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To develop an ultrasound (US)-guided ventral approach to the brachial plexus (BP) and evaluate nerve anatomy and staining in barred owl cadavers. Prospective, cadaveric study. Eleven adult male and female barred owl cadavers with a body mass of 0.43–0.98 kg. Eleven frozen cadavers were thawed for 48 hours, weighed and assigned a body condition score. Ten cadavers were placed in dorsal recumbency with wings abducted. US-guided visualization of the BP was achieved by placing a 13-6 MHz linear probe over the ventral aspect of the scapulohumeral joint, parallel to the sternum. A 22 gauge, 50 mm insulated needle was advanced in-plane in a caudal-to-cranial direction. In each owl, injection targeting one BP was performed with 0.4 mL kg–1 of a 1:1 0.5% ropivacaine and 1% methylene blue solution. Dissection was performed 15 minutes postinjection. Nerve staining was deemed successful if ≥ 1 cm of circumferential staining was achieved. The eleventh owl cadaver was injected with a 1:1 solution of 1% methylene blue and 74% ioversol contrast into both wings, and computed tomography (CT) was performed just before and 15 minutes after injection. The BP was clearly identified ultrasonographically in cadavers weighing > 0.5 kg. An injectate volume of 0.4 mL kg–1 provided complete staining of the BP branches in all cadavers. CT scan revealed no contrast within the coelomic cavity. The US-guided BP injection using a ventral approach was easily performed in barred owl cadavers weighing > 0.5 kg. The injection of 0.4 mL kg–1 of a ropivacaine–dye solution resulted in complete staining of the BP branches in all wings, suggesting that this technique could provide analgesia for structures distal to the scapulohumeral joint. Clinical studies are necessary to confirm the safety and efficacy of this technique in barred owls and other bird species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Understanding a species' distribution is vital for making sound conservation and management decisions. Secretive behaviors and complicated seasonal movement patterns have made range delimitation surprisingly elusive for some North American birds, including the Northern Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus). Despite being among the most common of North American forest owls, only the species' breeding range is well demarcated. This has resulted in the species historically being considered a "northern" bird, with eastern migratory and nonbreeding ranges extending only as far south as central Missouri and eastern Tennessee. Recent banding efforts have shown that saw-whet owls are fall migrants much farther south. We extend this work by investigating stopover duration and nonbreeding habitat selection during 2 winters at the edge of the species' southern distribution in the Ozark Highlands of northwest Arkansas. We used radio telemetry to track 27 owls, with 17 individuals detected at least once post-release (n = 54 surveys and 131 total detections). Length of stay in the study area was most influenced by year—birds remained an average of 3.6 weeks longer during an irruption year—and our data suggest that the species uses the Ozark Highlands for both nonbreeding residency and brief stopover periods. During the 2 year study, 37% of marked owls were winter residents, 26% remained in the area temporarily, and 37% were not redetected. Winter habitat preferences of saw-whet owls in the southeast are consistent with what is known about the species in its more northernly range, with birds selecting conifers on south-facing slopes in areas with an open understory. Overall, our results suggest that saw-whet owls are not rare fall migrants and winter residents in Arkansas as was previously assumed, and more generally, are likely underappreciated winter predators in southern pine ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a method for ontology construction in the field of ancient architecture digitization with the aim of addressing the lack of formalization, sharing, and reusable unified description mechanisms currently observed in the field of ancient architecture digitization. This method defines the related concepts, attributes, and relationships between concepts in the digitization of ancient architecture. It employs the network ontology language OWL to model the ontology in the digitization domain of ancient architecture and realizes the visualization of the ontology in the digitization domain of ancient architecture, thereby providing effective support for the sharing and reuse of digitization knowledge of ancient architecture. Finally, an example of a wooden tower is taken to verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating deep learning techniques, particularly language models (LMs), with knowledge representation techniques like ontologies has raised widespread attention, urging the need of a platform that supports both paradigms. Although packages such as OWL API and Jena offer robust support for basic ontology processing features, they lack the capability to transform various types of information within ontologies into formats suitable for downstream deep learning-based applications. Moreover, widely-used ontology APIs are primarily Java-based while deep learning frameworks like PyTorch and Tensorflow