufficient condition on sociality for properties, a condition which I argue all non‐social properties fail to satisfy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific literature contains a tremendous amount of kinetic data describing the dynamic behaviour of biochemical reactions over time. These data are needed for computational modelling to create models of biochemical reaction networks and to obtain a better understanding of the processes in living cells. To extract the knowledge from the literature, biocurators are required to understand a paper and interpret the data. For modellers, as well as experimentalists, this process is very time consuming because the information is distributed across the publication and, in most cases, is insufficiently structured and often described without standard terminology. In recent years, biological databases for different data types have been developed. The advantages of these databases lie in their unified structure, searchability and the potential for augmented analysis by software, which supports the modelling process. We have developed the SABIO- RK database for biochemical reaction kinetics. In the present review, we describe the challenges for database developers and curators, beginning with an analysis of relevant publications up to the export of database information in a standardized format. The aim of the present review is to draw the experimentalist's attention to the problem (from a data integration point of view) of incompletely and imprecisely written publications. We describe how to lower the barrier to curators and improve this situation. At the same time, we are aware that curating experimental data takes time. There is a community concerned with making the task of publishing data with the proper structure and annotation to ontologies much easier. In this respect, we highlight some useful initiatives and tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving energy efficiency in a manufacturing company through an energy management system requires active participation of different stakeholders and involvement of different organizational entities and technical processes. Interoperability of stakeholders and entities is the key factor to achieve a successful implementation of an energy management system. Researchers have been developing approaches in applying ontologies to address interoperability issues among humans as well as machines. Ontologies have also been used for knowledge representation in different domains, such as energy management and manufacturing. In recent years, researchers have developed knowledge-based intelligent energy management systems in buildings, especially households, which use ontologies for knowledge representation. In the manufacturing domain, ontologies have been used for knowledge management in order to provide a common formal understanding between the stakeholders, who have different background knowledge. This paper proposes an approach to apply ontology to allow knowledge-based energy efficiency evaluation in manufacturing companies. The ontology provides a formal knowledge representation that addresses the interoperability issues due to different human stakeholders as well as machines involved in the energy management system of the company. This paper also describes the methods used to construct and to process the ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Williamson argues that the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate should be abandoned as hopelessly unclear and that we should get on with the clearer contingentism‐necessitism debate. We think that Williamson's pessimism is not warranted by the brief arguments he gives. In this paper, we explain why and provide a clear formulation of the traditional actualist‐possibilist debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides an interpretation of section 2.013 of the Tractatus which casts light on the strategic role that that section plays in the early Wittgenstein's version of the ontology of logical atomism. The far‐reaching consequences that the proposed interpretation has on the issue of the metaphysical nature of objects are spelled out, and the identification of Tractatus objects with phenomenal qualities, that is with phenomenal abstract universals, is shown to be fully consistent with those consequences. As a by‐product of the analysis, the standpoint of the Tractatus with respect to both contingentism and necessitism is clarified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her paper, Ladelle McWhorter offers a genealogical account of the historical entanglement between the concepts of moral and legal personhood, which introduces a new level of complexity to contemporary debates concerning corporate personhood. In this commentary, I discuss the insights of McWhorter's genealogical analysis and pose two sets of questions concerning the ontological status of corporate personhood and the potential practical difficulties surrounding the creation of non-forensic, corporate entities. Particularly, I emphasize the intimate, historical relationship between legality and corporation, and consider its effects on the ontological and practical possibilities of corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the main methodological issues raised by a research project we carried out between 2012 and 2013 about Italian queer 'creative' migration in Berlin, focusing on the tensions among mobility/movement, desire, bodies, affects and fieldwork. Following an increasing international debate on the topic, the contribution discusses the (im)possibility to develop a queer method or methodology. We stress how 'queering' methodologies and methods is not an ontological position pre-assumed when conducting research with queer-identified