Functional Dependencies (FDs) are commonly used in data cleaning to identify dirty and inconsistent data values. However, many errors require user input for specific do- main knowledge. For example, let us consider the drugs, Advil and Crocin. FDs will consider these two drugs different because they are not syntactically equal. However, Advil and Crocin are synonyms as they are two different drugs with similar chemical compounds but marketed under distinct names in different countries. While FDs have traditionally been used in existing data cleaning solutions to model syntactic equivalence, they are not able to model broader relationships (e.g., synonym, Is-A (Inheritance)) defined by ontologies. In this thesis, we take a first step to discover a new dependency called Ontology Functional Dependencies (OFDs). OFDs model attribute relationships based on re- lationships in a given ontology. We present two effective algorithms to discover OFDs using synonyms and inheritance relationships. Our discovery algorithms search for minimal OFDs and prune the redundant ones. Both algorithms traverse the search lattice in a level-wise Breadth First Search (BFS) manner. In addition, we have devel- oped a set of pruning rules so that we can avoid considering unnecessary candidates in the search lattice. We present an experimental study describing the performance ivand scalability of our techniques. Experimental results show that both algorithms are effective in practice and discover OFDs efficiently for large datasets with millions of tuples. We also present a qualitative study showing that the discovered OFDs are meaningful with high precision and recall. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

F. De W. Bolman's Thesis--Columbia University. / Published also without thesis note. Vita. Photocopy (positive) made by University Microfilms. Bibliography: p. [241]-243.

Thesis--Munich. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-93).

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Nowadays, the comparison of educational courses and modules is performed manually by experts in the field of education. The main objective of this research work is to create an approach for the automation of this process. The main contribution of this work is a novel, ontology alignment-based methodology for the automated comparison of academic courses and modules, belonging to the cognitive learning domain. The results of this work are appropriate for such tasks as prior learning and degree recognition, the introduction of joint educational programmes and quality assurance in higher education institutions. The set-theoretical models of an educational course, its modules, learning outcomes and keywords were created and converted to the ontology. The choice of the information to be presented in the ontology was based on the careful analysis of programme specifications, module templates and Bologna recommendations for the comparison of educational courses. Ontology was chosen as the data model due to its ability to formally specify semantics, to represent taxonomies and to make inferences regarding data. The formal grammars of a keyword and a learning outcome were created to enable the semi-automated population of the ontology from the module templates. The corresponding annotators were designed in the General Architecture for Text Engineering 6.1. The algorithm for the comparison of educational courses and modules was based on the alignment of ontologies of their keywords and learning outcomes. A novel measure for calculating the similarity between the action verbs in the learning outcomes was introduced and was utilised. Both the measure and the algorithm were implemented in Java. For evaluation purposes, we utilised the module templates from the De Montfort and the Bauman Moscow State Technical Universities. The automatically produced annotations of the keywords and the learning outcomes were evaluated against a manually created gold standard. The high values of the precision, recall and f-measure proved their quality and their suitability for the task. The results produced by the alignment algorithm were compared with those produced by human judgement. The results returned by the experts and the algorithm were comparable, thus showing that the proposed approach is applicable for the partial automation of the comparison of educational modules and courses.

Developments in biblical studies, neurosciences, and Christian philosophy of mind force theologians reconsider the traditional concept of the immortal soul. At the same time the concept itself tends to create axiological dualism between the body and the soul that in turn may lead to insufficient appreciation of the physical life in this world. A more holistic approach to the ontology of the human beings is required. The aim of this study is to analyse the function of the concept of the soul in the dualistic anthropology of John Calvin and to compare it to the holistic anthropology of Karl Barth in order to answer the question whether the transition from one to the other is possible without the loss of the functions fulfilled by the soul. The thesis thus comprises four sections. The first explores the ontological anthropology of John Calvin focusing (1) on the soul as the bearer of the image of God, (2) on the body as an important epistemological instrument, (3) on the immortality as a natural human attribute and as a result of union with Christ, (4) on the resurrection as the ultimate hope. The second section identifies the shift of the philosophical presuppositions which occurred between Calvin and Barth. The third section looks closely at Karl Barth's anthropology as it is presented in the Church Dogmatics III/2 giving attention (1) to the new anthropological method of Karl Barth, and, following from that, to his understanding of (2) the image of God, (3) body/soul relationship, (4) death. Finally, the fourth section compares the views of John Calvin and Karl Barth. The study concludes that Karl Barth provides theological concepts which help to move theological discourse from a dualistic to a holistic view of man.

Semantically-enabled applications, such as ontology-based search and data integration, take into account the semantics of the input data in their algorithms. Such applications often use ontologies, which model the application domains in question, as well as alignments, which provide information about the relationships between the terms in the different ontologies. The quality and reliability of the results of such applications depend directly on the correctness and completeness of the ontologies and alignments they utilize. Traditionally, ontology debugging discovers defects in ontologies and alignments and provides means for improving their correctness and completeness, while ontology alignment establishes the relationships between the terms in the different ontologies, thus addressing completeness of alignments. This thesis focuses on the integration of ontology alignment and debugging for taxonomy networks which are formed by taxonomies, the most widely used kind of ontologies, connected through alignments. The contributions of this thesis include the following. To the best of our knowledge, we have developed the first approach and framework that integrate ontology alignment and debugging, and allow debugging of modelling defects both in the structure of the taxonomies as well as in their alignments. As debugging modelling defects requires domain knowledge, we have developed algorithms that employ the domain knowledge intrinsic to the network to detect and repair modelling defects. Further, a system has been implemented and several experiments with real-world ontologies have been performed in order to demonstrate the advantages of our integrated ontology alignment and debugging approach. For instance, in one of the experiments with the well-known ontologies and alignment from the Anatomy track in Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative 2010, 203 modelling defects (concerning incomplete and incorrect information) were discovered and repaired.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1987. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-57).