Effects of competition and cooperation interaction between agents on networks in the presence of a market capacity

Science.gov (United States)

Sonubi, A.; Arcagni, A.; Stefani, S.; Ausloos, M.

2016-08-01

A network effect is introduced taking into account competition, cooperation, and mixed-type interaction among agents along a generalized Verhulst-Lotka-Volterra model. It is also argued that the presence of a market capacity undoubtedly enforces a definite limit on the agent's size growth. The state stability of triadic agents, i.e., the most basic network plaquette, is investigated analytically for possible scenarios, through a fixed-point analysis. It is discovered that: (i) market demand is only satisfied for full competition when one agent monopolizes the market; (ii) growth of agent size is encouraged in full cooperation; (iii) collaboration among agents to compete against one single agent may result in the disappearance of this single agent out of the market; and (iv) cooperating with two rivals may become a growth strategy for an intelligent agent.

Effects of competition and cooperation interaction between agents on networks in the presence of a market capacity.

Science.gov (United States)

Sonubi, A; Arcagni, A; Stefani, S; Ausloos, M

2016-08-01

A network effect is introduced taking into account competition, cooperation, and mixed-type interaction among agents along a generalized Verhulst-Lotka-Volterra model. It is also argued that the presence of a market capacity undoubtedly enforces a definite limit on the agent's size growth. The state stability of triadic agents, i.e., the most basic network plaquette, is investigated analytically for possible scenarios, through a fixed-point analysis. It is discovered that: (i) market demand is only satisfied for full competition when one agent monopolizes the market; (ii) growth of agent size is encouraged in full cooperation; (iii) collaboration among agents to compete against one single agent may result in the disappearance of this single agent out of the market; and (iv) cooperating with two rivals may become a growth strategy for an intelligent agent.

Semi-Cooperative Learning in Smart Grid Agents

Science.gov (United States)

2013-12-01

this PhD program , but watching you grow has only made me realize how much more awesome human learning is. You have been a source of profound joy and...which should alleviate concern for scala - bility along this dimension. • Learning the negotiation model: Figure 6.23 shows single-episode results that...for Semi-cooperative Multi-agent Coordination. In IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning . [Prendergast, 1999

Cooperative mobile agents search using beehive partitioned structure and Tabu Random search algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Ramazani, Saba; Jackson, Delvin L.; Selmic, Rastko R.

2013-05-01

In search and surveillance operations, deploying a team of mobile agents provides a robust solution that has multiple advantages over using a single agent in efficiency and minimizing exploration time. This paper addresses the challenge of identifying a target in a given environment when using a team of mobile agents by proposing a novel method of mapping and movement of agent teams in a cooperative manner. The approach consists of two parts. First, the region is partitioned into a hexagonal beehive structure in order to provide equidistant movements in every direction and to allow for more natural and flexible environment mapping. Additionally, in search environments that are partitioned into hexagons, mobile agents have an efficient travel path while performing searches due to this partitioning approach. Second, we use a team of mobile agents that move in a cooperative manner and utilize the Tabu Random algorithm to search for the target. Due to the ever-increasing use of robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms, the field of cooperative multi-agent search has developed many applications recently that would benefit from the use of the approach presented in this work, including: search and rescue operations, surveillance, data collection, and border patrol. In this paper, the increased efficiency of the Tabu Random Search algorithm method in combination with hexagonal partitioning is simulated, analyzed, and advantages of this approach are presented and discussed.

Cooperative information agents and communication

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verharen, E.; Dignum, F.P.M.

1997-01-01

Research in Information Systems has switched its focus from data to communication. The communication between different autonomous Information Systems requires a certain amount of intelligence of each system. The system should be able to know which queries it can/may handle and also be able to

A framework for service enterprise workflow simulation with multi-agents cooperation

Science.gov (United States)

Tan, Wenan; Xu, Wei; Yang, Fujun; Xu, Lida; Jiang, Chuanqun

2013-11-01

Process dynamic modelling for service business is the key technique for Service-Oriented information systems and service business management, and the workflow model of business processes is the core part of service systems. Service business workflow simulation is the prevalent approach to be used for analysis of service business process dynamically. Generic method for service business workflow simulation is based on the discrete event queuing theory, which is lack of flexibility and scalability. In this paper, we propose a service workflow-oriented framework for the process simulation of service businesses using multi-agent cooperation to address the above issues. Social rationality of agent is introduced into the proposed framework. Adopting rationality as one social factor for decision-making strategies, a flexible scheduling for activity instances has been implemented. A system prototype has been developed to validate the proposed simulation framework through a business case study.

Distributed Cooperative Control of Nonlinear and Non-identical Multi-agent Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bidram, Ali; Lewis, Frank; Davoudi, Ali

2013-01-01

This paper exploits input-output feedback linearization technique to implement distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems with nonlinear and non-identical dynamics. Feedback linearization transforms the synchronization problem for a nonlinear and heterogeneous multi-agent system...... for electric power microgrids. The effectiveness of the proposed control is verified by simulating a microgrid test system....

INFORMATION SECURITY IN LOGISTICS COOPERATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomasz Małkus

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Cooperation of suppliers of raw materials, semi-finished products, finished products, wholesalers, retailers in the form of the supply chain, as well as outsourcing of specialized logistics service require ensuring adequate support of information. It concerns the use of appropriate computer tools. The security of information in such conditions of collaboration becomes the important problem for parties of contract. The objective of the paper is to characterize main issues relating to security of information in logistics cooperation.

Cellular image segmentation using n-agent cooperative game theory

Science.gov (United States)

Dimock, Ian B.; Wan, Justin W. L.

2016-03-01

Image segmentation is an important problem in computer vision and has significant applications in the segmentation of cellular images. Many different imaging techniques exist and produce a variety of image properties which pose difficulties to image segmentation routines. Bright-field images are particularly challenging because of the non-uniform shape of the cells, the low contrast between cells and background, and imaging artifacts such as halos and broken edges. Classical segmentation techniques often produce poor results on these challenging images. Previous attempts at bright-field imaging are often limited in scope to the images that they segment. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm for automatically segmenting cellular images. The algorithm incorporates two game theoretic models which allow each pixel to act as an independent agent with the goal of selecting their best labelling strategy. In the non-cooperative model, the pixels choose strategies greedily based only on local information. In the cooperative model, the pixels can form coalitions, which select labelling strategies that benefit the entire group. Combining these two models produces a method which allows the pixels to balance both local and global information when selecting their label. With the addition of k-means and active contour techniques for initialization and post-processing purposes, we achieve a robust segmentation routine. The algorithm is applied to several cell image datasets including bright-field images, fluorescent images and simulated images. Experiments show that the algorithm produces good segmentation results across the variety of datasets which differ in cell density, cell shape, contrast, and noise levels.

Research and Development for an Operational Information Ecology: The User-System Interface Agent Project

Science.gov (United States)

Srivastava, Sadanand; deLamadrid, James

1998-01-01

The User System Interface Agent (USIA) is a special type of software agent which acts as the "middle man" between a human user and an information processing environment. USIA consists of a group of cooperating agents which are responsible for assisting users in obtaining information processing services intuitively and efficiently. Some of the main features of USIA include: (1) multiple interaction modes and (2) user-specific and stereotype modeling and adaptation. This prototype system provides us with a development platform towards the realization of an operational information ecology. In the first phase of this project we focus on the design and implementation of prototype system of the User-System Interface Agent (USIA). The second face of USIA allows user interaction via a restricted query language as well as through a taxonomy of windows. In third phase the USIA system architecture was revised.

Cooperative vehicles for robust traffic congestion reduction: An analysis based on algorithmic, environmental and agent behavioral factors.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Prajakta Desai

Full Text Available Traffic congestion continues to be a persistent problem throughout the world. As vehicle-to-vehicle communication develops, there is an opportunity of using cooperation among close proximity vehicles to tackle the congestion problem. The intuition is that if vehicles could cooperate opportunistically when they come close enough to each other, they could, in effect, spread themselves out among alternative routes so that vehicles do not all jam up on the same roads. Our previous work proposed a decentralized multiagent based vehicular congestion management algorithm entitled Congestion Avoidance and Route Allocation using Virtual Agent Negotiation (CARAVAN, wherein the vehicles acting as intelligent agents perform cooperative route allocation using inter-vehicular communication. This paper focuses on evaluating the practical applicability of this approach by testing its robustness and performance (in terms of travel time reduction, across variations in: (a environmental parameters such as road network topology and configuration; (b algorithmic parameters such as vehicle agent preferences and route cost/preference multipliers; and (c agent-related parameters such as equipped/non-equipped vehicles and compliant/non-compliant agents. Overall, the results demonstrate the adaptability and robustness of the decentralized cooperative vehicles approach to providing global travel time reduction using simple local coordination strategies.

Cooperative vehicles for robust traffic congestion reduction: An analysis based on algorithmic, environmental and agent behavioral factors.

Science.gov (United States)

Desai, Prajakta; Loke, Seng W; Desai, Aniruddha

2017-01-01

Traffic congestion continues to be a persistent problem throughout the world. As vehicle-to-vehicle communication develops, there is an opportunity of using cooperation among close proximity vehicles to tackle the congestion problem. The intuition is that if vehicles could cooperate opportunistically when they come close enough to each other, they could, in effect, spread themselves out among alternative routes so that vehicles do not all jam up on the same roads. Our previous work proposed a decentralized multiagent based vehicular congestion management algorithm entitled Congestion Avoidance and Route Allocation using Virtual Agent Negotiation (CARAVAN), wherein the vehicles acting as intelligent agents perform cooperative route allocation using inter-vehicular communication. This paper focuses on evaluating the practical applicability of this approach by testing its robustness and performance (in terms of travel time reduction), across variations in: (a) environmental parameters such as road network topology and configuration; (b) algorithmic parameters such as vehicle agent preferences and route cost/preference multipliers; and (c) agent-related parameters such as equipped/non-equipped vehicles and compliant/non-compliant agents. Overall, the results demonstrate the adaptability and robustness of the decentralized cooperative vehicles approach to providing global travel time reduction using simple local coordination strategies.

The transmission of sustainable harvesting norms when agents are conditionally cooperative

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Richter, Andries; Grasman, J.

2013-01-01

Experimental and observational studies have highlighted the importance of agents being conditionally cooperative when facing a social dilemma. We formalize this mechanism in a theoretical model that portrays a small community having joint access to a common pool resource. The diffusion of norms of

The Evolution of Cooperation in Managed Groundwater Systems: An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Castilla Rho, J. C.; Mariethoz, G.; Rojas, R. F.; Andersen, M. S.; Kelly, B. F.; Holley, C.

2014-12-01

Human interactions with groundwater systems often exhibit complex features that hinder the sustainable management of the resource. This leads to costly and persistent conflicts over groundwater at the catchment scale. One possible way to address these conflicts is by gaining a better understanding of how social and groundwater dynamics coevolve using agent-based models (ABM). Such models allow exploring 'bottom-up' solutions (i.e., self-organised governance systems), where the behaviour of individual agents (e.g., farmers) results in the emergence of mutual cooperation among groundwater users. There is significant empirical evidence indicating that this kind of 'bottom-up' approach may lead to more enduring and sustainable outcomes, compared to conventional 'top-down' strategies such as centralized control and water right schemes (Ostrom 1990). New modelling tools are needed to study these concepts systematically and efficiently. Our model uses a conceptual framework to study cooperation and the emergence of social norms as initially proposed by Axelrod (1986), which we adapted to groundwater management. We developed an ABM that integrates social mechanisms and the physics of subsurface flow. The model explicitly represents feedback between groundwater conditions and social dynamics, capturing the spatial structure of these interactions and the potential effects on cooperation levels in an agricultural setting. Using this model, we investigate a series of mechanisms that may trigger norms supporting cooperative strategies, which can be sustained and become stable over time. For example, farmers in a self-monitoring community can be more efficient at achieving the objective of sustainable groundwater use than government-imposed regulation. Our coupled model thus offers a platform for testing new schemes promoting cooperation and improved resource use, which can be used as a basis for policy design. Importantly, we hope to raise awareness of agent-based modelling as

Patterns of cooperation: fairness and coordination in networks of interacting agents

Science.gov (United States)

Do, Anne-Ly; Rudolf, Lars; Gross, Thilo

2010-06-01

We study the self-assembly of a complex network of collaborations among self-interested agents. The agents can maintain different levels of cooperation with different partners. Further, they continuously, selectively and independently adapt the amount of resources allocated to each of their collaborations in order to maximize the obtained payoff. We show analytically that the system approaches a state in which the agents make identical investments, and links produce identical benefits. Despite this high degree of social coordination, some agents manage to secure privileged topological positions in the network, enabling them to extract high payoffs. Our analytical investigations provide a rationale for the emergence of unidirectional non-reciprocal collaborations and different responses to the withdrawal of a partner from an interaction that have been reported in the psychological literature.

Cooperative Communications for Wireless Information Assurance: Secure Cooperative Communications and Testbed Development

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Li, Xiaohua

2007-01-01

..., and have invented a new cooperative OFDM transmission scheme to combat transmission asynchronism. They are helpful to the development of future physical-layer wireless information assurance techniques as well as the cooperative communication techniques...

With Us or Against Us: Simulated Social Touch by Virtual Agents in a Cooperative or Competitive Setting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Huisman, Gijs; Kolkmeier, Jan; Kolkmeier, Jan; Heylen, Dirk K.J.; Bickmore, Timothy; Marsella, Stacy; Sidner, Candance

In this paper we examine how simulated social touch by a virtual agent in a cooperative or competitive augmented reality game influences the perceived trustworthiness, warmth and politeness of the agent. Before and after the game, participants interact with two agents whereby one agent touches the

Virtual expansion of the technical vision system for smart vehicles based on multi-agent cooperation model

Science.gov (United States)

Krapukhina, Nina; Senchenko, Roman; Kamenov, Nikolay

2017-12-01

Road safety and driving in dense traffic flows poses some challenges in receiving information about surrounding moving object, some of which can be in the vehicle's blind spot. This work suggests an approach to virtual monitoring of the objects in a current road scene via a system with a multitude of cooperating smart vehicles exchanging information. It also describes the intellectual agent model, and provides methods and algorithms of identifying and evaluating various characteristics of moving objects in video flow. Authors also suggest ways for integrating the information from the technical vision system into the model with further expansion of virtual monitoring for the system's objects. Implementation of this approach can help to expand the virtual field of view for a technical vision system.

Cooperative learning neural network output feedback control of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems under directed topologies

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, W.; Wang, D.; Peng, Z. H.

2017-09-01

Without assuming that the communication topologies among the neural network (NN) weights are to be undirected and the states of each agent are measurable, the cooperative learning NN output feedback control is addressed for uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems with identical structures in strict-feedback form. By establishing directed communication topologies among NN weights to share their learned knowledge, NNs with cooperative learning laws are employed to identify the uncertainties. By designing NN-based κ-filter observers to estimate the unmeasurable states, a new cooperative learning output feedback control scheme is proposed to guarantee that the system outputs can track nonidentical reference signals with bounded tracking errors. A simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Models for cooperative games with fuzzy relations among the agents fuzzy communication, proximity relation and fuzzy permission

CERN Document Server

Jiménez-Losada, Andrés

2017-01-01

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to cooperative game theory and a practice-oriented reference guide to new models and tools for studying bilateral fuzzy relations among several agents or players. It introduces the reader to several fuzzy models, each of which is first analyzed in the context of classical games (crisp games) and subsequently in the context of fuzzy games. Special emphasis is given to the value of Shapley, which is presented for the first time in the context of fuzzy games. Students and researchers will find here a self-contained reference guide to cooperative fuzzy games, characterized by a wealth of examples, descriptions of a wide range of possible situations, step-by-step explanations of the basic mathematical concepts involved, and easy-to-follow information on axioms and properties.

An Agent Architecture for Multi-Attribute Negotiation Using Incomplete Preference Information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jonker, C.M.; Robu, V.; Treur, J.

2007-01-01

A component-based generic agent architecture for multi-attribute (integrative) negotiation is introduced and its application is described in a prototype system for negotiation about cars, developed in cooperation with, among others, Dutch Telecom KPN. The approach can be characterized as cooperative

Distributed Cooperative Secondary Control of Microgrids Using Feedback Linearization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bidram, Ali; Davoudi, Ali; Lewis, Frank

2013-01-01

This paper proposes a secondary voltage control of microgrids based on the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The proposed secondary control is fully distributed; each distributed generator (DG) only requires its own information and the information of some neighbors. The dist......This paper proposes a secondary voltage control of microgrids based on the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The proposed secondary control is fully distributed; each distributed generator (DG) only requires its own information and the information of some neighbors...... parameters can be tuned to obtain a desired response speed. The effectiveness of the proposed control methodology is verified by the simulation of a microgrid test system....

Cooperative Robot Localization Using Event-Triggered Estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Iglesias Echevarria, David I.

It is known that multiple robot systems that need to cooperate to perform certain activities or tasks incur in high energy costs that hinder their autonomous functioning and limit the benefits provided to humans by these kinds of platforms. This work presents a communications-based method for cooperative robot localization. Implementing concepts from event-triggered estimation, used with success in the field of wireless sensor networks but rarely to do robot localization, agents are able to only send measurements to their neighbors when the expected novelty in this information is high. Since all agents know the condition that triggers a measurement to be sent or not, the lack of a measurement is therefore informative and fused into state estimates. In the case agents do not receive either direct nor indirect measurements of all others, the agents employ a covariance intersection fusion rule in order to keep the local covariance error metric bounded. A comprehensive analysis of the proposed algorithm and its estimation performance in a variety of scenarios is performed, and the algorithm is compared to similar cooperative localization approaches. Extensive simulations are performed that illustrate the effectiveness of this method.

Preconditions for Emergence of Lithuanian Clusters: from Informal Cooperation to Its Legitimation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Grumadaitė Kristina

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper reveals preconditions for the emergence of clusters as self-organisation based industrial systems in a context, in which cooperation traditions are insufficiently developed. These preconditions reflect the principles of the emergence of self-organising complex adaptive systems that are analysed in the complexity theory. Those principles are based on the initiation of non-equilibrium and its purposeful direction into the creation of a new order. This paper highlights the main external and internal tensions that influence informal or formal clustering of enterprises, while various change agents perform different roles making self-organising processes to occur.

Cooperative biological effects between ionizing radiation and other physical and chemical agents.

Science.gov (United States)

Manti, Lorenzo; D'Arco, Annalisa

2010-01-01

Exposure to ionizing radiation (IR), at environmentally and therapeutically relevant doses or as a result of diagnostics or accidents, causes cyto- and genotoxic damage. However, exposure to IR alone is a rare event as it occurs in spatial and temporal combination with several physico-chemical agents. Some of these are of known noxiousness, as is the case with chemical compounds at high dose, hence additive/synergistic effects can be expected or have been demonstrated. Conversely, the cellular toxicity of other agents, such as non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs), is only presumed and their short- and long-term cooperation on IR-induced damage remains undetermined. In this review, we shall examine evidence in support of the interplay between spatially and/or temporally related environmentally relevant stressors. In vitro or animal-based studies as well as epidemiological surveys have generally examined the combined action of no more than a couple of known or potentially DNA-damaging agents. Moreover, most existing research mainly focused on short-term effects of combined exposures. Hence, it is important that quantitative research addresses the issue of the possible cooperation between chronic exposure to environmental trace contaminants and exposure to EMFs, examining not only the modulation of damage acutely induced by IR but also long-term genome stability. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Distributed cooperative H∞ optimal tracking control of MIMO nonlinear multi-agent systems in strict-feedback form via adaptive dynamic programming

Science.gov (United States)

Luy, N. T.

2018-04-01

The design of distributed cooperative H∞ optimal controllers for multi-agent systems is a major challenge when the agents' models are uncertain multi-input and multi-output nonlinear systems in strict-feedback form in the presence of external disturbances. In this paper, first, the distributed cooperative H∞ optimal tracking problem is transformed into controlling the cooperative tracking error dynamics in affine form. Second, control schemes and online algorithms are proposed via adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) and the theory of zero-sum differential graphical games. The schemes use only one neural network (NN) for each agent instead of three from ADP to reduce computational complexity as well as avoid choosing initial NN weights for stabilising controllers. It is shown that despite not using knowledge of cooperative internal dynamics, the proposed algorithms not only approximate values to Nash equilibrium but also guarantee all signals, such as the NN weight approximation errors and the cooperative tracking errors in the closed-loop system, to be uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by simulation results of an application to wheeled mobile multi-robot systems.

Multi-agent cooperative systems applied to precision applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

McKay, M.D.; Anderson, M.O.; Gunderson, R.W.; Flann, N.; Abbott, B.

1998-01-01

Regulatory agencies are imposing limits and constraints to protect the operator and/or the environment. While generally necessary, these controls also tend to increase cost and decrease efficiency and productivity. Intelligent computer systems can be made to perform these hazardous tasks with greater efficiency and precision without danger to the operators. The Idaho national Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the Center for Self-Organizing and Intelligent Systems at Utah State University have developed a series of autonomous all-terrain multi-agent systems capable of performing automated tasks within hazardous environments. This paper discusses the development and application of cooperative small-scale and large-scale robots for use in various activities associated with radiologically contaminated areas, prescription farming, and unexploded ordinances

MR brain scan tissues and structures segmentation: local cooperative Markovian agents and Bayesian formulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Scherrer, B.

