Journal articles on the topic 'Region connection calculus'

Qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) is useful for deriving logical inferences when quantitative spatial information is not available. QSR theories have applications in areas such as geographic information systems, spatial databases, robotics, and cognitive sciences. The existing QSR theories have been applied primarily to 2D. The ability to perform QSR over a collection of 3D objects is desirable in many problem domains. Here we present the evolution (VRCC-3D+) of RCC-based QSR from 2D to both 3D (including occlusion support) and 4D (a temporal component). It is time consuming to construct large composition tables manually. We give a divide-and-conquer algorithm to construct a comprehensive composition table from smaller constituent tables (which can be easily handcrafted). In addition to the logical consistency entailment checking that is required for such a system, clearly there is a need for a spatio-temporal component to account for spatial movements and path consistency (i.e. to consider only smooth transitions in spatial movements over time). Visually, these smooth movement phenomena are represented as a conceptual neighborhood graph. We believe that the methods presented herein to detect consistency, refine uncertainty, and enhance reasoning about 3D objects will provide useful guidelines for other studies in automated spatial reasoning.

Over the last decades, noticeable efforts have been made to construct design knowledge during the detailed geometric definition phase systematically. However, physical products exhibit functional behaviors, which explain that they evolve over space and time. Hence, there is a need to extend assembly product knowledge towards the spatiotemporal dimension to provide more realistic knowledge models in assembly design. Systematic semantic knowledge representation via ontology enables designers to understand the anticipated product’s behavior in advance. In this article, Interval Algebra (IA) and Region Connection Calculus (RCC) are investigated to formalize and construct ontological spatiotemporal assembly product motion knowledge. IA is commonly used to represent the temporality between two entities, while RCC is more appropriate to represent the ‘part-to-part’ relationships of two topological spaces. This paper discusses the roles of IA and RCC and presents a case study of a nutcracker assembly model’s behavior. The assembly product motion ontology with the aid of IA and RCC is evaluated using a task-based approach. The evaluation shows the added value of the developed ontology compared to others published in the literature.

Background: Research is ongoing relating to the analysis of a set of issues that arise in connection with the creation of the operating on the basis of vacuum magnetic technologies a transcontinental high-speed land transport corridor, connecting the eastern regions of China with Russia. As part of the variation calculus task, the geopolitical, economic, social, logistic, geographic, geomorphological, seismological, topographic components of the project are considered, in which it is assumed that the high speed overland route will pass through the north-western part of the historical region of Dzungaria. Aim: Find the most optimal from the point of view of the above components the location of the most important section of high speed overland route passing through Central Asia. Methods: Variational methods for solving an optimization problem with the use of a computer math system. Results: After creating a fairly informative and versatile picture of the region in question, the foundations of the corresponding mathematical models are built. Conclusion: The New Dzungarian Gates is a key element in choosing the location of a high-speed overland route based on VMLT.

Topological relations are fundamental for qualitative description, querying and analysis of a 3D scene. Although topological relations for 2D objects have been extensively studied and implemented in GIS applications, their direct extension to 3D is very challenging and they cannot be directly applied to represent relations between components of complex 3D objects represented by 3D B-Rep models in <i>R</i>³. Herein we present an extended Region Connection Calculus (RCC) model to express and formalize topological relations between planar regions for creating 3D model represented by Boundary Representation model in <i>R</i>³. We proposed a new dimension extended 9-Intersection model to represent the basic relations among components of a complex object, including disjoint, meet and intersect. The last element in 3*3 matrix records the details of connection through the common parts of two regions and the intersecting line of two planes. Additionally, this model can deal with the case of planar regions with holes. Finally, the geometric information is transformed into a list of strings consisting of topological relations between two planar regions and detailed connection information. The experiments show that the proposed approach helps to identify topological relations of planar segments of point cloud automatically.

Topological relations are fundamental for qualitative description, querying and analysis of a 3D scene. Although topological relations for 2D objects have been extensively studied and implemented in GIS applications, their direct extension to 3D is very challenging and they cannot be directly applied to represent relations between components of complex 3D objects represented by 3D B-Rep models in &lt;i&gt;R&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. Herein we present an extended Region Connection Calculus (RCC) model to express and formalize topological relations between planar regions for creating 3D model represented by Boundary Representation model in &lt;i&gt;R&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. We proposed a new dimension extended 9-Intersection model to represent the basic relations among components of a complex object, including disjoint, meet and intersect. The last element in 3*3 matrix records the details of connection through the common parts of two regions and the intersecting line of two planes. Additionally, this model can deal with the case of planar regions with holes. Finally, the geometric information is transformed into a list of strings consisting of topological relations between two planar regions and detailed connection information. The experiments show that the proposed approach helps to identify topological relations of planar segments of point cloud automatically.

Biomedical images and models contain vast amounts of information. Regrettably, much of this information is only accessible by domain experts. This paper describes a biological use case in which this situation occurs. Motivation is given for describing images, from this use case, semantically. Furthermore, links are provided to the medical domain, demonstrating the transferability of this work. Subsequently, it is shown that a semantic representation in which every pixel is featured is needlessly expensive. This motivates the discussion of more abstract renditions, which are dealt with next. As part of this, the paper discusses the suitability of existing technologies. In particular, Region Connection Calculus and one implementation of the W3C Geospatial Vocabulary are considered. It transpires that the abstract representations provide a basic description that enables the user to perform a subset of the desired queries. However, a more complex depiction is required for this use case.

