Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Medical Physics, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1988.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1988.

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In this thesis the Semantic Web and its core technology---Web Ontology Language (OWL)---were studied. Considering the features of the different units involved in the dairy industry, OWL, in its capacity as an ontology description language, can be used to encode and thus exchange ontology among the units in the dairy industry. After creation of OWL file using Protege, an OWL parser was programmed to decode the ontology and data contained in the OWL file. Based on these investigations, it was determined that OWL can be used to encode, exchange, and decode data between farms and the units that interact with them, although large volumes of data among the service agencies pose certain challenges in terms of transfer size. A structure of the Semantic Web services in the dairy industry is proposed for Semantic Web Service registration, search and usage related to certain farm-management tasks. With the help of the Semantic Web and OWL, one can expect a more efficient data processing in the future dairy industry.

This thesis provides the rationale for the necessity of a redefining of the holistic back into nursing after the consequences of technological restructuring. This study revealed that the impact of modern technology-based, prescriptive changes on professional nursing practice in Canada has resulted in an increasing alienation of labour for nurses, including direct interference with patient-based nursing care, authority, necessity for broader knowledge systems, stability and fragility in job security. The implications of this examination have demonstrated that this shift has not been the result of mechanical technologies alone, but the science-based management philosophies and communicative nature of technologies as well. / This project has verified that more importantly than the advancing technological shift itself the danger for professional nursing has been in what these systems are actively replacing. Namely, prescriptive technologies work to establish a managerial or 'expert' presence and authority within the practice of nursing serving to change professional understandings for nurses as well as to decrease value in the judgement and holistic care skills of registered nurses.

Advances in sensor technology and space science have resulted in the availability of vast quantities of high quality earth observation data. This data can be used for monitoring the earth and to enhance our understanding of natural processes. Sensor Web researchers are working on constructing a worldwide computing infrastructure that enables dynamic sharing and analysis of complex heterogeneous earth observation data sets. Key challenges that are currently being investigated include data integration; service discovery, reuse and composition; semantic interoperability; and system dynamism. Two emerging technologies that have shown promise in dealing with these challenges are ontologies and software agents. This research investigates how these technologies can be integrated into an Ontology Driven Multi-Agent System (ODMAS) for the Sensor Web. The research proposes an ODMAS framework and an implemented middleware platform, i.e. the Sensor Web Agent Platform (SWAP). SWAP deals with ontology construction, ontology use, and agent based design, implementation and deployment. It provides a semantic infrastructure, an abstract architecture, an internal agent architecture and a Multi-Agent System (MAS) middleware platform. Distinguishing features include: the incorporation of Bayesian Networks to represent and reason about uncertain knowledge; ontologies to describe system entities such as agent services, interaction protocols and agent workflows; and a flexible adapter based MAS platform that facilitates agent development, execution and deployment. SWAP aims to guide and ease the design, development and deployment of dynamic alerting and monitoring applications. The efficacy of SWAP is demonstrated by two satellite image processing applications, viz. wildfire detection and monitoring informal settlement. This approach can provide significant benefits to a wide range of Sensor Web users. These include: developers for deploying agents and agent based applications; end users for accessing, managing and visualising information provided by real time monitoring applications, and scientists who can use the Sensor Web as a scientific computing platform to facilitate knowledge sharing and discovery. An Ontology Driven Multi-Agent Sensor Web has the potential to forever change the way in which geospatial data and knowledge is accessed and used. This research describes this far reaching vision, identifies key challenges and provides a first step towards the vision. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009.

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