Erfan Najmi

CAPRA: a comprehensive approach to product ranking using customer reviews

Online shopping generates billions of dollars in revenues, including both the physical goods and online services. Product images and associated descriptions are the two main sources of information used by the shoppers to gain knowledge about a product. However, these two pieces of information may not always present the true picture of the product. Images could be deceiving, and descriptions could be overwhelming or cryptic. Moreover, the relative rank of these products among the peers may lead to inconsistencies. Hence, a useful and widely used piece of information is “user reviews”. A number of vendors like Amazon have created whole ecosystems around user reviews, thereby boosting their revenues. However, extracting the relevant and useful information out of the plethora of reviews is not straight forward, and is a very tedious job. In this paper we propose a product ranking system that facilitates the online shopping experience by analyzing the reviews for sentiments, evaluating their usefulness, extracting and weighing different product features and aspects, ranking it among similar comparable products, and finally creating a unified rank for each product. Experiment results show the usefulness of our proposed approach in providing an effective and reliable online shopping experience in comparison with similar approaches.

Intelligent semantic question answering system

The volume of information available on the World Wide Web and the rate of its growth requires new techniques to handle and organize this data. Ontologies are becoming the pivotal methodology to represent domain-specific conceptual knowledge and hence help in providing solutions for Question Answering (QA) systems. This paper introduces an approach for enhancing the capabilities of QA systems using semantic technologies. We implemented an approach to convert the natural language user queries to Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples and find relevant answers. The experiment results show that the proposed technique works very well for single word answers. We believe that with some modifications this approach can be expanded to a wider scale.

A Web Service Negotiation Management and QoS Dependency Modeling Framework

Information Management Systems that outsource part of the functionality to other (likely unknown) services need an effective way to communicate with these services, so that a mutually beneficial solution can be generated. This includes bargaining for their optimal customizations and the discovery of overlooked potential solutions. In this article, we present an automated negotiation framework for information systems (denoted as WebNeg) that can be used by both the parties for conducting negotiations. WebNeg uses a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based approach for finding acceptable solutions in multiparty and multiobjective scenarios. The GA is enhanced using a new operator called Norm, which represents the cumulative knowledge of all the parties involved in the negotiation process. Norm incorporates the dependencies of different quality attributes of independently developed component services for the system composition. This enables WebNeg to find a better solution in the context of the current requirements. Experiment results indicate the applicability and improved performance of WebNeg (in comparison with existing similar works) in facilitating the negotiation management involved in a web service-based information composition process.

SNRNeg: A social network enabled negotiation service

Abstract In recent years, the number of services and applications on the World Wide Web has increased exponentially. Consequently, a plethora of services providing similar functionalities are now available, which often poses a challenge for the users in terms of quality-based selection of their required services. Interaction with unknown services raises the issue of trust. Moreover, the service deliverables have to be negotiated and agreed upon, before any exchange can start. In this paper, we present a social network based trust framework (SNRNeg) that facilitates the negotiation of quality of service components. We extract recommendations from the social network (using the trust relationships between different nodes), and incorporate it into a decision model; which is used for negotiating the component Web service(s) of a composite system in an automated manner. Experiment results indicate the applicability and performance of SNRNeg in improving the negotiations for service composition process.

