Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Un mapping d’ontologies est un ensemble de correspondances. Chaque correspondance relie des artefacts, typiquement concepts et propriétés, d’une ontologie avec ceux d’une autre ontologie. Le mapping entre ontologies a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt durant ces dernières années. En effet, le mapping d’ontologies est largement utilisé pour mettre en oeuvre de l’interopérabilité et intégration (transformation de données, réponse à la requête, composition de web service) dans les applications, et également dans la création de nouvelles ontologies. D’une part, vérifier l’exactitude (logique) d’un mapping est devenu un prérequis fondamentale à son utilisation. D’autre part, pour deux ontologies données, plusieurs mappings peuvent être établis, obtenus par différentes méthodes d’alignement, ou définis manuellement. L’utilisation de plusieurs mappings entre deux ontologies dans une seule application ou pour synthétiser un seul mapping tirant profit de ces plusieurs mappings, peut générer des erreurs dans l’application ou dans le mapping synthétisé car ces plusieurs mappings peuvent être contradictoires. Dans les deux situations décrites ci-dessus, l’exactitude, la non-contradiction et autres propriétés sont généralement exprimées de façon formelle et vérifiées dans le contexte des ontologies formelles (par exemple, lorsque les ontologies sont représentées en logique) La vérification de ces propriétés est généralement effectuée à l’aide d’un seul formalisme, exigeant d’une part que les ontologies soient représentées par ce seul formalisme et, d’autre part, qu’une représentation formelle des mappings soit fournie, complétée par des notions formalisant les propriétés recherchées. Cependant, il existe une multitude de formalismes hétérogènes pour exprimer les ontologies, allant des plus informels (par exemple, du texte contrôlé, des modèles en UML) aux formels (par exemple, des logiques de description ou des catégories). Ceci implique que pour appliquer les approches existantes, les ontologies hétérogènes doivent être traduites (ou juste transformées, si l’ontologie source est exprimée de façon informelle ou si la traduction complète pour maintenir l’équivalence n’est pas possible) dans un seul formalisme commun et les mappings sont reformulés à chaque fois : seulement à l’issu de ce processus, les propriétés recherchées peuvent être établies. Même si cela est possible, ce processus peut produire à la fois des mappings corrects et incorrects vis-à-vis de ces propriétés, en fonction de la traduction (transformation) opérée. En effet, les propriétés recherchées dépendent du formalisme employé pour exprimer les ontologies et les mappings. Dans cette dissertation, des différentes propriétés ont été a été reformulées d’une manière unifiée dans le contexte d’ontologies hétérogènes utilisant la théorie de Galois. Dans ce contexte, les ontologies sont représentées comme treillis, et les mappings sont reformulés comme fonctions entre ces treillis. Les treillis sont des structures naturelles pour la représentation directe d’ontologies sans obligation de traduire ou transformer les formalismes dans lesquels les ontologies sont exprimées à l’origine. Cette reformulation unifiée a permis d’introduire une nouvelle notion de mappings compatibles et incompatibles. Il est ensuite formellement démontré que cette nouvelle notion couvre plusieurs parmi les propriétés recherchées de mappings, mentionnées dans l’état de l’art. L’utilisation directe de mappings compatibles et incompatibles est démontrée par l’application à des mappings d’ontologies de haut niveau. La notion de mappings compatibles et incompatibles est aussi appliquée sur des ontologies de domaine, mettant en évidence comment les mappings incompatibles génèrent des résultats incorrects pour la fusion d’ontologies. / An ontology mapping is a set of correspondences. Each correspondence relates artifacts, such as concepts and properties, of one ontology to artifacts of another ontology. In the last few years, a lot of attention has been paid to establish mappings between source ontologies. Ontology mapping is widely and effectively used for interoperability and integration tasks (data transformation, query answering, or web-service composition, to name a few), and in the creation of new ontologies. On the one side, checking the (logical) correctness of ontology mappings has become a fundamental prerequisite of their use. On the other side, given two ontologies, there are several ontology mappings between them that can be obtained by using different ontology matching methods or just stated manually. Using ontology mappings between two ontologies in combination within a single application or for synthesizing one mapping taking the advantage of two original mappings, may cause errors in the application or in the synthesized mapping because those original mappings may be contradictory (conflicting). In both situations, correctness is usually formalized and verified in the context of fully formalized ontologies (e.g. in logics), even if some “weak” notions of correctness have been proposed when ontologies are informally represented or represented in formalisms preventing a formalization of correctness (such as UML). Verifying correctness is usually performed within one single formalism, requiring on the one side that ontologies need to be represented in this unique formalism and, on the other side, a formal representation of mapping is provided, equipped with notions related to correctness (such as consistency). In practice, there exist several heterogeneous formalisms for expressing ontologies, ranging from informal (text, UML and others) to formal (logical and algebraic). This implies that, willing to apply existing approaches, heterogeneous ontologies should be translated (or just transformed if, the original ontology is informally represented or when full translation, keeping equivalence, is not possible) in one common formalism, mappings need each time to be reformulated, and then correctness can be established. This is possible but possibly leading to correct mappings under one translation and incorrect mapping under another translation. Indeed, correctness (e.g. consistency) depends on the underlying employed formalism in which ontologies and mappings are expressed. Different interpretations of correctness are available within the formal or even informal approaches questioning about what correctness is indeed. In the dissertation, correctness has been reformulated in the context of heterogeneous ontologies by using the theory of Galois connections. Specifically ontologies are represented as lattices and mappings as functions between those lattices. Lattices are natural structures for directly representing ontologies, without changing the original formalisms in which ontologies are expressed. As a consequence, the (unified) notion of correctness has been reformulated by using Galois connection condition, leading to the new notion of compatible and incompatible mappings. It is formally shown that the new notion covers the reviewed correctness notions, provided in distinct state of the art formalisms, and, at the same time, can naturally cover heterogeneous ontologies. The usage of the proposed unified approach is demonstrated by applying it to upper ontology mappings. Notion of compatible and incompatible ontology mappings is also applied on domain ontologies to highlight that incompatible ontology mappings give incorrect results when used for ontology merging.