2008-12-01

Accurate magnetic resonance brain scan segmentation is critical in a number of clinical and neuroscience applications. This task is challenging due to artifacts, low contrast between tissues and inter-individual variability that inhibit the introduction of a priori knowledge. In this thesis, we propose a new MR brain scan segmentation approach. Unique features of this approach include (1) the coupling of tissue segmentation, structure segmentation and prior knowledge construction, and (2) the consideration of local image properties. Locality is modeled through a multi-agent framework: agents are distributed into the volume and perform a local Markovian segmentation. As an initial approach (LOCUS, Local Cooperative Unified Segmentation), intuitive cooperation and coupling mechanisms are proposed to ensure the consistency of local models. Structures are segmented via the introduction of spatial localization constraints based on fuzzy spatial relations between structures. In a second approach, (LOCUS-B, LOCUS in a Bayesian framework) we consider the introduction of a statistical atlas to describe structures. The problem is reformulated in a Bayesian framework, allowing a statistical formalization of coupling and cooperation. Tissue segmentation, local model regularization, structure segmentation and local affine atlas registration are then coupled in an EM framework and mutually improve. The evaluation on simulated and real images shows good results, and in particular, a robustness to non-uniformity and noise with low computational cost. Local distributed and cooperative MRF models then appear as a powerful and promising approach for medical image segmentation. (author)

76 FR 18220 - Labor-Management Cooperation Grant Program Information Collection Request

Science.gov (United States)

2011-04-01

... FEDERAL MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION SERVICE Labor-Management Cooperation Grant Program Information... submission of the following public information collection request (ICR) to the Office of Management and...-13). This information collection, ``Labor-Management Cooperation Grant Program Information Collection...

Collaborative Information Agents on the World Wide Web

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, James R.; Mathe, Nathalie; Wolfe, Shawn; Koga, Dennis J. (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

In this paper, we present DIAMS, a system of distributed, collaborative information agents which help users access, collect, organize, and exchange information on the World Wide Web. Personal agents provide their owners dynamic displays of well organized information collections, as well as friendly information management utilities. Personal agents exchange information with one another. They also work with other types of information agents such as matchmakers and knowledge experts to facilitate collaboration and communication.

Interface technology based on human cognition and understanding for the operation and maintenance of advanced human cooperative plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Numano, Masayoshi; Niwa, Yasuyuki; Itoh, Hiroko; Miyazaki, Keiko; Fukuto, Junji; Okazaki, Tadatsugi; Matsukura, Hiroshi; Tanaka, Kunihiko; Matsuoka, Takeshi; Liu, Qiao; Mitomo, Nobuo

2006-01-01

'Development of Intelligent Systems Technology for Advanced Human Cooperative Plants' was implemented as 'Nuclear Energy Fundamentals Crossover Research' by 3 institutes (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research; RIKEN, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology; AIST and National Maritime Research Institute; NMRI). Aiming at appropriate interaction between human and agents in Digital Maintenance Field which spreads widely in time and space, NMRI developed technologies on contraction of plant information, generalization and intuition of the information through visual presentation. Intuitive presentation gave on-site information for identifying the source of abnormalities to human operators. And a human-machine cooperation infrastructure for plant maintenance was proposed and developed, where an overview display was used to show position and state information of all the agents in the plant and each agent view was used to show the corresponding agent's information in detail. A part of this technology was implemented in a demonstration program. Two agents were developed to support human operators' plant maintenance activities in this program. This demonstration showed the effectiveness of human-agent cooperation for early plant abnormality detection. (author)

A Question Answering service for information retrieval in Cooper

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Giesbers, Bas; Taddeo, Antonio; Van der Vegt, Wim; Van Bruggen, Jan; Koper, Rob

2007-01-01

Giesbers, B., Taddeo, A., van der Vegt, W., van Bruggen, J., Koper, R. (2007). A Question Answering service for information retrieval in Cooper. Paper presented at the Cooper workshop, September 18, Crete, Greece.

Multi-Agent Information Classification Using Dynamic Acquaintance Lists.

Science.gov (United States)

Mukhopadhyay, Snehasis; Peng, Shengquan; Raje, Rajeev; Palakal, Mathew; Mostafa, Javed

2003-01-01

Discussion of automated information services focuses on information classification and collaborative agents, i.e. intelligent computer programs. Highlights include multi-agent systems; distributed artificial intelligence; thesauri; document representation and classification; agent modeling; acquaintances, or remote agents discovered through…

A fault diagnosis and operation advising cooperative expert system based on multi-agent technology

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhao, W.; Bai, X.; Ding, J.; Fang, Z.; Li, Z. [China Electric Power Research Inst., Haidian District, Beijing (China)

2006-07-01

Power systems are becoming more and more complex. In addition, the amount of real-time alarm messages from the supervisory control and data acquisition, energy management systems and wide area measurement systems about switchgear and protection are also increasing to a point far beyond the operator's capacity to digest the information. Research and development of a fault diagnosis system is necessary for the timely identification of fault or malfunctioning devices and for realizing the automation functions of dynamic supervisory control system. The prevailing fault diagnosis approaches in power systems include the expert system, artificial neural network, and fault diagnosis based on optimal theory. This paper discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches for diagnosing faults. The paper also proposed a new fault diagnosis and operational processing approach based on a cooperative expert system combined with a multi-agent architecture. For solving complex and correlative faults, the cooperative expert system can overcome the deficiency of a single expert system. It can be used not only for diagnosing complex faults in real time but also in providing timely operational advice. The proposed system has been used successfully in a district power grid in China's Shangdong province for a year. 9 refs., 4 figs.

Cooperative Trust Games

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

the more widely recognized competitive (non-cooperative) game theory. Cooperative game theory focuses on what groups of self-interested agents can...provides immediate justification for using non-cooperative game theory as the basis for modeling the purely competitive agents. 2.4. Superadditive...the competitive and altruistic contributions of the subset team. Definition: Given a payoff function ( ) in a subset team game , the total marginal

A User-Centered Cooperative Information System for Medical Imaging Diagnosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Gomez, Enrique J.; Quiles, Jose A.; Sanz, Marcos F.; del Pozo, Francisco

1998-01-01

Presents a cooperative information system for remote medical imaging diagnosis. General computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) problems addressed are definition of a procedure for the design of user-centered cooperative systems (conceptual level); and improvement of user feedback and optimization of the communication bandwidth in highly…

Remote Video Monitor of Vehicles in Cooperative Information Platform

Science.gov (United States)

Qin, Guofeng; Wang, Xiaoguo; Wang, Li; Li, Yang; Li, Qiyan

Detection of vehicles plays an important role in the area of the modern intelligent traffic management. And the pattern recognition is a hot issue in the area of computer vision. An auto- recognition system in cooperative information platform is studied. In the cooperative platform, 3G wireless network, including GPS, GPRS (CDMA), Internet (Intranet), remote video monitor and M-DMB networks are integrated. The remote video information can be taken from the terminals and sent to the cooperative platform, then detected by the auto-recognition system. The images are pretreated and segmented, including feature extraction, template matching and pattern recognition. The system identifies different models and gets vehicular traffic statistics. Finally, the implementation of the system is introduced.

Surrounding information consideration promotes cooperation in Prisoner’s dilemma game

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shu, Gang; Du, Xia; Li, Ya

2016-01-01

Highlights: • A new method of strategy updating is proposed in the Prisoner’s dilemma game. • The stochastic players only consider their neighbor’s payoff and update strategy by classical Fermi rule. • The advanced player would consider not only the neighbor’s payoff but also the neighbors’ local surrounding information. • The simulation result illustrates that with the increase of advanced players in the network, the fraction of cooperation increases. - Abstract: Evolutionary game theory provides a useful, integrative framework for studying the evolution of cooperation. A new strategy updating method is proposed in our model. Due to people with diversified thinking, players are divided into two categories based on their different strategy updating method: ordinary players and advanced players. The former players only consider their neighbor’s payoff and updating strategy by classical Fermi rule, while the latter players take both the neighbors’ surrounding information and payoff into account. The results show that the neighbors surrounding information consideration contributes to the evolution of cooperation and finds the fraction of cooperation grows evidently with the increase of advanced players numbers. Our model may provide a pragmatic approach to the research of cooperation in social network.

How feeling betrayed affects cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramazi, Pouria; Hessel, Jop; Cao, Ming

2015-01-01

For a population of interacting self-interested agents, we study how the average cooperation level is affected by some individuals' feelings of being betrayed and guilt. We quantify these feelings as adjusted payoffs in asymmetric games, where for different emotions, the payoff matrix takes the structure of that of either a prisoner's dilemma or a snowdrift game. Then we analyze the evolution of cooperation in a well-mixed population of agents, each of whom is associated with such a payoff matrix. At each time-step, an agent is randomly chosen from the population to update her strategy based on the myopic best-response update rule. According to the simulations, decreasing the feeling of being betrayed in a portion of agents does not necessarily increase the level of cooperation in the population. However, this resistance of the population against low-betrayal-level agents is effective only up to some extend that is explicitly determined by the payoff matrices and the number of agents associated with these matrices. Two other models are also considered where the betrayal factor of an agent fluctuates as a function of the number of cooperators and defectors that she encounters. Unstable behaviors are observed for the level of cooperation in these cases; however, we show that one can tune the parameters in the function to make the whole population become cooperative or defective.

How feeling betrayed affects cooperation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pouria Ramazi

Full Text Available For a population of interacting self-interested agents, we study how the average cooperation level is affected by some individuals' feelings of being betrayed and guilt. We quantify these feelings as adjusted payoffs in asymmetric games, where for different emotions, the payoff matrix takes the structure of that of either a prisoner's dilemma or a snowdrift game. Then we analyze the evolution of cooperation in a well-mixed population of agents, each of whom is associated with such a payoff matrix. At each time-step, an agent is randomly chosen from the population to update her strategy based on the myopic best-response update rule. According to the simulations, decreasing the feeling of being betrayed in a portion of agents does not necessarily increase the level of cooperation in the population. However, this resistance of the population against low-betrayal-level agents is effective only up to some extend that is explicitly determined by the payoff matrices and the number of agents associated with these matrices. Two other models are also considered where the betrayal factor of an agent fluctuates as a function of the number of cooperators and defectors that she encounters. Unstable behaviors are observed for the level of cooperation in these cases; however, we show that one can tune the parameters in the function to make the whole population become cooperative or defective.

Soft cooperation systems and games

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández, J. R.; Gallego, I.; Jiménez-Losada, A.; Ordóñez, M.

2018-04-01

A cooperative game for a set of agents establishes a fair allocation of the profit obtained for their cooperation. In order to obtain this allocation, a characteristic function is known. It establishes the profit of each coalition of agents if this coalition decides to act alone. Originally players are considered symmetric and then the allocation only depends on the characteristic function; this paper is about cooperative games with an asymmetric set of agents. We introduced cooperative games with a soft set of agents which explains those parameters determining the asymmetry among them in the cooperation. Now the characteristic function is defined not over the coalitions but over the soft coalitions, namely the profit depends not only on the formed coalition but also on the attributes considered for the players in the coalition. The best known of the allocation rules for cooperative games is the Shapley value. We propose a Shapley kind solution for soft games.

Agent control of cooperating satellites

OpenAIRE

Lincoln, N.K.; Veres, S.M.; Dennis, Louise; Fisher, Michael; Lisitsa, Alexei

2011-01-01

A novel, hybrid, agent architecture for (small)swarms of satellites has been developed. The software architecture for each satellite comprises ahigh-level rational agent linked to a low-level control system. The rational agent forms dynamicgoals, decides how to tackle them and passes theactual implementation of these plans to the control layer. The rational agent also has access to aMatLabmodel of the satellite dynamics, thus allowing it to carry out selective hypothetical reasoningabout pote...

Applying Maxi-adjustment to Adaptive Information Filtering Agents

OpenAIRE

Lau, Raymond; ter Hofstede, Arthur H. M.; Bruza, Peter D.

2000-01-01

Learning and adaptation is a fundamental property of intelligent agents. In the context of adaptive information filtering, a filtering agent's beliefs about a user's information needs have to be revised regularly with reference to the user's most current information preferences. This learning and adaptation process is essential for maintaining the agent's filtering performance. The AGM belief revision paradigm provides a rigorous foundation for modelling rational and minimal changes to an age...

Effects of information asymmetry on cooperation in the prisoners' dilemma game

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Xi-Peng; Wang Bing-Hong; Jiang Luo-Luo

2012-01-01

Effects of information asymmetry on cooperation in the prisoners' dilemma game are investigated. The amplitude A is introduced to describe the degree of information asymmetry. It is found that there exists an optimal value of amplitude A opt at which the fraction of cooperation reaches its maximal value. The reason lies in that cooperators on the two-dimensional grid form large clusters at A opt . In addition, the theoretical analysis in terms of the meanfield theory is used to understand this kind of phenomenon. It is confirmed that the information asymmetry plays an important role in the dynamics of the dilemma games of spatial prisoners. (general)

77 FR 44582 - Applications To Serve as Accountability Agents in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-07-30

... Accountability Agent for U.S.-based companies that are subject to Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction as part..., Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei... CPEA creates a framework for regional cooperation in the enforcement of privacy laws. In the case of...

Older partner selection promotes the prevalence of cooperation in evolutionary games.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Guoli; Huang, Jincai; Zhang, Weiming

2014-10-21

Evolutionary games typically come with the interplays between evolution of individual strategy and adaptation to network structure. How these dynamics in the co-evolution promote (or obstruct) the cooperation is regarded as an important topic in social, economic, and biological fields. Combining spatial selection with partner choice, the focus of this paper is to identify which neighbour should be selected as a role to imitate during the process of co-evolution. Age, an internal attribute and kind of local piece of information regarding the survivability of the agent, is a significant consideration for the selection strategy. The analysis and simulations presented, demonstrate that older partner selection for strategy imitation could foster the evolution of cooperation. The younger partner selection, however, may decrease the level of cooperation. Our model highlights the importance of agent׳s age on the promotion of cooperation in evolutionary games, both efficiently and effectively. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Complexity in Simplicity: Flexible Agent-based State Space Exploration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Jacob Illum; Larsen, Kim Guldstrand

2007-01-01

In this paper, we describe a new flexible framework for state space exploration based on cooperating agents. The idea is to let various agents with different search patterns explore the state space individually and communicate information about fruitful subpaths of the search tree to each other...

Use of information and communication technologies in an agroindustrial cooperative in Concórdia, Santa Catarina

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcos Roberto Pires Gregolin

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The sustainability of family farming properties goes through several stages, and can refer to the diversification of crops and agro-industrialization of primary products as two of them. To the extent that the farmer gets only deliver primary production to another agent in the production chain, it happens to come across challenges and barriers that previously did not know. Cooperatives of farmers present as an efficient alternative to assist producers in overcoming these difficulties. In this context it has been the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs as tools and applications to creatively face one of the main bottlenecks of family agroindustrialization: marketing. The objective of this study was to contextualize the limits and potential of the use of ICT in organizational management, marketing, communication and marketing in a cooperative. Therefore, there was a case study of exploratory and qualitative, through participant observation and semi-structured questionnaire. The cooperative in question was using ICTs aiming perform tasks of daily life in a fast and effective way. However, the cooperative agribusinesses, there was a greater fragility of farmers, especially the dependence of children for the use of ICT, lack of commitment, dedication and habit. The managers of the cooperative have endeavored to improve the use of  ICT as well as to expand the use of these tools by their members, despite the difficulties faced, aiming not only better organization, but also reduced costs and increased marketing of the products.

Multihop Capability Analysis in Wireless Information and Power Transfer Multirelay Cooperative Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qilin Wu

2018-01-01

Full Text Available We study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT in multihop wireless cooperative networks, where the multihop capability that denotes the largest number of transmission hops is investigated. By utilizing the broadcast nature of multihop wireless networks, we first propose a cooperative forwarding power (CFP scheme. In CFP scheme, the multiple relays and receiver have distinctly different tasks. Specifically, multiple relays close to the transmitter harvest power from the transmitter first and then cooperatively forward the power (not the information towards the receiver. The receiver receives the information (not the power from the transmitter first, and then it harvests the power from the relays and is taken as the transmitter of the next hop. Furthermore, for performance comparison, we suggest two schemes: cooperative forwarding information and power (CFIP and direct receiving information and power (DFIP. Also, we construct an analysis model to investigate the multihop capabilities of CFP, CFIP, and DFIP schemes under the given targeted throughput requirement. Finally, simulation results validate the analysis model and show that the multihop capability of CFP is better than CFIP and DFIP, and for improving the multihop capabilities, it is best effective to increase the average number of relay nodes in cooperative set.

Information Security for Compliance with Select Agent Regulations

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Nick; Campbell, Mark J.

2015-01-01

The past decade has seen a significant rise in research on high-consequence human and animal pathogens, many now known as “select agents.” While physical security around these agents is tightly regulated, information security standards are still lagging. The understanding of the threats unique to the academic and research environment is still evolving, in part due to poor communication between the various stakeholders. Perhaps as a result, information security guidelines published by select agent regulators lack the critical details and directives needed to achieve even the lowest security level of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). While only government agencies are currently required to abide by the provisions of FISMA (unless specified as preconditions for obtaining government grants or contracts—still a relatively rare or narrowly scoped occurrence), the same strategies were recently recommended by executive order for others. We propose that information security guidelines for select agent research be updated to promulgate and detail FISMA standards and processes and that the latter be ultimately incorporated into select agent regulations. We also suggest that information security in academic and research institutions would greatly benefit from active efforts to improve communication among the biosecurity, security, and information technology communities, and from a secure venue for exchange of timely information on emerging threats and solutions in the research environment. PMID:26042864

Information security for compliance with select agent regulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Nick; Campbell, Mark J; Baskin, Carole R

2015-01-01

The past decade has seen a significant rise in research on high-consequence human and animal pathogens, many now known as "select agents." While physical security around these agents is tightly regulated, information security standards are still lagging. The understanding of the threats unique to the academic and research environment is still evolving, in part due to poor communication between the various stakeholders. Perhaps as a result, information security guidelines published by select agent regulators lack the critical details and directives needed to achieve even the lowest security level of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). While only government agencies are currently required to abide by the provisions of FISMA (unless specified as preconditions for obtaining government grants or contracts--still a relatively rare or narrowly scoped occurrence), the same strategies were recently recommended by executive order for others. We propose that information security guidelines for select agent research be updated to promulgate and detail FISMA standards and processes and that the latter be ultimately incorporated into select agent regulations. We also suggest that information security in academic and research institutions would greatly benefit from active efforts to improve communication among the biosecurity, security, and information technology communities, and from a secure venue for exchange of timely information on emerging threats and solutions in the research environment.

Using cooperative learning for a drug information assignment.

Science.gov (United States)

Earl, Grace L

2009-11-12

To implement a cooperative learning activity to engage students in analyzing tertiary drug information resources in a literature evaluation course. The class was divided into 4 sections to form expert groups and each group researched a different set of references using the jigsaw technique. Each member of each expert group was reassigned to a jigsaw group so that each new group was composed of 4 students from 4 different expert groups. The jigsaw groups met to discuss search strategies and rate the usefulness of the references. In addition to group-based learning, teaching methods included students' writing an independent research paper to enhance their abilities to search and analyze drug information resources. The assignment and final course grades improved after implementation of the activity. Students agreed that class discussions were a useful learning experience and 75% (77/102) said they would use the drug information references for other courses. The jigsaw technique was successful in engaging students in cooperative learning to improve critical thinking skills regarding drug information.

Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access Program

Science.gov (United States)

Office of Postsecondary Education, US Department of Education, 2012

2012-01-01

The Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) Program supports projects focused on developing innovative technologies for accessing, collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating information from foreign sources to address the U.S.' teaching and research needs in international education and foreign…

Group Cooperation without Group Selection: Modest Punishment Can Recruit Much Cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

Krasnow, Max M; Delton, Andrew W; Cosmides, Leda; Tooby, John

2015-01-01

Humans everywhere cooperate in groups to achieve benefits not attainable by individuals. Individual effort is often not automatically tied to a proportionate share of group benefits. This decoupling allows for free-riding, a strategy that (absent countermeasures) outcompetes cooperation. Empirically and formally, punishment potentially solves the evolutionary puzzle of group cooperation. Nevertheless, standard analyses appear to show that punishment alone is insufficient, because second-order free riders (those who cooperate but do not punish) can be shown to outcompete punishers. Consequently, many have concluded that other processes, such as cultural or genetic group selection, are required. Here, we present a series of agent-based simulations that show that group cooperation sustained by punishment easily evolves by individual selection when you introduce into standard models more biologically plausible assumptions about the social ecology and psychology of ancestral humans. We relax three unrealistic assumptions of past models. First, past models assume all punishers must punish every act of free riding in their group. We instead allow punishment to be probabilistic, meaning punishers can evolve to only punish some free riders some of the time. This drastically lowers the cost of punishment as group size increases. Second, most models unrealistically do not allow punishment to recruit labor; punishment merely reduces the punished agent's fitness. We instead realistically allow punished free riders to cooperate in the future to avoid punishment. Third, past models usually restrict agents to interact in a single group their entire lives. We instead introduce realistic social ecologies in which agents participate in multiple, partially overlapping groups. Because of this, punitive tendencies are more expressed and therefore more exposed to natural selection. These three moves toward greater model realism reveal that punishment and cooperation easily evolve by

Group Cooperation without Group Selection: Modest Punishment Can Recruit Much Cooperation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Max M Krasnow

Full Text Available Humans everywhere cooperate in groups to achieve benefits not attainable by individuals. Individual effort is often not automatically tied to a proportionate share of group benefits. This decoupling allows for free-riding, a strategy that (absent countermeasures outcompetes cooperation. Empirically and formally, punishment potentially solves the evolutionary puzzle of group cooperation. Nevertheless, standard analyses appear to show that punishment alone is insufficient, because second-order free riders (those who cooperate but do not punish can be shown to outcompete punishers. Consequently, many have concluded that other processes, such as cultural or genetic group selection, are required. Here, we present a series of agent-based simulations that show that group cooperation sustained by punishment easily evolves by individual selection when you introduce into standard models more biologically plausible assumptions about the social ecology and psychology of ancestral humans. We relax three unrealistic assumptions of past models. First, past models assume all punishers must punish every act of free riding in their group. We instead allow punishment to be probabilistic, meaning punishers can evolve to only punish some free riders some of the time. This drastically lowers the cost of punishment as group size increases. Second, most models unrealistically do not allow punishment to recruit labor; punishment merely reduces the punished agent's fitness. We instead realistically allow punished free riders to cooperate in the future to avoid punishment. Third, past models usually restrict agents to interact in a single group their entire lives. We instead introduce realistic social ecologies in which agents participate in multiple, partially overlapping groups. Because of this, punitive tendencies are more expressed and therefore more exposed to natural selection. These three moves toward greater model realism reveal that punishment and cooperation

Cooperation under punishment: Imperfect information destroys it and centralizing punishment does not help

OpenAIRE

Sven Fischer; Kristoffel Grechenig; Nicolas Meier

2013-01-01

We run several experiments which allow us to compare cooperation under perfect and imperfect information and under a centralized and decentralized punishment regime. We find that (1) centralization by itself does not improve cooperation and welfare compared to an informal, peer-to-peer punishment regime and (2) centralized punishment is equally sensitive to noise as decentralized punishment, that is, it leads to significantly lower cooperation and welfare (total pro ts). Our results shed crit...

