De-CITE

 PROJECT TITLE

A Contribution to Decoding Concepts Important in
Technology and Engineering (De-CITE) 

1.0 INTRODUCTION

De-CITE project will address the disambiguation of key concepts that are used in education, research and other communication of knowledge and information important in Technology and Engineering.

Although there are a number of reputable sources [1-19, 21] addressing this increasingly critical problem, there is still a need to inform the academic and engineering community, as well as other socio-economic structures, about the consequences and possible solutions.

Almár and Both [7] attempted “to delimit space terminology”, while pointing out that “it is very difficult to define the boundaries of astronautics both in the scientific and in the technical field.” Such a strategy of multiplying separate nomenclatures, taxonomies and concepts for differing fields is bound to fail. Project De-CITE proposes that there is no need for such delimitation. On the contrary, the “demarcation boundaries” between the disciplines should be made more transparent. 
 

1.1 Context

“The human language is vague and ambiguous.” (G A Miller [15]).

Some educators are concerned that eliminating ambiguities will hinder the potentials for using analogies as inspiring modes of knowledge dissemination and expansion. Source [20] points out the importance of respecting the vagueness not only in the common language, but in the sciences as well. 

It is, however, important to recognise that learners and others who find themselves on the receiving end of the knowledge transfer are the individuals most likely to be disadvantaged by the use of ambiguous definitions and confusing use of key scientific concepts.

There has always been a delay between making new discoveries and organising the nomenclature that allows others to share and use that knowledge. This has been exacerbated by the recent increase in the quantity of new discoveries and their possible applications. There is, therefore, a growing need to review and revise basic scientific nomenclature. One approach to this is in the improvement in information processing. However, in spite of the developments in search engines, artificial intelligence may also lead into labyrinths that mingle both useful and irrelevant information. [9]

The presence of ambiguous, inconsistent and overlapping concepts in engineering and the sciences can be ascribed to insufficient communication between the branches of science that are growing adrift. Madsen and Adriansen (quoted in [10]) concluded that the construction of scientific knowledge can be seen as a struggle over who should legitimately define the terms of sciences and technology.

While contemporary information processing enables communication with the speed of magnetic waves, it also exposes the hindrances such as misunderstandings and conceptual misalignments. However, interactions between computerised media and humans such as the rise of the open sources of knowledge and the participatory Web have opened new gates for cross-disciplinary sharing and application of knowledge. [10]

“The comprehensive review of key scientific terms is a task that requires a mobilising of appropriate resources and institutions”, [12]. The missions of academe include sustaining knowledge shareability and applicability. Authors, editors and educators need to adopt the belief that mobile and transferable knowledge should be transparent to all disciplines.

We need to build the kind of scientific language that supports knowledge exchange and encourages learners to explore, access, use and improve knowledge treasures. One of the principal media for transport of knowledge is a language; its basic elements are words (terms). The term ‘lexicon’ is a direct hyponym of the term ‘knowledge’. [3]

In the case of lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) new words can be added as they become necessary [16]. However, far too frequently, new words are added although old words, providing a satisfactory meaning, already exist. This increases synonymy. Or, vice versa, new meanings are attached to words used in another discipline to denote a differing concept, thus causing homonymy.

“There does not seem to be a consensus about what many of the basic terms mean, or which is the overarching concept, … under which other terms might be presumed to be subsets. …. Clearly, the multiplicity of definitions for the same concepts, false synonyms and so forth show that the world of scholarship needs an approach to definitions of sufficient dimensionality.” [17]

“The recent globalisation trends show that, on all fronts - education, industry, science, social standard infrastructure, health - we need a common, well defined, language. Workers in all disciplines are expected to function effectively in global trans-disciplinary communities.” [18]

Accordingly, a number of projects have been launched aimed at the disambiguation of English terms:

(i) The American Heritage Book of English Usage [2] presents current problems in English usage to enable an informed selection of terms. Their experience about the usage of numerous synonyms shows that the opinions vary considerably. In the common (non-scientific) English, many shades of acceptability do exist. This source suggests that a warning needs to be provided about the consequences of tolerating a stigmatized usage. [2]

Rationales for defining links with “common” English are manifold:

·        Efforts to improve scientific terminology would be hampered without analysing language heritage;

·       Knowledge dissemination requires presenting its theories and hypotheses using the language of common sense. 

