Software agents for knowledge management: coordination in multi-agent supply chains and auctions

A fundamental question that must be addressed in software agents for knowledge management is coordination in multi-agent systems. The coordination problem is ubiquitous in knowledge management, such as in manufacturing, supply chains, negotiation, and agent-mediated auctions. This paper summarizes several multi-agent systems for knowledge management that have been developed recently by the author and his collaborators to highlight new research directions for multi-agent knowledge management systems. In particular, the paper focuses on three areas of research:

• •Coordination mechanisms in agent-based supply chains. How do we design mechanisms for coordination, information and knowledge sharing in supply chains with self-interested agents? What would be a good coordination mechanism when we have a non-linear structure of the supply chain, such as a pyramid structure? What are the desirable properties for the optimal structure of efficient supply chains in terms of information and knowledge sharing? Will DNA computing be a viable tool for the analysis of agent-based supply chains?
• •Coordination mechanisms in agent-mediated auctions. How do we induce cooperation and coordination among various self-interested agents in agent-mediated auctions? What are the fundamental principles to promote agent cooperation behavior? How do we train agents to learn to cooperate rather than program agents to cooperate? What are the principles of trust building in agent systems?
• •Multi-agent enterprise knowledge management, performance impact and human aspects. Will people use agent-based systems? If so, how do we coordinate agent-based systems with human beings? What would be the impact of agent systems in knowledge management in an information economy?

     

In brief

• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Communications Security Establishment
• Orga Kartensysteme
• Giesecke & Devrient
• INSIDE Contactless
• Epecom Technology & Distribution
• PT Adiwira Sembada
• Saflink
• European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s
• Sagem
• Gemplus
• Ingenico
• Korea Information & Communications Co
• TDK Semiconductor Corporation
• All American Semiconductor
• SchlumbergerSema
• Schlumberger Ltd
• Tribute Ltd
• Giesecke & Devrient
• INSIDE Contactless
• Beacon Technologies
• US Navy
• Transport for London
• Smart Frog Holdings
• Red Alert Group
• NEXT
• Trintech Group
• Smart Card Forum of China
• Beijing Commercial Administration
• Schlumberger
• Precise Biometrics
• Microexpert
• Visa International
• Applied DNA Sciences
• Applied DNA Sciences Europe Ltd
• Biowell Technology

     

In brief

• Datacard Group
• GlobalPlatform
• Atmel Corporation
• Giesecke & Devrient
• Siemens Business Services
• Macao Special Administrative Region
• Unibanka
• Austria Card
• ViVOtech
• Global Payments
• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• Federation of Small Businesses
• Datacard Group
• Sony’s
• SSP Solutions
• SSP-Litronic
• Department of Defense
• Visa International
• Datacard Group
• Nissan Motor Co
• SchlumbergerSema
• Legic Identsystems
• Airbus
• Financial Supervisory Committee
• Societe Generale
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Visa
• MasterCard
• Wal-Mart, The Limited, Sears Roebuck, Safeway, Circuit City
• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• Eurosmart
• Micróelectronica Española
• Target Corporation
• Insight Consulting
• ActivCard
• Radio Frequency Investigation
• Bell ID
• Giesecke & Devrient
• OTI

     

In Brief

• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• Datakey
• Sun Microsystems
• Departments of Defense
• Interior
• NASA
• Department of Defense
• Frost & Sullivan
• Transport for London
• Cubic Transportation Systems Ltd
• London Buses
• Transport for London
• EDS
• TranSys
• Microsoft
• Network Associates
• Visa
• Verisign
• Amazon
• eBay
• Coalition on Online Identity Theft
• Federal Trade Commission
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Bioscrypt
• Little Rock National Airport
• HID’s
• General Services Administration
• BearingPoint
• Marks and Spencer
• Intercede’s
• Infineon Technologies
• Cubic Corporation
• LaserCard Systems Corporation
• Drexler Technology Corporation
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Visa
• ISO
• ANSI
• Open Security Exchange
• IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization
• Computer Associates
• Gemplus
• HID
• Tyco Fire & Security’s Software House
• Hypercom Corporation
• MasterCard’s
• Fazoli’s
• National Bank of Serbia
• Giesecke & Devrient
• GlobalPlatform
• ICC Solutions

     

