A survey of semantic web services formalisms

The field of Semantic Web Services (SWS) has been recognized as one of the most promising areas of emergent research within the Semantic Web (SW) initiative, exhibiting an extensive commercial potential, and attracting significant attention from both industry and the research community. Currently, there exist several different frameworks and languages for formally describing a Web Service: OWL-S (Web Ontology Language for Services), WSMO (Web Service Modeling Ontology) and SAWSDL (Semantic Annotations for the Web Services Description Language) are the most important approaches. To the inexperienced user, choosing the appropriate paradigm for a specific SWS application may prove to be challenging, given a lack of clear separation between the ideas promoted by the associated research communities. In this paper, we systematically compare OWL-S, WSMO and SAWSDL from various standpoints, namely that of the service requester and provider as well as the broker based view. The comparison is meant to help users to better understand the strengths and limitations of these different approaches to formalising SWS, and to choose the most suitable solution for a given use case. © 2013 IEEE.

Design software architecture models using ontology

Software architecture plays an essential role in the high level description of a system design, where the structure and communication are emphasized. Despite its importance in the software engineering process, the lack of formal description and automated verification hinders the development of good software architecture models. In this paper, we present an approach to support the rigorous design and verification of software architecture models using the semantic web technology. We view software architecture models as ontology representations, where their structures and communication constraints are captured by the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). Specific configurations on the design are represented as concrete instances of the ontology, to which their structures and dynamic behaviors must conform. Furthermore, ontology reasoning tools can be applied to perform various automated verification on the design to ensure correctness, such as consistency checking, style recognition, and behavioral inference.

Semantic enabled sensor network design

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) systems have become more and more popular in our modern life. They have been widely used in many areas, such as smart homes/buildings, context-aware devices, military applications, etc. Despite the increasing usage, there is a lack of formal description and automated verification for WSN system design. In this paper, we present an approach to support the rigorous verification of WSN modeling using the Semantic Web technology We use Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) to define a meta-ontology for the modeling of WSN systems. Furthermore, we apply ontology reasoners to perform automated verification on customized WSN models and their instances. We demonstrate and evaluate our approach through a Light Control System (LCS) as the case study.

The Dialectics of Modernity - Recognizing Globalization. Studies on the Theoretical Perspectives of Globalization

The volume The Dialectics of Modernity - Recognizing Globalization. Studies on the Theoretical Perspectives of Globalization is the product of a work of that quarter of the century, which has been continuing, since 1989 up today, the true beginning of the globalization. Therefore, because that concept was not existing at that time, the work is not yet directed, in the first years, on the globalization itself. As it can be seen, this concept pushed through only in the second half of the nineties, when the concept could also be already statistically revealed in the world press. How a group of researchers from Hungary was enquirying during the nineties, according to partners of conversation at home and abroad, with whom one could talk about how the new world emerging with 1989 can actually be described, is a long story, the theory of which consists in the fact, that we apparently live in a world, where the most part of the people, even worse, even most of the intellectuals are hardly interested in how this one really looks like. On looking for partners, the circle of the authors of this volume was created. In Hungary, we quickly reached our limit (which much later did not prevent us from appearing, such as if we had always been living in the theoretically worked globalization). The French group around Jacques Poulain reacted the fastest way (and later around Francois de Bernard, with his particularly valuable homepage www.mondialisations.org), not much later the contact with the Russian colleagues around Alexandr Shumakov was created, in which Encyclopedia of the Globalization our contribution could already appear in 2003. On these traces, we came to the productive relationship with Leonid Grinin and Andrey Korotayev. Finally, we mention the Fürstenfeld's initiative, founded since 2009 with Melitta Becker's help in the framework of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Research in this Austrian city. A relevant part of the author inside this book participated from the beginning in the work of the group. The individual contributions to this volume are linked together by a common interest in knowledge. This is the theoretical view of the phenomenon of the globalization. From the beginning, it was not further defined or limited to certain approaches, particularly an independent theory of the globalization was not intended. We started from the fact, that every legitimately revealed theoretical approach can contribute legitimately to a later theory of the globalization. In this way, the further contacts with Nico Stehr and the members of the Dresden group for the investigation of the security problems arose, mainly with Ernst Woit. Hegel defined the philosophy as the flight of the Owl of Minerva, which "begins its flight only with the falling twilight". Through the theoretical investigation of the globalization always becoming interdisciplinary, we wanted by no means to debate about this incomparable aphorism. We simply started from the conviction, that a new reality should not remain without any description.

