An evolutionary behavioral model for decision making

For autonomous agents the problem of deciding what to do next becomes increasingly complex when acting in unpredictable and dynamic environments pursuing multiple and possibly conflicting goals. One of the most relevant behavior-based model that tries to deal with this problem is the one proposed by Maes, the Bbehavior Network model. This model proposes a set of behaviors as purposive perception-action units which are linked in a nonhierarchical network, and whose behavior selection process is orchestrated by spreading activation dynamics. In spite of being an adaptive model (in the sense of self-regulating its own behavior selection process), and despite the fact that several extensions have been proposed in order to improve the original model adaptability, there is not a robust model yet that can self-modify adaptively both the topological structure and the functional purpose\ud of the network as a result of the interaction between the agent and its environment. Thus, this work proffers an innovative hybrid model driven by gene expression programming, which makes two main contributions: (1) given an initial set of meaningless and unconnected units, the evolutionary mechanism is able to build well-defined and robust behavior networks which are adapted and specialized to concrete internal agent's needs and goals; and (2)\ud the same evolutionary mechanism is able to assemble quite\ud complex structures such as deliberative plans (which operate in the long-term) and problem-solving strategies

The interplay between short-term, mild physicochemical forcing and plankton dynamics in a coastal area

Two intensive surveys were conducted in the coastal waters of Barcelona (northwest Mediterranean) to assess short-term variations of biological parameters in relation to environmental conditions. Surveys lasted 1 week, with three to four samplings per day, and were carried out in autumn and spring. Rather than exploring extreme events, we aimed to study the effects of regular low or moderate perturbations, such as meteorological fronts, on the dynamics of the system. We focused on two attributes: wave height, as a proxy for mechanical energy entering the system, and nutrient inputs, whose variability in total load and relative composition is a central characteristic of coastal areas. The effects of the temporal coupling or uncoupling of both factors were examined. Sudden nutrient fluxes uncoupled from water motion tended to favor bacteria and heterotrophic nanoflagellates, while their concurrence with some water column mixing shaped a favorable scenario for large autotrophs. Ultimately, these two distinct biological responses pointed toward two main disturbance scenarios: episodes of nutrient enrichment uncoupled from mixing, mostly related to episodic water spills from the nearby city that contributed to high relative loads of ammonium and organic compounds; and episodes of increased wind caused by passing weather fronts that promoted some water column mixing and the entrainment of nutrients from bottom sediments or from adjacent water masses

Fractional Driven Damped Oscillator

The resonances associated with a fractional damped oscillator which is driven by an oscillatory external force are studied. It is shown that such resonances can be manipulated by tuning up either the coefficient of the fractional damping or the order of the corresponding fractional derivatives.Comment: 5 pages, 1 Figure. A misprint appearing in Eq. (6) of the published version is amended. Based on the work presented by F. Olivar-Romero in the Quantum Fest 2016: International Conference on Quantum Phenomena, Quantum Control and Quantum Optics, 17-21 October 2016, Mexico City, Mexic

Moral Principles Under Market Rules

In a republican society, the government must generally carry out the moral values of its constituents, ranging from physical protection to economic stability to social equality. This is done by Congress passing laws and the executive branch, upon the President approving those laws, executing them faithfully. Because the federal government is enormous, agencies and departments established for the laws can be carried out effectively. However, like any government, they are limited to a budget to carry out those laws. These agencies can easily monetize materials when estimating the policies’ impact, but it is not easy to monetize moral values. The agencies’ solution is through the willingness to pay. Therefore, by using the willingness to pay in their cost-benefit analysis, agencies can get a better idea as to what policies or regulations are most effective in implementing the moral values of the Congress and the people

NLSC: Unrestricted Natural Language-based Service Composition through Sentence Embeddings

Current approaches for service composition (assemblies of atomic services) require developers to use: (a) domain-specific semantics to formalize services that restrict the vocabulary for their descriptions, and (b) translation mechanisms for service retrieval to convert unstructured user requests to strongly-typed semantic representations. In our work, we argue that effort to developing service descriptions, request translations, and matching mechanisms could be reduced using unrestricted natural language; allowing both: (1) end-users to intuitively express their needs using natural language, and (2) service developers to develop services without relying on syntactic/semantic description languages. Although there are some natural language-based service composition approaches, they restrict service retrieval to syntactic/semantic matching. With recent developments in Machine learning and Natural Language Processing, we motivate the use of Sentence Embeddings by leveraging richer semantic representations of sentences for service description, matching and retrieval. Experimental results show that service composition development effort may be reduced by more than 44\% while keeping a high precision/recall when matching high-level user requests with low-level service method invocations.Comment: This paper will appear on SCC'19 (IEEE International Conference on Services Computing) on July 1

The Constitutionality of Section 5

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act serves as the constitutional response to the sins of voting discrimination perpetrated against minorities. The Founders of the Fifteenth Amendment envisioned the extinction of voting discrimination towards minorities and the prosperity of a government that is responsive to all Americans. Unfortunately, some states in the Union continued to block minorities from participating in elections through legal, political, and social means

Public v. Private Organizations

People always hear on the news politicians arguing with each other on the effectiveness of government. They both agree that government agencies can do a lot better than what they are doing right now, but disagree on how to resolve it. The left argues for providing more funding to these public agencies to have better performance; however, that will require an increase in taxes which most Americans do not want. The right argues for privatizing these public agencies so that there is no bureaucratic involvement in the procedure, as well as this, will determine which agencies succeed and which ones fail in the open market. I would have agreed more on the left’s opinion simply because this will eliminate the agency’s focus on profit over people; however, I realized that private administration is a more effective and better way to approach many services. The priorities that “private” emphasizes, while not perfect, are more efficient and effective than those that exist when these services remain with the public sector

The Irrationalness of Game Theory

In February 1909, at a time where political scientists were confused as to their purpose to society, the Right Honorable James Bryce highlighted the three most important criteria for effective research of political science at the fifth annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. He declares that political scientists “1) must be critical, 2) must beware of superficial resemblances, and 3) must endeavor to disengage the personal or accidental from the general causes at work” (numbers added) (8). These specific criteria ensure that any political science research conducted leads society to increase its understanding of the laws that govern themselves. Decades later, a new theory has taken political science by storm; relying on mathematical theories used by economists to explain why citizens and institutions act the way they do

Vox Populi Non Est Vox Dei

When determining where the meaning of truth lies in this world, the first question to ask is this: what truth is the world looking for? For medical scientists, they look for the truth to longevity. For philosophers, they look for moral truths. For political scientists, they look for the truth of power. What does power do, and how is it used are questions to ponder when investigating this truth; however, one must first answer the question of where does power lie. Some political scientists, such as Francis Lieber, reminds us how history relates the concept of power with God, the all-powerful, all-knowing creator through the phrase “Vox Populi Vox Dei” – the voice of the people is the voice of God ( 1877 ). The historical phrase presumes that the power of God, and therefore power itself, exists within the people. However, both Lieber, Dahl, and Ford will show that the voice of one God, aka the power, cannot lie with the voice of the people