INTERFIRM COOPERATION AND INFORMATION SHARING THROUGH INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammed Belal UDDIN

2012-01-01

Full Text Available When firms engage in cooperative efforts, interfirm relations get particular interest to be studied. A direct interlock occurs when an executive or director of one firm sits on the board of another firm, and an indirect interlock occurs when two firms have directors or executives who sit on the board of a third firm. The three commonly used theoretical models such as social network theory, learning theory, and theory of strategic choice are more relevant for the formation and management of interlocking directorates. Uncertainty, resource scarcity, mutual trust, dependency, etc. influence the formation of interlocking directorates. Consequently, interlocking directorates allow sharing of information and overall cooperation between partners through learning, collaboration, networking, and effective relationship, etc. Proper management of interlocking directorates requires communication and collaboration among partners that enhance exchange of knowledge and cooperation.

Decentralized Opportunistic Spectrum Resources Access Model and Algorithm toward Cooperative Ad-Hoc Networks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ming Liu

Full Text Available Limited communication resources have gradually become a critical factor toward efficiency of decentralized large scale multi-agent coordination when both system scales up and tasks become more complex. In current researches, due to the agent's limited communication and observational capability, an agent in a decentralized setting can only choose a part of channels to access, but cannot perceive or share global information. Each agent's cooperative decision is based on the partial observation of the system state, and as such, uncertainty in the communication network is unavoidable. In this situation, it is a major challenge working out cooperative decision-making under uncertainty with only a partial observation of the environment. In this paper, we propose a decentralized approach that allows agents cooperatively search and independently choose channels. The key to our design is to build an up-to-date observation for each agent's view so that a local decision model is achievable in a large scale team coordination. We simplify the Dec-POMDP model problem, and each agent can jointly work out its communication policy in order to improve its local decision utilities for the choice of communication resources. Finally, we discuss an implicate resource competition game, and show that, there exists an approximate resources access tradeoff balance between agents. Based on this discovery, the tradeoff between real-time decision-making and the efficiency of cooperation using these channels can be well improved.

DAIDS: a Distributed, Agent-based Information Dissemination System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pete Haglich

2007-10-01

Full Text Available The Distributed Agent-Based Information Dissemination System (DAIDS concept was motivated by the need to share information among the members of a military tactical team in an atmosphere of extremely limited or intermittent bandwidth. The DAIDS approach recognizes that in many cases communications limitations will preclude the complete sharing of all tactical information between the members of the tactical team. Communications may be limited by obstructions to the line of sight between platforms; electronic warfare; or environmental conditions, or just contention from other users of that bandwidth. Since it may not be possible to achieve a complete information exchange, it is important to prioritize transmissions so the most critical information from the standpoint of the recipient is disseminated first. The challenge is to be able to determine which elements of information are the most important to each teammate. The key innovation of the DAIDS concept is the use of software proxy agents to represent the information needs of the recipient of the information. The DAIDS approach uses these proxy agents to evaluate the content of a message in accordance with the context and information needs of the recipient platform (the agent's principal and prioritize the message for dissemination. In our research we implemented this approach and demonstrated that it provides nearly a reduction in transmission times for critical tactical reports by up to a factor of 30 under severe bandwidth limitations.

Fairness in multi-agent systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jong, de S.; Tuyls, K.P.; Verbeeck, K.

2008-01-01

Multi-agent systems are complex systems in which multiple autonomous entities, called agents, cooperate in order to achieve a common or personal goal. These entities may be computer software, robots, and also humans. In fact, many multi-agent systems are intended to operate in cooperation with or as

Cooperation in human-computer communication

OpenAIRE

Kronenberg, Susanne

2000-01-01

The goal of this thesis is to simulate cooperation in human-computer communication to model the communicative interaction process of agents in natural dialogs in order to provide advanced human-computer interaction in that coherence is maintained between contributions of both agents, i.e. the human user and the computer. This thesis contributes to certain aspects of understanding and generation and their interaction in the German language. In spontaneous dialogs agents cooperate by the pro...

On fairness, full cooperation, and quantum game with incomplete information

Science.gov (United States)

Lei, Zhen-Zhou; Liu, Bo-Yang; Yi, Ying; Dai, Hong-Yi; Zhang, Ming

2018-03-01

Quantum entanglement has emerged as a new resource to enhance cooperation and remove dilemmas. This paper aims to explore conditions under which full cooperation is achievable even when the information of payoff is incomplete. Based on the quantum version of the extended classical cash in a hat game, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement may be used for achieving full cooperation or avoiding moral hazards with the reasonable profit distribution policies even when the profit is uncertain to a certain degree. This research further suggests that the fairness of profit distribution should play an important role in promoting full cooperation. It is hopeful that quantum entanglement and fairness will promote full cooperation among distant people from various interest groups when quantum networks and quantum entanglement are accessible to the public. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61673389, 61273202, and 61134008.

South-South Development Cooperation and Soft Power. The case of Brazil's foreign policy and technical cooperation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bry, Sandra

's participation in development cooperation and how these international political ambitions influence the project model of its South-South Development Cooperation, called technical cooperation. This was done by investigating the manifestations of ‘soft power’ in Brazilian development cooperation activities...... of the agent's attractive actions without which a country's soft power is non-existent. Therefore this thesis maintains that soft power theory should shift its current analytical focus from the agent to the subject and enhance the analysis on the role of subject's perceptions in the creation of ‘soft...

Design of Collaborative Information Agents

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jonker, C.M.; Klusch, M.; Treur, J.; Klusch, M.; Kerschberg, L.

2000-01-01

Effective development of nontrivial systems of collaborative information agents requires that an in-depth analysis is made resulting in (1) specification of requirements at different levels of the system, (2) specification of design structures, and (3) a systematic verification. To support a

The value of international cooperation for abating global climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hammitt, James K.; Adams, John L.

1996-01-01

Because abatement of global climate change is a public good, independent national actions may not produce the efficient quantity. Using a numerical integrated-assessment model, abatement costs and damages induced by climate change are compared at the cooperative and noncooperative solutions to a set of two-party dynamic games between the industrialized and developing countries. Games with perfect and imperfect information about climate and economic factors are considered. Across 144 games with perfect information, incorporating different values of climate and economic parameters, the noncooperative solution usually yields global benefits comparable to those of the cooperative solution. In about one-fifth of these games, however, a second noncooperative solution exists which yields none of the benefits of the cooperative solution. In a game with imperfect information, where the state of nature is uncertain in the first but known in the second of two periods, the expected benefits of the noncooperative solution are 98% of the expected benefits of the cooperative solution. In contrast to single-agent studies which show little cost to delaying abatement, the benefits of cooperation are usually lost if cooperation is delayed 20 years

Procedure for the design of Information Management Systems in Production Cooperatives

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maidelyn Díaz Pérez

2018-02-01

Full Text Available The information management systems of the entrepreneurial organizations have been conceived that the fulfillment of the strategic objectives depend to a large extent on the good performance of several informative tasks such as obtaining information from the environment, identifying and representing the information flows of the processes , the structuring of operational and functional data, the internal management of knowledge, etc. But in turn, the achievement of these actions depends on there being a group of procedures that lead to the adequate standardization of the data. In spite of the fact that these procedures are essential for the proper functioning of any system, and that, for the most part, the quality, reliability and pertinence of the information that is managed depends on them, it is not usual for them to exist in cooperative organizations. even in most cases they are not written. The objective of this research is to establish a procedure to design an information management system for research in a production cooperative linked directly to research. The result obtained allows identifying, defining and structuring the data required by the system to operate efficiently, as well as articulate the different components that should integrate it in its systemic development. This procedure facilitates the efficient management of operative, functional and strategic information of the different processes of a cooperative in correspondence with its strategic objectives.

A Distributed Multi-Agent System for Collaborative Information Management and Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, James R.; Wolfe, Shawn R.; Wragg, Stephen D.; Koga, Dennis (Technical Monitor)

2000-01-01

In this paper, we present DIAMS, a system of distributed, collaborative agents to help users access, manage, share and exchange information. A DIAMS personal agent helps its owner find information most relevant to current needs. It provides tools and utilities for users to manage their information repositories with dynamic organization and virtual views. Flexible hierarchical display is integrated with indexed query search-to support effective information access. Automatic indexing methods are employed to support user queries and communication between agents. Contents of a repository are kept in object-oriented storage to facilitate information sharing. Collaboration between users is aided by easy sharing utilities as well as automated information exchange. Matchmaker agents are designed to establish connections between users with similar interests and expertise. DIAMS agents provide needed services for users to share and learn information from one another on the World Wide Web.

Models in cooperative game theory

CERN Document Server

Branzei, Rodica; Tijs, Stef

2008-01-01

This book investigates models in cooperative game theory in which the players have the possibility to cooperate partially. In a crisp game the agents are either fully involved or not involved at all in cooperation with some other agents, while in a fuzzy game players are allowed to cooperate with infinite many different participation levels, varying from non-cooperation to full cooperation. A multi-choice game describes the intermediate case in which each player may have a fixed number of activity levels. Different set and one-point solution concepts for these games are presented. The properties of these solution concepts and their interrelations on several classes of crisp, fuzzy, and multi-choice games are studied. Applications of the investigated models to many economic situations are indicated as well. The second edition is highly enlarged and contains new results and additional sections in the different chapters as well as one new chapter.

Modeling the cooperative and competitive contagions in online social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Zhuang, Yun-Bei; Chen, J. J.; Li, Zhi-hong

2017-10-01

The wide adoption of social media has increased the interaction among different pieces of information, and this interaction includes cooperation and competition for our finite attention. While previous research focus on fully competition, this paper extends the interaction to be both "cooperation" and "competition", by employing an IS1S2 R model. To explore how two different pieces of information interact with each other, the IS1S2 R model splits the agents into four parts-(Ignorant-Spreader I-Spreader II-Stifler), based on SIR epidemic spreading model. Using real data from Weibo.com, a social network site similar to Twitter, we find some parameters, like decaying rates, can both influence the cooperative diffusion process and the competitive process, while other parameters, like infectious rates only have influence on the competitive diffusion process. Besides, the parameters' effect are more significant in the competitive diffusion than in the cooperative diffusion.

Costly advertising and the evolution of cooperation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Markus Brede

Full Text Available In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect and a binary 'advertising' strategy (advertise or don't advertise. Advertising, which comes at a cost [Formula: see text], allows investment into faster propagation of the agents' traits to adjacent individuals. Importantly, game strategy and advertising strategy are subject to the same evolutionary mechanism. Via analytical reasoning and numerical simulations I demonstrate that a range of advertising costs exists, such that the prevalence of cooperation is significantly enhanced through co-evolution. Linking costly replication to the success of cooperators exposes a novel co-evolutionary mechanism that might contribute towards a better understanding of the origins of cooperation-supporting heterogeneity in agent populations.

Costly advertising and the evolution of cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

Brede, Markus

2013-01-01

In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect) and a binary 'advertising' strategy (advertise or don't advertise). Advertising, which comes at a cost [Formula: see text], allows investment into faster propagation of the agents' traits to adjacent individuals. Importantly, game strategy and advertising strategy are subject to the same evolutionary mechanism. Via analytical reasoning and numerical simulations I demonstrate that a range of advertising costs exists, such that the prevalence of cooperation is significantly enhanced through co-evolution. Linking costly replication to the success of cooperators exposes a novel co-evolutionary mechanism that might contribute towards a better understanding of the origins of cooperation-supporting heterogeneity in agent populations.

Behavior of Collective Cooperation Yielded by Two Update Rules in Social Dilemmas: Combining Fermi and Moran Rules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xia Chengyi; Wang Lei; Wang Jinsong; Wang Juan

2012-01-01

We combine the Fermi and Moran update rules in the spatial prisoner's dilemma and snowdrift games to investigate the behavior of collective cooperation among agents on the regular lattice. Large-scale simulations indicate that, compared to the model with only one update rule, the cooperation behavior exhibits the richer phenomena, and the role of update dynamics should be paid more attention in the evolutionary game theory. Meanwhile, we also observe that the introduction of Moran rule, which needs to consider all neighbor's information, can markedly promote the aggregate cooperation level, that is, randomly selecting the neighbor proportional to its payoff to imitate will facilitate the cooperation among agents. Current results will contribute to further understand the cooperation dynamics and evolutionary behaviors within many biological, economic and social systems.

Behavior of Collective Cooperation Yielded by Two Update Rules in Social Dilemmas: Combining Fermi and Moran Rules

Science.gov (United States)

Xia, Cheng-Yi; Wang, Lei; Wang, Juan; Wang, Jin-Song

2012-09-01

We combine the Fermi and Moran update rules in the spatial prisoner's dilemma and snowdrift games to investigate the behavior of collective cooperation among agents on the regular lattice. Large-scale simulations indicate that, compared to the model with only one update rule, the cooperation behavior exhibits the richer phenomena, and the role of update dynamics should be paid more attention in the evolutionary game theory. Meanwhile, we also observe that the introduction of Moran rule, which needs to consider all neighbor's information, can markedly promote the aggregate cooperation level, that is, randomly selecting the neighbor proportional to its payoff to imitate will facilitate the cooperation among agents. Current results will contribute to further understand the cooperation dynamics and evolutionary behaviors within many biological, economic and social systems.

Exact performance of cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radios with quantized information under imperfect reporting channels

KAUST Repository

Ben Ghorbel, Mahdi

2013-09-01

Spectrum sensing is the first and main step for cognitive radio systems to achieve an efficient use of the spectrum. Cooperation among cognitive radio users is a technique employed to improve the sensing performance by exploiting the diversity between the sensing channels to overcome the fading and shadowing effects which allows reduction of miss-detection and false alarm probabilities. Information can be exchanged between cooperating users in different formats from the binary hard information to the full soft information. Quantized information has shown its efficiency as a trade-off between binary hard and full soft for other cooperative schemes, in this paper, we investigate the use of quantized information between cooperating cognitive users. We derive closed-form expressions of the cooperative average false alarm and detection probabilities over fading channels for a generalized system model with not necessarily identical average sensing Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and imperfect reporting channels. Numerical simulations allow us to conclude a tradeoff between the quantization size and the reporting energy in order to achieve the optimal cooperative error probability. Copyright © 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc.

Cooperation in a dynamical adjustment of duopoly game with incomplete information

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ding Zhanwen; Shi Guiping

2009-01-01

In the output competition of Cournot game, the adjustment of output is considered under the circumstances that participants have incomplete information. In this paper, two strategies with output's adjustment are mainly discussed: the tit-for-tat strategy and the tit-for-tat strategy with cooperative intention and their dynamic systems, respectively. The result shows that the tit-for-tat strategy may lead to the cooperation of them, but the stability of adjustment system is sensitive to the parameters; while the tit-for-tat strategy with cooperative intention can make the Pareto Optimality stable within the parameters' certain scope.

Survey of agent for intelligent information retrieval; Chiteki kensaku no tame no agent no chosa

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yazawa, T [Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Tokyo (Japan)

1996-09-01

Development of agent systems has been surveyed, to classify and arrange characteristic functions of the agents, and to grasp the realization situation of these agents in their development. In addition, prospective functions of information retrieval systems using the agents at maximum and functions to be developed among these in the future are clarified. The agents are characterized by the expression function, communication function, planning function, adaptive function, and learning function. The agents are desired to be classified into interface agents whose works are to respond to individual workers, coordinator agents which conduct works with high pervasion, such as assignment of works and their control, and task agents which conduct specialized works for individual examples. Thus, design and configuration of the agent system, and improvement and expansion of system functions can be effectively and easily conducted. 52 refs., 5 figs., 3 tabs.

Coupled information diffusion--pest dynamics models predict delayed benefits of farmer cooperation in pest management programs.

Science.gov (United States)

Rebaudo, François; Dangles, Olivier

2011-10-01

Worldwide, the theory and practice of agricultural extension system have been dominated for almost half a century by Rogers' "diffusion of innovation theory". In particular, the success of integrated pest management (IPM) extension programs depends on the effectiveness of IPM information diffusion from trained farmers to other farmers, an important assumption which underpins funding from development organizations. Here we developed an innovative approach through an agent-based model (ABM) combining social (diffusion theory) and biological (pest population dynamics) models to study the role of cooperation among small-scale farmers to share IPM information for controlling an invasive pest. The model was implemented with field data, including learning processes and control efficiency, from large scale surveys in the Ecuadorian Andes. Our results predict that although cooperation had short-term costs for individual farmers, it paid in the long run as it decreased pest infestation at the community scale. However, the slow learning process placed restrictions on the knowledge that could be generated within farmer communities over time, giving rise to natural lags in IPM diffusion and applications. We further showed that if individuals learn from others about the benefits of early prevention of new pests, then educational effort may have a sustainable long-run impact. Consistent with models of information diffusion theory, our results demonstrate how an integrated approach combining ecological and social systems would help better predict the success of IPM programs. This approach has potential beyond pest management as it could be applied to any resource management program seeking to spread innovations across populations.

Decentralized Opportunistic Spectrum Resources Access Model and Algorithm toward Cooperative Ad-Hoc Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Ming; Xu, Yang; Mohammed, Abdul-Wahid

2016-01-01

Limited communication resources have gradually become a critical factor toward efficiency of decentralized large scale multi-agent coordination when both system scales up and tasks become more complex. In current researches, due to the agent’s limited communication and observational capability, an agent in a decentralized setting can only choose a part of channels to access, but cannot perceive or share global information. Each agent’s cooperative decision is based on the partial observation of the system state, and as such, uncertainty in the communication network is unavoidable. In this situation, it is a major challenge working out cooperative decision-making under uncertainty with only a partial observation of the environment. In this paper, we propose a decentralized approach that allows agents cooperatively search and independently choose channels. The key to our design is to build an up-to-date observation for each agent’s view so that a local decision model is achievable in a large scale team coordination. We simplify the Dec-POMDP model problem, and each agent can jointly work out its communication policy in order to improve its local decision utilities for the choice of communication resources. Finally, we discuss an implicate resource competition game, and show that, there exists an approximate resources access tradeoff balance between agents. Based on this discovery, the tradeoff between real-time decision-making and the efficiency of cooperation using these channels can be well improved. PMID:26727504

Cooperation, compensation and transition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ju, Y.

2004-01-01

Cooperation and compensation are two important and well-linked issues in economics. The central question in cooperation is how to share the joint gains among participating players. Compensation is a specific aspect of surplus sharing problems providing incentives for agents to sacrifice their own

The Agent of extracting Internet Information with Lead Order

Science.gov (United States)

Mo, Zan; Huang, Chuliang; Liu, Aijun

In order to carry out e-commerce better, advanced technologies to access business information are in need urgently. An agent is described to deal with the problems of extracting internet information that caused by the non-standard and skimble-scamble structure of Chinese websites. The agent designed includes three modules which respond to the process of extracting information separately. A method of HTTP tree and a kind of Lead algorithm is proposed to generate a lead order, with which the required web can be retrieved easily. How to transform the extracted information structuralized with natural language is also discussed.

Evolution of natural agents: preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information.

Science.gov (United States)

Sharov, Alexei A

2016-04-01

Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs (e.g., memory, transient messengers, and external signs) that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas interpreting subagents together with scaffolds, tools, and resources, are constructed. Some of these processes are simple and invariant, whereas others are complex and contextual. Advance of functional information includes improvement and modification of already existing functions. Although the genome information may change passively and randomly, the interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent behavior and embryonic development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of already existing information, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel functions. Evolution of functional information progressed from protosemiosis, where signs correspond directly to actions, to eusemiosis, where agents associate signs with objects. Language is the most advanced form of eusemiosis, where the knowledge of objects and models is communicated between agents.

Multiagent Cooperative Learning Strategies for Pursuit-Evasion Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jong Yih Kuo

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This study examines the pursuit-evasion problem for coordinating multiple robotic pursuers to locate and track a nonadversarial mobile evader in a dynamic environment. Two kinds of pursuit strategies are proposed, one for agents that cooperate with each other and the other for agents that operate independently. This work further employs the probabilistic theory to analyze the uncertain state information about the pursuers and the evaders and uses case-based reasoning to equip agents with memories and learning abilities. According to the concepts of assimilation and accommodation, both positive-angle and bevel-angle strategies are developed to assist agents in adapting to their environment effectively. The case study analysis uses the Recursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit (REPAST to implement a multiagent system and demonstrates superior performance of the proposed approaches to the pursuit-evasion game.

Information processing and dynamics in minimally cognitive agents.

Science.gov (United States)

Beer, Randall D; Williams, Paul L

2015-01-01

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the relative merits of information processing versus dynamical approaches to understanding cognitive processes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these two styles of explanation using a model agent evolved to solve a relational categorization task. Specifically, we separately analyze the operation of this agent using the mathematical tools of information theory and dynamical systems theory. Information-theoretic analysis reveals how task-relevant information flows through the system to be combined into a categorization decision. Dynamical analysis reveals the key geometrical and temporal interrelationships underlying the categorization decision. Finally, we propose a framework for directly relating these two different styles of explanation and discuss the possible implications of our analysis for some of the ongoing debates in cognitive science. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Cooperative Localization for Mobile Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cakmak, Burak; Urup, Daniel Nygaard; Meyer, Florian

2016-01-01

We propose a hybrid message passing method for distributed cooperative localization and tracking of mobile agents. Belief propagation and mean field message passing are employed for, respectively, the motion-related and measurementrelated part of the factor graph. Using a Gaussian belief approxim......We propose a hybrid message passing method for distributed cooperative localization and tracking of mobile agents. Belief propagation and mean field message passing are employed for, respectively, the motion-related and measurementrelated part of the factor graph. Using a Gaussian belief...

