bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM THE CO‐OPERATIVE EXPERIENCE OF ITALIAN AGRICULTURAL LABOUR
Authors: SANCISI Manlio
Published: April 2007

Signor Manlio Sancisi opens his book “From Trade‐union Action to Co‐operative Action” with a Foreword in which he sets himself to trace the lessons of a practical kind which may be drawn, especially under present circumstances, from the co‐operative experiences of Italian agricultural labour. He gives particular consideration to conditions in Switzerland, but his observations and suggestions have a general application. We consider, therefore, that the text of this Foreword should be placed before our readers in exfenso. — Edg. M.
COOPERATIVE RURAL ELECTRIFICATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Authors: RALL Udo
Published: April 2007

A most impressive work has been accomplished during the past few years in the United States both by the Federal Authorities and by local bodies in the domain of electrification. Their example might advantageously be followed by the Governments bf many other countries. An essential part of this work is concerned with rural electrification, which presents a most original feature in the considerable rôle allocated to a new organ, the cooperative of rural electrification, whose establishment and operation are given every encouragement by the public authorities.

A very exhaustive and remarkably clear account of the whole system adopted, its practical realisation, and the extent of the work already achieved, has been published by the Pan American Union, Division of Agricultural Cooperation (Washington, D.C.), in its “Series on Cooperatives”, No. 15. It is the work of Mr. Udo Rall. It will be of the greatest interest to the readers of the Annals of Collective Economy to have this masterly survey brought before them.

We desire to express our gratitude both to the Division of Agricultural Cooperation and to Mr. Udo Rall for their kindness in allowing us to reprint it.
The International Centre For Research and Information on Collective Economy (I. C. R. I. C. E.)
Authors: MILHAUD Edgard
Published: April 2007

Summary: 1. The presumable of the draft of the statues, p. 26. — 2. Object of the Centre, p. 28. — 3. The means of action, p. 29. — 4. Structure of the Organsation, p. 30. — 5. The seat, p. 31. — 6. Resources, p. 31. — 7. Rights of the members, p. 33. — 8. Possible Winding up, p. 33. — 9. Ground already covered and the next stages, p. 35.
Nationalisation of the Iron and Steel Industry in Great Britain
Authors: REYNAUD Jean
Published: April 2007

Introduction. – FIRST PART. Motives for the nationalisation of Steel. – I. The steel industry is essential. 1. Generalities. – 2. Steel is basic: a) the uses of steel; b) Steel and economic problems; c) steel and full employment; d) the power of steel. – II. At the present time the steel industry has the form of a pernicious private monopoly: 1. The development of the monopoly; 2. The steel monopoly and national interest: a) opposition of the private interest of the steel masters and the national interest; b) monopoly and prices; c) protection of the Monopoly; d) Elimination of Independent Competition; e) prevention of Expansion. – III. The production of the monopoly is insufficient: 1. A sample of the production; 2. Comments on the production; 3. Some improvements made; 4. The steel plan and expansion. – IV. Conclusion: Nationalisation of steel essential; 1. Monopoly inevitable; 2. A supervised monopoly? 3. Public enterprise essential. – SECOND PART. Modalities of nationalisation. – I. Structure of the Corporation: 1. Constitution of the Corporation; its functions; 2. Control of the Corporation's Activity; 3. Various legal clauses. – II. Nechanism of the transition from private industry to public ownership: 1. Transfer of property; 2. Compensation to holders of securities; 3. Measures of safeguard’until the date of the actual transfer; 4. Mainteneance of certain private enterprises; 5. Financing of the operation; 6. Various clauses. – III. Characteristies of the system. – Conclusion.
Belgian Municipal Credit
Authors: DENUCÉ Raymond
Published: April 2007

In this month of December 1950, Belgian Municipal Credit, which deserves a place of honour in the history of modern collective economy institutions, will be celebrating its 90th birthday. The Annals of Collective Economy are happy to bring to their readers on this occasion an article which the Managing Director of Belgion Municipal Credit has kindly agreed to write for them, and for which the editors would like to thank the. author most warmly.
Industrial Cooperatives in the Ukrainian S.S.R.
Authors: Tereshtenko V. J.
Published: April 2007

The writer is former Chief Economist of United Nations Relief and Rehabflitation Mission in the Ukraine in 1946–47, and Director of the “Cooperative Project” of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, in 1937–42; at present lecturer on Soviet economics at Columbia University, N.Y.C., and on consumber cooperatives at the Graduate School of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Theory of the fourth Power (the economic Power) Nationalisation of Enterprise
Authors: COMISETTI Louis
Published: April 2007

Doctrinal divergences on the problem of Nationalisation. — The ideas of the Nation and the State. — The juridical personification of the nation. — The industrial and business State. — To establish State Control is not to nationalise. — How nationalise without establishing State Control?— The autonomous administration of public right. — The economic personification of the nation. — Definition of nationalisation. — Conclusions.
Main Features of Workers' Conditions in Collective Economy Enterprises
Authors: ERDMANN Richard
Published: April 2007