This contribution adopts the taxonomic concept approach, including the use oftaxonomic concept labels(name sec. [according to] source) and region connection calculus-5 (RCC–5) articulations and alignments. Prior to this study, the broad-nosed weevil genusMinyomerusHorn, 1876 sec. Jansen & Franz, 2015 (Curculionidae [non-focal]: Entiminae [non-focal]: Tanymecini [non-focal]) contained 17 species distributed throughout the desert and plains regions of North America. In this review ofMinyomerussec. Jansen & Franz, 2018, we describe the following four species as new to science:Minyomerus ampullaceussec. Jansen & Franz, 2018 (henceforth: [JF2018]), new species,Minyomerus franko[JF2018], new species,Minyomerus sculptilis[JF2018], new species, andMinyomerus tylotos[JF2018], new species. The four new species are added to, and integrated with, the preceding revision, and an updated key and phylogeny ofMinyomerus[JF2018] are presented. A cladistic analysis using 52 morphological characters of 26 terminal taxa (5/21 outgroup/ingroup) yielded a single most-parsimonious cladogram (Length = 99 steps, consistency index = 60, retention index = 80). The analysis reaffirms the monophyly ofMinyomerus[JF2018] with eight unreversed synapomorphies. The species-group placements, possible biogeographic origins, and natural history of the new species are discussed in detail.

We introduce, study, and evaluate a novel algorithm in the context of qualitative constraint-based spatial and temporal reasoning that is based on the idea of variable elimination, a simple and general exact inference approach in probabilistic graphical models. Given a qualitative constraint network [Formula: see text], our algorithm utilizes a particular directional local consistency, which we denote by [Formula: see text]-consistency, in order to efficiently decide the satisfiability of [Formula: see text]. Our discussion is restricted to distributive subclasses of relations, i.e., sets of relations closed under converse, intersection, and weak composition and for which weak composition distributes over non-empty intersections for all of their relations. We demonstrate that enforcing [Formula: see text]-consistency in a given qualitative constraint network defined over a distributive subclass of relations allows us to decide its satisfiability, and obtain similar useful results for the problems of minimal labelling and redundancy. Further, we present a generic method that allows extracting a scenario from a satisfiable network, i.e., an atomic satisfiable subnetwork of that network, in a very simple and effective manner. The experimentation that we have conducted with random and real-world qualitative constraint networks defined over a distributive subclass of relations of the Region Connection Calculus and the Interval Algebra, shows that our approach exhibits unparalleled performance against state-of-the-art approaches for checking the satisfiability of such constraint networks.

AbstractWe review the work of the present authors to employ variational calculus to formulate continuous models for the connections between various carbon nanostructures. In formulating such a variational principle, there is some evidence that carbon nanotubes deform as in perfect elasticity, and rather like the elastica, and therefore we seek to minimize the elastic energy. The calculus of variations is utilized to minimize the curvature subject to a length constraint, to obtain an Euler–Lagrange equation, which determines the connection between two carbon nanostructures. Moreover, a numerical solution is proposed to determine the geometric parameters for the connected structures. Throughout this review, we assume that the defects on the nanostructures are axially symmetric and that the into-the-plane curvature is small in comparison to that in the two-dimensional plane, so that the problems can be considered in the two-dimensional plane. Since the curvature can be both positive and negative, depending on the gap between the two nanostructures, two distinct cases are examined, which are subsequently shown to smoothly connect to each other.

A continuous-time white Gaussian channel can be formulated using a white Gaussian noise, and a conventional way for examining such a channel is the sampling approach based on the Shannon–Nyquist sampling theorem, where the original continuous-time channel is converted to an equivalent discrete-time channel, to which a great variety of established tools and methodology can be applied. However, one of the key issues of this scheme is that continuous-time feedback and memory cannot be incorporated into the channel model. It turns out that this issue can be circumvented by considering the Brownian motion formulation of a continuous-time white Gaussian channel. Nevertheless, as opposed to the white Gaussian noise formulation, a link that establishes the information-theoretic connection between a continuous-time channel under the Brownian motion formulation and its discrete-time counterparts has long been missing. This paper is to fill this gap by establishing causality-preserving connections between continuous-time Gaussian feedback/memory channels and their associated discrete-time versions in the forms of sampling and approximation theorems, which we believe will play important roles in the long run for further developing continuous-time information theory. As an immediate application of the approximation theorem, we propose the so-called approximation approach to examine continuous-time white Gaussian channels in the point-to-point or multi-user setting. It turns out that the approximation approach, complemented by relevant tools from stochastic calculus, can enhance our understanding of continuous-time Gaussian channels in terms of giving alternative and strengthened interpretation to some long-held folklore, recovering “long-known” results from new perspectives, and rigorously establishing new results predicted by the intuition that the approximation approach carries. More specifically, using the approximation approach complemented by relevant tools from stochastic calculus, we first derive the capacity regions of continuous-time white Gaussian multiple access channels and broadcast channels, and we then analyze how feedback affects their capacity regions: feedback will increase the capacity regions of some continuous-time white Gaussian broadcast channels and interference channels, while it will not increase capacity regions of continuous-time white Gaussian multiple access channels.

Over the last two years, the canonical approach to quantum gravity based on connections and triads has been put on a firm mathematical footing through the development and application of a new functional calculus on the space of gauge equivalent connections. This calculus does not use any background fields (such as a metric) and thus well-suited to a fully non-perturbative treatment of quantum gravity. Using this framework, quantum geometry is examined. Fundamental excitations turn out to be one-dimensional, rather like polymers. Geometrical observables such as areas of surfaces and volumes of regions are purely discrete spectra. Continuum picture arises only upon coarse graining of suitable semi-classical states. Next, regulated quantum diffeomorphism constraints can be imposed in an anomaly-free fashion and the space of solutions can be given a natural Hilbert space structure. Progress has also been made on the quantum Hamiltonian constraint in a number of directions. In particular, there is a recent approach based on a generalized .Wick transformation which maps solutions to the Euclidean quantum constraints to those of the Lorentzian theory. These developments are summarized. Emphasis is on conveying the underlying ideas and overall pictures rather than technical details.

