@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Using Machine Learning Algorithms for Categorizing Quranic Chaptersby Major Phases of Prophet Mohammad's Messengership},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-66862},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {This paper discusses the categorization of Quranic chapters by major phases of Prophet Mohammad's messengership using machine learning algorithms. First, the chapters were categorized by places of revelation using Support Vector Machine and na{\"i}ve Bayesian classifiers separately, and their results were compared to each other, as well as to the existing traditional Islamic and western orientalists classifications. The chapters were categorized into Meccan (revealed in Mecca) and Medinan (revealed in Medina). After that, chapters of each category were clustered using a kind of fuzzy-single linkage clustering approach, in order to correspond to the major phases of Prophet Mohammad's life. The major phases of the Prophet's life were manually derived from the Quranic text, as well as from the secondary Islamic literature e.g hadiths, exegesis. Previous studies on computing the places of revelation of Quranic chapters relied heavily on features extracted from existing background knowledge of the chapters. For instance, it is known that Meccan chapters contain mostly verses about faith and related problems, while Medinan ones encompass verses dealing with social issues, battles…etc. These features are by themselves insufficient as a basis for assigning the chapters to their respective places of revelation. In fact, there are exceptions, since some chapters do contain both Meccan and Medinan features. In this study, features of each category were automatically created from very few chapters, whose places of revelation have been determined through identification of historical facts and events such as battles, migration to Medina…etc. Chapters having unanimously agreed places of revelation were used as the initial training set, while the remaining chapters formed the testing set. The classification process was made recursive by regularly augmenting the training set with correctly classified chapters, in order to classify the whole testing set. Each chapter was preprocessed by removing unimportant words, stemming, and representation with vector space model. The result of this study shows that, the two classifiers have produced useable results, with an outperformance of the support vector machine classifier. This study indicates that, the proposed methodology yields encouraging results for arranging Quranic chapters by phases of Prophet Mohammad's messengership.},
  subject      = {Koran},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Understanding the Vex Rendering Engine},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-51333},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {The Visual Editor for XML (Vex)[1] used by TextGrid [2]and other applications has got rendering and layout engines. The layout engine is well documented but the rendering engine is not. This lack of documenting the rendering engine has made refactoring and extending the editor hard and tedious. For instance many CSS2.1 and upcoming CSS3 properties have not been implemented. Software developers in different projects such as TextGrid using Vex would like to update its CSS rendering engine in order to provide advanced user interfaces as well as support different document types. In order to minimize the effort of extending Vex functionality, I found it beneficial to write a basic documentation about Vex software architecture in general and its CSS rendering engine in particular. The documentation is mainly based on the idea of architectural layered diagrams. In fact layered diagrams can help developers understand software's source code faster and easier in order to alter it, and fix errors. This paper is written for the purpose of providing direct support for exploration in the comprehension process of Vex source code. It discusses Vex software architecture. The organization of packages that make up the software, the architecture of its CSS rendering engine, an algorithm explaining the working principle of its rendering engine are described.},
  subject      = {Cascading Style Sheets},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2012,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Towards a Knowledge-Based Learning System for The Quranic Text},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-70003},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {In this research, an attempt to create a knowledge-based learning system for the Quranic text has been performed. The knowledge base is made up of the Quranic text along with detailed information about each chapter and verse, and some rules. The system offers the possibility to study the Quran through web-based interfaces, implementing novel visualization techniques for browsing, querying, consulting, and testing the acquired knowledge. Additionally the system possesses knowledge acquisition facilities for maintaining the knowledge base.},
