Induction of robust classifiers for web ontologies through kernel machines

The paper focuses on the task of approximate classification of semantically annotated individual resources in ontological knowledge bases. The method is based on classification models built through kernel methods, a well-known class of effective statistical learning algorithms. Kernel functions encode a notion of similarity among elements of some input space. The definition of a family of parametric language-independent kernel functions for individuals occurring in an ontology allows the application of these statistical learning methods on Semantic Web knowledge bases. The classification models induced by kernel methods offer an alternative way to classify individuals with respect to the typical exact and approximate deductive reasoning procedures. The proposed statistical setting enables further inductive approaches to a variety of other tasks that can better cope with the inherent incompleteness of the knowledge bases in the Semantic Web and with their potential incoherence due to their distributed nature. The effectiveness of the proposed method is empirically proved through experiments on the task of approximate classification with real ontologies collected from standard repositories.     

Ontology-based semantic search on the Web and its combination with the power of inductive reasoning

Semantic Web search is currently one of the hottest research topics in both Web search and the Semantic Web. In previous work, we have presented a novel approach to Semantic Web search, which allows for evaluating ontology-based complex queries that involve reasoning over the Web relative to an underlying background ontology. We have developed the formal model behind this approach, and provided a technique for processing Semantic Web search queries, which consists of an offline ontological inference step and an online reduction to standard Web search. In this paper, we continue this line of research. We further enhance the above approach by the use of inductive rather than deductive reasoning in the offline inference step. This increases the robustness of Semantic Web search, as it adds the important ability to handle inconsistencies, noise, and incompleteness, which are all very likely to occur in distributed and heterogeneous environments such as the Web. The inductive variant also allows to infer new (not logically deducible) knowledge (from training individuals). We report on a prototype implementation of (both the deductive and) the inductive variant of our approach in desktop search, and we provide extensive new experimental results, especially on the running time and the precision and the recall of our new?approach.     

Parallel and Sequential Algorithms for Data Mining Using Inductive Logic

Inductive logic is a research area in the intersection of machine learning and logic programming, and has been increasingly applied to data mining. Inductive logic studies learning from examples, within the framework provided by clausal logic. It provides a uniform and expressive means of representation: examples, background knowledge, and induced theories are all expressed in first-order logic. Such an expressive representation is computationally expensive, so it is natural to consider improving the performance of inductive logic data mining using parallelism. We present a parallelization technique for inductive logic, and implement a parallel version of a core inductive logic programming system: Progol. The technique provides perfect partitioning of computation and data access and communication requirements are small, so almost linear speedup is readily achieved. However, we also show why the information flow of the technique permits superlinear speedup over the standard sequential algorithm. Performance results on several datasets and platforms are reported. The results have wider implications for the design on parallel and sequential data-mining algorithms. Received 30 August 2000 / Revised 30 January 2001 / Accepted in revised form 16 May 2001     

Semantic Web search based on ontological conjunctive queries

Many experts predict that the next huge step forward in Web information technology will be achieved by adding semantics to Web data, and will possibly consist of (some form of) the Semantic Web. In this paper, we present a novel approach to Semantic Web search, called Serene, which allows for a semantic processing of Web search queries, and for evaluating complex Web search queries that involve reasoning over the Web. More specifically, we first add ontological structure and semantics to Web pages, which then allows for both attaching a meaning to Web search queries and Web pages, and for formulating and processing ontology-based complex Web search queries (i.e., conjunctive queries) that involve reasoning over the Web. Here, we assume the existence of an underlying ontology (in a lightweight ontology language) relative to which Web pages are annotated and Web search queries are formulated. Depending on whether we use a general or a specialized ontology, we thus obtain a general or a vertical Semantic Web search interface, respectively. That is, we are actually mapping the Web into an ontological knowledge base, which then allows for Semantic Web search relative to the underlying ontology. The latter is then realized by reduction to standard Web search on standard Web pages and logically completed ontological annotations. That is, standard Web search engines are used as the main inference motor for ontology-based Semantic Web search. We develop the formal model behind this approach and also provide an implementation in desktop search. Furthermore, we report on extensive experiments, including an implemented Semantic Web search on the Internet Movie Database.     

