Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is Noesis?
A. Noesis is an ontology driven meta search engine for Coastal and Marine Science resources like web-pages, data and publications.

Q. How do I use the ontology to refine the search query?
A. The search query is broken down to identify concepts that are defined in the Noesis ontologies. Noesis presents the user with the associated terms on the left side of the page as shown in Fig. 1 and 2. You can use these terms to append to your search query or use the new term as a new search query. Selecting the check box next to the term appends it to the query and clicking on the term starts a new search with the term clicked as the query. The following classes of associated terms are presented to the user.

• Specializations: For eg: Search Term -'Cyclone'
  specializations: 'Hurricane', 'Typhoon'
• Generalizations: For eg: Search Term -'Storm Surge'
  Generalization: 'Flooding'
• Synonyms: For eg: Search Term -'Coastal Wetland'
  synonym : 'Marine Wetland'
• Related Terms: For eg: Search Term -'Sea Grass'
  Related terms: 'Algal Blooms' etc.

Q. How do I browse the concepts described in the hierarchy?
A. On the left side of the results page, you will see the "Refine Search" category (Fig. 1, 2). The search term's direct parents and siblings are shown in a tree structure. Similarly, Related terms and Synonyms are also listed out under the Refine search category. Clicking on any of these terms will make it the search term and you will see all concepts associated with it.

Q. How do I filter results from different resources?
A. The resources found are aggregated into categories (Fig. 3). These are listed on the right side of the page. Each source is listed with a checkbox. selecting this checkbox lists the results from the corresponding source. To leave out results from a source, keep this box unchecked.

Q. How do I add terms (like name of authors) to the search query that are not defined in the ontology?
A. On the left bottom corner of the page, a text box is provided to add additional terms to search query.

Q. Do you intend to add more places to search for Noesis?
A. Yes, we keep adding them. If you would like to suggest a new resource, please contact ramachan@itsc.uah.edu.

Q. Can Noesis be used for other domains?
A. Noesis is specialized for Coastal and Marine Science domain. It can be customized for other domains too. Please contact ramachan@itsc.uah.edu for further details.