User Preference Web Search -- Experiments with a System Connecting Web and User

We present models, methods, implementations and experiments with a system enabling personalized web search for many users with different preferences. The system consists of a web information extraction part, a text search engine, a middleware supporting top-k answers and a user interface for querying and evaluation of search results. We integrate several tools (implementing our models and methods) into one framework connecting user with the web. The model represents user preferences with fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic, here understood as a scoring describing user satisfaction. This model can be acquired with explicit or implicit methods. Model-theoretic semantics is based on fuzzy description logic f-EL. User preference learning is based on our model of fuzzy inductive logic programming. Our system works both for English and Slovak resources. The primary application domain are job offers and job search, however we show extension to mutual investment funds search and a possibility of extension into other application domains. Our top-k search is optimized with own heuristics and repository with special indexes. Our model was experimentally implemented, the integration was tested and is web accessible. We focus on experiments with several users and measure their satisfaction according to correlation coefficients

Knowledge-Based Systems. Overview and Selected Examples

The Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) project builds on IIASA's traditional strength in the methodological foundations of operations research and applied systems analysis, and its rich experience in numerous application areas including the environment, technology and risk. The ACA group draws on this infrastructure and combines it with elements of AI and advanced information and computer technology to create expert systems that have practical applications. By emphasizing a directly understandable problem representation, based on symbolic simulation and dynamic color graphics, and the user interface as a key element of interactive decision support systems, models of complex processes are made understandable and available to non-technical users. Several completely externally-funded research and development projects in the field of model-based decision support and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) are currently under way, e.g., "Expert Systems for Integrated Development: A Case Study of Shanxi Province, The People's Republic of China." This paper gives an overview of some of the expert systems that have been considered, compared or assessed during the course of our research, and a brief introduction to some of our related in-house research topics

PROLOG fejlesztések és alkalmazások Magyarországon

A Prolog-MProlog nyelv bemutatása és az MProlog hazai megvalósulásai után részletesen ismerteti a korábban elkészült és a még fejlesztés alatt lévő hazai MProlog-alapú projekteket. Az anyag a tapasztalatok és a következtetések levonása után a hazai szerzők Prolog témájú dolgozatainak teljes körű (több mint 75) bibliográfiájával zárul

Feasibility of Representing Selected Elements of The 1985 Building Regulations in Prolog or other Rule-Based Form

This dissertation examines the proposition that there is a consistent and repeatable internal structure within regulations. This is demonstrated to be the case for regulations which make up The Building Regulations 985, which is used to illustrate many of the arguments discussed. The outcome of the research is the representation of a series of example regulations to reveal the nature of their internal structure. The form that the internal structure takes is embodied in a series of linked data structures known as 'frames' using the Prolog computer language. Evidence for the existence of an internal structure is based upon data obtained from analysis of one year's Appeals and Determinations in a report taken from a series published from time to time by the Institute of Building Control.Theories about the nature of prescriptive rules are discussed to introduce the subject of regulations which are described in the light of relevant legal theories about rules in general. To clarify the issues involved a systems model is proposed to provide an overview of the building regulations process. The history of regulatory control of building construction in this country is described as a prelude to considering the nature of disputes and the type of information they can yield to support the thesis. Research into the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques for processing legal statements is reviewed to establish how such experiments relate to the concept of internal structure in regulations. The appraisal identifies a number of representational problems that restrict presentation of the internal structure. The dissertation is supported by worked examples of regulations that have been analysed and by output from a sample analysis session