subjects, but is a process of dismantling taken-for-granted, stable, monolithic categories and identities. In order to do so, the paper discusses positionalities, situated knowledge and the different interactions - with both human and non-human actors - shaping the field. Through analysing body performances in the terms introduced by Taylor, 'a politics of becoming' emerges as a way to consider the relation between sexualities and spaces. The 'objects' of our research, that is, queer migrants, can thus be reframed following Braidotti's conceptualisation of the 'nomadic subject' and Deleuze and Guattari's 'desiring machines'. Since they are shaped by affects, personal trajectories are exceptional and unique, composing new territorial materialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper serves as a timely reminder for culture scholars in business studies to engage in multi-paradigmatic studies. Our review of culture literature (at the macro level: regional, societal, national) reveals a dominance of the objectivist tradition, which has, over time, resulted in three problems: (1) an oversimplification of the otherwise complex culture concept; (2) equating nation and culture; and (3) neglecting factors other than cultural dimensions that influence individual behavior. We argue that these problems can be partially resolved by engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Since combining different paradigmatic traditions can be difficult, we also offer insights into how this can be done through two illustrative cases of recent multi-paradigmatic studies. These examples reveal that conducting multi-paradigmatic cultural research is not only feasible, but that it also results in more innovative insights than mono-paradigmatic studies, while simultaneously resolving some of the afore-cited problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Learning analytics (LA) is a significant area of the enhanced learning technology that has been emerged during the last decade. In this paper, we present a Cloud Adapted Workflow e-Assessment System, called Cloud-AWAS. This system makes use of the learning analytics in order to turn learners into more effective and better learners. Hence, Cloud-AWAS could be seamlessly integrated into any learning management system. This system provides a generic e-assessment workflow which is adapted to learner's profiles. We have started by creating a learner profile ontology based on extraction data from e-assessment activities, file log and personal information. Then, we have defined three adaptation actions: Add Activity, Edit Activity, and Delete Activity, applied on the workflow assessment and using information extracted from learner profile ontology instances. Each action is applied according to a number of conditions. Finally, we present some results of the empirical evaluation of Cloud_AWAS. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 24:951-966, 2016; View this article online at ; DOI [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the coexistence of competing and contested interests in intercultural natural resource management ( NRM) systems in Australia and Malaysia, this paper explores the ways in which ontological pluralism and the interplay of socio-cultural, political-economic and biophysical influences shape NRM systems. We aim to foster a discursive space in which to reframe the challenges of capacity building in the rapidly changing spaces of intercultural NRM systems. The paper synthesizes the conceptual arguments of field research to conclude that capacity deficits of dominant institutions, processes and knowledge systems drive many systemic failures in land and sea management affecting Indigenous peoples. We advocate urgent action to build intercultural competence and new capacities and competencies in those institutions. The paper reframes intercultural NRM in terms of coexistence and invites wider debate about these 'new geographies of coexistence' in intercultural NRM systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Modern software often uses ontologies as its key component to store data and their relationships. This is different from using an ontology as a stand-alone tool for knowledge sharing and representation. The ontology component needs to work with other software components and needs to evolve as the software evolves. Ontology design has been a research topic for years; however, most of these studies focus on using ontologies as stand-alone applications. This paper studies ontology patterns that can be applied to design ontologies as an integral part of a service-oriented application. The paper first briefly reviews various ontology design issues including a brief survey of existing ontology design patterns. The paper then outlines general principles for using ontologies in software applications, including the needs to incorporate ontology design process as a part of software development processes, design ontologies as a component of an overall software architecture, and use ontologies to enhance software evolution and the role that ontologies can play in software validation. The paper then proposes some common ontology patterns that can be used to design ontologies in service-oriented applications. This is followed by examining two international projects, SENSEI and FCINT, where ontologies are used in service-oriented applications and several ontology design patterns are used. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores to solve a hard metaphysical problem for contemporary social ontology by turning to medieval theology and solve a problem for medieval theology by turning to social ontology. Topics include examines exotic as it may seem, the connection between the two has been noted before and in his review of an edited volume on social ontology, Wolfgang Grassl wondered why one avenue has been totally neglected from which insights may be derived.

