bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Dawn of a Critical Transparency Right for the Profiling Era
Authors: Hildebrandt Mireille
Published: February 2025

Potential consumers are increasingly profiled to detect their habits and preferences in order to provide for targeted services. Both industry and the European Commission are investing huge sums of money into what they call Ambient Intelligence and the creation of an ‘Internet of Things’. Such intelligent networked environments will depend on real time monitoring and profiling, resulting in real time adaptations of the environment. In this contribution Mireille Hildebrandt will assess the threats and opportunities of such autonomic profiling in terms of its impact on individual autonomy and refined discrimination and indicate the extent to which traditional data protection is ineffective as regards profiling. She will then highlight the potential of the draft General Data Protection Regulation to provide a more adequate and effective level playing field for both the industry and individual citizens in the profiling era. The most revolutionary change she detects is not the right to be forgotten or the right to data portability but the right to be informed about the potential consequences of being profiled.
Direct Glass Fabrication – New Applications of Glass with Additive Processes
Authors: Rammig Lisa
Published: February 2025

Direct fabrication technologies for different materials have been developed to great detail, yet for glass, one of the most aesthetically pleasing materials known, developments are still in the early stages. By examining material properties, common technologies and analysing the parameters governing the direct fabrication of glass the following conclusions can be made; Fabrication technologies are available but must be adapted for the properties of glass. This case study which was elaborated as part of a master thesis, tries to show these fabrication abilities by moving away from computer-controlled additive processes to a manual process, derived from conventional welding techniques used in the chemical industry.
The Design of an All Glass Roof to the EN1990
Authors: Kruijs Ron
Published: February 2025

Architects van Mourik designed, in cooperation with Glasimpex Holland, an all glass roof for a cultural centre at Utrecht. The roof is sized 13×17m1, the main beams are 13m length. Because of the low budget the beams are split in four pieces size 3,25m1. Bearing hole connection is used. The design have to meet the EN1990 and national annex of Holland. Meaning the probability of failure and the way the structure fails must meet the requirements of the EN1990. Using the Dutch standard NEN2608, the EN1990 is respected. NEN2608 annex D given method, based on Fine and Kinney, is used to estimate the number of broken plies from the structural member that can be expected during the servility of the structure. The damaged structure must be able to carry a given level of load.
Future Fast Methods for Loads Calculations: The ‘FFAST’ Project
Authors: Jones Dorian  , Gaitonde Ann
Published: February 2025

The ‘FFAST project’ is being performed by a consortium comprising 13 members: University of Bristol, INRIA, CSIR, TU Delft, DLR, IRIAS, University of Liverpool, Politechnico di Milano, NUMECA International S.A., Optimad Engineering S.r.l., Airbus Operations Ltd, EADS-MAS and IITP. It is focused on the investigation and development of methods for accelerating the aircraft loads calculation process.
“ALICIA”: All Conditions Operations and Innovative Cockpit Infrastructure
Authors: Napoletano Linda  , Dreyer Daniel
Published: February 2025

Low clouds and poor visibility are the most disruptive factors for aviation. So, considering the expected growth of the air traffic over the next decades, it is vital to reduce the impact of difficult weather conditions. The European FP7 project called “ALICIA” – All conditions operations and Innovative Cockpit Infrastructure – here below described aims at developing new and scalable cockpit applications which can extend aircraft operations in degraded conditions and at providing the critical building blocks necessary to reduce delays in Europe associated with bad weather. The final goal is to achieve All Conditions Operations (ACO) allowing aircraft to fly with the same safety and performance in almost every conditions.
Modular Joints for Composite Aircraft Components
Authors: Llopart Prieto Llorenç
Published: February 2025

Modular Joints for composite aircraft components (MOJO – Modular Joints) European research project was set to introduce a material driven design for aeronautics composite components. Composites are associated with integration, complexity, manufacturing risk, weight savings and high costs. Cost savings are achieved with out-of-autoclave infusion processes and tailored preforms made of high performance textiles. Adhesive bonding, as the most compatible joining method for composite parts, provides also significant cost and weight savings. The challenge was to create synergy between preform infusion and adhesive bonding processes supporting differential design principles. This last allows the decrease of highly integration and reduces the manufacturing risk.
IFAR – International Forum for Aviation Research
Authors: Szodruch Joachim  , Degenhardt Richard
Published: February 2025

