A multi-agent system to manage users and spaces in a adaptive environment system

This paper, deals with the actual problem of manage user preferences and local specifications on an IoT adaptive system, namely using a multi agent system to achieve a Smart Environment System. On a new era of interaction between persons and physical spaces, users want those spaces smartly adapt to their preferences in a transparent way. To achieve that, new approaches are needed. In this project we develop a multi agent system architecture with different layers to achieve a solution that entails all the proposed objectives.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Using jason framework to develop a multi-agent system to manage users and spaces in an adaptive environment system

Manage user preferences and local specifications on an IoT adaptive system is a actual problem. This paper uses Jason framework to develop a multi agent system to achieve a Smart Environment System, and supports interaction between persons and physical spaces, that users want to smartly adapt to their preferences in a transparent way. This work proposes a new approach, that has been developed using a multi agent system architecture with different layers to achieve a solution that entails all the proposed objectives.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Probabilistic Perception Revision in AgentSpeak(L)

Agent programming is mostly a symbolic discipline and, as such, draws little benefits from probabilistic areas as machine learning and graphical models. However, the greatest objective of agent research is the achievement of autonomy in dynamical and complex environments — a goal that implies embracing uncertainty and therefore the entailed representations, algorithms and techniques. This paper proposes an innovative and conflict free two layer approach to agent programming that uses already established methods and tools from both symbolic and probabilistic artificial intelligence. Moreover, this method is illustrated by means of a widely used agent programming example, GOLDMINERS

Reasoning about the executability of goal-plan trees

User supplied domain control knowledge in the form of hierarchically structured agent plans is at the heart of a number of approaches to reasoning about action. This knowledge encodes the “standard operating procedures” of an agent for responding to environmental changes, thereby enabling fast and effective action selection. This paper develops mechanisms for reasoning about a set of hierarchical plans and goals, by deriving “summary information” from the conditions on the execution of the basic actions forming the “leaves” of the hierarchy. We provide definitions of necessary and contingent pre-, in-, and postconditions of goals and plans that are consistent with the conditions of the actions forming a plan. Our definitions extend previous work with an account of both deterministic and non-deterministic actions, and with support for specifying that actions and goals within a (single) plan can execute concurrently. Based on our new definitions, we also specify requirements that are useful in scheduling the execution of steps in a set of goal-plan trees. These requirements essentially define conditions that must be protected by any scheduler that interleaves the execution of steps from different goal-plan trees

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) after elective hip, knee and shoulder arthroplasty: Protocol for a prospective cohort study

Background The number of hip, knee and shoulder arthroplasties continues to rise worldwide. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has launched an initiative (called PaRIS Initiative) for the systematic collection of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in patients undergoing elective hip and knee arthroplasty. The Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute (IOR) was selected as a pilot center for the launch of the Initiative in Italy given that IOR hosts the Registry of Orthopedic Prosthetic Implants (RIPO), a region-wide registry which collects joint implant data from all the hospitals in the Emilia-Romagna Region. In this specific geographic area information related to PROMs after joint replacement is unknown. This paper describes the protocol of a study (PaRIS-IOR) that aims to implement the collection of a set of PROMs within an existing implant registry in Italy. The study will also investigate the temporal trend of PROMs in relation to the type of prosthesis and the type of surgical intervention. Methods The PaRIS-IOR study is a prospective, single site, cohort study that consists of the administration of PROMs questionnaires to patients on the list for elective arthroplasty. The questionnaires will be administered to the study population within 30 days before surgery, and then at 6 and 12 months following surgery. The study population will consist of consecutive adult patients undergoing either hip, knee or shoulder arthroplasty. The collected data will be linked with those routinely collected by the RIPO in order to assess the temporal trend of PROMs in relation to the type of prosthesis and the type of surgical intervention. Discussion The PaRIS-IOR study could have important implications in targeting the factors influencing functional outcomes and quality of life reported by patients after hip, knee and shoulder arthroplasty, and will also represent the first systematic collection of PROMs related to arthroplasty in Italy

Impact of previous lumbar spine surgery on total hip arthroplasty and vice versa: How long should we be concerned about mechanical failure?

