bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Pulmonary Diffusion, Ventilation-Perfusion Ratio and Arterial Oxygen Homeostasis
Authors: Hsia Connie C.W.
Published: February 2025

The lung derives from two distinct embryonic origins, has two separate circulations, undergoes extensive branching morphogenesis, experiences the highest blood flow and the largest continuous distortion among organs due to wide fluctuations in ventilation, perfusion and mechanical stresses. The inflated lung volume consists of about 85% air and 15% cells, fibers, matrix and blood. Both gravitation-dependent and -independent gradients contribute to spatial heterogeneity in structure and function. Dynamic factors such as surface folding, the surfactant layer, and capillary erythrocytes distribution greatly influence the physical properties of the organ. These unique features pose challenges for the optimization of lung function in health and disease. Oxygen uptake across the lung begins with O2flow into the lungs via negative pressure generated by diaphragm contraction, followed by convective distribution among airways, diffusive distribution within intra-acinar air spaces and across the blood-gas barrier, diffusion across plasma and capillary erythrocyte membrane and finally chemical reaction with hemoglobin. Efficiency of O2transfer depends on appropriate matching between diffusion interfaces, allosteric interaction with hemoglobin, and regulation of hematological volumes and flow. This chapter briefly reviews: 1. Structural determinants of gas exchange. 2. Physiological determinants of gas exchange, including distributive and diffusive factors, the methods of measurement and interpretation of results. 3. Arterial oxygen homeostasis, including optimization of alveolar-arterial O2tension gradient during exercise via regulation of hematological volumes and allosteric control of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve.
Thailand National ICT Plan and Human Resource Development
Authors: Sunalai Angsumal
Published: February 2025

This paper explains the National ICT Plans of the Government of Thailand. In particular it looks at human resource development of IT workers. It concludes by highlighting the importance of the International Academy of the CIO.
Local e-Governance in the Philippines
Authors: Magno Francisco A.
Published: February 2025

This paper assesses the contributions of ICT to local governance in the Philippines. The author examines the enabling policy environment; then surveys various local governance applications and concludes presenting the case of Naga City as a best practice as a local e-governance the country.
ICT Enhancing Learning Across Societies
Authors: Matsuura Koichiro
Published: February 2025

This is a transcript of a speech given at the International Academy of CIO Conference at Waseda University in 2008, Tokyo, Japan. The speech promotes the use of ICT for learning.
Future Directions for e-Government and e-Municipality in Japan – Panel Discussion
Authors: Obi Toshio  , Sudoh Osamu  , Kokuryo Jiro  , Ohyama Nagaaki
Published: February 2025

One of the panel discussions of the 2009 Tokyo International Academy of CIO Conference was related to the future of e-Government and e-Municipality in Japan. Here, panelists from both academia and the government express their points of view on how to improve Japanese e-government at the central and local level.
The Innovative CIO for e-Governance
Authors: Obi Toshio  , Iwasaki Naoko
Published: February 2025

In this paper, the author analyzes the role functions and core competencies of the Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) as a key player within the Japanese IT Reform Strategy, related to e-governance.
The Roles of the Chief Information Officer
Authors: Thajchayapong Pairash  , Koanantakool Thaweesak
Published: February 2025

This paper describes the changing role of the Chief Information Officer in the private and public sector. In either case, CIOs are required to be more innovative and service oriented. The author also gives some examples of effective CIO leadership in Thailand. The paper ends by highlighting the importance of the International Academy of CIO in providing training for CIOs.
On the Representation of Quantities and their Parts in Conceptual Modeling
Authors: Guizzardi Giancarlo
Published: February 2025

In a series of publications, we have employed ontological theories and principles used to evaluate and improve the quality of conceptual modeling grammars and models. In this article, we continue this work by providing an ontological interpretation and sound modeling guidelines for a traditionally neglected notion in the conceptual modeling literature, namely, the representation of types whose instances are quantities (amounts of matter, masses). Here, we analyze different alternatives for the adequate representation of quantities as well as their parts in conceptual models. Moreover, we advance a number of metamodeling constraints that can be incorporated in a UML 2.0 metamodel extension, thus, allowing for the suitable representation of these notions.
Ontological Lessons from the Semantics of Mass and Count Nouns
Authors: Pelletier Francis Jeffry
Published: February 2025

Mass terms are those such as ‘water’, ‘computer software’, ‘advice’, and ‘knowledge’. They are contrasted with count terms such as ‘person’, ‘computer program’, ‘suggestion’, and ‘belief’. Intuitively, mass terms refer to “stuff” while count terms refer to “objects”. Since mass terms refer to stuff, they (but not count terms) allow for measurement: ‘a liter of water’, ‘three CDs worth of computer software’, ‘too much advice’, ‘many books worth of deep knowledge’. Since count terms refer to objects, they (but not mass terms) allow for counting, quantifying and individuating: ‘a person’, ‘three computer programs’, ‘each suggestion’, ‘that belief of his’.
Ontology-Driven Imagery Analysis
Authors: Self Troy  , Kolas Dave  , Dean Mike
Published: February 2025