In Brief

• Ingenico
• Barclaycard
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• DCSSI
• Park City Mountain Resort
• Rapidtron
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Zhejiang Unicom
• China Unicom
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Gemplus
• Gartner Dataquest
• Gemplus
• Universal Kart
• Teknoloji Holding Group
• Texas Instruments RFid Systems
• National People’s Congress
• Bay Area Rapid Transit District
• San Francisco International Airport
• On Track Innovations
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Bluefish Technologies
• First National Bank of South Africa
• FirstRand Bank
• Hypercom Corporation
• Grintek Telecom
• Australian Bankers’ Association
• Thales e-Security
• Keycorp
• Eftpos New Zealand
• ANZ Banking Group
• Provenco
• STMicroelectronics
• CSOB Bank
• Kredyt Bank
• VISA
• KBC Bank & Insurance Group
• Proton World International
• K&H
• Smart Card Alliance
• SCM Microsystems
• Bureau of Immigration
• Hansabank
• Setec
• Aconite
• International Turnkey Systems

     

In brief

Including brief stories on:

• Cubic
• Sharp Microelectronics
• MIPS Technologies
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Theseus
• Bluefish
• Afghan Wireless Communication Company
• Ministry of Communications and Telephone Systems International
• Cubic Transportation Systems
• Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA)
• Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
• NDS Group
• DIRECTV
• JCB Co
• Convex Letter Card
• Toppan Printing Co
• Maxell
• Crédit Mutuel
• Multos
• MasterCard
• Schlumberger’s Smart Cards and Terminals
• Desjardins
• MagIC 9000
• RSA Security
• SCM Microsystems
• OTI
• ABSA Bank
• Standard Bank
• The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• First National Bank Omaha
• Oberthur Card Systems
• Sunbeach Communications
• HID Corporation
• Dorado Products

     

Active design reviews: Principles and practices

Although many new software design techniques have emerged in the past 15 years, there have been few changes to the procedures for reviewing the designs produced using these techniques. This report describes an improved technique, based on the following ideas, for reviewing designs.

• 1.1. The efforts of each reviewer should be focused on those aspects of the design that suit his or her experience and expertise.
• 2.2. The characteristics of the reviewers needed should be explicitly specified before reviewers are selected.
• 3.3. Reviewers should be asked to make positive assertions about the design rather than simply allowed to point out defects.
• 4.4. The designers pose questions to the reviewers, rather than vice versa. These questions are posed on a set of questionnaires that requires careful study of some aspect of the design.
• 5.5. Interaction between designers and reviewers occurs in small meetings involving two to four people rather than meetings of large groups.

Illustrations of these ideas are drawn from the application of active design reviews to the Naval Research Laboratory's Software Cost Reduction project.     

Students' attitudes toward playing games and using games in education: Comparing Scotland and the Netherlands

Games-based learning has captured the interest of educationalists and industrialists who seek to exploit the characteristics of computer games as they are perceived by some to be a potentially effective approach for teaching and learning. Despite this interest in using games-based learning there is a dearth of empirical evidence supporting the validity of the approach covering the wider context of gaming and education. This study presents a large scale gaming survey, involving 887 students from 13 different Higher Education (HE) institutes in Scotland and the Netherlands, which examines students' characteristics related to their gaming preferences, game playing habits, and their perceptions and thoughts on the use of games in education. It presents a comparison of three separate groups of students: a group in regular education in a Scottish university, a group in regular education in universities in the Netherlands and a distance learning group from a university in the Netherlands. This study addresses an overall research question of: Can computer games be used for educational purposes at HE level in regular and distance education in different countries? The study then addresses four sub-research questions related to the overall research question:

• •What are the different game playing habits of the three groups?
• •What are the different motivations for playing games across the three groups?
• •What are the different reasons for using games in HE across the three groups?
• •What are the different attitudes towards games across the three groups?

To our knowledge this is the first in-depth cross-national survey on gaming and education. We found that a large number of participants believed that computer games could be used at HE level for educational purposes and that further research in the area of game playing habits, motivations for playing computer games and motivations for playing computer games in education are worthy of extensive further investigation. We also found a clear distinction between the views of students in regular education and those in distance education. Regular education students in both countries rated all motivations for playing computer games as significantly more important than distance education students. Also the results suggest that Scottish students aim to enhance their social experience with regards to competition and cooperation, while Dutch students aim to enhance their leisurely experience with regards to leisure, feeling good, preventing boredom and excitement.     

