Healthcare systems have to be understood in terms of a wide variety of heterogeneous, distributed and ubiquitous systems, speaking different languages, integrating medical equipment and being customised by different entities, which in turn were set by people living in different contexts and aiming at different goals. Therefore, architecture has been envisaged to support the medical applications in terms of an agency for integration, diffusion and archiving of medical information and the electronic medical record, a form of a web spider of intelligent information processing system, its major subsystems, their functional roles and the flow of information and control among them, with adjustable autonomy. With such web-based simulated systems, quality of service will be improved (e.g., the available knowledge may be used for educational and training purposes).

Quality of service in healthcare units

Invited Papers.- Qualitative Decision Rules under Uncertainty.- Applications of Latent Class Analysis in Social Science Research.- Foundations of Uncertainty Concepts.- Transformations from Imprecise to Precise Probabilities.- A Representation Theorem and Applications.- On Modal Probability and Belief.- Bayesian Networks.- A Multi-layered Bayesian Network Model for Structured Document Retrieval.- Using Kappas as Indicators of Strength in Qualitative Probabilistic Networks.- Qualitative Bayesian Networks with Logical Constraints.- Introducing Situational Influences in QPNs.- Classification of Aerial Missions Using Hidden Markov Models.- Algorithms for Uncertainty Inference.- Dynamic Importance Sampling Computation in Bayesian Networks.- Morphing the Hugin and Shenoy-Shafer Architectures.- Learning.- Characterization of Inclusion Neighbourhood in Terms of the Essential Graph: Upper Neighbours.- Approximating Conditional MTE Distributions by Means of Mixed Trees.- Effective Dimensions of Partially Observed Polytrees.- Decision Graphs.- Applying Numerical Trees to Evaluate Asymmetric Decision Problems.- Mixed Influence Diagrams.- Decision Making Based on Sampled Disease Occurrence in Animal Herds.- Decision Network Semantics of Branching Constraint Satisfaction Problems.- Belief Functions.- Web of Trust: Applying Probabilistic Argumentation to Public-Key Cryptography.- A Comparison of Methods for Transforming Belief Function Models to Probability Models.- Fuzzy Matching and Evidential Reasoning.- Modeling Positive and Negative Pieces of Evidence in Uncertainty.- Directed Evidential Networks with Conditional Belief Functions.- Computational-Workload Based Binarization and Partition of Qualitative Markov Trees for Belief Combination.- Risk Assessment in Drinking Water Production Using Belief Functions.- Algebraic Structures Related to the Consensus Operator for Combining of Beliefs.- Fuzzy Sets.- Inclusion Measures in Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory.- A Random Set Model for Fuzzy Labels.- On the Induction of Different Kinds of First-Order Fuzzy Rules.- Reasoning under Vagueness Expressed by Nuanced Statements.- Possibility Theory.- Partial Lattice-Valued Possibilistic Measures and Some Relations Induced by Them.- Coherent Conditional Probability as a Measure of Uncertainty of the Relevant Conditioning Events.- Decision Trees and Qualitative Possibilistic Inference: Application to the Intrusion Detection Problem.- Default Reasoning.- Multi-valued Conditional Events Avoid Lewis' Triviality Result.- Solving Semantic Problems with Odd-Length Cycles in Argumentation.- On the Relation between Reiter's Default Logic and Its (Major) Variants.- Belief Revision and Inconsistency Handling.- Probable Consistency Checking for Sets of Propositional Clauses.- On Iterated Revision in the AGM Framework.- Epistemic Logics for Information Fusion.- Logics.- Propositional Fusion Rules.- Preferential Logics for Reasoning with Graded Uncertainty.- Paraconsistent Reasoning via Quantified Boolean Formulas, II: Circumscribing Inconsistent Theories.- Modal (Logic) Paraconsistency.- A Formal Framework for Handling Conflicting Desires.- A Sequent Calculus for Skeptical Reasoning in Predicate Default Logic (Extended Abstract).- Probabilistic Lexicographic Entailment under Variable-Strength Inheritance with Overriding.- Demo Papers.- ABEL: An Interactive Tool for Probabilistic Argumentative Reasoning.- The Hugin Tool for Learning Bayesian Networks.

Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty: 7th European Conference, ECSQARU 2003, Aalborg, Denmark, July 2-5, 2003. Proceedings

Diabetes Mellitus is now a prevalent disease in both developed and underdeveloped countries, being a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Overweight/obesity and hypertension are potentially modifiable risk factors for diabetes mellitus, and persist during the course of the disease. Despite the evidence from large controlled trials establishing the benefit of intensive diabetes management in reducing microvasculars and macrovasculars complications, high proportions of patients remain poorly controlled. Poor and inadequate glycemic control among patients with Type 2 diabetes constitutes a major public health problem and a risk factor for the development of diabetes complications. In clinical practice, optimal glycemic control is difficult to obtain on a long-term basis, once the reasons for feebly glycemic control are complex. Therefore, this work will focus on the development of a diagnosis support system, in terms of its knowledge representation and reasoning procedures, under a formal framework based on Logic Programming, complemented with an approach to computing centred on Artificial Neural Networks, to evaluate the Diabetes states and the Degree-of-Confidence that one has on such a happening.

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Artificial neural networks in diabetes control

Operational planning is an activity carried out by all manufacturing and logistical companies. Its co-ordination with supply chain partners aims at synchronising resources utilisation in order to minimise inefficiencies, such as unnecessary inventory holding, or in order to improve revenue through better resource utilisation. It is a rather complex process as partners have different objectives and information asymmetry is part of any effort to find good co-ordination solutions. Furthermore, because supply chains evolve in a dynamic and uncertain environment, once a co-ordination of operations plans is achieved, input data, such as forecasts or resources’ status, can change and affect on hand plans. These dynamic changes not only require updating the plan that is directly affected by the changes, but it also requires the adjustment of all plans that are part of the same co-ordination solution (Stadtler, H. 2009. A framework for collaborative planning and state-of-the-art. OR Spectrum, 31 (1), 5–30). Theref...

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Dynamic mutual adjustment search for supply chain operations planning co-ordination

This paper is about the challenge of online voting. First it illustrates why we should put effort into this subject, and it describes the security requirements which have to be achieved. Then it discusses an approach to achieve online voting step by step, and evaluates experiences gathered in pilot projects being conducted so far. Further on the German discussion on online voting is reflected, and it is emphasised that online voting is not at all only a technical challenge. More interdisciplinary research and a widespread public discussion is needed, which could be reached e.g. by a technology assessment. The last section gives a short prospect to e-democracy on the whole, and why online voting has to be embedded there.

Towards the Knowledge Society

In this paper we address the role of divergence and convergence in creative processes, and argue about the need to consider them in Computational Creativity research in the Genetic or Evolutionary Programming paradigm, being one's goal the problem of the Halt Condition in Genetic Programming. Here the candidate solutions are seen as evolutionary logic programs or theories, being the test whether a solution is optimal based on a measure of the quality-of-information carried out by those logical theories or programs. Furthermore, we present Conceptual Blending Theory as being a promising framework for implementing convergence methods within creativity programs, in terms of the logic programming framework.

The halt condition in genetic programming

The use of agents in Electronic Commerce environments leads to the necessity to introduce some formal analysis and definitions. A four-step method is introduced for developing EC-directed agents, which are able to take into account nonlinearites such as gratitude and agreement. Negotiations that take into account a multistep exchange of arguments provide extra information, at each step, for the intervening agents, enabling them to react accordingly. This argument-based negotiation among 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB8746 IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, Intelligent Agent Software Engineering, edited by Valentina Plekhanova. Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 138 Brito, Novais & Neves Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Copy right Idea Grou p Inc . Copy right Idea Grou p Inc . opyri ght Id ea G roup Inc. Copy right Idea Grou p Inc . agents has much to gain from the use of Extended Logic Programming mechanisms. Incomplete information is common in EC scenarios; therefore, arguments must also take into account the presence of statements with an unknown valuation. INTRODUCTION The amount of ambiguity present in real-life negotiations is intolerable for automatic reasoning systems. Concepts present in each intervening party of a real-life negotiation need to be objectively formalized in order for an automatic approach to be reached. Logic, and especially, Extend Logic Programming (ELP) (Baral & Gelfond, 1994) poses itself as a powerful tool to achieve the desired formality without compromising comprehension and readability, and the ability to easily build an executable prototype for agents. Logical formulas are extremely powerful, unambiguous, and possess a set of interesting advantages (McCarthy, 1959): Expressing information in declarative sentences is far more modular than expressing it in segments of computer programs or in tables. Sentences can be true in a much wider context than specific programs can be used. The supplier of a fact does not have to understand much about how the receiver functions or how or whether the receiver will use it. The same fact can be used for many purposes, because the logical consequences of collections of facts can be available. However, in a dynamic environment such as the one found in electronic commerce (EC), the simple use of logical formulas is not enough. The use of nonmonotonic characteristics is self-evident (which is in some way found in ELP) (Neves, 1984). In general logic programs, negative information is provided by the closedworld assumption (i.e., everything that cannot be proven to be true is false), however, in extended logic programs, that is not so. In ELP, a query may fail due to the fact that information is not available to support it or, on the other hand, it may fail due to the fact that negation succeeds. The knowledge base (KB), which serves as the basis for the agents reasoning, can be seen has an extended logic program (P) that is a collection f rules with the form: L0 ← L1, ..., Lm, not Lm+1, ..., not Ln 21 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the publisher's webpage: www.igi-global.com/chapter/logic-behind-negotiation/24148

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The Logic Behind Negotiation: From Pre-Argument Reasoning to Argument-Based Negotiation

The use of agents in Electronic Commerce (EC) environments leads to the necessity to introduce some formal analysis and definitions. Negotiations which take into account a multi-step exchange of arguments provide extra information, at each step, for the intervening agents, enabling them to react accordingly. This argument-based negotiation among agents has much to gain from the use of logical mechanisms. Although the use of logic to express arguments in Law is well known, EC poses new challenges. Concepts such as round and probable conflict are important in the formalization of negotiation arguments. The ideas of conflict/attack and victory/defeat are some of the most important to be formalized.

Incomplete information is common in EC scenarios therefore, arguments must take into account the presence of statements with an unknown valuation.

The set of rules that is to express the knowledge of an agent needs priorization; i.e., some rules have a higher priority than others. Priorities are usually set by the relative ordering of clauses, however, through knowledge classification and the introduction of embedded priority rules, an higher flexibility is reached.

On the Logical Aspects of Argument-Based Negotiation among Agents

Logic presents itself as a major tool in the development of formal descriptions for agent-based systems; indeed, Logic Programming (LP) and specially Extended Logic Programming (ELP) provide a powerful tool for the development of such systems, besides being mathematically correct (and subject to proof) are easy to prototype. On the other hand Electronic Commerce (EC) poses new challenges in the areas of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) and formal modelling, where specific agent architectures are mandatory. In this work such a problem will be approached by the Experience-Based Mediator (EBM) agent one, particularly suited to take into account the argumentation processes that are inherent to any EC deal The last but not least, although logic has been successfully used in the areas of argumentation (specially, legal argumentation), the reasoning process that happens before hand is rarely stated. In EC scenarios, such process takes into account features such as temporality, priorities, delegation, making use of incomplete information, and leading to feasible EC systems.

https://domino.fov.uni-mb.si/proceedings.nsf/0/dbfe710de5a0e1e6c1256e9f002f08f2/$FILE/04_Brito.pdf

Temporality, Priorities and Delegation in an E-Commerce Environment

Argumentation enables agents to justify their actions and to reach stable situations faster, due to the amount of information that is exchanged. Logic and, in special, Extended Logic Programming (ELP) provides a way to develop arguments which are mathematically correct and close to a working prototype. Logic-based argumentation exhibits a set of unparalleled features such as: adequacy to logic-based approaches to pre-argument reasoning, similarity to the human reasoning processes, reasoning with incomplete information, and argument composition and extension, among many others.Electronic Commerce (EC) poses new challenges to argumentation due to the presence of heterogeneous environments. The ontological problems raised by such environments have been approached by the use of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) frameworks. Thus, solving the problem of argument exchange in heterogeneous environments should build on such frameworks. CommerceNet's eCo framework provides a 7-layer framework on which an argumentation service can be easily built.

Luís Brito

Papers

The halt condition in genetic programming

The Logic Behind Negotiation: From Pre-Argument Reasoning to Argument-Based Negotiation

On the Logical Aspects of Argument-Based Negotiation among Agents

Temporality, Priorities and Delegation in an E-Commerce Environment

Argument exchange in heterogeneous electronic commerce environments