Incorporating Fairness into Development of an Integrated Multi-agent Online Dispute Resolution Environment

The paper describes the development of an integrated multi-agent online dispute resolution environment called IMODRE that was designed to assist parties involved in Australian family law disputes achieve legally fairer negotiated outcomes. The system extends our previouswork in developing negotiation support systems Family_ Winner and AssetDivider. In this environment one agent uses a Bayesian Belief Network expertly modeled with knowledge of the Australian Family Law domain to advise disputants of their Best Alternatives to Negotiated Agreements. Another agent incorporates the percentage split of marital property into an integrative bargaining process and applies heuristics and game theory to equitably distribute marital property assets and facilitate further trade-offs. We use this system to add greater fairness to Family property law negotiations

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A framework for teaching epistemic insight in schools

This paper gives the rationale and a draft outline for a framework for education to teach epistemic insight into schools in England. The motivation to research and propose a strategy to teach and assess epistemic insight followed research that investigated how students and teachers in primary and secondary schools respond to big questions about the nature of reality and human personhood. The research revealed that there are pressures in schools that dampen students’ expressed curiosity in these types of questions and limit their developing epistemic insight into how science, religion and the wider humanities relate. These findings prompted the construction of a framework for education for students aged 5–16 designed to encourage students’ expressed interest in big questions and develop their understanding of the ways that science interacts with other ways of knowing. The centrepiece of the framework is a sequence of learning objectives for epistemic insight, organised into three categories. The categories are, firstly, the nature of science in real world contexts and multidisciplinary arenas; secondly, ways of knowing and how they interact; and thirdly, the relationships between science and religion. Our current version of the Framework is constructed to respond to the way that teaching is organised in England. The key principles and many of the activities could be adopted and tailored to work in many other countries

Adjunctive rifampicin for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (ARREST): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is a common cause of severe community-acquired and hospital-acquired infection worldwide. We tested the hypothesis that adjunctive rifampicin would reduce bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death, by enhancing early S aureus killing, sterilising infected foci and blood faster, and reducing risks of dissemination and metastatic infection. METHODS: In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults (≥18 years) with S aureus bacteraemia who had received ≤96 h of active antibiotic therapy were recruited from 29 UK hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) via a computer-generated sequential randomisation list to receive 2 weeks of adjunctive rifampicin (600 mg or 900 mg per day according to weight, oral or intravenous) versus identical placebo, together with standard antibiotic therapy. Randomisation was stratified by centre. Patients, investigators, and those caring for the patients were masked to group allocation. The primary outcome was time to bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death (all-cause), from randomisation to 12 weeks, adjudicated by an independent review committee masked to the treatment. Analysis was intention to treat. This trial was registered, number ISRCTN37666216, and is closed to new participants. FINDINGS: Between Dec 10, 2012, and Oct 25, 2016, 758 eligible participants were randomly assigned: 370 to rifampicin and 388 to placebo. 485 (64%) participants had community-acquired S aureus infections, and 132 (17%) had nosocomial S aureus infections. 47 (6%) had meticillin-resistant infections. 301 (40%) participants had an initial deep infection focus. Standard antibiotics were given for 29 (IQR 18-45) days; 619 (82%) participants received flucloxacillin. By week 12, 62 (17%) of participants who received rifampicin versus 71 (18%) who received placebo experienced treatment failure or disease recurrence, or died (absolute risk difference -1·4%, 95% CI -7·0 to 4·3; hazard ratio 0·96, 0·68-1·35, p=0·81). From randomisation to 12 weeks, no evidence of differences in serious (p=0·17) or grade 3-4 (p=0·36) adverse events were observed; however, 63 (17%) participants in the rifampicin group versus 39 (10%) in the placebo group had antibiotic or trial drug-modifying adverse events (p=0·004), and 24 (6%) versus six (2%) had drug interactions (p=0·0005). INTERPRETATION: Adjunctive rifampicin provided no overall benefit over standard antibiotic therapy in adults with S aureus bacteraemia. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment

Tourism information systems integration and utilization within the semantic web

The objective of this research was to generate grounded theory about the extent to which the Semantic Web and related technologies can assist with the creation, capture, integration, and utilization of accurate, consistent, timely, and up-to-date Web based tourism information. Tourism is vital to the economies of most countries worldwide (developed and lessdeveloped). Advanced Destination Marketing Systems (DMS) are essential if a country’s tourism infrastructure, facilities and attractions are to receive maximum exposure. A necessary prerequisite here is that relevant data must be captured, ‘cleansed’, organized, integrated and made available to key industry parties (e.g. travel agents and inbound tour operators). While more and more tourists are using the Internet for travel planning, the usability of the Internet as a travel information source remains a problem, with travellers often having trouble finding the information they seek as the amount of online travel related information increases. The problem is largely caused by the current Web’s lack of structure, which makes the integration of heterogeneous data a difficult time consuming task. Traditional approaches to overcoming heterogeneity have to a large extent been unsuccessful. In the past organizations attempted to rectify the problem by investing heavily in top-down strategic information systems planning projects (SISP), with the ultimate aim of establishing a new generation of systems built around a single common set of enterprise databases. An example of this approach to integration is that undertaken by the Bell companies (Nolan, Puryear & Elron 1989), whose massive investment in computer systems turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. The Semantic Web offers a new approach to integration. Broadly speaking, the Semantic Web (Berners-Lee, Hendler & Lassila 2001) refers to a range of standards, languages, development frameworks and tool development initiatives aimed at annotating Web pages with welldefined metadata so that intelligent agents can reason more effectively about services offered at particular sites. The technology is being developed by a number of scientists and industry organizations in a collaborative effort led by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) with the goal of providing machine readable Web intelligence that would come from hyperlinked vocabularies, enabling Web authors to explicitly define their words and concepts. It is based on new markup languages such as such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) (Manola & Miller 2004), Ontology Web Language (OWL) (McGuinness & Harmelen 2004), and ontologies which provide a shared and formal description of key concepts in a given domain. The ontology driven approach to integration advocated here might be considered ‘bottom-up’, since individual enterprises (and parts of the one enterprise) can apply the technology (largely) independently – thereby mirroring the processes by which the Web itself evolved. The idea is that organizations could be provided with a common model (the Semantic Web ontology), and associated (easy-to-use) software could then be employed to guide them in the development of their Websites. As such, because Website production is driven by the common ontology, consistency and convenient integration is almost an automatic by-product (for all companies that take advantage of the technology and approach). In many cases, organizations would not have to change their present data structures or naming conventions, which could potentially overcome many of the change management issues that have led to the failure of previous integration initiatives. Many researchers (e.g. (El Sawy 2001)) have stressed the necessity to take a holistic view of technology, people, structure and processes in IT projects and, more specifically, Sharma et al. (2000, p. 151) have noted that as significant as DMS technological problems are, they may well pale into insignificance when compared with the managerial issues that need to be resolved. With this in mind, a systems development research approach supported by a survey of tourism operators and secondary interviews was used to generate grounded theory. The systems development and evaluation were designed to uncover technical benefits of using the Semantic Web for the integration and utilization of online tourism information. The survey of tourism operators and secondary data interviews were aimed at providing an understanding of attitudes towards adoption of a radical new online technology among industry stakeholders. A distinguishing feature of this research was its applied and pragmatic focus: in particular, one aim was to determine just what of practical use can be accomplished today, with current (albeit, extended) technology, in a real industry setting

Asset Negotiation and Trade-Off Support within a Multi-Agent Environment

Argumentation theory is often used in multi-agent systems to facilitate autonomous agent reasoning and multi-agent interaction. The technology can also be used to develop online negotiation and mediation services by providing argument structures that assist parties involved in a dispute to resolve outstanding issues or avoid future disputes. While Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) represents a move from a fixed and formal process to a more flexible one, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) moves ADR from a physical to a virtual place. The research aims to capitalise on the recent trend towards ODR by creating a JADE based multi-agent ODR environment. The utility functions and argument structures of two existing ODR applications are being re-deployed as Web based intelligent agents capable of intuitively coordinating during a negotiation. One agent uses expert knowledge of the Australian Family Law domain to recommend a percentage property split, while another uses heuristics and game theory and combines this split with a significance rating of items provided by each party, to allocate issues and advise upon possible trade-offs. The ultimate aim is to provide disputants with an integrated ODR environment offering a range of services to assist them in achieving fairer outcomes

Incorporating Issues of Fairness into Development of a Multi-Agent Negotiation Support System

One of the major concerns raised by people using Negotiation Support Systems is about the fairness of the process. Individuals undertake negotiation to derive better outcomes than could be obtained from conflict and litigation. Thus they often engage in interest based negotiation. But interest based negotiation focuses upon the interests of disputants rather than upon objective measures of fairness or justice. For example in family law, differences in power between men and women may lead to negotiated results that favor men. Bargaining imbalances can thus produce unfair results unless mediators or Negotiation Support Systems overcome them. It is thus vital to incorporate measures to address fairness in the development of Negotiation Support Systems. The paper describes the development of a multi-agent based Negotiation Support System designed to assist disputants to achieve legally fairer negotiated outcomes. The system uses a Bayesian Belief Network and Artificial Intelligence techniques to incorporate Best Alternatives to Negotiated Agreements into an integrative bargaining process. Through this system, we aim to demonstrate how principles of legal fairness can be applied in Australian Family Law. 8th - 12th June 2009 held at the Institute of Law and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelon

A Multi-Agent Architecture for Online Dispute Resolution Services

Abstract: Argumentation theory is often used in multi agent-systems to facilitate autonomous agent reasoning and multi-agent interaction. The technology can also be used to develop online negotiation and mediation services by providing argument structures that assist parties involved in a dispute to resolve outstanding issues or avoid future disputes. While Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) represents a move from a fixed and formal process to a more flexible one, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) moves ADR from a physical to a virtual place. The research aims to capitalise on the recent trend towards ODR by creating a JADE based multi-agent ODR environment. The utility functions and argument structures of two existing ODR applications are being re-deployed as Web based intelligent agents capable of intuitively coordinating during a negotiation. One agent uses expert knowledge of the Australian Family Law domain to recommend a percentage property split, while another uses heuristics and game theory and combines this split with a significance rating of items provided by each party, to allocate issues and advise upon possible trade-offs. The ultimate aim is to provide disputants with an integrated ODR environment offering a range of services to assist them in achieving fairer outcomes