A. Extracts from industrial agreements, 97. — I. Working hours, 97; II. Extra pay, 98; III. Childrens' and married men's allowance. 98; IV. Continued pay in case of illness, 98; V. Holidays, 99; VI. Other benefits obtained, 99; VII. Old age pensions, 100; VIII. Voluntary provisions made by the undertakings, 101. — B. Extracts from legislative provisions, 101. — I. Industrial regulations, 101; 2. Basic Law of the German Federal Republic, 101; 3. Regulation on working hours, 101; 4. Law regulating pay for public holidays, 102; 5. Law against unfair dismissal, 102; 6. Law on protection of working mothers, 103; 7. Law on employment of the seriously disabled, 103; 8. Law on period of notice for office staff, 104; 9. Law on child labour and on working hours for young people (law on protection of voting people), 104; 10. Law on industrial agreements. 105: 11 . Law on repatriates (Heimkehrer), 105; 12. Law on children's allowances and the creation of Family Compensation Funds (Law on children's allowances), 105. — C. Survey of legal status of officials in collective economy undertakings, 106.; — D. Right of employees to a say in management, 108.
PRICING IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISES
Authors: Gupta K. R.
Published: April 2007

The pricing in private and public enterprise differs primarily on the supply side. In the long run, private enterprises must cover total costs and provide an adequate return necessary to attract venture capital. In contrast, extra‐commercial considerations may influence pricing in public enterprises. They may incur losses in the public interest under explicit directives from the government.

A number of theories of pricing in public enterprises have been put forward. Most important of these are: (1) marginal cost of production theory; (2) no profit, no loss theory; (3) average cost of production theory; (4) theory of making profits. All these theories suffer from a number of weaknesses and none of them taken individually is a satisfactory guide for determining the prices of the products of public enterprises.

There however exists a strong case for public enterprises, particularly in developing countries, to earn reasonable profits in pricing their products. Public enterprises fostered on public revenues must yield surpluses which can be used either for their own expansion or for financing the general development plans of the country. The profits which a public enterprise can earn are an important indication of the justification for the use of economic resources in that economic activity. Upholding the test of profit not only lessens possibilities of the investment decisions being subjected to political pressures but also safeguards against inefficiency in management. A policy of profits is essential for attaining the goal of building a socialist society. The amount of profits expected from different enterprises, however, cannot be uniform because of diverse objectives sought in the setting up of public enterprises, degree of essentiality of their products, nature of the services provided by them, size of their market, class of their consumers and their paying capacity, conditions of market under which they operate, their role in stimulating growth and social benefits conferred by them.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN THE CO‐OPERATIVE ENVIRONMENT
Authors: Stephenson T. E.
Published: April 2007

This paper examines the relationship between the Chief Executive of a CO‐operative retail society and his Board of Directors. It takes for its starting point three critical activities of the Chief Executive, i.e. the achievement of society objectives; the maintenance of the internal stability of the society and the adaptation of the society to the external environment.

Two factors which influence the performance of these activities are the Chief Executive's orientation to society performance and his relationship with his Board.

The Chief Executive will tend to be inward‐outward in orientation. Factors affecting this will be his previous task experience and organisational experience of which two aspects are important (a) time—the length of service a t lower and middle management level and (b) structure—the degree of delegation. These will affect the Chief Executive Officer's ability to deal with uncertainty in the environment, A third influential factor will be the attitudes and expectations of his Board which will be structured by their perception of democratic control. Finally the nature of the environment will affect the Chief Executive's orientation and his flexibility.

In dealing with the problems which face him the Chief Executive is influenced by his reference points, i.e. by the degree of internalisation of co‐operative values, and by his beliefs about the rightness of previous decisions.

His decision‐making is influenced by the interaction of his beliefs and those of his Board and by the depth to which they are held. These beliefs may be seen in two parts, first, relating to the nature of co‐operative enterprise and secondly, to the method by which the co‐operative enterprise is controlled.

Contributing to the depth of internalisation of co‐operative beliefs would appear to be their social and political backgrounds. Additional factors for the Chief Executive Officer include length of service in the co‐operative movement, non‐co‐operative experience and his commitment to :managerial values'.

On the basis of the differing orientations of the persons concerned, it is possible to hypothesise the development of certain decision‐making situations.
CO‐OPERATION AND AGRI‐BUSINESS EVOLUTION
Authors: Harris T. D.
Published: April 2007

Co‐operatives in North America, developed to correct or off set real or imagined wrongs in the economic system within which agriculture over time became further involved, have remained largely rural. Where successful, co‐operatives bridged the gap between a fundamentalist agricultural production industry that tended to look inwards to itself and a privately capitalised marketing industry that looked outwards towards metropolitan and overseas markets. In pioneer and pioneering environments where free enterprise agri‐business became significantly involved in on‐farm or on‐ranch operations, co‐operatives did not become im‐portant as the services and attitudes of agri‐business complemented rather than exploited the man on the land.

