Negotiating Socially Optimal Allocations of Resources with Argumentation

The resource allocation problem of multi-agent systems is the problem of deciding how to allocate resources, controlled by agents, to agents within a given system. Agents typically have preferences over alternative allocations of resources. These preferences may be derived from the agents’ goals, which can be fulfilled by different plans (sets of resources). The problem arises because agents may not be able to fulfil their goals without being re-allocated resources controlled by other agents and agents may have conflicting preferences over allocations. Examples of the resource allocation problem include electronic commerce (where resources are commodities equipped with prices), the grid (where resources are computational entities equipped with computational power), and scheduling and timetabling (where resources may be tasks with costs). The focus in this thesis is distributed decision-making amongst agents, whereby agents actively participate in computing re-allocations, starting from initial allocations which may or may not fulfil their goals. A re-allocation is arrived at by means of local negotiation steps wherein resources change hands between the agents involved in the negotiations. The negotiation method of choice in this thesis is argumentation-based negotiation supported by assumption-based argumentation. This method allows agents to work towards their goals despite incomplete information regarding the goals of and resources allocated to other agents, to share knowledge, thereby eliminating unknowns, and to resolve conflicts within themselves and between one another which may arise because of inconsistent information. Solutions generated by a resource allocation mechanism may be ranked according to how they affect the individual welfare of the agents as well as the overall social welfare of the agent society, according to different notions of social welfare borrowed from economics. The argumentation-based negotiation mechanism we propose guarantees, for the problem domain of interest in this thesis, that negotiations between agents always terminate converging to a solution. Moreover, the mechanism guarantees that solutions reached optimise the welfare of the individual agents as well as the agent society as a whole according to Pareto optimal and utilitarian notions of social welfare

Impact Analysis of Remittance Flow on Import Demand of Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of remittances on import demand of Pakistan, by keeping the effect of population. This study has used time series data set from 1975 to 2015 and the result has shown that there is a significant and positive effect of remittances and population on import demand. The results of this study have also shown that the model of this study takes account of the direct effects of imported inputs on exports and availability of official foreign exchange reserves on the level of imports. Real exchange rate shock has shown 10 percent reduction in the volume of imports which in turn lowers the volume of exports in our model by about 2% point in short run and 5% point in long run. So, it is recommended that developing countries should follow the policy of import compression. The result has shown that over the next decade rising global protectionist pressures, higher energy prices, increased world interest rates and augmented political uncertainty could seriously undermine the debt-servicing capacities for most heavily-indebted, low-growth, low-income countries in the Asia Pacific region. The policy implication of this study is that economy should spend precious foreign exchange only to fund vital imports only to successfully overcome foreign exchange shortages and this would enable many underdeveloped countries to support rapid economic growth

A Forensic Analysis of Video Streaming Activities on Android Applications

Mobile applications of video streaming platforms store a lot of information on mobile devices which can have both positive and negative impacts. Positive, in the sense that it could assist law enforcement agencies in solving crime, and the negative impact is that it could be accessed by malicious actors. In this study, we forensically investigate the Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and iFlix android applications. The major focus is on identifying stored artifacts on the mobile devices left behind by the android video streaming applications. It will give law enforcement agencies and forensic investigators a clear direction when it comes to extracting evidence to solve a crime. On the other hand, it will notify the mobile application developers on how to further improve the security of their mobile applications.

Multi-label Class-imbalanced Action Recognition in Hockey Videos via 3D Convolutional Neural Networks

Automatic analysis of the video is one of most complex problems in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. A significant part of this research deals with (human) activity recognition (HAR) since humans, and the activities that they perform, generate most of the video semantics. Video-based HAR has applications in various domains, but one of the most important and challenging is HAR in sports videos. Some of the major issues include high inter- and intra-class variations, large class imbalance, the presence of both group actions and single player actions, and recognizing simultaneous actions, i.e., the multi-label learning problem. Keeping in mind these challenges and the recent success of CNNs in solving various computer vision problems, in this work, we implement a 3D CNN based multi-label deep HAR system for multi-label class-imbalanced action recognition in hockey videos. We test our system for two different scenarios: an ensemble of $k$ binary networks vs. a single $k$-output network, on a publicly available dataset. We also compare our results with the system that was originally designed for the chosen dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed approach performs better than the existing solution.Comment: Accepted to IEEE/ACIS SNPD 2018, 6 pages, 3 figure

Inequalities concerning the rate of growth of polynomials involving the polar derivative