Peripheral ossifying fibroma, first reported by Shepard in 1844 as alveolar exostosis, is a non-neoplastic reactive lesion arising as a focal exophytic mass exclusively on the gingiva originating from the interdental area and shows no bone involvement in most cases. The lesion shows propensity for maxilla and incisor-cuspid region with female predilection. The etiological factors include local factors causing gingival irritation like calculus, plaque, ill fitting dentures or orthodontic appliances; and hormonal influence, initiate exhuberant connective tissue response. The lesion shows high recurrence potential , necessitating proper identification, treatment and effective long-term recall protocol. This case report presents a relatively rare case of juvenile peripheral ossifying fibroma in relation to mandibular central & lateral incisors in an adolescent female child followed for upto 1 year after surgical excision

As savanas neotropicais estão distribuídas predominantemente no território brasileiro na forma de fitofisionomias que variam de campo cerrado a cerradão. A variabilidade na riqueza é tão marcante que menos de 15% da diversidade é mantida ao longo de sua abrangência. Para contribuir com o entendimento dos padrões de distribuição da vegetação do cerrado e com a diferenciação das comunidades ecotonais setentrionais, utilizou-se um banco de dados com 482 comunidades de cerrado sensu lato, em diferentes expressões florísticas, que acumulou 1221 espécies lenhosas. Calculou-se padrões de composições similares entre comunidades (floras areais), destacando as concentrações florísticas setentrionais, e evidenciou-se elevado grau de β-diversidade mediante a formação de nove floras sinareais. Tais níveis de rotatividade atestam que numerosas unidades de conservação em diferentes regiões são necessárias para proteger toda a diversidade de espécies, fisionomias e funcionalidades dos cerrados. Os resultados fornecem uma atualização e complementação científica na qual os tomadores de decisão nacionais podem contextualizar o significado mesológico dos cerrados brasileiro como condutores ambientais conectados a um sistema em maior escala. Biogeographic connections of Brazilian savannas: partition of marginal and disjunct diversity and conservation of northern ecotonal tropics in a biodiversity hotspot A B S T R A C TThe neotropical savannas are distributed predominantly in the Brazilian territory in the form of phytophysiognomies that vary from Campo limpo of Cerrado to Cerradão. The variability in richness is so remarkable that less than 15% of diversity is maintained throughout its range. To contribute to the understanding of the distribution patterns of the Cerrado vegetation and to the differentiation of northern ecotonal communities, a database of 482 communities of Cerrado sensu lato, in different floristic expressions, that accumulated 1.221 woody species was used. Similar composition patterns were calculated between communities (“areal” floras, typical of each area), highlighting the northern floristic concentrations, and a high degree of β-diversity was evidenced by the formation of nine synareal floras. These levels of turnover attest that numerous protected areas in different regions are necessary to protect all species diversity, physiognomies and functionalities of the cerrados. The results provide an update and scientific complementation in which national decision makers can contextualize the mesological meaning of Brazilian cerrados as environmental conductors connected to a larger scale system.Keywords: Cerrado, beta diversity, phytogeography, ecotone, synareal flora, marginal and disjunct savannas

AbstractA common approach to interpreting spiking activity is based on identifying the firing fields—regions in physical or configuration spaces that elicit responses of neurons. Common examples include hippocampal place cells that fire at preferred locations in the navigated environment, head direction cells that fire at preferred orientations of the animal’s head, view cells that respond to preferred spots in the visual field, etc. In all these cases, firing fields were discovered empirically, by trial and error. We argue that the existence and a number of properties of the firing fields can be established theoretically, through topological analyses of the neuronal spiking activity. In particular, we use Leray criterion powered by persistent homology theory, Eckhoff conditions and Region Connection Calculus to verify consistency of neuronal responses with a single coherent representation of space.

We present a visual and interactive taxonomic Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool, the Automated Taxonomic Concept Reasoner (ATCR), whose graphical web interface is under development and will also become available via an Application Programming Interface (API). The tool employs automated reasoning (Beeson 2014) to align multiple taxonomies visually, in a web browser, using user or expert-provided taxonomic articulations, i.e. "Region Connection Calculus (RCC-5) relationships between taxonomic concepts, provided in a specific logical language (Fig. 1). It does this by representing the problem of taxonomic alignment under these constraints in terms of logical inference, while performing these inferences computationally and leveraging the powerful Microsoft Z3 Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solver (de Moura and Bjørner 2008). This tool represents further development of utilities for the taxonomic concept approach, which fundamentally addresses the challenge of robust biodiversity data aggregation in light of multiple conflicting sources (and source classifications) from which primary biodiversity data almost invariably originate. The approach has proven superior to aggregation, based just on the syntax and semantics provided by the Darwin Core standard Franz and Sterner 2018). Fig. 1 provides an artificial example of such an alignment. Two taxonomies, A and B, are shown. There are five taxonomic concepts, A.One, A.Two, A.Three, B.One and B.Two. A.Two and A.Three are sub-concepts (children) of A.One, and B.Two is a sub-concept (child) of B.One. These are represented by the direction of the grey arrows. The undirected mustard-coloured lines represent relationships, i.e., the articulations referred to in the previous paragraph. These may be of five kinds: congruent (==), includes (&lt;) and included in (&gt;), overlap (&gt;&lt;), and disjointness. These five relationships are known in the AI literature as the Region Connection Calculus-5 (RCC-5) (Randell et al. 1992, Bennett 1994, Bennett 1994), and taken exclusively and in conjunction with each other, have certain desirable properties with respect to the representation of spatial relationships. The provided relationship (i.e. the articulation) may also be an arbitrary disjunction of these five fundamental kinds, thus allowing for representation of some degree of logical uncertainty. Then, and under three assumptions that: "sibling" concepts are disjoint in their instances, all instances of a parent concept are instances of at least one of its child concepts, and every concept has at least one instance - the SMT-based automated reasoner is able to deduce the relationships represented by the undirected green lines. It is also able to deduce disjunctive relationships where these are logically implied. "sibling" concepts are disjoint in their instances, all instances of a parent concept are instances of at least one of its child concepts, and every concept has at least one instance - the SMT-based automated reasoner is able to deduce the relationships represented by the undirected green lines. It is also able to deduce disjunctive relationships where these are logically implied. ATCR is related to Euler/X (Franz et al. 2015), an existing tool for the same kinds of taxonomic alignment problems, which was used, for example, to obtain an alignment of two influential primate classifications (Franz et al. 2016). It differs from Euler/X in that it employs a different logical encoding that enables more efficient and more informative computational reasoning, and also in that it provides a graphical web interface, which Euler/X does not.