  subject      = {Wissensbanksystem},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Reference Architecture, Design of Cascading Style Sheets Processing Model},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-51328},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {The technique of using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to format and present structured data is called CSS processing model. For instance a CSS processing model for XML documents describes steps involved in formatting and presenting XML documents on screens or papers. Many software applications such as browsers and XML editors have their own CSS processing models which are part of their rendering engines. For instance each browser based on its CSS processing model renders CSS layout differently, as a result an inconsistency in the support of CSS features arises. Some browsers support more CSS features than others, and the rendering itself varies. Moreover the W3C standards are not even adhered by some browsers such as Internet Explorer. Test suites and other hacks and filters cannot definitely solve these problems, because these solutions are temporary and fragile. To palliate this inconsistency and browser compatibility issues with respect to CSS, a reference CSS processing model is needed. By extension it could even allow interoperability across CSS rendering engines. A reference architecture would provide common software architecture and interfaces, and facilitate refactoring, reuse, and automated unit testing. In [2] a reference architecture for browsers has been proposed. However this reference architecture is a macro reference model which does not consider separately individual components of rendering and layout engines. In this paper an attempt to develop a reference architecture for CSS processing models is discussed. In addition the Vex editor [3] rendering and layout engines, as well as an extended version of the editor used in TextGrid project [5] are also presented in order to validate the proposed reference architecture.},
  subject      = {Cascading Style Sheets},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Philosophical and Computational Approaches for Estimating and Visualizing Months of Revelations of Quranic Chapters},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65784},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {The question of why the Quran structure does not follow its chronology of revelation is a recurring one. Some Islamic scholars such as [1] have answered the question using hadiths, as well as other philosophical reasons based on internal evidences of the Quran itself. Unfortunately till today many are still wondering about this issue. Muslims believe that the Quran is a summary and a copy of the content of a preserved tablet called Lawhul-Mahfuz located in the heaven. Logically speaking, this suggests that the arrangement of the verses and chapters is expected to be similar to that of the Lawhul-Mahfuz. As for the arrangement of the verses in each chapter, there is unanimity that it was carried out by the Prophet himself under the guidance of Angel Gabriel with the recommendation of God. But concerning the ordering of the chapters, there are reports about some divergences [3] among the Prophet's companions as to which chapter should precede which one. This paper argues that Quranic chapters might have been arranged according to months and seasons of revelation. In fact, based on some verses of the Quran, it is defendable that the Lawhul-Mahfuz itself is understood to have been structured in terms of the months of the year. In this study, philosophical and mathematical arguments for computing chapters' months of revelation are discussed, and the result is displayed on an interactive scatter plot.},
  subject      = {Text Mining},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Markup overlap: Improving Fragmentation Method},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-49084},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Overlapping is a common word used to describe documents whose structural dimensions cannot be adequately represented using tree structure. For instance a quotation that starts in one verse and ends in another verse. The problem of overlapping hierarchies is a recurring one, which has been addressed by a variety of approaches. There are XML based solutions as well as Non-XML ones. The XML-based solutions are: multiple documents, empty elements, fragmentation, out-of-line markup, JITT and BUVH. And the Non-XML approaches comprise CONCUR/XCONCUR, MECS, LMNL ...etc. This paper presents shortly state-of-the-art in overlapping hierarchies, and introduces two variations on the TEI fragmentation markup that have several advantages.},
  subject      = {XML},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Java Web Frameworks Which One to Choose?},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-49407},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {This article discusses web frameworks that are available to a software developer in Java language. It introduces MVC paradigm and some frameworks that implement it. The article presents an overview of Struts, Spring MVC, JSF Frameworks, as well as guidelines for selecting one of them as development environment.},
  subject      = {Java Frameworks},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Empirical Study on Screen Scraping Web Service Creation: Case of Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV)},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-49396},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Internet is the biggest database that science and technology have ever produced. The world wide web is a large repository of information that cannot be used for automation by many applications due to its limited target audience. One of the solutions to the automation problem is to develop wrappers. Wrapping is a process whereby unstructured extracted information is transformed into a more structured one such as XML, which could be provided as webservice to other applications. A web service is a web page whose content is well structured so that a computer program can consume it automatically. This paper describes steps involved in constructing wrappers manually in order to automatically generate web services.},