This paper contains some results for algebraic polynomials in the complex plane involving the polar derivative that are inspired by some classical results of Bernstein. Obtained results yield the polar derivative analogues of some inequalities giving estimates for the growth of derivative of lacunary polynomials

Comparative Antagonistic Profiling of Different Trichoderma Species Against Drechslera tetramera, Pathogenic to Capsicum frutescens

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is much popular among farmers in combating diseases of the crop. Being eco-friendly, safe and effective disease control agents, biological agents are being used widely by farmers in combating diseases and pests. Two isolates of Biological Control Agents viz. Trichoderma viride and Trichoderma harzianum were evaluated in vitro for their antagonistic profiling against Drechslera tetramera isolated from Capsicum frutescens. Both species of Trichoderma were almost equally effective against the pathogen growth in vitro. Trichoderma was found to be a potent bioagent in controlling the growth of Drechslera tetramera

Analyzing the Islamist and new-Islamist discourse on minorities in an Islamic state

The call by the Islamist scholars for an Islamic state governed by the sharia law has given rise to the criticism that Islamic state would involve the discrimination of religious minorities and their reversion to inferior or second-class status. In this paper, the Islamic discourse on non-Muslims living in an Islamic state is examined under two trends: Islamist and the New Islamist trend. This paper is an attempt to highlight and understand the Islamic discourse on the citizenship of non-Muslim minorities. It will also contribute to how this discourse has changed over time. More importantly, it will put forth the efforts made by New-Islamist scholars who associate themselves with wasatiyyah movement to reconcile the Islamist and modern concept ofcitizenship. Notwithstanding, the objectives of this paper is threefold: to discuss the relationship between Muslim majority and non-Muslim minority in a proposed Islamic state; to identify the basic rights such as freedom of religion and other rights, that are available to non-Muslims residents of an Islamic state; and to assess how far the new-Islamist scholars have been successful in reconciling the traditional Islamist discourse with the modern nation-state notion of citizenship

Cholecystitis in Situs Inversus with Dextrocardia

Background: Surgical problem known as Acute Cholecystitis is very common nowadays; however it may cause trouble in diagnosing when person has situs inversus, (i.e.) viscera situated on the opposite side of the body. Our case report discusses the history and physical exam findings, images of radiograph, diagnosis, and how we dealt with cholecystitis in situs inversus with dextrocardia.Case Presentation: An eighty-six yrs. old male having pain in the upper left hypochondrium region, presented in emergency department. He was later diagnosed to have acute cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder) with cholelithiasis (presence of gallstones in gallbladder) in situs inversus totalis. Patient underwent elective open cholecystectomy within 24 h. Patient recovered well and was discharged on fourth postoperative day.Conclusion: Acute cholecystitis in Situs Inversus with Dextrocardia is very rare congenital anomaly and requires great expertise in the field of surgery to operate on these patients because of the reverse anatomy of the organs

CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Gene Editing in Grain Crops

The development of reliable and efficient techniques for making precise targeted changes in the genome of living organisms has been a long-standing objective of researchers throughout the world. In plants, different methods, each with several different variations, have been developed for this purpose, though many of them are hampered either by providing only temporary modification of gene function or unpredictable off-target results. The recent discovery of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and the CRISPR-associated 9 (Cas9) nucleases started a new era in genome editing. Basically, the CRISPR/Cas system is a natural immune response of prokaryotes to resist foreign genetic elements entering via plasmids and phages. Through this naturally occurring gene editing system, bacteria create DNA segments known as CRISPR arrays that allow them to “remember” foreign genetic material for protection against it and other similar sequences in the future. This system has now been adopted by researchers in laboratory to create a short guide RNA that binds to specific target sequences of DNA in eukaryotic genome, and the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA at the targeted location. Once cut, the cell’s endogenous DNA repair machinery is used to add, delete, or replace pieces of genetic material. Though CRISPR/Cas9 technology has been recently developed, it has started to be regularly used for gene editing in plants as well as animals to good success. It has been proved as an efficient transgene-free technique. A simple search on PubMed (NCBI) shows that among all plants, 80 different studies published since 2013 involved CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in rice. Of these, 20, 13, and 24 papers have been published in 2019, 2018, and 2017, respectively. Furthermore, 20 different studies published since 2014 utilized CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing in wheat, where five of these studies were published in 2019 and seven were published in 2018. Genomes of other grain crops edited through this technique include maize, sorghum, barley, etc. This indicates the high utility of this technique for gene editing in grain crops. Here we emphasize on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in rice, wheat, and maize