(ii) WordNet [3] is an online lexical database developed at Princeton University. In this reference system the English lexical words are organized into synonym sets (synsets), each representing one underlying lexical concept. Synsets are linked to a large collection of semantic relations including hyponymy and antonymy. WordNet organizes lexical information in terms of word meanings (rather than word forms) to enable word sense identification and information retrieval. WordNet can be used to support a more transparent communication, automatic text analysis and artificial intelligence applications.

(iii) UNESCO Thesaurus (“a controlled and multidisciplinary documentary language containing semantically related terms, which covers a specific domain of knowledge”) is a structured list used in analysis of publications in education, culture, sciences, and communication in English, French and Spanish.[4, 5]

The UNESCO Thesaurus allows subject terms to be linked by means of:

(iv) The Knowledge Yielding Ontologies for Transition-based Organization (KYOTO) Project is co-funded by the European Union under FP7 ICT Programme (Technologies for Information Management) under Challenge 4 - Digital Libraries and Content.

KYOTO makes knowledge sharable between communities of people, cultures, languages and computers, by assigning meaning to text and giving text to meaning. The goal of KYOTO is a system that allows people to define the meaning of their words and terms in a shared Wiki platform so that it becomes anchored across languages and cultures but also so that a computer can be used to detect knowledge and facts in text. With these definitions it will be possible to find information on footprints in documents, websites and reports so that users can directly ask the computer for actual information in their environment. Project Coordinator Prof. Dr. Piek T.J.M. Vossen supports the De-CITE research and his reference is presented in Appendix 1.

(v) The European Space Agency (ESA): www.esa.int recognises importance of organising and sharing the core knowledge. ESA Knowledge Management (KM) team directs their efforts to challenges such as creating and sharing ontologies and definitions and clarity of KM standards. ESA KM team fully supports  De-CITE project.

The significance of establishing and maintaining unambiguous concepts and non-homonymic nomenclature is in defining knowledge in terms of its application and sharing.

 
2.0 PROJECT TEAM
 
2.1 Project Champion

Professor Faik Uzunovic, University of Zenica

2.2 Project Chief Investigator

Associate Professor Kazem Abhary, University of South Australia

2.3 Project Coordinator

Name: Dr Sead Spuzic
Lecturer & Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering (AME)
Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
University of South Australia
Office Address: Mawson Lakes Campus, J2-19
Postal Address: University of South Australia
Internal Post Code: MLK-18
GPO Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5001
Telephone:        +61 8 830 23219, +61 8 8365 0767
Fax:      +61 8 830 23380; Email: Sead.Spuzic@unisa.edu.au
Internet address: http://people.unisa.edu.au/Sead.Spuzic
 
2.4 Team Members

- Dr Kazem Abhary, Associate Professor (University of South Australia, AME)

Biographical notes of all team members are presented in Appendix 2.
 

3.0 OBJECTIVES

Project De-CITE will focus on selected key terms and concepts broadly used in Technology and Engineering. While Technology can be defined briefly as the Science of Techniques, Engineering embraces actual application of Sciences; both are created by humans and we certainly did not intend to create ambiguities and misinterpretations, for example in relation to important terms such as vector, time, number, definition, frequency, etc.

It is not “only” the fundamental knowledge such as mechanics, materials and mathematics, where the critical concepts cry out for disambiguation. The knowledge and space technology era has already started, and this inherently evokes the need for an efficient inter-disciplinary communication and sharing the knowledge. “One of the most important missions of the International Space Station (ISS) is experiments utilizing space environments like microgravity and ultra-high vacuum. Material science experiments in space are among the most important experiments. Space experiments have numerous possibilities for bringing new technology and new knowledge to engineering and science fields. These experiments will be conducted on the ISS through international collaboration... (hence)  ... it is very important that researchers and industries in non-space fields participate in space experiments.”[1]

For example, imagine how confusing a student may find the statement that the surface wind vectors (the wind vector represents the motion of the air mass over the ground) are used to predict the distribution of various airborne vectors (here vector is a transmitter ─ any agent, person, animal, microorganism, DNA molecule ─ that carries and transmits a material which, for example, may cause infection) in the local atmosphere.