The future challenges of air transport motivated in 2010 the leading worldwide aviation research institutions to found IFAR – the International Forum for Aviation Research – which is working on a voluntary, non-binding basis. The primary purpose of IFAR is to connect research organisations worldwide, to enable the information exchange on aviation research activities between members, to facilitate opportunities for networking and creating partnerships and to coordinate views and make recommendations for use by its members. Climate change is currently one of the most relevant topic and was the initial motivation to set up IFAR. However, the focus of IFAR is on all non-competitive research and development topics related to global technical challenges such as those pertaining to emission, noise, security, safety and efficient operations, and steps to reduce the impact of aviation on climate and the environment. Against this background, IFAR aims at developing a regularly updated IFAR Framework Document outlining global research objectives and technological opportunities for use by its members. The results will be updated regularly at the website www.ifar.aero From the beginning, the IFAR activities were supported by the IFAR secretariat which was established and financed by DLR. From mid 2011 the IFAR administration and the IFAR activities are also supported by the 3-year Support-Action-Project IFARs funded by the European Commission. After mid 2014 IFAR is expected and will be self organised without any further external support.
Aerodynamic Technologies for More Effective, Environmentally Friendly Air Transport System: The KATnet Strategy
Authors: Abbas Adel  , Schrauf Geza  , Valero Eusebio
Published: February 2025

Most of the requirements fixed by the ACARE Vision 2020 for civil aircraft operations are conditioned by the improvement of aircraft aerodynamic performance, which necessitates using technologies able to achieve a more effective, environmentally friendly air transport system. The European coordination action so-called KATnet has identified and assessed key aerodynamic technologies that offer solutions to take up the challenges of this Vision 2020. These technologies are highlighted here below.
Classification of Postural Disorders and Spinal Deformities in the Three Dimensions According to Computer Optical Topography
Authors: Sarnadskiy V.N.
Published: February 2025

The appearance of surface topography has opened up new opportunities for population-based studies of postural disorders and spinal deformities. In Russia such study began in 1996 and nowadays a large amount of statistical data on the pediatric population has been accumulated. Analysis of the postural disorder and spinal deformity varieties has allowed us to create a new classification of these disorders. Classification is based on three-dimensional estimation of the trunk and on the orthopedic division of structural scoliosis into 4 grades assumed in Russia.
Why X-rays are not reliable to assess sagittal profile: a cross sectional study
Authors: Zaina Fabio  , Pizzetti Paolo  , Donzelli Sabrina  , Negrini Francesco  , Negrini Stefano
Published: February 2025

Background. X-rays are the gold standard evaluation for sagittal plane deformities even if, to see the spine, it's necessary to move the arms from the resting position to a forward one. The postural impact of arm positions has never been verified. The aim of this study is to measure the effect of arm positioning on surface topography measure.
Short-term effects of combination of several physiotherapy methods on the respiratory function – a case report of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis
Authors: Wnuk Bartosz  , Frackiewicz Joanna  , Durmala Jacek  , Czernicki Krzysztof  , Wadolowski Karol
Published: February 2025

The aim of the study was to evaluate the positive effects of combination of several physiotherapy methods on the respiratory function on example of a case report.
Long Term Monitoring of Blood Flow at Multiple Depths – Observations of Changes
Authors: Hagblad Jimmie  , Folke Mia  , Lindén Maria
Published: February 2025

Detecting reduced circulation, which is a major factor in the development of pressure ulcers, can be done using optical methods. PPG and LDF can be combined and used to evaluate blood flow at different depths. In this study the use of a probe combining PPG and LDF to monitor multiple tissue depths is evaluated. The effects on blood flow and temperature without additional provocation was examined. Measurements were performed during 60 min and the use of an active probe was compared with the use of a semi-active probe turned off a major part of the time. Changes in temperature and blood flow using these probe configurations (active and semi-active probe) are compared; four different 5 min segments during a 60 min measurement. A general increase in both temperature and blood flow is found but this increase could not be concluded to occur due to the light sources of the probe.
Wearable Wireless Multi-parameter Sensor Module for Physiological Monitoring
Authors: Liverud Anders E.  , Vedum Jon  , Fleurey Franck  , Seeberg Trine M.
Published: February 2025

Advances in low power technology have given new possibilities for continuous physiological monitoring in several domains such as health care with disease prevention and quality of care services and workers in harsh environment. A miniaturized, multifunctional sensor module that transmits sensor data wirelessly using Bluetooth Smart technology has been developed. The wireless communication link is influenced by factors like antenna orientation, reflections, interference and noise. Test results for signal strength measurements for the wireless transmission in various setups are given and discussed.
Extraction of ABCD Rule Features from Skin Lesions Images with Smartphone
Authors: Rosado Luís  , Castro Rui  , Ferreira Liliana  , Ferreira Márcia
Published: February 2025