This paper applies cognitive models, inspired by cognitive science, with the aim to propose architectural and knowledge-based requirements to structure ontological models for the cognitive profiling of agents. The proposed architecture aims to address the lack of flexibility that most agent-based collaborations are affected by. The resulting agents, equipped with advanced cognitive profiling, have an increased cognitive awareness of themselves and are more capable of interacting with other agents in a multi-agents based environment. In this research, cognitive awareness identifies the ability of the web agents to diagnose their processing limitations and to establish interactions with the external environment. The outcome is the enhanced flexibility, reusability and predictability of the agent behaviour; thus contributing towards minimizing human cognitive demands. The concept of cognitive profiling presented in this paper considers the semantic web as an action mediating space, where ontological models provide affordances for improving cognitive awareness through shared knowledge-base. The conceptual model for the cognitive profile architecture is developed with Protégé Ontology editor to generate OWL Ontology and evaluated through a proof of concept. The results show that agents equipped with cognitive awareness can undertake complex tasks more dynamically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper Martin Heidegger's notions about dwelling in the sites of finitude and 'power-free' ( Macht-los) 'letting-be' ( Gelassenheit) are explored as fundamental possibilities for resisting the ontological violence posed by global capitalism, the planetary outcome of the metaphysical condition Heidegger calls the 'machination' ( Machenschaft). Beginning from the planetary machination-the emergence of the flexible and circularly functioning power of calculative intelligibility-resistance is understood ontologically and hence as a radical critique of power as a consummation of the history of the metaphysical constitution of being. The paper culminates in a discussion of Heidegger's view on the awakening of the 'other beginning' of the abyssal 'Event' of being, a groundless 'time-space-play' capable of constituting an alternative modality of relations no longer based upon the calculative functions of power but upon groundless thought and non-violent dwelling in the earth-sites of finite being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the drastic development of semantic-driven applications, assessing the quality of ontologies has received more attention. Measuring and assessing the quality of ontologies can help ontology engineers to control project management and reduce the risk of project failures. However, most of the existing ontology metrics for measuring and assessing the quality of ontologies are defined based on ontology structure, and neglect the stability of ontology measurement. In this paper, we concentrate on stable ontology measurement by using semantically derived ontology metrics. We propose four ontology cohesion metrics, which fully consider the implicitly expressed semantic information and are defined based on ontological semantics rather than ontology structure. Before measuring and assessing an ontology, we materialize a pre-processing for stable ontology measurement by treating the ontology. The proposed ontology cohesion metrics are theoretically validated by the validation criteria of object-oriented software. The experimental results show that we can successfully collect more semantic knowledge from the testing ontologies for stable ontology measurement by using the proposed ontology cohesion metrics. The ontology cohesion metrics proposed in this paper can be reasonably used as a cogent complementarity of existing ontology metrics. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of any tissue involves differentiation, cell dynamics and interactions with adjacent tissues. This paper suggests that the complexity of the system as a whole can be represented as a mathematical graph, that is, a set of connected triples of the general form [ term] < relationship> [ term]. Computationally, such graphs are widely used for modeling data; visually, they form hierarchies and networks. For morphogenesis, the triples are of the general structure < noun > < verb > < noun >, where nouns cover tissues, molecules and networks and verbs describe processes such as moves, differentiates, grows and apoptoses. The paper considers the general formalism of graphs, where graphs are already used in biology, and how developmental anatomy may be described using this format. Representing morphogenesis as a visual graph is complicated as the formalism has to incorporate tissue types, molecular signals, networks, dynamic processes and some aspects, at least, of tissue geometry. The formation of a capillary sprout is chosen as an example of how this complexity can be represented graphically, with colour used to distinguish tissues and molecules. There are three key benefits, beyond its compactness, in using the graph formalism of morphogenesis to complement experimentation. First, it emphasizes the distributed nature of causality in morphogenesis. Secondly, producing all the triples for the visual graph requires explicit formalization of each aspect of the process, and this, in turn, often exposes gaps in knowledge and so suggests new experiments. Thirdly, once the graph has been formalized, triples can be annotated with associated information or IDs (e.g. cell types, publications, gene-expression data) that link to external online resources that may be regularly