A common international nomenclature is thus very useful for engineers, researchers and scientists who intend to participate in, and exploit the results of the space experiments. Source [1] recommends building the English version nomenclature first because the English is universally accepted in scientific and engineering community. The same source calls for sponsors, volunteers and people  in order to contribute in maintaining  and reconstructing the Multilingual Space Terminology Data Bank (MSTDB).

De-CITE project is a continuation of previous studies published in references [9-14] and builds it’s strategy on the extensive bibliography maintained by Princeton University [3].

De-CITE will deliver the following end results:

• Over 5 key concepts will be identified and the related ambiguities will be defined
• Over 200 institutions and organisations will be contacted to collect a statistical sample with regard to the proposed definitions of these concepts
• The proposed options for defining these concepts will be published including the results of the statistical analysis.

3.2 Desired Outcomes/Objectives

3.2.1 Provide workable definitions of background terms needed for systematic disambiguation of analysed concepts.

3.2.2 Identify and expose over 5 cases of important concepts, and propose improved terms, definitions and disambiguation (examples of ambiguous concepts include: logistics, frequency, reliability, probability, time, vector, differential, technology, chemistry, metal, element, structure, topology, morphology, term, ontology, number, condenser).

3.2.3 Create an open source web site where the above terms and definitions will be available to the public.

3.2.4 Establish communication, and seek collaboration with and support from the following organisations, institutions and associations:

(i) The University of South Australia Aviation Academy: http://www.unisa.edu.au/aviation/aboutus/default.asp 

(ii) The Space Industry Innovation Council (Space IIC): http://www.innovation.gov.au/Industry/Space/Pages/SpaceIndustryInnovationCouncil.aspx 

(iv) Elsevier   http://www.elsevier.com/

(v) EuroWordNet: http://www.illc.uva.nl/EuroWordNet/ 

(vi) Aerospace Technology: http://www.aerospace-technology.com/glossary/

(vii) University of Leeds. Dictionary for the Avionics: http://g.oswego.edu/dl/acs/glossary/glossary.html 

(viii) The European Space Agency (ESA): www.esa.int 

(ix) NASA Education: http://education.nasa.gov/edprograms/core/home/index.html http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/hqlibrary/aerospacedictionary/ 

(x) Springer http://www.springer.com/

(xi) Engineers Australia: http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/

(xii) The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA.): http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html

(xiii) The UNESCO Terminology and Thesaurus: http://databases.unesco.org/thesaurus/ and http://termweb.unesco.org/

(xiv) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO): http://www.isro.org/

(xv) International Journal of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering http://www.waset.org/journals/ijmiae/ 

(xvi) The American Heritage® Book of English Usage - A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English: http://www.bartleby.com/ and http://www.bartleby.com/64/

(xvii) The Historical Thesaurus of English project at the University of Glasgow http://www.oup.com/online/ht/ http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/historicalthesaurus/HTE_Main_Categories.html

(xviii) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): www.w3.org — http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

(xix) WordNet (a lexical database of English homed by Princeton University): http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

(xx) The Global WordNet Association: http://www.globalwordnet.org/ 

(xxi) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About 

(xxii) Engineering Dictionary: http://dictionary.babylon.com/science/engineering/

(xxiii)  ONTOLOG - collaborative work environment http://ontolog.cim3.net/

(xxiv)  Directory of ISO-recognized international aerospace standards  http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/directory_of_aerospace_standards.htm 

(xxv)  American Society of Mechanical Engineers http://www.asme.org/

(xxvi)  The International Association for World Englishes (IAWE)  http://www.iaweworks.org/

(xxvii)  The International Virtual Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability http://interop-vlab.eu/

3.2.5 Design and administrate electronic questionnaires to more than 100 education, research, publishing and other socio-economic institutions and societies, asking for comments on the problems and suggested disambiguation of terms and definitions collected in point 3.2.2.