Gato-do-mato-pequeno (Leopardus tigrinus) na Caatinga: ocupação e padrão de atividade de um felídeo ameaçado e pouco conhecido na floresta tropical seca do nordeste do Brasil

While the carnivores are considered regulators and structuring of natural communities are also extremely threatened by human activities. Endangered little-spotted-cat (Leopardus tigrinus) is one of the lesser known species from the Neotropical cats. In this work we investigate the occupancy and the activity pattern of L. tigrinus in Caatinga of Rio Grande do Norte testing: 1) how environmental and anthropogenic factors influence their occupation and 2) how biotic and abiotic factors influence their activity pattern. For this we raised occurrence data of species in 10 priority areas for conservation. We built hierarchical models of occupancy based on maximum likelihood to represent biological hypotheses which were ranked using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). According to the results the feline occupancy is more likely away from rural settlements and in areas with a higher proportion of woody vegetation. The opportunistic killing of L. tigrinus and in retaliation for poultry predation close to residential areas can explain this result; as well as more complex vegetation structure can better serve as refuge and ensure more food. Analyzing the records of the species through circular statistics we conclude that the activity pattern is mostly nocturnal, although considerable crepuscular and a small diurnal activity. L. tigrinus activity was directly affected by the availability of small terrestrial mammals, which are essentially nocturnal. In addition, the temperatures recorded in the environment directly and indirectly affect the activity of the little-spotted-cat, as also influence the activity of their potential prey. Generally, the cats were more active when possible prey were active, and this happened at night when lower temperatures are recorded. Moreover, the different lunar phases did not affect the activity pattern. The results improve the understanding of an endangered feline inhabiting the Caatinga biome, and thus can help develop conservation and management strategies, as well as in planning future research in this semi-arid ecosystem.

Q Fever, Scrub Typhus, and Rickettsial Diseases in Children, Kenya, 2011-2012.

To increase knowledge of undifferentiated fevers in Kenya, we tested paired serum samples from febrile children in western Kenya for antibodies against pathogens increasingly recognized to cause febrile illness in Africa. Of patients assessed, 8.9%, 22.4%, 1.1%, and 3.6% had enhanced seroreactivity to Coxiella burnetii, spotted fever group rickettsiae, typhus group rickettsiae, and scrub typhus group orientiae, respectively.

Dynamique de la variation génétique et épigénétique chez un vertébré kleptogène

La variation phénotypique est essentielle à la persistance des organismes dans le temps ainsi qu’à la colonisation de nouveaux habitats. Les principales sources de variation phénotypique sont la génétique et l'épigénétique. L'épigénétique a été proposé comme un atout important pour les organismes asexués pour compenser le manque de diversité génétique. L'objectif de cette étude est d'évaluer si l’absence de variation génétique est compensée par l'épigénétique en comparant les profils de méthylation d’individus gynogènes et kleptogènes des hybrides de salamandre à points bleus. Les individus échantillonnés s’organisent en cinq groupes génétiquement différenciés, provenant du même haplome paternel A. jeffersonianum. Deux des cinq groupes sont exclusivement gynogènes, pour des raisons écologiques ou génomiques. Les trois autres groupes sont formés d’individus parfois kleptogènes, car ils présentent une variation génétique plus élevée au sein d’un site qu’entre les sites, en plus de porter des allèles très divergents par rapport à la distribution globale des allèles hybrides, trouvés en haute fréquence dans les populations sympatriques de A. laterale. Les patrons épigénétiques sont variables et distincts entre les cinq groupes génétiques. Les groupes gynogènes sont les seuls à présenter un effet environnemental significatif sur leurs patrons épigénétiques, suggérant que ces individus clonaux doivent être en mesure de maximiser leur potentiel de variation épigénétique pour faire face à des variations environnementales.

Tarpon

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Ice observations in the Southern Ocean between 1878 and 1928