Introduction: This registry study aims to assess the prevalence and demographic characteristics of patients with lumbar spine (LS) surgical procedures who undergo total hip arthroplasty (THA), to compare the long-term survival and causes of failure of THA in patients who previously underwent LS fusion and non-fusion surgical procedures, and to evaluate the risk of undergoing a revision LS surgery after THA. Materials and methods: Patients who underwent LS surgery followed by THA were identified by cross-referencing data from the Orthopedic Prosthetic Implants Registry and the Regional Hospital Discharge Database. Three groups of THA patients were identified: patients who underwent previous lumbar surgery with fusion (LS fusion-THA), without fusion (LS non-fusion-THA), and a control group with only THA (No LS surgery–THA). Demographic data, THA survival, number and causes of failure, and data on revision procedures on THA and LS were collected. Results: Of the total of 79,984 THA, 2.2% of patients had a history of LS procedures. THA only patients showed better results, while patients in the LS fusion-THA group had worse implant survival at 5-year follow-up. In the LS fusion-THA and LS non-fusion-THA, mechanical THA failures were more frequent in the first two years after implantation. There were no differences between groups regarding the risk of undergoing LS revision surgery. Conclusions: LS surgery negatively affects THA survivorship. In patients who previously underwent LS fusion and non-fusion surgical procedures, most THA failure occurs in the first two years after implant. The study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between the hip and the LS and provides useful guidance for clinical practice

SAJaS: enabling JADE-based simulations

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are widely acknowledged as an appropriate modelling paradigm for distributed and decentralized systems, where a (potentially large) number of agents interact in non-trivial ways. Such interactions are often modelled defining high-level interaction protocols. Open MAS typically benefit from a number of infrastructural components that enable agents to discover their peers at run-time. On the other hand, multi-agent-based simulations (MABS) focus on applying MAS to model complex social systems, typically involving a large agent population. Several MAS development frameworks exist, but they are often not appropriate for MABS; and several MABS frameworks exist, albeit sharing little with the former. While open agent-based applications benefit from adopting development and interaction standards, such as those proposed by FIPA, MABS frameworks typically do not support them. In this paper, a proposal to bridge the gap between MAS simulation and development is presented, including two components. The Simple API for JADE-based Simulations (SAJaS) enhances MABS frameworks with JADE-based features. While empowering MABS modellers with modelling concepts offered by JADE, SAJaS also promotes a quicker development of simulation models for JADE programmers. In fact, the same implementation can, with minor changes, be used as a large scale simulation or as a distributed JADE system. In its current version, SAJaS is used in tandem with the Repast simulation framework. The second component of our proposal consists of a MAS Simulation to Development (MASSim2Dev) tool, which allows the automatic conversion of a SAJaS-based simulation into a JADE MAS, and vice-versa. SAJaS provides, for certain kinds of applications, increased simulation performance. Validation tests demonstrate significant performance gains in using SAJaS with Repast when compared with JADE, and show that the usage of MASSim2Dev preserves the original functionality of the system. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Semantic Mutation Testing for Multi-Agent Systems

This paper introduces semantic mutation testing (SMT) into multiagent systems. SMT is a test assessment technique that makes changes to the interpretation of a program and then examines whether a given test set has the ability to detect each change to the original interpretation. These changes represent possible misunderstandings of how the program is interpreted. SMT is also a technique for assessing the robustness of a program to semantic changes. This paper applies SMT to three rule-based agent programming languages, namely Jason, GOAL and 2APL, provides several contexts in which SMT for these languages is useful, and proposes three sets of semantic mutation operators (i.e., rules to make semantic changes) for these languages respectively, and a set of semantic mutation operator classes for rule-based agent languages. This paper then shows, through preliminary evaluation of our semantic mutation operators for Jason, that SMT has some potential to assess tests and program robustness

Phase Transformations during the Reaction Heat Treatment

The evolution of Nb containing phases during the diffusion heat treatment of three different high critical current Nb$_{3}$Sn strand types is compared, based on synchrotron X-ray diffraction results that have been obtained at the ID15 beam line of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). In all strands studied, Nb$_{3}$Sn formation is preceded by the formation of a Cu-Nb-Sn ternary phase, NbSn2 and Nb6Sn5. As compared to the PIT and Tube Type strand, the amount of these phases formed in the RRP strand is relatively small. In the RRP strand subelements with a fine filament structure Nb$_{3}$Sn grows more quickly, thereby preventing to a large extent the formation of the other higher tin phases