updated. Such annotations allow the graph to be viewed as a self-maintaining review. The graph approach sees dynamic processes as the drivers of developmental momentum and, because the same processes are used many times during development, it seems appropriate to view them as modules and their underlying networks as genomic subroutines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive control is easy to identify in its effects, but difficult to grasp conceptually. This creates somewhat of a puzzle: Is cognitive control a bona fide process or an epiphenomenon that merely exists in the mind of the observer? The topiCS special edition on cognitive control presents a broad set of perspectives on this issue and helps to clarify central conceptual and empirical challenges confronting the field. Our commentary provides a summary of and critical response to each of the papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization and global concerns for tropical moist forests have a strong impact on the ability of local, indigenous people who live either in or close to the forest and depend upon the quality of the ecosystem resources that the forest provides for the vital necessities of their daily life. This paper explores how tension between global and local interests arises. It investigates differences in the acquisition of knowledge about the forest ecosystem and suggests ways to mediate and negotiate between the interested parties. Catchment forest management at Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania is the reference case for this research. Methodologically, there are challenges connected to the different positions expressed in a 'locals - globals' discussion about forest ecosystem services and sustainability. Within this setting, the paper argues for an ecological mediation between locals and globals based on an actor-network and stakeholder approach. In the conclusion, the paper suggests a framework for ecological methods, where ecological semantics can be a mediator between nature (ecology) and culture (society) to evolve a common understanding for environmental sustainability and valuation of ecosystem services. From this, another framework for mediating ecological indicators is developed to keep the elements of local versus global interest, nature versus society and epistemology versus ontology together in one system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specimen identification keys are still the most commonly created tools used by systematic biologists to access biodiversity information. Creating identification keys requires analyzing and synthesizing large amounts of information from specimens and their descriptions and is a very labor-intensive and time-consuming activity. Automating the generation of identification keys from text descriptions becomes a highly attractive text mining application in the biodiversity domain. Fine-grained semantic annotation of morphological descriptions of organisms is a necessary first step in generating keys from text. Machine-readable ontologies are needed in this process because most biological characters are only implied (i.e., not stated) in descriptions. The immediate question to ask is “How well do existing ontologies support semantic annotation and automated key generation?” With the intention to either select an existing ontology or develop a unified ontology based on existing ones, this paper evaluates the coverage, semantic consistency, and inter-ontology agreement of a biodiversity character ontology and three plant glossaries that may be turned into ontologies. The coverage and semantic consistency of the ontology/glossaries are checked against the authoritative domain literature, namely, Flora of North America and Flora of China. The evaluation results suggest that more work is needed to improve the coverage and interoperability of the ontology/glossaries. More concepts need to be added to the ontology/glossaries and careful work is needed to improve the semantic consistency. The method used in this paper to evaluate the ontology/glossaries can be used to propose new candidate concepts from the domain literature and suggest appropriate definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Marx's Theses on Feuerbach offer a tremendous and yet neglected resource for work in political ecology and the production of nature. Whilst not calling for a dramatic shift in the way in which such work is conducted, the paper shows how the Theses offer a firm and concise foundation on which to base the ontological and epistemological claims of work on the politicised environment. Ontologically, nature is a differentiated unity, best understood as sensuous activity or practice. This fits well with Smith's claims that nature is produced, whilst not limiting production to capitalist activity. Environments are thereby made up of everyday activity. Subverting the apparent anthropocentrism of this claim, the paper shows how (as Gramsci recognised) the Theses on Feuerbach have an incipient sense of the socio-natural. Post-humanist critiques of Smith's (humanist) production of nature thesis are thereby disrupted. Production realises a differentiated unity of socio-natural relations. Epistemologically, the paper demonstrates how the Theses push political ecologists to construct knowledge claims from practical activity. An ecological politics thereby emerges from the situated knowledges of different actors. Building on this, the paper argues that Marx's ‘notes to himself’ give us a sense of possible worlds and possible ecologies beyond the topsy-turvy one we have made in the present. Through the concept of praxis evinced in the Theses , a vision of the engaged scholar activist, committed to learning about the world through changing it (and