are mainly for Python programming. To address the needs, we present DeepOnto , a Python package designed for ontology engineering with deep learning. The package encompasses a core ontology processing module founded on the widely-recognised and reliable OWL API, encapsulating its fundamental features in a more "Pythonic" manner and extending its capabilities to incorporate other essential components including reasoning, verbalisation, normalisation, taxonomy, projection, and more. Building on this module, DeepOnto offers a suite of tools, resources, and algorithms that support various ontology engineering tasks, such as ontology alignment and completion, by harnessing deep learning methods, primarily pre-trained LMs. In this paper, we also demonstrate the practical utility of DeepOnto through two use-cases: the Digital Health Coaching in Samsung Research UK and the Bio-ML track of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic commerce and finance are progressively supporting and including decentralized, shared and public ledgers such as the blockchain. This is reshaping traditional commercial activities by advancing them towards Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Commerce 3.0, thereby supporting the latter's potential to outpace the hurdles of central authority controllers and lawgivers. The quantity and entropy of the information that must be sought and managed to become active participants in such a relentlessly evolving scenario are increasing at a steady pace. For example, that information comprises asset or service description, general rules of the game, and specific technologies involved for decentralization. Moreover, the relevant information ought to be shared among innumerable and heterogeneous stakeholders, such as producers, buyers, digital identity providers, valuation services, and shipment services, to just name a few. A clear semantic representation of such a complex and multifaceted blockchain-based e-Commerce ecosystem would contribute dramatically to make it more usable, namely more automatically accessible to virtually anyone wanting to play the role of a stakeholder, thereby reducing programmers' effort. However, we feel that reaching that goal still requires substantial effort in the tailoring of Semantic Web technologies, hence this article sets out on such a route and advances a stack of OWL 2 ontologies for the semantic description of decentralized e-commerce. The stack includes a number of relevant features, ranging from the applicable stakeholders through the supply chain of the offerings for an asset, up to the Ethereum blockchain, its tokens and smart contracts. Ontologies are defined by taking a behaviouristic approach to represent the various participants as agents in terms of their actions, inspired by the Theory of Agents and the related mentalistic notions. The stack is validated through appropriate metrics and SPARQL queries implementing suitable competency questions, then demonstrated through the representation of a real world use case, namely, the iExec marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background In today’s landscape of data management, the importance of knowledge graphs and ontologies is escalating as critical mechanisms aligned with the FAIR Guiding Principles—ensuring data and metadata are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. We discuss three challenges that may hinder the effective exploitation of the full potential of FAIR knowledge graphs. Results We introduce “semantic units” as a conceptual solution, although currently exemplified only in a limited prototype. Semantic units structure a knowledge graph into identifiable and semantically meaningful subgraphs by adding another layer of triples on top of the conventional data layer. Semantic units and their subgraphs are represented by their own resource that instantiates a corresponding semantic unit class. We distinguish statement and compound units as basic categories of semantic units. A statement unit is the smallest, independent proposition that is semantically meaningful for a human reader. Depending on the relation of its underlying proposition, it consists of one or more triples. Organizing a knowledge graph into statement units results in a partition of the graph, with each triple belonging to exactly one statement unit. A compound unit, on the other hand, is a semantically meaningful collection of statement and compound units that form larger subgraphs. Some semantic units organize the graph into different levels of representational granularity, others orthogonally into different types of granularity trees or different frames of reference, structuring and organizing the knowledge graph into partially overlapping, partially enclosed subgraphs, each of which can be referenced by its own resource. Conclusions Semantic units, applicable in RDF/OWL and labeled property graphs, offer support for making statements about statements and facilitate graph-alignment, subgraph-matching, knowledge graph profiling, and for management of access restrictions to sensitive data. Additionally, we argue that organizing the graph into semantic units promotes the differentiation of ontological and discursive information, and that it also supports the differentiation of multiple frames of reference within the graph.