One of the greatest challenges in dermatology today is the early detection of melanoma since the success rates of curing this type of cancer are very high if detected during the early stages of its development. The main objective of the work presented in this paper is to create a prototype of a patient-oriented system for skin lesion analysis using a smartphone. This work aims at implementing a self-monitoring system that collects, processes, and stores information of skin lesions through the automatic extraction of specific visual features. The selection of the features was based on the ABCD rule, which considers 4 visual criteria considered highly relevant for the detection of malignant melanoma. The algorithms used to extract these features are briefly described and the results achieved using images taken from the smartphone camera are discussed.
Co-production of Health Enabled by Next Generation Personal Health Systems
Authors: Boye Niels
Published: February 2025

This paper describes the theoretical principles for the establishment of a parallel and complementary modality of healthcare delivery – named Coproduction of Health (CpH). This service-model activates digital data, information, and knowledge about health, healthy choices, and the individuals' health-state and computes through personalized models context-aware communication and advice. “Lightweight technologies” (smartphones, tablets, application stores) would serve as the technology close to the end-users (citizens, patients, clients, customers), connecting them with “big data” in conventionally and non-conventionally organized data repositories. The CpH modality aims at providing synergies between professional healthcare, selfcare, informal care and provides data-fusion from several sources such as health characteristics of consumer goods, from sensors, actuators, and health related data-repositories, and turns this into “health added value” for the individual. A theoretical business model respecting healthcare values, ethics, and legal foundation is also sketched out.
The HemoCop Telemetric Sensor System: Technology and Results of in-vivo Assessment
Authors: Schostek Sebastian  , Schurr Marc O.
Published: February 2025

Upper gastrointestinal bleeding is considered the most frequent emergency in endoscopy units. Decisive for successful treatment of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding is a timely recognition. We have developed a telemetric implant containing a novel optical sensor principle able to detect the presence of blood in the lumen of the GI tract. In-vivo experiments demonstrated the possibility to detect bleeding in situ and to send an alert signal to an extracorporeal receiver.
BI Views: Connection, Immersion, and Fusion Through the Lens of Emergence
Authors: Carlsson Sven A.  , Tona Olgerta
Published: February 2025

In the debate on the core of Information System (IS), El Sawy identified three faces of IS views: connection, immersion, and fusion. However, no research has further elaborated these concepts. For this task, we adopted the characteristics of the old concept of “emergence” to better describe and explain the shifts in IS from connection to immersion and finally towards fusion. A police organization is examined as a case study, and its Business Intelligence (BI) system and users and their interaction in solving daily tasks are observed. The study took place during two different time periods in 2009 and 2011. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, including a survey and interviews. Two main user groups were identified in the police organization: viewers and analysts. The results of this study showed that in the context of viewers BI is in connection view and is slowly emerging into immersion. On the other hand, in the context of analysts BI is positioned in immersion view and, based on emergent properties, we concluded that there is potential for a slow emergence towards fusion once more capabilities are integrated in the BI system used by the analysts.
R-Checkpoint Algorithm for Multi-Event Decision Making over Multivariate Time Series
Authors: Ngan Chun-Kit  , Brodsky Alexander  , Lin Jessica
Published: February 2025

We propose a Relaxed Checkpoint algorithm (R-Checkpoint) to solve Multi-Event Expert Query Parametric Estimation (ME-EQPE) problems over multivariate time series. Our proposed algorithm combines the strengths of both domain-knowledge-based and formal-learning-based approaches to learn decision parameters for yielding a reasonable time utility over multivariate time series. More specifically, our approach solves the decision optimization problems to yield the time utility from multiple decision time points, as well as learns the multiple sets of decision parameters in their respective events during the computations at a lower cost. We show that our approach produces a reasonable forecasting result by using the learned multiple sets of decision parameters.
Understanding doctors' perceptions of their prescribing competency and the value they ascribe to an electronic prescribing system
Authors: Baysari Melissa T.  , Westbrook Johanna I.  , Day Richard O.
Published: February 2025

Resistance to adoption has been identified as one of the major barriers to successful implementation of technological systems in hospitals. Acceptance of an electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) system is expected to occur if prescribers perceive a need for e-prescribing systems to reduce prescribing errors. We set out to examine doctors' perceptions of their prescribing competency and to identify perceived advantages and disadvantages of using an e-prescribing system, with the objective of determining the value doctors ascribed to the e-prescribing system. This study was conducted at a teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia. Sixteen prescribers participated in a 20-minute semi-structured interview where they were asked to comment on prescribing errors (their own errors and errors they believed to be common) and advantages and disadvantages of the e-prescribing system. Prescribers held the view that they rarely made prescribing errors. Although users recognised advantages and disadvantages of using the e-prescribing system, most preferred paper to electronic prescribing. Prescribers most likely overestimated their prescribing competency and so failed to see the value of an e-prescribing system to reduce prescribing errors. E-prescribing system implementation is a challenging task for any hospital. These results suggest that keeping prescribers informed about their prescribing errors and the quality improvement benefits of e-prescribing may lead to greater acceptance of and satisfaction with an e-prescribing system.
Early discharge and its effect on ED length of stay and access block
Authors: Khanna Sankalp  , Boyle Justin  , Good Norm  , Lind James
Published: February 2025