This paper presents a new paradigm for imagery analysis where imagery is annotated using terms defined in ontologies, enabling more powerful querying and exploitation of the analysis results. The ontology terms represent the concepts and relationships necessary to effectively describe the objects and activities within a domain of interest. A platform for viewing and editing imagery annotations is described along with a specialized semantic knowledge base capable of efficiently querying the information using semantic, spatial, and temporal qualifiers. The ontologies used for representing the annotations and domain of interest are also described.
Vectorial Pattern Databases
Authors: Linares López Carlos
Published: February 2025

In this work, a new approach for creating Pattern Databases (PDBs) is suggested that induces non-consistent heuristic functions just by recognizing feasible (yet admissible) heuristic values. This approach serves to generalize even further the BPMX propagation rule, that will work now even in directed graphs. Experiments in different state spaces show a noticeable improvement over the Scalar Pattern Databases.
Implementing Simple Modular ERDF ontologies
Authors: Damásio Carlos Viegas  , Analyti Anastasia  , Antoniou Grigoris
Published: February 2025

The Extended Resource Description Framework has been proposed to equip RDF graphs with weak and strong negation, as well as derivation rules, increasing the expressiveness of ordinary RDF graphs. In parallel, the Modular Web framework enables collaborative and controlled reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this paper we show how to use the Modular Web Framework to capture the modular semantics for ERDF graphs, supporting local semantics and different points of view, local closed-world and open-world assumptions, and scoped negation-as-failure.
Bagged Biclustering for Microarray Data
Authors: Hanczar Blaise  , Nadif Mohamed
Published: February 2025

One of the major tools of transcriptomics is the biclustering that simultaneously constructs a partition of both examples and genes. Several methods have been proposed for microarray data analysis that enables to identify groups of genes with similar expression profiles only under a subset of examples. We propose to improve the quality of these biclustering methods by using an ensemble approach. Our bagged biclustering method generates a collection of biclusters using the bootstrap samples of the original data and aggregate them into new biclusters. Our method improve the performance of biclustering on artificial and real datasets.
Extending Clause Learning DPLL with Parity Reasoning
Authors: Laitinen Tero  , Junttila Tommi  , Niemelä Ilkka
Published: February 2025

We consider a combined satisfiability problem where an instance is given in two parts: a set of traditional clauses extended with a set of parity (xor) constraints. To solve such problems without translation to CNF, we develop a parity constraint reasoning method that can be integrated to a clause learning solver. The idea is to devise a module that offers a decision procedure and implied literal detection for parity constraints and also provides clausal explanations for implied literals and conflicts. We have implemented the method and integrated it to a state-of-the-art clause learning solver. The resulting system is experimentally evaluated and compared to state-of-the-art solvers.
An Equilibrium Analysis of Competing Double Auction Marketplaces Using Fictitious Play
Authors: Shi Bing  , Gerding Enrico H.  , Vytelingum Perukrishnen  , Jennings Nicholas R.
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we analyse how traders select marketplaces and bid in a setting with multiple competing marketplaces. Specifically, we use a fictitious play algorithm to analyse the traders' equilibrium strategies for market selection and bidding when their types are continuous. To achieve this, we first analyse traders' equilibrium bidding strategies in a single marketplace and find that they shade their offers in equilibrium and the degree to which they do this depends on the amount and types of fees that are charged by the marketplace. Building on this, we then analyse equilibrium strategies for traders in competing marketplaces in two particular cases. In the first, we assume that traders can only select one marketplace at a time. For this, we show that, in equilibrium, all traders who choose one of the marketplaces eventually converge to the same one. In the second case, we allow buyers to participate in multiple marketplaces at a time, while sellers can only select one marketplace. For this, we show that sellers eventually distribute in different marketplaces in equilibrium and that buyers shade less and sellers shade more in the equilibrium bidding strategy (since sellers have more market power than buyers).
BnB-ADOPT
Authors: Gutierrez Patricia  , Meseguer Pedro
Published: February 2025

Distributed constraint optimization problems can be solved by BnB-ADOPT+, a distributed asynchronous search algorithm. In the centralized case, local consistency techniques applied to constraint optimization have been shown very beneficial to increase performance. In this paper, we combine BnB-ADOPT+with different levels of soft arc consistency, propagating unconditional deletions caused by either the enforced local consistency or by distributed search. The new algorithm maintains BnB-ADOPT+optimality and termination. In practice, this approach decreases substantially BnB-ADOPT+requirements in communication cost and computation effort when solving commonly used benchmarks.
Linear Logic for Non-Linear Storytelling
Authors: Bosser Anne-Gwenn  , Cavazza Marc  , Champagnat Ronan
Published: February 2025