Costly Advertising and the Evolution of Cooperation

Science.gov (United States)

Brede, Markus

2013-01-01

In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect) and a binary ‘advertising’ strategy (advertise or don’t advertise). Advertising, which comes at a cost , allows investment into faster propagation of the agents’ traits to adjacent individuals. Importantly, game strategy and advertising strategy are subject to the same evolutionary mechanism. Via analytical reasoning and numerical simulations I demonstrate that a range of advertising costs exists, such that the prevalence of cooperation is significantly enhanced through co-evolution. Linking costly replication to the success of cooperators exposes a novel co-evolutionary mechanism that might contribute towards a better understanding of the origins of cooperation-supporting heterogeneity in agent populations. PMID:23861752

Transshipment games with identical newsvendors and cooperation costs

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hezarkhani, B.; Kubiak, W.

2013-01-01

In a transshipment game, supply chain agents cooperate to transship surplus products. Although the game has been well studied in the OR literature, the fundamental question whether the agents can afford cooperation costs to set up and maintain the game in the first place has not been addressed thus

ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS: AN APPROACH FOCUSED ON OBJECTS WITH INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcelo Botelho da Costa Moraes

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Accounting aims at the treatment of information related to economic events within organizations. In order to do so, the double entry method is used (debt and credit accounting, which only considers monetary variations. With the development of information technologies, accounting information systems are born. In the 1980’s, the REA model (economic Resources, economic Events and economic Agents is created, which focuses on accounting information records, based on the association of economic resources, economic events and economic agents. The objective of this work is to demonstrate an object-oriented modeling with intelligent agents use, for information development and analysis focused on users. The proposed model is also analyzed according to accounting information quality, necessary for accounting information users, capable to comply with the needs of different user groups, with advantages in applications.

Information Sharing Mechanism among Mobile Agents In Ad-hoc Network Environment and Its Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kunio Umetsuji

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Mobile agents are programs that can move from one site to another in a network with their data and states. Mobile agents are expected to be an essential tool in pervasive computing. In multi platform environment, it is important to communicate with mobile agents only using their universal or logical name not using their physical locations. More, in an ad-hoc network environment, an agent can migrate autonomously and communicate with other agents on demand. It is difficult that mobile agent grasps the position information on other agents correctly each other, because mobile agent processes a task while moving a network successively. In order to realize on-demand mutual communication among mobile agents without any centralized servers, we propose a new information sharing mechanism within mobile agents. In this paper, we present a new information sharing mechanism within mobile agents. The method is a complete peer based and requires no agent servers to manage mobile agent locations. Therefore, a mobile agent can get another mobile agent, communicate with it and shares information stored in the agent without any knowledge of the location of the target mobile agent. The basic idea of the mechanism is an introduction of Agent Ring, Agent Chain and Shadow Agent. With this mechanism, each agent can communicate with other agents in a server-less environment, which is suitable for ad-hoc agent network and an agent system can manage agents search and communications efficiently.

An information economic rationale for cooperatives

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bogetoft, Peter

2005-01-01

We consider how to organise the processing and marketing of an agricultural product when farming costs are known only by the individual farmers. We show that when marginal costs are uncorrelated, the market for final goods is competitive, and the market for processing is non-competitive, the soci......-competitive, the socially optimal production levels are sustained by a cooperative and a cooperative only. We show also that the cooperative form is particularly useful when the cost uncertainty is large and the net average revenue product is small....

Evolution of natural agents: preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information

OpenAIRE

Sharov, Alexei A.

2016-01-01

Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs (e.g., memory, transient messengers, and external signs) that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via comp...

The Geographic Information Grid System Based on Mobile Agent

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2006-01-01

We analyze the deficiencies of current application systems, and discuss the key requirements of distributed Geographic Information service (GIS). We construct the distributed GIS on grid platform. Considering the flexibility and efficiency, we integrate the mobile agent technology into the system. We propose a new prototype system, the Geographic Information Grid System (GIGS) based on mobile agent. This system has flexible services and high performance, and improves the sharing of distributed resources. The service strategy of the system and the examples are also presented.

The technical viability of alternative blowing agents in polyisocyanurate roof insulation: A cooperative industry/government project

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Christian, J.E.; Courville, G.E.; Desjarlais, A.O.; Graves, R.S.; Linkous, R.L.; McElroy, D.L.; Weaver, F.J.; Wendt, R.L.; Yarbrough, D.W.

1993-06-01

This report is a summary of the cooperative industry/government program to establish the viability of alternative blowing agents to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The project was initiated in 1989 following two workshops that focused on needed research on thermal insulation blown with substitutes for CFC-11 and CFC-12. The project is directed by a steering committee of representatives of the sponsors and of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The purpose of the project is to determine if the performance of polyisocyanurate (PIR) roof insulation foam boards blown with alternate agents differs from the performance of boards blown with CFC-1. This report describes apparent thermal conductivity (k) results obtained from field and laboratory tests from 1989 to 1992 on a set of experimental PIR laminate boardstock produced to evaluate the viability of alternative hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as blowing agents. All boardstock was manufactured from similar formulations that were not optimized for thermal performance. Commercial broadstock made in the future may differ in performance from this set. The PIR boards were prepared with CFC-11, HCFC-123, HCFC-141b, and 50/50 and 65/35 blends of HCFC-123/HCFC-141b.

Agent-based method for distributed clustering of textual information

Science.gov (United States)

Potok, Thomas E [Oak Ridge, TN; Reed, Joel W [Knoxville, TN; Elmore, Mark T [Oak Ridge, TN; Treadwell, Jim N [Louisville, TN

2010-09-28

A computer method and system for storing, retrieving and displaying information has a multiplexing agent (20) that calculates a new document vector (25) for a new document (21) to be added to the system and transmits the new document vector (25) to master cluster agents (22) and cluster agents (23) for evaluation. These agents (22, 23) perform the evaluation and return values upstream to the multiplexing agent (20) based on the similarity of the document to documents stored under their control. The multiplexing agent (20) then sends the document (21) and the document vector (25) to the master cluster agent (22), which then forwards it to a cluster agent (23) or creates a new cluster agent (23) to manage the document (21). The system also searches for stored documents according to a search query having at least one term and identifying the documents found in the search, and displays the documents in a clustering display (80) of similarity so as to indicate similarity of the documents to each other.

7 CFR 1124.11 - Cooperative reserve supply unit.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 9 2010-01-01 2009-01-01 true Cooperative reserve supply unit. 1124.11 Section 1124... MARKETING AREA Order Regulating Handling Definitions § 1124.11 Cooperative reserve supply unit. Cooperative reserve supply unit means any cooperative association or its agent that is a handler pursuant to § 1000.9...

Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

Bear, Adam; Rand, David G

2016-01-26

Humans often cooperate with strangers, despite the costs involved. A long tradition of theoretical modeling has sought ultimate evolutionary explanations for this seemingly altruistic behavior. More recently, an entirely separate body of experimental work has begun to investigate cooperation's proximate cognitive underpinnings using a dual-process framework: Is deliberative self-control necessary to reign in selfish impulses, or does self-interested deliberation restrain an intuitive desire to cooperate? Integrating these ultimate and proximate approaches, we introduce dual-process cognition into a formal game-theoretic model of the evolution of cooperation. Agents play prisoner's dilemma games, some of which are one-shot and others of which involve reciprocity. They can either respond by using a generalized intuition, which is not sensitive to whether the game is one-shot or reciprocal, or pay a (stochastically varying) cost to deliberate and tailor their strategy to the type of game they are facing. We find that, depending on the level of reciprocity and assortment, selection favors one of two strategies: intuitive defectors who never deliberate, or dual-process agents who intuitively cooperate but sometimes use deliberation to defect in one-shot games. Critically, selection never favors agents who use deliberation to override selfish impulses: Deliberation only serves to undermine cooperation with strangers. Thus, by introducing a formal theoretical framework for exploring cooperation through a dual-process lens, we provide a clear answer regarding the role of deliberation in cooperation based on evolutionary modeling, help to organize a growing body of sometimes-conflicting empirical results, and shed light on the nature of human cognition and social decision making.

The influence of continuous historical velocity difference information on micro-cooperative driving stability

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Liang-Yi; Sun, Di-Hua; Zhao, Min; Cheng, Sen-Lin; Zhang, Geng; Liu, Hui

2018-03-01

In this paper, a new micro-cooperative driving car-following model is proposed to investigate the effect of continuous historical velocity difference information on traffic stability. The linear stability criterion of the new model is derived with linear stability theory and the results show that the unstable region in the headway-sensitivity space will be shrunk by taking the continuous historical velocity difference information into account. Through nonlinear analysis, the mKdV equation is derived to describe the traffic evolution behavior of the new model near the critical point. Via numerical simulations, the theoretical analysis results are verified and the results indicate that the continuous historical velocity difference information can enhance the stability of traffic flow in the micro-cooperative driving process.

Network Management using Multi-Agents System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nestor DUQUE

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to present a multiagent system for network management. The models developed for the proposed system defines certain intelligent agents interact to achieve the objectives and requirements of the multiagent organization.These agents have the property of being adaptive, acquire knowledge and skills to make decisions according to the actual state of the network that is represented in the information base, MIB, SNMP devices. The ideal state of the network policy is defined by the end user entered, which contain the value that should have performance variables and other parameters such as the frequency with which these variables should be monitored.. An agent based architecture increase the integration, adaptability, cooperation, autonomy and the efficient operation in heterogeneous environment in the network supervision. 

Network Management using Multi-Agents System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gustavo ISAZA

2012-12-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to present a multiagent system for network management. The models developed for the proposed system defines certain intelligent agents interact to achieve the objectives and requirements of the multiagent organization.These agents have the property of being adaptive, acquire knowledge and skills to make decisions according to the actual state of the network that is represented in the information base, MIB, SNMP devices. The ideal state of the network policy is defined by the end user entered, which contain the value that should have performance variables and other parameters such as the frequency with which these variables should be monitored.. An agent based architecture increase the integration, adaptability, cooperation, autonomy and the efficient operation in heterogeneous environment in the network supervision. 

Cooperative peer-to-peer multiagent-based systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Caram, L F; Caiafa, C F; Ausloos, M; Proto, A N

2015-08-01

A multiagent based model for a system of cooperative agents aiming at growth is proposed. This is based on a set of generalized Verhulst-Lotka-Volterra differential equations. In this study, strong cooperation is allowed among agents having similar sizes, and weak cooperation if agents have markedly different "sizes", thus establishing a peer-to-peer modulated interaction scheme. A rigorous analysis of the stable configurations is presented first examining the fixed points of the system, next determining their stability as a function of the model parameters. It is found that the agents are self-organizing into clusters. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that, depending on parameter values, multiple stable configurations can coexist. It occurs that only one of them always emerges with probability close to one, because its associated attractor dominates over the rest. This is shown through numerical integrations and simulations, after analytic developments. In contrast to the competitive case, agents are able to increase their capacity beyond the no-interaction case limit. In other words, when some collaborative partnership among a relatively small number of partners takes place, all agents act in good faith prioritizing the common good, when receiving a mutual benefit allowing them to surpass their capacity.

The European cooperative approach to securing critical information infrastructure.

Science.gov (United States)

Purser, Steve

2011-10-01

This paper provides an overview of the EU approach to securing critical information infrastructure, as defined in the Action Plan contained in the Commission Communication of March 2009, entitled 'Protecting Europe from large-scale cyber-attacks and disruptions: enhancing preparedness, security and resilience' and further elaborated by the Communication of May 2011 on critical Information infrastructure protection 'Achievements and next steps: towards global cyber-security'. After explaining the need for pan-European cooperation in this area, the CIIP Action Plan is explained in detail. Finally, the current state of progress is summarised together with the proposed next steps.

Multi-agents and learning: Implications for Webusage mining

Science.gov (United States)

Lotfy, Hewayda M.S.; Khamis, Soheir M.S.; Aboghazalah, Maie M.

2015-01-01

Characterization of user activities is an important issue in the design and maintenance of websites. Server weblog files have abundant information about the user’s current interests. This information can be mined and analyzed therefore the administrators may be able to guide the users in their browsing activity so they may obtain relevant information in a shorter span of time to obtain user satisfaction. Web-based technology facilitates the creation of personally meaningful and socially useful knowledge through supportive interactions, communication and collaboration among educators, learners and information. This paper suggests a new methodology based on learning techniques for a Web-based Multiagent-based application to discover the hidden patterns in the user’s visited links. It presents a new approach that involves unsupervised, reinforcement learning, and cooperation between agents. It is utilized to discover patterns that represent the user’s profiles in a sample website into specific categories of materials using significance percentages. These profiles are used to make recommendations of interesting links and categories to the user. The experimental results of the approach showed successful user pattern recognition, and cooperative learning among agents to obtain user profiles. It indicates that combining different learning algorithms is capable of improving user satisfaction indicated by the percentage of precision, recall, the progressive category weight and F1-measure. PMID:26966569

Multi-dimensional information diffusion and balancing market supply: an agent-based approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Osinga, S.A.; Kramer, M.R.; Hofstede, G.J.; Beulens, A.J.M.

2013-01-01

This agent-based information management model is designed to explore how multi-dimensional information, spreading through a population of agents (for example farmers) affects market supply. Farmers make quality decisions that must be aligned with available markets. Markets distinguish themselves by

Conceptual Modeling of Events as Information Objects and Change Agents

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bækgaard, Lars

as a totality of an information object and a change agent. When an event is modeled as an information object it is comparable to an entity that exists only at a specific point in time. It has attributes and can be used for querying and specification of constraints. When an event is modeled as a change agent...... it is comparable to an executable transaction schema. Finally, we briefly compare our approach to object-oriented approaches based on encapsulated objects....

Technological Cooperation Networks at Bio-Manguinhos: the Role of Information and Communication Technologies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lázaro Pereira de Oliveira

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This article identifies and discusses the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs to the technological cooperation projects of Bio-Manguinhos, a pharmaceutical manufacturer that belongs to Osvaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ, responsible for producing vaccines, reagents and biopharmaceuticals, with priority on meeting the needs of the Brazilian public health system. It is a case study with a qualitative approach for descriptive and explanatory purposes. The data were collected from 14 interviews conducted with managers of research and development (R&D projects with high relevance to the organization. The results allow concluding that the ICTs requiring greater interdependence between partners and two-way knowledge flows have not yet been used. They also show the importance of closer cooperation between the information technology (IT and R&D areas. A future positioning of Bio-Manguinhos as a technological center focused on discovery and sale of new active ingredients can favor the use of tools that promote greater integration between the partners of technology cooperation networks.

Multiagent cooperation and competition with deep reinforcement learning.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ardi Tampuu

Full Text Available Evolution of cooperation and competition can appear when multiple adaptive agents share a biological, social, or technological niche. In the present work we study how cooperation and competition emerge between autonomous agents that learn by reinforcement while using only their raw visual input as the state representation. In particular, we extend the Deep Q-Learning framework to multiagent environments to investigate the interaction between two learning agents in the well-known video game Pong. By manipulating the classical rewarding scheme of Pong we show how competitive and collaborative behaviors emerge. We also describe the progression from competitive to collaborative behavior when the incentive to cooperate is increased. Finally we show how learning by playing against another adaptive agent, instead of against a hard-wired algorithm, results in more robust strategies. The present work shows that Deep Q-Networks can become a useful tool for studying decentralized learning of multiagent systems coping with high-dimensional environments.

Multiagent cooperation and competition with deep reinforcement learning

Science.gov (United States)

Kodelja, Dorian; Kuzovkin, Ilya; Korjus, Kristjan; Aru, Juhan; Aru, Jaan; Vicente, Raul

2017-01-01

Evolution of cooperation and competition can appear when multiple adaptive agents share a biological, social, or technological niche. In the present work we study how cooperation and competition emerge between autonomous agents that learn by reinforcement while using only their raw visual input as the state representation. In particular, we extend the Deep Q-Learning framework to multiagent environments to investigate the interaction between two learning agents in the well-known video game Pong. By manipulating the classical rewarding scheme of Pong we show how competitive and collaborative behaviors emerge. We also describe the progression from competitive to collaborative behavior when the incentive to cooperate is increased. Finally we show how learning by playing against another adaptive agent, instead of against a hard-wired algorithm, results in more robust strategies. The present work shows that Deep Q-Networks can become a useful tool for studying decentralized learning of multiagent systems coping with high-dimensional environments. PMID:28380078

Multiagent cooperation and competition with deep reinforcement learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Tampuu, Ardi; Matiisen, Tambet; Kodelja, Dorian; Kuzovkin, Ilya; Korjus, Kristjan; Aru, Juhan; Aru, Jaan; Vicente, Raul

2017-01-01

Evolution of cooperation and competition can appear when multiple adaptive agents share a biological, social, or technological niche. In the present work we study how cooperation and competition emerge between autonomous agents that learn by reinforcement while using only their raw visual input as the state representation. In particular, we extend the Deep Q-Learning framework to multiagent environments to investigate the interaction between two learning agents in the well-known video game Pong. By manipulating the classical rewarding scheme of Pong we show how competitive and collaborative behaviors emerge. We also describe the progression from competitive to collaborative behavior when the incentive to cooperate is increased. Finally we show how learning by playing against another adaptive agent, instead of against a hard-wired algorithm, results in more robust strategies. The present work shows that Deep Q-Networks can become a useful tool for studying decentralized learning of multiagent systems coping with high-dimensional environments.

Effect of resource spatial correlation and hunter-fisher-gatherer mobility on social cooperation in Tierra del Fuego.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

José Ignacio Santos

Full Text Available This article presents an agent-based model designed to explore the development of cooperation in hunter-fisher-gatherer societies that face a dilemma of sharing an unpredictable resource that is randomly distributed in space. The model is a stylised abstraction of the Yamana society, which inhabited the channels and islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile. According to ethnographic sources, the Yamana developed cooperative behaviour supported by an indirect reciprocity mechanism: whenever someone found an extraordinary confluence of resources, such as a beached whale, they would use smoke signals to announce their find, bringing people together to share food and exchange different types of social capital. The model provides insight on how the spatial concentration of beachings and agents' movements in the space can influence cooperation. We conclude that the emergence of informal and dynamic communities that operate as a vigilance network preserves cooperation and makes defection very costly.

49 CFR 40.331 - To what additional parties must employers and service agents release information?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... service agents release information? 40.331 Section 40.331 Transportation Office of the Secretary of... Release of Information § 40.331 To what additional parties must employers and service agents release information? As an employer or service agent you must release information under the following circumstances...

A Secure Protocol Based on a Sedentary Agent for Mobile Agent Environments

OpenAIRE

Abdelmorhit E. Rhazi; Samuel Pierre; Hanifa Boucheneb

2007-01-01

The main challenge when deploying mobile agent environments pertains to security issues concerning mobile agents and their executive platform. This paper proposes a secure protocol which protects mobile agents against attacks from malicious hosts in these environments. Protection is based on the perfect cooperation of a sedentary agent running inside a trusted third host. Results show that the protocol detects several attacks, such as denial of service, incorrect execution and re-execution of...

Computational Aspects of Cooperative Game Theory

CERN Document Server

Chalkiadakis, Georgios; Wooldridge, Michael

2011-01-01

Cooperative game theory is a branch of (micro-)economics that studies the behavior of self-interested agents in strategic settings where binding agreements among agents are possible. Our aim in this book is to present a survey of work on the computational aspects of cooperative game theory. We begin by formally defining transferable utility games in characteristic function form, and introducing key solution concepts such as the core and the Shapley value. We then discuss two major issues that arise when considering such games from a computational perspective: identifying compact representation

OntoTrader: An Ontological Web Trading Agent Approach for Environmental Information Retrieval

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Iribarne

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Modern Web-based Information Systems (WIS are becoming increasingly necessary to provide support for users who are in different places with different types of information, by facilitating their access to the information, decision making, workgroups, and so forth. Design of these systems requires the use of standardized methods and techniques that enable a common vocabulary to be defined to represent the underlying knowledge. Thus, mediation elements such as traders enrich the interoperability of web components in open distributed systems. These traders must operate with other third-party traders and/or agents in the system, which must also use a common vocabulary for communication between them. This paper presents the OntoTrader architecture, an Ontological Web Trading agent based on the OMG ODP trading standard. It also presents the ontology needed by some system agents to communicate with the trading agent and the behavioral framework for the SOLERES OntoTrader agent, an Environmental Management Information System (EMIS. This framework implements a “Query-Searching/Recovering-Response” information retrieval model using a trading service, SPARQL notation, and the JADE platform. The paper also presents reflection, delegation and, federation mediation models and describes formalization, an experimental testing environment in three scenarios, and a tool which allows our proposal to be evaluated and validated.

Fundamental properties of cooperative contagion processes

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Li; Ghanbarnejad, Fakhteh; Brockmann, Dirk

2017-10-01

We investigate the effects of cooperativity between contagion processes that spread and persist in a host population. We propose and analyze a dynamical model in which individuals that are affected by one transmissible agent A exhibit a higher than baseline propensity of being affected by a second agent B and vice versa. The model is a natural extension of the traditional susceptible-infected-susceptible model used for modeling single contagion processes. We show that cooperativity changes the dynamics of the system considerably when cooperativity is strong. The system exhibits discontinuous phase transitions not observed in single agent contagion, multi-stability, a separation of the traditional epidemic threshold into different thresholds for inception and extinction as well as hysteresis. These properties are robust and are corroborated by stochastic simulations on lattices and generic network topologies. Finally, we investigate wave propagation and transients in a spatially extended version of the model and show that especially for intermediate values of baseline reproduction ratios the system is characterized by various types of wave-front speeds. The system can exhibit spatially heterogeneous stationary states for some parameters and negative front speeds (receding wave fronts). The two agent model can be employed as a starting point for more complex contagion processes, involving several interacting agents, a model framework particularly suitable for modeling the spread and dynamics of microbiological ecosystems in host populations.