Effecting early discharge is a widely recommended strategy for improving patient flow in acute hospitals. This paper analyses the impact of inpatient discharge timing on Emergency Department (ED) flow parameters such as access block and length of stay, while comparing this to the effect on hospital occupancy, to arrive at an understanding of a ‘whole of hospital’ response to discharge timing. The impact of hospital size is also investigated. The analysis reveals that, on days when the discharge peak lags the peak in inpatient admissions, hospitals of all sizes exhibit increased levels of occupancy, inpatient and ED length of stay, and access block. The findings corroborate the efficacy of early discharge initiatives and ‘whole of hospital’ flow improvement initiatives for addressing overcrowding and efficiency issues in hospitals.
Towards A Unified Definition of Function
Authors: Mizoguchi Riichiro  , Kitamura Yoshinobu  , Borgo Stefano
Published: February 2025

Both natural objects and artifacts have been studied from a variety of perspectives by the different sciences. One issue that has so far resisted philosophical and ontological investigations is the definition of a general notion of function capable of making sense of the functions attributed to natural objects, such as biological organisms, as well as of the functions attributed to artifacts, such as (designed) tools.
A method for re-engineering a thesaurus into an ontology
Authors: Kless Daniel  , Jansen Ludger  , Lindenthal Jutta  , Wiebensohn Jens
Published: February 2025

The construction of complex ontologies can be facilitated by adapting existing vocabularies. There is little clarity and in fact little consensus as to what modifications of vocabularies are necessary in order to re-engineer them into ontologies. In this paper we present a method that provides clear steps to follow when re-engineering a thesaurus. The method makes use of top-level ontologies and was derived from the structural differences between thesauri and ontologies as well as from best practices in modeling, some of which have been advocated in the biomedical domain. We illustrate each step of our method with examples from a re-engineering case study about agricultural fertilizers based on the AGROVOC thesaurus. Our method makes clear that re-engineering thesauri requires far more than just a syntactic conversion into a formal language or other easily automatable steps. The method can not only be used for re-engineering thesauri, but does also summarize steps for building ontologies in general, and can hence be adapted for the re-engineering of other types of vocabularies or terminologies.
Axiomatizing Change-of-State Words
Authors: Montazeri Niloofar  , Hobbs Jerry R.
Published: February 2025

We describe our effort in defining change-of-state words from Core WordNet by constructing axioms anchored in core theories that are crucial in characterizing event words, including change of state, composite entity, scales and event structure. Our methodology consists of three steps: Analyzing the structure of a word's WordNet senses, writing axioms for the most general senses, and testing the axioms on textual entailment pairs. We also describe some common issues we faced and decisions we had to make during axiomatization. We look at two specific textual entailment examples in detail to illustrate the power of this method.
States, Processes and Events, and the Ontology of Causal Relations
Authors: Galton Antony
Published: February 2025

The subject of causality is large, and fraught with difficulties. In this paper, we concentrate on two aspects which are of importance when we seek to handle causality from an ontological point of view, The first concerns the range of particulars between which causal and causal-like relations may hold. In addition to events—the domain most typically chosen as the objects of causation—we consider the role played by processes and states, taking a particular view of the nature of these entities. The second aspect concerns the range of different causal and causal-like relations to be considered. In addition to causation itself we consider such things as initiation and termination, perpetuation, enablement and prevention. We do not present a fully-fledged ontological theory of causation, but lay down some basic ingredients that should be taken into account in the construction of such a theory.
Ontology of Time in GFO
Authors: Baumann Ringo  , Loebe Frank  , Herre Heinrich
Published: February 2025

Time, events, changes and processes play a major role in conceptual modeling, and in information systems and computer science altogether. Accordingly, the representation of time structures and reasoning about temporal data and knowledge are important theoretical and practical research areas. We assume that a formal representation of temporal knowledge must use as a framework some toplevel ontology that describes the most general categories of temporal entities. In the current paper we discuss an ontology of time which is part of the foundational ontology GFO (General Formal Ontology). This ontology of time is inspired by ideas of Franz Brentano [1]. It is used to propose novel contributions to a number of problematic issues related to temporal representation and reasoning, among others, the Dividing Instant Problem and the problem of persistence and change. We present an axiomatization of the ontology as a theory in first-order logic. Eventually, metalogical analysis shows the consistency, completeness, and decidability of this theory.
Full-text Retrieval System for Humanities Researches
Authors: Murakawa Takehiko  , Watagami Yukiharu  , Utsunomiya Keigo  , Nakagawa Masaru
Published: February 2025