Whilst narrative representations have played a prominent role in AI research, there has been a renewed interest in the topic with the development of interactive narratives. A typical approach aims at generating narratives from baseline action representations, most often using planning techniques. However, this research has developed empirically, often as an application of planning. In this paper, we explore a more rigorous formalisation of narrative concepts, both at the action level and at the plot level. Our aim is to investigate how to bridge the gap between action descriptions and narrative concepts, by considering the latter from the perspective of resource consumption and causality. We propose to use Linear Logic, often introduced as a logic of resources, for it provides, through linear implication, a better description of causality than in Classical and Intuitionistic Logic. Besides advances in the fundamental principles of narrative formalisation, this approach can support the formal validation of scenario description as a preliminary step to their implementation via other computational formalisms.
LTL Goal Specifications Revisited
Authors: Bauer Andreas  , Haslum Patrik
Published: February 2025

The language of linear temporal logic (LTL) has been proposed as a formalism for specifying temporally extended goals and search control constraints in planning. However, the semantics of LTL is defined wrt. infinite state sequences, while a finite plan generates only a finite trace. This necessitates the use of a finite trace semantics for LTL. A common approach is to evaluate LTL formulae on an infinite extension of the finite trace, obtained by infinitely repeating the last state. We study several aspects of this finite LTL se mantics: we show its satisfiability problem is PSpace-complete (same as normal LTL), show that it complies with all equivalence laws that hold under standard (infinite) LTL semantics, and compare it with other finite trace semantics for LTL proposed in planning and in runtime verification. We also examine different mechanisms for determining whether or not a finite trace satisfies or violates an LTL formula, interpreted using the infinite extension semantics.
Acceptability semantics accounting for strength of attacks in argumentation
Authors: Claudette Cayrol  , Caroline Devred  , Marie-Christine Lagasquie-Schiex
Published: February 2025

We consider argumentation systems with several attack relations of different strength. We focus on the impact of various strength attacks on the semantics of such systems. First, we refine the classical notion of defence, by comparing the strength of an attack with the strength of a counter-attack. Then, we propose different ways to compare defenders, and sets of defenders. That enables us to define admissible sets offering a best defence for their elements.
An Algorithm for Stage Semantics
Authors: Caminada Martin
Published: February 2025

In the current paper, we re-examine the concept of stage semantics, which is one of the oldest semantics for abstract argumentation. Using a formal treatment of its properties, we explain how the intuition behind stage semantics differs from the intuition behind the admissibility based semantics that most scholars in argumentation theory are familiar with. We then provide a labelling-based algorithm for computing all stage extensions, based on earlier algorithms for computing all preferred, stable and semi-stable extensions.
Hidden gap in agile methods adoption
Authors: Šochová Zuzana
Published: February 2025

The paper extends a research on agile adoption process done by the author as a dissertation thesis [1]. It investigates the success and failures of agile adoption process and offers directions on how to improve the agile adoption in different environments. Furthermore the paper suggests how to start the agile adoption process, providing a guideline defining which questions should be answered and which areas should be understood before the organization may start the adoption process. As an extension of this area, the paper investigates an agile maturity, helping organization in the iterative process improving effort. Additionally, having an appropriate company culture was identified as the most important aspect during the agile adoption process. But however, this implies the change ability and acceptance for most of the organizations. In addition to that, the paper summarizes a soft guideline on how to adopt agile methods, and defines two new frameworks on how to start adoption process and how to improve it during the adoption iteration cycle.
Development of a Commercial Product Including Software
Authors: Koono Zenya  , Chen Hui
Published: February 2025

Current software engineering assumes that software is developed to meet the requirements of clients. Apart for this business model, there has been another and more universal business model. Namely, a person or a company develops their own commercial product/service of pure software or combined software and hardware, delivers it to a free and competing market and receives the revenue. Major systems vendors, big software vendors and embedded system vendors have been working with this business model. This paper explains the activities in the creation phase of the product or service, management requirements and development work in the new business model.
Adaptive Automatic Mark-up Tool for Legacy Dictionaries
Authors: Pretkalniņa Lauma  , Millere Ilze
Published: February 2025

This paper considers the problem of developing a trainable software tool for automatic structural mark-up of legacy dictionaries that have been digitalized in a rich-text format. The proposed method is intended to obtain the accurate structural representation of an entry from its visual formatting, which is assumed to be consistent throughout the dictionary. The obtained XML structures are assured to be valid against the specified DTD [1].
Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language – the Standardised Way
Authors: Rimkutė Erika  , Kovalevskaitė Jolanta  , Melninkaitė Vida  , Utka Andrius  , Vitkutė-Adžgauskienė Daiva
Published: February 2025