3.2.6 Analyse the feedback, prepare the final report and publish the results of the consensus at the Project Website.

3.2.7 Publish in international journals and conferences devoted to engineering/science/technology education.

4.0 SCOPE

The improved definitions of at lest 5 key scientific concepts will be published (including online publishing), including the terms and examples of their use, and providing audiovisual multimedia presentations where this helps to better understand the defined concept. All options will be discussed until statistically significant consensus is reached.

Examples of misconceptions and misaligned usages of the above concepts will be presented as well.

5.1 Stakeholder list

The stakeholder list is identical to the list in Section 3.2.4. In addition, the final results will be delivered to the bodies responsible for academic performance and outcomes at the University of South Australia and all other interested universities. 

Since the most acute problems appear due to the ignoring the key concepts already established in fundamental science and engineering fields, it was considered advisable to include in the research team academics from basic disciplines such as chemistry, mechanical and materials engineering and mathematics. 

5.2 Project Coordinator

The Project Coordinator is responsible for the following aspects:

• the day-to-day management and informing all team members about the realisation according to the Gantt chart shown in section 7.2,
• designing and maintaining the project website, repository, administration, correspondence, database and other evidence,
• coordinating and facilitating the activities and interactions of team members,
• analysis/synthesis of the data based on statistical methods and models,
• preparing and distributing the milestone reports,
• final preparation and submitting the Project Reports.

5.3 Project Team Members

Team Members are responsible for collaborating in and contributing to the project according to project plan and the Gantt Chart presented in Section 7.2.

Each member will identify at least one (1) ambiguous key concept (and corresponding terms) from their field of academic expertise and propose for each of these concepts am option for an improved definition.

Each member is responsible for finding, analysing and compiling the information necessary for the project. Sources of information include, but are not limited to the interviews, surveys and published references.

Dr Denise Wood has expertise in the design, development and application of Web 2.0. She will provide guidance in the use of the Web 2.0 knowledge base and the application of the Web 2.0 site for increasing participation and sharing of ideas by the academic community and relevant industry groups.

6.0 RISK MITIGATION

Major Project Risk is in a potentially slow response (or no response) from contacts listed in Section 3.2.4, and other contacts invited to participate by means of questionnaires and surveys. 

Bearing in mind the count of the team members, their career paths, achievements and international standing both in the academe and beyond, there is a reasonable expectancy that the Project Goals will be met within the proposed schedule. For example, members of the team have already published scientific works co-authored with international participation of academics from seven overseas Universities - references [9 – 14].

7.0 PROJECT APPROACH

7.1 Process to be followed

De-CITE research hypothesises that the roots of the ambiguity problems lie in the differences in interpretations of certain background epistemological, ontological and didactic concepts such as “definition”, “knowledge” and “noema”. (A draft of pilot discussion on these background concepts is presented at http://epistemic.yolasite.com/)

It is proposed that De-CITE departs from an axiomatic definition of the key notions to enable analysis of the ambiguity issues. Already existing definitions, well established in basic scientific disciplines, will be put forward and analysed to detect where the discrepancies and misalignments occur. A hierarchy of terms that allocates priority to fundamental sciences (mathematics, chemo-physics, mechanics) will be promoted. Academic, publishing and other socio-economic institutions should be consulted and prompted to raise the awareness about the ambiguities and to select the critical concepts and terms. The Internet should be utilised to access the scientific and other expert databases (ScienceDirect, Scopus, and WordNet etc). Analysis will be based on samples representing different usages of identical terms to evaluate the possibility for establishing a consensus with regard to the definitions of key concepts.

Homonymy can be avoided by introducing new terms. It is unlikely that one language, with its unique vocabulary, can hope to cover the full diversity of growing knowledge. Since English is the lingua franca of Sciences and Engineering it is clear that an organised system of extension of the scientific nomenclature should be adopted. The multiplication in homonyms can be avoided by using terms from the vocabulary provided by other languages. We propose that the trend of adopting the foreign words in the English language be strategically continued.

