Information, Volume 5, Issue 2 (June 2014) – 8 articles , Pages 209-388

Information is usually related to knowledge. Here, we present a broader picture in which information is associated with epistemic structures, which form cognitive infological systems as basic recipients and creators of cognitive information. Infological systems are modeled by epistemic spaces, while operators in these spaces are mathematical models of information. Information that acts on epistemic structures is called cognitive information, while information that acts on knowledge structures is called epistemic information. The latter brings new and updates existing knowledge, being of primary importance to people. In this paper, both types of information are studied as operators in epistemic spaces based on the general theory of information. As a synthetic approach, which reveals the essence of information, organizing and encompassing all main directions in information theory, the general theory of information provides efficient means for such a study. Different types of information dynamics representation use tools from various mathematical disciplines, such as the theory of categories, functional analysis, mathematical logic and algebra. In this paper, we base our exploration of information and knowledge dynamics on functional analysis further developing the mathematical stratum of the general theory of information. Full article

Simulating organizational processes characterized by interacting human activities, resources, business rules and constraints, is a challenging task, because of the inherent uncertainty, inaccuracy, variability and dynamicity. With regard to this problem, currently available business process simulation (BPS) methods and tools are unable to efficiently capture the process behavior along its lifecycle. In this paper, a novel approach of BPS is presented. To build and manage simulation models according to the proposed approach, a simulation system is designed, developed and tested on pilot scenarios, as well as on real-world processes. The proposed approach exploits interval-valued data to represent model parameters, in place of conventional single-valued or probability-valued parameters. Indeed, an interval-valued parameter is comprehensive; it is the easiest to understand and express and the simplest to process, among multi-valued representations. In order to compute the interval-valued output of the system, a genetic algorithm is used. The resulting process model allows forming mappings at different levels of detail and, therefore, at different model resolutions. The system has been developed as an extension of a publicly available simulation engine, based on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard. Full article

Sparse coding is an active research subject in signal processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. A novel method of facial expression recognition via non-negative least squares (NNLS) sparse coding is presented in this paper. The NNLS sparse coding is used to form a facial expression classifier. To testify the performance of the presented method, local binary patterns (LBP) and the raw pixels are extracted for facial feature representation. Facial expression recognition experiments are conducted on the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) database. Compared with other widely used methods such as linear support vector machines (SVM), sparse representation-based classifier (SRC), nearest subspace classifier (NSC), K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN), the experiment results indicate that the presented NNLS method performs better than other used methods on facial expression recognition tasks. Full article

The present review seeks to take stock of the South Korean publication activity on the field of chemistry by analyzing systematically all chemistry-related scholarly communications collected in the Web of Science (WOS) database published by at least one Korean author or Korean institute- or university-affiliated author from 1993 to 2012. The studied parameters included the growth in number of the communications, as well as the language-, document-, category-, source-, organization-, and collaboration-wise distribution of the South Korean communications. A total of 5660 communications on chemistry were found to be published by South Korean researchers during the aforementioned period of time, and South Korea was the 15th country (1.77%) in the world in terms of informational communication activity in chemistry. Full article

“Information” (=information including its processing, communication, etc.) is indispensable for the modern understanding of processes within cells, tissues, organs, the organism, but also between individuals and social structures. Is “information” the mathematically applicable substitute for the omnipotent and in all living entities identical Vis Vitalis, applicable also to machines? Vis Vitalis was falsified by evolutionary theory. Its explanatory power was not “saved” with an alternative hypothesis. So the causal explanation of what could be handled previously with Vis Vitalis remains a “grey area” in the landscape of sciences. “Information” seems to fill the gap between, e.g., body and mind. Therefore, an analysis of “information” from an evolutionary view can be helpful even for information sciences: there are gaps which cannot be bridged sufficiently, especially between the different evolutionary levels up to the “hierarchical structure” of a person as a social being. An analysis is presented: the meaning and the indispensable carriers of “information” have changed within the evolutionary processes. Options and restrictions for an evolution-oriented use of “information” are discussed and applied. Doing this it seems possible not only to bridge the gap between the layers within the biological, emotional, cognitive and intellectual hierarchical levels within a person, but between persons and machines too. Full article

Shelf-out-of-stock is one of the leading motivations of technology innovation in the shelf of the future. The Shelf Detector project described in this paper aims to solve the problem of data knowledge in the shelf-out-of-stock problem. This paper is mainly focused on the information layer of the system and main novelties illustrated in this work are in the information field demonstrating the huge number of insights that can be derived from the use of such a tool able to gather data in real time from the store. The tool presented is the first being installed for a long time in a high number of stores and products, demonstrating the ability to gather data and extract interesting insights. This paper aims to demonstrate the feasibility and the scalability of our system in providing a high number of data and interesting insights for store and marketing teams. The cloud based architecture developed and tested in this project is a key feature of our system together with the ability to collect data from a distributed sensor network. Full article

This review examines some particular, but important and basic aspects of information: Information is related to questions and should provide at least partial answers. Information comes in pieces, and it should be possible to aggregate these pieces. Finally, it should be possible to extract that part of a piece of information which relates to a given question. Modeling these concepts leads to an algebraic theory of information. This theory centers around two different but closely related types of information algebras, each containing operations for aggregation or combination of information and for extracting information relevant to a given question. Generic constructions of instances of such algebras are presented. In particular, the close connection of information algebras to logic and domain theory will be exhibited. Full article

Wheeler’s observer-participancy and the related it from bit credo refer to quantum non-locality and contextuality. The mystery of these concepts slightly starts unveiling if one encodes the (in)compatibilities between qubit observables in the relevant finite geometries. The main objective of this treatise is to outline another conceptual step forward by employing Grothendieck’s dessins d’enfants to reveal the topological and (non)algebraic machinery underlying the measurement acts and their information content. Full article