The paper presents the development process of the 160m word Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language (CCLL), standardization issues being the focus of current development phase. The paper presents problems and solutions for the process of converting the CCLL from a proprietary format into a standardised one. Challenges in encoding the corpus using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines P5 are addressed, covering document metadata, text structure and morphological annotation levels that are already implemented in CCLL. Future perspectives for corpus development are discussed.
Estonian Emotional Speech Corpus: Culture and Age in Selecting Corpus Testers
Authors: Altrov Rene  , Pajupuu Hille
Published: February 2025

The Estonian Emotional Speech Corpus serves as the acoustic basis for emotional text-to-speech synthesis. Because the Estonian synthesizer is a TTS-synthesizer, we started off by focusing on read texts and the emotions contained in them. The corpus is built on a theoretical model and we are currently at the stage of verifying the components of the model. In the present article we give an overview of the corpus and the principles used in selecting its testers. Some studies show that people who have lived longer in a certain culture can more easily recognize vocal expressions of emotion that are characteristic of the culture without seeing the speaker's facial expressions. We therefore decided not to use people under 30 years of age as testers of emotions in our theoretical model. We used two tests to verify the selection principles for the testers. In the first test, 27 young adults aged under 30 were asked to listen to and identify the emotion (joy, anger, sadness, neutral) of 35 sentences. We then compared the results with those of adults aged over 30. In the second test we asked 32 Latvians listen to the same sentences, and then compared the results with those of Estonians. Our analysis showed that younger and older testers, Estonians and Latvians perceive emotions quite differently. From these test results we can say that the selection principle of corpus testers, using people who are more familiar with Estonian culture, is acceptable.The study was supported by the National Program for Estonian Language Technology and the project SF0050023s09 “Modeling intermodular phenomena in Estonian”.
Cathexis: An Emotional Basis for Human-like Learning
Authors: Sellers Michael
Published: February 2025

This work describes human-like learning in Dynemotion agents. These agents perceive their world through the combined lenses of multi-layered emotion-based concepts (memories), personality traits, and current needs. They learn in a psychologically plausible and computationally tractable fashion that focuses on perceptions that have emotional significance. This method enables concept formation, aggregation, and generalization, and takes into account a working store and long-term memory fading with disuse. Agents may learn from observation, from their own actions, and from what other agents tell them. This leads to a form of reputation and opinion in learning as well as first-hand learning. Another emergent effect of this learning algorithm is that agents learn in ways that make them subject to human-like correlation/causation errors. Dynemotion agents are designed to become socially plausible in personality, emotion, behavior, learning, and relationships with each other and humans, as supported by their emotional and learning systems.
Inferencing in Database Semantics
Authors: Hausser Roland
Published: February 2025

As a computational model of natural language communication, Database SemanticsFor an introduction to DBS see [NLC'06]. For a concise summery see [Hausser 2009a].
Architecture-Driven Modelling Methodologies
Authors: Jaakkola Hannu  , Thalheim Bernhard
Published: February 2025

Classical software development methodologies take architectural issues as granted or pre-determined. They thus neglect the impact decisions for architecture have within the development process. This omission is applicable as long as we are considering monolithic systems. It cannot however been kept whenever we move to distributed systems. Web information systems pay far more attention to users support and thus require sophisticated layout and playout systems. These systems go beyond what has been known for presentation systems.
Soft Sensor based on E-αNETs
Authors: Maniscalco Umberto  , Pilato Giovanni  , Vassallo Giorgio
Published: February 2025

Spatial forecasting of physical environmental parameters like temperature and humidity, can be realized by soft sensors based on neural networks. The paper is focused on the use of an original neural network model named E-αNet to realize a soft sensors system. E-αNet introduces the concept of “automatic learning” of the activation functions, reducing the complexity of the net in terms of number of hidden units and improving the learning capability. A comparison among different architecture models led from statistical and metrological points of view, shows how E-αNet produces interesting results in a real world application (a non invasive monitoring of the conservation state of old monument).
The Cross-Modal and Cross-Cultural Processing of Affective Information
Authors: Esposito Anna  , Riviello Maria Teresa
Published: February 2025

The present work reports on a set of perceptual psychological experiments aimed to portray the underlying meta-structure of affective communication, exploiting a crossmodal database of verbal and non-verbal (gaze, facial expressions, and gestures) American English video clips, for a comparative analysis of the subjective perception of emotional states dynamically presented through the visual and auditory channels, considered either singularly or in combination. The participants to the experiments are 90 Italian and 90 American English subjects. The results reveal that the amount of emotional information conveyed by the audio and visual components separately is much the same as that conveyed through the combined channels, suggesting a nonlinear processing of the emotional information and a cognitive load effect when it arrives from both the channels. In addition, and differently from previous results observed in experiments involving Italian stimuli, both the Italian and the American subjects seem to exploit more the visual than the auditory information, debating the previously suggested “language expertise hypothesis” (see [12, 13]) that favours the identification of emotional expressions in the audio when subjects are asked to label emotional stimuli in their own language because of their expertise in language-specific prosodic and paralinguistic information. It is possible that at the base of the encoding of the emotional information there is a more language specific process that is strictly related to the language and the way suprasegmental information are encoded and expressed in it.
Remarks about Wavelet Analysis in the EEG Artifacts Detection
Authors: Labate Domenico  , La Foresta Fabio  , Inuso Giuseppina  , Morabito Francesco C.
Published: February 2025

Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings are often contaminated by artifacts, i.e. signals that have no-cerebral origin and therefore distort the EEG analysis. In this paper we propose a wavelet analysis useful to detect impulsive artifacts, like spike and eye blink; in particular we use two threshold's methods based on the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and on the stationary wavelet transform (SWT), respectively. Both methods are equivalent in the identification of eye blink artifact, but we find a different behavior in the spikes detection. Using the DWT we observed that the spike detection is decimation-sensitive, in other words the even or odd decimation corrupts the artifact identification step. On the other hand, the translational invariance property of SWT allows to overcome this limitation improving the wavelet analysis for the EEG artifacts detection.
MEED: A Memory-efficient Distance Bounding Protocol with Error Detection
Authors: Xin Wei  , Tang Cong  , Xiong Hu  , Wang Yonggang  , Sun Huiping  , Guan Zhi  , Chen Zhong
Published: February 2025

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems suffer from different security and privacy problems, among which relay attacks are a hot topic recently. A relay attack is a form of man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack where the adversary manipulates the communication by only relaying the verbatim messages between two parties. The main countermeasure against relay attacks is the use of distance bounding protocols measuring the round-trip time between the reader and the tag, more precisely, it uses bit exchanges for a series of rapid challenge-response rounds in RFID systems. In 2005, Hancke and Kuhn first introduced distance bounding protocol into RFID systems, after that, many schemes have been proposed based on this protocol. However, most schemes tend to a more complex design to decrease adversary's success probability. In this paper, we propose a novel distance bounding protocol named MEED, using only 2n bits of memory, which, to our best knowledge, is equal to Hancke and Kuhn's protocol and less than any existing protocols. In addition, by using our protocol, the tag is able to detect adversary's malicious queries. We also make a comparison with typical previous distance bounding protocols in both memory and mafia fraud success probability.
RFID Mutual Authentication Protocols with Universally Composable Security
Authors: Su Chunhua  , Li Yingjiu  , Deng Robert H.
Published: February 2025

Universally Composable (UC) framework is the strongest security notion for designing fully trusted cryptographic protocols, and it is very challenging on applying UC security in the design of RFID mutual authentication protocols. In this paper, we formulate the necessary conditions for achieving UC secure RFID mutual authentication protocols in a fully trusted environment, and indicate the flaws of some existing schemes under UC framework. We define the ideal functionality for RFID mutual authentication and propose the first UC secure RFID mutual authentication protocol based on public key encryption and some trusted third parties which can be modeled as functionalities. We prove the security of our protocol under the strongest adversary model assuming both the tags' and readers' corruptions. Furthermore, we present two (public) key update protocols for the cases of multiple readers: one uses Message Authentication Code (MAC); the other uses trusted certificates in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
On False Authentications for C1G2 Passive RFID Tags
Authors: Chiew Kevin  , Li Yingjiu  , Li Tieyan  , Deng Robert H.
Published: February 2025

Many reader/tag authentication protocols are proposed to effectively authenticate tags and readers. However, we demonstrate with YA-TRAP as an example how false authentications that a legitimate tag could be wrongly rejected by a reader may arise from these protocols when they are applied to C1G2 (class 1 generation 2) passive RFID tags. In this paper, we identify a protocol pattern of which the implementation on C1G2 passive tags leads to false authentications, and further identify three types of the existing protocols that can bring with false authentications due to containing this pattern. Moreover, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for false authentications prevention, and propose a semaphore-based solution which revises the pattern by adding semaphore operations so as to avoid false authentications. Our experiments demonstrate the arising of false authentications and verify the effectiveness of our solution.
Decentralization as a Local Governance Innovation in Thailand
Authors: Nagai Fumio  , Kagoya Kazuhiro
Published: February 2025

This chapter focuses on local governance innovation in Thailand. During the past 15 years, decentralization has been implemented in Thailand. Local government in Thailand is increasingly important in providing public services, not only in civil engineering but in social policies as well. Major functions of Thai local governments and the course of decentralization shall be briefly explained. While structural innovation, such as amalgamation or local cooperation, was unsuccessful, monitoring and giving incentives through ‘local government awards’ by central government are widely used. Awards are given to local governments in areas central agencies think significant and want local governments to pay more attention to. In this chapter, the capability of local governments will be analyzed, by using survey data on Thai local government conducted in 2006. Our findings suggest that people's access to local governments plays a significant part in the capability of local governments.
Innovations in Public Governance in India
Authors: Sharma Sangeeta  , Jhajharia Naresh
Published: February 2025