A common task in many database applications is the migration of legacy data from multiple sources into a new one. This requires identifying semantically related elements of the source and target systems and the creation of mapping expressions to transform instances of those elements from the source format to the target format. Currently, data migration is typically done manually, a tedious and timeconsuming process, which is difficult to scale to a high number of data sources. In this paper, we describe QuickMig, a new semi-automatic approach to determining semantic correspondences between schema elements for data migration applications. QuickMig advances the state of the art with a set of new techniques exploiting sample instances, domain ontologies, and reuse of existing mappings to detect not only element correspondences but also their mapping expressions. QuickMig further includes new mechanisms to effectively incorporate domain knowledge of users into the matching process. The results from a comprehensive evaluation using real-world schemas and data indicate the high quality and practicability of the overall approach.

Flood plain mapping has become an increasingly important part of flood plain management. Flood plain mapping employs mapping software and hydraulic calculation packages to efficiently map flood plains. Modelers often utilize automation software to develop the complex geometries required to reduce the time to develop hydraulic models. The Utah Inundation Mapping System (UTIMS) is designed to reduce the time required to develop complex geometries for use in flood plain mapping studies. The automated geometries developed by UTIMS include: flood specific river centerlines, bank lines, flow path lines, cross sections and areal averaged n-value polygons. UTIMS thus facilitates developing automated input to US Army Corps of Engineer's HEC-RAS software. Results from HEC-RAS can be imported back to UTIMS for display and mapping. The user can also specify convergence criteria for water surface profile at selected locations along the river and thus run UTIMS and HEC-RAS iteratively till the convergence criterion is met. UTIMS develops a new flood specific geometry file for each iteration, enabling an accurate modeling of flood-plain. Utilizing this robust and easy to operate software within the GIS environment modelers can significantly reduce the time required to develop accurate flood plain maps. The time thus saved in developing the geometries allows modelers to spend more time doing the actual modeling and analyzing results. The time thus saved can also result in faster turn around and potential cost cutting in flood-plain modeling work. In this paper the authors describe UTIMS capabilities, compare them with other available software, and demonstrate the UTIMS flood plain automation process using a case study.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, 2013. / High resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric data covering the 1:50,000 mapsheets 2229AB Mapungubwe and 2229AD Coila were collected by the Council for Geoscience and interpreted in this study. Several generations of magnetised lineaments were identified and modelled as mafic dykes. North-northwest, east-northeast and east-west trending lineaments occur in the pre-Karoo basement (~2.04 Ga to Dwyka) and east-west trending lineaments predominate in Karoo sediments (<183 Ma). A number of circular magnetic anomalies occur in north-northwest and east-northeast trending clusters in the southwest of the study area. These were interpreted to be intrusive plugs – possibly feeders for the dolerite sills and dykes that occur in the area. Radiometric data delineate geological units within the pre-Karoo basement. Granitic to granodioritic rocks (2.6 Ga) are enriched in uranium and thorium while tonalitic rocks are not. Geological cross-sections, constructed along flight lines and tie-lines, suggest that there are two or more sills at depth under the southwestern portion of the study area intruded by the Venetia kimberlite pipes. In addition a large strongly magnetic anomaly with no surface expression was identified in the northeastern area and modelled to be at about 1200 m depth.