  subject      = {HTML},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2010,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Doing Webservices Composition by Content-based Mashup: Example of a Web-based Simulator for Itinerary Planning},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-50036},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Webservices composition is traditionally carried out using composition technologies such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) [1] and Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) [2]. The composition technology involves the process of web service discovery, invocation, and composition. However these technologies are not easy and flexible enough because they are mainly developer-centric. Moreover majority of websites have not yet embarked into the world of web service, although they have very important and useful information to offer. Is it because they have not understood the usefulness of web services or is it because of the costs? Whatever might be the answers to these questions, time and money are definitely required in order to create and offer web services. To avoid these expenditures, wrappers [7] to automatically generate webservices from websites would be a cheaper and easier solution. Mashups offer a different way of doing webservices composition. In web environment a Mashup is a web application that brings together data from several sources using webservices, APIs, wrappers and so on, in order to create entirely a new application that was not provided before. This paper presents first an overview of Mashups and the process of web service invocation and composition based on Mashup, then describes an example of a web-based simulator for navigation system in Germany.},
  subject      = {Mashup <Internet>},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Design and Implementation of Architectures for Interactive Textual Documents Collation Systems},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-56601},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {One of the main purposes of textual documents collation is to identify a base text or closest witness to the base text, by analyzing and interpreting differences also known as types of changes that might exist between those documents. Based on this fact, it is reasonable to argue that, explicit identification of types of changes such as deletions, additions, transpositions, and mutations should be part of the collation process. The identification could be carried out by an interpretation module after alignment has taken place. Unfortunately existing collation software such as CollateX1 and Juxta2's collation engine do not have interpretation modules. In fact they implement the Gothenburg model [1] for collation process which does not include an interpretation unit. Currently both CollateX and Juxta's collation engine do not distinguish in their critical apparatus between the types of changes, and do not offer statistics about those changes. This paper presents a model for both integrated and distributed collation processes that improves the Gothenburg model. The model introduces an interpretation component for computing and distinguishing between the types of changes that documents could have undergone. Moreover two architectures implementing the model in order to solve the problem of interactive collation are discussed as well. Each architecture uses CollateX library, and provides on the one hand preprocessing functions for transforming input documents into CollateX input format, and on the other hand a post-processing module for enabling interactive collation. Finally simple algorithms for distinguishing between types of changes, and linking collated source documents with the collation results are also introduced.},
  subject      = {Softwarearchitektur},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Design and Implementation of a Model-driven XML-based Integrated System Architecture for Assisting Analysis, Understanding, and Retention of Religious Texts:The Case of The Quran},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65737},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Learning a book in general involves reading it, underlining important words, adding comments, summarizing some passages, and marking up some text or concepts. Once deeper understanding is achieved, one would like to organize and manage her/his knowledge in such a way that, it could be easily remembered and efficiently transmitted to others. This paper discusses about modeling religious texts using semantic XML markup based on frame-based knowledge representation, with the purpose of assisting understanding, retention, and sharing of knowledge they contain. In this study, books organized in terms of chapters made up of verses are considered as the source of knowledge to model. Some metadata representing the multiple perspectives of knowledge modeling are assigned to each chapter and verse. Chapters and verses with their metadata form a meta-model, which is represented using frames, and published on a web mashup. An XML-based annotation and visualization system equipped with user interfaces for creating static and dynamic metadata, annotating chapters' contents according to user selected semantics, and templates for publishing generated knowledge on the Internet, has been developed. The system has been applied to the Quran, and the result obtained shows that multiple perspectives of information modeling can be successfully applied to religious texts, in order to support analysis, understanding, and retention of the texts.},
