International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation: 2012 Report

IHTSDO CoP: 2012 Annual Activity Report Now Available

Our annual activity report for 2012 is now available in two formats:

Online magazine: www.ihtsdo.org/activity_report

PDF: www.ihtsdo.org/activity_report.pdf

We hope you enjoy it! Any comments or questions can be sent to info AT ihtsdo.org.

Source and many thanks to Juliet Krarup (ihtsdo staff)

Semantic Web journal Special Issue on Cognitive Science and the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web journal invites paper submissions for a special issue on "Cognitive Approaches for the Semantic Web." The scope of the special issue includes research from cognitive science that employs Semantic Web technologies, ontologies, or Linked Data as well as semantic web research that takes inspiration from Cognitive Science findings and methods. We also invite work from domains that would benefit from a closer integration of cognitive science methods into the Semantic Web such as the digital humanities, bioinformatics, and GIScience. Submitted research may address a variety of topics including (but not limited to) reasoning, information retrieval and integration, personalization, context, patterns, user interfaces, spatial cognition, and learning. All standard paper types from the Semantic Web journal may be submitted (research paper, survey paper, tool/system paper, dataset description paper, application report, ontology description - see http://www.semantic-web-journal.org/authors ). In addition, we invite vision and position papers of the highest quality, which will be evaluated as to their potential to stimulate research investigations on the interplay between Cognitive Science and Semantic Web.

Deadlines

Paper submission deadline: January 10, 2013
Notification: March 10, 2013

Editors of the special issue:

Rob Goldstone (Indiana University, Bloomington, US)
Frank van Harmelen (VU Amsterdam, NL)
Pascal Hitzler (Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University, Dayton, US)
Krzysztof Janowicz (University of California, Santa Barbara, US)
Kai-Uwe Kühnberger (Universität Osnabrück, DE)

Guest editorial board (to be completed)

Benjamin Adams (University of California, Santa Barbara, US)
Claudia d'Amato (University of Bari, IT)
Alan Bundy (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Jérôme Euzenat (INRIA Rhône-Alpes, FR)
Helmar Gust (Universität Osnabrück, DE)
Cory Henson (Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University, Dayton, US)
Zhisheng Huang (VU Amsterdam, NL)
Werner Kuhn (Universität Münster, DE)
Alexander Mehler (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, DE)
Simon Scheider (Universität Münster, DE)
Christoph Schlieder (Universität Bamberg, DE)
Lael Schooler (MPI für Bildungsforschung, DE)
Wei Lee Woon (Masdar Institute, Abu Dhabi, AE)
Gudrun Ziegler (DICA-lab, University of Luxembourg, LU)
...

Contact: If you have questions, please contact us via contact @ semantic-web-journal.net .

-- Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler
Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
http://www.knoesis.org/pascal/
Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

'Semantic Reefs' - All at Sea, on Land and in Mind

In reviewing some literature recently I came across the phrase 'semantic reef'. In forwarding a copy of the paper Dr Trina Myers described the semantic reef as: an architecture created to automatically infer phenomenon or alerts about coral reefs using Semantic technologies (aka. Linked Data).

The coinage of semantic reef in the paper by Myers and Atkinson really captured my imagination. While the semantic web is of interest to me and the environment is the oxygen to the human ecosystem, to our very existence and well-being; Myers and Atkinson's semantic reef is very specific:

The Semantic Reef Knowledge Representation system is an eco-informatics application designed to assist in the integration of remotely sensed data streams and historic data sets supporting flexible hypothesis design and knowledge extraction. The system is an ontology-based architecture built to allow researchers to combine disjoint data sets into a single Knowledge Base for modelling the impact of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. p.16.

I've written previously of the conceptual role that the axes of Hodges' model can play. How they act as a distinct, idealised boundary between the disciplines. Most evident is the MECHANISTIC-HUMANISTIC divide between the hard sciences and the humanities. Academics, researchers, health practitioners can become trapped in a disciplinary silo. Reefs are often a Great Barrier. Mariners have to find navigable waters to find a way through. Safe passage is recorded.