On modularity in infinitary term rewriting

We study modular properties in strongly convergent infinitary term rewriting. In particular, we show that:

• •Confluence is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems, even when these are non-collapsing.
• •Confluence modulo equality of hypercollapsing subterms is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems.
• •Normalization is not preserved across direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems.
• •Unique normalization with respect to reduction is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

Together, these facts constitute a radical departure from the situation in finitary term rewriting. Positive results are:

• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems iff at most one system contains a collapsing rule.
• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of non-collapsing systems if only terms of finite rank are considered.
• •Top-termination is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.
• •Normalization is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

All of the negative results above hold in the setting of weakly convergent rewriting as well, as do the positive results concerning modularity of top-termination and normalization for left-linear systems.     

Circumventing the ill-conditioning problem with multiquadric radial basis functions: Applications to elliptic partial differential equations

Madych and Nelson [1] proved multiquadric (MQ) mesh-independent radial basis functions (RBFs) enjoy exponential convergence. The primary disadvantage of the MQ scheme is that it is global, hence, the coefficient matrices obtained from this discretization scheme are full. Full matrices tend to become progressively more ill-conditioned as the rank increases.In this paper, we explore several techniques, each of which improves the conditioning of the coefficient matrix and the solution accuracy. The methods that were investigated are

• 1.(1) replacement of global solvers by block partitioning, LU decomposition schemes,
• 2.(2) matrix preconditioners,
• 3.(3) variable MQ shape parameters based upon the local radius of curvature of the function being solved,
• 4.(4) a truncated MQ basis function having a finite, rather than a full band-width,
• 5.(5) multizone methods for large simulation problems, and
• 6.(6) knot adaptivity that minimizes the total number of knots required in a simulation problem.

The hybrid combination of these methods contribute to very accurate solutions.Even though FEM gives rise to sparse coefficient matrices, these matrices in practice can become very ill-conditioned. We recommend using what has been learned from the FEM practitioners and combining their methods with what has been learned in RBF simulations to form a flexible, hybrid approach to solve complex multidimensional problems.     

CALPHAD XXXIV 2005 conference summary

The thirty-fourth annual CALPHAD meeting was held at Kasteel Vaeshartelt, Maastricht, The Netherlands, on May 22–27, 2005. The local organizing committee consisted of Harry A.J. Oonk (chairman), Aad C.G. van Genderen, Michel H.G. Jacobs, Paul J. van Ekeren, and Marjan Hogenbirk (secretary); all employed at Utrecht University, Faculties of Chemistry and Geosciences.There were 134 delegates and 6 accompanying guests from 23 different countries. Oral communications (72) were presented in the following 10 sessions:

• 1.First Principles and Other Matters
• 2.High Pressure
• 3.Modeling and Experiments
• 4.CALPHAD Thermodynamics
• 5.Kinetic Matters
• 6.Miscellaneous (a collection of diverse subjects)
• 7.Experimental Thermodynamics
• 8.Nuclear Materials and Other Matters
• 9.Cluster Variation Subjects
• 10.CALPHAD Thermodynamics and Related Subjects.

Posters (60) were exposed in a continuous manner from Monday morning to Thursday evening. The posters were largely divided into two groups with one group closely related to Calphad Thermodynamics: first principles; thermodynamic phase diagram analysis; algorithms for Gibbs energy minimization; and kinetics, and another group covering a variety of subjects: teaching; statistical thermo-dynamics; experimental determination of phase equilibrium relationships; (micro)-calorimetry; molar volume; viscosity; waste heat; and subjects from the realm of molecular alloys.After Monday’s last lecture, a lively plenary discussion took place—some kind of a game between (traditional) CALPHAD thermodynamics and first principles. The discussion was continued on Tuesday evening. The present summary is organized into three sections

• I.Summaries of oral communications
• II.Titles of the exposed posters
• III.Summary of the discussions on Monday and Tuesday evening.

     

Preface: Volume 59, Issue 3

QAPL'01This volume contains the Post-Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (QAPL'01). The workshop was held in Firenze, Italy on Friday 7th September 2001, as satellite event to Principles, Logics, and Implementations of high-level programming languages, PLI'01.The majority of approaches in program semantics and analysis are arguably concentrated on qualitative investigations of various computational properties. As a result, some aspects of computation are neglected, which are of a quantitative nature. Such aspects are nevertheless important and sometimes essential in determining the behaviour of systems. As an example, issues related to resource consumption (storage, time, bandwidth, etc.) cannot be ignored when systems of interacting, competing or cooperating processes are considered.The aim of this workshop was to discuss appropriate models of programming languages, which are able to capture quantitative aspects of computation. Such models are good candidates to provide the base of new approaches in semantics and program analysis. Their investigation will hopefully not just allow for a better understanding of program behaviour (e.g. how agents compete for a limited resource), but also help to establish better connections with related complexity theoretic questions.Probabilistic languages and real-time languages constitute two important prototypical examples of quantitative models. But we encouraged the contributions covering other and/or more general quantitative aspects in the design, analysis and implementation of programming languages, with particular emphasis on the functional and declarative paradigms.The papers presented at the workshop were selected by the program committee consisting of

• •Luca de Alfaro, University of California at Berkeley, USA
• •Frank de Boer, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
• •Alessandra Di Pierro, University of Pisa, Italy
• •Maurizio Gabbrielli, University of Udine, Italy
• •Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, University of Birmingham, UK
• •Herbert Wiklicky, Imperial College, UK.

At the workshop there was one invited talk by

• •David Sands: Asymptotic Reasoning Meets Programming Language Semantics

as well as eight contributed talks:

• •Keye Martin: Powerdomains and Zero Finding
• •Thom Frühwirth: As Time Goes By: Complexity Analysis of Simplification Rule
• •Antonio Brogi, Alessandra Di Pierro and Herbert Wiklicky: On Language Expressiveness and Dimension
• •David Clark, Sebastian Hunt and Pasquale Malacaria: Quantitative Analysis of the Leakage of Confidential Data
• •Marius C. Bujorianu and Manuela L. Bujorianu: On the Hilbert Machine Quantitative Computational Model
• •Frank S. de Boer, Maurizio Gabbrielli and Maria Chiara Meo: Proving Correctness of Timed Concurrent Constraint Programs
• •Nicos Angelopoulos and David R. Gilbert: A Statistical View of Probabilistic Finite Domains
• •Richard Kieburtz: Real-time Reactive Programming for Embedded Controllers

These Post-Proceedings contain the reviewed and revised versions of the first four of these presentations.October 2002 Alessandra di Pierro Herbert Wiklicky     

Does intelligent CAD exist?

Intelligent CAD is a term which has grown in popularity in recent years as the results of research into Artificial Intelligence (AI) get applied to design problems. But there is confusion as to what the term means; e.g. whether current generations of expert systems for design are Intelligent CAD, or whether Intelligent CAD is simply an unachievable goal.This paper argues that Intelligent CAD represents a vision which is almost identical to the earliest visions of Computer Aided Design (CAD). The major difference now is that we have the opportunity through our improved knowledge of AI and cognitive science to take important strides towards delivering CAD systems close to these visions. However, the opportunity may be missed if we concentrate on the wrong issues.It is also argued that developments towards Intelligent CAD will be successful only if they accept the following tenets:

• 1.design is considered as an intellectual knowledge-based process,
• 2.systems do not need to replicate human intelligence; they are required only to exhibit behaviour regarded as intelligent, and
• 3.necessary components of such systems are knowledge-rich models of designs, the capacity for tacit knowledge, and the ability to learn.

     

On Bounded Rational Trace Languages

In this paper, for a finitely generated monoid M, we tackle the following three questions:

1. Is it possible to give a characterization of rational subsets of M which have polynomial growth?
2. What is the structure of the counting function of rational sets which have polynomial growth?
3. Is it true that every rational subset of M has either exponential growth or it has polynomial growth? Can one decide for a given rational set which of the two options holds?

We give a positive answer to all the previous questions in the case that M is a direct product of free monoids. Some of the proved results also extend to trace monoid.     

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is the chess machine that defeated then-reigning World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997. There were a number of factors that contributed to this success, including:

• •a single-chip chess search engine,
• •a massively parallel system with multiple levels of parallelism,
• •a strong emphasis on search extensions,
• •a complex evaluation function, and
• •effective use of a Grandmaster game database.

This paper describes the Deep Blue system, and gives some of the rationale that went into the design decisions behind Deep Blue.     

High integrity software development: process and tool issues

YSE and BAe Defence have recently completed an unclassified study for MoD (PE) specifically concerned with high integrity software development process and tool issues. The overall objective of the project was to produce guidance for MoD project managers on the sorts of processes and toolsets which their suppliers should be expected to deploy on projects being conducted in the context of Interim Defense Standard (IDS) 00-55 and IDS 00-56. A wide-ranging survey of industrial practice underpinned the project.This paper reports the main areas of work of the project and its results. The topics covered include:

• •⊗ ideal high integrity software development including tool support requirements;
• •⊗ a review of current high integrity software development practice;
• •⊗ available tool support (COTS and proprietary);
• •⊗ a minimum acceptable process and associated tool support;
• •⊗ process and toolset hazard analysis;
• •⊗ process and toolset safety cases;
• •⊗ building better toolsets;
• •⊗ process and toolset assessment.

     

A consultancy service in industrial robotics: Methods and experience

In consideration of the growing importance of the application of ir in Austrian producing enterprises, the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce established a special department in 1982 with a view to:

• 1.(a) convince enterpreneurs of the advantages of using high technologies, such as microelectronics, industrial robots, flexible manufacturing systems, cad/cam etc. and
• 2.(b) assist and advise respective enterprises in making a decisioin as to whether and where to implement high technical products into their production and — in the affirmative — how to proceed further.

This contribution outlines various methods to ascertain most effectively

• •- where robots could be used in a certain enterprise
• •- how specific technical problems should be solved and
• •- the estimate of economy.

     

Dynamic fluid–structure interaction using finite volume unstructured mesh procedures

A three-dimensional finite volume, unstructured mesh (FV-UM) method for dynamic fluid–structure interaction (DFSI) is described. Fluid structure interaction, as applied to flexible structures, has wide application in diverse areas such as flutter in aircraft, wind response of buildings, flows in elastic pipes and blood vessels. It involves the coupling of fluid flow and structural mechanics, two fields that are conventionally modelled using two dissimilar methods, thus a single comprehensive computational model of both phenomena is a considerable challenge. Until recently work in this area focused on one phenomenon and represented the behaviour of the other more simply. More recently, strategies for solving the full coupling between the fluid and solid mechanics behaviour have been developed. A key contribution has been made by Farhat et al. [Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 21 (1995) 807] employing FV-UM methods for solving the Euler flow equations and a conventional finite element method for the elastic solid mechanics and the spring based mesh procedure of Batina [AIAA paper 0115, 1989] for mesh movement.In this paper, we describe an approach which broadly exploits the three field strategy described by Farhat for fluid flow, structural dynamics and mesh movement but, in the context of DFSI, contains a number of novel features:

• •a single mesh covering the entire domain,
• •a Navier–Stokes flow,
• •a single FV-UM discretisation approach for both the flow and solid mechanics procedures,
• •an implicit predictor–corrector version of the Newmark algorithm,
• •a single code embedding the whole strategy.

     

Team structure and team performance in IS development: a social network perspective

Teamwork during IS development (ISD) is an important issue. This paper discusses the relationship between team structure and ISD team performance using a social network approach. Based on empirical evidence collected from 25 teams in a system analysis and design course, we found that:

• (1)Group cohesion was positively related to overall performance.
• (2)Group conflict indexes were not significantly correlated with overall performance.
• (3)Group characteristics, e.g., cohesion and conflict, fluctuated in different phases, but in later stages, much less cohesion occurred and the advice network seemed to be very important.
• (4)Group structures seemed to be a critical factor for good performance.

Further in-depth studies were conducted on teams exhibiting the highest and lowest performance to determine their differences from a sociogram analysis perspective.     

Knowledge-based automatic dimensioning

A knowledge-based system, for automatically dimensioning a given 3D CAD model, is described. It was found that

• 1.1. dimensioning should preferably be based upon manufacturing features which are sets of surfaces in specified 3d relationships
• 2.2. several different kinds of rules are needed
  • 2.1.(a) for each feature, rules for generation of dimensions onto sets of surfaces comprising it
  • 2.2.(b) for each surface, the generation of linear dimension forms
  • 2.3.(c) for each such form, the instantiation of the dimension onto an explicit 3d linear element
  • 2.4.(d) the selection of 3d linear elements to express in 2d views, and the selection of views to use
  • 2.5.(e) the layout of the 2d dimensions generated.
• 3.3. a large amount of redundancy occurred, which had to be managed and retained, until final decision on selection and placement of 2D dimensions were made.

The system works by a sequence of applications of rules, which construct a set of prioritized goals connected by a network of redundancy relationships. Rules of types (a), (b) and (c) are successively applied, starting with the 3D model, to produce linear dimensioning goals, with redundancy relations among them. View selection and 2D layout involve rules of types (d) and (e), and a complex evaluation of each individual 2D dimensioning choice for each 3D linear dimensioning goal.The system was written in Prolog, using the UCLA CADLOG intelligent CAD system.