Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2009. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 21, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-69).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.116-.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-222). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-137).

Thesis (M.Econ.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.116-145). Also available online.

Inference enables an agent to create new knowledge from old or discover implicit relationships between concepts in a knowledge base (KB), provided that appropriate techniques are employed to deal with ambiguous, incomplete and sometimes erroneous data. The ever-increasing volumes of KBs on the web, available for use by automated systems, present an opportunity to leverage the available knowledge in order to improve the inference process in automated query answering systems. This thesis focuses on the FRANK (Functional Reasoning for Acquiring Novel Knowledge) framework that responds to queries where no suitable answer is readily contained in any available data source, using a variety of inference operations. Most question answering and information retrieval systems assume that answers to queries are stored in some form in the KB, thereby limiting the range of answers they can find. We take an approach motivated by rich forms of inference using techniques, such as regression, for prediction. For instance, FRANK can answer “what country in Europe will have the largest population in 2021?" by decomposing Europe geo-spatially, using regression on country population for past years and selecting the country with the largest predicted value. Our technique, which we refer to as Rich Inference, combines heuristics, logic and statistical methods to infer novel answers to queries. It also determines what facts are needed for inference, searches for them, and then integrates the diverse facts and their formalisms into a local query-specific inference tree. Our primary contribution in this thesis is the inference algorithm on which FRANK works. This includes (1) the process of recursively decomposing queries in way that allows variables in the query to be instantiated by facts in KBs; (2) the use of aggregate functions to perform arithmetic and statistical operations (e.g. prediction) to infer new values from child nodes; and (3) the estimation and propagation of uncertainty values into the returned answer based on errors introduced by noise in the KBs or errors introduced by aggregate functions. We also discuss many of the core concepts and modules that constitute FRANK. We explain the internal “alist” representation of FRANK that gives it the required flexibility to tackle different kinds of problems with minimal changes to its internal representation. We discuss the grammar for a simple query language that allows users to express queries in a formal way, such that we avoid the complexities of natural language queries, a problem that falls outside the scope of this thesis. We evaluate the framework with datasets from open sources.

This thesis explores fifteen women’s accounts of pregnancy over the course of gestation. It highlights the fluidity and dynamism of these women’s experiences, placing these in the context of the breadth of medical interventions they engaged with. Much existing literature concerning pregnancy focuses on specific instances of contact with medical professionals or technological interventions. This study explores the mundane and routine elements of the everyday practice of pregnancy, including during the first trimester. This is a period rarely addressed in academic literature. The thesis draws on data from in-depth interviews with women in Scotland, experiencing a continuing pregnancy for the first time. These were conducted at three points over the course of gestation. Interviews aimed to explore women’s interactions with medical interventions, their conceptualisations of the foetus, and changing experiences of embodiment. Analysis took place in several stages, incorporating three ‘readings’ of interviews and the development of a case study for each participant. This was inspired by the voice centred relational method of analysis. Themes were then identified and developed within, and between, individual women’s accounts. Participants’ narratives, particularly in early pregnancy, resonated with Rothman’s (1988) concept of the ‘tentative pregnancy’, originally developed to describe pregnancy in the wake of amniocentesis. Tentativeness emerged as a key theme characterising women’s experiences. Tentativeness was especially evident during the first trimester, largely due to women’s understanding that the risk of miscarriage was at its highest during this period. Women described managing their emotions at this time, in order to balance excitement about their wanted pregnancy with the possibility that it may end in a pregnancy loss. One aspect of this emotion work, explored in this thesis, was the effort made by women to keep their pregnancy a secret from wider family and friends for the first twelve weeks of gestation. Medical intervention and its associated technologies played a key role in both constructing pregnancy as tentative, but paradoxically, also provided a means to resolve this through reassurance. Women engaged with these interventions flexibly. In contrast to much existing literature, this thesis highlights that while contact with prenatal technologies cemented the reality of the pregnancy for some, they also had the power to add to the ambiguity of participants’ status as a ‘pregnant woman’. In later pregnancy, women’s shifting embodied experiences contributed to a reduction in tentativeness. The ability to feel definite foetal movements, coupled with medical and popular discourses of foetal viability, allowed women to feel less anxious about the safety of the pregnancy and the foetus. As a result, women reported changed interactions with health professionals and advice during the final trimester of pregnancy. This thesis, engaging with literature from sociology, science and technology studies (STS) and anthropology, makes theoretical contributions in three areas. First, its consideration of gestation over time nuances discussions of pregnancy in terms of risk. Second, this research further contributes to literature regarding pregnant embodiment, and conceptualisations of the foetus. Third, the thesis demonstrates that relationships between forms of knowledge mobilised by participants during pregnancy were complex, shifting over the course of gestation, and reflective of women’s experiences of pregnancy as tentative.