vice-versa), emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do numbers exist? Carnap (1956 [1950]) famously argues that this question can be understood in an "internal" and in an "external" sense, and calls "external" questions "non‐cognitive". Carnap also says that external questions are raised "only by philosophers" (p. 207), which means that, in his view, philosophers raise "non‐cognitive" questions. However, it is not clear how the internal/external distinction and Carnap's related views about philosophy should be understood. This paper provides a new interpretation. I draw attention to Carnap's distinction between purely external statements, which are independent from all frameworks, and pragmatic external statements, which concern which framework one should adopt, and argue that the latter express noncognitive mental states. Specifically, I argue that "frameworks" are systems of rules for the assessment of statements, which are utterances of ordinary language sentences. Pragmatic external statements express noncognitive dispositions to follow only certain rules of assessment. For instance, "numbers exist" understood as a pragmatic external statement expresses a noncognitive disposition to use only rules of assessment according to which numbers do exist. Carnap can thereby be understood as proposing a distinctive form of noncognitivism about ontology that is in some respects analogous to norm‐expressivism in metaethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Searle has mistakenly claimed that emergence is the central concept in the account of social ontology defended by Tony Lawson, the central figure in the project now regularly referred to as Cambridge Social Ontology. This is not the case. Rather, if any concept can be considered central for Lawson, it is organisation. In this paper, I explain how Searle could misunderstand Lawson and, in doing so, I bring out the importance of organisation for understanding how phenomena, both social and non‐social, are constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the UK, wide‐ranging efforts have been made to enhance citizen access to psychological therapy. Clinical psychologists are key providers of and gatekeepers for therapy. This article is concerned with how clinical psychologists foster access (or not) to psychological care. More specifically, it interrogates how psychologists manage, and make decisions around, patient referrals. Following a referral, psychologists must resolve an uncertain situation: should they accept a referral and continue with an assessment? Thereafter, they must decide whether a patient is suitable for their service – and for therapy more generally. Certainty is synthesised against a backdrop of sometimes powerful pressures to meet service targets. Taking cues from medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS), this article interrogates some of the uncertainties around access to psychological therapy, and how decisions made by clinical psychologists involve negotiations of patient, service and professional ontologies. To do so, it draws on interviews with 40 psychologists across England and Scotland. The paper spotlights a professional group that is often absent from or only dimly lit within sociological observation and analysis: clinical psychology. Through attending to the discourses of psychologists, I extend conversations about uncertainty through a distinctive case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health 3.0 is a health‐related extension of the Web 3.0 concept. It is based on the semantic Web which provides for semantically organizing electronic health records of individuals. Health 3.0 is rapidly gaining ground as a new research topic in many academic and industrial disciplines. Due to the recent rapid spread of wearable sensors and smart devices with access to social media, migrating health services from the traditional centre‐based health system to personal health care is inevitable. In this current era of greater personalization, treating patients' health problems according to their profile and medical data gathered is possible using the latest information technologies. Consequently, personalized health recommender systems have gained importance. Empowering the utility of advanced Web technology in personalized health systems is still challenging due to pressing issues, such as lack of low cost and accurate smart medical sensors and wearable devices, existing investment in legacy Web system architecture in health sector, heterogeneity of medical data gathered by myriad health care institutions and isolated health services, and interoperability issues as well as multi‐dimensionality of medical data. By tracing recent developments, this paper offers a systematic review through recent research on semantic Web‐enabled personalized health systems, namely, semanticized personalized health recommender systems with the key enabling technologies, major applications, and successful case studies. Critical questions derived from the research studies were discussed, and main directions of open issues were identified leading to recommendations for future study in the field of personalized health recommender systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly complex systems of systems (SoS) have to be developed in ever shorter times‐to‐market at reduced costs and with high reliability. In addition, as the life cycle of such SoS frequently spans across several decades, customer expectations and market conditions will evolve. Systems engineering (SE)/model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) and configuration management (CM) need to be ever more closely integrated to appropriately address this situation. CM as a discipline is essential for establishing traceability and