Fundamental properties of cooperative contagion processes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen, Li; Ghanbarnejad, Fakhteh; Brockmann, Dirk

2017-01-01

We investigate the effects of cooperativity between contagion processes that spread and persist in a host population. We propose and analyze a dynamical model in which individuals that are affected by one transmissible agent A exhibit a higher than baseline propensity of being affected by a second agent B and vice versa. The model is a natural extension of the traditional susceptible-infected-susceptible model used for modeling single contagion processes. We show that cooperativity changes the dynamics of the system considerably when cooperativity is strong. The system exhibits discontinuous phase transitions not observed in single agent contagion, multi-stability, a separation of the traditional epidemic threshold into different thresholds for inception and extinction as well as hysteresis. These properties are robust and are corroborated by stochastic simulations on lattices and generic network topologies. Finally, we investigate wave propagation and transients in a spatially extended version of the model and show that especially for intermediate values of baseline reproduction ratios the system is characterized by various types of wave-front speeds. The system can exhibit spatially heterogeneous stationary states for some parameters and negative front speeds (receding wave fronts). The two agent model can be employed as a starting point for more complex contagion processes, involving several interacting agents, a model framework particularly suitable for modeling the spread and dynamics of microbiological ecosystems in host populations. (paper)

A Public-key based Information Management Model for Mobile Agents

OpenAIRE

Rodriguez, Diego; Sobrado, Igor

2000-01-01

Mobile code based computing requires development of protection schemes that allow digital signature and encryption of data collected by the agents in untrusted hosts. These algorithms could not rely on carrying encryption keys if these keys could be stolen or used to counterfeit data by hostile hosts and agents. As a consequence, both information and keys must be protected in a way that only authorized hosts, that is the host that provides information and the server that has sent the mobile a...

SWARMs Ontology: A Common Information Model for the Cooperation of Underwater Robots

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Xin; Bilbao, Sonia; Martín-Wanton, Tamara; Bastos, Joaquim; Rodriguez, Jonathan

2017-01-01

In order to facilitate cooperation between underwater robots, it is a must for robots to exchange information with unambiguous meaning. However, heterogeneity, existing in information pertaining to different robots, is a major obstruction. Therefore, this paper presents a networked ontology, named the Smart and Networking Underwater Robots in Cooperation Meshes (SWARMs) ontology, to address information heterogeneity and enable robots to have the same understanding of exchanged information. The SWARMs ontology uses a core ontology to interrelate a set of domain-specific ontologies, including the mission and planning, the robotic vehicle, the communication and networking, and the environment recognition and sensing ontology. In addition, the SWARMs ontology utilizes ontology constructs defined in the PR-OWL ontology to annotate context uncertainty based on the Multi-Entity Bayesian Network (MEBN) theory. Thus, the SWARMs ontology can provide both a formal specification for information that is necessarily exchanged between robots and a command and control entity, and also support for uncertainty reasoning. A scenario on chemical pollution monitoring is described and used to showcase how the SWARMs ontology can be instantiated, be extended, represent context uncertainty, and support uncertainty reasoning. PMID:28287468

Information Sharing, Cooperative Behaviour and Hotel Performance: A Survey of the Kenyan Hospitality Industry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sammy Odari Namusonge

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Information sharing is the life blood of supply chain collaboration. Its role in achieving operational performance of supply chains has been widely acclaimed. However whether information sharing would result in improved performance in the context of the hospitality industry has not been empirically determined. This study sought to find out the role of information sharing on hotel performance when the relationship was mediated by cooperative behaviour. A survey design was employed where proportionate stratified sampling was used to select 50 out of 57 town hotels. Data was collected through the use of questionnaires as well interview guides to the procurement\\supply chain departments of these hotels. Logarithmic transformations were used in conjunction with multiple regression analysis to determine the relationship between information sharing, cooperative behaviour and hotel performance. The study concludes that information sharing in the Kenyan hospitality industry does not directly relate to hotel performance. Its relationship is mediated by cooperative behaviour (trust and attitude with supply chain partners. This suggests that information sharing is essential but insufficient by itself to bring significant performance improvements in hotels in the Kenyan hospitality industry. A possible reason for this is that this collaborative practice is highly dependent on information sharing capability, structure of the information as well as culture. Through quadrant analysis the study identifies and recommends the sharing of information about long term strategic plans and events such as entering new markets and acquiring a new customer base as an area of primary priority for improvement.

Models in cooperative game theory crisp, fuzzy, and multi-choice games

CERN Document Server

Branzei, Rodica; Tijs, Stef

2005-01-01

This book investigates models in cooperative game theory in which the players have the possibility to cooperate partially. In a crisp game the agents are either fully involved or not involved at all in coperation with some other agents, while in a fuzzy game players are allowed to cooperate with infinite many different participation levels, varying from non-cooperation to full cooperation. A multi-choice game describes the intermediate case in which each player may have a fixed number of activity levels. Different set and one-point solution concepts for these games are presented. The propertie

An event-triggered control approach for the leader-tracking problem with heterogeneous agents

Science.gov (United States)

Garcia, Eloy; Cao, Yongcan; Casbeer, David W.

2018-05-01

This paper presents an event-triggered control and communication framework for the cooperative leader-tracking problem with communication constraints. Continuous communication among agents is not assumed in this work and decentralised event-based strategies are proposed for agents with heterogeneous linear dynamics. Also, the leader dynamics are unknown and only intermittent measurements of its states are obtained by a subset of the followers. The event-based method not only represents a way to restrict communication among agents, but it also provides a decentralised scheme for scheduling information broadcasts. Notably, each agent is able to determine its own broadcasting instants independently of any other agent in the network. In an extension, the case where transmission of information is affected by time-varying communication delays is addressed. Finally, positive lower-bounds on the inter-event time intervals are obtained in order to show that Zeno behaviour does not exist and, therefore, continuous exchange of information is never needed in this framework.

Multi-agent systems: effective approach for cancer care information management.

Science.gov (United States)

Mohammadzadeh, Niloofar; Safdari, Reza; Rahimi, Azin

2013-01-01

Physicians, in order to study the causes of cancer, detect cancer earlier, prevent or determine the effectiveness of treatment, and specify the reasons for the treatment ineffectiveness, need to access accurate, comprehensive, and timely cancer data. The cancer care environment has become more complex because of the need for coordination and communication among health care professionals with different skills in a variety of roles and the existence of large amounts of data with various formats. The goals of health care systems in such a complex environment are correct health data management, providing appropriate information needs of users to enhance the integrity and quality of health care, timely access to accurate information and reducing medical errors. These roles in new systems with use of agents efficiently perform well. Because of the potential capability of agent systems to solve complex and dynamic health problems, health care system, in order to gain full advantage of E- health, steps must be taken to make use of this technology. Multi-agent systems have effective roles in health service quality improvement especially in telemedicine, emergency situations and management of chronic diseases such as cancer. In the design and implementation of agent based systems, planning items such as information confidentiality and privacy, architecture, communication standards, ethical and legal aspects, identification opportunities and barriers should be considered. It should be noted that usage of agent systems only with a technical view is associated with many problems such as lack of user acceptance. The aim of this commentary is to survey applications, opportunities and barriers of this new artificial intelligence tool for cancer care information as an approach to improve cancer care management.

Social influence, agent heterogeneity and the emergence of the urban informal sector

Science.gov (United States)

García-Díaz, César; Moreno-Monroy, Ana I.

2012-02-01

We develop an agent-based computational model in which the urban informal sector acts as a buffer where rural migrants can earn some income while queuing for higher paying modern-sector jobs. In the model, the informal sector emerges as a result of rural-urban migration decisions of heterogeneous agents subject to social influence in the form of neighboring effects of varying strengths. Besides using a multinomial logit choice model that allows for agent idiosyncrasy, explicit agent heterogeneity is introduced in the form of socio-demographic characteristics preferred by modern-sector employers. We find that different combinations of the strength of social influence and the socio-economic composition of the workforce lead to very different urbanization and urban informal sector shares. In particular, moderate levels of social influence and a large proportion of rural inhabitants with preferred socio-demographic characteristics are conducive to a higher urbanization rate and a larger informal sector.

The Generalization of Mutual Information as the Information between a Set of Variables: The Information Correlation Function Hierarchy and the Information Structure of Multi-Agent Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Wolf, David R.

2004-01-01

The topic of this paper is a hierarchy of information-like functions, here named the information correlation functions, where each function of the hierarchy may be thought of as the information between the variables it depends upon. The information correlation functions are particularly suited to the description of the emergence of complex behaviors due to many- body or many-agent processes. They are particularly well suited to the quantification of the decomposition of the information carried among a set of variables or agents, and its subsets. In more graphical language, they provide the information theoretic basis for understanding the synergistic and non-synergistic components of a system, and as such should serve as a forceful toolkit for the analysis of the complexity structure of complex many agent systems. The information correlation functions are the natural generalization to an arbitrary number of sets of variables of the sequence starting with the entropy function (one set of variables) and the mutual information function (two sets). We start by describing the traditional measures of information (entropy) and mutual information.

Interference Information Based Power Control for Cognitive Radio with Multi-Hop Cooperative Sensing

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Youngjin; Murata, Hidekazu; Yamamoto, Koji; Yoshida, Susumu

Reliable detection of other radio systems is crucial for systems that share the same frequency band. In wireless communication channels, there is uncertainty in the received signal level due to multipath fading and shadowing. Cooperative sensing techniques in which radio stations share their sensing information can improve the detection probability of other systems. In this paper, a new cooperative sensing scheme that reduces the false detection probability while maintaining the outage probability of other systems is investigated. In the proposed system, sensing information is collected using multi-hop transmission from all sensing stations that detect other systems, and transmission decisions are based on the received sensing information. The proposed system also controls the transmit power based on the received CINRs from the sensing stations. Simulation results reveal that the proposed system can reduce the outage probability of other systems, or improve its link success probability.

Formalization of Informal Waste Pickers’ Cooperatives in Blantyre, Malawi: A Feasibility Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cidrick Kasinja

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Poor road networks, inadequate financial resources and low levels of political will mean that many developing countries, especially their unplanned settlements, struggle with solid waste management. Recently, Informal Waste Pickers (IWPs have been incorporated into waste management cooperatives by formalizing their operations as a strategy to improve the quality and efficiency of waste management in such areas. This study was conducted in Zingwangwa, an unplanned settlement in Blantyre, Malawi, to understand whether the formalization of IWPs into cooperatives could be effective and/or accepted as a way of managing Municipal Solid Waste in unplanned urban settlements in Malawi. Thirty-four IWPs in Zingwangwa were identified and interviewed using a structured questionnaire; personnel from the Blantyre City Council and middlemen were interviewed as key informants. We determined that IWPs experience challenges in all dimensions of their lives: low material prices with exploitative price fluctuations, negative public perception and a lack of transportation are a few of their struggles. Furthermore, a fear of decreased income, conflicts during proceeds sharing, free riding behaviors and an attachment to their independence mean that IWPs are unlikely to form a cooperative on their own though some would be willing to join if a third party initiated the formalization process.

Design and Application of an Intelligent Agent for Web Information Discovery

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

闵君; 冯珊; 唐超; 许立达

2003-01-01

With the propagation of applications on the internet, the internet has become a great information source which supplies users with valuable information. But it is hard for users to quickly acquire the right information on the web. This paper an intelligent agent for internet applications to retrieve and extract web information under user's guidance. The intelligent agent is made up of a retrieval script to identify web sources, an extraction script based on the document object model to express extraction process, a data translator to export the extracted information into knowledge bases with frame structures, and a data reasoning to reply users' questions. A GUI tool named Script Writer helps to generate the extraction script visually, and knowledge rule databases help to extract wanted information and to generate the answer to questions.

Investigation of autistic traits through strategic decision-making in games with adaptive agents.

Science.gov (United States)

Craig, Alexis B; Grossman, Emily; Krichmar, Jeffrey L

2017-07-17

Autism Spectrum Disorders are characterized by difficulties in communicating and cooperating with other people. Impairment in Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to infer what another person is thinking, may contribute to these social deficits. The present study assesses the relationship between autistic traits and decision-making in a socioeconomic game environment that measures ToM and cooperation. We quantified participant strategy during game play with computer agents that simulated aspects of ToM or fixed strategy agents with static behaviors or heuristics. Individuals with higher Autism Quotient (AQ) scores cooperated less than subjects with low AQ scores with the ToM agents. In contrast, subjects with higher AQ scores cooperated more with fixed strategy agents. Additionally, subjects with higher AQ scores spent more time than low AQ subjects signaling cooperative intent in games with fixed strategy agents while spending less time signaling cooperation with adaptive agents, indicating a preference toward systemizing behaviors in the face of uncertainty. We conclude that individuals with high levels of autistic traits are less likely to utilize ToM as a cognitive strategy, even when it is beneficial, to achieve a desired outcome.

Low ranks make the difference : How achievement goals and ranking information affect cooperation intentions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Poortvliet, P. Marijn; Janssen, Onne; Van Yperen, N.W.; Van de Vliert, E.

This investigation tested the joint effect of achievement goals and ranking information on information exchange intentions with a commensurate exchange partner. Results showed that individuals with performance goals were less inclined to cooperate with an exchange partner when they had low or high

Application of Agent Methodology in Healthcare Information Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Reem Abdalla

2017-02-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a case study to describe the features and the phases of the two agent methodologies. The Gaia methodology for agent oriented analysis and design, Tropos is a detailed agent oriented software engineering methodology to explore each methodology's ability to present solutions for small problems. Also we provide an attempt to discover whether the methodology is in fact understandable and usable. In addition we were collecting and taking notes of the advantages and weaknesses of these methodologies during the study analysis for each methodology and the relationships among their models. The Guardian Angle: Patient-Centered Health Information System (GA: PCHIS is the personal system to help track, manage, and interpret the subject's health history, and give advice to both patient and provider is used as the case study throughout the paper.

Automatic Generation of Agents using Reusable Soft Computing Code Libraries to develop Multi Agent System for Healthcare

OpenAIRE

Priti Srinivas Sajja

2015-01-01

This paper illustrates architecture for a multi agent system in healthcare domain. The architecture is generic and designed in form of multiple layers. One of the layers of the architecture contains many proactive, co-operative and intelligent agents such as resource management agent, query agent, pattern detection agent and patient management agent. Another layer of the architecture is a collection of libraries to auto-generate code for agents using soft computing techni...

Determinants of enrollment of informal sector workers in cooperative based health scheme in Bangladesh

Science.gov (United States)

Sarker, Abdur Razzaque; Sultana, Marufa; Mahumud, Rashidul Alam; Ahmed, Sayem; Islam, Ziaul; Morton, Alec; Khan, Jahangir A. M.

2017-01-01

Background Providing access to affordable health care for the informal sector remains a considerable challenge for low income countries striving to make progress towards universal health coverage. The objective of the study is to identify the factors shaping the decision to enroll in a cooperative based health scheme for informal workers in Bangladesh and also help to identify the features of informal workers without health schemes and their likelihood of being insured. Methods Data were derived from a cross-sectional in-house survey within the catchment area of a cooperative based health scheme in Bangladesh during April–June 2014, covering a total of 784 households (458 members and 326 non-members). Multivariate logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated with cooperative based health scheme and explanatory variables. Findings This study found that a number of factors were significant determinants of health scheme participation including sex of household head, household composition, occupational category as well as involvement social financial safety net programs. Conclusion Findings from this study can be suggestive for policy-makers interested in scaling up health insurance for informal workers in Bangladesh. Shared funding from this large informal sector can generate new resources for healthcare, which is in line with the healthcare financing strategy of Bangladesh as well as the recommendation of the World Health Organization for developing social health insurance as part of the path to Universal Health Coverage. PMID:28750052

Determinants of enrollment of informal sector workers in cooperative based health scheme in Bangladesh.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdur Razzaque Sarker

Full Text Available Providing access to affordable health care for the informal sector remains a considerable challenge for low income countries striving to make progress towards universal health coverage. The objective of the study is to identify the factors shaping the decision to enroll in a cooperative based health scheme for informal workers in Bangladesh and also help to identify the features of informal workers without health schemes and their likelihood of being insured.Data were derived from a cross-sectional in-house survey within the catchment area of a cooperative based health scheme in Bangladesh during April-June 2014, covering a total of 784 households (458 members and 326 non-members. Multivariate logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated with cooperative based health scheme and explanatory variables.This study found that a number of factors were significant determinants of health scheme participation including sex of household head, household composition, occupational category as well as involvement social financial safety net programs.Findings from this study can be suggestive for policy-makers interested in scaling up health insurance for informal workers in Bangladesh. Shared funding from this large informal sector can generate new resources for healthcare, which is in line with the healthcare financing strategy of Bangladesh as well as the recommendation of the World Health Organization for developing social health insurance as part of the path to Universal Health Coverage.

Social aggregation as a cooperative game

Science.gov (United States)

Vilone, Daniele; Guazzini, Andrea

2011-07-01

A new approach for the description of phenomena of social aggregation is suggested. On the basis of psychological concepts (as for instance social norms and cultural coordinates), we deduce a general mechanism for social aggregation in which different clusters of individuals can merge according to cooperation among the agents. In their turn, the agents can cooperate or defect according to the clusters' distribution inside the system. The fitness of an individual increases with the size of its cluster, but decreases with the work the individual had to do in order to join it. In order to test the reliability of such a new approach, we introduce a couple of simple toy models with the features illustrated above. We see, from this preliminary study, how cooperation is the most convenient strategy only in the presence of very large clusters, while on the other hand it is not necessary to have one hundred percent of cooperators for reaching a totally ordered configuration with only one megacluster filling the whole system.

Inequity aversion and the evolution of cooperation

OpenAIRE

Ahmed, Asrar; Karlapalem, Kamalakar

2014-01-01

Evolution of cooperation is a widely studied problem in biology, social science, economics, and artificial intelligence. Most of the existing approaches that explain cooperation rely on some notion of direct or indirect reciprocity. These reciprocity based models assume agents recognize their partner and know their previous interactions, which requires advanced cognitive abilities. In this paper we are interested in developing a model that produces cooperation without requiring any explicit m...

Analysis of the process of communicational informational monthly of a São Paulo State interior region cooperative

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliana Correa Bernardes

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The information is an essential element for decision-making. In the environmental organizations, have access to information becomes crucial to remain competitive conditions in an increasingly global market. For farmers, access to the media to provide them with data to enable a more secure decision-making is fundamental. In this sense, the organizations, associations, governments and private companies lay hold of communication tools that can equip your audience information. In the specific case of this study, we sought to analyze the information content developed by a Cooperative inside of São Paulo. The methodological approach of this research followed the exploratory and descriptive research supported by content analysis, using both Nvivo® software. It was noted, that the present communication barriers in this study have a potential exclusion of features and can harm. particularly, a significant portion of the cooperative members belonging to family farming, since these also included among the public of the cooperative.

Mechanisms and dynamics of cooperation and competition emergence in complex networked systems

Science.gov (United States)

Gianetto, David A.

Cooperative behavior is a pervasive phenomenon in human interactions and yet how it can evolve and become established, through the selfish process of natural selection, is an enduring puzzle. These behaviors emerge when agents interact in a structured manner; even so, the key structural factors that affect cooperation are not well understood. Moreover, the literature often considers cooperation a single attribute of primitive agents who do not react to environmental changes but real-world actors are more perceptive. The present work moves beyond these assumptions by evolving more realistic game participants, with memories of the past, on complex networks. Agents play repeated games with a three-part Markovian strategy that allows us to separate the cooperation phenomenon into trust, reciprocity, and forgiveness characteristics. Our results show that networks matter most when agents gain the most by acting in a selfish manner, irrespective of how much they may lose by cooperating; since the context provided by neighborhoods inhibits greedy impulses that agents otherwise succumb to in isolation. Network modularity is the most important driver of cooperation emergence in these high-stakes games. However, modularity fails to tell the complete story. Modular scale-free graphs impede cooperation when close coordination is required, partially due to the acyclic nature of scale-free network models. To achieve the highest cooperation in diverse social conditions, both high modularity, low connectivity within modules, and a rich network of long cycles become important. With these findings in hand, we study the influence of networks on coordination and competition within the federal health care insurance exchange. In this applied study, we show that systemic health care coordination is encouraged by the emergent insurance network. The network helps underpin the viability of the exchange and provides an environment of stronger competition once a critical-mass of insurers have

Technical cooperation for the wider uses of Ho-166 therapeutic agents in European countries

CERN Document Server

Park, K B; Choi, S M; Han, K H; Hong, Y D; Park, W W; Shin, B C

2002-01-01

Czech has put their priority in developing the radiopharmaceuticals based on reactor produced Ho-166 and a related fabrication will be extended to other EU conturies including Germany, France, etc after a development of project. The collaboration will be based on the mutual agreement for developing the between research institutes, industries and academic institutes and further researches should be followed by the issue of developing radiopharmaceuticals using Ho-166. To strengthen the collaboration, detailed discussions for the practical collaboration have been made through the visitation to the research institution of each counter part. For implementing the collaboration between NPI and KAERI, an institutional basis technical cooperation agreement(TCA) will be concluded. Furthermore, agreement for the substantial collaboration on Ho-166 related researches will be made after the conclusion of the TCA. It will accelerate the commercialization of KAERI developed Ho-166 therapeutic agents into other European cou...

Artificial agents learning human fairness

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jong, de S.; Tuyls, K.P.; Verbeeck, K.; Padgham, xx; Parkes, xx

2008-01-01

Recent advances in technology allow multi-agent systems to be deployed in cooperation with or as a service for humans. Typically, those systems are designed assuming individually rational agents, according to the principles of classical game theory. However, research in the field of behavioral

Information Processing and Dynamics in Minimally Cognitive Agents

Science.gov (United States)

Beer, Randall D.; Williams, Paul L.

2015-01-01

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the relative merits of information processing versus dynamical approaches to understanding cognitive processes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these two styles of explanation using a model agent evolved to solve a relational categorization task. Specifically, we…

Modeling Multi-Mobile Agents System Based on Coalition Signature Mechanism Using UML

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

SUNZhixin; HUANGHaiping; WANGRuchuan

2004-01-01

With the development of electronic commerce and agent techniques, multi-mobile agents cooperation can not only improve the efficiency of electronic business trade, but more importantly, it has a comprehensive applicative value in solving the security issues of mobile agent system. This paper firstly describes the mechanism of multi-mobile agents coalition signature aiming at the system security. Subsequently it brings forward a basic architecture of Multi-mobile agents system (MMAS) based on the design pattern of multi-mobile agents. The paper uses the diagrs_rn of UML, such as use case diagram, class diagram and sequence diagram to build the detailed model of the coalition signature and multi-mobile agents cooperation results. Through security analysis, we find that multimobile agents cooperation and interaction can solve some security problems of mobile agents in transfer, and also it can improve the efficiency of business trade. These results indicate that MMAS has a high security performance and can be widely used in E-commerce trade.

Cooperation, competition and the emergence of criticality in communities of adaptive systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hidalgo, Jorge; Muñoz, Miguel A; Grilli, Jacopo; Suweis, Samir; Maritan, Amos

2016-01-01

The hypothesis that living systems can benefit from operating at the vicinity of critical points has gained momentum in recent years. Criticality may confer an optimal balance between too ordered and exceedingly noisy states. Here we present a model, based on information theory and statistical mechanics, illustrating how and why a community of agents aimed at understanding and communicating with each other converges to a globally coherent state in which all individuals are close to an internal critical state, i.e. at the borderline between order and disorder. We study—both analytically and computationally—the circumstances under which criticality is the best possible outcome of the dynamical process, confirming the convergence to critical points under very generic conditions. Finally, we analyze the effect of cooperation (agents trying to enhance not only their fitness, but also that of other individuals) and competition (agents trying to improve their own fitness and to diminish those of competitors) within our setting. The conclusion is that, while competition fosters criticality, cooperation hinders it and can lead to more ordered or more disordered consensual outcomes. (paper: classical statistical mechanics, equilibrium and non-equilibrium)

Transnational Research Co-operation: Opportunities and Challenges for transnational research co-operation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

of the NGOs have a lot of international experience (mainly in Denmark and Germany) as partners in different co-operation projects. Almost all the NGOs have recognized the important role of the scientific information in their activity. NGOs also feel the need for an easy access to required information...... for transnational co-operation like: an investigation/project concerning the driving forces behind urban development,or a co-operation in the field of wastewater reuse and minimization of wastewater loads and discharge, or a service page (internet) to search for potential partners. The governmental institutions...... in order to improve transnational cooperation are identified to be: • Search for national/international project partners • Access to existent co-operation projects or networks • Develop in common project proposals on themes requested by community groups • Exchange information/good operational practices...

Is Cooperative Memory Special? The Role of Costly Errors, Context, and Social Network Size When Remembering Cooperative Actions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tim Winke

2017-10-01

require excellent memory. Thus, modeling the evolution of cooperation requires an understanding of both the social environment in which agents interact and the cognitive capabilities of these agents.

Ignorance Is Bliss, But for Whom? The Persistent Effect of Good Will on Cooperation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mike Farjam

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Who benefits from the ignorance of others? We address this question from the point of view of a policy maker who can induce some ignorance into a system of agents competing for resources. Evolutionary game theory shows that when unconditional cooperators or ignorant agents compete with defectors in two-strategy settings, unconditional cooperators get exploited and are rendered extinct. In contrast, conditional cooperators, by utilizing some kind of reciprocity, are able to survive and sustain cooperation when competing with defectors. We study how cooperation thrives in a three-strategy setting where there are unconditional cooperators, conditional cooperators and defectors. By means of simulation on various kinds of graphs, we show that conditional cooperators benefit from the existence of unconditional cooperators in the majority of cases. However, in worlds that make cooperation hard to evolve, defectors benefit.

Social Stratification and Cooperative Behavior in Spatial Prisoners' Dilemma Games.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peng Lu

Full Text Available It has been a long-lasting pursuit to promote cooperation, and this study aims to promote cooperation via the combination of social stratification and the spatial prisoners' dilemma game. It is previously assumed that agents share the identical payoff matrix, but the stratification or diversity exists and exerts influences in real societies. Thus, two additional classes, elites and scoundrels, derive from and coexist with the existing class, commons. Three classes have different payoff matrices. We construct a model where agents play the prisoners' dilemma game with neighbors. It indicates that stratification and temptation jointly influence cooperation. Temptation permanently reduces cooperation; elites play a positive role in promoting cooperation while scoundrels undermine it. As the temptation getting larger and larger, elites play a more and more positive and critical role while scoundrels' negative effect becomes weaker and weaker, and it is more obvious when temptation goes beyond its threshold.

Agent-Based Model of Information Security System: Architecture and Formal Framework for Coordinated Intelligent Agents Behavior Specification

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Gorodetski, Vladimir

2001-01-01

The contractor will research and further develop the technology supporting an agent-based architecture for an information security system and a formal framework to specify a model of distributed knowledge...

Exact performance of cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radios with quantized information under imperfect reporting channels

KAUST Repository

Ben Ghorbel, Mahdi; Nam, Haewoon; Alouini, Mohamed-Slim

2013-01-01

between the sensing channels to overcome the fading and shadowing effects which allows reduction of miss-detection and false alarm probabilities. Information can be exchanged between cooperating users in different formats from the binary hard information

Generating Self-Reliant Teams of Autonomous Cooperating Robots: Desired design Characteristics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Parker, L.E.

1999-05-01

The difficulties in designing a cooperative team are significant. Several of the key questions that must be resolved when designing a cooperative control architecture include: How do we formulate, describe, decompose, and allocate problems among a group of intelligent agents? How do we enable agents to communicate and interact? How do we ensure that agents act coherently in their actions? How do we allow agents to recognize and reconcile conflicts? However, in addition to these key issues, the software architecture must be designed to enable multi-robot teams to be robust, reliable, and flexible. Without these capabilities, the resulting robot team will not be able to successfully deal with the dynamic and uncertain nature of the real world. In this extended abstract, we first describe these desired capabilities. We then briefly describe the ALLIANCE software architecture that we have previously developed for multi-robot cooperation. We then briefly analyze the ALLIANCE architecture in terms of the desired design qualities identified.

Developing Digital Dashboard Management for Learning System Dynamic Cooperative Simulation Behavior of Indonesia. (Study on Cooperative Information Organization in the Ministry of Cooperatives and SME)

Science.gov (United States)

Eni, Yuli; Aryanto, Rudy

2014-03-01

There are problems being experienced by the Ministry of cooperatives and SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) including the length of time in the decision by the Government to establish a policy that should be taken for local cooperatives across the province of Indonesia. The decision-making process is still analyzed manually, so that sometimes the decisions taken are also less appropriate, effective and efficient. The second problem is the lack of monitoring data cooperative process province that is too much, making it difficult for the analysis of dynamic information to be useful. Therefore the authors want to fix the system that runs by using digital dashboard management system supported by the modeling of system dynamics. In addition, the author also did the design of a system that can support the system. Design of this system is aimed to ease the experts, head, and the government to decide (DSS - Decision Support System) accurately effectively and efficiently, because in the system are raised alternative simulation in a description of the decision to be taken and the result from the decision. The system is expected to be designed dan simulated can ease and expedite the decision making. The design of dynamic digital dashboard management conducted by method of OOAD (Objects Oriented Analysis and Design) complete with UML notation.

Punishment does not promote cooperation under exploration dynamics when anti-social punishment is possible.

Science.gov (United States)

P Hauser, Oliver; A Nowak, Martin; G Rand, David

2014-11-07

It has been argued that punishment promotes the evolution of cooperation when mutation rates are high (i.e. when agents engage in 'exploration dynamics'). Mutations maintain a steady supply of agents that punish free-riders, and thus free-riders are at a disadvantage. Recent experiments, however, have demonstrated that free-riders sometimes also pay to punish cooperators. Inspired by these empirical results, theoretical work has explored evolutionary dynamics where mutants are rare, and found that punishment does not promote the evolution of cooperation when this 'anti-social punishment' is allowed. Here we extend previous theory by studying the effect of anti-social punishment on the evolution of cooperation across higher mutation rates, and by studying voluntary as well as compulsory Public Goods Games. We find that for intermediate and high mutation rates, adding punishment does not promote cooperation in either compulsory or voluntary public goods games if anti-social punishment is possible. This is because mutations generate agents that punish cooperators just as frequently as agents that punish defectors, and these two effects cancel each other out. These results raise questions about the effectiveness of punishment for promoting cooperation when mutations are common, and highlight how decisions about which strategies to include in the strategy set can have profound effects on the resulting dynamics. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

New nontoxic double information magnetic and fluorescent MRI agent

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kublickas, Augustinas; Rastenien, Loreta; Bloznelytė-Plėšnienė, Laima; Karalius, Nerijus [Liquid Crystals Laboratory, Institute of Science and Technology, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences (Lithuania); Franckevinius, Marius [Institute of Physics, Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (Lithuania); Loudos, George [Technological Educational Institute of Athens (Greece); Fahmi, Amir [Materials Science, Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences (Germany); Vaisnoras, Rimas [Liquid Crystals Laboratory, Institute of Science and Technology, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences (Lithuania)

2015-05-18

Today sensitivity of the MRI is not enough compared to the nuclear methods, such as positron emission tomography and single photon emission computed tomography. Challenging its extension to the nanometre scale could provide a powerful new tool for the nanosciences and nanomedicine. To achieve this potential, innovative new detection strategies are required to overcome the severe sensitivity limitations of conventional inductive detection techniques. In this regard, we perform embodiment of nanodiamonds in dendrimer matrix as additional fluorescent optical and magnetic (together with Gd (III)) imaging modalities of the MRI. New hybrid system composed of dendrimer-gadolinium Gd (III) - nanodiamond as a new contrast agent for MRI was studied. Poly(propilene-imine) PPI and poly(amidoamine) PAMAM dendrimers with fixed size of nanocavities will be used as host material to protect organism against the toxicity and also to increase relaxivity of contrast agent (resulting in the increases MRI resolution). Nanodiamond as biocompatible platform to functionalize the contrast agent will be used. This bimodal hybrid system enables to use smaller amount of the contrast agent and could permit the decrease of the lateral toxicity. This bimodal hybrid system as MRI agent is providing double information (magnetic and fluorescent) about the damaged cell.

New nontoxic double information magnetic and fluorescent MRI agent

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kublickas, Augustinas; Rastenien, Loreta; Bloznelytė-Plėšnienė, Laima; Karalius, Nerijus; Franckevinius, Marius; Loudos, George; Fahmi, Amir; Vaisnoras, Rimas

2015-01-01

Today sensitivity of the MRI is not enough compared to the nuclear methods, such as positron emission tomography and single photon emission computed tomography. Challenging its extension to the nanometre scale could provide a powerful new tool for the nanosciences and nanomedicine. To achieve this potential, innovative new detection strategies are required to overcome the severe sensitivity limitations of conventional inductive detection techniques. In this regard, we perform embodiment of nanodiamonds in dendrimer matrix as additional fluorescent optical and magnetic (together with Gd (III)) imaging modalities of the MRI. New hybrid system composed of dendrimer-gadolinium Gd (III) - nanodiamond as a new contrast agent for MRI was studied. Poly(propilene-imine) PPI and poly(amidoamine) PAMAM dendrimers with fixed size of nanocavities will be used as host material to protect organism against the toxicity and also to increase relaxivity of contrast agent (resulting in the increases MRI resolution). Nanodiamond as biocompatible platform to functionalize the contrast agent will be used. This bimodal hybrid system enables to use smaller amount of the contrast agent and could permit the decrease of the lateral toxicity. This bimodal hybrid system as MRI agent is providing double information (magnetic and fluorescent) about the damaged cell.

Informing General CSCW Product Development through Cooperative Design in Specific Work Domains

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grønbæk, Kaj; Mogensen, Preben Holst

1997-01-01

sharing of materials in the engineering domain. In our project, a single engineering company (Great Belt Link Ltd.) was chosen as the user organization. The paper summarizes the process from observational studies, over a future workshop and cooperative prototyping activities, to a pilot installation. We...... describe how these activities informed the general hypermedia framework and application design. Use scenarios and prototypes with example data from the users‘ daily work were used as sources both to trigger design ideas and new insights regarding work practice. Common participants in specific activities...... and general development activities supported transfer of work domain knowledge into general features of the product being developed. Mutual challenging characterized the interaction between specific cooperative analysis and design activities and general development activities. Prototypes, scenarios, materials...

Agent-oriented Architecture for Task-based Information Search System

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aroyo, Lora; de Bra, Paul M.E.; De Bra, P.; Hardman, L.

1999-01-01

The topic of the reported research discusses an agent-oriented architecture of an educational information search system AIMS - a task-based learner support system. It is implemented within the context of 'Courseware Engineering' on-line course at the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology,

The agents of natural genome editing.

Science.gov (United States)

Witzany, Guenther

2011-06-01

The DNA serves as a stable information storage medium and every protein which is needed by the cell is produced from this blueprint via an RNA intermediate code. More recently it was found that an abundance of various RNA elements cooperate in a variety of steps and substeps as regulatory and catalytic units with multiple competencies to act on RNA transcripts. Natural genome editing on one side is the competent agent-driven generation and integration of meaningful DNA nucleotide sequences into pre-existing genomic content arrangements, and the ability to (re-)combine and (re-)regulate them according to context-dependent (i.e. adaptational) purposes of the host organism. Natural genome editing on the other side designates the integration of all RNA activities acting on RNA transcripts without altering DNA-encoded genes. If we take the genetic code seriously as a natural code, there must be agents that are competent to act on this code because no natural code codes itself as no natural language speaks itself. As code editing agents, viral and subviral agents have been suggested because there are several indicators that demonstrate viruses competent in both RNA and DNA natural genome editing.

Reinforcement Learning Multi-Agent Modeling of Decision-Making Agents for the Study of Transboundary Surface Water Conflicts with Application to the Syr Darya River Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Riegels, N.; Siegfried, T.; Pereira Cardenal, S. J.; Jensen, R. A.; Bauer-Gottwein, P.

2008-12-01

In most economics--driven approaches to optimizing water use at the river basin scale, the system is modelled deterministically with the goal of maximizing overall benefits. However, actual operation and allocation decisions must be made under hydrologic and economic uncertainty. In addition, river basins often cross political boundaries, and different states may not be motivated to cooperate so as to maximize basin- scale benefits. Even within states, competing agents such as irrigation districts, municipal water agencies, and large industrial users may not have incentives to cooperate to realize efficiency gains identified in basin- level studies. More traditional simulation--optimization approaches assume pre-commitment by individual agents and stakeholders and unconditional compliance on each side. While this can help determine attainable gains and tradeoffs from efficient management, such hardwired policies do not account for dynamic feedback between agents themselves or between agents and their environments (e.g. due to climate change etc.). In reality however, we are dealing with an out-of-equilibrium multi-agent system, where there is neither global knowledge nor global control, but rather continuous strategic interaction between decision making agents. Based on the theory of stochastic games, we present a computational framework that allows for studying the dynamic feedback between decision--making agents themselves and an inherently uncertain environment in a spatially and temporally distributed manner. Agents with decision-making control over water allocation such as countries, irrigation districts, and municipalities are represented by reinforcement learning agents and coupled to a detailed hydrologic--economic model. This approach emphasizes learning by agents from their continuous interaction with other agents and the environment. It provides a convenient framework for the solution of the problem of dynamic decision-making in a mixed cooperative / non-cooperative

Unified Generic Geometric-Decompositions for Consensus or Flocking Systems of Cooperative Agents and Fast Recalculations of Decomposed Subsystems Under Topology-Adjustments.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Wei

2016-06-01

This paper considers a unified geometric projection approach for: 1) decomposing a general system of cooperative agents coupled via Laplacian matrices or stochastic matrices and 2) deriving a centroid-subsystem and many shape-subsystems, where each shape-subsystem has the distinct properties (e.g., preservation of formation and stability of the original system, sufficiently simple structures and explicit formation evolution of agents, and decoupling from the centroid-subsystem) which will facilitate subsequent analyses. Particularly, this paper provides an additional merit of the approach: considering adjustments of coupling topologies of agents which frequently occur in system design (e.g., to add or remove an edge, to move an edge to a new place, and to change the weight of an edge), the corresponding new shape-subsystems can be derived by a few simple computations merely from the old shape-subsystems and without referring to the original system, which will provide further convenience for analysis and flexibility of choice. Finally, such fast recalculations of new subsystems under topology adjustments are provided with examples.

Efficient many-party controlled teleportation of multiqubit quantum information via entanglement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yang Chuiping; Chu, Shih-I; Han Siyuan

2004-01-01

We present a way to teleport multiqubit quantum information from a sender to a distant receiver via the control of many agents in a network. We show that the original state of each qubit can be restored by the receiver as long as all the agents collaborate. However, even if one agent does not cooperate, the receiver cannot fully recover the original state of each qubit. The method operates essentially through entangling quantum information during teleportation, in such a way that the required auxiliary qubit resources, local operation, and classical communication are considerably reduced for the present purpose

49 CFR 40.329 - What information must laboratories, MROs, and other service agents release to employees?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... other service agents release to employees? 40.329 Section 40.329 Transportation Office of the Secretary... Confidentiality and Release of Information § 40.329 What information must laboratories, MROs, and other service agents release to employees? (a) As an MRO or service agent you must provide, within 10 business days of...

Costly punishment and cooperation in the evolutionary snowdrift game

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, C.; Ji, M.; Yap, Yee Jiun; Zheng, Da-Fang; Hui, P. M.

2011-05-01

The role of punishments in promoting cooperation is an important issue. We incorporate costly punishments into the snowdrift game (SG) by introducing a third punishing (P) character, and study the effects. The punishers, who carry basically a cooperative (C) character, are willing to pay a cost α so as to punish a non-cooperative (D) opponent by β. Depending on the initial fractions of the characters, α, β, and the cost-to-benefit ratio r in the SG, the three-character system evolves into a steady state consisting either only of C and P characters or only of C and D characters, in a well-mixed population. The former situation represents an enhancement in cooperation relative to the SG, while the latter is similar to the SG. The dynamics in approaching these different steady states are found to be different. Analytically, the key features in the dynamics and the steady states observed in simulations are captured by a set of differential equations. The sensitivity to the initial distribution of characters is studied by depicting the flow in a phase portrait and analyzing the nature of fixed points. The analysis also shows the role of P-character agents in preventing a system from invasion by D-character agents. Starting from a population consisting only of C and P agents, a D-character agent intended to invade the system cannot survive when the initial fraction of P agents is greater than r/β. Our model, defined intentionally as a simulation algorithm, can be readily generalized to incorporate many interesting effects, such as those in a networked population.

Distributed, cooperating knowledge-based systems

Science.gov (United States)

Truszkowski, Walt

1991-01-01

Some current research in the development and application of distributed, cooperating knowledge-based systems technology is addressed. The focus of the current research is the spacecraft ground operations environment. The underlying hypothesis is that, because of the increasing size, complexity, and cost of planned systems, conventional procedural approaches to the architecture of automated systems will give way to a more comprehensive knowledge-based approach. A hallmark of these future systems will be the integration of multiple knowledge-based agents which understand the operational goals of the system and cooperate with each other and the humans in the loop to attain the goals. The current work includes the development of a reference model for knowledge-base management, the development of a formal model of cooperating knowledge-based agents, the use of testbed for prototyping and evaluating various knowledge-based concepts, and beginning work on the establishment of an object-oriented model of an intelligent end-to-end (spacecraft to user) system. An introductory discussion of these activities is presented, the major concepts and principles being investigated are highlighted, and their potential use in other application domains is indicated.

9th KES Conference on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems : Technologies and Applications

CERN Document Server

Howlett, Robert; Jain, Lakhmi

2015-01-01

Agents and multi-agent systems are related to a modern software paradigm which has long been recognized as a promising technology for constructing autonomous, complex and intelligent systems. The topics covered in this volume include agent-oriented software engineering, agent co-operation, co-ordination, negotiation, organization and communication, distributed problem solving, specification of agent communication languages, agent privacy, safety and security, formalization of ontologies and conversational agents. The volume highlights new trends and challenges in agent and multi-agent research and includes 38 papers classified in the following specific topics: learning paradigms, agent-based modeling and simulation, business model innovation and disruptive technologies, anthropic-oriented computing, serious games and business intelligence, design and implementation of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, digital economy, and advances in networked virtual enterprises. Published p...

Russian and Foreign Experience of Integration of Agent-Based Models and Geographic Information Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Konstantin Anatol’evich Gulin

2016-11-01

Full Text Available The article provides an overview of the mechanisms of integration of agent-based models and GIS technology developed by Russian and foreign researchers. The basic framework of the article is based on critical analysis of domestic and foreign literature (monographs, scientific articles. The study is based on the application of universal scientific research methods: system approach, analysis and synthesis, classification, systematization and grouping, generalization and comparison. The article presents theoretical and methodological bases of integration of agent-based models and geographic information systems. The concept and essence of agent-based models are explained; their main advantages (compared to other modeling methods are identified. The paper characterizes the operating environment of agents as a key concept in the theory of agent-based modeling. It is shown that geographic information systems have a wide range of information resources for calculations, searching, modeling of the real world in various aspects, acting as an effective tool for displaying the agents’ operating environment and allowing to bring the model as close as possible to the real conditions. The authors also focus on a wide range of possibilities for various researches in different spatial and temporal contexts. Comparative analysis of platforms supporting the integration of agent-based models and geographic information systems has been carried out. The authors give examples of complex socio-economic models: the model of a creative city, humanitarian assistance model. In the absence of standards for research results description, the authors focus on the models’ elements such as the characteristics of the agents and their operation environment, agents’ behavior, rules of interaction between the agents and the external environment. The paper describes the possibilities and prospects of implementing these models

Design and simulation of material-integrated distributed sensor processing with a code-based agent platform and mobile multi-agent systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Bosse, Stefan

2015-02-16

Multi-agent systems (MAS) can be used for decentralized and self-organizing data processing in a distributed system, like a resource-constrained sensor network, enabling distributed information extraction, for example, based on pattern recognition and self-organization, by decomposing complex tasks in simpler cooperative agents. Reliable MAS-based data processing approaches can aid the material-integration of structural-monitoring applications, with agent processing platforms scaled to the microchip level. The agent behavior, based on a dynamic activity-transition graph (ATG) model, is implemented with program code storing the control and the data state of an agent, which is novel. The program code can be modified by the agent itself using code morphing techniques and is capable of migrating in the network between nodes. The program code is a self-contained unit (a container) and embeds the agent data, the initialization instructions and the ATG behavior implementation. The microchip agent processing platform used for the execution of the agent code is a standalone multi-core stack machine with a zero-operand instruction format, leading to a small-sized agent program code, low system complexity and high system performance. The agent processing is token-queue-based, similar to Petri-nets. The agent platform can be implemented in software, too, offering compatibility at the operational and code level, supporting agent processing in strong heterogeneous networks. In this work, the agent platform embedded in a large-scale distributed sensor network is simulated at the architectural level by using agent-based simulation techniques.