The last thing anyone wants is a shipwreck; whether in the ecosphere, designing software or health care.
Maybe this is another (long-winded-yes) way of recognising the collapse of holistic bandwidth at the point of a medical emergency, a crisis. The situation IS a shipwreck. A disaster of a very personal kind. What lies beyond the information required in that specific instant, what lies outside that atoll is suddenly not important.


More positively though a reef also represents an opportunity. It is a sign, a measure of global health. As such it IS a community. It is community. Harmony. Balance. It is the community around which others revolve. And we need to recognise; nOt that, but this and nOw. ...:

Trina Myers, Ian Atkinson (2013). Eco-informatics modelling via semantic inference. Information Systems. 38, 1, March 2013, 16–32.

Thanks to Dr Trina Myers.

Image sources:
Australian National Maritime Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atafutrim.jpg

Reflections [VII] Conceptual Spaces At Work: OntoSpaces - A Perspectivist Approach to CS

This session started fairly quietly but was one that rather shouted out in the end because of its possible relevance to Hodges' model. There was a clue having recognised one contributor from a reference already found:

Hautamäki, A. (1992). A Conceptual Space Approach To Semantic Networks, Computers and Mathematics with Applications. 23, 6-9, 517-525.

Kaipainen and Hautamäki began by asking what is the origin of quality dimensions? They proceeded to explain their use of perspectivism and the perspectival nature of cognition directing the audience to Giere (2006). The history of this is based on philosophy and the work of Nietzsche, Goodman and Putnam.

The work of Kaipainen and Hautamäki proposes the OntoSpace as a means to further extend Gärdenfors' work. An ontospace is an n-dimensional metadata space. In this space a perspective is an array of weights. The weights express the interest or attention towards each onto-dimension.


A transformation can be made from Ontospace A to lower dimensional space B. There are many technical points here to get to grips with. A figure was provided (I have gone over the yellow square 'Topical Domain' as it was indistinct; the green circle reads 'b Representational Space B').

This is an ecological and manageable means to conceptualization of a topical domain in ontospace A. Mention of ecological and manageable prompted me to clarify what this means, as I can see h2cm as being ecological and manageable. In the sense of breadth and depth of knowledge and possibly reducing the data context (as ever), patient, carer, nurse, learner....

The presentation included a software demonstration insofar as time allowed. The context was banking. The interface both applied dimensions and prioritised them. In the break I was able to explain Hodges' model to Mauri (Kaipainen), using a board in the upstairs dining room. By email Mauri subsequently noted that the home page of the old website actually reflects the model down to the placement of the menu links. (This is a struggle with Drupal and its themes, trying to come up with something that is original, represents the model and yet is not gimmicky the interface being obscure.) I approached Mauri and his colleague regards referencing their draft paper and they are happy for me to do so.

In health and social care of course we are very used to 'perspectives'. Especially seeking a caring perspective through empathy and rapport, putting on the shoes of the other and trying to appreciate the perspective they may or may not see. As I have said before I wonder at times if my passion for h2cm is an overvalued idea. I feel at times I am clutching at straws to find a theoretical underpinning for Hodges' model. At this conference there were no warts, and this presentation added more very useful ideas and in this case interdisciplinary bridges:

Solomon describes Nietzsche’s perspectivism so that it’s a view that “one always knows or perceives or thinks about something from a particular perspective - not just a spatial viewpoints, but a particular context of surrounding impressions. influences, and ideas, conceived of through one’s language and social upbringing and, ultimately, determined by virtual everything about oneself, one’s psychophysical make-up, and one’s history” (Solomon 1996, 195). Kaipainen and Hautamäki (to follow)

Ontospaces also seems to reflect the resulting dialogues found in health and social care and the need to constantly attend to and reconcile the same:

As Baghramian sees it, there can be more than one correct account of how things are in any given domain (2004, Chapter 10). Thus the issue is not which perspective is correct or true, but how to explore and mutually relate multiple perspectives.

Kaipainen, M., Hautamäki, A. Ontospaces: A Perspectivist Approach to Conceptual Spaces (to follow).

Giere, Ronald, N. (2006). Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Images: Peter Jones (with thanks to the presenters)