controlling baseline evolutions between all the relevant pieces of information resulting from the related system life cycle processes of all constituent systems of such SoS; but for this to work, the scope of CM must be extended both throughout the entire life cycle and across all participating monolithic systems. New frameworks are needed to effectively and efficiently apply CM across SoS arrangements. This paper proposes an ontology‐based, federative approach to managing the inherent complexity of CM in the context of SoS, with particular focus on a change management framework for SoS. Examples from a conceptual system that is concerned with the submarine exploration of Enceladus as part of the "Saturn exploration system" are used to demonstrate typical SE/MBSE artifacts and how CM needs to address them across the involved operational and enabling systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the latest statistics, the proportion of the elderly (+65) is increasing and is expected to double within the European Union in a period of 50 years. This ageing is due to the improvement of quality of life and advances in medicine in the last decades. Gerontechnology is receiving a great deal of attention as a way of providing the elderly with sustainable products, environments, and services combining gerontology and technology. One of the most important aspects to consider by gerontechnology is the mobility/rehabilitation technologies, because there is an important relationship between mobility and the elderly's quality of life. Telerehabilitation systems have emerged to allow the elderly to perform their rehabilitation exercises remotely. However, in many cases, the proposed systems assist neither the patients nor the experts about the progress of the rehabilitation. To address this problem, we propose in this paper, a fuzzy‐semantic system for evaluating patient's physical state during the rehabilitation process based on well‐known standard for patients' evaluation. Moreover, a tool called FINE has been developed that facilitates the evaluation be accomplished in a semi‐automatic way first asking patients to carry out a set of standard tests and then inferencing their state by means of a fuzzy‐semantic approach using the data captured during the rehabilitation tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursing theories are typically anthropocentric and emphasize caring for a person as a unitary whole. They maintain the dualisms of human–nonhuman, natural–social and material–ideal. Recent developments in nonhuman ontology question the utility of that approach. One important philosopher in this new materialism is political theorist Jane Bennett. In this paper, I explore Bennett's vital materialism and enchantment as two concepts arising from the nonhuman turn that should inform nursing philosophy. Vital materialism considers the lively power of matter to affect the world and be affected in relations. Enchantment refers to a sense of wonder and captivation with matter. While summarizing her important contributions, I also describe common criticisms and responses. I consider the human as an assemblage of matter as well as the agency or "thing power" of matter external to humans. This has implications for nursing thought and practice, and it can inform a more capacious research methodology. I also discuss how compassion fatigue or burnout and other professional issues may be seen as a form of disenchantment with the material world. I argue that embracing these and other elements of Bennett's new materialist philosophy can help nurses and other health professionals enrich their theories and practice to advance their disciplines and improve care for persons and populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mereological nominalism is the thesis that properties are identical to fusions of their instances. Long ignored, this paper argues that it's a plausible ontology of properties. Whilst not everyone will accept it, it's going to appeal to many philosophers and (at the least) should no longer be relegated to the annals of the history of metaphysics.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to argue for some useful distinctions in the theory of grounding. I do so by first introducing the notion of grounding, discussing some of its features, and arguing that grounds must play some role in bringing about what they ground (sec.1). I then argue that there are various distinct roles a fact may play in bringing about another, and more particularly that we should distinguish between three such roles; enablers, partial grounds, and facts that partly ground (sec. 2). Finally, I present two theoretical advantages to incorporating these distinctions into our theory of grounding. Namely, that it reframes, and arguably dissolves, the contingentist‐necessitarian debate (sec. 3), and that it helps to elegantly deal with the purported counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding and thus maintain the plausible elements of the assumption that grounding is a transitive relation (sec.4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the mode of being of names. The paper begins by explaining why the joke is on commentators who see Lewis Carroll's White Knight as applying the use/mention distinction. Then it argues that the real problem with the distinction is that the idea that names are used to mention what they name depends on mistakenly conceiving of language as existing autonomously; and that philosophers have this conception because they fail to appreciate what they are doing when they philosophise about language. This failure also explains why philosophers mistakenly think of any manifestation of a name as a (physical) token. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]