When Physical Systems Realize Functions...

After briefly discussing the relevance of the notions computation and implementation for cognitive science, I summarize some of the problems that have been found in their most common interpretations. In particular, I argue that standard notions of computation together with a state-to-state correspondence view of implementation cannot overcome difficulties posed by Putnam's Realization Theorem and that, therefore, a different approach to implementation is required. The notion realization of a function, developed out of physical theories, is then introduced as a replacement for the notional pair computation-implementation. After gradual refinement, taking practical constraints into account, this notion gives rise to the notion digital system which singles out physical systems that could be actually used, and possibly even built.     

Negotiating Boundaries. Configuration Management in Software Development Teams

Using case-study material from threesmall software development teams, this paper analysesthe regionalisation of design spaces. Its mainpurpose is to understand problems and practices ofcooperative work in such spaces. Configurationmanagement is used to denote both a practice andsupporting software tools and their relationship. Amajor concern is how to develop practices and toolsthat support cooperation across multipleorganisational and social boundaries whilesimultaneously being respectful of regionalisations.     

Organisational development issues and the implementation of the Clean Technology paradigm in industry

Environmental protection activities in industry have rapidly increased in number over the last years. Additionally, surveys of environmental activities have identified a change in the kind or in the approaches used to environmental problem solving. A new paradigm Clean Technology has been developed which gradually seems to replace the Clean-up Technology paradigm and the older Dilute and Disperse paradigm. The new Clean Technology paradigm brings with it not only a new way of looking at environmental protection, but also a range of rules guiding the application of technology and the design of technological systems. This paper presents a few case studies highlighting and evaluating Clean Technology activities.     

Modelling co-operation in the design of knowledge production systems: The Made In'Coop method

This paper presents the latest developments of the MadeIn 'Coop method for modelling the human-machine and human-human co-operation process, and an application of this method for the design of a more co-operative version of the C³I System CHEOPS. We first consider that the design of software systems for organizations is tied more and more to the perspective of compound Knowledge Production Systems that link humans and machines engaged in a co-operative problem solving process. After exposing the four principles upon which MadeIn 'Coop rests for modelling co-operation, we present an artificial problem solving dialogue between CHEOPS and its users. Consistent with the Group Cognitive Processes Theory framework, we propose a dialogue analysis according to two complimentary points of view: the Collective Problem Solving model, and the Coordination model. This analysis should help system designers to identify new system functionalities to assist problem solving.(C³I) Command Control Communication Intelligence Systems     

Relevant logic programming

In this paper we present a fragment of (positive) relevant logic which can be computed by a straightforward extension to SLD resolution while allowing full nesting of implications. These two requirements lead quite naturally to a fragment in which the major feature is an ambiguous user-level conjunction which is interpreted intensionally in query positions and extensionally in assertion positions. These restrictions allow a simple and efficient extension to SLD resolution (and more particularly, the PROLOG evaluation scheme) with quite minor loss in expressive power.     

A dialectical model of assessing conflicting arguments in legal reasoning

Inspired by legal reasoning, this paper presents a formal framework for assessing conflicting arguments. Its use is illustrated with applications to realistic legal examples, and the potential for implementation is discussed. The framework has the form of a logical system for defeasible argumentation. Its language, which is of a logic-programming-like nature, has both weak and explicit negation, and conflicts between arguments are decided with the help of priorities on the rules. An important feature of the system is that these priorities are not fixed, but are themselves defeasibly derived as conclusions within the system. Thus debates on the choice between conflicting arguments can also be modelled.The proof theory of the system is stated in dialectical style, where a proof takes the form of a dialogue between a proponent and an opponent of an argument. An argument is shown to be justified if the proponent can make the opponent run out of moves in whatever way the opponent attacks. Despite this dialectical form, the system reflects a declarative, or relational approach to modelling legal argument. A basic assumption of this paper is that this approach complements two other lines of research in AI and Law, investigations of precedent-based reasoning and the development of procedural, or dialectical models of legal argument.Supported by a research fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and by Esprit WG 8319 Modelage.     