1. Between 5 and 7 key concepts will be selected based on the review of literature (using ScienceDirect and other online collections) and the survey that includes academic and other scientific, practising and cultural communities, based on the following criteria:

(i) the concept should be used in several disciplines;

(ii) the selected term/definition is evidently ambiguous (e.g. homonymic).

2. The initial set offered for voting will include the concepts listed at http://figures.yolasite.com/list.php (additional concepts will be selected based on the survey).

3. Voters will be selected from academic institutions, from sources listed in Section 3.2.4 and from other sources recommended by the stakeholders. “Significant Consensus” is reached with 40% votes. The options which reached less than 25% will be declared inferior. Survey must include minimum 30 institutions. The total count of voters must be minimum 100. At least 70% of voters must have already published at least five refereed publications of a recognised academic standard. List of already established contacts is presented at http://figures.yolasite.com/links.php.

4. Voters can choose to remain anonymous; however, the fraction of completely anonymous voters is limited to maximum of 30%.

5. Definitions of the concepts and terms that are adopted by consensus will be presented in accordance to the principles defined in references [9-14]. 

6. The full database (concepts, nomenclature options and the definitions) will be posted on the Internet and made available to the public. Examples from previous research are posted at http://tablea.yolasite.com/tableb.php .

7. The information about the reached consensus will be disseminated including the proposal to the authors, publishers, editors and other sources of knowledge records to consider standardisation of the presented concepts and terms.

8. The collected database will be presented and analysed using statistical methods and models (e.g. descriptive statistics and test of hypotheses).

9. Two research papers will be published presenting the mature stage of the project findings and the concluding results respectively. 

7.2 Schedule

May – October  2010: project promotion and pilot surveys.

October 2010 – November 2011: Between 5 and 7 key concepts will be selected based on the surveys following the criteria outlined below:

(i) the analysed concept and term should be used in several disciplines;

(ii) the relevant term should be homonymic, and/or

• there are synonyms involved in the relevant definitions and/or

• the definition is otherwise ambiguous, and/or

• the definition is not transparent to all involved disciplines.

October 2010 – December 2010: The description of the initial set of the concepts will be distributed; this list includes the following concepts: definition, differential, digital, drawing, electronic, faculty, frequency, information, knowledge, metal, mining, noema, noesis, number, ontology, phase, product, probability, structure, technology, term, time, and vector.

January 2011 – December 2011: The additional concepts and terms will be selected and defined based on the literature review and the results of the survey.

December 2010 – February 2012: The concepts, nomenclature options and the definitions will be made publicly available on the Internet. The full database and the results of voting will be posted on the Internet. 

October 2010 – April 2012: The collected database will be analysed using statistical methods. 

April – July 2012: The information about the consensus will be disseminated including the proposal to the authors, publishers, editors and other sources of knowledge records to consider standardisation of the presented concepts and terms.

8.0 DELIVERABLES

8.1  Project website will be designed and made available open to public.

8.2  Critical concepts (5 – 7 cases) will be identified, discussed and re-defined.

8.3  The list defined in 8.2 will be posted & questionnaire distributed to all stakeholders.

8.4  Responses will be collected, analysed, summarised and posted on the Internet.

8.5  Two research papers will be published in international journals, and one conference presentation will be delivered to the international research audience.

8.6  Both the partial and the final report will be delivered to all stakeholders.  

9.0 COMMUNICATION PLAN

1. First progress report by 10th March 2011 

2. Second progress report by 10th December 2011

3. Final report by 10th July 2012.

Project website http://figures.yolasite.com/de-cite.php is available open to public. 

