From sequential to parallel Inductive Logic Programming

Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) has achieved considerablesuccess in a wide range of domains. It is recognized however thateciency is a major obstacle to the use of ILP systems in applicationsrequiring large amounts of data. In this paper we address the problem ofeciency in ILP in three steps: i) we survey speedup techniques proposedfor sequential execution of ILP systems; ii) we survey dierent ways ofparallelizing an ILP system and; ii) adapt and combine the sequentialexecution speedup techniques in the parallel implementations of an ILPsystem. We also propose a novel technique to partition the search spaceinto independent sub-spaces that may be adequately searched in parallel

Desenvolvimento de recursos de design em pequenas empresas da indústria automóvel : uma abordagem metodológica

ABSTRACT: This paper reflects part of a broader investigation on the development of methodologies to identify, value and manage design capabilities in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage. With the automotive industry and smaller supplier Portuguese companies as background, this paper explores the resource-based view theory (RBV) and the dynamic capabilities theory as a theoretical construct for a further development of research tools. In the automotive industry, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) continue to control the overall design of the vehicle, as part of the ability to manage the offer portfolio and brand communication. However, the industry have been moving towards an increasing participation of smaller suppliers in product development processes, pushed towards capabilities’ development as a requirement to continue competitive in the OEM’s suppliers network. The role of design and design management capabilities have been explored as strategic resources or core competencies. However, Design is not typically found in smaller supplier firms as resource (as opposed to Design studios in larger companies) but found as a process in resourcecapability combinations, establishing the need for a new research approach. Therefore, the RBV is a tool to value the design process as a sustained competitive advantage. The RBV conceptualizes a framework to determine or identify the strategic resources available or needed within a company. At these lenses, the basis for a sustainable competitive advantage lies in the application of the bundle of valuable resources identified and at the firm's disposal and the combinations with its capabilitiesEste artigo reflete parte de uma investigação mais ampla sobre o desenvolvimento de metodologias para identificar, valorizar e gerir os recursos de design, com o objetivo de criar uma vantagem competitiva sustentável. Com a indústria automóvel e as pequenas empresas portuguesas fornecedoras como pano de fundo, este artigo explora a teoria da Resource Based View (RBV) e a teoria das Dynamic Capabili_es (DCT) como um construto teórico para o desenvolvimento de ferramentas de investigação. Na indústria automóvel, os OEM (fabricantes de equipamentos originais) continuam a controlar o design geral do veículo, como parte da capacidade de gestão do seu portfólio assim como a comunicação de marca. No entanto, o setor tem seguido um caminho para uma participação crescente de fornecedores menores nos processos de desenvolvimento de produto, impulsionados para o desenvolvimento de capacidades como requisito de competitividade na rede de fornecedores dos OEM. O papel dos recursos do design e da gestão do design foram já explorados como recurso estratégicos ou competências fundamentais. No entanto, o Design não é normalmente encontrado em empresas de menor dimensão como recurso (em oposição aos estúdios de Design em empresas maiores), mas sim como um processo de combinações de diferentes capacidades e recursos, estabelecendo a necessidade de uma nova abordagem de pesquisa. Portanto, a RBV é uma ferramenta que visa a valorização do processo de design como uma vantagem competitiva sustentada. A RBV concetualiza uma estrutura para determinar ou identificar os recursos estratégicos disponíveis ou necessários dentro de uma empresa. Deste ponto de vista, a base para uma vantagem competitiva sustentável está na aplicação do conjunto de recursos valiosos identificados e à disposição da empresa em forma de combinações das suas diferentes capacidades e recursos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Design Education : University-industry collaboration, a case study

The Design Journal : An International Journal for All Aspects of Design. - V. 22, i. 1 (2019). - p. 1317-1332.Design education often happens in hypothetical contexts indifferent to reality or the surrounding context, disregarding articulation between academy and industry and with no attention to approaches that might enable the academy and the business world to get closer and share knowledge and dynamics reflecting the cultural, technological and social realities of present day society. In the expectation of having design education better address the diverse competencies that will enable graduates to deal with future professional challenges in design, a partnership was established between the University Lusíada Norte and “A Portuguesas”, a start-up dedicated to versatile "easy-going" footwear and with several sustainability concerns. The present case study was integrated in a 3rd year annual unit -Design III, of the BA in Design of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of the University Lusíada Norte

IndLog - Induction in logic

IndLog is a general purpose Prolog-based Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) system. It is theoretically based on the Mode Directed Inverse Entailment and has several distinguishing features that makes it adequate for a wide range of applications. To search efficiently through large hypothesis spaces, IndLog uses original features like lazy evaluation of examples and Language Level Search. IndLog is applicable in numerical domains using the lazy evaluation of literals technique and Model Validation and Model Selection statistical-based techniques.IndLog has a MPI/LAM interface that enables its use in parallel ordistributed environments, essential for Multi-relational Data Mining applications.Parallelism may be used in three flavours: splitting of the dataamong the computation nodes; parallelising the search through the hypothesisspace and; using the different computation nodes to do theorylevelsearch.IndLog has been applied successfully to major ILP literature datasetsfrom the Life Sciences, Engineering, Reverse Engineering, Economics,Time-Series modelling to name a few