Automated Negotiation Using Semantic Rules

With the extensive adaptation of Web service based applications in dynamic businesses applications including on demand computing, highly configurable virtual solutions and cloud computing based systems demand automated tools for composing and managing these services in composite systems. The use of standard protocols for publishing, discovery, invocation, process definition and SLA definition etc. (e.g. UDDI, WSDL, SOAP, BPEL, WS-Agreement, WS-Policy) has made it possible to compose highly usable composite systems with minimal efforts. On the other hand the existence of a number of functionally equivalent service provide the system designers with the flexibility of choosing the most appropriate services for the system. Hence, automated negotiation among Web services provides an effective way for the services to bargain for their optimal customizations and allow the discovery of overlooked potential solutions. In this paper, we present a Web service negotiation framework that would be used by both the customer and providers of Web services for conducting automated negotiations for quality of service properties of Web services. Our proposed framework is highly flexible, protocol independent and supports participant polices for communication, negotiation and service level agreement creation. We further extend our approach by extending WS-Negotiation and WS-Renegotiation to model multi-round negotiation for multiple attributes of negotiated services in a multi-service and multi-party negotiation scenarios. We also describe a semantic web rules based approach for converting compatible participant policies for mutual comprehension of Web service. We describe in detail the process of negotiating service level agreements using the semantic web rules based approach.

ConceptOnto: An upper ontology based on ConceptNet

The exponential growth of information has prompted the introduction of new technologies such as Semantic Web and Common Sense knowledge bases. To connect the different knowledge presentations together is a primary requirement, and ontologies are central we need for this transformation. In this paper we introduce ConceptOnto which is an ontology based on the ConceptNet knowledge base with extension of some of the other properties in some of the more acclaimed upper ontologies. Our goal in the creation of ConceptOnto is readability for humans, and maximizing the functionality while saving the generality of the ontology.

ConceptRDF: An RDF presentation of ConceptNet knowledge base

The exponential growth of information on the Web has prompted the introduction of new technologies such as Semantic Web and Common Sense knowledge bases. While there are different models available to present information, RDF, as the cornerstone of Semantic Web technologies, has a dominant place for formats suitable both for human interactions and machine understanding. In this paper we present ConceptRDF, a conversion of ConceptNet, as one of the largest common sense knowledge bases available for public use, to RDF/XML format, suitable for use in different fields of information retrieval.

A Framework for Automated Service Negotiation

Web services composition enables the business to dynamically and seamlessly integrate business applications on the web. The performance of an overall composition is a function of its individual component services. Hence, both functional and nonfunctional properties of Web services are important when negotiating component service for a system. Automated negotiation helps speed up this process and often improves the overall quality of the composite system. In this paper, we present a negotiation Web service that would be used by both the businesses searching for a Web service as well as the providers of Web services for conducting negotiations for dependent QoS parameters. We present the detailed architecture and system engineering view of our framework and use a genetic algorithm (GA) based approach for finding acceptable solutions in multi-party and multi-objective scenarios. Experimental results indicate the applicability and improved performance of our approach in facilitating the negotiations involved in a Web service composition process.

Dependency modeling in automated web services quality component negotiations

Web services are a popular choice for component oriented systems that support dynamic compositions. Automated negotiation among Web services provides an effective way for the services to bargain for their optimal customizations and allows the discovery of overlooked potential solutions. Unique and dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of service consumers pose challenges for effective approaches of service compositions with multiple QoS parameters. In this paper, we present a negotiation Web service that would be used by both the consumer and provider Web services for conducting negotiations for dependent QoS parameters. We use a genetic algorithm(GA) based approach for finding acceptable solutions in multi-party and multi-objective scenarios. Experimental results indicate the applicability and improved performance or our approach in facilitating the negotiations involved in a Web service composition process.

When does priming justice promote forgiveness? On the importance of distributive and procedural justice for self and others

Abstract Two studies show that thinking about justice can both enhance and impede forgiveness, depending on whether thoughts about distributive and procedural justice for self and others are activated. In Study 1 (n = 197), participants expressed more forgiveness towards a prior transgressor when primed to think about justice for self or procedural justice for others, and less forgiveness when primed to think about distributive justice for others. Study 2 (n = 231) used an alternate priming method and replicated these effects by inducing an interpersonal transgression and measuring forgiveness intentions, emotions and behavior. Study 2 also showed that priming justice influences forgiveness especially when the perceived severity of an interpersonal offense is high. The current research shows that activating justice cognitions can enhance or impinge on forgiveness in predictable ways. We discuss contributions to emerging justice theory, potential implications, and future directions.