Conflict-driven ASP Solving with External Sources

Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-known problem solving approach based on nonmonotonic logic programs and efficient solvers. To enable access to external information, HEX-programs extend programs with external atoms, which allow for a bidirectional communication between the logic program and external sources of computation (e.g., description logic reasoners and Web resources). Current solvers evaluate HEX-programs by a translation to ASP itself, in which values of external atoms are guessed and verified after the ordinary answer set computation. This elegant approach does not scale with the number of external accesses in general, in particular in presence of nondeterminism (which is instrumental for ASP). In this paper, we present a novel, native algorithm for evaluating HEX-programs which uses learning techniques. In particular, we extend conflict-driven ASP solving techniques, which prevent the solver from running into the same conflict again, from ordinary to HEX-programs. We show how to gain additional knowledge from external source evaluations and how to use it in a conflict-driven algorithm. We first target the uninformed case, i.e., when we have no extra information on external sources, and then extend our approach to the case where additional meta-information is available. Experiments show that learning from external sources can significantly decrease both the runtime and the number of considered candidate compatible sets.Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programmin

Neural Word Segmentation with Rich Pretraining

Neural word segmentation research has benefited from large-scale raw texts by leveraging them for pretraining character and word embeddings. On the other hand, statistical segmentation research has exploited richer sources of external information, such as punctuation, automatic segmentation and POS. We investigate the effectiveness of a range of external training sources for neural word segmentation by building a modular segmentation model, pretraining the most important submodule using rich external sources. Results show that such pretraining significantly improves the model, leading to accuracies competitive to the best methods on six benchmarks.Comment: Accepted by ACL 201

Learning from openness : the dynamics of breadth in external innovation linkages

We explore how openness in terms of external linkages generates learning effects, which enable firms to generate more innovation outputs from any given breadth of external linkages. Openness to external knowledge sources, whether through search activity or linkages to external partners in new product development, involves a process of interaction and information processing. Such activities are likely to be subject to a learning process, as firms learn which knowledge sources and collaborative linkages are most useful to their particular needs, and which partnerships are most effective in delivering innovation performance. Using panel data from Irish manufacturing plants, we find evidence of such learning effects: establishments with substantial experience of external collaborations in previous periods derive more innovation output from openness in the current period

The infosource scale: a measure to assess the importance of external tourism information sources

Information sources have long been considered an important variable in understanding consumer purchasing behaviors. Although research on information sources has been performed in a wide range of social disciplines, this variable has never been operationalized in a services marketing context. In this paper we develop a scale that measures the importance of information sources to the selection of tourism services. Insights from an empirical study of 350 tourists indicates that this multi-dimensional scale incorporates five types of information sources: 1) media, 2) institutional brochures, 3) commercial brochures, 4) travel agents, and 5) internet. Discussion centers on implications of this scale to theory and managerial development of tourism and services strategies. Directions for future research are also presented.Tourism, Information Sources, Services Marketing, Communication

Use of Information, Product Innovation and Financial Performance on Belgian Glasshouse Holdings

In order to meet the changing needs and preferences of consumers it will be important for Belgian glasshouse growers to change from a production-driven to a customer-driven strategy. More than ever, use of information and product innovation become critical factors in the changing competitive environment. The aim of the research is to analyse the relationship between business and managerial characteristics, use of information sources, product innovation and financial performance of the firm. The results indicate that the average Belgian glasshouse grower makes low use of external information sources for production decisions. However an important variation in information use can be observed among the growers. The results reveal that vegetable producers make more use of external information than producers of ornamental plants, which can be related to their co-operational organization. Although the predictors of information use can vary substantially across information sources, the results reveal that, independent of sector differences, the value attached to "creativity and innovation" is an important determinant of information use. A significant positive relationship was found between the use of information and product innovation. The results indicate that product innovation and financial performance are associated, however this association was only statistically significant for the growers of ornamental plants.Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management,

New passive telemetry system

Passive telemetry system enables the monitoring of vital biological functions from living organisms, without external connections or power sources. The FM system, using a phase locked loop technique, keeps the information frequency and powering frequencies separate

Detecting Effective Knowledge Sources in Product Innovation: Evidence from Local Firms and MNCs/JVs in Southeast Asia

This paper examines the effects of internal and external sources of knowledge on the introduction of new products based on new technologies or information at firms which responded to a questionnaire survey conducted in four Southeast Asian countries. The results confirm that local firms make full use of locally available sources of new technology or information to achieve product innovation. On the other hand, foreign-owned firms depend mainly on internal R&D capacities and also possibly upon cooperation with local universities. These findings highlight the fact that local firms complement their lack of internal resources for product innovation with external knowledge sources. Foreign-owned firms utilize their international production networks to concentrate their resources on innovative activities.

Information Guide: European External Action Service.

A guide to information sources on the European External Action Service (EEAS), with hyperlinks to further sources of information within European Sources Online and on external websites

Do firms rely on sources of information for organizational innovation?

The growing literature on knowledge and information has focused on the impact of information sources on technological innovation. Our objective was to explore the use made by firms of internal and external (market, research and generally available) sources of information for their organizational innovation practices? implementation. Furthermore, we studies whether these sources may vary according to whether the firm operates in the manufacturing or service industry. Multivariate probit models? results on 2008 Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data show notable differences between services and manufacturing, for instance that employees? skill levels are more important for manufacturing than for services. Overall, this paper provides strong evidence of the heterogeneity in firms? sources of information to engage in organizational innovation. On one hand, differences appear in the sources of innovation used for the various types of organizational innovation, indicating the appropriateness to differentiate organizational innovation practices rather than using an aggregated measure of organizational innovation. On the other hand, the sources of information vary according to the type of industry, even though some similarities appear. Managerial and theoretical implications for organizational innovation are provided.CIS; manufacturing/services; organizational innovation; sources of information

Markets, herding and response to external information

We focus on the influence of external sources of information upon financial markets. In particular, we develop a stochastic agent-based market model characterized by a certain herding behavior as well as allowing traders to be influenced by an external dynamic signal of information. This signal can be interpreted as a time-varying advertising, public perception or rumor, in favor or against one of two possible trading behaviors, thus breaking the symmetry of the system and acting as a continuously varying exogenous shock. As an illustration, we use a well-known German Indicator of Economic Sentiment as information input and compare our results with Germany's leading stock market index, the DAX, in order to calibrate some of the model parameters. We study the conditions for the ensemble of agents to more accurately follow the information input signal. The response of the system to the external information is maximal for an intermediate range of values of a market parameter, suggesting the existence of three different market regimes: amplification, precise assimilation and undervaluation of incoming information.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures. Thoroughly revised and updated version of arXiv:1302.647