  subject      = {Wissensrepr{\"a}sentation},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Computing Generic Causes of Revelation of the Quranic Verses Using Machine Learning Techniques},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-66083},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Because many verses of the holy Quran are similar, there is high probability that, similar verses addressing same issues share same generic causes of revelation. In this study, machine learning techniques have been employed in order to automatically derive causes of revelation of Quranic verses. The derivation of the causes of revelation is viewed as a classification problem. Initially the categories are based on the verses with known causes of revelation, and the testing set consists of the remaining verses. Based on a computed threshold value, a na{\"i}ve Bayesian classifier is used to categorize some verses. After that, using a decision tree classifier the remaining uncategorized verses are separated into verses that contain indicators (resultative connectors, causative expressions…), and those that do not. As for those verses having indicators, each one is segmented into its constituent clauses by identification of the linking indicators. Then a dominant clause is extracted and considered either as the cause of revelation, or post-processed by adding or subtracting some terms to form a causal clause that constitutes the cause of revelation. Concerning remaining unclassified verses without indicators, a naive Bayesian classifier is again used to assign each one of them to one of the existing classes based on features and topics similarity. As for verses that could not be classified so far, manual classification was made by considering each verse as a category on its own. The result obtained in this study is encouraging, and shows that automatic derivation of Quranic verses' generic causes of revelation is achievable, and reasonably reliable for understanding and implementing the teachings of the Quran.},
  subject      = {Text Mining},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Computer-based Textual Documents Collation System for Reconstructing the Original Text from Automatically Identified Base Text and Ranked Witnesses},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65749},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Given a collection of diverging documents about some lost original text, any person interested in the text would try reconstructing it from the diverging documents. Whether it is eclecticism, stemmatics, or copy-text, one is expected to explicitly or indirectly select one of the documents as a starting point or as a base text, which could be emended through comparison with remaining documents, so that a text that could be designated as the original document is generated. Unfortunately the process of giving priority to one of the documents also known as witnesses is a subjective approach. In fact even Cladistics, which could be considered as a computer-based approach of implementing stemmatics, does not present or recommend users to select a certain witness as a starting point for the process of reconstructing the original document. In this study, a computational method using a rule-based Bayesian classifier is used, to assist text scholars in their attempts of reconstructing a non-existing document from some available witnesses. The method developed in this study consists of selecting a base text successively and collating it with remaining documents. Each completed collation cycle stores the selected base text and its closest witness, along with a weighted score of their similarities and differences. At the end of the collation process, a witness selected more often by majority of base texts is considered as the probable base text of the collection. Witnesses' scores are weighted using a weighting system, based on effects of types of textual modifications on the process of reconstructing original documents. Users have the possibility to select between baseless and base text collation. If a base text is selected, the task is reduced to ranking the witnesses with respect to the base text, otherwise a base text as well as ranking of the witnesses with respect to the base text are computed and displayed on a bar diagram. Additionally this study includes a recursive algorithm for automatically reconstructing the original text from the identified base text and ranked witnesses.},
  subject      = {Textvergleich},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Assisting Understanding, Retention, and Dissemination of Religious Texts Knowledge with Modeling, and Visualization Techniques: The Case of The Quran},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-55927},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Learning a book in general involves reading it, underlining important words, adding comments, summarizing some passages, and marking up some text or concepts. Once deeper understanding is achieved, one would like to organize and manage her/his knowledge in such a way that, it could be easily remembered and efficiently transmitted to others. In this paper, books organized in terms of chapters consisting of verses, are considered as the source of knowledge to be modeled. The knowledge model consists of verses with their metadata and semantic annotations. The metadata represent the multiple perspectives of knowledge modeling. Verses with their metadata and annotations form a meta-model, which will be published on a web Mashup. The meta-model with linking between its elements constitute a knowledge base. An XML-based annotation system breaking down the learning process into specific tasks, helps constructing the desired meta-model. The system is made up of user interfaces for creating metadata, annotating chapters' contents according to user selected semantics, and templates for publishing the generated knowledge on the Internet. The proposed software system improves comprehension and retention of knowledge contained in religious texts through modeling and visualization. The system has been applied to the Quran, and the result obtained shows that multiple perspectives of information modeling can be successfully applied to religious texts. It is expected that this short ongoing study would motivate others to engage in devising and offering software systems for cross-religions learning.},
  subject      = {Wissensmanagement},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {Assisting Analysis and Understanding of Quran Search Results with Interactive Scatter Plots and Tables},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-55840},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {The Quran is the holy book of Islam consisting of 6236 verses divided into 114 chapters called suras. Many verses are similar and even identical. Searching for similar texts (e.g verses) could return thousands of verses, that when displayed completely or partly as textual list would make analysis and understanding difficult and confusing. Moreover it would be visually impossible to instantly figure out the overall distribution of the retrieved verses in the Quran. As consequence reading and analyzing the verses would be tedious and unintuitive. In this study a combination of interactive scatter plots and tables has been developed to assist analysis and understanding of the search result. Retrieved verses are clustered by chapters, and a weight is assigned to each cluster according to number of verses it contains, so that users could visually identify most relevant areas, and figure out the places of revelation of the verses. Users visualize the complete result and can select a region of the plot to zoom in, click on a marker to display a table containing verses with English translation side by side.},
  subject      = {Text Mining},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {A Rule-based Statistical Classifier for Determining a Base Text and Ranking Witnesses In Textual Documents Collation Process},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-57465},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Given a collection of diverging documents about some lost original text, any person interested in the text would try reconstructing it from the diverging documents. Whether it is eclecticism, stemmatics, or copy-text, one is expected to explicitly or indirectly select one of the documents as a starting point or as a base text, which could be emended through comparison with remaining documents, so that a text that could be designated as the original document is generated. Unfortunately the process of giving priority to one of the documents also known as witnesses is a subjective approach. In fact even Cladistics, which could be considered as a computer-based approach of implementing stemmatics, does not present or recommend users to select a certain witness as a starting point for the process of reconstructing the original document. In this study, a computational method using a rule-based Bayesian classifier is used, to assist text scholars in their attempts of reconstructing a non-existing document from some available witnesses. The method developed in this study consists of selecting a base text successively and collating it with remaining documents. Each completed collation cycle stores the selected base text and its closest witness, along with a weighted score of their similarities and differences. At the end of the collation process, a witness selected more often by majority of base texts is considered as the probable base text of the collection. Witnesses' scores are weighted using a weighting system, based on effects of types of textual modifications on the process of reconstructing original documents. Users have the possibility to select between baseless and base text collation. If a base text is selected, the task is reduced to ranking the witnesses with respect to the base text, otherwise a base text as well as ranking of the witnesses with respect to the base text are computed and displayed on a histogram.},
  subject      = {Textvergleich},
  language  = {en}
}
@unpublished{Nassourou2011,
  author    = {Nassourou, Mohamadou},
  title     = {A Knowledge-based Hybrid Statistical Classifier for Reconstructing the Chronology of the Quran},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-54712},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Computationally categorizing Quran's chapters has been mainly confined to the determination of chapters' revelation places. However this broad classification is not sufficient to effectively and thoroughly understand and interpret the Quran. The chronology of revelation would not only improve comprehending the philosophy of Islam, but also the easiness of implementing and memorizing its laws and recommendations. This paper attempts estimating possible chapters' dates of revelation through their lexical frequency profiles. A hybrid statistical classifier consisting of stemming and clustering algorithms for comparing lexical frequency profiles of chapters, and deriving dates of revelation has been developed. The classifier is trained using some chapters with known dates of revelation. Then it classifies chapters with uncertain dates of revelation by computing their proximity to the training ones. The results reported here indicate that the proposed methodology yields usable results in estimating dates of revelation of the Quran's chapters based on their lexical contents.},
  subject      = {Text Mining},
  language  = {en}
}