We provide an overview and update on initiatives and approaches to add taxonomic data intelligence to distributed biodiversity knowledge networks. "Taxonomic intelligence" for biodiversity data is defined here as the ability to identify and renconcile source-contextualized taxonomic name-to-meaning relationships (Remsen 2016). We review the scientific opportunities, as well as information-technological and socio-economic pathways - both existing and envisioned - to embed de-centralized taxonomic data intelligence into the biodiversity data publication and knowledge intedgration processes. We predict that the success of this project will ultimately rest on our ability to up-value the roles and recognition of systematic expertise and experts in large, aggregated data environments. We will argue that these environments will need to adhere to criteria for responsible data science and interests of coherent communities of practice (Wenger 2000, Stoyanovich et al. 2017). This means allowing for fair, accountable, and transparent representation and propagation of evolving systematic knowledge and enduring or newly apparent conflict in systematic perspective (Sterner and Franz 2017, Franz and Sterner 2018, Sterner et al. 2019). We will demonstrate in principle and through concrete use cases, how to de-centralize systematic knowledge while maintaining alignments between congruent or concflicting taxonomic concept labels (Franz et al. 2016a, Franz et al. 2016b, Franz et al. 2019). The suggested approach uses custom-configured logic representation and reasoning methods, based on the Region Connection Calculus (RCC-5) alignment language. The approach offers syntactic consistency and semantic applicability or scalability across a wide range of biodiversity data products, ranging from occurrence records to phylogenomic trees. We will also illustrate how this kind of taxonomic data intelligence can be captured and propagated through existing or envisioned metadata conventions and standards (e.g., Senderov et al. 2018). Having established an intellectual opportunity, as well as a technical solution pathway, we turn to the issue of developing an implementation and adoption strategy. Which biodiversity data environments are currently the most taxonomically intelligent, and why? How is this level of taxonomic data intelligence created, maintained, and propagated outward? How are taxonomic data intelligence services motivated or incentivized, both at the level of individuals and organizations? Which "concerned entities" within the greater biodiversity data publication enterprise are best positioned to promote such services? Are the most valuable lessons for biodiversity data science "hidden" in successful social media applications? What are good, feasible, incremental steps towards improving taxonomic data intelligence for a diversity of data publishers?

The taxonomic foundation of a new regional flora or monograph is the reconciliation of pre-existing names and taxonomic concepts (i.e., variation in usage of those names). This reconciliation is traditionally done manually, but the availability of taxonomic resources online and of text manipulation software means that some of the work can now be automated, speeding up the development of new taxonomic products. As a contribution to developing a new Flora of Alaska (floraofalaska.org), we have digitized the main pre-existing flora (Hultén 1968) and combined it with key online taxonomic name sources (Panarctic Flora, Flora of North America, International Plant Names Index - IPNI, Tropicos, Kew’s World Checklist of Selected Plant Families), to build a canonical list of names anchored to external Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) (e.g., IPNI URLs). We developed taxonomically-aware fuzzy-matching software (matchnames, Webb 2020) to identify cognates in different lists. The taxa for which there are variations between different sources in accepted names and synonyms are then flagged for review by taxonomic experts. However, even though names may be consistent across previous monographs and floras, the taxonomic concept (or circumscription) of a name may differ among authors, meaning that the way an accepted name in the flora is applied may be unfamiliar to the users of previous floras. We therefore have begun to manually align taxonomic concepts across five existing floras: Panarctic Flora, Flora of North America, Cody’s Flora of the Yukon (Cody 2000), Welsh’s Flora (Welsh 1974) and Hultén’s Flora (Hultén 1968), analysing usage and recording the Region Connection Calculus (RCC-5) relationships between taxonomic concepts common to each source. So far, we have mapped taxa in 13 genera, containing 557 taxonomic concepts and 482 taxonomic concept relationships. To facilitate this alignment process we developed software (tcm, Webb 2021) to record publications, names, taxonomic concepts and relationships, and to visualize the taxonomic concept relationships as graphs. These relationship graphs have proved to be accessible and valuable in discussing the frequently complex shifts in circumscription with the taxonomic experts who have reviewed the work. The taxonomic concept data are being integrated into the larger dataset to permit users of the new flora to instantly see both the chain of synonymy and concept map for any name. We have also worked with the developer of the Arctos Collection Management Solution (a database used for the majority of Alaskan collections) on new data tables for storage and display of taxonomic concept data. In this presentation, we will describe some of the ideas and workflows that may be of value to others working to connect across taxonomic resources.