The full-text retrieval system which is available in Internet-incapable places is reported. To use the retrieval service in a quick and efficient manner, there are properties which the system should require. Portability, accuracy and timeliness are defined as requirements for practical use and we constructed the system for satisfying all these properties. Moreover we supplied the registration support and implemented a unique bookmark feature in order that the system can fulfill the properties named installation-facility and reusability. Evaluation experiments made sure that the added features were useful for the information retrieval. Since the system is developed for supporting literature searching by humanities researchers, it does not only accept a variety of document files but split Excel files by row into the records at the time of registration. Application of the service to source code management is also discussed.
Goal-Oriented Robustness Analysis
Authors: Honda Kozo  , Nakagawa Hiroyuki  , Tahara Yasuyuki  , Ohsuga Akihiko
Published: February 2025

In the upstream software development processes, from requirements definition to design, one of the most important tasks is to make the requirements completely satisfied in the design process, therefore actually realizing the required system. Thus, a seamless connection between the requirements model and the design model is very effective to completely realize user requirements. KAOS [1] is one of the typical methodologies of Goal-oriented requirements engineering [2]. It elicits and builds up the requirements systematically and exhaustively. ICONIX process [3] designs a system using UML diagrams. In the ICONIX process, requirements are reviewed using use case models, and then designed with class and sequence diagrams to realize the use cases through robustness diagrams. Based on these methodologies, this paper presents an approach to transfer as much information as possible from KAOS requirements models to preliminary design of system behaviors in ICONIX. Our approach allows the use case models and robustness diagrams to reflect the requirements of the KAOS model with the refinement patterns. We also conducted a case study where flight reservations in an international airline were modeled for the requirements definition and the preliminary design. We could find every requirements defined by the KAOS model in the use case models and the robustness diagrams. Our approach was confirmed to be feasible through this case study.
Markerless Human Motion Tracking: A Survey
Authors: Stathopoulou Ioanna-Ourania  , Tsihrintzis George A.
Published: February 2025

Towards building new, friendlier human-computer interaction and multimedia interactive services systems, new computer techniques are applied which aim at revealing information about the affective state, cognitive activity, personality, intention and psychological state of a person. In this paper we conduct a survey to recent developments and current state-of-the-art in the field of body analysis by the use of non-intrusive optical systems. Markerless based human motion capture describes the activity of analyzing and expressing human motion using image processing and computer vision techniques. In this paper, we categorize these approaches in the following four categories: Model-based methods, Region-based methods, Active contour based methods and Feature-based methods and present the advantages and disadvantages of each category separately.
Investigating Strategic Considerations in Persuasion Dialogue Games
Authors: Hadjinikolis Christos  , Modgil Sanjay  , Black Elizabeth  , Mcburney Peter  , Luck Michael
Published: February 2025

This paper provides a framework for argumentation-based persuasion dialogues that enables a participant to implement strategies based on its modelling of its interlocutor's knowledge. The framework is defined on the basis of the recent ASPIC+general model of argumentation, and thus accommodates a range of pos sible instantiations. We extend existing works on persuasion by accounting for both admissible and grounded semantics, and also by allowing participants to not only move arguments that attack those of their interlocutor, but also preferences which undermine the success of these attacks as defeats. We also state formal results for these dialogues, and then use these dialogues to illustrate that appropriate mechanisms for strategising need to account for the logical content of arguments, rather than just rely on their abstract specification.
A submodular-based decomposition strategy for valued CSPs
Authors: Helaoui Maher  , Naanaa Wady
Published: February 2025

Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problems (VCSPs) can model many combinatorial problems. VCSPs that involve submodular valuation functions only is a particular class of VCSPs that have the advantage of being tractable. In this paper, we propose a problem decomposition strategy for binary VCSPs which consists in decomposing the problem to be solved into a set of submodular, and then tractable, subproblems. The decomposition strategy combines two problem solving techniques, namely domain partitioning and value permutation.
Complexity and Approximability of Egalitarian Nash Product Social Welfare Optimization in Multiagent Resource Allocation
Authors: Nguyen Nhan-Tam  , Nguyen Trung Thanh  , Rothe Jörg
Published: February 2025

Multiagent resource allocation deals with distributing (bundles) of resources to agents that specify utility functions over bundles. A natural and important problem in this field is social welfare optimization. We assume resources to be indivisible and nonshareable and that utility functions are represented by the k-additive form or as straight-line programs. We prove NP-completeness for egalitarian and Nash product social welfare optimization for straight-line program representation of utility functions. In addition, we show that social welfare optimization by the Nash product in the 1-additive form is hard to approximate, yet we also give fully polynomial-time approximation schemes for egalitarian and Nash product social welfare optimization in the 1-additive form with a fixed number of agents.
Multi-Attribute Auction Mechanism for Supporting Resource Allocation in Business Process Enactment
Authors: Pla Albert  , López Beatriz  , Murillo Javier
Published: February 2025