On generators and generative capacity of EOL forms

Summary In this paper we study the generative capacity of EOL forms from two different points of view. On the one hand, we consider the generative capacity of special EOL forms which one could call linear like and context free like, establishing the existence of a rich variety of non-regular sub-EOL language families. On the other hand, we propose the notion of a generator L of a language family We mean by this that any synchronized EOL system generating L generates — if understood as an EOL form — all languages of . We characterize the generators of the family of regular languages, and prove that other well known language families do not have generators.Partially supported under NSE Research Council of Canada, grant No. A-7700     

Semantic analysis in XTRA,an English — Chinese machine translation system

This paper concerns the resolution of lexical ambiguity in a machine translation environment. We describe the integration of principles of selection restrictions. Preference Semantics, and intelligent relaxation of constraints in handling lexical ambiguity. The approach differs from many previous MT systems in that it is more powerful than brute force systems, while more realistic than systems that assume a large degree of coded encyclopedia information for full understanding.     

A decision support tool for the diagnosis of breast cancer based upon Fuzzy ARTMAP

This paper presents research into the application of the fuzzy ARTMAP neural network model to the diagnosis of cancer from fine-needle aspirates of the breast. Trained fuzzy ARTMAP networks are differently pruned so as to maximise accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. The differently pruned networks are then employed in a cascade of networks intended to separate cases into certain and suspicious classes. This mimics the predictive behaviour of a human pathologist. The fuzzy ARTMAP model also provides symbolic rule extraction facilities and the validity of the derived rules for this domain is discussed. Additionally, results are provided showing the effects upon network performance of different input features and different observers. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

The crisis of control: A progressive approach towards information systems integration for small companies

When small companies grow, they face a range of strategic managerial challenges. Stage models for small company growth predict that a crisis of control can occur when existing information systems for communication and control are no longer able to cope with increased throughput, nor are they able to respond flexibly to opportunities and challenges in the business environment. In response, owner-managers (OMs) may seek technological enterprise-wide solutions, in a drive towards integrated information systems (IIS). This paper reports a case study in which the Viable Systems Model (VSM) was used during an integration project in a small manufacturing company. In this case, the solution was found in organisational learning, rather than technology. It is argued that such a phase may be an essential step to the adoption of ERP/MRP at a later date for small growing companies.     

Validating the PSL/Sugar Semantics Using Automated Reasoning

The Accellera organisation selected Sugar, IBMs formal specification language, as the basis for a standard to drive assertion-based verification in the electronics industry. Sugar combines regular expressions, Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) and Computation Tree Logic (CTL) into a property language intended for both static verification (e.g. model checking) and dynamic verification (e.g. simulation). In 2003 Accellera decided to rename the evolving standard to Accellera Property Specification Language (or PSL for short). We motivate and describe a deep semantic embedding of PSL in the version of higher-order logic supported by the HOL 4 theorem-proving system. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that mechanised theorem proving can be a useful aid to the validation of the semantics of an industrial design language.     

Coordinating Multiple Agents via Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we attempt to use reinforcement learning techniques to solve agent coordination problems in task-oriented environments. The Fuzzy Subjective Task Structure model (FSTS) is presented to model the general agent coordination. We show that an agent coordination problem modeled in FSTS is a Decision-Theoretic Planning (DTP) problem, to which reinforcement learning can be applied. Two learning algorithms, coarse-grained and fine-grained, are proposed to address agents coordination behavior at two different levels. The coarse-grained algorithm operates at one level and tackle hard system constraints, and the fine-grained at another level and for soft constraints. We argue that it is important to explicitly model and explore coordination-specific (particularly system constraints) information, which underpins the two algorithms and attributes to the effectiveness of the algorithms. The algorithms are formally proved to converge and experimentally shown to be effective.     

Automatic Extraction of Collocations From Korean Text

In this paper, we propose a statistical method to automaticallyextract collocations from Korean POS-tagged corpus. Since a large portion of language is represented by collocation patterns, the collocational knowledge provides a valuable resource for NLP applications. One difficulty of collocation extraction is that Korean has a partially free word order, which also appears in collocations. In this work, we exploit four statistics, frequency,randomness, convergence, and correlation' in order to take into account the flexible word order of Korean collocations. We separate meaningful bigrams using an evaluation function based on the four statistics and extend the bigrams to n-gram collocations using a fuzzy relation. Experiments show that this method works well for Korean collocations.     

Theory of edge perception for computer vision feedback control

In this paper, the authors address the problem of edge-perception for its applications to vision-feedback control in robotic systems.In natural vision, the recognition of objects takes place through the process consisting of eye system, neural networks and cognition. The cognitive process, in turn yields a phenomenon known as perception. This is the phenomenon of perception of physical attributes, such as edges, color and texture, etc., which is responsible for the recognition of objects through the natural vision processes.In this paper, we make an attempt to postulate the theory of perception for gray-level images. The gray-level images, when going through the cognitive and perception processes, are contaminated by the uncertainty; here we call it cognitive uncertainty.The studies in this paper are confined to the phenomenon of edge-perception for two-dimensional gray-level images, however, these studies can be extended to other types of visual attributes both in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces. Indeed, the perception of these attributes, which attempts to emulate the human vision system, may help in the design of a truly robust computer vision-feedback control system for robotic applications.     

Human-oriented and machine-oriented reasoning: Remarks on some problems in the history of Automated Theorem Proving

Examples in the history of Automated Theorem Proving are given, in order to show that even a seemingly mechanical activity, such as deductive inference drawing, involves special cultural features and tacit knowledge. Mechanisation of reasoning is thus regarded as a complex undertaking in cultural pruning of human-oriented reasoning. Sociological counterparts of this passage from human- to machine-oriented reasoning are discussed, by focusing on problems of man-machine interaction in the area of computer-assisted proof processing.     

Collaboration and Teamwork: Immersion and Presence in an Online Learning Environment

In the world of OTIS, an online Internet School for occupational therapists, students from four European countries were encouraged to work collaboratively through problem-based learning by interacting with each other in a virtual semi-immersive environment. This paper describes, often in their own words, the experience of European occupational therapy students working together across national and cultural boundaries. Collaboration and teamwork were facilitated exclusively through an online environment, since the students never met each other physically during the OTIS pilot course. The aim of the paper is to explore the observations that (1) there was little interaction between students from different tutorial groups and (2) virtual teamwork developed in each of the cross-cultural tutorial groups. Synchronous data from the students was captured during tutorial sessions and peer-booked meetings and analyzed using the qualitative constructs of immersion, presence and reflection in learning. The findings indicate that immersion was experienced only to a certain extent. However, students found both presence and shared presence, within their tutorial groups, to help collaboration and teamwork. Other evidence suggests that communities of interest were established. Further study is proposed to support group work in an online learning environment. It is possible to conclude that collaborative systems can be designed, which encourage students to build trust and teamwork in a cross cultural online learning environment.This revised version was published online in March 2005 with corrections to the cover dateFunded by the European Union through the TENTelecom programme.     

A two-layer fuzzy pattern matching procedure for the evaluation of conditions involving vague quantifiers

In this note, we are interested in the evaluation of conditions of the form The value of attribute a for Q items of X is in F or more shortly Q items of X are F, where X is a set of items, Q denotes a possibly vague proportion (which may be linguistically expressed, e.g. most), F is a (possibly fuzzy) subset of the attribute domain of a. and where the available knowledge about the value a(x) of the attribute a for any item x may be imprecise or even vague. The evaluation is based on a fuzzy pattern matching procedure repeated two times. Such conditions may be encountered in queries addressed to an incomplete information data base or in the if-part of expert rules.