Background: Gingival recession can cause esthetic problems, especially if it occurs in the maxillary anterior region. Gingival recession accompanied by endodontic complications requires a multidisciplinary approach to achieve successful therapy. Objective: To report the treatment of Miller’s class-III gingival recession using laterally stretched flap + connective tissue graft with frenotomy and apicoectomy in one visit. Case Report: A healthy 24-year-old man presented with chief complaints of open and painful gums on his left upper front tooth. After objective and radiographic examinations, the diagnosis of tooth 21 was Miller’s class-III gingival recession, that is, plaque and calculus with endo–perio lesions and grade 1 luxation. The treatment given included scaling, root planning, curettage, retreatment of root canal and root coverage therapy with frenotomy and apicoectomy. Results: The results obtained were partial root coverage of 71.4% and an increase in the thickness of keratinized tissue. Conclusion: Healing of periodontal tissue damage accompanied by endodontic lesions showed success and obtained stable treatment results with a multidisciplinary approach. Keywords: Miller’s class-III gingival recession, endodontic lesion, laterally stretched flap, apicoectomy

Background: Gingival recession can cause esthetic problems, especially if it occurs in the maxillary anterior region. Gingival recession accompanied by endodontic complications requires a multidisciplinary approach to achieve successful therapy. Objective: To report the treatment of Miller’s class-III gingival recession using laterally stretched flap + connective tissue graft with frenotomy and apicoectomy in one visit. Case Report: A healthy 24-year-old man presented with chief complaints of open and painful gums on his left upper front tooth. After objective and radiographic examinations, the diagnosis of tooth 21 was Miller’s class-III gingival recession, that is, plaque and calculus with endo–perio lesions and grade 1 luxation. The treatment given included scaling, root planning, curettage, retreatment of root canal and root coverage therapy with frenotomy and apicoectomy. Results: The results obtained were partial root coverage of 71.4% and an increase in the thickness of keratinized tissue. Conclusion: Healing of periodontal tissue damage accompanied by endodontic lesions showed success and obtained stable treatment results with a multidisciplinary approach. Keywords: Miller’s class-III gingival recession, endodontic lesion, laterally stretched flap, apicoectomy

The Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System (OBKMS) is an end-to-end, eXtensible Markup Language (XML)- and Linked Open Data (LOD)-based ecosystem of tools and services that encompasses the entire process of authoring, submission, review, publication, dissemination, and archiving of biodiversity literature, as well as the text mining of published biodiversity literature (Fig. 1). These capabilities lead to the creation of interoperable, computable, and reusable biodiversity data with provenance linking facts to publications. OBKMS is the result of a joint endeavour by Plazi and Pensoft lasting many years. The system was developed with the support of several biodiversity informatics projects - initially (Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy) ViBRANT, and then followed by pro-iBiosphere, European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), and Biosystematics, informatics and genomics of the big 4 insect groups (BIG4). The system includes the following key components: ARPHA Journal Publishing Platform: a journal publishing platform based on the TaxPub XML extension for National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s Journal Publishing Document Type Definition (DTD) (Version 3.0). Its advanced ARPHA-BioDiv component deals with integrated biodiversity data and narrative publishing (Penev et al. 2017). GoldenGATE Imagine: an environment for marking up, enhancing, and extracting text and data from PDF files, supporting the TaxonX XML schema. It has specific enhancements for articles containing descriptions of taxa ("taxonomic treatments") in the field of biological systematics, but its core features may be used for general purposes as well. Biodiversity Literature repository (BLR): a public repository hosted at Zenodo (CERN) for published articles (PDF and XML) and images extracted from articles. Ocellus/Zenodeo: a search interface for the images stored at BLR. TreatmentBank: an XML-based repository for taxonomic treatments and data therein extracted from literature. The OpenBiodiv knowledge graph: a biodiversity knowledge graph built according to the Linked Open Data (LOD) principles. Uses the RDF data model, the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) query language, is open to the public, and is powered by the OpenBiodiv-O ontology (Senderov et al. 2018). OpenBiodiv portal: Semantic search and browser for the biodiversity knowledge graph. Multiple semantic apps packaging specific views of the biodiviersity knowledge graph. Supporting tools: Pensoft Markup Tool (PMT) ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) ReFindit R libraries for working with RDF and for converting XML to RDF (ropenbio, RDF4R). Plazi RDF converter, web services and APIs. ARPHA Journal Publishing Platform: a journal publishing platform based on the TaxPub XML extension for