Resources are taking into account when designing business processes, but, under certain circumstances, they should be scheduled when business processes are enacted. Nowadays, the decentralization of the activities and outsourcing of certain tasks to third party companies is increasing the complexity of the resource allocation for business process. Moreover, some activities cannot be scheduled in advance, because they depend on some decision points in the business process, forcing the allocation of resources to tasks on the go. To deal with these issues we present a multi-attribute auction mechanism. Auctions are a market mechanism that facilitate the resource allocation in open, distributed scenarios. The auction model we are presenting is multi-attribute, so in addition to deal with the economic costs of the allocations, it enables the inclusion of other attributes, such as finishing on time or the quality of the outcomes. We have tested our proposal in a simulated framework and the results show about the benefits of using different attributes, in addition of providing privacy relationships among business process and resource providers.
Neural Network-based Framework for Data Stream Mining
Authors: Silva Bruno  , Marques Nuno
Published: February 2025

We address the problem of mining data streams using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Usual data stream clustering models (eg. k-means) are too dependent on assumptions regarding cluster statistical properties (ie. number of clusters, cluster shape), while unsupervised ANN algorithms (Adaptive Resonant Theory — ART networks and Self-Organizing Maps — SOM) are recognized widely by their ability to discover hidden patterns, generalization capabilities and robustness to noise. However, use of ANNs with the data stream model is still poorly explored. We propose a methodology and modular framework to cluster data streams and extract other relevant knowledge. Empirical results with both synthetic and real data provide evidence of the validity of the approach.
Modeling Temporal Aspects of Contract Net Protocol Using Timed Colored Petri Nets
Authors: Boukredera Djamila  , Aknine Samir  , Maamri Ramdane
Published: February 2025

Contract Net Protocol (CNP) is a high level communication protocol. It is one of the most widely used protocols in multi-agent system (MAS) to resolve decentralized task allocation problem. The main aim of the protocol is to facilitate contract negotiation between a manager agent and many contractor agents. A lot of work has been done for the verification of the protocol and its extensions, but there still a lack of a formalism for representing temporal interaction aspects which are an essential parameter in modeling the protocol . This paper proposes to use Timed Colored Petri Nets (TCPN) to model correctly and formally this temporal dimension often defined as interaction duration and message deadlines. We will use simulation techniques and state space analysis to verify important properties namely model correctness, deadline respect, absence of deadlocks and livelocks, absence of dead code, agent terminal states consistency, concurrency and validity.
Mo.Di.Bot – Mobile Diagnostic Robot
Authors: Cristalli Cristina  , Angione Giacomo  , Lattanzi Luca  , Graf Birgit  , Weisshardt Florian  , Arbeiter Georg
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this paper is the description of Mo.Di.Bot system and demonstration. Mo.Di.Bot is a mobile robot with manipulation and measurement capabilities conceived for advanced diagnosis and quality control in industrial environments. Mo.Di.Bot is composed of a mobile platform, a robotic arm and a high DOF end-effector, and it can autonomously move and interact with the surrounding environment. The safety of the system is guaranteed by a set of Time Of Flight sensors used to model and monitor the working area where also human operators can be present. In addition, the robot is equipped with measurement instruments specific for the diagnostic inspection of the products under test. Washing machines life-test laboratories have been chosen in order to validate Mo.Di.Bot capabilities in a real-world industrial application scenario, but the results achieved can be easily extended to many industrial sectors, goods and electromechanical components where high levels of flexibility and autonomy are needed.
Verification of Description Logic Knowledge and Action Bases
Authors: Bagheri Hariri Babak  , Calvanese Diego  , De Giacomo Giuseppe  , De Masellis Riccardo  , Felli Paolo  , Montali Marco
Published: February 2025

We introduce description logic (DL) Knowledge and Action Bases (KAB), a mechanism that provides both a semantically rich representation of the information on the domain of interest in terms of a DL KB and a set of actions to change such information over time, possibly introducing new objects. We resort to a variant of DL-Lite where UNA is not enforced and where equality between objects may be asserted and inferred. Actions are specified as sets of conditional effects, where conditions are based on epistemic queries over the KB (TBox and ABox), and effects are expressed in terms of new ABoxes. We address the verification of temporal properties expressed in a variant of first-order μ-calculus where a controlled form of quantification across states is allowed. Notably, we show decidability of verification, under a suitable restriction inspired by the notion of weak acyclicity in data exchange.
Natural Language Arguments: A Combined Approach
Authors: Cabrio Elena  , Villata Serena
Published: February 2025