Decentralised ledgers are gaining momentum following the interest of industries and people in smart contracts. Major attention is paid to blockchain applications intended for trading assets that exploit digital cryptographic certificates called tokens. Particularly relevant tokens are the non-fungible tokens (NFTs), namely, unique and non-replicable tokens used to represent the cryptographic counterpart of assets ranging from pieces of art through to licenses and certifications. A relevant consequence of the hard-coded nature of blockchains is the hardness of probing, in particular when advanced searchers involving the capabilities of the smart contracts or the assets digitised by NFTs are required. For this purpose, a formal representation for the operational semantics of smart contracts and of tokens has become particularly urgent, especially in economy and finance, where blockchains become increasingly relevant. Hence, we feel the need to tailor Semantic Web technologies to achieve that semantic representation at least for NFTS. This article reports on an ontology that leverages the Ontology for Agents, Systems, and Integration of Services ("OASIS") towards the semantic representation of smart contracts responsible for managing ERC721-compliant NFTs and running on the Ethereum blockchain. Called Ether-OASIS, the proposed ontology adopts OASIS and tailors its behaviouristic approach to the Ethereum blockchain by conceiving smart contracts as agents running on the blockchain and, consequently, smart contract interactions as agent commitments. Smart contracts are represented in terms of their actions, purposes and tokens that they manage, thus realising a blockchain that is more usable both by users and automated applications. The ontology is evaluated using standard ontological metrics and applied on a case study concerning the minting and transferring of NFTs that digitise batches of wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of governments is to guarantee that every individual worldwide, regardless of disability, have access to education. However, learners with disabilities exhibit higher rates of school and college dropouts than regular students. The main goal of contemporary research is to anticipate such drop-outs slightly earlier and offer recommendations and alternative pathways for their career enhancement by utilizing a novel approach LSOWL–CNN method. Initially, the dataset is pre-processed to increase the classification performance. Following that, the features are extracted and by employing ENT-QDA, the features are reduced. Rules based on fuzzy data will be created based on the features. A classification method called Linear Scaling Owl Optimal control Method with CNN (LSOWL–CNN) is employed to train the system using the created rules and testing the data the final results are classified. Results of the experiments showed that the suggested model attained an Accuracy of 96.817% which outperforms the existing models which is implementing in a python tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance characteristics and certain maintenance aspects of a natural language querying (NLQ) interface depend on how the data model is conceptualized. One of the areas where alternative conceptualizations are available is events and their specialization. The concept of event specialization is already known from event extraction methods, which allows for a more precise description of the events identified in a text. In the context of NLQ interfaces, event specialization allows narrower or broader questions. This study investigates how the choice of event specialization strategy in OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontologies affects the complexity and performance-related aspects of the NLQ interface to ontologies. In this paper, we present four event specialization strategies and investigate how they impact the size of the ontology schema and vocabulary of the NLQ interface, the performance of querying and data import, the size of the semantic repository, and the complexity of SPARQL queries. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and present recommendations on determining the best one for the needs of NLQ interface end-users and developers.

The Semantic Web emerged in response to the unprecedented growth of information and data sharing on the Web. It consists of a set of technologies that enable the automatic (machine) management and processing of linked data across hundreds of distributed repositories. To connect and interlink data, the Semantic Web uses Resource Description Framework (RDF), which is a graph-based data model that simplifies the description of resources using triples (subject, predicate, object). The representation of data in RDF usually follows an ontology, a knowledge base model that dictates the relationships and characteristics of the linked data. Ontologies play an important role in the Semantic Web and are a key component. However, ontologies might not be correct and, in some cases, might not be available. In general, ontologies are created manually by domain experts in collaboration with ontology engineers, which is a costly and error-prone task. In this study, we present a proposal to automatically generate ontologies from RDF datasets. We use summarization techniques to reduce triples and retain the most relevant ones. Subsequently, classes, datatype properties, object properties, as well as the domain and range of properties are identified for schema construction. In addition, an enrichment of the schema is performed by incorporating Object Property axioms. The result is the delivery of a serialized ontology document in OWL/XML format. Furthermore, we present an experimental evaluation of an RDF dataset of 16005 triples. Through application of our summarization technique the original dataset was decreased by 98%. The ontology was generated with a time of 148.73 seconds. Finally, 9 classes, 10 Object Properties, 6 Datatype Properties, and 4 different types of Object Property axioms were identified.

