Extend Commitment Protocols with Temporal Regulations: Why and How

The proposal of Elisa Marengo's thesis is to extend commitment protocols to explicitly account for temporal regulations. This extension will satisfy two needs: (1) it will allow representing, in a flexible and modular way, temporal regulations with a normative force, posed on the interaction, so as to represent conventions, laws and suchlike; (2) it will allow committing to complex conditions, which describe not only what will be achieved but to some extent also how. These two aspects will be deeply investigated in the proposal of a unified framework, which is part of the ongoing work and will be included in the thesis.Comment: Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium and Poster Session of the 5th International Symposium on Rules (RuleML 2011@IJCAI), pages 1-8 (arXiv:1107.1686

The role of the individual in the coming era of process-based therapy

For decades the development of evidence-based therapy has been based on experimental tests of protocols designed to impact psychiatric syndromes. As this paradigm weakens, a more process-based therapy approach is rising in its place, focused on how to best target and change core biopsychosocial processes in specific situations for given goals with given clients. This is an inherently more idiographic question than has normally been at issue in evidence-based therapy over the last few decades. In this article we explore methods of assessment and analysis that can integrate idiographic and nomothetic approaches in a process-based era.Accepted manuscrip

Mechanisms for Automated Negotiation in State Oriented Domains

This paper lays part of the groundwork for a domain theory of negotiation, that is, a way of classifying interactions so that it is clear, given a domain, which negotiation mechanisms and strategies are appropriate. We define State Oriented Domains, a general category of interaction. Necessary and sufficient conditions for cooperation are outlined. We use the notion of worth in an altered definition of utility, thus enabling agreements in a wider class of joint-goal reachable situations. An approach is offered for conflict resolution, and it is shown that even in a conflict situation, partial cooperative steps can be taken by interacting agents (that is, agents in fundamental conflict might still agree to cooperate up to a certain point). A Unified Negotiation Protocol (UNP) is developed that can be used in all types of encounters. It is shown that in certain borderline cooperative situations, a partial cooperative agreement (i.e., one that does not achieve all agents' goals) might be preferred by all agents, even though there exists a rational agreement that would achieve all their goals. Finally, we analyze cases where agents have incomplete information on the goals and worth of other agents. First we consider the case where agents' goals are private information, and we analyze what goal declaration strategies the agents might adopt to increase their utility. Then, we consider the situation where the agents' goals (and therefore stand-alone costs) are common knowledge, but the worth they attach to their goals is private information. We introduce two mechanisms, one 'strict', the other 'tolerant', and analyze their affects on the stability and efficiency of negotiation outcomes.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Logic-Based Specification Languages for Intelligent Software Agents

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGoLog, Agent-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, DyLog, Concurrent METATEM and Ehhf. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.Comment: 67 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Accepted for publication by the Journal "Theory and Practice of Logic Programming", volume 4, Maurice Bruynooghe Editor-in-Chie

The evolution of tropos: Contexts, commitments and adaptivity

Software evolution is the main research focus of the Tropos group at University of Trento (UniTN): how do we build systems that are aware of their requirements, and are able to dynamically reconfigure themselves in response to changes in context (the environment within which they operate) and requirements. The purpose of this report is to offer an overview of ongoing work at UniTN. In particular, the report presents ideas and results of four lines of research: contextual requirements modeling and reasoning, commitments and goal models, developing self-reconfigurable systems, and requirements awareness

Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace and Organizational Agility with People

Driven by dynamic competitive conditions, an increasing number of firms are experimenting with new, and what they hope will be, more dynamic organizational forms. This development has opened up exciting theoretical and empirical venues for students of leadership, business strategy, organizational theory, and the like. One domain that has yet to catch the wave, however, is strategic human resource management (SHRM). In an effort to catch up, we here draw on the dynamic organization (DO) and human resource strategy (HRS) literatures to delineate both a process for uncovering and the key features of a carefully crafted HRS for DOs. The logic is as follows. DOs compete through marketplace agility. Marketplace agility requires that employees at all levels engage in proactive, adaptive, and generative behaviors, bolstered by a supportive mindset. Under the right conditions, the essential mindset and behaviors, although highly dynamic, are fostered by a HRS centered on a relatively small number of dialectical, yet paradoxically stable, guiding principles and anchored in a supportive organizational infrastructure. This line of reasoning, however, rests on a rather modest empirical base and, thus, is offered less as a definitive statement than as a spur for much needed additional research