Design and Simulation of Material-Integrated Distributed Sensor Processing with a Code-Based Agent Platform and Mobile Multi-Agent Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stefan Bosse

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Multi-agent systems (MAS can be used for decentralized and self-organizing data processing in a distributed system, like a resource-constrained sensor network, enabling distributed information extraction, for example, based on pattern recognition and self-organization, by decomposing complex tasks in simpler cooperative agents. Reliable MAS-based data processing approaches can aid the material-integration of structural-monitoring applications, with agent processing platforms scaled to the microchip level. The agent behavior, based on a dynamic activity-transition graph (ATG model, is implemented with program code storing the control and the data state of an agent, which is novel. The program code can be modified by the agent itself using code morphing techniques and is capable of migrating in the network between nodes. The program code is a self-contained unit (a container and embeds the agent data, the initialization instructions and the ATG behavior implementation. The microchip agent processing platform used for the execution of the agent code is a standalone multi-core stack machine with a zero-operand instruction format, leading to a small-sized agent program code, low system complexity and high system performance. The agent processing is token-queue-based, similar to Petri-nets. The agent platform can be implemented in software, too, offering compatibility at the operational and code level, supporting agent processing in strong heterogeneous networks. In this work, the agent platform embedded in a large-scale distributed sensor network is simulated at the architectural level by using agent-based simulation techniques.

A Framework for Organization-Aware Agents

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Andreas Schmidt; Dignum, Virginia; Villadsen, Jørgen

2017-01-01

boundaries and work towards the objectives of the organization. In this paper, we present the AORTA reasoning framework and show how it can be integrated into typical BDI-agents. We provide operational semantics that enables agents to make organizational decisions in order to coordinate and cooperate without......’ behavior space and describe the expected behavior of the agents. Assuming an open environment, where agents are developed independently of the Organizational structures, agents need to be able to reason about the structure, so that they can deliberate about their actions and act within the expected...

Costly advertising and the evolution of cooperation

OpenAIRE

Brede, Markus

2013-01-01

In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect) and a binary 'advertising' strategy (advertise or don't advertise). Advertising, which comes at a cost [Formula: see text], allows investment into faster propagation of the agents' traits to adjacent individuals. Import...

Cooperative epistemic multi-agent planning for implicit coordination

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Engesser, Thorsten; Bolander, Thomas; Mattmüller, Robert

2017-01-01

framework to include perspective shifts, allowing us to define new notions of sequential and conditional planning with implicit coordination. With these, it is possible to solve planning tasks with joint goals in a decentralized manner without the agents having to negotiate about and commit to a joint...... policy at plan time. First we define the central planning notions and sketch the implementation of a planning system built on those notions. Afterwards we provide some case studies in order to evaluate the planner empirically and to show that the concept is useful for multi-agent systems in practice....

Hybrid Multi-Agent Control in Microgrids: Framework, Models and Implementations Based on IEC 61850

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaobo Dou

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Operation control is a vital and complex issue for microgrids. The objective of this paper is to explore the practical means of applying decentralized control by using a multi agent system in actual microgrids and devices. This paper presents a hierarchical control framework (HCF consisting of local reaction control (LRC level, local decision control (LDC level, horizontal cooperation control (HCC level and vertical cooperation control (VCC level to meet different control requirements of a microgrid. Then, a hybrid multi-agent control model (HAM is proposed to implement HCF, and the properties, functionalities and operating rules of HAM are described. Furthermore, the paper elaborates on the implementation of HAM based on the IEC 61850 Standard, and proposes some new implementation methods, such as extended information models of IEC 61850 with agent communication language and bidirectional interaction mechanism of generic object oriented substation event (GOOSE communication. A hardware design and software system are proposed and the results of simulation and laboratory tests verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategies, models and implementations.

Spatial snowdrift game in heterogeneous agent systems with co-evolutionary strategies and updating rules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xia Hai-Jiang; Li Ping-Ping; Ke Jian-Hong; Lin Zhen-Quan

2015-01-01

We propose an evolutionary snowdrift game model for heterogeneous systems with two types of agents, in which the inner-directed agents adopt the memory-based updating rule while the copycat-like ones take the unconditional imitation rule; moreover, each agent can change his type to adopt another updating rule once the number he sequentially loses the game at is beyond his upper limit of tolerance. The cooperative behaviors of such heterogeneous systems are then investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. The numerical results show the equilibrium cooperation frequency and composition as functions of the cost-to-benefit ratio r are both of plateau structures with discontinuous steplike jumps, and the number of plateaux varies non-monotonically with the upper limit of tolerance ν T as well as the initial composition of agents f a0 . Besides, the quantities of the cooperation frequency and composition are dependent crucially on the system parameters including ν T , f a0 , and r. One intriguing observation is that when the upper limit of tolerance is small, the cooperation frequency will be abnormally enhanced with the increase of the cost-to-benefit ratio in the range of 0 < r < 1/4. We then probe into the relative cooperation frequencies of either type of agents, which are also of plateau structures dependent on the system parameters. Our results may be helpful to understand the cooperative behaviors of heterogenous agent systems. (paper)

Agent-Based Optimization

CERN Document Server

Jędrzejowicz, Piotr; Kacprzyk, Janusz

2013-01-01

This volume presents a collection of original research works by leading specialists focusing on novel and promising approaches in which the multi-agent system paradigm is used to support, enhance or replace traditional approaches to solving difficult optimization problems. The editors have invited several well-known specialists to present their solutions, tools, and models falling under the common denominator of the agent-based optimization. The book consists of eight chapters covering examples of application of the multi-agent paradigm and respective customized tools to solve  difficult optimization problems arising in different areas such as machine learning, scheduling, transportation and, more generally, distributed and cooperative problem solving.

Information Infrastructure for Cooperative Research in Neuroscience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. J. Durka

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The paper describes a framework for efficient sharing of knowledge between research groups, which have been working for several years without flaws. The obstacles in cooperation are connected primarily with the lack of platforms for effective exchange of experimental data, models, and algorithms. The solution to these problems is proposed by construction of the platform (EEG.pl with the semantic aware search scheme between portals. The above approach implanted in the international cooperative projects like NEUROMATH may bring the significant progress in designing efficient methods for neuroscience research.

Cooperative problem solving with personal mobile information tools in hospitals.

Science.gov (United States)

Buchauer, A; Werner, R; Haux, R

1998-01-01

Health-care professionals have a broad range of needs for information and cooperation while working at different points of care (e.g., outpatient departments, wards, and functional units such as operating theaters). Patient-related data and medical knowledge have to be widely available to support high-quality patient care. Furthermore, due to the increased specialization of health-care professionals, efficient collaboration is required. Personal mobile information tools have a considerable potential to realize almost ubiquitous information and collaborative support. They enable to unite the functionality of conventional tools such as paper forms, dictating machines, and pagers into one tool. Moreover, they can extend the support already provided by clinical workstations. An approach is described for the integration of mobile information tools with heterogeneous hospital information systems. This approach includes identification of functions which should be provided on mobile tools. Major functions are the presentation of medical records and reports, electronic mailing to support interpersonal communication, and the provision of editors for structured clinical documentation. To realize those functions on mobile tools, we propose a document-based client-server architecture that enables mobile information tools to interoperate with existing computer-based application systems. Open application systems and powerful, partially wireless, hospital-wide networks are the prerequisites for the introduction of mobile information tools.

Consensus for linear multi-agent system with intermittent information transmissions using the time-scale theory

Science.gov (United States)

Taousser, Fatima; Defoort, Michael; Djemai, Mohamed

2016-01-01

This paper investigates the consensus problem for linear multi-agent system with fixed communication topology in the presence of intermittent communication using the time-scale theory. Since each agent can only obtain relative local information intermittently, the proposed consensus algorithm is based on a discontinuous local interaction rule. The interaction among agents happens at a disjoint set of continuous-time intervals. The closed-loop multi-agent system can be represented using mixed linear continuous-time and linear discrete-time models due to intermittent information transmissions. The time-scale theory provides a powerful tool to combine continuous-time and discrete-time cases and study the consensus protocol under a unified framework. Using this theory, some conditions are derived to achieve exponential consensus under intermittent information transmissions. Simulations are performed to validate the theoretical results.

Incentive mechanism based on cooperative advertising for cost information sharing in a supply chain with competing retailers

Science.gov (United States)

Setak, Mostafa; Kafshian Ahar, Hajar; Alaei, Saeed

2017-09-01

This paper proposes a new motivation for information sharing in a decentralized channel consisting of a single manufacturer and two competing retailers. The manufacturer provides a common product to the retailers at the same wholesale price. Both retailers add their own values to the product and distribute it to consumers. Factors such as retail prices, values added to the product, and local advertising of the retailers simultaneously have effect on market demand. Each retailer has full information about the own added value which is unknown to the manufacturer and other retailer. The manufacturer uses a cooperative advertising program for motivating the retailers to disclose their private information. A numerical study is presented to compare different scenarios of information sharing. Computational results show that there is a condition in which full information sharing is beneficial for all members of the supply chain through cooperative advertising program and, therefore, retailers have enough incentive to disclose their cost information to the manufacturer.

Relay tracking control for second-order multi-agent systems with damaged agents.

Science.gov (United States)

Dong, Lijing; Li, Jing; Liu, Qin

2017-11-01

This paper investigates a situation where smart agents capable of sensory and mobility are deployed to monitor a designated area. A preset number of agents start tracking when a target intrudes this area. Some of the tracking agents are possible to be out of order over the tracking course. Thus, we propose a cooperative relay tracking strategy to ensure the successful tracking with existence of damaged agents. Relay means that, when a tracking agent quits tracking due to malfunction, one of the near deployed agents replaces it to continue the tracking task. This results in jump of tracking errors and dynamic switching of topology of the multi-agent system. Switched system technique is employed to solve this specific problem. Finally, the effectiveness of proposed tracking strategy and validity of the theoretical results are verified by conducting a numerical simulation. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Controlling the transmitted information of a multi-photon interacting with a single-Cooper pair box

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kadry, Heba; Abdel-Aty, Abdel-Haleem; Zakaria, Nordin; Cheong, Lee Yen

2014-01-01

We study a model of a multi-photon interaction of a single Cooper pair box with a cavity field. The exchange of the information using this system is studied. We quantify the fidelity of the transmitted information. The effect of the system parameters (detuning parameter, field photons, state density and mean photon number) in the fidelity of the transmitted information is investigated. We found that the fidelity of the transmitted information can be controlled using the system parameters

Controlling the transmitted information of a multi-photon interacting with a single-Cooper pair box

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kadry, Heba, E-mail: hkadry1@yahoo.com; Abdel-Aty, Abdel-Haleem, E-mail: hkadry1@yahoo.com; Zakaria, Nordin, E-mail: hkadry1@yahoo.com [Computer and Information Science Department, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak (Malaysia); Cheong, Lee Yen [Fundamental and Applied Science Department, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak (Malaysia)

2014-10-24

We study a model of a multi-photon interaction of a single Cooper pair box with a cavity field. The exchange of the information using this system is studied. We quantify the fidelity of the transmitted information. The effect of the system parameters (detuning parameter, field photons, state density and mean photon number) in the fidelity of the transmitted information is investigated. We found that the fidelity of the transmitted information can be controlled using the system parameters.

Fusion of multiagent preference orderings with information on agent's importance being incomplete certain

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Wang Jianqiang

2007-01-01

The problem of fusing multiagent preference orderings, with information on agent's importance being incomplete certain with respect to a set of possible courses of action, is described. The approach is developed for dealing with the fusion problem described in the following sections and requires that each agent provides a preference ordering over the different alternatives completely independent of the other agents, and the information on agent's importance is incomplete certain. In this approach, the ternary comparison matrix of the alternatives is constructed, the eigenvector associated with the maximum eigenvalue of the ternary comparison matrix is attained so as to normalize priority vector of the alternatives. The interval number of the alternatives is then obtained by solving two sorts of linear programming problems. By comparing the interval numbers of the alternatives, the ranking of alternatives can be generated. Finally, some examples are given to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the method.

Towards a multi-agent system for regulated information exchange in crime investigations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, Pieter; Prakken, H.; Vey Mestdagh, C.N.J. de

2005-01-01

This paper outlines a multi-agent architecture for regulated information exchange of crime investigation data between police forces. Interactions between police officers about information exchange are analysed as negotiation dialogues with embedded persuasion dialogues. An architecture is then

Intergovernmental cooperation for mission-oriented information systems: a memoir

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Woolston, John E.

2004-12-01

This frankly personal account is based on my involvement in negotiations, design, and development for international bibliographic systems to support three different missions: fostering the peaceful uses of atomic energy (International Nuclear Information System, or INIS); supporting research, development, and better practices in agriculture (International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology, or AGRIS); and improving economic and social conditions in poorer countries (Development Sciences Information System, or DEVSIS). All three designs were based on the concept of decentralized operation: each country reports the information produced in its own territory; the merging of this input and the overall management are in the hands of an organization in the United Nations system; and all participants have equal rights to exploit the entire database. INIS began in 1970 and is still in steady operation; AGRIS started in 1975 and showed quantitative and qualitative growth for more than twenty years but has been in disastrous decline since its peak in 1996; and DEVSIS, unfortunately, was not launched on a global scale. Attempts are made to identify the condition -- political and technical -- likely to favor or frustrate efforts to obtain cooperation among countries for the construction of large, essentially comprehensive databases and ultimately for sharing knowledge without discrimination between rich and poor participants.

Intergovernmental cooperation for mission-oriented information systems: a memoir

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Woolston, John E.

2004-01-01

This frankly personal account is based on my involvement in negotiations, design, and development for international bibliographic systems to support three different missions: fostering the peaceful uses of atomic energy (International Nuclear Information System, or INIS); supporting research, development, and better practices in agriculture (International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology, or AGRIS); and improving economic and social conditions in poorer countries (Development Sciences Information System, or DEVSIS). All three designs were based on the concept of decentralized operation: each country reports the information produced in its own territory; the merging of this input and the overall management are in the hands of an organization in the United Nations system; and all participants have equal rights to exploit the entire database. INIS began in 1970 and is still in steady operation; AGRIS started in 1975 and showed quantitative and qualitative growth for more than twenty years but has been in disastrous decline since its peak in 1996; and DEVSIS, unfortunately, was not launched on a global scale. Attempts are made to identify the condition -- political and technical -- likely to favor or frustrate efforts to obtain cooperation among countries for the construction of large, essentially comprehensive databases and ultimately for sharing knowledge without discrimination between rich and poor participants

49 CFR 40.17 - Is an employer responsible for obtaining information from its service agents?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Is an employer responsible for obtaining... Responsibilities § 40.17 Is an employer responsible for obtaining information from its service agents? Yes, as an employer, you are responsible for obtaining information required by this part from your service agents...

Cooperative Dynamics in Lattice-Embedded Scale-Free Networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shang Lihui; Zhang Mingji; Yang Yanqing

2009-01-01

We investigate cooperative behaviors of lattice-embedded scale-free networking agents in the prisoner's dilemma game model by employing two initial strategy distribution mechanisms, which are specific distribution to the most connected sites (hubs) and random distribution. Our study indicates that the game dynamics crucially depends on the underlying spatial network structure with different strategy distribution mechanism. The cooperators' specific distribution contributes to an enhanced level of cooperation in the system compared with random one, and cooperation is robust to cooperators' specific distribution but fragile to defectors' specific distribution. Especially, unlike the specific case, increasing heterogeneity of network does not always favor the emergence of cooperation under random mechanism. Furthermore, we study the geographical effects and find that the graphically constrained network structure tends to improve the evolution of cooperation in random case and in specific one for a large temptation to defect.

Gossip and ostracism promote cooperation in groups.

Science.gov (United States)

Feinberg, Matthew; Willer, Robb; Schultz, Michael

2014-03-01

The widespread existence of cooperation is difficult to explain because individuals face strong incentives to exploit the cooperative tendencies of others. In the research reported here, we examined how the spread of reputational information through gossip promotes cooperation in mixed-motive settings. Results showed that individuals readily communicated reputational information about others, and recipients used this information to selectively interact with cooperative individuals and ostracize those who had behaved selfishly, which enabled group members to contribute to the public good with reduced threat of exploitation. Additionally, ostracized individuals responded to exclusion by subsequently cooperating at levels comparable to those who were not ostracized. These results suggest that the spread of reputational information through gossip can mitigate egoistic behavior by facilitating partner selection, thereby helping to solve the problem of cooperation even in noniterated interactions.

Multi-agent and complex systems

CERN Document Server

Ren, Fenghui; Fujita, Katsuhide; Zhang, Minjie; Ito, Takayuki

2017-01-01

This book provides a description of advanced multi-agent and artificial intelligence technologies for the modeling and simulation of complex systems, as well as an overview of the latest scientific efforts in this field. A complex system features a large number of interacting components, whose aggregate activities are nonlinear and self-organized. A multi-agent system is a group or society of agents which interact with others cooperatively and/or competitively in order to reach their individual or common goals. Multi-agent systems are suitable for modeling and simulation of complex systems, which is difficult to accomplish using traditional computational approaches.

Intelligent Control System Taking Account of Cooperativeness Using Weighting Information on System Objective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Masaki Takahashi

2004-08-01

Full Text Available This study considers an intelligent control system to integrate flexibly its components by using weighted information where the system evaluation is reflected. Such system evaluates the information flowing through the components and converts them by weighting depending on the degree of importance. Integration of components based on the system evaluation enables a system consisting of them to realize various, flexible and adaptive control. In this study, the intelligent control method is applied to a swing up and stabilization control problem of a number of cart and pendulum systems on a restricted straight guide. To stabilize the pendulum in a restricted environment, each system should realize not only a swing-up and stabilization control of the pendulum, but also a position control of the cart to avoid collision or deadlock. The experiment using a real apparatus demonstrated that the controller learning light interaction acquires egoistic character, the controller learning heavy interaction behaves altruistically, and the controller equally considering self cart and another cart becomes cooperative. In other words, these autonomous decentralized controllers can acquire various characters and flexibility for cooperation.

Network characteristics emerging from agent interactions in balanced distributed system.

Science.gov (United States)

Salman, Mahdi Abed; Bertelle, Cyrille; Sanlaville, Eric

2015-01-01

A distributed computing system behaves like a complex network, the interactions between nodes being essential information exchanges and migrations of jobs or services to execute. These actions are performed by software agents, which behave like the members of social networks, cooperating and competing to obtain knowledge and services. The load balancing consists in distributing the load evenly between system nodes. It aims at enhancing the resource usage. A load balancing strategy specifies scenarios for the cooperation. Its efficiency depends on quantity, accuracy, and distribution of available information. Nevertheless, the distribution of information on the nodes, together with the initial network structure, may create different logical network structures. In this paper, different load balancing strategies are tested on different network structures using a simulation. The four tested strategies are able to distribute evenly the load so that the system reaches a steady state (the mean response time of the jobs is constant), but it is shown that a given strategy indeed behaves differently according to structural parameters and information spreading. Such a study, devoted to distributed computing systems (DCSs), can be useful to understand and drive the behavior of other complex systems.

Agents Based e-Commerce and Securing Exchanged Information

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Jaljouli, Raja; Abawajy, Jemal

Mobile agents have been implemented in e-Commerce to search and filter information of interest from electronic markets. When the information is very sensitive and critical, it is important to develop a novel security protocol that can efficiently protect the information from malicious tampering as well as unauthorized disclosure or at least detect any malicious act of intruders. In this chapter, we describe robust security techniques that ensure a sound security of information gathered throughout agent’s itinerary against various security attacks, as well as truncation attacks. A sound security protocol is described, which implements the various security techniques that would jointly prevent or at least detect any malicious act of intruders. We reason about the soundness of the protocol usingSymbolic Trace Analyzer (STA), a formal verification tool that is based on symbolic techniques. We analyze the protocol in key configurations and show that it is free of flaws. We also show that the protocol fulfils the various security requirements of exchanged information in MAS, including data-integrity, data-confidentiality, data-authenticity, origin confidentiality and data non-repudiability.

TRUST MODEL FOR INFORMATION SECURITY OF MULTI-AGENT ROBOTIC SYSTEMS WITH A DECENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

I. A. Zikratov

2014-03-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with the issues on protection of multi-agent robotic systems against attacks by robots-saboteurs. The operation analysis of such systems with decentralized control is carried out. Concept of harmful information impact (attack from a robot-saboteur to the multi-agent robotic system is given. The class of attacks is considered using interception of messages, formation and transfer of misinformation to group of robots, and also carrying out other actions with vulnerabilities of multiagent algorithms without obviously identified signs of invasion of robots-saboteurs. The model of information security is developed, in which robots-agents work out trust levels to each other analyzing the events occurring in the system. The idea of trust model consists in the analysis of transferred information by each robot and the executed actions of other members in a group, comparison of chosen decision on iteration step k with objective function of the group. Distinctive feature of the trust model in comparison with the closest analogue - Buddy Security Model in which the exchange between the agents security tokens is done — is involvement of the time factor during which agents have to "prove" by their actions the usefulness in achievement of a common goal to members of the group. Variants of this model realization and ways of an assessment of trust levels for agents in view of the security policy accepted in the group are proposed.

Valued Information at the Right Time (VIRT) and the Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) - A Win/Win Proposition

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Acevedo, Rafael A

2006-01-01

In this thesis I examine the theory of Valued Information at the Right Time (VIRT) and the benefits its implementation can provide to the Navy's best example of accurate information-sharing, the Cooperative Engagement Capability...