No description available.

BACKGROUND:Opioids are the cornerstone of treatment for moderate to severe pain, but chronic use leads to maladaptations that include: tolerance, dependence and opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). These responses limit the utility of opioids, as well as our ability to control chronic pain. Despite decades of research, we have no therapies or proven strategies to overcome this problem. However, murine haplotype based computational genetic mapping and a SNP data base generated from analysis of whole-genome sequence data (whole-genome HBCGM), provides a hypothesis-free method for discovering novel genes affecting opioid maladaptive responses.RESULTS:Whole genome-HBCGM was used to analyze phenotypic data on morphine-induced tolerance, dependence and hyperalgesia obtained from 23 inbred strains. The robustness of the genetic mapping results was analyzed using strain subsets. In addition, the results of analyzing all of the opioid-related traits together were examined. To characterize the functional role of the leading candidate gene, we analyzed transgenic animals, mRNA and protein expression in behaviorally divergent mouse strains, and immunohistochemistry in spinal cord tissue. Our mapping procedure identified the allelic pattern within the netrin-1 receptor gene (Dcc) as most robustly associated with OIH, and it was also strongly associated with the combination of the other maladaptive opioid traits analyzed. Adult mice heterozygous for the Dcc gene had significantly less tendency to develop OIH, become tolerant or show evidence of dependence after chronic exposure to morphine. The difference in opiate responses was shown not to be due to basal or morphine-stimulated differences in the level of Dcc expression in spinal cord tissue, and was not associated with nociceptive neurochemical or anatomical alterations in the spinal cord or dorsal root ganglia in adult animals.CONCLUSIONS:Whole-genome HBCGM is a powerful tool for identifying genes affecting biomedical traits such as opioid maladaptations. We demonstrate that Dcc affects tolerance, dependence and OIH after chronic opioid exposure, though not through simple differences in expression in the adult spinal cord.

No description available.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT:This research assignment is an exploratory qualitative study into mapping unplanned outcomes of executive coaching. The research purpose was twofold: to address the lack of a common and comprehensive framework for the mapping of outcomes of executive coaching, and to add to the body of knowledge regarding unplanned outcomes of executive coaching. In developing the mapping framework, the available literature was reviewed and, through an inductive process, a framework, model, taxonomy and mapping tool were developed. Based on core concepts attributable to Kirkpatrick, Wilber and Jaques, the mapping tool developed was then tested, using data obtained from a purposive sample of seven semi-structured interviews with Gauteng based coachees. The sample excluded any individuals who had been coached by the researcher. During the data analysis, the planned outcomes were mapped using the mapping tool and related processes. Thereafter the actual outcomes were mapped, identifying those outcomes that matched planned outcomes and those that supported the planned outcomes. A technique named ‘outcome chains’ was developed and used for this process. The unplanned outcomes were identified by a process of elimination, being those that remained unallocated in the planned chain process. It was found that outcomes of executive coaching can be mapped using a framework based on the principles of Kirkpatrick, Wilber and Jaques, with all identified outcomes being mapped successfully. Four categories of unplanned outcomes were identified, namely those that hinder the attainment of planned outcomes, insufficient evidence of achieving planned outcomes, actual outcomes related to planned outcomes but with scope different to planned and, fourthly, actual outcomes unrelated to planned outcomes. Additionally, three themes of unplanned outcomes, each with two sub-themes, were identified, namely personal (sub-themes: physical and spiritual), family (sub-themes: immediate and extended) and work (sub-themes: positive and negative). The most surprising finding was that all seven coachees experienced unplanned outcomes, which is markedly different to previous research findings and may be due to the inclusion of non-work related outcomes. The key recommendations arising from this research assignment embrace the research into, and practice of, executive coaching. Regarding the research elements, it is recommended that the mapping framework developed in this research be further refined and tested as a holistic standard for evaluating the outcomes of executive coaching, including those outcomes that impact the coachee as an individual. For the executive coaching fraternity, it is recommended that coaches challenge themselves and their practices regarding the probability, categories and impact of unplanned outcomes, and introduce measures to maximise the upside and minimise the risks of unplanned outcomes. Finally, the regular testing and recording of the coachee’s reaction to executive coaching is recommended as a predictor of coaching efficacy.

published_or_final_version / Biochemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy