Ontological Issues in Agent-aware Negotiation Services ⋆

Abstract. In negotiation events involving multiple, highly customisable goods, buying agents need to express relations, constraints, and preferences over attributes of different items. Not forgetting the provider side, providing agents may also impose constraints or conditions over their offers. Thus, there is the need for providing all trading agents involved with a rich enough language to express their business rules. In this paper we focus on the ontological issues that need to be considered in order to empower the expressiveness offered by negotiation objects and offers to incorporate buyers ’ and providers ’ business preferences. We take the stance that a highly expressive ontology is compulsory to enact agentaware negotiation services in actual-world procurement settings.

Negotiation support in highly-constrained trading scenarios

Abstract. Negotiation events in industrial procurement involving multiple, highly customisable goods pose serious challenges to buyers when trying to determine the best set of providers ’ offers. Typically, a buyer’s decision involves a large variety of constraints that may involve attributes of a very same item as well as attributes of different, multiple items. In this paper we present the winner determination capabilities of iBundler[10], an agent-aware decision support service offered to buyers to help them determine the optimal bundle of received offers based on their constraints and preferences. In this way, buyers are relieved with the burden of solving too hard a problem, and thus concentrate on strategic issues. iBundler is intended as a negotiation service for buying agents and as a winner determination service for reverse combinatorial auctions with side constraints.

Number of X-linked androgen receptor gene CAG repeats and femininity in women.

Two studies used a sample of 300 female Australian monozygotic twins who had been genotyped for the X-linked androgen receptor gene and scored for the number of repeats of the triplet CAG. (A low number of repeats is associated with greater risk of prostate cancer in males and more effective transcription of androgens). In the first study, three measures of masculinity–femininity were constructed from the items of two personality questionnaires that had been taken by the members of a large twin sample (not, vert, similar3000 pairs). Two of the three measures, admitting to fears and worries and a willingness to break rules, were not significantly correlated with number of CAG repeats in the genotyped subsample. The third measure, confiding in others versus reserved, showed a small but significant correlation with CAG repeats in this female sample: fewer repeats went with scores in the reserved (i.e. masculine) direction. In the second study, CAG repeat scores were correlated with 90 questionnaire items related to female reproductive functions. Three items were associated with fewer repeats: age, having had a hysterectomy and length of labor at the birth of a second child. Because many items were screened, this was regarded as suggestive but not conclusive evidence of an association of CAG repeats with these reproduction-related traits