In the more commercialised integrated agriculture of today, corporate agri‐business has found an interest in greater involvement in farm operations: much of this comes from changes in technology that make off‐farm purchases as important a component of the agricultural com‐plex as off‐farm sales of products. Thus, co‐operatives have lost their unique “bridge” role, have problems themselves of identity and of their most desirable patterns of future development. But their competition‐existing corporate agri‐business and new entrants from the conglom‐erate industrial giants‐are not without their problems also. These are outlined as well as the issues co‐operatives‐and co‐operative philosophers and promoters‐must tackle if they are to remain successful market participants and have identifiable characteristics that reflect co‐ operative idealism. The unique member‐client relationship the co‐operative is based on should be exploited to maintain and expand these complementary and essential goals for continued farmers’business participation in the North American and world economies.
ARE COLLECTIVE ECONOMY UNDERTAKINGS INTEGRATED INTO THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY? A POSTSCRIPT*
Authors: Dieck Margret
Published: April 2007

I. The concept of economic and social policy in the Federal Republic of Germany.

II. Public undertakings: conditionally recognized.

III. Co‐operatives: integrated.

IV. Trade union undertakings: disputed.

V. German collective economy: a creation of theory, not a political reality.
A SURVEY OF MARKET SOCIALIST FORMS
Authors: Yunker James A.
Published: April 2007

Considerable interest is currently emerging in an economic system that would combine the basic socialist principle of public ownership of the non‐human factors of production with the basic free market principle of relatively limited control over the economy by the central government. Such a system has come to be known as “market socialism”. This paper provides a survey over the four primary variants of market socialism that may be distinguished in the economic literature. These are as follows: 1) Langian socialism aims at a socialist equivalent to perfectly competitive capitalism; 2) service socialism aims at replacing profit maximization with constrained output or revenue maximization: 3) cooperative socialism aims at installing the employees of the enterprise as its “ultimate” managers; 4) pragmatic socialism aims at a socialist equivalent to contemporary real‐world capitalism, whether this system is perfectly competitive or not. A brief description and discussion of each of these variants is provided, together with a review of the relevant literature. The article is concluded with an argument that of the four variants, the pragmatic is the most attractive in terms of possible real‐world implementation both because its similarity to capitalism reduces the possibility of imfortunate deficiencies of theoretical blueprints as a guide to actual behavior, and because it best reflects those aspects of the traditional socialist ideal and intent that remain fully valid even at the present time.
MEASURING AND IMPROVING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN UK POST OFFICE COUNTERS USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS
Authors: DOBLE Michael
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT:*

This paper sought to establish how technically efficient Post Office Counters is nationally and regionally. The method by which this was determined is data envelopment analysis, applied to data for 1989 on 1281 Crown post offices. The input used was labour, and outputs consisted of average waiting times as a measure of quality of service, and nine different categories of counter transactions. Nationally it was found that technical efficiency could be significantly improved by making more efficient use of labour inputs and reducing average waiting times. Wide disparities were found in regional efficiency and it was hypothesized that these relative differences were due to differing working practices, turnovers of staff and local labour market conditions. It was also concluded for the period studied that some structural inefficiency existed due to the existence of inefficient working practices and the lack of computerization of transaction procedures.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON A RECENT ATTEMPT AT INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION BETWEEN CONSUMER COOPERATIVES*
Authors: SCHEDIWY Robert
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT: The catastrophe of Konsum Austria in spring 1995 put an end to the alliance between this large but ailing consumer cooperative and the Swiss Migros group. The circumstances of this tragic event illustrate that cooperation between cooperatives should either be based on an equal footing between partners of approximately equal strength and in good economic health or that it should openly reflect large differences in economic status.
LA DÉLÉGATION DES SERVICES PUBLICS AUX ASSOCIATIONS PAR LES COLLECTIVITÉS LOCALES:
Authors: GACHET Bernard
Published: April 2007

RÉSUMÉ**: Dans le cadre communal français, des biens collectifs locaux sont offerts simultanement par les municipalités et par les associations. Toutefois, l'offre publique ne signifie pas toujours la production publique. Les municipalités peuvent ainsi déléguer la gestion de services collectifs locaux à des entreprises privées ou à des associations. La plupart du temps, les communes se contenteront de subventionner laproduction associative.