National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s Journal Publishing Document Type Definition (DTD) (Version 3.0). Its advanced ARPHA-BioDiv component deals with integrated biodiversity data and narrative publishing (Penev et al. 2017). GoldenGATE Imagine: an environment for marking up, enhancing, and extracting text and data from PDF files, supporting the TaxonX XML schema. It has specific enhancements for articles containing descriptions of taxa ("taxonomic treatments") in the field of biological systematics, but its core features may be used for general purposes as well. Biodiversity Literature repository (BLR): a public repository hosted at Zenodo (CERN) for published articles (PDF and XML) and images extracted from articles. Ocellus/Zenodeo: a search interface for the images stored at BLR. TreatmentBank: an XML-based repository for taxonomic treatments and data therein extracted from literature. The OpenBiodiv knowledge graph: a biodiversity knowledge graph built according to the Linked Open Data (LOD) principles. Uses the RDF data model, the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) query language, is open to the public, and is powered by the OpenBiodiv-O ontology (Senderov et al. 2018). OpenBiodiv portal: Semantic search and browser for the biodiversity knowledge graph. Multiple semantic apps packaging specific views of the biodiviersity knowledge graph. Semantic search and browser for the biodiversity knowledge graph. Multiple semantic apps packaging specific views of the biodiviersity knowledge graph. Supporting tools: Pensoft Markup Tool (PMT) ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) ReFindit R libraries for working with RDF and for converting XML to RDF (ropenbio, RDF4R). Plazi RDF converter, web services and APIs. Pensoft Markup Tool (PMT) ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) ReFindit R libraries for working with RDF and for converting XML to RDF (ropenbio, RDF4R). Plazi RDF converter, web services and APIs. As part of OBKMS, Plazi and Pensoft offer the following services beyond supplying the software toolkit: Digitization through imaging and text capture of paper-based or digitally born (PDF) legacy literature. XML markup of both legacy and newly published literature (journals and books). Data extraction and markup of taxonomic names, literature references, taxonomic treatments and organism occurrence records. Export and storage of text, images, and structured data in data repositories. Linking and semantic enhancement of text and data, bibliographic references, taxonomic treatments, illustrations, organism occurrences and organism traits. Re-packaging of extracted information into new, user-demanded outputs via semantic apps at the OpenBiodiv portal. Re-publishing of legacy literature (e.g., Flora, Fauna, and Mycota series, important biodiversity monographs, etc.). Semantic open access publishing (including data publishing) of journal and books. Integration of biodiversity information from legacy and newly published literature into interoperable biodiversity repositories and platforms (Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Species-ID, Plazi, Wikidata, and others). Digitization through imaging and text capture of paper-based or digitally born (PDF) legacy literature. XML markup of both legacy and newly published literature (journals and books). Data extraction and markup of taxonomic names, literature references, taxonomic treatments and organism occurrence records. Export and storage of text, images, and structured data in data repositories. Linking and semantic enhancement of text and data, bibliographic references, taxonomic treatments, illustrations, organism occurrences and organism traits. Re-packaging of extracted information into new, user-demanded outputs via semantic apps at the OpenBiodiv portal. Re-publishing of legacy literature (e.g., Flora, Fauna, and Mycota series, important biodiversity monographs, etc.). Semantic open access publishing (including data publishing) of journal and books. Integration of biodiversity information from legacy and newly published literature into interoperable biodiversity repositories and platforms (Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Species-ID, Plazi, Wikidata, and others). In this presentation we make the case for why OpenBiodiv is an essential tool for advancing biodiversity science. Our argument is that through OpenBiodiv, biodiversity science makes a step towards the ideals of open science (Senderov and Penev 2016). Furthermore, by linking data from various silos, OpenBiodiv allows for the discovery of hidden facts. A particular example of how OpenBiodiv can advance biodiversity science is demonstrated by the OpenBiodiv's solution to "taxonomic anarchy" (Garnett and Christidis 2017). "Taxonomic anarchy" is a term coined by Garnett and Christidis to denote the instability of taxonomic names as symbols for taxonomic meaning. They propose an "authoritarian" top-down approach to stablize the naming of species. OpenBiodiv, on the other hand, relies on taxonomic concepts as integrative units and therefore integration can occur through alignment of taxonomic concepts via Region Connection Calculus (RCC-5) (Franz and Peet 2009). The alignment is "democratically" created by the users of system but no consensus is forced and "anarchy" is avoided by using unambiguous taxonomic concept labels (Franz et al. 2016) in addition to Linnean names.