The system of public governance through progressive strategic planning lays down the mechanism to deliver services to the people. Though an innovative approach is the prerequisite for evolving an effective dynamic system, it is equally important to follow the fundamental normative patterns inherited in societal conventions. The Indian system of governance is one such example where traditionalism is amalgamated with modernism. Thus there are certain legacies which form the basic fabric of governance, but at the same time the government has also introduced highly-advanced practices to keep pace with changing circumstances. This chapter presents an analysis of the main developments in order to understand how the Indian system has evolved.
Recent Innovations in Public Financial Management and Procurement in Asia Pacific
Authors: Wescott Clay G.
Published: February 2025

Asia-Pacific countries have increasingly sought to innovate the way they are governed. The following chapter begins with the question: How have global economic governance regimes affected the development of public governance in the region? It then narrows the focus to public financial management and procurement, looking at how external forces have affected the redesign of governments and governance models. It draws on evidence from recent evaluations of World Bank and other international partner support to understand why governments and their international partners fostered certain types of innovations, including participatory expenditure reviews, use of performance information, accelerated disbursements, cutting costs through tighter central controls, hard budget constraints, medium-term expenditure frameworks, modernized accounting systems, computer-based financial management information systems, contracting out public services, merit-based posting of staff in key positions, and salary top ups. It examines what advances have been made and the challenges faced. It concludes with suggestions for further research.
Learning Multi-Label Predictors under Sparsity Budget
Authors: Naula Pekka  , Pahikkala Tapio  , Airola Antti  , Salakoski Tapio
Published: February 2025

In real-life machine learning applications, there are often costs associated with the features needed in prediction. This is the case for example when deploying learned models in mass produced products, where the manufacturing costs or space limitations may restrict the number of feature extracting sensors that can be included in each device. In such situations, the training process involves a sparsity budget restricting the number of features the learned predictor can use. In this paper, we consider the problem of learning multi-label predictors under a sparsity budget. For this purpose, we consider three different wrapper-based greedy forward selection approaches for constructing sparse multi-label learning models. In our experiments, we show that the method selecting a common set of features shared by multiple tasks by greedily maximizing the prediction performance averaged over all the tasks provides a better prediction performance than the approaches selecting the features separately for each task.
A Language-Acquisition-Based Approach to Grammatical Inference
Authors: Becerra-Bonache Leonor  , Jiménez-López M. Dolores
Published: February 2025

This paper focuses on a subfield of machine learning, the so-called grammatical inference. A a new framework of grammatical inference motivated by the process of acquiring natural language is suggested. The final goal of this research is to improve techniques in machine learning by using as a model natural language acquisition. We claim that the simulation of the process of acquiring a natural language could improve grammatical inference techniques and this improvement could have important implications in the field of human language technologies.
Taming the Zoo of Discrete HMM Subspecies & Some of their Relatives
Authors: Christiansen Henning  , Have Christian Theil  , Lassen Ole Torp  , Petit Matthieu
Published: February 2025

Hidden Markov Models, or HMMs, are a family of probabilistic models used for describing and analyzing sequential phenomena such as written and spoken text, biological sequences and sensor data from monitoring of hospital patients and industrial plants. An inherent characteristic of all HMM subspecies is their control by some sort of probabilistic, finite state machine, but which may differ in the detailed structure and specific sorts of conditional probabilities. In the literature, however, the different HMM subspecies tend to be described as separate kingdoms with their entrails and inference methods defined from scratch in each particular case. Here we suggest a unified characterization using a generic, probabilistic-logic framework and generic inference methods, which also promote experiments with new hybrids and mutations. This may even involve context dependencies that traditionally are considered beyond reach of HMMs.
How the Structure of DNA Molecules Provides Tools for Computation
Authors: Head Tom
Published: February 2025

DNA molecules have several structural features that allow DNA to be used as tools for solving computational problems. Some of these same features of DNA molecules allow them to generate, in the presence of appropriate enzymes, potentially infinite ‘languages’ over the alphabet of paired nucleotides A/T, C/G, G/C and T/A. Fundamental features of DNA are described in detail. Language generation, via ‘splicing systems’, is then described at some length. Then, in three short Sections, computations of solutions of toy instances of classical combinatorial problems are indicated with references given for detailed study. We close with an invitation to investigate the exciting new work in DNA constructions and computations through the web pages of several researchers. These notes were prepared to accompany tutorial talks given at the 1st Intern. Work Confer. on Linguistics, Biology and Computer Science: Interplays in Tarragona, Spain March 14–19, 2011.
Object Store Based Simulation Interworking
Authors: Ritson Carl G.  , Andrews Paul S.  , Sampson Adam T.
Published: February 2025