Aprés avoir précisé la distinction entre fourniture et production de biens, et le cadre légal et administratif particulier dans lequel s'inscrit la fourniture publique communale des biens et services collectifs locaux, nous soulignons les causes et les formes dupartenariat entre secteur public communal et associations, et les catégories d'actions associatives répondant aux attentes des municipalités.
PUBLIC ENTERPRISE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: prospects and constraints
Authors: VAVOURAS Ioannis S.
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT*: The author highlights the problems and prospects of public enterprises within the European Union, as well as the major adjustments considered necessary for these enterprises to fulfil their role. He argues that general criteria determining whether the production of goods and services should be in the public sector cannot be readily established in the European Union, since public supply does not solely depend on the specific economic characteristics of the particular good or service, but also on the prevailing social, cultural and economic conditions in each country, on the economic policy pursued, and on the structural characteristics of its private and public sectors, including entrepreneurial and trade union behaviour.
PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN GREECE
Authors: DAOUTOPOULOS George A.
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT: Local authorities in Greece were considered until recently instruments for the implementation of government policy. The article focuses on the major nomothetical reforms in the history of modern Greece to revive local autonomy and provide local people with more opportunities to define their own development needs. Apart from criticizing those reforms and raising points of interest for other countries with a highly centralized system of government, the prospects for community development in Greece are examined and a number of suggestions are offered.
THE ISSUES RAISED BY THE EXPERIENCE OF UTILITY PRIVATIZATION IN THE UK
Authors: CORRY Dan
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT**: The UK utilities have all had a change of ownership over the last decade and a half. Does it really change things and, if so, in what ways? In fact, very little research has been carried out on this much copied experiment and evidence on efficiency gains is not that strong. But two main things have emerged. First, regulation and competition are the key drivers of change. It may well be that privatization was needed in the UK to allow these things to happen. It does not follow, however, that in other industries, or other countries, change is dependent on privatization. Second, different groups gain and lose (in absolute and relative terms) from privatization. In the UK, shareholders and large consumers have gained far more than small consumers, ex‐employees and the tax payer. In particular, the fact that low‐income consumers have done less well than the generality of consumers raises important issues for social cohesion and for policy.
A ROLE FOR COOPERATIVES IN THE MARKET ECONOMY
Authors: NORMARK Peter
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT*: This article emphasizes that the cooperative form of organization has an important role to play in developing the institutional variety in the market economy. Cooperatives are important tools for counteracting monopolies and monopsonies. Cooperatives may be analysed in terms of network organizations that enable weaker actors in the market to develop businesses that are beneficial both for themselves as users as well as for the larger national society. The development of new cooperatives is highly dependent on existing social networks in the local environment. Actors trying to promote the establishment of new cooperatives therefore have better chances of success if existing social networks are used as bases for the development of member‐owned businesses.
THE CLASHING CULTURES OF MARKETING AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
Authors: BOVAIRD Tony , RUBIENSKA Anne
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT*

It has became fashionable to recommend ‘marketing’ to any public sector organization in financial difficulties or suffering from an image problem. Yet there are important tensions between the culture of marketing, derived mainly from Anglo‐Saxon models of manufacturing management, and the ethos and practice of public service management. We build upon Senge's model of a learning organization to question whether the use of conventional marketing approaches can be an aid to the most ambitious forms of organizational learning. A new public marketing is proposed which locates the concepts and techniques of marketing strategy within a learning model which makes explicit the political values and processes of public sector agencies. Such an approach requires a major rethink in the approach to marketing currently found in the UK public sector.
THE THEORY OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISE RECONSIDERED
Authors: GARNER Maurice R.
Published: April 2007

ABSTRACT**

A comparison of the essential characteristics of public and private enterprise against the background of agency theory shows that archetypal public enterprise is not an enterprise in the generally accepted legal and economic senses of that expression. If it is to be efficient, therefore, archetypal public enterprise must not be left dependent upon governance and monitoring systems appropriate to private enterprise but must, by means of an intimate and cooperative (and not an ‘arm's length') relationship between the principal (government) and the agent (management), be provided with precisely defined and quantified objectives that lead to an agreed measure of overall performance. The essay's conclusions are important because, inter alia, they shift the efficiency debate from property to governance.
A foundational approach to autonomous knowledge acquisition
Authors: Delgrande James P.
Published: April 2007

A formal, foundational approach to autonomous knowledge acquisition is presented. In particular, “learning from examples” and “learning from being told” and the relation of these approaches to first‐order representation systems are investigated. It is assumed initially that the only information available for acquisition is a stream of facts, or ground atomic formulae, describing a domain. On the basis of this information, hypotheses expressed in set‐theoretic terms and concerning the application domain may be proposed. As further instances are received, the hypothesized relations may be modified or discarded, and new relations formed. The intent though is to characterize those hypotheses that may potentially be formed, rather than to specify the subset of the hypotheses that, for whatever reason, should be held.