References: 

[1] Yamamoto H., Fukuda Y. “Proposal for New Terminology for Space Station Era and Multilingual Space Terminology Data Bank Reconstruction” Acta Astronautica, Volume 50, Issue 2, January 2002, pp. 119-124

[2] The American Heritage® Book of English Usage - A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English, http://www.bartleby.com/ and http://www.bartleby.com/64/  (accessed on 22nd April 2010) 

[3] WordNet lexical database for the English language, developed by Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University, under direction of G A Miller; http://wordnet.princeton.edu/  (accessed on 22nd April 2010) 

[4] The UNESCO Thesaurus, http://databases.unesco.org/thesaurus/ (accessed on 10th March 2010) 

[5] UN glossaries UN interpreters’ resource page, http://un-interpreters.org/glossaries.html  & http://databases.unesco.org/thesaurus/other.html  (accessed on 13 April 2010)

[6] International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), http://www.iupac.org/ and http://www.iupac.org/general/FAQs/ns.html  (accessed on 13 April 2010)

[7] Almár I., Both E.“The Delimitation Problem—Selecting the Basic List of Terms for an Astronautical Dictionary” Acta Astronautica, Volume 50, Issue 2, January 2002, pp. 83-87

[8] Kato A. “Current Status of NASDA Terminology Database” Acta Astronautica, Volume 50, Issue 2, January 2002, pp. 107-111

[9] Abhary K., Adriansen H. K., Begovac F., Kovacic Z., Shpigelman C. N., Stevens C., Spuzic S., Uzunovic F.  and Xing K. "A Contribution to Transparency of Scientific and Engineering Concepts" The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, (2009) Volume 9, Issue 5, pp. 93-106. http://ijt.cgpublisher.com

[10] Abhary K., Adriansen H. K., Begovac F., Djukic D., Qin B., Spuzic S., Wood D. and Xing K. (2009) "Some Basic Aspects of Knowledge" Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009, pp. 1753-1758; presented at the World Conference on Educational Sciences, North Cyprus, 04-07 February, 2009; http://www.wces2009.org/  

[11] Spuzic S., Xing K. and Abhary K. "Some Examples of Ambiguities in Cross-disciplinary Terminology", The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, Volume 4, Issue 2, (2008) pp. 19-28; http://ijt.cgpublisher.com 

[12] Spuzic S., Xing K. and Abhary K. “Some Aspects of Terminology in Materials Related Knowledge Sharing”, Proceedings 7th International Scientific Symposium: Metallic and Nonmetallic Materials (MNM 2008), 22-23 May 2008; organized by Zenica University and the University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen, Germany

[13] Spuzic S., Abhary K., Stevens C., Fabris N., Rice J., Nouwens F. “Contribution to Cross-disciplinary Lexicon” (Editors: D Radcliffe and J Humphries) Proceedings 4th ASEE/AaeE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education, Sydney, 26-29 September 2005 

[14] Spuzic S. and Nouwens F.  "A Contribution to Defining the Term ‘Definition’", Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology Education, Volume 1 (2004) pp. 645-662, http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2004/090spuzi.pdf

[15] Miller G. A. "Ambiguous Words" (Originally published March 2001 at Impacts Magazine) 

[16] Thorne S. "Mastering Advanced English Language" Palgrave Master Series, Macmillan Press, London, 1997 

[17] McCarty S. "Cultural, Disciplinary and Temporal Contexts of e-Learning and English as a Foreign Language", eLearn MAGAZINE published by ACM - Association for Computing Machinery; http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=research&article=4-1  (accessed on 20th April 2010)

[18] Downey G. L., Lucena J. C., Moskal B., Bigley T., Hays C., Jesiek B., Kelly L., Lehr J., Miller J., and Nichols-Belo A. "Engineering Cultures: Expanding the Engineering Method for Global Problem Solvers" (Editors: D. Radcliffe and J. Humphries) Proceedings 4th ASEE/AaeE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education, Sydney, 26-29 September 2005

[19] Linton J. D. “De-babelizing the language of innovation” Technovation, Volume 29, Issue 11, November 2009, pp. 729-737

[20] van Deemter K. “Not Exactly - In Praise of Vagueness”, Oxford University Press, USA, 2010

[21] Philip Seargeant "Naming and defining in world Englishes" ( journal) World Englishes (pages 97–113) Volume 29, Issue 1 March 2010