Towards quantifying the completeness of BDI goals

Often, such as in the presence of con icts, an agent must choose between multiple intentions. The level of complete- ness of the intentions can be a factor in this deliberation. We sketch a pragmatic but principled mechanism for quan- tifying the level of completeness of goals in a Belief-Desire- Intention{like agent. Our approach leverages previous work on resource and e ects summarization but we go beyond by accommodating both dynamic resource summaries and goal e ects, while also allowing a non-binary quanti cation of goal completeness

Programming Deliberation Strategies in Meta-APL

A key advantage of BDI-based agent programming is that agents can deliberate about which course of action to adopt to achieve a goal or respond to an event. However, while state-of-the-art BDI-based agent programming languages provide flexible support for expressing plans, they are typically limited to a single, hard-coded, deliberation strategy (perhaps with some parameterisation) for all task environments. In this paper, we present an alternative approach. We show how both agent programs and the agent’s deliberation strategy can be encoded in the agent programming language meta-APL. Key steps in the execution cycle of meta-APL are reflected in the state of the agent and can be queried and updated by meta-APL rules, allowing BDI deliberation strategies to be programmed with ease. To illustrate the flexibility of meta-APL, we show how three typical BDI deliberation strategies can be programmed using meta-APL rules. We then show how meta-APL can used to program a novel adaptive deliberation strategy that avoids interference between intentions

Agent oriented modelling of tactical decision making

A key requirement in military simulation is to have executable models of tactical decision-making. Such models are used to simulate the behaviour of human entities such as submarine commanders, fighter pilots and infantry, with a view to producing realistic predictions about tactical outcomes. Tactics specify the means of achieving mission objectives, and should capture both reactive and deliberative behaviour. The lack of a methodology and supporting tools for designing computer-based models of tactics makes them difficult to create, maintain and reuse, and this is now a significant problem in military simulation domains. To address this, we have developed TDF (Tactics Development Framework), a tactics modelling methodology and tool based on the BDI (Beliefs, Desires, Intentions) paradigm, that supports agent-oriented structural modelling of tactics and related artefacts including missions, storylines, goals and plans. The methodology was initially assessed by analysts in the undersea warfare domain, and was subsequently evaluated using a simple scenario in the autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles domain. The latter evaluation involved a comparison with UML designs, indicating that our methodology provides significant benefits to those building and maintaining models of tactical decision-making

Pioglitazone Prevents Capillary Rarefaction in Streptozotocin-Diabetic Rats Independently of Glucose Control and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Expression

Background/Aims: Reduction of capillary network density occurs early in the development of metabolic syndrome and may be relevant for the precipitation of diabetes. Agonists of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-gamma transcription factor are vasculoprotective, but their capacity for structural preservation of the microcirculation is unclear. Methods: Male Wistar rats were rendered diabetic by streptozotocin and treated with pioglitazone in chow for up to 12 weeks. Capillary density was determined in heart and skeletal muscle after platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 (PECAM-1) immunostaining. Hallmarks of apoptosis and angiogenesis were determined. Results: Capillary density deteriorated progressively in the presence of hyperglycemia (from 971/mm(2) to 475/mm(2) in quadriceps muscle during 13 weeks). Pioglitazone did not influence plasma glucose, left ventricular weight, or body weight but nearly doubled absolute and relative capillary densities compared to untreated controls (1.2 vs. 0.6 capillaries/myocyte in heart and 1.5 vs. 0.9 capillaries/myocyte in quadriceps muscle) after 13 weeks of diabetes. No antiapoptotic or angiogenic influence of pioglitazone was detected while a reduced expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-3 alpha and PPAR coactivator-1 alpha (PGC-1 alpha) mRNA as well as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) protein possibly occurred as a consequence of improved vascularization. Conclusion: Pioglitazone preserves microvascular structure in diabetes independently of improvements in glycemic control and by a mechanism unrelated to VEGF-mediated angiogenesis. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

An Information Theoretic, Microfluidic-Based Single Cell Analysis Permits Identification of Subpopulations among Putatively Homogeneous Stem Cells

An incomplete understanding of the nature of heterogeneity within stem cell populations remains a major impediment to the development of clinically effective cell-based therapies. Transcriptional events within a single cell are inherently stochastic and can produce tremendous variability, even among genetically identical cells. It remains unclear how mammalian cellular systems overcome this intrinsic noisiness of gene expression to produce consequential variations in function, and what impact this has on the biologic and clinical relevance of highly ‘purified’ cell subgroups. To address these questions, we have developed a novel method combining microfluidic-based single cell analysis and information theory to characterize and predict transcriptional programs across hundreds of individual cells. Using this technique, we demonstrate that multiple subpopulations exist within a well-studied and putatively homogeneous stem cell population, murine long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs). These subgroups are defined by nonrandom patterns that are distinguishable from noise and are consistent with known functional properties of these cells. We anticipate that this analytic framework can also be applied to other cell types to elucidate the relationship between transcriptional and phenotypic variation

Agent design consistency checking via planning

In this work we present a novel approach to check the consistency of agent designs (prior to any implementation) with respect to the requirements specifications via automated planning. This checking is essentially a search problem which makes planning technology an appropriate solution. We focus our work on BDI agent systems and the Prometheus design methodology in order to directly compare our approach to previous work. Our experiments in more than 16K random instances prove that the approach is more effective than previous ones proposed: it achieves higher coverage, lower run-time, and importantly, can handle loops in the agent detailed design and unbounded subgoal reasoning

A Soft COP Model for Goal Deliberation in a BDI Agent

Not availabl