A computer-aided conceptual ship design system incorporating expert knowledge

PhD ThesisIn today's highly competitive shipbuilding market the emphasis is on the production of acceptable design proposals within a very short timescale. A computer-aided conceptual ship design system, which utifises the latest developments in workstation technology, has been developed. It is intended to help reduce the technical and commercial risks associated with the process of tendering for newbuilding contracts. The system as a whole, uses fundamental modeffing techniques to enable areas such as dimensions generation, huilform development, layout design, powering estimation, mass estimation, motions prediction, work content estimation and cost estimation to be considered at a much greater level of detail at the concept design stage than was previously possible. This thesis describes the specification and development of those parts of the overall design system concerned with the generation of vessel dimensions and huliform and layout design. In order to improve the flexibility of the system, a so-called expert system approach has been adopted to provide the mechanism for the control of the design methodology. For this purpose, a unique expert system shell named INCODES (INtelligent COncept DEsign System) was specified and developed. The development of this shell is described in some detail. The application of the INCODES shell to the control of the logic involved in the development of design proposals for containerships is discussed, and the knowledge base developed for the generation of these design proposals is described. The knowledge base is shown to incorporate fundamental procedures for the generation of vessel dimensions and for huliform and layout design, as well as a comprehensive suite of analysis routines to assist in the verification of the design proposals. The knowledge base is also considered to be unique in its treatment of the investigation of the loading arrangements of containership design proposals. The flexibility of the procedures developed is demonstrated by their application to the generation and examination of containership design proposals which possess a range of physical and operational characteristics.British Shipbuilders Limited, Marine Design Consultants Limited

Chord Sequence patterns in OWL

This thesis addresses the representation of and reasoning on musical knowledge in the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web that aims at describing information that is distributed on the web in a machine-processable form. Existing approaches to modelling musical knowledge in the context of the Semantic Web have focused on metadata. The description of musical content and reasoning as well as integration of content descriptions and metadata are yet open challenges. This thesis discusses the possibilities of representing musical knowledge in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) focusing on chord sequence representation and presents and evaluates a newly developed solution. The solution consists of two main components. Ontological modelling patterns for musical entities such as notes and chords are introduced in the (MEO) ontology. A sequence pattern language and ontology (SEQ) has been developed that can express patterns in a form resembling regular expressions. As MEO and SEQ patterns both rewrite to OWL they can be combined freely. Reasoning tasks such as instance classification, retrieval and pattern subsumption are then executable by standard Semantic Web reasoners. The expressiveness of SEQ has been studied, in particular in relation to grammars. The complexity of reasoning on SEQ patterns has been studied theoretically and empirically, and optimisation methods have been developed. There is still great potential for improvement if specific reasoning algorithms were developed to exploit the sequential structure, but the development of such algorithms is outside the scope of this thesis. MEO and SEQ have also been evaluated in several musicological scenarios. It is shown how patterns that are characteristic of musical styles can be expressed and chord sequence data can be classified, demonstrating the use of the language in web retrieval and as integration layer for different chord patterns and corpora. Furthermore, possibilities of using SEQ patterns for harmonic analysis are explored using grammars for harmony; both a hybrid system and a translation of limited context-free grammars into SEQ patterns have been developed. Finally, a distributed scenario is evaluated where SEQ and MEO are used in connection with DBpedia, following the Linked Data approach. The results show that applications are already possible and will benefit in the future from improved quality and compatibility of data sources as the Semantic Web evolves

Applied logic : its use and implementation as a programming tool

The first Part of the thesis explains from first principles the concept of "logic programming" and its practical application in the programming language Prolog. Prolog is a simple but powerful language which encourages rapid, error-free programming and clear, readable, concise programs. The basic computational mechanism is a pattern matching process ("unification") operating on general record structures ("terms" of logic). IThe ideas are illustrated by describing in detail one sizable Prolog program which implements a simple compiler. The advantages and practicability of using Prolog for "real" compiler implementation are discussed. The second Part of the thesis describes techniques for implementing Prolog efficiently. In particular it is shown how to compile the patterns involved in the matching process into instructions of a low-level language. This idea has actually been implemented in a compiler (written in Prolog) from Prolog to DECsystem-10 assembly language. However the principles involved are explained more abstractly in terms of a "Prolog Machine". The code generated is comparable in speed with that produced by existing DEC10 Lisp compilers. Comparison is possible since pure Lisp can be viewed as a (rather restricted) subset of Prolog. It is argued that structured data objects, such as lists and trees, can be manipulated by pattern matching using a "structure 'sharing" representation as efficiently as by conventional selector and constructor functions operating on linked records in "heap" storage. Moreover the pattern matching formulation actually helps the implementor to produce a better implementation