During the period in question, large ice drifts transported incalculable numbers of icebergs, ice fields and ice floes from the Antarctica into the South Atlantic, confronting long-journeying sailing ships on the Cape Horn route with considerable danger. As is still the case today, the ice drifts generally tended in a northeasterly direction. Thus it can be assumed that the ice masses occuring near Cape Horn and in the South Atlantic originated in Graham Land and the South Shetland Islands, while those found in the Pacific will have come from Victoria Land. The masses drifting to Cape Horn, Isla de los Estados, the Falkland Islands and occasionally as far as the Tristan da Cunha Group are transported by the West Wind Drift and Falkland Current, diverted by the Brazil Current. The Bouvet and Agulhas Currents have little influence here. The great ice masses repeatedly reached points beyond the "outermost drift ice boundery" calculated in the course of the years, to continue on in the direction of the equator. The number of sailing ships which fell victim to the ice drifts while rounding Cape Horn can only be surmised; they simply disappeared without a trace in the expanses of the South Atlantic. Until the end of the 1900s the dangers presented by ice were less serious for westward-bound ships than for the "homeward-bounders" travelling from West to East. Following the turn of the century, however, the risk for "onwardbounders" increased significantly. Whether the ice drifts actually grew in might or whether the more frequent and more detailed reports led to this impression, could never be ascertained by the German Hydrographie Office. In the forty-one years between 1868 and 1908, ten light, ten medium and nine heavy ice years were counted, and only twelve years in which no reports of ice were submitted to the German Hydrographie Office. "One of the most terrible dangers threatening ships on their return from the Pacific Ocean," the pilot book for the Atlantic Ocean warns, "is the encounter with ice, to be expected south of the 50th parallel (approx.) in the Pacific and south of the 40th parallel (approx.) in the South Atlantic." Following the ice drift of 1854-55, thought to be the first ever recorded, the increasing numbers of sailing ships rounding Cape Horn were frequently confronted with drifts of varying sizes or with single icebergs. Then from 1892-94, a colossal ice drift crossed the path of the sailships in three stages. Several sailing ships collided with the icebergs and could be counted lucky if they survived with heavy damage to the bow and the fo regear. The reports on those which vanished for ever in the ice masses are hardly of investigative value. The English suffered particularly badly in the ice-plagued waters; their captains apparently sailed courses that led more freqently through drifts than did the sailing instructions of the German Hydrographic Office. Thus, among others, Capt. Jarvis' DUNTRUNE, also the STANMORE, ARTHURSTONE and LORD RANOCH as well as the French GALATHEE and CASHMERE all collided with icebergs. The crew of the AETHELBERTH panicked after a collision and took to their lifeboats. It was only after the ship detached itself from the iceberg it had rammed that the men returned to it and continued their journey. The TEMPLEMORE, on the other hand, had to be abandoned for good. Of the German sailing ships, the FLOTOW is to be mentioned here, and in the third phase of the drift the American SAN JOAQUIN lost a large proportion of its rigging. In the 20th century ice drifts continued to cross the courses of the Cape Horn ships. 1906 and 1908 were recorded as particularly heavy ice years. In 1908-09 both the FALKLANDBANK and the TOXTETH fell prey to ice, or so it was assumed during the subsequent Maritime Board proceedings. For the most part the German sailing ships were spared greater damages by sea. Their captains sent detailed ice reports to the German Hydrographic Office, which gratefully welcomed the information and partially incorporated it in the third and final edition of the "Pilot Book for the Atlantic Ocean." From the end of 1926 until the beginning of 1928, the last of the large sailing ships were once again confronted with "tremendous masses of icebergs and ice drifts." Reports of this period originated above all on the P-Liners PADUA, PAMIR, PASSAT, PEKING, PINNAS, PRIWALL and the ships of Gustav Erikson's fleet. The fate of the training sailship ADMIRAL KARPFANGER in connection with the ice in early 1938 was never clearly determined by the Maritime Board proceedings. Collision with an iceberg, however, is thought to be the most likely cause of accident. Today freight sailing ships no longer cross the oceans. The Cape Horn route is relatively insignificant for engine-powered ships and icebergs can be spotted in plenty of time by modern navigation technology ... The large ice drifts are no longer a menace, but only a marginal note in the final chapter of the history of transoceanic sailing.

The crowded magnetosphere of the post-common-envelope binary QS Virginis

We present high-speed photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy of the eclipsing post-common-envelope binary QS Virginis (QS Vir). Our Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) spectra span multiple orbits over more than a year and reveal the presence of several large prominences passing in front of both the M star and its white dwarf companion, allowing us to triangulate their positions. Despite showing small variations on a time-scale of days, they persist for more than a year and may last decades. One large prominence extends almost three stellar radii from the M star. Roche tomography reveals that the M star is heavily spotted and that these spots are long-lived and in relatively fixed locations, preferentially found on the hemisphere facing the white dwarf. We also determine precise binary and physical parameters for the system. We find that the 14 220 ± 350 K white dwarf is relatively massive, 0.782 ± 0.013 M⊙, and has a radius of 0.010 68 ± 0.000 07 R⊙, consistent with evolutionary models. The tidally distorted M star has a mass of 0.382 ± 0.006 M⊙ and a radius of 0.381 ± 0.003 R⊙, also consistent with evolutionary models. We find that the magnesium absorption line from the white dwarf is broader than expected. This could be due to rotation (implying a spin period of only ˜700 s), or due to a weak (˜100 kG) magnetic field, we favour the latter interpretation. Since the M star's radius is still within its Roche lobe and there is no evidence that it is overinflated, we conclude that QS Vir is most likely a pre-cataclysmic binary just about to become semidetached.