Formal systems are derived by means of which the set of potential hypotheses is precisely specified, and a procedure is derived for restoring the consistency of a set of hypotheses after conflicting evidence is encountered. In addition, this work is extended to where a learning system may be “told” arbitrary sentences concerning a domain. Included in this is an investigation of the relation between acquiring knowledge and reasoning deductively. However, the interaction of these approaches leads to immediate difficulties which likely require informal, pragmatic techniques for their resolution. The overall framework is intended both as a foundation for investigating autonomous approaches to learning and as a basis for the development of such autonomous systems.
Learning to control a dynamic physical system
Authors: Connell Margaret E. , Connell E. , Utgoff Paul E.
Published: April 2007

This paper presents an approach to learning to control a dynamic physical system. The approach has been implemented in a program named CART, and applied to a simple physical system studied previously by several researchers. Experiments illustrate that a control method is learned in about 16 trials, an improvement over previous learning programs.
A computational theory of motor learning
Authors: Langley Wayne Iba and Pat
Published: April 2007

In this paper we present a computational theory of human motor performance and learning. The theory is implemented as a running AI system called MAGGIE. Given a description of a desired movement as input, the system generates simulated motor behavior as output. The theory states mat skills are encoded as motor schemas, which specify the positions and velocities of a limb at selected points in time. Moreover, there exist two natural representations for such knowledge; viewer‐centered schemas describe visually perceived behavior, arid joint‐centered schemas are used to generate behavior. When the model acts upon these two representational formats, they exhibit quite different behavioral characteristics. MAGGIE performs the desired movement within a feedback control paradigm, monitoring for errors and correcting them when it detects them. Learning involves improving the joint‐centered schema over many practice trials; this reduces the need for monitoring. The model accounts for a number of well‐documented motor phenomena, including the speed‐accuracy trade‐off and the gradual improvement in performance with practice. It also makes several testable predictions. We close with a discussion of the theory's strengths and weaknesses, along with directions for future research.
Reasoning about knowledge and belief: a survey
Authors: McArthur Gregory L.
Published: April 2007

We examine a number of logics of knowledge and belief from the perspective of knowledge‐based systems. We are concerned with the beliefs of a knowledge‐based system, including both the system's base set of beliefs–those garnered directly from the world–and beliefs that follow from the base set. Three things to consider with such logics are the expressive power of the language of the logic, the correctness and completeness of the inferences sanctioned, and the speed with which it is possible to determine whether a given sentence is believed. The influential possible worlds approach to representing belief has the property of logical omniscience, which makes for inferences that are unacceptable in the context of belief and may take too much time to make. We examine a number of weak logics which attempt to deal with these problems. These logics divide into three categories: those that admit incomplete or inconsistent situations into their semantics, those that posit a number of distinct states for a believer which correspond roughly to frames of mind, and those that incorporate axioms or other syntactic entities directly into the semantics. As to expressive power, we consider whether belief should be represented by a predicate or a sentential operator and examine the boundary between self‐referential and inconsistent systems. Finally, we consider logics of believing only, which add the assumption that a system's base set of beliefs are, in a certain sense, all that it believes.
Plans and resource‐bounded practical reasoning
Authors: Bratman Michael E. , Israel David J. , Pollack Martha E.
Published: April 2007

An architecture for a rational agent must allow for means‐end reasoning, for the weighing of competing alternatives, and for interactions betwen these two forms of reasoning. Such an architecture must also address the problem of resource boundedness. We sketch a solution of the first problem that points the way to a solution of the second. In particular, we present a high‐level specification of the practical‐reasoning component of an architecture for a resource‐bounded rational agent. In this architecture, a major role of the agent's plans is to constrain the amount of further practical reasoning she must perform.
Constructive belief and rational representation
Authors: Doyle Jon
Published: April 2007

It is commonplace in artificial intelligence to divide an agent's explicit beliefs into two parts: the beliefs explicitly represented or manifest in memory, and the implicitly represented or constructive beliefs that are repeatedly reconstructed when needed rather than memorized. Many theories of knowledge view the relation between manifest and constructive beliefs as a logical relation, with the manifest beliefs representing the constructive beliefs through a logic of belief. This view, however, limits the ability of a theory to treat incomplete or inconsistent sets of beliefs in useful ways. We argue that a more illuminating view is that belief is the result of rational representation. In this theory, the agent obtains its constructive beliefs by using its manifest beliefs and preferences to rationally (in the sense of decision theory) choose the most useful conclusions indicated by the manifest beliefs.
A basic agent
Authors: Vere Steven , Bickmore Timothy
Published: April 2007

A basic agent has been constructed which integrates limited natural language understanding and generation, temporal planning and reasoning, plan execution, simulated symbolic perception, episodic memory, and some general world knowledge. The agent is cast as a robot submarine operating in a two‐dimensional simulated “Seaworld” about which it has only partial knowledge. It can communicate with people in a vocabulary of about 800 common English words using a medium coverage grammar. The agent maintains an episodic memory of events in its life and has a limited ability to reflect on those events. A person can make statements to the agent, ask it questions, and give it commands. In response to commands, a temporal task planner is invoked to synthesize a plan, which is then executed at an appropriate future time. A large variety of temporal references in natural language are interpreted with respect to agent time. The agent can form and retain compound future plans, and replan in response to new information or new commands. Natural language verbs are represented in a state transition semantics for compatibility with the planner. The agent is able to give terse answers to questions about its past experiences, present activities and perceptions, future intentions, and general knowledge. No other artificial intelligence artifact with this range of capabilities has previously been constructed.
DISLOG: programming in logic with discontinuities
Authors: Saint‐Dizier Patrick
Published: April 2007

