Internet-based Multiagent Architecture

Research in intelligent agents and multiagent systems that run on the Internet has received increased attention and importance in recent years. Since the Internet continues to grow, intelligent agent technology is progressively being introduced to many Internet-based applications for communications between different applications. The aim of this paper is to present an Internet-based architecture for multiagent systems which offers a communication infrastructure and coordination services for agents to achieve their goals. A structured architecture is proposed to support communication facilities among several agents and coordinate agent activities in distributed environments such as the Internet and Intranets. The architecture consists of 1) Application agents, 2) Communication handler, 3) Knowledge manager, and 4) Repository. (Yuen, et al. 1999; Leung, et al. 1999). These four layers cooperate together and provide common facilities necessary for typical multiagent systems or agent-based applications with various choices. An Internet-based prototype for auditing and detecting unauthorized transactions within an organization over the Internet or an Intranet is implemented to demonstrate the practicability and feasibility of the proposed Internet-based architecture for multiagent systems

Energy Requirements for Quantum Data Compression and 1-1 Coding

By looking at quantum data compression in the second quantisation, we present a new model for the efficient generation and use of variable length codes. In this picture lossless data compression can be seen as the {\em minimum energy} required to faithfully represent or transmit classical information contained within a quantum state. In order to represent information we create quanta in some predefined modes (i.e. frequencies) prepared in one of two possible internal states (the information carrying degrees of freedom). Data compression is now seen as the selective annihilation of these quanta, the energy of whom is effectively dissipated into the environment. As any increase in the energy of the environment is intricately linked to any information loss and is subject to Landauer's erasure principle, we use this principle to distinguish lossless and lossy schemes and to suggest bounds on the efficiency of our lossless compression protocol. In line with the work of Bostr\"{o}m and Felbinger \cite{bostroem}, we also show that when using variable length codes the classical notions of prefix or uniquely decipherable codes are unnecessarily restrictive given the structure of quantum mechanics and that a 1-1 mapping is sufficient. In the absence of this restraint we translate existing classical results on 1-1 coding to the quantum domain to derive a new upper bound on the compression of quantum information. Finally we present a simple quantum circuit to implement our scheme.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Compromising building regulations and user expectations in the design of high-rise domestic kitchens

Purpose ??? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance and relevance of social and habitual behaviours of home occupants to the building design process. It argues that introducing quantitative measures such as daylight level alone may not result in a ???healthy and functional??? kitchen without appreciating or factoring-in the impacts of the social roles and user expectations of kitchens in high-rise and compact urban situations.\ud Design/methodology/approach ??? The study investigated three common types of apartment buildings in Hong Kong. Case studies suggested that it is crucial to include in a design process proper considerations of human behaviours byway of preferred approaches andmodes of living, space usage, and weightings of end-user responses that would influence architectural design in a direct and crucial way.\ud Findings ??? The study noted that daylight quality of a kitchen is perceived by most families to be not as important as building control officials and designers thought it would. Instead, it is found that social and cultural factors are more important parameters for users. The study observed that designers rely on physical and quantitative approaches such as daylight factor, window size and window-to-room area ratio to qualify a design solution and ignore the socio-cultural parameters.\ud Originality/value ??? The paper calls for designers and building control officials to incorporate the study of functionality and socio-cultural preferences of users groups in the building design process. The study envisages that an integrated design methodology would enhance the living environment

Effect of a Video-Supported Nurse-Led Advance Care Planning for Older Adults with Frailty: A Randomized Controlled Trial

This chapter reports the results of a parallel, double-blinded randomized controlled trial to examine the effect of video-supported nurse-led advance care planning (ACP) as compared with a health education program plus an ACP promotion leaflet on end-of-life decision-making outcomes in older adults with frailty. Outcomes were assessed at 1 month and 6 months after the intervention via telephone. Between December 2018 and January 2020, 449 older adults were screened for eligibility. The trial was terminated early after 105 subjects had been assigned (intervention: 51; control: 54) because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the end of the funding period. No significant between-group difference was found in the retention rate at 1 (41.2% vs. 38.9%) and 6 months (35.3% vs. 44.4%). In the intention-to-treat analysis, the ACP group reported a higher but non-significant advance directive completion rate (5.9% vs. 1.9%) and a significantly higher mean score in quality of communication about end-of-life care at 1 month [estimated difference: 8.73 (1.16–16.30). There was no evidence of a difference in favorable outcomes of subjects receiving the video-supported, nurse-led ACP compared with those receiving active control. Results might have been confounded by high attrition, poor intervention completion, and reduced sample size due to the early termination of the study

