PACMAS: A Personalized, Adaptive, and Cooperative MultiAgent System Architecture

In this paper, a generic architecture, designed to support the implementation of applications aimed at managing information among different and heterogeneous sources, is presented. Information is filtered and organized according to personal interests explicitly stated by the user. User pro- files are improved and refined throughout time by suitable adaptation techniques. The overall architecture has been called PACMAS, being a support for implementing Personalized, Adaptive, and Cooperative MultiAgent Systems. PACMAS agents are autonomous and flexible, and can be made personal, adaptive and cooperative, depending on the given application. The peculiarities of the architecture are highlighted by illustrating three relevant case studies focused on giving a support to undergraduate and graduate students, on predicting protein secondary structure, and on classifying newspaper articles, respectively

Financial Institutions and Structures for Growth in East Asia

Singapore, development, institutions, finance

The LDP at 50: The Rise, Power Resources, and Perspectives of Japan’s Dominant Party

Japan’s ruling party is a prime example of a dominant party. While dominant parties in other democracies around the world have lost their grip on power or have even disappeared altogether, the LDP is still going strong. What explains the success of the party? How did the LDP acquire its dominant position and how did it manage to cling to it? In an attempt to answer these questions, this paper discusses the rise, the power (re-)sources and the perspectives of Japan’s dominant party.Liberal Democratic Party, Japan, dominant party, party competition, electoral system

“Educational Regionalization” and the Gated Global: The Construction of the Caribbean Educational Policy Space

This article draws on “regime theory,” particularly on the concepts of cooperation, compatibility of interests, and proclivity to compromise, to examine the rise of the Caribbean Educational Policy Space (CEPS). In making this argument, with the aid of a content analysis of 26 educational policies from the 15 member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), this article first locates the different policy mechanism of external effects, or policy tools, within the regional policy environment that governs and regulates education at the national level to explain how these policy tools and mechanisms have given rise to a very distinctive form of what I call educational regionalism that frames the regional educational policy space in the Caribbean. The data show that CARICOM utilized the noneconomic process of functional cooperation, and the policy tools of lesson drawing, policy externalization, and policy transfer to respond to pressures of globalization across three different policy cycles and concludes by discussing the implications of such a policy maneuver for the integrative project of economic regionalism

A Review of the Ecology and Economics of Montserrat's Marine Resources

Montserrat is a small, volcanic island in the Caribbean Sea that has undergone significant economic and ecological change over the past three decades due to disruption caused by a hurricane and prolonged volcanic activity. Montserrat's marine ecosystems face a variety of threats, including sedimentation from the volcano, storm damage, coastal development, and climate change-associated sea level rise. While fishing plays a small economic role in Montserrat in terms of its contribution to national GDP, it is an important source of income and food security, and is culturally significant. There are currently about 100 fishers active in Montserrat, targeting over 200 species of fish and invertebrates. Landings are substantially lower than they were prior to the onset of volcanic activity, reflecting the lower number of fishers and the loss of access to productive fishing grounds. There are currently very few fisheries management regulations that are enforced in Montserrat, but regulations proposed in 2009 would restrict fishing gear and seasons, protect certain species, and facilitate the creation of marine reserves. Montserrat currently does not have any ocean zoning aside from the Maritime Exclusion Zone, which restricts access to the waters adjacent to the volcano

Shared-Use Bus Priority Lanes On City Streets: Case Studies in Design and Management, MTI Report 11-10

This report examines the policies and strategies governing the design and, especially, operations of bus lanes in major congested urban centers. It focuses on bus lanes that operate in mixed traffic conditions; the study does not examine practices concerning bus priority lanes on urban highways or freeways. Four key questions addressed in the paper are: How do the many public agencies within any city region that share authority over different aspects of the bus lanes coordinate their work in designing, operating, and enforcing the lanes? What is the physical design of the lanes? What is the scope of the priority use granted to buses? When is bus priority in effect, and what other users may share the lanes during these times? How are the lanes enforced? To answer these questions, the study developed detailed cases on the bus lane development and management strategies in seven cities that currently have shared-use bus priority lanes: Los Angeles, London, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, and Sydney. Through the case studies, the paper examines the range of practices in use, thus providing planners and decision makers with an awareness of the wide variety of design and operational options available to them. In addition, the report highlights innovative practices that contribute to bus lanes’ success, where the research findings make this possible, such as mechanisms for integrating or jointly managing bus lane planning and operations across agencies

A Web-based Operation Management System for Distributed Divisional Organizations

Operation Management is an important and complex task for a divisional structured organization, especially when the divisions are distributed geographically. In most cases, such organizations didn’t not urge all of it’s divisions to use an integrated information system at the very beginning. But with the development and the expanding of the organization, they sometimes found themselves in the trouble of information exchange and almost lost control of their divisions. At such time, however, on one hand the head quarter inquires more detailed information and more business control on the divisions. On the other hand, some divisions are well built and have its own business processes and information systems. It’s impossible for them to rebuild the information system to integrate with the other divisions and the head quarter as well. Operation Management System (OPMGT) enables real-time inspection of the divisions’ operational data and flexible operation evaluation of each division via the Internet and without much change on the other information systems. The OPMGT presented in this paper was originally developed for the head quarter of a distributed divisional based organization to govern the distributed divisions. System analysis, design and implementation of OPMGT are discussed in detail. Having been developed on the basis of eFramework, a J2EE framework, OPMGT is proved to be highly sufficient in operation management of a distributed divisional structured organization, and it may also do some help to integrate information systems in some degree

An End-User Development Approach to Building Customizable Web-Based Document Workflow Management Systems

As organizations seek to control their practices through Business Process Management (BPM - or the process of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization through the automation of tasks), workflow management systems (WFMS) have emerged as fundamental supporting software tools. A WFMS must maintain process state while managing the utilization of people and applications (resources), data (context), and constraints (rules) associated with each of the tasks [Baeyens04]. It must also be configurable so it can be easily adapted to manage specific workflows within any application domain. Finally, the WFMS should be flexible enough to allow for changing business needs. In order to meet these challenges, a WFMS must provide access to process and document definition tools as well as administrative tools. In this project we have used an End User Developmentn (EUD) approach [Repenning04] to build a stand-alone web-based WFMS which offers the non-technical end user the ability to design, launch, and manage multiple automated workflows and their associated documents. It empowers end users to build and customize their own systems without requiring from them skills other than those associated with their domain of expertise