In this paper, we present an extension to PROLOG we call DISLOG which is designed to deal with relations between non‐contiguous elements in a structure. This extension turns out to be well suited for syntactic analysis of natural and artificial languages. It is also well adapted to express traversal constraints in applications such as planning and expert systems and deductive systems involving, for example, temporal reasoning, DISLOG belongs to the constrained logic programming paradigm and turns out to be more declarative, transparent, and simple than PROLOG to deal with longdistance relations.
The role of the user's domain knowledge in generation
Authors: Paris Cécile L.
Published: April 2007

A question‐answering program that provides access to a large amount of data will be most useful if it can tailor its answers to each individual user. In particular, a user's level of knowledge about the domain of discourse is an important factor in this tailoring if the answer provided is to be both informative and understandable to the user. In this research, we address the issue of how the user's domain knowledge, or the level of expertise, might affect an answer. We present TAILOR, a flexible computer system that takes into account this knowledge to provide an answer that is appropriate for users with varying levels of expertise (including novices and experts), without requiring an a priori set of user types.

Un programme qui donne accès à un système de connaissances à de nombreux et divers utilisateurs serait plus utile s'il pouvait adapter ses réponses pour chaque utilisateur. En particulier, le savoir de l'utilisateur est un facteur important pour que la réponse soit compréhensible et informative. Dans cet article, nous étudions le rǒle de la connaissance de l'utilisateur pour former un texte qui soit approprié pour la personne qui le lira. Nous présentons TAILOR, un système de génération flexible qui est sensitif au niveau de connaissance de l'utilisateur. TAILOR peut générer des textes appropries pour des utilisateurs aux niveaux de connaissances très variés, sans avoir besoin ?un groupe de stéréotypes définis a priori.
Bridging the generation gap between text planning and linguistic realization
Authors: Meteer Marie W.
Published: April 2007

Text planning is traditionally done as a separate process, independent of linguistic realization. However, I show in this paper that it is essential for a text planner to know the linguistic consequences of its actions. The choice of how to realize an element affects how much information is conveyed (e.g., “Floyd arrived safely in Boston” vs. “Floyd landed safely at Logan”) and what other information can be added (e.g., “Peter was deciding for an hour” vs. *“Peter made a decision for an hour”). The choice of realization also affects how the relative salience of the elements being expressed will be perceived (e.g., “The green car is in the garage” vs. “The car in the garage is green”). I have defined an intermediate level of representation for text planning, called the Text Structure. It is an abstract linguistic level that reflects germane linguistic constraints while abstracting away from syntactic detail. This representation allows the text planner to have greater control over the decisions, so that it can take advantage of the expressiveness of language to convey subtleties of meaning. More importantly, the Text Structure allows the generation process overall to be incremental, since it ensures that the text plan being composed will always be expressible in the language.

La planification de textes est habituellement réalisée séparément, sans tenir compte de la réalisation linguistique. Cependant, ľauteur demontre dans cet article qu'il est essentiel à un planificateur de textes de connai̊tre les conséquences linguistiques de ses actions. Le choix de la méhode de réalisation ?un élément influe sur la quantité?informations qui est transmise (par ex.: 〈〈 Floyd est arrivé sain et sauf à Boston 〉〉 et 〈〈 Floyd a atterri sain et sauf àľaéroport Logan 〉〉) et sur quelle autre information peut ětre ajoutée. Le choix de la méthode de réalisation influe également sur la façon dont les caractères saillants des ééments qui sont exprimés seront perçus (par ex.: 〈〈 la voiture verte est dans le garage 〉〉 et 〈〈 la voiture dans le garage est verte 〉〉). L'auteur a défini un niveau intérmediaire de représentation pour la planification de textes qu'il a appelé structure de texte. Il; s'agit ?'un niveau linguistique abstrait qui refléte les contraintes linguistiques appropriées tout en s'éloignant du détail syntaxique. Cette représentation permet au planificateur de textes ?avoir un meilleur contrǒle des décisions, et done de tirer profit de la force ?expression du langage afin de tenir compte des subtiliés de sens. Plus important encore, la structure de texte permet au processus de génération ?ětre incrémentiel, car elle s'assure que le plan de texte en voie de composition soit toujours exprimable dans le langage.
ASSUMPTION‐BASED REASONING AND CLAUSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Authors: Kean Alex , Tsiknis George
Published: April 2007