With the growing use of the Social Web, an increasing number of applications for exchanging opinions with other people are becoming available online. These applications are widely adopted with the consequence that the number of opinions about the debated issues increases. In order to cut in on a debate, the participants need first to evaluate the opinions in favour or against the debated issue. Argumentation theory proposes algorithms and semantics to evaluate the set of accepted arguments, given the conflicts among them. The main problem is how to automatically generate the arguments from the natural language formulation of the opinions used in these applications. Our paper addresses this problem by proposing and evaluating the use of natural language techniques to generate the arguments. In particular, we adopt the textual entailment approach, a generic framework for applied semantics, where linguistic objects are mapped by means of semantic inferences at a textual level. We couple textual entailment together with a Dung-like argumentation system which allows us to identify the arguments that are accepted in the considered online debate. The originality of the proposed framework lies in the following point: natural language debates are analyzed and the arguments are automatically extracted.
Guiding User Choice During Discussion by Silence, Examples and Justifications
Authors: Fenster Maier  , Zuckerman Inon  , Kraus Sarit
Published: February 2025

This paper describes an approach for guiding human choice-making by a computerized agent, in a conversational setting, where both user and agent provide meaningful input. In the proposed approach, the agent attempts to convince a person by providing examples for the person to emulate or by providing justifications for the person to internalize and build or change her preferences accordingly. The agent can take into account examples and justifications provided by the person. In a series of experiments where the task was selecting a location for a school, a computer agent interacted with subjects using a textual chat-type interface, with different agent designs being used in different experiments. The results show that the example-providing agent outperformed the justification providing agent and both, surprisingly, outperformed an agent which pre sented the subject with both examples and justifications. In addition, it was demonstrated that in some cases the best strategy for the agent is to keep silent.
Argumentation-Based Reinforcement Learning for RoboCup Soccer Keepaway
Authors: Gao Yang  , Toni Francesca  , Craven Robert
Published: February 2025

Reinforcement Learning (RL) suffers from several difficulties when applied to domains with no obvious goal state defined; this leads to inefficiency in RL algorithms. In this paper we consider a solution within the context of a widely-used testbed for RL, that of RoboCup Keepaway soccer. We introduce Argumentation-Based RL (ABRL), using methods from argumentation theory to integrate domain knowledge, represented by arguments, into the SMDP algorithm for RL by using potential-based reward shaping. Empirical results show that ABRL outperforms the original SMDP algorithm, for this game, by improving the optimal performance.
Complexity of Branching Temporal Description Logics
Authors: Gutiérrez-Basulto Víctor  , Christoph Jung Jean  , Lutz Carsten
Published: February 2025

We study branching-time temporal description logics (TDLs) based on the DLs ALC and EL and the temporal logics CTL and CTL*. The main contributions are algorithms for satisfiability that are more direct than existing approaches, and (mostly) tight elementary complexity bounds that range from PTIME to 2EXPTIME and 3EXPTIME. A careful use of tree automata techniques allows us to obtain transparent and uniform algorithms, avoiding to deal directly with the intricacies of CTL*.
Creating Features from a Learned Grammar in a Simulated Student
Authors: Li Nan  , Schreiber Abraham  , Cohen William W.  , Koedinger Kenneth R.
Published: February 2025

Understanding and developing intelligent agents that simulate human learning has been a long-standing goal in both artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Although learning agents are able to produce intelligent behavior with less human knowledge engineering than in the past, intelligent agent developers are still required to manually encode much prior domain knowledge. We recently proposed an efficient algorithm that acquires representations of the world using an unsupervised grammar induction algorithm, and integrated this representation learner into a simulated student, SimStudent. In this paper, we use the representation learner to automatically generate a set of feature predicates based on the acquired representation, and provide the automatically generated feature predicates to SimStudent as prior domain knowledge. We show that with the automatically-generated feature predicates, the learning agent can perform at a level comparable to when it is given manually-constructed feature predicates, but without the effort required to create these feature predicates.
Tunneling and Decomposition-Based State Reduction for Optimal Planning
Authors: Nissim Raz  , Apsel Udi  , Brafman Ronen
Published: February 2025

Action pruning is one of the most basic techniques for improving a planner's performance. The challenge of preserving optimality while reducing the state space has been addressed by several methods in recent years. In this paper we describe two optimality preserving pruning methods: The first is a generalization of tunnel macros. The second, the main contribution of this paper, is a novel partition-based pruning method. The latter requires the introduction of new automated domain decomposition techniques which are of independent interest. Both methods prune the actions applicable at state s based on the last action leading to s, and both attempt to capture the intuition that, when possible, we should focus on one subgoal at a time. As we demonstrate, neither method dominates the other, and a combination of both allows us to obtain an even stronger pruning rule. We also introduce a few modifications to A* that utilize properties shared by both methods to find an optimal plan. Our empirical evaluation compares the pruning power of the two methods and their combination, showing good coverage, reduction in running time, and reduction in the number of expansions.
Institutionalised Paxos Consensus
Authors: Sanderson David  , Pitt Jeremy
Published: February 2025