Since their first encounter with colonial administrators in 1963, approximately 2,000 indigenous people living in the Nimakot region of central New Guinea have been struggling with a tension between their indigenous way of life and the imperatives of the state. It is not just that they are on the international border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and therefore difficult to categorise into this or that country. It is that they do not habitually conceptualise themselves and others in categorical terms. They value and focus on relationships rather than categories. In their struggle to adapt the blooming buzzing complexities of their semi-nomadic lifestyle and relational logic to the strict and apparently static lines, grids, and coordinates of rationalistic statecraft they have become torn by duelling conceptions of “kantri” itself (Melanesian Tok Pisin for “country”). On the one hand, kantri invokes an unbroken rural landscape rich with personal and cultural memories that establish a firm and deep relationship with the land and the ancestors. Such a notion fits easily with local conceptions of kinship and land tenure. On the other hand, kantri is a bounded object, part of an often frustrating and mystifying system of categorization imposed by strict and rationalist mechanisms of statecraft. The following analyses this tension based on 22 months of intensive and intimate participant observation in the region from 1999-2006 with a special focus on the uses and impacts of writing and other new communication technologies. The categorical bias of statecraft is enabled, fostered, extended, and maintained by the technology of writing. Statecraft seeks (or makes) categories that are ideally stable, permanent, non-negotiable, and fit for the relative fixity of print, while the relationships emphasised by people of Nimakot are fluid, temporary, negotiable, contested and ambiguous. In contrast to the engaged, pragmatic, and personal view one finds in face-to-face relationships on the ground, the state’s knowledge of the local is ultimately mediated by what can be written into abstract categories that can be listed, counted and aggregated, producing a synoptic, distanced, and decontextualising perspective. By simplifying the cacophonous blooming buzzing complexities of life into legible categories, regularities, and rules, the pen and paper become both the eyes and the voice of the state (Scott 2). Even the writing of this paper is difficult. Many sentences would be easier to write if I could just name the group I am discussing. But the group of people I am writing about have no clear and uncontested name for themselves. More importantly, they do not traditionally think of themselves as a “group,” nor do they habitually conceptualise others in terms of bounded groups of individuals. The biggest challenge to statecraft’s attempts to create a sense of “country” here is the fact that most local people do not subjectively think of themselves in categorical terms. They do not imagine themselves to be part of “adjacent and competitive empires” (Strathern 102). This “group” is most widely known as the western “Atbalmin” though the name is not an indigenous term. “Atbalmin” is a word used by the neighbouring Telefol that means “people of the trees.” It was adopted by early patrol officers who were accompanied by Telefol translators. As these early patrols made their way through the “Atbalmin” region from east to west they frequently complained about names and their inability to pin or pen them down. Tribal names, clan names, even personal names seemed to change with each asking. While such flexibility and flux were perfectly at home in an oral face-to-face environment, it wasn’t suitable for the colonial administrators’ relatively fixed and static books. The “mysterious Kufelmin” (as the patrol reports refer to them) were even more frustrating for early colonial officers. Patrols heading west from Telefomin searched for decades for this mysterious group and never found them. To this day nobody has ever set foot in a Kufelmin village. In each valley heading west patrols were told that the Kufelmin were in the next valley to the west. But the Kufelmin were never there. They were always one more valley to the west. The problem was that the administrators wrongly assumed “Kufelmin” to be a tribal name as stable and categorical as the forms and maps they were using would accept. Kufelmin simply means “those people to the West.” It is a relational term, not a categorical one. The administration’s first contact with the people of Nimakot exposed even more fundamental differences and specific tensions between the local relational logic and the categorical bias of statecraft. Australian patrol officer JR McArthur crested the mountain overlooking Nimakot at precisely 1027 hours on 16 August 1963, a fact he dutifully recorded in his notebook (Telefomin Patrol Report 12 of 1962/63). He then proceeded down the mountain with pen and paper in hand, recording the precise moment he crossed the Sunim creek (1109 hours), came to Sunimbil (1117 hours), and likewise on and on to his final destination near the base of the present-day airstrip. Such recordings of precise times and locations were central to McArthur's main goal. Amidst the steep mountains painted with lush green gardens, sparkling waterfalls, and towering virgin rainforests McArthur busied himself examining maps and aerial photographs searching for the region’s most impressive, imposing, and yet altogether invisible feature: the 141st Meridian East of Greenwich, the international border. McArthur saw his work as one of fixing boundaries, taking names, and extending the great taxonomic system of statecraft that would ultimately “rationalise” and order even this remote corner of the globe. When he came to the conclusion that he had inadvertently stepped outside his rightful domain he promptly left, noting in his report that he purchased a pig just before leaving. The local understanding of this event is very different. While McArthur was busy making and obeying categories, the people of Nimakot were primarily concerned with making relationships. In this case, they hoped to create a relationship through which valuable goods, the likes of which they had never seen, would flow. The pig mentioned in McArthur's report was not meant to be bought or sold, but as a gift signifying the beginning of what locals hoped would be a long relationship. When McArthur insisted on paying for it and then promptly left with a promise that he would never return, locals interpreted his actions as an accusation of witchcraft. Witchcraft is the most visible and dramatic aspect of the local relational logic of being, what might be termed a relational ontology. Marilyn Strathern describes this ontology as being as much “dividual” as individual, pointing out that Melanesians tend to conceptualise themselves as defined and constituted by social relationships rather than independent from them (102). The person is conceptualised as socially and collectively constituted rather than individuated. A person’s strength, health, intelligence, disposition, and behaviour depend on the strength and nature of one’s relationships (Knauft 26). The impacts of this relational ontology on local life are far reaching. Unconditional kindness and sharing are constantly required to maintain healthy relations because unhealthy relations are understood to be the direct cause of sickness, infertility, and death. Where such misfortunes do befall someone, their explanations are sought in a complex calculus examining relational histories. Whoever has a bad relation with the victim is blamed for their misfortune. Modernists disparage such ideas as “witchcraft beliefs” but witchcraft accusations are just a small part of a much more pervasive, rich, and logical relational ontology in which the health and well-being of relations are conceptualised as influencing the health and well-being of things and people. Because of this logic, people of Nimakot are relationship experts who navigate the complex relational field with remarkable subtleness and tact. But even they cannot maintain the unconditional kindness and sharing that is required of them when their social world grows too large and complex. A village rarely grows to over 50 people before tensions lead to an irresolvable witchcraft accusation and the village splits up. In this way, the continuous negotiations inspired by the relational ontology lead to constant movement, changing of names, and shifting clan affiliations – nothing that fits very well on a static map or a few categories in a book. Over the past 45 years since McArthur first brought the mechanisms of statecraft into Nimakot, the tensions between this local relational ontology and the categorical logic of the state have never been resolved. One might think that a synthesis of the two forms would have emerged. Instead, to this day, all that becomes new is the form through which the tensions are expressed and the ways in which the tensions are exacerbated. The international border has been and continues to be the primary catalyst for these tensions to express themselves. As it turns out, McArthur had miscalculated. He had not crossed the international border before coming to Nimakot. It was later determined that the border runs right through the middle of Nimakot, inspiring one young local man to describe it to me as “that great red mark that cuts us right through the heart.” The McArthur encounter was a harbinger of what was to come; a battle for kantri as unbounded connected landscape, and a battle with kantri as a binding categorical system, set against a backdrop of witchcraft imagery. Locals soon learned the importance of the map and census for receiving state funds for construction