Child Sexual Exploitation in Northern Ireland Report of the Independent Inquiry (PDF 2.73MB)

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), led by Kathleen Marshall In September 2013, a Ministerial Summit was held on the theme of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Northern Ireland. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) referred to Operation Owl, an investigation of allegations of CSE in Northern Ireland, which had resulted in a number of adults being interviewed and some being arrested. Two weeks later, the then Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Edwin Poots, announced three actions to address this issue: an ongoing PSNI investigation focusing on 22 children and young people; a thematic review of these cases by the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland (SBNI); and an independent, expert-led inquiry into CSE in Northern Ireland, to be commissioned by the Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety and the Minister of Justice. The Minister for Education agreed that the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) would enjoin the Inquiry in relation to schools and the effectiveness of the statutory curriculum with respect to CSE. The Inquiry was to focus on both children and young people living at home in the community and those living in care. This is an executive summary of the report of this Inquiry.    

A internacionalização de PME: o caso da Carvalheira, Bastos Lda.

Atualmente, a internacionalização é uma estratégia adotada por muitas empresas, independentemente da sua dimensão com o intuito de enfrentar o abrandamento económico no seu mercado doméstico e impulsionar o seu crescimento. No caso das PME, as principais razões que as levam a sair do seu mercado doméstico e a arriscar em mercados externos prendem-se com motivações reativas e muitas vezes exógenas, como sejam a saturação do mercado doméstico, as pressões da concorrência e as relações com os clientes. Assim, a crise financeira no país, aliada à crise no setor da construção civil, leva esta PME portuguesa, do ramo da carpintaria de limpo, a procurar novas oportunidades no exterior. No entanto, como tem consciência da falta de experiência e conhecimento nos mercados internacionais, começa por abordar os mercados numa lógica de procura de novas oportunidades, aproveitando as oportunidades que lhe são dirigidas e vendo nestas uma forma de aprofundar relacionamentos e ganhar experiência neste âmbito. Posteriormente, este conhecimento e experiência permitir-lhe-á enveredar por uma estratégia de internacionalização mais ativa, abandonando/diminuindo a lógica de oportunidade e apostando numa lógica mais estruturada e planeada. Este trabalho, ao tirar proveito de um único estudo de caso, pretende analisar a perspetiva evolutiva da empresa, e como uma estratégia empreendedora, a confiança e a incorporação em redes de relacionamentos facilitam o processo de abertura aos mercados externos.

Optimization and Applications of Large-Scale Biomedical Event Networks

The overwhelming amount and unprecedented speed of publication in the biomedical domain make it difficult for life science researchers to acquire and maintain a broad view of the field and gather all information that would be relevant for their research. As a response to this problem, the BioNLP (Biomedical Natural Language Processing) community of researches has emerged and strives to assist life science researchers by developing modern natural language processing (NLP), information extraction (IE) and information retrieval (IR) methods that can be applied at large-scale, to scan the whole publicly available biomedical literature and extract and aggregate the information found within, while automatically normalizing the variability of natural language statements. Among different tasks, biomedical event extraction has received much attention within BioNLP community recently. Biomedical event extraction constitutes the identification of biological processes and interactions described in biomedical literature, and their representation as a set of recursive event structures. The 2009–2013 series of BioNLP Shared Tasks on Event Extraction have given raise to a number of event extraction systems, several of which have been applied at a large scale (the full set of PubMed abstracts and PubMed Central Open Access full text articles), leading to creation of massive biomedical event databases, each of which containing millions of events. Sinece top-ranking event extraction systems are based on machine-learning approach and are trained on the narrow-domain, carefully selected Shared Task training data, their performance drops when being faced with the topically highly varied PubMed and PubMed Central documents. Specifically, false-positive predictions by these systems lead to generation of incorrect biomolecular events which are spotted by the end-users. This thesis proposes a novel post-processing approach, utilizing a combination of supervised and unsupervised learning techniques, that can automatically identify and filter out a considerable proportion of incorrect events from large-scale event databases, thus increasing the general credibility of those databases. The second part of this thesis is dedicated to a system we developed for hypothesis generation from large-scale event databases, which is able to discover novel biomolecular interactions among genes/gene-products. We cast the hypothesis generation problem as a supervised network topology prediction, i.e predicting new edges in the network, as well as types and directions for these edges, utilizing a set of features that can be extracted from large biomedical event networks. Routine machine learning evaluation results, as well as manual evaluation results suggest that the problem is indeed learnable. This work won the Best Paper Award in The 5th International Symposium on Languages in Biology and Medicine (LBM 2013).

Um modelo de suporte à comunicação de agentes para tratamento de informação imprecisa baseada em sinônimos

Este trabalho propõe o desenvolvimento de um modelo de suporte á comunicação entre agentes e uma Ontologia com informações imprecisas. Os conceitos desta ontologia podem possuir sinônimos possibilitando a interpretação de termos linguísticos imprecisos. Tal problema é relacionado às questões de desenvolvimento da comunicação em Sistemas Multiagentes, possuindo como referência uma base de conhecimento da qual estes agentes possam requisitar informações. Neste estudo, a premissa do modelo é o de ser útil como componente na utilização por desenvolvedores que queiram utilizar de forma simplificada uma conexão com uma Ontologia para dar suporte na comunicação. Para o presente estudo são discutidos os conceitos sobre a comunicação no ambiente multiagentes. Também é realizada uma revisão sobre o desenvolvimento de Ontologias, de forma a criar uma ontologia para os agentes. A lógica nebulosa, baseado em variáveis linguísticas, servirá como modeladora da imprecisão da informação, dando suporte a essa questão com a Ontologia e a comunicação. De forma a validar o modelo proposto, é realizado um estudo de caso no sistema multiagentes das hortas urbanas do Parque San Jerónimo, de Sevilha, Espanha.

Lagoa mirim: caracterização da pesca artesanal e composição da captura

Os ambientes aquáticos continentais da metade sul do RS são caracterizados por uma ampla planície costeira, onde destaca-se a Lagoa Mirim, com uma área total binacional (Brasil e Uruguai) de 3.750 Km². Nesta região, a pesca é uma importante atividade sócio-econômica, porém, a economia da região baseia-se no cultivo do arroz e na criação de gado. A proposta deste trabalho foi realizar um diagnóstico preliminar desta atividade na L. Mirim. A metodologia foi baseada na aplicação de formulários aos pescadores artesanais (perfil sócio-econômico e características da pesca) e na identificação das espécies que compunham a captura proveniente do desembarque pesqueiro no entorno da L. Mirim (Jaguarão, Santa Isabel e Santa Vitória do PalmarPorto e Curral Alto). Os dados de captura total de pescado foram provenientes de fontes independentes e complementares. O estudo sugere um perfil do pescador artesanal composto por 71% de indivíduos de sexo masculino, entre 20 e 65 anos de idade que costumam ficar de uma semana a quinze dias embarcados. A maioria (71%) dos pescadores artesanais entrevistados possui somente ensino fundamental e seus familiares geralmente estão envolvidos na atividade pesqueira. Foram identificados 28 locais de pesca e as principais espécies capturadas pela pesca artesanal foram: traíra Hoplias malabaricus, jundiá Rhandia aff. quelen, pintado Pimelodus maculatus, peixerei Odontesthes spp, viola-cascuda Loricariichthys anus e tambico Oligosarcus spp. A traíra foi a espécie mais representativa em peso (> 40%). Estas espécies apresentaram flutuações na composição das capturas ao longo do ano; os menores valores foram registrados entre julho e setembro (meses frios), exceto para o peixe-rei. A análise dos dados também aponta uma variação interanual dos valores totais de pescado e alguns fatores que podem estar associados à diminuição da captura são os prolongados períodos de seca na região, o uso da água na orizicultura e a falta de fiscalização da atividade pesqueira. Estudos baseados em estimativas de pescarias e conhecimento sobre a biologia das espécies capturadas podem fornecer subsídios para o correto manejo dos recursos pesqueiros, para tanto, são necessárias pesquisas que investiguem aspectos do uso sustentado das espécies de importância econômica na região e os possíveis efeitos da atividade pesqueira sobre a estrutura e a biodiversidade do ecossistema. Assim, para garantir a sustentabilidade da Lagoa Mirim, faz-se necessário envolver os pescadores artesanais e suas estratégias de pesca, em função de seus conhecimentos ecológicos, nas pesquisas que integram a elaboração das políticas públicas.