Background & objectives: Mosquito vectors are disease-causing insects, responsible for various life-threatening vector-borne diseases such as dengue, Zika, malaria, chikungunya, and lymphatic filariasis. In practice, synthetic insecticides are used to control the mosquito vector, but, the continuous usage of synthetic insecticides is toxic to human health resulting in communicable diseases. Non-toxic biocontrol agents such as bacteria, fungus, plants, and mosquito densoviruses play a vital role in controlling mosquitoes. Community awareness of mosquito biocontrol agents is required to control vector-borne diseases. Mosquito vector-based ontology facilitates mosquito biocontrol by providing information such as species names, pathogen-associated diseases, and biological controlling agents. It helps to explore the associations among the mosquitoes and their biocontrol agents in the form of rules. The Mosquito vector-based Biocontrol Ontology Recommendation System (MBORS) provides the knowledge on mosquito-associated biocontrol agents to control the vector at the early stage of the mosquitoes such as eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults. This paper proposes MBORS for the prevention and effective control of vector-borne diseases. The Mosquito Vector Association ontology (MVAont) suggests the appropriate mosquito vector biocontrol agents (MosqVecRS) for related diseases. Methods: Natural Language Processing and Data mining are employed to develop the MBORS. While Tokenization, Part-of-speech Tagging (POS), Named Entity Recognition (NER), and rule-based text mining techniques are used to identify the mosquito ontology concepts, the data mining apriori algorithm is used to predict the associations among them. Results: The outcome of the MBORS results in MVAont as Web Ontology Language (OWL) representation and MosqVecRS as an Android application. The developed ontology and recommendation system are freely available on the web portal. Interpretation & conclusion: The MVAont predicts harmless biocontrol agents which help to diminish the rate of vector-borne diseases. On the other hand, the MosqVecRS system raises awareness of vectors and vector-borne diseases by recommending suitable biocontrol agents to the vector control community and researchers.

Detecting software requirements defects is crucial in reducing the risk of software project failures. Existing methods for automatic detection, especially during requirements changes, are limited in coverage and often lack robust tool support. Addressing this gap, we define the four most common types of requirements defects (incompleteness, inconsistency, redundancy, and ambiguity) and present algorithms for their detection. We propose a novel behaviour engineering-based approach, translating software requirements into behaviour trees and then into the Web Ontology Language (OWL). We developed ‘requirements defects identifier’, a tool that queries the OWL knowledge base to identify potential defects during requirements analysis and change. Validated on three final-year student projects, our approach demonstrated success in detecting all four defect types, offering broader coverage compared to existing tools. A real-world case study has been used to validate the applicability of the proposed approach. Our experiments demonstrate that the tool can successfully detect all four different types of requirement defects during both requirements analysis and requirements change.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) operates a network of over 100 marine weather observation buoys. These buoys presently use a wave observation system named the Digital Directional Wave Module (DDWM). The DDWM uses commercial motion sensors contained in a single package and processing boards that are now obsolete. Therefore, the NDBC completed an engineering effort to replace these obsolete components with a new wave observation system named Ocean Wave Linux (OWL). The OWL replaces the DDWM's nine axis motion sensor with a compatible device. The OWL produces the same observations as the DDWM but with much less power consumption and with modern COTS available components. The DDWM is contained in a single tube named WAVCEAN-16, which is a payload in the NDBC's Self-Contained Ocean Observation Payload (SCOOP). WAVCEAN-16 physically contains the Wave and Ocean (which measures sea surface temperature) modules. After extensive, successful field trials, the OWL components replaced the DDWM components. This effectively created a new tube or product. The new tube is named WAVCEAN-18. This paper focuses on the changes from WAVCEAN-16 to WAVCEAN-18 and highlights engineering analysis of field tests of the WAVCEAN-18. We also describe the NDBC's plans for operational transition from the WAVCEAN-16 to WAVCEAN-18. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic spatial capture-recapture (SCR) methods appear ideally suited for estimating population trends of cryptic species that are difficult to monitor. Despite evidence suggesting acoustic SCR offers greater precision over estimates obtained through distance sampling or mark-recapture approaches, it has seldom been applied to avian taxa. Here we assess the utility of acoustic SCR for estimating population density of owls, a group of birds for which population estimates are generally lacking. We conducted passive acoustic surveys for Barred Owls (Strix varia) and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) over the spring breeding seasons of 2020–2021 in a protected park in Georgia, USA. We used a combination of acoustic discrimination techniques to identify individuals, including spectrogram cross-correlation, hierarchical clustering, and visual scanning. The resulting estimates of the density of Great Horned Owl individuals (0.28 ± 0.026 [SE] per km2) were consistent with population density estimates from previous studies in other parts of the species' range. However, our methods appeared unsuitable for distinguishing Barred Owl individuals, which prevented estimation of population density for this species. We provide recommendations to improve acoustic sampling and individual discrimination of owls and suggest that acoustic SCR offers important advantages over conventional methods for monitoring some cryptic birds. Los métodos de captura-recaptura espacial (CRE) acústica parecen ser ideales para estimar las tendencias poblacionales de especies crípticas que son de difícil seguimiento. A pesar de la evidencia que sugiere que la CRE acústica ofrece mayor precisión que las estimaciones obtenidas mediante muestreo de distancia o enfoques de marcado-recaptura, ésta rara vez se ha aplicado a taxones aviares. Evaluamos la utilidad de la CRE acústica para estimar la densidad poblacional de búhos, un grupo de aves para el cual generalmente faltan estimaciones poblacionales. Realizamos estudios acústicos pasivos para Strix varia y Bubo virginianus durante las temporadas de cría en las primaveras del 2020 y 2021 en un parque protegido de Georgia, EEUU. Utilizamos una combinación de técnicas de discriminación acústica para identificar individuos, incluyendo correlación cruzada de espectrogramas, agrupacion jerárquica y escaneo visual. Las estimaciones resultantes de la densidad de individuos de B. virginianus (0.28 ± 0.026 [EE] por km2) fueron consistentes con las estimaciones de densidad poblacional obtenidas en estudios realizados previamente en otras áreas del rango de distribución de la especie. Sin embargo, nuestros métodos parecieron inadecuados para distinguir individuos de S. varia, lo que impidió la estimación de su densidad poblacional. Ofrecemos recomendaciones para mejorar el muestreo acústico y la discriminación individual de búhos, y sugerimos que la CRE acústica ofrece importantes ventajas sobre los métodos convencionales utilizados para el seguimiento de algunas aves crípticas. [Traducción del equipo editorial] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information modelling for databases and object-oriented information systems avails of conceptual data modelling languages such as EER and UML Class Diagrams. Many attempts exist to add logical rigour to them, for various reasons and with disparate strengths. In this paper we aim to provide a structured overview of the many efforts. We focus on aims, approaches to the formalisation, including key dimensions of choice points, popular logics used, and the main relevant reasoning services. We close with current challenges and research directions.

This article proposes a method for ontology construction in the field of ancient architecture digitization with the aim of addressing the lack of formalization, sharing, and reusable unified description mechanisms currently observed in the field of ancient architecture digitization. This method defines the related concepts, attributes, and relationships between concepts in the digitization of ancient architecture. It employs the network ontology language OWL to model the ontology in the digitization domain of ancient architecture and realizes the visualization of the ontology in the digitization domain of ancient architecture, thereby providing effective support for the sharing and reuse of digitization knowledge of ancient architecture. Finally, an example of a wooden tower is taken to verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and mechanism of wind buffeting noise suppression using a new bionic structure inspired by the quiet flight of owls. Firstly, the new bionic schemes based on NACA0012 wing with two sinusoidal leading-edge serrations and one straight leading-edge curve are used in a cavity after verifying the simulation. Then, the results of the three bionic schemes are compared and analyzed. It is found that the schemes with leading-edge serrations and surface ridges can suppress wind buffeting noise effectively. In particular, the sinusoidal scheme with a wavelength λ = 0.24 c (chord length c) can significantly reduce resonance energies above 21 dB over a wide range of speeds. Furthermore, the study reveals that in the bionic scheme, only the negative pressure core moves in the opening and hits the trailing edge, which reduces the pressure fluctuation in the cavity. The boundary layer thickness (BLT) also fluctuates in span under the influence of the leading-edge serration and the surface ridge, which is favorable for suppressing wind buffeting noise. However, the suppression effect is not solely related to the fluctuation of BLT in the span at the trailing edge but is also influenced by the minimum BLT at this point. Therefore, if the BLT has a certain intensity fluctuation in the span, and the minimum BLT at the trailing