projects, education, health care, and other amenities. In the early 1970s a charismatic local man convinced others to move into one large village called Tumolbil. The large population literally put Tumolbil “on the map,” dramatically increasing its visibility to government and foreign aid. Drawn by the large population, an airstrip, school, and aid post were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Locally this process is known as “namba tok,” meaning that “numbers (population, statistics, etc.) talk” to the state. The greater the number, the stronger the voice, so locals are now intent on creating large stable villages that are visible to the state and in line for services and development projects. Yet their way of life and relational cultural logics continue to betray their efforts to create such villages. Most people still navigate the complexities of their social relations by living in small, scattered, semi-nomadic hamlets. Even as young local men trained in Western schools become government officials in charge of the maps and census books themselves, they are finding that they are frustrated by the same characteristics of life that once frustrated colonial administrators. The tensions between the local relational ontology and the categorical imperatives of the state come to rest squarely on the shoulders of these young men. They want large stable villages that will produce a large number in the census book in order to bring development projects to their land. More importantly, they recognise that half of their land rests precariously west of that magical 141st Meridian. A clearly defined and distinct place on the map along with a solid number of names in the census book, have become essential to assuring their continued connection with their kantri. On several occasions they have felt threatened by the possibility that they would have to either abandon the land west of the meridian or become citizens of Indonesia. The first option threatens their sense of kantri as connection to their traditional land. The other violates their new found sense of kantri as nationalistic pride in the independent state of Papua New Guinea. In an attempt to resolve these increasingly pressing tensions, the officers designed “Operation Clean and Sweep” in 2003 – a plan to move people out of their small scattered hamlets and into one of twelve larger villages that had been recognised by Papua New Guinea in previous census and mapping exercises. After sending notice to hamlet residents, an operation team of over one hundred men marched throughout Nimakot, burning each hamlet along the way. Before each burning, officers gave a speech peppered with the phrase “namba tok.” Most people listened to the speeches with enthusiasm, often expressing their own eagerness to leave their hamlet behind to live in a large orderly village. In one hamlet they asked me to take a photo of them in front of their houses just before they cheerfully allowed government officers to enter their homes and light the thatch of their rooftops. “Finally,” the officer in charge exclaimed triumphantly, “we can put people where their names are.” If the tension between local relational logics and the categorical imperatives of the state had been only superficial, perhaps this plan would have ultimately resolved the tension. But the tension is not only expressed objectively in the need for large stable villages, but subjectively as well, in the state’s need for people to orient themselves primarily as citizens and individuals, doing what is best for the country as a categorical group rather than acting as relational “dividuals” and orienting their lives primarily towards the demands of kinship and other relations. This tension has been recognised in other contexts as well, and theorised in Craig Calhoun’s study of nationalism in which he marks out two related distinctions: “between networks of social relationships and categories of similar individuals, and between reproduction through directly interpersonal interactions and reproduction through the mediation of relatively impersonal agencies of large-scale cultural standardization and social organization” (29). The former in both of these distinctions make up the essential components of relational ontology, while the latter describe the mechanisms and logic of statecraft. To describe the form of personhood implicit in nationalism, Calhoun introduces the term “categorical identity” to designate “identification by similarity of attributes as a member of a set of equivalent members” (42). While locals are quick to understand the power of categorical entities in the cultural process of statecraft and therefore have eagerly created large villages on a number of occasions in order to “game” the state system, they do not readily assume a categorical identity, an identity with these categories, and the villages have consistently disintegrated over time due to relational tensions and witchcraft accusations born from the local relational ontology. Operation Clean and Sweep reached its crisis moment just two days after the burnings began. An influential man from one of the unmapped hamlets scheduled for burning came to the officers complaining that he would not move to the large government village because he would have to live too close to people who had bewitched and killed members of his family. Others echoed his fears of witchcraft in the large government villages. The drive for a categorical order came head to head with the local relational ontology. Moving people into large government villages and administering a peaceful, orderly, lawful society of citizens (a categorical identity) would take much more than eliminating hamlets and forced migration. It would require a complete transformation in their sense of being – a transformation that even the officers themselves have not fully undertaken. The officers did not see the relational ontology as the problem. They saw witchcraft as the problem. They announced plans to eradicate witchcraft altogether. For three months, witchcraft suspects were apprehended, interrogated, and asked to list names of other witches. With each interrogation, the list of witches grew longer and longer. The interrogations were violent at times, but not as violent or as devastating as the list itself. The violence of the list hid behind its simple elegance. Like a census book, it had a mystique of orderliness and rationality. It stripped away the ugliness and complexity of interrogations leaving nothing but pure categorical knowledge. In the interrogation room, the list became a powerful tool the officer in charge used to intimidate his suspects. He often began by reading from the list, as if to say, “we already have you right here.” But one might say it was the officer who was really trapped in the list. It ensnared him in its simple elegance, its clean straight lines and clear categories. He was not using the list as much as the list was using him. Traditionally it was not the witch that was of concern, but the act of witchcraft itself. If the relationship could be healed – thereby healing the victim – all was forgiven. The list transformed the accused from temporary, situational, and indefinite witches involved in local relational disputes to permanent, categorical witches in violation of state law. Traditional ways of dealing with witchcraft focused on healing relationships. The print culture of the state focuses on punishing the categorically “guilty” categorical individual. They were “sentenced” “by the book.” As an outsider, I was simply thought to be naïve about the workings of witchcraft. My protests were ignored (see Wesch). Ultimately it ended because making a list of witches proved to be even more difficult than making a list for the census. Along with the familiar challenges of shifting names and affiliations, the witch list made its own enemies. The moment somebody was listed all of their relations ceased recognising the list and those making it as authoritative. In the end, the same tensions that motivated Operation Clean and Sweep were only reproduced by the efforts to resolve them. The tensions demonstrated themselves to be more tenacious than anticipated, grounded as they are in pervasive self-sustaining cultural systems that do not overlap in a way that is significant enough to threaten their mutual existence. The relational ontology is embedded in rich and enduring local histories of gift exchange, marriage, birth, death, and conflict. Statecraft is embedded in a broader system of power, hierarchy, deadlines, roles, and rules. They are not simply matters of belief. In this way, the focus on witches and witchcraft could never resolve the tensions. Instead, the movement only exacerbated the relational tensions that inspire, extend, and maintain witchcraft beliefs, and once again people found themselves living in small, scattered hamlets, wishing they could somehow come together to live in large prosperous villages so their population numbers would be great enough to “talk” to the state, bringing in valuable services, and more importantly, securing their land and citizenship with Papua New Guinea. It is in this context that “kantri” not only embodies the tensions between local ways of life and the imperatives of the state, but also the persistent hope for resolution, and the haunting memories of previous failures. References Calhoun, Craig. Nationalism. Open UP, 1997. Knauft, Bruce. From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1999. McArthur, JR. Telefomin Patrol Report 12 of 1962/63 Strathern, Marilyn. The Gender of the Gift. U California P, 1988. Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale UP, 1998. Wesch, Michael. “A Witch Hunt in New Guinea: Anthropology on Trial.” Anthropology and Humanism 32.1 (2007): 4-17.