The CoSMoS project is building generic modelling tools and simulation techniques for complex systems. As part of this project a number of simulations have been developed in many programming languages. This paper describes a framework for interconnecting simulation components written in different programming languages. These simulation components are synchronised and coupled using a shared object space. This approach allows us to combine highly concurrent agent-based simulations written in occam-π, with visualisation and analysis components written in flexible scripting languages such as Python and domain specific languages such as MATLAB.
The Flying Gator: Towards Aerial Robotics in occam-π
Authors: Armstrong Ian  , Pirrone-Brusse Michael  , Smith Anthony  , Jadud Matthew
Published: February 2025

The Flying Gator is an unmanned aerial vehicle developed to support investigations regarding concurrent and parallel control for robotic and embedded systems. During ten weeks in the summer of 2010, we designed, built, and tested an airframe, control electronics, and a concurrent firmware capable of sustaining autonomous level flight. Ultimately, we hope to have a robust, open source control system capable of supporting interesting research questions exploring concurrency in real time systems as well as current issues in sustainable agriculture.
Prioritised Choice over Multiway Synchronisation
Authors: Warren Douglas N.
Published: February 2025

Previous algorithms for resolving choice over multiway synchronisations have been incompatible with the notion of priority. This paper discusses some of the problems resulting from this limitation and offers a subtle expansion of the definition of priority to make choice meaningful when multiway events are involved. Presented in this paper is a prototype extension to the JCSP library that enables prioritised choice over multiway synchronisations and which is compatible with existing JCSP Guards. Also discussed are some of the practical applications for this algorithm as well as its comparative performance.
The Modular Structure of an Ontology: Atomic Decomposition and Module Count
Authors: Del Vescovo Chiara  , Parsia Bijan  , Sattler Uli  , Schneider Thomas
Published: February 2025

Extracting a subset of a given ontology that captures all the ontology's knowledge about a specified set of terms is a well-understood task. This task can be based, for instance, on locality-based modules. However, a single module does not allow us to understand neither topicality, connectedness, structure, or superfluous parts of an ontology, nor agreement between actual and intended modeling.
11. Zinc and Infectious Diseases
Authors: Fischer Walker Christa L.  , Lamberti Laura  , Roth Daniel  , Black Robert E.
Published: February 2025

Zinc is an essential micronutrient critical to the maintenance of a healthy immune system. Zinc deficiency is often linked with an increased risk for infectious diseases especially among at-risk populations such as young children and pregnant women. Supplementation with zinc has been shown to prevent and treat diarrhea among children under 5 years of age decreasing both diarrhea morbidity and mortality. Zinc deficiency is also correlated with risk for respiratory infections, but the benefit of supplementation appears to be limited to more severe episodes and populations with high rates of zinc deficiency. While there is evidence suggesting a correlation between zinc deficiency and the prevalence of malaria, measles, HIV, and tuberculosis, few studies have shown a benefit of supplementation for either prevention or treatment of these infections. The World Health Organization currently recommends zinc supplementation for the treatment of diarrhea among children under 5 years of age.
1. Introduction – Why Investigate Zinc?
Authors: Rink Lothar
Published: February 2025

Zinc is an essential trace element. The human body contains 2-3 g of zinc. Since there are no storing systems for zinc in the body, zinc has to be ingested daily and the homeostasis has to be regulated accurately. The recommended daily intake varies between 7-12mg of zinc. The chemical properties of zinc made it to one of the favorite metal ions in biological processes. This results in hundreds of zinc-dependent enzymes and signaling events dependent on zinc. Due to this importance a deficiency in zinc is related to multiple organ dysfunctions. Since zinc deficiency has been described in humans it became more and more obvious that severe zinc deficiency is one of the leading health problems in developing countries and marginal zinc deficiency a common problem in the industrial world. Therefore a detailed knowledge about zinc is necessary to understand dysfunctions in zinc homeostasis and to develop therapies using the biological capacity of this trace element.
25. Zinc and Diabetes
Authors: Chimienti Fabrice  , Rutter Guy A.  , Wheeler Michael B.  , Wijesekara Nadeeja
Published: February 2025

Diabetes is a set of metabolic disorders in which there is a major dysregulation of blood glucose levels. All but a very small number of patients suffer from either type 1 and type 2 diabetes, both having the same long-term complications. There is a longstanding relationship between zinc homeostasis and maintenance of glycaemia. Diabetes affects intracellular zinc homeostasis, alterations of which effects carbohydrate metabolism. Zinc has strong functional interactions with the insulin biosynthesis/secretion machinery, the immune system, and insulin signalling. Zinc deficiency also impairs cellular antioxidant defense. In this chapter we will review the multiple roles of zinc in diabetes, including its importance for insulin-producing cells at the molecular level. The role of zinc transporters in the insulin secretion pathway and effects on beta cell protection are also discussed.
Model Checking Single Web Services using Markov Chains and MDPs
Authors: Oghabi Giti  , Bentahar Jamal  , Benharref Abdelghani
Published: February 2025