ILP在语义Web数据挖掘研究中的应用

语义网络数据挖掘是基于语义网络环境的数据挖掘,它给数据挖掘技术的应用研究提出了新的课题。归纳逻辑程序设计是由机器学习与逻辑程序设计交叉所形成的一个研究领域,它为知识工程等人工智能的应用领域提供了新的强有力的技术支持。分析了现有几种常用数据挖掘技术在语义Web环境下应用的局限性,提出了采用归纳逻辑程序设计(ILP)作为语义Web上适合的数据挖掘技术,给出了应用这种技术的算法描述,通过具体实例验证了其可行性。     

Tree-based models for inductive classification on the Web Of Data

The Web of Data, which is one of the dimensions of the Semantic Web (SW), represents a tremendous source of information, which motivates the increasing attention to the formalization and application of machine learning methods for solving tasks such as concept learning, link prediction, inductive instance retrieval in this context. However, the Web of Data is also characterized by various forms of uncertainty, owing to its inherent incompleteness (missing information, uneven data distributions) and noise, which may affect open and distributed architectures. In this paper, we focus on the inductive instance retrieval task regarded as a classification problem. The proposed solution is a framework for learning Terminological Decision Trees from examples described in an ontological knowledge base, to be used for performing instance classifications. For the purpose, suitable pruning strategies and a new prediction procedure are proposed. Furthermore, in order to tackle the class-imbalance distribution problem, the framework is extended to ensembles of Terminological Decision Trees called Terminological Random Forests. The proposed framework has been evaluated, in comparative experiments, with the main state of the art solutions grounded on a similar approach, showing that: (1) the employment of the formalized pruning strategies can improve the model predictiveness; (2) Terminological Random Forests outperform the usage of a single Terminological Decision Tree, particularly when the knowledge base is endowed with a large number of concepts and roles; (3) the framework can be exploited for solving related problems, such as predicting the values of given properties with finite ranges.     

小数据集贝叶斯网络多父节点参数的修复

具有已知结构的小数据集贝叶斯网络多父节点参数学习是一个重要而困难的研究课题,由于信息不充分,使得无法直接对多父节点参数进行有效的估计,如何修复这些参数便是问题的核心.针对问题提出了一种有效的小数据集多父节点参数修复方法,该方法首先使用Bootstrap抽样扩展小数据集,然后分别将Gibbs抽样与最大似然树和贝叶斯网络相结合,通过依次对扩展数据按一定比例的迭代修正来实现对多父节点参数的修复.实验结果表明,这种方法能够有效地使大部分多父节点参数得到修复.     

f-NSWRL:一种语义Web非单调模糊规则语言

现实世界中存在着大量的不精确和不确定知识和信息.在语义Web中表示模糊规则是语义Web领域的重要研究问题之一.作为模糊语义Web规则语言,f-SWRL(fuzzy Semantic Web Rule Language)仅能表达单调的模糊规则,不能表示非单调的模糊规则.为了表示现实世界中人类知识和推理的非单调性,本文提出一种新的模糊规则语言--f-NSWRL (fuzzy Nonmonotonic Semantic Web Rule Language),对两种否定(即否定(negation)和负即失败(negation as failure))在其中的应用进行了研究,讨论了优先级问题来处理模糊知识库中的规则冲突问题,给出了在竞争规则中计算优先级的法则.为了使规则互换格式RuleML(Rule Markup Language)在f-NSWRL与其他规则语言进行规则互换时起到中间语言的作用,本文对RuleML进行了非单调和优先级两方面的扩展.     

OWL-QL—a language for deductive query answering on the Semantic Web

This paper discusses the issues involved in designing a query language for the Semantic Web and presents the OWL query language (OWL-QL) as a candidate standard language and protocol for query–answering dialogues among Semantic Web computational agents using knowledge represented in the W3Cs ontology web language (OWL). OWL-QL is a formal language and precisely specifies the semantic relationships among a query, a query answer, and the knowledge base(s) used to produce the answer. Unlike standard database and Web query languages, OWL-QL supports query–answering dialogues in which the answering agent may use automated reasoning methods to derive answers to queries, as well as dialogues in which the knowledge to be used in answering a query may be in multiple knowledge bases on the Semantic Web, and/or where those knowledge bases are not specified by the querying agent. In this setting, the set of answers to a query may be of unpredictable size and may require an unpredictable amount of time to compute.     

模糊描述逻辑知识库查询蕴涵的判定方法

大规模领域本体的快速发展对语义Web领域的数据访问提出了更高的要求,而基本的本体推理服务已不能满足数据密集型应用中处理复杂查询(主要是合取查询)的迫切需要.为此,大量的研究工作集中在本体和描述逻辑知识库合取查询算法的设计实现上,并开发出了很多知识库存储和查询的实用工具.近来模糊本体和模糊描述逻辑的研究,特别是它们在处理语义Web中模糊信息方面,得到了广泛关注.文中重点研究了模糊SH这一族极富表达能力的描述逻辑知识库的合取查询问题,提出了相应的基于推演表的算法,证明了算法对于f-SHOIQ的真子逻辑的可靠性、完备性和可终止性.证明了算法对于f-SHOIQ是可靠的,并分析了导致算法不可终止的原因.对于该问题的数据复杂度,证明了当查询中不存在传递角色时其严格的CONP上限.对于联合复杂度,汪明了算法关于知识库和查询大小的CO3NEXPTIME时间复杂度上限.     

Collective knowledge systems: Where the Social Web meets the Semantic Web

What can happen if we combine the best ideas from the Social Web and Semantic Web? The Social Web is an ecosystem of participation, where value is created by the aggregation of many individual user contributions. The Semantic Web is an ecosystem of data, where value is created by the integration of structured data from many sources. What applications can best synthesize the strengths of these two approaches, to create a new level of value that is both rich with human participation and powered by well-structured information? This paper proposes a class of applications called collective knowledge systems, which unlock the “collective intelligence” of the Social Web with knowledge representation and reasoning techniques of the Semantic Web.     

MEBN: A language for first-order Bayesian knowledge bases

Although classical first-order logic is the de facto standard logical foundation for artificial intelligence, the lack of a built-in, semantically grounded capability for reasoning under uncertainty renders it inadequate for many important classes of problems. Probability is the best-understood and most widely applied formalism for computational scientific reasoning under uncertainty. Increasingly expressive languages are emerging for which the fundamental logical basis is probability. This paper presents Multi-Entity Bayesian Networks (MEBN), a first-order language for specifying probabilistic knowledge bases as parameterized fragments of Bayesian networks. MEBN fragments (MFrags) can be instantiated and combined to form arbitrarily complex graphical probability models. An MFrag represents probabilistic relationships among a conceptually meaningful group of uncertain hypotheses. Thus, MEBN facilitates representation of knowledge at a natural level of granularity. The semantics of MEBN assigns a probability distribution over interpretations of an associated classical first-order theory on a finite or countably infinite domain. Bayesian inference provides both a proof theory for combining prior knowledge with observations, and a learning theory for refining a representation as evidence accrues. A proof is given that MEBN can represent a probability distribution on interpretations of any finitely axiomatizable first-order theory.     

