Defeasible Logic for Automated Negotiation

Negotiation plays a fundamental role in e-commerce. In this paper, the application of defeasible logic for automated negotiation is investigated. Defeasible logic is flexible enough to be adapted to several possible negotiation strategies, has efficient implementations, and provides a formal basis for analysis (e.g. to explain why a negotiation was not successful). Two case studies, one small and one more comprehensive, will be described and the feasibility of approaches based on defeasible logic will be discussed

Is Defeasible Logic Applicable?

In this paper the application of defeasible logic for automated negotiation is investigated. Defeasible logic is flexible enough to be adapted to several possible negotiation strategies, has efficient implementations, and provides a formal basis for analysis (e.g. to explain why a negotiation was not successful). Two case studies, one small and one more comprehensive, will be described and the feasibility of approaches based on defeasible logic will be discussed

OrgMining 2.0: A Novel Framework for Organizational Model Mining from Event Logs

Providing appropriate structures around human resources can streamline operations and thus facilitate the competitiveness of an organization. To achieve this goal, modern organizations need to acquire an accurate and timely understanding of human resource grouping while faced with an ever-changing environment. The use of process mining offers a promising way to help address the need through utilizing event log data stored in information systems. By extracting knowledge about the actual behavior of resources participating in business processes from event logs, organizational models can be constructed, which facilitate the analysis of the de facto grouping of human resources relevant to process execution. Nevertheless, open research gaps remain to be addressed when applying the state-of-the-art process mining to analyze resource grouping. For one, the discovery of organizational models has only limited connections with the context of process execution. For another, a rigorous solution that evaluates organizational models against event log data is yet to be proposed. In this paper, we aim to tackle these research challenges by developing a novel framework built upon a richer definition of organizational models coupling resource grouping with process execution knowledge. By introducing notions of conformance checking for organizational models, the framework allows effective evaluation of organizational models, and therefore provides a foundation for analyzing and improving resource grouping based on event logs. We demonstrate the feasibility of this framework by proposing an approach underpinned by the framework for organizational model discovery, and also conduct experiments on real-life event logs to discover and evaluate organizational models.Comment: Manuscript initially submitted for review on 13/5/2020 with 38 pages, 10 figures, 11 table

The Cercal Organ May Provide Singing Tettigoniids a Backup Sensory System for the Detection of Eavesdropping Bats

Conspicuous signals, such as the calling songs of tettigoniids, are intended to attract mates but may also unintentionally attract predators. Among them bats that listen to prey-generated sounds constitute a predation pressure for many acoustically communicating insects as well as frogs. As an adaptation to protect against bat predation many insect species evolved auditory sensitivity to bat-emitted echolocation signals. Recently, the European mouse-eared bat species Myotis myotis and M. blythii oxygnathus were found to eavesdrop on calling songs of the tettigoniid Tettigonia cantans. These gleaning bats emit rather faint echolocation signals when approaching prey and singing insects may have difficulty detecting acoustic predator-related signals. The aim of this study was to determine (1) if loud self-generated sound produced by European tettigoniids impairs the detection of pulsed ultrasound and (2) if wind-sensors on the cercal organ function as a sensory backup system for bat detection in tettigoniids. We addressed these questions by combining a behavioral approach to study the response of two European tettigoniid species to pulsed ultrasound, together with an electrophysiological approach to record the activity of wind-sensitive interneurons during real attacks of the European mouse-eared bat species Myotis myotis. Results showed that singing T. cantans males did not respond to sequences of ultrasound pulses, whereas singing T. viridissima did respond with predominantly brief song pauses when ultrasound pulses fell into silent intervals or were coincident with the production of soft hemi-syllables. This result, however, strongly depended on ambient temperature with a lower probability for song interruption observable at 21°C compared to 28°C. Using extracellular recordings, dorsal giant interneurons of tettigoniids were shown to fire regular bursts in response to attacking bats. Between the first response of wind-sensitive interneurons and contact, a mean time lag of 860 ms was found. This time interval corresponds to a bat-to-prey distance of ca. 72 cm. This result demonstrates the efficiency of the cercal system of tettigoniids in detecting attacking bats and suggests this sensory system to be particularly valuable for singing insects that are targeted by eavesdropping bats

The 4C spectrum of fundamental behavioral relations for concurrent systems

The design of concurrent software systems, in particular process-aware information systems, involves behavioral modeling at various stages. Recently, approaches to behavioral analysis of such systems have been based on declarative abstractions defined as sets of behavioral relations. However, these relations are typically defined in an ad-hoc manner. In this paper, we address the lack of a systematic exploration of the fundamental relations that can be used to capture the behavior of concurrent systems, i.e., co-occurrence, conflict, causality, and concurrency. Besides the definition of the spectrum of behavioral relations, which we refer to as the 4C spectrum, we also show that our relations give rise to implication lattices. We further provide operationalizations of the proposed relations, starting by proposing techniques for computing relations in unlabeled systems, which are then lifted to become applicable in the context of labeled systems, i.e., systems in which state transitions have semantic annotations. Finally, we report on experimental results on efficiency of the proposed computations

Shrinking wings for ultrasonic pitch production: hyperintense ultra-short-wavelength calls in a new genus of neotropical katydids (Orthoptera: tettigoniidae)

This article reports the discovery of a new genus and three species of predaceous katydid (Insecta: Orthoptera) from Colombia and Ecuador in which males produce the highest frequency ultrasonic calling songs so far recorded from an arthropod. Male katydids sing by rubbing their wings together to attract distant females. Their song frequencies usually range from audio (5 kHz) to low ultrasonic (30 kHz). However, males of Supersonus spp. call females at 115 kHz, 125 kHz, and 150 kHz. Exceeding the human hearing range (50 Hz–20 kHz) by an order of magnitude, these insects also emit their ultrasound at unusually elevated sound pressure levels (SPL). In all three species these calls exceed 110 dB SPL rms re 20 µPa (at 15 cm). Males of Supersonus spp. have unusually reduced forewings (<0.5 mm2). Only the right wing radiates appreciable sound, the left bears the file and does not show a particular resonance. In contrast to most katydids, males of Supersonus spp. position and move their wings during sound production so that the concave aspect of the right wing, underlain by the insect dorsum, forms a contained cavity with sharp resonance. The observed high SPL at extreme carrier frequencies can be explained by wing anatomy, a resonant cavity with a membrane, and cuticle deformation