This essay is a contribution to social ontology, drawing on the work of John Searle and of Hernando de Soto. At the center of the argument is the proposition advanced by De Soto in his Mystery of ...Capital to the effect that many of the entities which structure our contemporary social reality are entities which exist in virtue of the fact that there are (paper or digital) documents which support their existence. I here develop De Soto’s argument further, focusing specifically on the ontological problems raised by a family of new types of social phenomena – exemplified most dramatically in the domain of finance for example in the form of what are called “structured investment vehicles” – made possible as a result of the employment of computer technology in entity creation. I address also Searle’s most recent work on social ontology, and conclude with an appendix on the theory of Documentality advanced by Maurizio Ferraris.
In his introduction to The Ant Trap (2015), Brian Epstein claims that philosophers (more precisely, ontologists) have a delicate task, which is to identify the building blocks of the social world. ...This is not in itself surprising. Identifying the components of reality is exactly what philosophers (and more precisely, ontologists) have always done. What is different now is that, according to Epstein, performing this task is not a theoretical exercise for its own sake. Indeed, identifying the ...
Olfactory dysfunction is amongst the many symptoms of Long COVID. Whilst most people that experience smell loss post COVID-19 recover their sense of smell and taste within a few weeks, about 10% of ...cases experience long-term problems, and their smell recovery journey often begins a few months later when everyday items start to smell distorted. This is known as parosmia. The aim of this study was to identify the key food triggers of parosmic distortions and investigate the relationship between distortion and disgust in order to establish the impact of parosmia on diet and quality of life. In this cross-sectional study (n = 727), respondents experiencing smell distortions completed a questionnaire covering aspects of smell loss, parosmia and the associated change in valence of everyday items. There was a significant correlation between strength and disgust (p < 0.0001), and when the selected items were reported as distorted, they were described as either unpleasant or gag-inducing 84% of the time. This change in valence associated with loss of expected pleasure and the presence of strange tastes and burning sensations must certainly lead to changes in eating behaviours and serious longer-term consequences for mental health and quality of life.
The value of any kind of data is greatly enhanced when it exists in a form that allows it to be integrated with other data. One approach to integration is through the annotation of multiple bodies of ...data using common controlled vocabularies or 'ontologies'. Unfortunately, the very success of this approach has led to a proliferation of ontologies, which itself creates obstacles to integration. The Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) consortium is pursuing a strategy to overcome this problem. Existing OBO ontologies, including the Gene Ontology, are undergoing coordinated reform, and new ontologies are being created on the basis of an evolving set of shared principles governing ontology development. The result is an expanding family of ontologies designed to be interoperable and logically well formed and to incorporate accurate representations of biological reality. We describe this OBO Foundry initiative and provide guidelines for those who might wish to become involved.
With increasing demands for more rapid and practical analyses, various techniques of ambient ionization mass spectrometry have gained significant interest due to the speed of analysis and abundance ...of information provided. Herein, an ambient ionization technique that utilizes corona discharge was applied, for the first time, to analyze and categorize whole seeds of black and white peppers from different origins. This setup requires no solvent application nor gas flow, thus resulting in a very simple and rapid analysis that can be applied directly to the sample without any prior workup or preparation. Combined with robust data pre-processing and subsequent chemometric analyses, this analytical method was capable of indicating the geographical origin of each pepper source with up to 98% accuracies in all sub-studies. The simplicity and speed of this approach open up the exciting opportunity for onsite analysis without the need for a highly trained operator. Furthermore, this methodology can be applied to a variety of spices and herbs, whose geographical indication or similar intellectual properties are economically important, hence it is capable of creating tremendous impact in the food and agricultural industries.
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted immense work on the investigation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Rapid, accurate, and consistent interpretation of generated data is thereby of fundamental concern. ...Ontologies-structured, controlled, vocabularies-are designed to support consistency of interpretation, and thereby to prevent the development of data silos. This paper describes how ontologies are serving this purpose in the COVID-19 research domain, by following principles of the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry and by reusing existing ontologies such as the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) Core, which provides terminological content common to investigations of all infectious diseases. We report here on the development of an IDO extension, the Virus Infectious Disease Ontology (VIDO), a reference ontology covering viral infectious diseases. We motivate term and definition choices, showcase reuse of terms from existing OBO ontologies, illustrate how ontological decisions were motivated by relevant life science research, and connect VIDO to the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). We next use terms from these ontologies to annotate selections from life science research on SARS-CoV-2, highlighting how ontologies employing a common upper-level vocabulary may be seamlessly interwoven. Finally, we outline future work, including bacteria and fungus infectious disease reference ontologies currently under development, then cite uses of VIDO and CIDO in host-pathogen data analytics, electronic health record annotation, and ontology conflict-resolution projects.
The enCIFer program permits the location, reporting and correction of syntax and format violations in single‐ or multi‐block crystallographic information files (CIFs). The program also permits the ...editing of existing individual or looped data items and the addition of new data in these categories, and provides data‐entry wizards for the addition of two types of standard information for small‐molecule structural studies, namely publication data and chemical and physical property information. Facilities for the graphical visualization and manipulation of structure(s) in a CIF are also provided.
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