Learning and innovative elements of strategy adoption rules expand cooperative network topologies.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Shijun; Szalay, Máté S; Zhang, Changshui; Csermely, Peter

2008-04-09

Cooperation plays a key role in the evolution of complex systems. However, the level of cooperation extensively varies with the topology of agent networks in the widely used models of repeated games. Here we show that cooperation remains rather stable by applying the reinforcement learning strategy adoption rule, Q-learning on a variety of random, regular, small-word, scale-free and modular network models in repeated, multi-agent Prisoner's Dilemma and Hawk-Dove games. Furthermore, we found that using the above model systems other long-term learning strategy adoption rules also promote cooperation, while introducing a low level of noise (as a model of innovation) to the strategy adoption rules makes the level of cooperation less dependent on the actual network topology. Our results demonstrate that long-term learning and random elements in the strategy adoption rules, when acting together, extend the range of network topologies enabling the development of cooperation at a wider range of costs and temptations. These results suggest that a balanced duo of learning and innovation may help to preserve cooperation during the re-organization of real-world networks, and may play a prominent role in the evolution of self-organizing, complex systems.

A Qualitative Study of Information Technology Students' Learning Outcomes during a Cooperative Education Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Krejci, Katherine T.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to describe the learning outcomes of the cooperative-education experience from an Information Technology student's perspective at a large Fortune 500 manufacturing/sales company located in the Midwest United States. Open-ended interview questions were developed based on the four-component model…

Cooperative CEO Identity and Efficient Governance: Member or Outside CEO?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Q.X. Liang (Qiao Xin); G.W.J. Hendrikse (George)

2012-01-01

textabstractA principal-agent model is formulated to capture the efficiency of cooperatives with a member CEO and cooperatives with an employed outsider as CEO. Results of the model show that the incentive strength regarding the member CEO is stronger compared to that of the outside CEO in order to

The evolution of strong reciprocity: cooperation in heterogeneous populations.

Science.gov (United States)

Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert

2004-02-01

How do human groups maintain a high level of cooperation despite a low level of genetic relatedness among group members? We suggest that many humans have a predisposition to punish those who violate group-beneficial norms, even when this imposes a fitness cost on the punisher. Such altruistic punishment is widely observed to sustain high levels of cooperation in behavioral experiments and in natural settings. We offer a model of cooperation and punishment that we call STRONG RECIPROCITY: where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, strong reciprocators obey the norm and punish its violators, even though as a result they receive lower payoffs than other group members, such as selfish agents who violate the norm and do not punish, and pure cooperators who adhere to the norm but free-ride by never punishing. Our agent-based simulations show that, under assumptions approximating likely human environments over the 100000 years prior to the domestication of animals and plants, the proliferation of strong reciprocators when initially rare is highly likely, and that substantial frequencies of all three behavioral types can be sustained in a population. As a result, high levels of cooperation are sustained. Our results do not require that group members be related or that group extinctions occur.

Co-operation and Phase Behavior under the Mixed Updating Rules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Wen; Li Yao-Sheng; Xu Chen

2015-01-01

We present a model by considering two updating rules when the agents play prisoner's dilemma on a square lattice. Agents can update their strategies by referencing one of his neighbors of higher payoffs under the imitation updating rule or directly replaced by one of his neighbors according to the death-birth updating rule. The frequency of co-operation is related to the probability q of occurrence of the imitation updating or the death-birth updating and the game parameter b. The death-birth updating rule favors the co-operation while the imitation updating rule favors the defection on the lattice, although both rules suppress the co-operation in the well-mixed population. Therefore a totally co-operative state may emerge when the death-birth updating is involved in the evolution when b is relatively small. We also obtain a phase diagram on the q-b plane. There are three phases on the plane with two pure phases of a totally co-operative state and a totally defective state and a mixing phase of mixed strategies. Based on the pair approximation, we theoretically analyze the phase behavior and obtain a quantitative agreement with the simulation results. (paper)

Inequity aversion and the evolution of cooperation

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmed, Asrar; Karlapalem, Kamalakar

2014-02-01

Evolution of cooperation is a widely studied problem in biology, social science, economics, and artificial intelligence. Most of the existing approaches that explain cooperation rely on some notion of direct or indirect reciprocity. These reciprocity based models assume agents recognize their partner and know their previous interactions, which requires advanced cognitive abilities. In this paper we are interested in developing a model that produces cooperation without requiring any explicit memory of previous game plays. Our model is based on the notion of inequity aversion, a concept introduced within behavioral economics, whereby individuals care about payoff equality in outcomes. Here we explore the effect of using income inequality to guide partner selection and interaction. We study our model by considering both the well-mixed and the spatially structured population and present the conditions under which cooperation becomes dominant. Our results support the hypothesis that inequity aversion promotes cooperative relationship among nonkin.

Cooperative strategies European perspectives

CERN Document Server

Killing, J Peter

1997-01-01

Cooperative Strategies: European Perspectives is one of three geographically targeted volumes in which the contributors present the most current research on topics such as advances in theories of cooperative strategies, the formation of cooperative alliances, the dynamics of partner relationships, and the role of information and knowledge in cooperative alliances. Blending conceptual insights with empirical analyses, the contributors highlight commonalities and differences across national, cultural, and trade zones. The chapters in this volume are anchored in a wide set of theoretical approaches, conceptual frameworks, and models, illustrating how rich the area of cooperative strategies is for scholarly inquiry.

Origins of human cooperation and morality.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomasello, Michael; Vaish, Amrisha

2013-01-01

From an evolutionary perspective, morality is a form of cooperation. Cooperation requires individuals either to suppress their own self-interest or to equate it with that of others. We review recent research on the origins of human morality, both phylogenetic (research with apes) and ontogenetic (research with children). For both time frames we propose a two-step sequence: first a second-personal morality in which individuals are sympathetic or fair to particular others, and second an agent-neutral morality in which individuals follow and enforce group-wide social norms. Human morality arose evolutionarily as a set of skills and motives for cooperating with others, and the ontogeny of these skills and motives unfolds in part naturally and in part as a result of sociocultural contexts and interactions.

Heuristics guide cooperative behaviors in public goods game

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yongjie; Chen, Tong

2015-12-01

In public goods game (PGG), player's cooperative behavior is not pure economical rationality, but social preference and prosocial intuition play extremely important roles as well. Social preference and prosocial intuition can be guided by heuristics from one's neighbors in daily life. To better investigate the impacts of heuristics on the evolution of cooperation, four types of agents are introduced into our spatial PGG. Through numerical simulations, results show that the larger percentages of cooperators with independent thought, the easier emergence and maintenance of collective cooperative behaviors. Additionally, we find that differentia heuristic capability has great effect on the equilibrium of PGG. Cooperation can be obviously promoted, when heuristic capability of cooperators with independent thought is stronger than that of defectors with independent thought. Finally, we observe that cooperators with independent thought and defectors with independent thought are favorable for the formation of some high quality clusters, which can resist the invasion between each other. Our work may help us understand more clearly the mechanism of cooperation in real world.

Cooperative Monitoring Center Occasional Paper/8: Cooperative Border Security for Jordan: Assessment and Options

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Qojas, M.

1999-03-01

This document is an analysis of options for unilateral and cooperative action to improve the security of Jordan's borders. Sections describe the current political, economic, and social interactions along Jordan's borders. Next, the document discusses border security strategy for cooperation among neighboring countries and the adoption of confidence-building measures. A practical cooperative monitoring system would consist of hardware for early warning, command and control, communications, and transportation. Technical solutions can expand opportunities for the detection and identification of intruders. Sensors (such as seismic, break-wire, pressure-sensing, etc.) can warn border security forces of intrusion and contribute to the identification of the intrusion and help formulate the response. This document describes conceptual options for cooperation, offering three scenarios that relate to three hypothetical levels (low, medium, and high) of cooperation. Potential cooperative efforts under a low cooperation scenario could include information exchanges on military equipment and schedules to prevent misunderstandings and the establishment of protocols for handling emergency situations or unusual circumstances. Measures under a medium cooperation scenario could include establishing joint monitoring groups for better communications, with hot lines and scheduled meetings. The high cooperation scenario describes coordinated responses, joint border patrols, and sharing border intrusion information. Finally, the document lists recommendations for organizational, technical, and operational initiatives that could be applicable to the current situation.

APPLICATION OF EUROPEAN STANDARDS OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS – INFORMATIONAL RESOURSE OF CONSUMER COOPERATION DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stepan KOSHKAROV

2016-07-01

Full Text Available More than 120 countries use the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS and the International Accounting Standards (IAS. The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU obliges Ukraine to consider European convergence of accounting and reporting. Since 2012 for some entities the use of IFRS has been compulsory, but for others – voluntary. This trend coincides with the imperative necessity of the consumer cooperation of Ukraine to reform its multilevel informational system as a key component of its effective management and successful implementation of controlling. It is proposed to start reforming with the introduction of IFRS and IAS. Consumer cooperation represents cooperative sector of Ukrainian economy and is included into different international and European cooperative associations. With its historic mission to meet the needs of its members, socio-economic and cultural development of rural areas, in terms of the crisis it faces the serious problem of the systemic reforming under existing conditions through the innovative development and use of experience of economically developed countries, especially the EU.

Study and Application of Reinforcement Learning in Cooperative Strategy of the Robot Soccer Based on BDI Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wu Bo-ying

2009-11-01

Full Text Available The dynamic cooperation model of multi-Agent is formed by combining reinforcement learning with BDI model. In this model, the concept of the individual optimization loses its meaning, because the repayment of each Agent dose not only depend on itsself but also on the choice of other Agents. All Agents can pursue a common optimum solution and try to realize the united intention as a whole to a maximum limit. The robot moves to its goal, depending on the present positions of the other robots that cooperate with it and the present position of the ball. One of these robots cooperating with it is controlled to move by man with a joystick. In this way, Agent can be ensured to search for each state-action as frequently as possible when it carries on choosing movements, so as to shorten the time of searching for the movement space so that the convergence speed of reinforcement learning can be improved. The validity of the proposed cooperative strategy for the robot soccer has been proved by combining theoretical analysis with simulation robot soccer match (11vs11 .

Does information about patients who are intellectually disabled translate into better cooperation during dental visits?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meurs, D.; Rutten, M.; de Jongh, A.

2010-01-01

The objective of this study was to investigate whether having background information about a patient with an intellectual disability (ID) would have a positive effect on the level of cooperation during a first dental visit. Study participants were 57 consecutive dental patients (mean age = 24.3

The INIS and the Spanish American Cooperation in the field of the nuclear documentation and information field

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Suarez, R.J.

1981-01-01

INIS system is described in its subjects covered, its functioning and outputs produced. It is stated that due to similar necesities that hispano-american countries, belonging to INIS system, have; an harmonic and associated work in the scientific and technological information area is convenient. The importance of a cooperation program as well as a regional mutual assistance in disseminating, servicing, training, technical supporting, designing, organizing and putting into service Nuclear Information Centers is remarked. The outstanding characteristics of INIS system are pointed out like being descentralized and cooperating as well as the profitable utilization of important experience from previous systems like ENDS (European Nuclear Documentation System) and Nuclear Science Abstracts from USA. Also other important characteristics of INIS system are evaluated like the permanent challenge to National Centers in order to improve their services, that implying a common task for librarians, new information specialists and users. (E.A.C.) [es

The intertemporal choice behaviour. The role of emotions in a multi-agent decision problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Angelarosa Longo

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Decision Neuroscience has shown positive and negative side of emotions in intertemporal choices. Psychological evidences, indeed, point out anomalies (impulsivity modifies the discount function of each individual and the false consensus effect which increases the degree of consensus in a multi-agent decision problem. An experiment (Engelmann and Strobel 2004 demonstrates that the relevance of the false consensus effect depends on the difficulty of the information retrieval, so the underlying mechanism is an information processing deficiency rather than egocentricity. We demonstrate that emotions can not cause anomalies in a cooperative strategic interaction because information is explicit.

Controlled teleportation of multi-qudit quantum information

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

2007-01-01

We propose a scheme for realizing a controlled teleportation of random M-qudit quantum information under the control of N agents. The resource consumption includes a prearranged (2M + N + 1)-qudit entangled quantum channel and (2M + N + 1) log2 d-bit classical communication. And the quantum operations used in the teleportation process are a series of generalized Bell-state measurements, single-qudit measurements, qudit H-gates, qudit-Pauli gates and qudit phase gates. It is shown that the original state can be restored by the receiver only on condition that all the agents work in collaboration with each others. If one agent does not cooperate with the other, the original state cannot be fully recovered.

Teamwork in Multi-Agent Systems A Formal Approach

CERN Document Server

Dunin-Keplicz, Barbara Maria

2010-01-01

What makes teamwork tick?. Cooperation matters, in daily life and in complex applications. After all, many tasks need more than a single agent to be effectively performed. Therefore, teamwork rules!. Teams are social groups of agents dedicated to the fulfilment of particular persistent tasks. In modern multiagent environments, heterogeneous teams often consist of autonomous software agents, various types of robots and human beings. Teamwork in Multi-agent Systems: A Formal Approach explains teamwork rules in terms of agents' attitudes and their complex interplay. It provides the first comprehe

Multi-agent simulation of competitive electricity markets: Autonomous systems cooperation for European market modeling

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Santos, Gabriel; Pinto, Tiago; Morais, Hugo; Sousa, Tiago M.; Pereira, Ivo F.; Fernandes, Ricardo; Praça, Isabel; Vale, Zita

2015-01-01

Highlights: • Definition of an ontology allowing the communication between multi-agents systems. • Social welfare evaluation in different electricity markets. • Demonstration of the use of the proposed ontology between two multi-agents systems. • Strategic biding in electricity markets. • European electricity markets comparison. - Abstract: The electricity market restructuring, and its worldwide evolution into regional and even continental scales, along with the increasing necessity for an adequate integration of renewable energy sources, is resulting in a rising complexity in power systems operation. Several power system simulators have been developed in recent years with the purpose of helping operators, regulators, and involved players to understand and deal with this complex and constantly changing environment. The main contribution of this paper is given by the integration of several electricity market and power system models, respecting to the reality of different countries. This integration is done through the development of an upper ontology which integrates the essential concepts necessary to interpret all the available information. The continuous development of Multi-Agent System for Competitive Electricity Markets platform provides the means for the exemplification of the usefulness of this ontology. A case study using the proposed multi-agent platform is presented, considering a scenario based on real data that simulates the European Electricity Market environment, and comparing its performance using different market mechanisms. The main goal is to demonstrate the advantages that the integration of various market models and simulation platforms have for the study of the electricity markets’ evolution

A Resource Logic for Multi-Agent Plan Merging

NARCIS (Netherlands)

De Weerdt, M.M.; Bos, A.; Tonino, H.; Witteveen, C.

2003-01-01

In a multi-agent system, agents are carrying out certain tasks by executing plans. Consequently, the problem of finding a plan, given a certain goal, has been given a lot of attention in the literature. Instead of concentrating on this problem, the focus of this paper is on cooperation between

Cooperative Epistemic Multi-Agent Planning With Implicit Coordination

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Engesser, Thorsten; Bolander, Thomas; Mattmüller, Robert

2015-01-01

, meaning coordination is only allowed implicitly by means of the available epistemic actions. While this approach can be fruitfully applied to model reasoning in some simple social situations, we also provide some benchmark applications to show that the concept is useful for multi-agent systems in practice....

Symmetry warrants rational cooperation by co-action in Social Dilemmas.

Science.gov (United States)

Sasidevan, V; Sinha, Sitabhra

2015-08-12

Is it rational for selfish individuals to cooperate? The conventional answer based on analysis of games such as the Prisoners Dilemma (PD) is that it is not, even though mutual cooperation results in a better outcome for all. This incompatibility between individual rationality and collective benefit lies at the heart of questions about the evolution of cooperation, as illustrated by PD and similar games. Here, we argue that this apparent incompatibility is due to an inconsistency in the standard Nash framework for analyzing non-cooperative games and propose a new paradigm, that of the co-action equilibrium. As in the Nash solution, agents know that others are just as rational as them and taking this into account lead them to realize that others will independently adopt the same strategy, in contrast to the idea of unilateral deviation central to Nash equilibrium thinking. Co-action equilibrium results in better collective outcomes for games representing social dilemmas, with relatively "nicer" strategies being chosen by rational selfish individuals. In particular, the dilemma of PD gets resolved within this framework, suggesting that cooperation can evolve in nature as the rational outcome even for selfish agents, without having to take recourse to additional mechanisms for promoting it.

A Multi-Agent Based Energy Management Solution for Integrated Buildings and Microgrid System

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Anvari-Moghaddam, Amjad; Rahimi-Kian, Ashkan; Mirian, Maryam S.

2017-01-01

-reflex to complex learning agents are designed and implemented to cooperate with each other to reach an optimal operating strategy for the mentioned integrated energy system (IES) while meeting the system’s objectives and related constraints. The optimization process for the EMS is defined as a coordinated......In this paper, an ontology-driven multi-agent based energy management system (EMS) is proposed for monitoring and optimal control of an integrated homes/buildings and microgrid system with various renewable energy resources (RESs) and controllable loads. Different agents ranging from simple...... distributed generation (DG) and demand response (DR) management problem within the studied environment and is solved by the proposed agent-based approach utilizing cooperation and communication among decision agents. To verify the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed multi-agent based EMS, several...

Mobile agent-enabled framework for structuring and building distributed systems on the internet

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

CAO Jiannong; ZHOU Jingyang; ZHU Weiwei; LI Xuhui

2006-01-01

Mobile agent has shown its promise as a powerful means to complement and enhance existing technology in various application areas. In particular, existing work has demonstrated that MA can simplify the development and improve the performance of certain classes of distributed applications, especially for those running on a wide-area, heterogeneous, and dynamic networking environment like the Internet. In our previous work, we extended the application of MA to the design of distributed control functions, which require the maintenance of logical relationship among and/or coordination of processing entities in a distributed system. A novel framework is presented for structuring and building distributed systems, which use cooperating mobile agents as an aid to carry out coordination and cooperation tasks in distributed systems. The framework has been used for designing various distributed control functions such as load balancing and mutual exclusion in our previous work. In this paper, we use the framework to propose a novel approach to detecting deadlocks in distributed system by using mobile agents, which demonstrates the advantage of being adaptive and flexible of mobile agents. We first describe the MAEDD (Mobile Agent Enabled Deadlock Detection) scheme, in which mobile agents are dispatched to collect and analyze deadlock information distributed across the network sites and, based on the analysis, to detect and resolve deadlocks. Then the design of an adaptive hybrid algorithm derived from the framework is presented. The algorithm can dynamically adapt itself to the changes in system state by using different deadlock detection strategies. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated using simulations. The results show that the algorithm can outperform existing algorithms that use a fixed deadlock detection strategy.

Novel Concepts of Cooperative Wireless Networking

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Qi

2008-01-01

; secondly, the increasing density of the wireless devices makes cooperation possible; last, the cost of information exchange (i.e. transmission power, transmission time, spectrum, etc.) is very low if information exchange over short-range link is needed. Cooperation changes the way of information delivery......Although wireless networks have achieved great success in the lastest two decades, the current wireless networks have difficulties to fulll users' ever-increasing expectations and needs. It is mainly due to available spectrum resource scarcity, limited battery capacity of wireless device......, unreliable wireless radio link, etc. To tackle these issues, a new telecommunication paradigm has been proposed, referred to as cooperative wireless networking [1]. The basic idea of cooperative wireless networking is that wireless devices work together to achieve their individual goals or one common goal...

The evolution of cooperation by the Hankshaw effect.

Science.gov (United States)

Hammarlund, Sarah P; Connelly, Brian D; Dickinson, Katherine J; Kerr, Benjamin

2016-06-01

The evolution of cooperation-costly behavior that benefits others-faces one clear obstacle. Namely, cooperators are always at a competitive disadvantage relative to defectors, individuals that reap the benefits, but evade the cost of cooperation. One solution to this problem involves genetic hitchhiking, where the allele encoding cooperation becomes linked to a beneficial mutation, allowing cooperation to rise in abundance. Here, we explore hitchhiking in the context of adaptation to a stressful environment by cooperators and defectors with spatially limited dispersal. Under such conditions, clustered cooperators reach higher local densities, thereby experiencing more mutational opportunities than defectors. Thus, the allele encoding cooperation has a greater probability of hitchhiking with alleles conferring stress adaptation. We label this probabilistic enhancement the "Hankshaw effect" after the character Sissy Hankshaw, whose anomalously large thumbs made her a singularly effective hitchhiker. Using an agent-based model, we reveal a broad set of conditions that allow the evolution of cooperation through this effect. Additionally, we show that spite, a costly behavior that harms others, can evolve by the Hankshaw effect. While in an unchanging environment these costly social behaviors have transient success, in a dynamic environment, cooperation and spite can persist indefinitely. © 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Multi-agent control system with information fusion based comfort model for smart buildings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, Zhu; Wang, Lingfeng; Dounis, Anastasios I.; Yang, Rui

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► Proposed a model to manage indoor energy and comfort for smart buildings. ► Developed a control system to maximize comfort with minimum energy consumption. ► Information fusion with ordered weighted averaging aggregation is used. ► Multi-agent technology and heuristic intelligent optimization are deployed in developing the control system. -- Abstract: From the perspective of system control, a smart and green building is a large-scale dynamic system with high complexity and a huge amount of information. Proper combination of the available information and effective control of the overall building system turns out to be a big challenge. In this study, we proposed a building indoor energy and comfort management model based on information fusion using ordered weighted averaging (OWA) aggregation. A multi-agent control system with heuristic intelligent optimization is developed to achieve a high level of comfort with the minimum power consumption. Case studies and simulation results are presented and discussed in this paper.

Purchasing cooperatives for small employers: performance and prospects.

Science.gov (United States)

Wicks, E K; Hall, M A

2000-01-01

Health insurance purchasing cooperatives were established in the early to mid-1990s for the purpose of making health insurance more affordable and accessible for small employers. Extensive interviews at six cooperatives reveal that while some cooperatives enrolled large numbers of small employers, most have won only small market shares and a number have struggled for survival, not always successfully. They have allowed small employers to offer individual employees choice of health plans, but none has been able to sustain lower prices than are available in the conventional market. Among the important impediments to their success are limited support from health plans and conflicts over the role of insurance agents.

Cooperative SIS epidemics can lead to abrupt outbreaks

Science.gov (United States)

Ghanbarnejad, Fakhteh; Chen, Li; Cai, Weiran; Grassberger, