Frame-driven Extraction of Linked Data and Ontologies from Text

Ontology design and population -core aspects of semantic technologies- re- cently have become fields of great interest due to the increasing need of domain-specific knowledge bases that can boost the use of Semantic Web. For building such knowledge resources, the state of the art tools for ontology design require a lot of human work. Producing meaningful schemas and populating them with domain-specific data is in fact a very difficult and time-consuming task. Even more if the task consists in modelling knowledge at a web scale. The primary aim of this work is to investigate a novel and flexible method- ology for automatically learning ontology from textual data, lightening the human workload required for conceptualizing domain-specific knowledge and populating an extracted schema with real data, speeding up the whole ontology production process. Here computational linguistics plays a fundamental role, from automati- cally identifying facts from natural language and extracting frame of relations among recognized entities, to producing linked data with which extending existing knowledge bases or creating new ones. In the state of the art, automatic ontology learning systems are mainly based on plain-pipelined linguistics classifiers performing tasks such as Named Entity recognition, Entity resolution, Taxonomy and Relation extraction [11]. These approaches present some weaknesses, specially in capturing struc- tures through which the meaning of complex concepts is expressed [24]. Humans, in fact, tend to organize knowledge in well-defined patterns, which include participant entities and meaningful relations linking entities with each other. In literature, these structures have been called Semantic Frames by Fill- 6 Introduction more [20], or more recently as Knowledge Patterns [23]. Some NLP studies has recently shown the possibility of performing more accurate deep parsing with the ability of logically understanding the structure of discourse [7]. In this work, some of these technologies have been investigated and em- ployed to produce accurate ontology schemas. The long-term goal is to collect large amounts of semantically structured information from the web of crowds, through an automated process, in order to identify and investigate the cognitive patterns used by human to organize their knowledge.

Association mapping of stem rust resistance in durum wheat at the seedling and adult plant stages

In wheat, stem rust is known to rapidly evolve new virulence to resistance genes. While more than 50 stem rust resistance (Sr) loci have been identified in wheat, only a few remain effective, particularly against the highly virulent race Ug99 (TTKSK race) and a mixture of durum-specific races. An association mapping (AM) study based on 183 durum wheat accessions was utilized to identify resistance loci for stem rust response in Ethiopia over four seasons and artificial inoculation with Ug99 (TTKSK race) and a mixture of durum-specific races under field conditions as well as in greenhouse test at seedling stage under controlled conditions for resistance to four highly virulent stem rust races: TRTTF, TTTTF, (TTKSK (Ug99) and JRCQC. The panel was profiled with 1,253 SSR and DArT markers. Twelve QTL-tagging markers were significant (P < 0.05) across three to four seasons. The role of Sr13, Sr9, Sr14, Sr17, and Sr28 was confirmed. Thirteen significant markers were in regions with no Sr genes/QTLs. The results under controlled conditions showed that 15, 20, 19 and 19 chromosome regions harbored markers that showed significant effects for races TRTTF, TTTTF, TTKSK and JRCQC, respectively. These genomic regions showed marker R2 values ranging from 1.13 to 8.34, 1.92 to 17.64, 1.75 to 23.12 and 1.51 to 15.33% for races TRTTF, TTTTF, TTKSK and JRCQC, respectively. The study demonstrates that stem rust resistance in durum wheat is governed in part by shared loci and in part by race-specific ones. The QTLs identified in this study through AM will be useful in the marker-assisted development of durum wheat cultivars with durable stem rust resistance.

Labour, LGBT* rights, and Europe. Discourses in Italy and Serbia

At the time of writing, all three elements that are evoked in the title – emancipation and social inclusion of sexual minorities, labour and labour activism, and the idea and substance of “Europe” – are being invested by deep, long-term, and – to varied degrees – radical processes of social transformation. The meaning of words like “equality”, “rights”, “inclusion”, and even “democracy” is as precarious and uncertain as are the lives of those European citizens who are marginalised by intersecting conditions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class – in a constellation of precarities that is both unifying and fragmented (fragmenting). Conflicts are played, in hidden or explicit ways, over material processes of redistribution as well as discursive practices that revolve around these words. Against this backdrop, and roughly ten years after the European Union provided an input for institutional commitment to the protection of LGBT* workers' rights with the Council Directive 2000/78/EC, the dissertation contrasts discourses on workplace equality for LGBT* persons produced by a plurality of actors, seeking to identify values, semantics, and agendas framing and informing organisations’ views and showing how each actor has incorporated LGBT* rights into its own discourse, each time in a way that is functional to the construction and/or confirmation of its organisational identity: transnational union networks, by presenting LGBT* rights as a natural, neutral commitment within the framework of universal human rights protection; left-wing organisations, by collocating activism for LGBT* rights within a wider project of social emancipation that is for all the marginalised, yet is not neutral, but attached to specific values and opposed to specific political adversaries (the right-wing, the nationalists); business networks, by acknowledging diversity as a path to better performance and profits, thus encouraging inclusion and non-discrimination of “deserving” LGBT* workers.

Statistical mechanics formalism and methods for the analysis of real networks

This thesis provides a thoroughly theoretical background in network theory and shows novel applications to real problems and data. In the first chapter a general introduction to network ensembles is given, and the relations with “standard” equilibrium statistical mechanics are described. Moreover, an entropy measure is considered to analyze statistical properties of the integrated PPI-signalling-mRNA expression networks in different cases. In the second chapter multilayer networks are introduced to evaluate and quantify the correlations between real interdependent networks. Multiplex networks describing citation-collaboration interactions and patterns in colorectal cancer are presented. The last chapter is completely dedicated to control theory and its relation with network theory. We characterise how the structural controllability of a network is affected by the fraction of low in-degree and low out-degree nodes. Finally, we present a novel approach to the controllability of multiplex networks

Review of Complete Crime and Punishment Series

Some examples of topics covered include undocumented immigrants, guns, and terrorism within Crime and Criminal Behavior, vigilantes, Miranda warnings, and zero-tolerance policing within Police and Law Enforcement; insanity laws, DNA evidence, and victims' rights within Courts, Law, and Justice; gangs and prison violence, capital punishment, and prison privatization within Corrections; and school violence, violent juvenile offenders, and age of responsibility within Juvenile Crime and Justice. Note that Sage offers numerous reference works that provide focused analysis of key topics in the field of criminal justice, such as the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment (2002), the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (2009), the Encyclopedia of Victimology and Crime Prevention (2010), the Encyclopedia of White Collar & Corporate Crime (2004), and the Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence (2008), available in print or as e-books via Sage Reference online.

How Porous are the Walls that Separate Us?: Transformative Service-Learning, Women’s Incarceration, and the Unsettled Self

In this article, we refine a politics of thinking from the margins by exploring a pedagogical model that advances transformative notions of service learning as social justice teaching. Drawing on a recent course we taught involving both incarcerated women and traditional college students, we contend that when communication among differentiated and stratified parties occurs, one possible result is not just a view of the other but also a transformation of the self and other. More specifically, we suggest that an engaged feminist praxis of teaching incarcerated women together with college students helps illuminate the porous nature of fixed markers that purport to reveal our identities (e.g., race and gender), to emplace our bodies (e.g., within institutions, prison gates, and walls), and to specify our locations (e.g., cultural, geographic, socialeconomic). One crucial theoretical insight our work makes clear is that the model of social justice teaching to which we aspired necessitates re-conceptualizing ourselves as students and professors whose subjectivities are necessarily relational and emergent.

The Politics of the "New North": Putting History and Geography at Stake in Arctic Futures

References to a “New North” have snowballed across popular media in the past 10 years. By invoking the phrase, scientists, policy analysts, journalists and others draw attention to the collision of global warming and global investment in the Arctic today and project a variety of futures for the region and the planet. While changes are apparent, the trope of a “New North” is not new. Discourses that appraised unfamiliar situations at the top of the world have recurred throughout the twentieth century. They have also accompanied attempts to cajole, conquer, civilize, consume, conserve and capitalize upon the far north. This article examines these politics of the “New North” by critically reading “New North” texts from the North American Arctic between 1910 and 2010. In each case, appeals to novelty drew from evaluations of the historical record and assessments of the Arctic’s shifting position in global affairs. “New North” authors pinpointed the ways science, state power, capital and technology transformed northern landscapes at different moments in time. They also licensed political and corporate influence in the region by delimiting the colonial legacies already apparent there. Given these tendencies, scholars need to approach the most recent iteration of the “New North” carefully without concealing or repeating the most troubling aspects of the Arctic’s past.

Men's Modesty, Religion, and the State: Spaces of Collision

This article examines religious practices in the United States, which govern modesty and other dress norms for men. I focus both on the spaces within which they most collide with regulatory regimes of the state and the legal implications of these norms, particularly for observant Muslim men. Undergirding the research are those ‘‘gender equality’’ claims made by many religious adherents, that men are required to maintain proper modesty norms just as are women. Also undergirding the research is the extensive anti-Islam bias in American culture today. The spaces within which men’s religiously proscribed dress and grooming norms are most at issue—indicated by First Amendment legal challenges to rights of religious practice—are primarily those state-controlled, total institutions Goffman describes, such as in the military and prisons. The implications of gendered modesty norms are important, as state control over religious expression in prisons, for example, is much more difficult to contest than in other spaces, although this depends entirely on who is doing the contesting and within which religious context. In American society today—and particularly within the context of growing Islamaphobia following the 9/11 attacks—the implications are greatest for those men practicing ‘‘prison Islam.’’

Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from pets and horses in Switzerland: molecular characterization and clinical data

OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether Acinetobacter baumannii isolates of veterinary origin shared common molecular characteristics with those described in humans. METHODS: Nineteen A. baumannii isolates collected in pets and horses were analysed. Clonality was studied using repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (rep-PCR) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). PCR and DNA sequencing for various beta-lactamase, aminoglycoside-modifying enzyme, gyrA and parC, ISAba1 and IS1133, adeR and adeS of the AdeABC efflux pump, carO porin and class 1/2/3 integron genes were performed. RESULTS: Two main clones [A (n = 8) and B (n = 9)] were observed by rep-PCR. MLST indicated that clone A contained isolates of sequence type (ST) ST12 (international clone II) and clone B contained isolates of ST15 (international clone I). Two isolates of ST10 and ST20 were also noted. Seventeen isolates were resistant to gentamicin, 12 to ciprofloxacin and 3 to carbapenems. Isolates of ST12 carried bla(OXA-66), bla(ADC-25), bla(TEM-1), aacC2 and IS1133. Strains of ST15 possessed bla(OXA-69), bla(ADC-11), bla(TEM-1) and a class 1 integron carrying aacC1 and aadA1. ISAba1 was found upstream of bla(ADC) (one ST10 and one ST12) and/or bla(OXA-66) (seven ST12). Twelve isolates of different STs contained the substitutions Ser83Leu in GyrA and Ser80Leu or Glu84Lys in ParC. Significant disruptions of CarO porin and overexpressed efflux pumps were not observed. The majority of infections were hospital acquired and in animals with predisposing conditions for infection. CONCLUSIONS: STs and the molecular background of resistance observed in our collection have been frequently described in A. baumannii detected in human patients. Animals should be considered as a potential reservoir of multidrug-resistant A. baumannii.

The Strauss and Carpenter Prognostic Scale in subjects clinically at high risk of psychosis

Objective:  To investigate the predictive value of the Strauss and Carpenter Prognostic Scale (SCPS) for transition to a first psychotic episode in subjects clinically at high risk (CHR) of psychosis. Method:  Two hundred and forty-four CHR subjects participating in the European Prediction of Psychosis Study were assessed with the SCPS, an instrument that has been shown to predict outcome in patients with schizophrenia reliably. Results:  At 18-month follow-up, 37 participants had made the transition to psychosis. The SCPS total score was predictive of a first psychotic episode (P < 0.0001). SCPS items that remained as independent predictors in the Cox proportional hazard model were as follows: most usual quality of useful work in the past year (P = 0.006), quality of social relations (P = 0.006), presence of thought disorder, delusions or hallucinations in the past year (P = 0.001) and reported severity of subjective distress in past month (P = 0.003). Conclusion:  The SCPS could make a valuable contribution to a more accurate prediction of psychosis in CHR subjects as a second-step tool. SCPS items assessing quality of useful work and social relations, positive symptoms and subjective distress have predictive value for transition. Further research should focus on investigating whether targeted early interventions directed at the predictive domains may improve outcomes.