We address the problem of maintaining consistency in systems that are open, decentralised and resource-constrained, where the system components are highly mobile and/or ‘volatile’. An example of these systems is found in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). Self-organising and norm-governed electronic institutions have been proposed to address these issues, but the problem of maintaining the consistency of conventionally-agreed values (institutional facts) arises due to the fragmentation/aggregation of component clusters, role failure, and revision of agreed values.
Efficient Crowdsourcing of Unknown Experts using Multi-Armed Bandits
Authors: Tran-Thanh Long  , Stein Sebastian  , Rogers Alex  , Jennings Nicholas R.
Published: February 2025

We address the expert crowdsourcing problem, in which an employer wishes to assign tasks to a set of available workers with heterogeneous working costs. Critically, as workers produce results of varying quality, the utility of each assigned task is unknown and can vary both between workers and individual tasks. Furthermore, in realistic settings, workers are likely to have limits on the number of tasks they can perform and the employer will have a fixed budget to spend on hiring workers. Given these constraints, the objective of the employer is to assign tasks to workers in order to maximise the overall utility achieved. To achieve this, we introduce a novel multi–armed bandit (MAB) model, the bounded MAB, that naturally captures the problem of expert crowdsourcing. We also propose an algorithm to solve it efficiently, called bounded ϵ–first, which uses the first ϵB of its total budget B to derive estimates of the workers' quality characteristics (exploration), while the remaining (1−ϵ) B is used to maximise the total utility based on those estimates (exploitation). We show that using this technique allows us to derive an O(B2/3) upper bound on our algorithm's performance regret (i.e. the expected difference in utility between the moptimal and our algorithm). In addition, we demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms existing crowdsourcing methods by up to 155% in experiments based on real–world data from a prominent crowdsourcing site, while achieving up to 75% of a hypothetical optimal with full information.
Using Learning to Rank Approach for Parallel Corpora Based Cross Language Information Retrieval
Authors: Azarbonyad Hosein  , Shakery Azadeh  , Faili Heshaam
Published: February 2025

Learning to Rank (LTR) refers to machine learning techniques for training a model in a ranking task. LTR has been shown to be useful in many applications in information retrieval (IR). Cross language information retrieval (CLIR) is one of the major IR tasks that can potentially benefit from LTR to improve the ranking accuracy. CLIR deals with the problem of expressing query in one language and retrieving the related documents in another language. One of the most important issues in CLIR is how to apply monolingual IR methods in cross lingual environments. In this paper, we propose a new method to exploit LTR for CLIR in which documents are represented as feature vectors. This method provides a mapping based on IR heuristics to employ monolingual IR features in parallel corpus based CLIR. These mapped features are considered as training data for LTR. We show that using LTR trained on mapped features can improve CLIR performance. A comprehensive evaluation on the English-Persian CLIR suggests that our method has significant improvements over parallel corpora based methods and dictionary based methods.
Ordinal Decision Models for Markov Decision Processes
Authors: Weng Paul
Published: February 2025

Setting the values of rewards in Markov decision processes (MDP) may be a difficult task. In this paper, we consider two ordinal decision models for MDPs where only an order is known over rewards. The first one, which has been proposed recently in MDPs [23], defines preferences with respect to a reference point. The second model, which can been viewed as the dual approach of the first one, is based on quantiles. Based on the first decision model, we give a new interpretation of rewards in standard MDPs, which sheds some interesting light on the preference system used in standard MDPs. The second model based on quantile optimization is a new approach in MDPs with ordinal rewards. Although quantile-based optimality is state-dependent, we prove that an optimal stationary deterministic policy exists for a given initial state. Finally, we propose solution methods based on linear programming for optimizing quantiles.
Negotiating Concurrently with Unknown Opponents in omplex, Real-Time Domains
Authors: Williams Colin R.  , Robu Valentin  , Gerding Enrico H.  , Jennings Nicholas R.
Published: February 2025

We propose a novel strategy to enable autonomous agents to negotiate concurrently with multiple, unknown opponents in real-ime, over complex multi-issue domains. We formalise our strategy as an optimisation problem, in which decisions are based on probabilistic information about the opponents' strategies acquired during negotiation. In doing so, we develop the first principled approach that enables the coordination of multiple, concurrent negotiation threads for practical negotiation settings. Furthermore, we validate our strategy using the agents and domains developed for the International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC), and we benchmark our strategy against the state-of-the-art. We find that our approach significantly outperforms existing approaches, and this difference improves even further as the number of available negotiation opponents and the complexity of the negotiation domain increases.