As lazy as it can be

Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is a promising technology for knowledgeextraction applications. ILP has produced intelligible solutions for a wide variety of domains where it has been applied. The ILP lack of efficiency is, however, a major impediment for its scalability to applications requiring large amounts of data. In this paper we address important issues that must be solved to make ILP scalable to applicationsof knowledge extraction in large amounts of data. The issues include: efficiency and storage requirements.We propose and evaluate a set of techniques, globally called lazy evaluation of examples, to improve the efficiency of ILP systems. Lazy evaluation is essentially a way to avoid or postpone the evaluation of the generated hypotheses (coverage tests). To reduce the storage amount a representation schema called interval trees is proposed and evaluated.All the techniques were evaluated using the IndLog ILP system and a set of ILPdatasets referenced in the literature. The proposals lead to substantial efficiency improvements and memory savings and are generally applicable to any ILP system

Improving the efficiency of ILP systems using an incremental language level search

We propose and evaluate a technique to improve the eciency of an ILP system. The technique avoids the generation of useless hypotheses.It denes a language bias coupled with a search strategy and is called Incremental Language Level Search (ILLS). The techniques havebeen encoded in the ILP system IndLog. The proposal leads to substantial eciency improvements in a set of ILP datasets referenced on theliterature

LogCHEM: interactive discriminative mining of chemical structure

One of the most well known successes of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is on Structure-Activity Relationship (SAR) problems. In such problems, ILP has proved several times to be capable of constructing expert comprehensible models that hell) to explain the activity of chemical compounds based on their structure and properties. However, despite its successes on SAR problems, ILP has severe scalability problems that prevent its application oil larger datasets. In this paper we present LogCHEM, an ILP based tool for discriminative interactive mining of chemical fragments. LogCHEM tackles ILP's scalability issues in the context of SAR applications. We show that LogCHEM benefits from the flexibility of ILP both by its ability to quickly extend the original mining model, and by its ability, to interface with external tools. Furthermore, We demonstrate that LogCHEM can be used to mine effectively large chemoinformatics datasets, namely, several datasets from EPA's DSSTox database and on a dataset based on the DTP AIDS anti-viral screen

A step up with the HARVARD system: the HARVARD-g system

The HARVARD system is a general purpose system adequate for Knowledge Discover in Databases (KDD) running in general purpose PCs and based on distributed computing over a connected network of PCs. In this paper we discuss the extension of HARVARD to interact with a Grid Computing setting. This extension, called HARVARD-g, enable the HARVARD system to schedule task to the Grid and therefore largely increase its available computational power

Numerical reasoning with an ILP system capable of lazy evaluation and customised search

Using problem-speci®c background knowledge, computer programs developed within theframework of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) have been used to construct restricted®rst-order logic solutions to scienti®c problems. However, their approach to the analysis ofdata with substantial numerical content has been largely limited to constructing clauses that:(a) provide qualitative descriptions (high'', low'' etc.) of the values of response variables;and (b) contain simple inequalities restricting the ranges of predictor variables. This has precludedthe application of such techniques to scienti®c and engineering problems requiring amore sophisticated approach. A number of specialised methods have been suggested to remedythis. In contrast, we have chosen to take advantage of the fact that the existing theoreticalframework for ILP places very few restrictions of the nature of the background knowledge.We describe two issues of implementation that make it possible to use background predicatesthat implement well-established statistical and numerical analysis procedures. Any improvementsin analytical sophistication that result are evaluated empirically using arti®cial andreal-life data. Experiments utilising arti®cial data are concerned with extracting constraintsfor response variables in the text-book problem of balancing a pole on a cart. They illustratethe use of clausal de®nitions of arithmetic and trigonometric functions, inequalities, multiplelinear regression, and numerical derivatives. A non-trivial problem concerning the predictionof mutagenic activity of nitroaromatic molecules is also examined. In this case, expert chemistshave been unable to devise a model for explaining the data. The result demonstrates the combineduse by an ILP program of logical and numerical capabilities to achieve an analysis thatincludes linear modelling, clustering and classi®cation. In all experiments, the predictions obtainedcompare favourably against benchmarks set by more traditional methods of quantitativemethods, namely, regression and neural-network

One-year rehospitalisations for congestive heart failure in Portuguese NHS hospitals: a multilevel approach on patterns of use and contributing factors

Identification of rehospitalisations for heart failure and contributing factors flags health policy intervention opportunities designed to deliver care at a most effective and efficient level. Recognising that heart failure is a condition for which timely and appropriate outpatient care can potentially prevent the use of inpatient services, we aimed to determine to what extent comorbidities and material deprivation were predictive of 1 year heart failure specific rehospitalisation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio