Probability Distributions.- Linear Models for Regression.- Linear Models for Classification.- Neural Networks.- Kernel Methods.- Sparse Kernel Machines.- Graphical Models.- Mixture Models and EM.- Approximate Inference.- Sampling Methods.- Continuous Latent Variables.- Sequential Data.- Combining Models.

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

How to Do Things With Words

The agent metaphor comes packaged with a number of powerful abstractions. Some of these are psychological, such as beliefs, knowledge, and intentions-abstractions that were traditionally studied in AI. However, there are a number of other abstractions that the agent metaphor brings to the fore. Of these, one has been emphasizing the social abstractions. Close cousins of the social abstractions are the ethical and legal abstractions. These too are being recognized as increasingly important in developing agents that are not only sociable, but also well behaved.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/4236/14762/00670692.pdf

Agent jurisprudence

Trust is a fundamental basis for interaction in multiagent systems. Probabilistic trust models support an agent estimating trustworthiness of another agent based on prior experience. We extend and enhance an existing probabilistic trust model to (1) enable agents to establish trust relations between each other based on no more than limited experience, and (2) provide approaches for agents to find and choose desired interaction partners based on the trust they place in others. Our approaches are inspired by challenges arising in the context of social networks and service-oriented computing. All our approaches can be integrated into the base trust model seamlessly.
When a truster needs to estimate the trust to place in a trustee with whom the truster has little prior experience, the truster must rely upon intermediary agents to lead it to one or more witnesses who would have direct experience with the trustee. Trust propagation approaches that exploit the imperfectly transitive nature of trust address this very problem. Where trustworthy witnesses can be found, such approaches can be quite effective. We propose a generalized way to propagate trust that accommodates situations where trustworthy witnesses cannot be found through typical propagation. Our approach supports an agent customizing the patterns by which to search for witnesses. The resulting approach is generic in that it can capture existing network-based approaches merely through the introduction of appropriate patterns.
In service-oriented computing, we consider service selection wherein service consumers choose services with desired nonfunctional properties. To do this, a service consumer needs trust-based approaches to analyze its service network, which is composed of the trust relations the consumer builds from its interactions with service providers. Existing service selection approaches either fail to capture the dynamic relationships between services or assume that the environment is fully observable. Besides, they do not emphasize the relationship between a consumer's interests and the utility the consumer draws from a service. We propose two trust models that build trust by accurately punishing or rewarding services in terms of the qualities they offer. Both models are effective despite incomplete observations regarding the services under consideration. We also design a service selection approach, built on our trust models, to enable consumers to select services based on their individual utility functions, which reflect their preferences, and estimate trust to capture the providers’ quality. This approach guides consumers to construct service compositions that satisfy their quality requirements. An extension of this approach with contracts approximates Pareto optimality without the use of a market mechanism.

Probabilistic trust models for social and service networks

We examine blockchain technologies, especially smart contracts, as a platform for decentralized applications. By providing a basis for consensus, blockchain promises to upend business models that presuppose a central authority. However, blockchain suffers from major shortcomings arising from an over-regimented way of organizing computation that limits its prospects. We propose a sociotechnical, yet computational, perspective that avoids those shortcomings. A centerpiece of our vision is the notion of a declarative, violable contract in contradistinction to smart contracts. This new way of thinking enables flexible governance, by formalizing organizational structures; verification of correctness without obstructing autonomy; and a meaningful basis for trust.

Violable Contracts and Governance for Blockchain Applications.

In the study of agents on the Internet, we often ascribe to them human qualities, such as beliefs and intentions. These qualities are best understood as metaphors that give developers a way to talk about and design the capabilities and applications of agents. Despite all the progress in computing, users have been slow to accept the technology. They have often accepted what was thrown at them, but only under economic duress. Bringing the technology closer to their emotional needs might ease this resistance. So how can we put a human face on computing? Maybe by putting an animated face on it! Thus, an interface may consist of an agent, which has an explicit presence (for example, as an on-screen animated figure) and appears to have a personality. In computer human interfaces, especially for education and commerce where a large variety of people must deal with computers, an anthropoid agent might be more inviting. Depending on the situation, the agent might appear shy, friendly, stern, or knowledgeable. For example, people might better accept advice offered politely by a shy agent, or heed warnings uttered seriously by a stern agent. And they might be more likely to purchase goods or services offered by a friendly, knowledgeable agent that could appear empathetic to their needs.

Agents on the Web: Anthropoid Agents.

Modern information system architectures place applications in an application server and persistent objects in a relational database. In this setting, we consider the problem of improving application throughput; our proposed solution uses data prefetching (read-aheads) to minimize the total data-access time of an application, in a manner that affects neither the application code nor the backend DBMS. Our methodology is based on analyzing and automatically merging SQL queries to produce query sequences with low total response time, in ways that exploit the application’s data-access patterns. The proposed approach is independent of the application domain and can be viewed as a component of container managed persistence that can be implemented in middleware.

Munindar P. Singh

Papers

Agent jurisprudence

Probabilistic trust models for social and service networks

Violable Contracts and Governance for Blockchain Applications.

Agents on the Web: Anthropoid Agents.

Deriving Efficient SQL Sequences via Read-Aheads