David Martin

Bio: David Martin is an academic researcher from Nuance Communications. The author has contributed to research in topics: Medicine & Semantic Web Stack. The author has an hindex of 32, co-authored 91 publications receiving 10340 citations. Previous affiliations of David Martin include SRI International & Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.

Taskable Reactive Agent Communities

Abstract: : The focus of Taskable Reactive Agent Communities (TRAC) project was to develop mixed-initiative technology to enable humans to supervise and manage teams of agents as they perform tasks in dynamic environments. TRAC technology would enable users to task agent communities in a high-level language that provides both descriptions of goals to be satisfied and boundaries on agent behavior. The TRAC approach can be viewed as providing a form of high-level process management technology that enables flexible human control of agent communities. In particular, the TRAC framework is intended to support applications where processes are distributed and automated, but where human guidance can improve performance and increase flexibility. The technical work for the project focused on identifying useful categories of guidance for directing agents, designing languages for expressing guidance, and developing techniques for operationalizing guidance into constraints that influence agent behavior. Because users may provide incompatible or unsatisfiable guidance to agents, the work also encompassed techniques for detecting and resolving conflicting guidance. The TRAC implementation was used as the basis for a demonstration system called TIGER (TRAC Intelligence Gathering and Emergency Response), which focused on the problem of multiagent intelligence gathering in the wake of a simulated natural disaster. Within TIGER, a human supervisor can delegate tasks to agents while providing guidance to control their runtime behavior.

Problems of finance for home acquisition by private residential property developers in bauchi metropolis, nigeria

Abstract: Purpose-The purpose of the paper is to examine the problem of finance for home acquisition by private residential property develop ers in Bauchi metropolis, Nigeria. Design methodology/approach- Two hundred respondents were selected through stratified random sampling. Data were presented usi ng simple percentage distribution tables and Chi-square analyses were used to analyze the data collected for the research. The conditions for accessing credit from the Nation al Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) which is in custody of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Niger ia (FMBN) and private financial institutions are examined. The average monthly inco mes of public sector workers was established from two different salary structures wh ich are currently applicable to workers in State and Federal Government establishments. Findings- The findings reveal that low income of the majority of the respondents; poor source finance and difficulty in accessing credit a mongst others were discovered to be the major housing finance impediments to residential pr operty development in the study area. The study identified low incomes/wages to be the gr eatest impediment to credit as workers below Grade Level 07 on the two salary stru ctures could not pay off a loan of N1.5m which is equivalent to cost of 1-bedroom bungalow based on their monthly earnings. Research limitations/implications- In order to make meaningful and adequate coverage, the study is limited to Jos metropolis. It will als o be limited to residential properties in the study area. The potential respondents will be the s ample size drawn from the population of the study in both Jos North and Jos South Local Government. Practical implications-The implication of the study is that the current gl obal financial crisis has caused a surge in lending rates which wi ll further affect loan seekers affordability to credit. Lending rates in private f inancial institutions are on the higher side averaging 23 per cent in addition to other charges while other conditions attached to credit makes it practically impossible for low inco me earners to meet the requirements. Originality/value- This paper represents the first work that analyse t he problem of finance for home acquisition by private residential property developers in Bauchi metropolis, Nigeria. Conclusion- It can be concluded that public sector workers who are currently on the two salary structure employed in the study are low inco me earners and generally lack affordability for credit. Recommendations- The study recommends for upward review of workers’ salaries particularly those on the two salary structures emp loyed for the study to facilitate their access to credit for home acquisition and there is need to simplify the procedure for

Sleeping beauty generated CD19 CAR T-Cell therapy for advanced B-Cell hematological malignancies

Abstract: Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has emerged recently as a standard of care treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and several subtypes of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). However, its use remains limited to highly specialized centers, given the complexity of its administration and its associated toxicities. We previously reported our experience in using a novel Sleeping Beauty (SB) CD19-specific CAR T-cell therapy in the peri-transplant setting, where it exhibited an excellent safety profile with encouraging survival outcomes. We have since modified the SB CD19 CAR construct to improve its efficacy and shorten its manufacturing time. We report here the phase 1 clinical trial safety results. Fourteen heavily treated patients with relapsed/refractory ALL and NHL were infused. Overall, no serious adverse events were directly attributed to the study treatment. Three patients developed grades 1-2 cytokine release syndrome and none of the study patients experienced neurotoxicity. All dose levels were well tolerated and no dose-limiting toxicities were reported. For efficacy, 3 of 8 (38%) patients with ALL achieved CR/CRi (complete remission with incomplete count recovery) and 1 (13%) patient had sustained molecular disease positivity. Of the 4 patients with DLBCL, 2 (50%) achieved CR. The SB-based CAR constructs allow manufacturing of targeted CAR T-cell therapies that are safe, cost-effective and with encouraging antitumor activity.

DAML-S: semantic markup for web services

Abstract: The Semantic Web should enable greater access not only to content but also to services on the Web. Users and software agents should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering particular services and having particular properties. As part of the DARPA Agent Markup Language program, we have begun to develop an ontology of services, called DAML-S, that will make these functionalities possible. In this paper we describe the overall structure of the ontology, the service profile for advertising services, and the process model for the detailed description of the operation of services. We also compare DAML-S with several industry efforts to define standards for characterizing services on the Web.

QoS-aware middleware for Web services composition

Abstract: The paradigmatic shift from a Web of manual interactions to a Web of programmatic interactions driven by Web services is creating unprecedented opportunities for the formation of online business-to-business (B2B) collaborations. In particular, the creation of value-added services by composition of existing ones is gaining a significant momentum. Since many available Web services provide overlapping or identical functionality, albeit with different quality of service (QoS), a choice needs to be made to determine which services are to participate in a given composite service. This paper presents a middleware platform which addresses the issue of selecting Web services for the purpose of their composition in a way that maximizes user satisfaction expressed as utility functions over QoS attributes, while satisfying the constraints set by the user and by the structure of the composite service. Two selection approaches are described and compared: one based on local (task-level) selection of services and the other based on global allocation of tasks to services using integer programming.

Semantic Matching of Web Services Capabilities

Abstract: The Web is moving from being a collection of pages toward a collection of services that interoperate through the Internet. The first step toward this interoperation is the location of other services that can help toward the solution of a problem. In this paper we claim that location of web services should be based on the semantic match between a declarative description of the service being sought, and a description of the service being offered. Furthermore, we claim that this match is outside the representation capabilities of registries such as UDDI and languages such as WSDL.We propose a solution based on DAML-S, a DAML-based language for service description, and we show how service capabilities are presented in the Profile section of a DAML-S description and how a semantic match between advertisements and requests is performed.

Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE

Abstract: JADE (Java Agent Development Framework) is a software framework to make easy the development of multi-agent applications in compliance with the FIPA specifications. JADE can then be considered a middle-ware that implements an efficient agent platform and supports the development of multi agent systems. JADE agent platform tries to keep high the performance of a distributed agent system implemented with the Java language. In particular, its communication architecture tries to offer flexible and efficient messaging, transparently choosing the best transport available and leveraging state-of-the-art distributed object technology embedded within Java runtime environment. JADE uses an agent model and Java implementation that allow good runtime efficiency, software reuse, agent mobility and the realization of different agent architectures.

Service oriented architectures: approaches, technologies and research issues

Abstract: Service-oriented architectures (SOA) is an emerging approach that addresses the requirements of loosely coupled, standards-based, and protocol- independent distributed computing. Typically business operations running in an SOA comprise a number of invocations of these different components, often in an event-driven or asynchronous fashion that reflects the underlying business process needs. To build an SOA a highly distributable communications and integration backbone is required. This functionality is provided by the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that is an integration platform that utilizes Web services standards to support a wide variety of communications patterns over multiple transport protocols and deliver value-added capabilities for SOA applications. This paper reviews technologies and approaches that unify the principles and concepts of SOA with those of event-based programing. The paper also focuses on the ESB and describes a range of functions that are designed to offer a manageable, standards-based SOA backbone that extends middleware functionality throughout by connecting heterogeneous components and systems and offers integration services. Finally, the paper proposes an approach to extend the conventional SOA to cater for essential ESB requirements that include capabilities such as service orchestration, "intelligent" routing, provisioning, integrity and security of message as well as service management. The layers in this extended SOA, in short xSOA, are used to classify research issues and current research activities.