Knowledge graph embeddings for dealing with concept drift in machine learning

Data stream learning has been largely studied for extracting knowledge structures from continuous and rapid data records. As data is evolving on a temporal basis, its underlying knowledge is subject to many challenges. Concept drift,¹ as one of core challenge from the stream learning community, is described as changes of statistical properties of the data over time, causing most of machine learning models to be less accurate as changes over time are in unforeseen ways. This is particularly problematic as the evolution of data could derive to dramatic change in knowledge. We address this problem by studying the semantic representation of data streams in the Semantic Web, i.e., ontology streams. Such streams are ordered sequences of data annotated with ontological vocabulary. In particular we exploit three levels of knowledge encoded in ontology streams to deal with concept drifts: i) existence of novel knowledge gained from stream dynamics, ii) significance of knowledge change and evolution, and iii) (in)consistency of knowledge evolution. Such knowledge is encoded as knowledge graph embeddings through a combination of novel representations: entailment vectors, entailment weights, and a consistency vector. We illustrate our approach on classification tasks of supervised learning. Key contributions of the study include: (i) an effective knowledge graph embedding approach for stream ontologies, and (ii) a generic consistent prediction framework with integrated knowledge graph embeddings for dealing with concept drifts. The experiments have shown that our approach provides accurate predictions towards air quality in Beijing and bus delay in Dublin with real world ontology streams.     

Representing and Reasoning About XML with Ontologies

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has reached a wide acceptance as the relevant standardization for representing and exchanging data on the Web. Unfortunately, XML covers the syntactic level but lacks semantics, and thus cannot be directly used for the Semantic Web. Currently, finding a way to utilize XML data for the Semantic Web is challenging research. As we have known that ontology can formally represent shared domain knowledge and enable semantics interoperability. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate how to represent and reason about XML with ontologies. Firstly, we give formalized representations of XML data sources, including Document Type Definitions (DTDs), XML Schemas, and XML documents. On this basis, we propose formal approaches for transforming the XML data sources into ontologies, and we also discuss the correctness of the transformations and provide several transformation examples. Furthermore, following the proposed approaches, we implement a prototype tool that can automatically transform XML into ontologies. Finally, we apply the transformed ontologies for reasoning about XML, so that some reasoning problems of XML may be checked by the existing ontology reasoners.     

基于本体的推理机研究

语义网技术的兴起促进了本体技术的发展,本体作为语义网的基石,在知识表示与知识推理方面发挥着重要作用。本体表示语言与描述逻辑相结合,为本体推理的合理性和有效性提供了保证。介绍了本体语言、描述逻辑和描述逻辑推理的基本原理,重点介绍了基于SHIQ描述逻辑的推理机Racer的基本功能及其在智能信息检索中的应用。     

DL-Learner—A framework for inductive learning on the Semantic Web

In this system paper, we describe the DL-Learner framework, which supports supervised machine learning using OWL and RDF for background knowledge representation. It can be beneficial in various data and schema analysis tasks with applications in different standard machine learning scenarios, e.g. in the life sciences, as well as Semantic Web specific applications such as ontology learning and enrichment. Since its creation in 2007, it has become the main OWL and RDF-based software framework for supervised structured machine learning and includes several algorithm implementations, usage examples and has applications building on top of the framework. The article gives an overview of the framework with a focus on algorithms and use cases.     

Intelligent condition monitoring using fuzzy inductive learning

Extensive research has been performed for developing knowledge based intelligent monitoring systems for improving the reliability of manufacturing processes. Due to the high expense of obtaining knowledge from human experts, it is expected to develop new techniques to obtain the knowledge automatically from the collected data using data mining techniques. Inductive learning has become one of the widely used data mining methods for generating decision rules from data. In order to deal with the noise or uncertainties existing in the data collected in industrial processes and systems, this paper presents a new method using fuzzy logic techniques to improve the performance of the classical inductive learning approach. The proposed approach, in contrast to classical inductive learning method using hard cut point to discretize the continuous-valued attributes, uses soft discretization to enable the systems have less sensitivity to the uncertainties and noise. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been illustrated in an application of monitoring the machining conditions in uncertain environment. Experimental results show that this new fuzzy inductive learning method gives improved accuracy compared with using classical inductive learning techniques.