This paper proposes a new verification method for individual web service specified using OWL-S, the Ontology Web Language for semantic web Services, where probabilities are introduced to model uncertain choices. The approach makes use of a probabilistic model checker named PRISM. The web service description is received as an input in form of OWL-S, which is analyzed and automatically transformed into a Discrete Time Markov Chain (DTMC) or a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The obtained DTMC/MDP is then processed and coded into the PRISM language. This code is parsed and verified by the PRISM model checker to determine which required properties are satisfied by the web service. In addition to the atomic processes, different composite processes are considered including sequence, choice, if-then-else, repeat-while, repeat-until, split, and split join. We also prove that the transformation algorithm is sound and complete and introduce a software tool implementing the approach.
Virtual Doctor System (VDS): Aspects on Reasoning Issues
Authors: Fujita Hamido  , Kurematsu Masaki  , Hakura Jun
Published: February 2025

Ontology alignment in different view computer Interaction based on emotional modelling and physical views, collectively; has been investigated and reported in this paper. Two types of ontology have been presented to formalize a patient state: mental ontology reflecting the patient mental behavior due to certain disorder and physical ontology reflecting the observed physical behavior exhibited through disorder. These two types of ontology have been mapped and aligned for reasoning using a simple Bayesian Network for causal reasoning to define what we call as simple case diagnosis. We have constructed an integrated computerized model which reflects a human diagnostician as computer model and through it; an integrated interaction between that model and the real human user (patient) is utilized for 1ststage diagnosis purposes.
Argumentation-based Negotiation in t-DeLP-POP
Authors: Pardo Pere  , Dellunde Pilar  , Godo Lluís
Published: February 2025

In this contribution, we propose to model argumentation-based negotiation in terms of t-DeLP-POP, a partial order planning system that incorporates temporal defeasible logic. This logic combines temporal facts and durative rules into temporal arguments. We propose a dialogue protocol for the negotiation of plans in this planning system that models a variety of scenarios for argumentative negotiation of complex services. Then we consider case studies in the literature can be naturally modeled by dialogues in this logic-based planning framework.
On the Simulation of Human Frailty
Authors: Horswill Ian  , Lisetti Christine
Published: February 2025

Artificial intelligence generally focuses on engineering rationality. While rational agents are undoubtedly useful, we argue that computational methods are also useful for modeling aspects of human behavior that fall short of perfect rationality. And moreover, that for certain kinds of applications, this is preferable to perfect rationality.
Extracting Episodic Memory Feature Relevance Without Domain Knowledge
Authors: Walker Benjamin  , Dalen Dustin  , Faltersack Zachary  , Nuxoll Andrew
Published: February 2025

Episodic memory provides many important capabilities to a cognitive architecture. One of the challenges of creating a general episodic memory system is to be effective when given no information about the agent's task.
VideoPanels Experience: From BICA Challenge to Metacognition
Authors: Kalish Michael Q.  , Samsonovich Alexei V.
Published: February 2025

VideoPanels are recurrent multipoint videoseminars, originated as a virtual extension of the International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). These professional online working sessions include panel discussions and presentations of research papers accepted for BICA Society publication venues. The overarching goal of discussions on VideoPanels is to develop a roadmap to solving the BICA Challenge: the challenge to create a computational equivalent of the human mind using BICA as an approach. Topics of the first VideoPanels included: (i) the BICA Challenge, (ii) system-theoretic and evolutionary approaches to the study of BICA; and (iii) metacognition. This work provides a brief review of these sessions and analyzes their experience.
Intelligent Icons for Cross-Cultural Knowledge Searching
Authors: Heimbürger Anneli  , Kiyoki Yasushi  , Kohtala Samu
Published: February 2025

Pictorial symbols capture our imagination. A visual vocabulary - that anyone from any culture, any country, and in any context of life can understand - is a very interesting research challenge. The collections of visual symbols usually are context-specific, and include symbols and signs for example at airports, in hotels, in traffic and in maps. Our ongoing research work is related to pictorial symbols in our living environments. These symbols symbolize our living environments and guide us in different situations. Here we introduce our idea of intelligent icons and their functions. We also give some examples of their applications. We review spatial relations as an interesting approach to (a) icon recognition and (b) to illustrate the situation-specific relation between the user and the icon in question. The design principles and the basic model of the system architecture of our I-Icon system are described. We also present an example of intelligent icon implementation.