Word Processors with Line-Wrap: Cascading, Self-Organized Criticality, Random Walks, Diffusion, Predictability

We examine the line-wrap feature of text processors and show that adding characters to previously formatted lines leads to the cascading of words to subsequent lines and forms a state of self-organized criticality. We show the connection to one-dimensional random walks and diffusion problems, and we examine the predictability of catastrophic cascades.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX with RevTeX package, 4 postscript figures appende

Residues and World-Sheet Instantons

We reconsider the question of which Calabi-Yau compactifications of the heterotic string are stable under world-sheet instanton corrections to the effective space-time superpotential. For instance, compactifications described by (0,2) linear sigma models are believed to be stable, suggesting a remarkable cancellation among the instanton effects in these theories. Here, we show that this cancellation follows directly from a residue theorem, whose proof relies only upon the right-moving world-sheet supersymmetries and suitable compactness properties of the (0,2) linear sigma model. Our residue theorem also extends to a new class of "half-linear" sigma models. Using these half-linear models, we show that heterotic compactifications on the quintic hypersurface in CP^4 for which the gauge bundle pulls back from a bundle on CP^4 are stable. Finally, we apply similar ideas to compute the superpotential contributions from families of membrane instantons in M-theory compactifications on manifolds of G_2 holonomy.Comment: 47 page

The anomalous Higgs-top couplings in the MSSM

The anomalous couplings of the top quark and the Higgs boson has been studied in an effective theory resulting in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) when the heavy fields are integrated out. Constraints on the parameters of the model from the experimental data on the ratio $R_b={\Gamma(Z\to b\bar{b})/\Gamma(Z\to hadrons)}$ are derived.Comment: Latex, 26 pages + 13 ps figures, final version in PR

Development and validation of a symptom-based activity index for adults with eosinophilic esophagitis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Standardized instruments are needed to assess the activity of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and to provide end points for clinical trials and observational studies. We aimed to develop and validate a patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument and score, based on items that could account for variations in patient assessments of disease severity. We also evaluated relationships between patient assessment of disease severity and EoE-associated endoscopic, histologic, and laboratory findings. METHODS: We collected information from 186 patients with EoE in Switzerland and the United States (69.4% male; median age, 43 y) via surveys (n = 135), focus groups (n = 27), and semistructured interviews (n = 24). Items were generated for the instruments to assess biologic activity based on physician input. Linear regression was used to quantify the extent to which variations in patient-reported disease characteristics could account for variations in patient assessment of EoE severity. The PRO instrument was used prospectively in 153 adult patients with EoE (72.5% male; median age, 38 y), and validated in an independent group of 120 patients with EoE (60.8% male; median age, 40.5 y). RESULTS: Seven PRO factors that are used to assess characteristics of dysphagia, behavioral adaptations to living with dysphagia, and pain while swallowing accounted for 67% of the variation in patient assessment of disease severity. Based on statistical consideration and patient input, a 7-day recall period was selected. Highly active EoE, based on endoscopic and histologic findings, was associated with an increase in patient-assessed disease severity. In the validation study, the mean difference between patient assessment of EoE severity (range, 0-10) and PRO score (range, 0-8.52) was 0.15. CONCLUSIONS: We developed and validated an EoE scoring system based on 7 PRO items that assess symptoms over a 7-day recall period. Clinicaltrials.gov number: NCT00939263

Solving an Avionics Real-Time Scheduling Problem by Advanced IP-Methods

We report on the solution of a real-time scheduling problem that arises in the design of software-based operation control of aircraft. A set of tasks has to be distributed on a minimum number of machines and offsets of the tasks have to be computed. The tasks emit jobs periodically starting at their offset and then need to be executed on the machines without any delay. Also, further constraints in terms of memory usage and redundancy requirements have to be met. Approaches based on standard integer programming formulations fail to solve our real-world instances. By exploiting structural insights of the problem we obtain an IP-formulation and primal heuristics that together solve the real-world instances to optimality and outperform text-book approaches by several orders of magnitude. Our methods lead, for the first time, to an industry strength tool to optimally schedule aircraft sized problems