edge is close to that of the smooth airfoil scheme, the noise suppression effect is significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In birds, fine-scale selection of habitat, like roosting sites, plays an important role in energy conservation. Many diurnal birds roost in cavities or densely foliated coniferous trees, both of which may provide shelter from predators and precipitation, and reduce heat loss from convective and radiative forces. Thermal benefits of roost sites have not been widely studied in nocturnal birds, like owls, roosting during the day. The objective of this study was to assess possible thermal benefits of coniferous roosting sites for the small, nocturnal Northern Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus) at the southern extent of its nonbreeding distribution, where winters are often mild with warm days. I deployed operative temperature models (n = 40) for 21 d at 10 sites in Madison County, Arkansas. Sites were either a shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) or eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) roost tree, each paired with a deciduous tree. At each site, I synchronously deployed models in 4 microsites reflecting potential owl roosting sites that likely varied considerably in their thermal properties: conifer crown, conifer trunk, deciduous crown, deciduous trunk. My objectives were to (1) test for an effect of microsite on 4 composite operative temperature variables, and (2) test for an effect of microsite on mean wind speed. Results suggest conifer crown roost sites are cooler, more thermally buffered, and experience lower wind speed than deciduous crown and both trunk roost sites. Thus, the saw-whet owl likely benefits from overwintering in coniferous trees to avoid thermally stressful temperatures, particularly on warm winter days. En aves, la selección de escala fina del hábitat, como de los dormideros, juega un papel importante en la conservación de energía. Muchas aves diurnas anidan en cavidades o en árboles que son coníferas densamente foliadas, y ambas estrategias brindan refugio de depredadores y precipitación y reducen la pérdida de calor de fuerzas convectivas y radiativas. Los beneficios térmicos de los dormideros no han sido estudiados ampliamente en aves nocturnas, como las lechuzas, que duermen durante el día. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar los posibles beneficios térmicos de dormideros en coníferas para el pequeño tecolore Aegolius acadicus en la parte sureña de su distribución no reproductiva, donde los inviernos son leves y tienen días cálidos. Desplegué modelos de temperatura operativos (n = 40) por 21 días en 10 sitios en Madison County, Arkansas. Los dormideros se encontraban ya sea en pino de hoja corta (Pinus echinata) o el cedro de Virginia (Juniperus virginiana), cada uno junto a un árbol decíduo. En cada sitio, desplegué asincrónicamente modelos en 4 micrositios que reflejaban potenciales dormideros de los tecolotes que muy posiblemente variaban en sus propiedades térmicas: corona de la conífera, tronco de la conífera, corona decidua, tronco de la decidua. Mis objetivos fueron: (1) probar el efecto del micrositio en 4 variables de temperatura operatuva compuesta y (2) probar el efecto del micrositio en el promedio de la velocidad del viento. Los resultados sugieren que las coronas de las coníferas son más frescas, más aisladas térmicamente y experimentan menor velocidad del viento que las coronas de las decíduas y que ambos sitios del tronco. Entonces el tecolote Aegolius acadicus se beneficia posiblemente al hibernar en árboles de coníferas para evitar temperaturas termicamente estresantes, particularmente en días cálidos del invierno. Palabras clave: Aegolius acadicus, ecología térmica, lechuza, modelamiento térmico, selección de dormidero, tecolote Aegolius acadicus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reasoning is the process of inferring new knowledge and identifying inconsistencies within ontologies. Traditional techniques often prove inadequate when reasoning over large Knowledge Bases containing millions or billions of facts. This article introduces NORA, a persistent and scalable OWL reasoner built on top of Apache Spark, designed to address the challenges of reasoning over extensive and complex ontologies. NORA exploits the scalability of NoSQL databases to effectively apply inference rules to Big Data ontologies with large ABoxes. To facilitate scalable reasoning, OWL data, including class and property hierarchies and instances, are materialized in the Apache Cassandra database. Spark programs are then evaluated iteratively, uncovering new implicit knowledge from the dataset and leading to enhanced performance and more efficient reasoning over large‐scale ontologies. NORA has undergone a thorough evaluation with different benchmarking ontologies of varying sizes to assess the scalability of the developed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built from the ontology's signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their 'meaningfulness' was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a 'quality ordering' of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra , Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and "low"-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]