A truth maintenance system is a subsystem that manages the utilization of assumptions in the reasoning process of a problem solver. Doyle's original motivation for creating a truth maintenance system was to augment a reasoning system with a control strategy for activities concerning its nonmonotonic state of beliefs. Hitherto, much effort has been invested in designing and implementing the concept of truth maintenance, and little effort has been dedicated to the formalization that is essential to understanding it. This paper provides a complete formalization of the principle of truth maintenance. Motivated by Reiter and de Kleer's preliminary report on the same subject, this paper extends their study and gives a formal account of the concept of truth maintenance under the general title of assumption‐based reasoning. The concept of assumption‐based theory is defined, and the notions of explanation and direct consequence are presented as forms of plausible conclusions with respect to this theory. Additionally, the concepts of extension and irrefutable sentences are discussed together with other variations of explanation and direct consequence. A set of algorithms for computing these conclusions for a given theory are presented using the notion of prime implicates. Finally, an extended example on Boolean circuit diagnosis is shown to exemplify these ideas.
STRUCTURE RECOGNITION BY CONNECTIONIST RELAXATION: FORMAL ANALYSIS
Authors: Cooper Paul R.
Published: April 2007

A formal description is given of a connectionist implementation of discrete relaxation for labelled graph matching. The network is shown to converge. The desired behavior of the algorithm is formally specified; then it is proved that the result of the relaxation meets the formal goal. The network is limited by complexity considerations to the detection and propagation of unary and binary consistency constraints. The application is fast parallel indexing into a memory of object models, based on a visually derived junction/link structure description. Implementation experiments are presented, and explicit and exact space and time requirements are developed.
RATIONALITY AND ITS ROLES IN REASONING
Authors: Doyle Jon
Published: April 2007

The economic theory of rationality promises to equal mathematical logic in its importance for the mechanization of reasoning. We survey the growing literature on how the basic notions of probability, utility, and rational choice, coupled with practical limitations on information and resources, influence the design and analysis of reasoning and representation systems.
THE ROLE OF LITERAL MEANING IN THE COMPREHENSION OF NON‐LITERAL CONSTRUCTIONS
Authors: Lytinen Steven L. , Burridge Robert R. , Kirtner Jeffrey D.
Published: April 2007

Based on psychological studies which show that metaphors and other non‐literal constructions are comprehended in the same amount of time as comparable literal constructions, some researchers have concluded that literal meaning is not computed during comprehension of non‐literal constructions. In this paper, we suggest that the empirical evidence does not rule out the possibility that literal meaning is constructed. We present a computational model of comprehension of non‐literal expressions which is consistent with the data, but in which literal meaning is computed. This model has been implemented as part of a unification‐based natural language processing system, called LINK.
METALLEL: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO NON‐LITERAL PHRASE INTERPRETATION1
Authors: Iverson Eric , Helmreich Stephen
Published: April 2007

Metallel is a program that incorporates marker passing techniques within a preference/collative semantics framework. This allows for the simultaneous generation of literal and non‐literal meaning representations, while allowing for a much greater degree of parallelism during processing. In addition, we have integrated metonymic and metaphoric inferencing into one procedure, arguing that at least some types of metaphor can be represented as parallel metonymies. A number of examples are presented which show that metallel's output is roughly equivalent to conventional, rule‐based approaches to metonymy.
SEMANTICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN TELOS: A LANGUAGE FOR KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION DIMITRIS PLEXOUSAKIS
Authors: PLEXOUSAKIS DIMITR
Published: April 2007

This paper focuses on the semantics of Telos, a language for representing knowledge about information systems. Telos is intended to support the development of information systems, especially in the requirements modeling phase. An object‐oriented representational framework is supported by Telos. Its features include aggregation, generalization, and classification, the treatment of attributes as first‐class objects and the explicit representation of time. Telos also provides an assertion sublanguage for expressing deductive rules and integrity constraints. A possible‐worlds semantics is defined for Telos knowledge bases. This semantics is intended to capture the peculiarities involved in the interpretation of temporal expressions. The integration of time has also inspired the treatment of existence in Telos. An ontology of objects based on the property of existence is proposed. In the spirit of KRYPTON, Telos knowledge bases are specified functionally, in terms of the operations provided for querying and updating them. This knowledge‐level analysis will allow us to specify exactly what a knowledge base can be ASK‐ed or TELL‐ed about the domain of discourse. Soundness, consistency, and completeness results have also been proven to complete the specification of Telos knowledge bases. This formal account of the language provides a logical framework that can be used to verify the correctness of any proposed implementation of the system.
USING A FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE FOR PARSING AND SEMANTIC PROCESSING
Authors: LAPALME GUY , LAVIER FABRICE
Published: April 2007

