Enacting agent-based services for automated procurement

Negotiation events in industrial procurement involving multiple, highly customisable goods pose serious challenges to buying agents when trying to determine the best set of providing agents’ offers. Typically, a buying agent's decision involves a large variety of constraints that may involve attributes of a very same item as well as attributes of different, multiple items. In this paper we present iBundler, an agent-aware service offered to buying agents to help them determine the optimal bundle of received offers based on their business rules. In this way, buying agents are relieved with the burden of solving too hard a problem and concentrate on strategic issues. iBundler is intended as a negotiation service for buying agents and as a winner determination service for reverse combinatorial auctions with side constraints. Furthermore, we assess the computational cost added by employing agent technology in the development of iBundler to characterise the type of negotiation scenarios that it can acceptably handle.     

The Influence of the Incorporation Method and Mass Ratio of Copper on the Antibacterial Activity of MCM-41

Silicon - This work deals with the use for the first time of waste spent glass as a new source of silicon and aluminum in the synthesis of highly ordered MCM-41 nanomaterials and also treats the...     

Rate of elapsed polymerization of hydroxyethylacrylate gel induced by gamma irradiation

The rate of elapsed polymerization of polyhydroxyethylacrylate in gelatin has been studied to investigate the effect of co-monomers consumption at a given dose.The polymer gel dosimeters consisted of 2%～4%N,N-methyelene-bis-acrylamJde cross-linker,2%-4% 2-hydroxyethylaerylate monomer and gelatin at 3% and 5%,The dosimeters were irradiated by using 60Co teletherapy Y-ray source up to 20 Gy at a constant dose rate.The relaxation rate of water proton in the dosimeters at different doses and co-monomer concentrations were measured using a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.The rate of elapsed polymerization decreases with increasing the dose and the initial concentration of co-monomers.The rate of consumption of co-monomers increases with an increase of the polymerization and the gelatin content of the polymer gel.