Multi-agent systems in industry: current trends & future challenges

This paper introduces the multi-agent systems paradigm and presents some industrial applications of this AI approach, namely in manufacturing, handling and logistics domains. The road-blockers for the current weak adoption of this technology in industry are also discussed, and finally the current trends and several future challenges are pointed out to increase the wider dissemination and acceptance of the multi-agent technology in industry

A regenerative approach to canine osteoarthritis using allogeneic, adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Safety results of a long-term follow-up

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are emerging as an effective therapeutic tool in treating canine osteoarthritis (OA). In this report, we focused on the questions of whether MSC transplantation has long-term beneficial effects for the improvement in motion and also evaluated the safety of MSC injection. Visceral adipose tissue, a surgical waste obtained during routine ovariectomy served as a source of allogeneic MSCs and used to treat OA. Altogether, fifty-eight dogs were transplanted in the study suffering from OA in the elbow (42 animals), hip (5), knee (8), ankle (2), and hock (1). The effect of MSC transplantation was evaluated by the degree of lameness at a 4-5-years follow-up period based on the owners' subjective observations. The results showed that 83% of the OA patients improved or retained improvement in lameness. Clinical safety of the treatment was assessed by evaluating the coincidence of tumors or other diseases and other adverse reactions (such as local inflammation) after MSC cell therapy. Two incidences of local inflammation for <1 week at the site of injection were reported. No other adverse reactions were detected post-treatment. Sixteen dogs died during the study, 4 due to cancer and 12 due to other diseases, diagnosed by veterinarians. Overall, our survey suggests that MSC transplantation has long-term beneficial effects in reducing lameness. Moreover, no enrichment in a specific cause of death was observed in the transplanted animals, compared to reported literature. Our data suggest that MSC treatment could be an effective and safe long-term therapy for canine OA

Towards self-organized service-oriented multi-agent systems

The demand for large-scale systems running in complex and even chaotic environments requires the consideration of new paradigms and technologies that provide flexibility, robustness, agility and responsiveness. Multiagents systems is pointed out as a suitable approach to address this challenge by offering an alternative way to design control systems, based on the decentralization of control functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative entities. However, in spite of their enormous potential, they usually lack some aspects related to interoperability, optimization in decentralized structures and truly self-adaptation. This paper discusses a new perspective to engineer adaptive complex systems considering a 3-layer framework integrating several complementary paradigms and technologies. In a first step, it suggests the integration of multi-agent systems with service-oriented architectures to overcome the limitations of interoperability and smooth migration, followed by the use of technology enablers, such as cloud computing and wireless sensor networks, to provide a ubiquitous and reconfigurable environment. Finally, the resulted service-oriented multi-agent system should be enhanced with biologically inspired techniques, namely self-organization, to reach a truly robust, agile and adaptive system

Data mining: a tool for detecting cyclical disturbances in supply networks.

Disturbances in supply chains may be either exogenous or endogenous. The ability automatically to detect, diagnose, and distinguish between the causes of disturbances is of prime importance to decision makers in order to avoid uncertainty. The spectral principal component analysis (SPCA) technique has been utilized to distinguish between real and rogue disturbances in a steel supply network. The data set used was collected from four different business units in the network and consists of 43 variables; each is described by 72 data points. The present paper will utilize the same data set to test an alternative approach to SPCA in detecting the disturbances. The new approach employs statistical data pre-processing, clustering, and classification learning techniques to analyse the supply network data. In particular, the incremental k-means clustering and the RULES-6 classification rule-learning algorithms, developed by the present authors’ team, have been applied to identify important patterns in the data set. Results show that the proposed approach has the capability automatically to detect and characterize network-wide cyclical disturbances and generate hypotheses about their root cause

Recent developments and future trends of industrial agents

The agent technology provides a new way to design and engineer control solutions based on the decentralization of control over distributed structures, addressing the current requirements for modern control systems in industrial domains. This paper presents the current situation of the development and deployment of agent technology, discussing the initiatives and the current trends faced for a wider dissemination and industrial adoption, based on the work that is being carried out by the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Agents

Measuring and managing liquidity risk in the Hungarian practice

The crisis that unfolded in 2007/2008 turned the attention of the financial world toward liquidity, the lack of which caused substantial losses. As a result, the need arose for the traditional financial models to be extended with liquidity. Our goal is to discover how Hungarian market players relate to liquidity. Our results are obtained through a series of semistructured interviews, and are hoped to be a starting point for extending the existing models in an appropriate way. Our main results show that different investor groups can be identified along their approaches to liquidity, and they rarely use sophisticated models to measure and manage liquidity. We conclude that although market players would have access to complex liquidity measurement and management tools, there is a limited need for these, because the currently available models are unable to use complex liquidity information effectively

Social Media, Gender and the Mediatisation of War: Exploring the German Armed Forces’ Visual Representation of the Afghanistan Operation on Facebook

Studies on the mediatisation of war point to attempts of governments to regulate the visual perspective of their involvements in armed conflict – the most notable example being the practice of ‘embedded reporting’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. This paper focuses on a different strategy of visual meaning-making, namely, the publication of images on social media by armed forces themselves. Specifically, we argue that the mediatisation of war literature could profit from an increased engagement with feminist research, both within Critical Security/Critical Military Studies and within Science and Technology Studies that highlight the close connection between masculinity, technology and control. The article examines the German military mission in Afghanistan as represented on the German armed forces’ official Facebook page. Germany constitutes an interesting, and largely neglected, case for the growing literature on the mediatisation of war: its strong antimilitarist political culture makes the representation of war particularly delicate. The paper examines specific representational patterns of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan and discusses the implications which arise from what is placed inside the frame of visibility and what remains out of its view