This paper describes an original approach to semantics representation based on the use of a non‐strict functional programming language with polymorphic typing. This approach provides a unified formalism needing no preprocessing or postprocessing to the functional language itself: parsing and semantics are declared naturally using function definition and evaluation is done by lambda application along the lines of Montague. We show that by changing only the model we can, after parsing, compute either the truth value of a sentence or its parse tree.
POLYNOMIAL TIME ALGORITHMS FOR LEARNING NEURAL NETS OF NONOVERLAPPING PERCEPTRONS
Authors: GOLEA MOSTEFA , MARCHAND MARIO
Published: April 2007

We investigate the problem of learning two‐layer neural nets of nonoverlapping perceptrons where each input unit is connected to one and only one hidden unit. We first show that this restricted problem with no overlap at all between the receptive fields of the hidden units is as hard as the general problem (with total overlap) if the learner uses examples only. However, if membership queries are allowed, the restricted problem is indeed easier to solve. We give a learning algorithm that uses examples and membership queries to PAC learn the intersection of K‐nonoverlapping perceptrons, regardless of whether the instance space in Boolean, discrete, or continuous. An extension of this algorithm is proven to PAC learn two‐layer nets with K‐nonoverlapping perceptrons. The simulations performed indicate that both algorithms are fast and efficient.
AN ARGUMENT‐BASED APPROACH TO NONMONOTONIC REASONING*
Authors: LIN FANGZHEN
Published: April 2007

We define an argument system to be a pair consisting of a set of inference rules and a set of completeness conditions. Inference rules are used to build arguments. Completeness conditions are used to define argument structures, which are sets of arguments supporting belief sets. We reformulate Reiter's default logic as special argument systems. This enables us, among other things, to apply the negation‐as‐failure rule to general default theories. We also speculate on some other potential uses of our argument systems.
LINEAR ITERATED PUSHDOWNS
Authors: Weir David J.
Published: April 2007

This paper discusses variants of nondeterministic one‐way S‐automata and context‐free S‐grammars where S is a storage type. The framework that these systems provide can be used to give alternative formulations of embedded pushdown automata and linear indexed grammars. The embedded pushdown automata is obtained by means of a linear version of a class of storage types called iterated pushdowns. Linear indexed grammar is obtained by using the pushdown storage type and restricting the way in which the grammar uses its storage.
LL(k)‐PARSING OF COUPLED‐CONTEXT‐FREE GRAMMARS
Authors: Pitsch Gisela
Published: April 2007

Coupled‐context‐free grammars are a natural generalization of context‐free grammars obtained by combining nonterminals to corresponding parentheses which can only be substituted simultaneously. Refering to the generative capacity of the grammars we obtain an infinite hierarchy of languages that comprises the context‐free languages as the first and all the languages generated by TAGs as the second element. Here, we present a generalization of the context‐free LL(k)‐notion onto coupled‐context‐free grammars, which leads to a characterization of subclasses of coupled‐context‐free grammars–and in this way of TAGs as well–which can be parsed in linear time. The parsing procedure described works incrementally so that it can be used for on‐line parsing of natural language. Examples show that important elements of the tree‐adjoining languages can be generated by LL(k)‐coupled‐context‐free grammars.
AN EVALUATION OF THE TEMPORAL COHERENCE HEURISTIC IN PARTIAL‐ORDER PLANNING
Authors: Yang Qiang , Murray Cheryl
Published: April 2007

This paper presents an evaluation of a heuristic for partial‐order planning, known as temporal coherence. The temporal coherence heuristic was proposed by Drummond and Currie as a method to improve the efficiency of partial‐order planning without losing the ability to find a solution (i.e., completeness). It works by using a set of domain constraints to prune away plans that do not “make sense,” or are temporally incoherent. Our analysis shows that, while intuitively appealing, temporal coherence can only be applied to a very specific implementation of a partial‐order planner and still maintain completeness. Furthermore, the heuristic does not always improve planning efficiency; in some cases, its application can actually degrade the efficiency of planning dramatically. To understand when the heuristic will work well, we conducted complexity analysis and empirical tests. Our results show that temporal coherence works well when strong domain constraints exist that significantly reduce the search space, when the number of subgoals is small, when the plan size is not too large, and when it is inexpensive to check each domain constraint.
DESIGNING AND BUILDING A NEGOTIATING AUTOMATED AGENT
Authors: Kraus Sarit , Lehmann Daniel
Published: April 2007

Negotiations are very important in a multiagenl environment, particularly, in an environment where there are conflicts between the agents, and cooperation would be beneficial. We have developed a general structure for a Negotiating Automated Agent that consists of five modules: a Prime Minister, a Ministry of Defense, a Foreign Office, a Headquarters and Intelligence. These modules are implemented using a dynamic set of local agents belonging to the different modules. We used this structure to develop a Diplomacy player. Diplomat. Playing Diplomacy involves a certain amount of technical skills as in other board games, but the capacity to negotiate, explain, convince, promise, keep promises or break them, is an essential ingredient in good play. Diplomat was evaluated and consistently played better than human players.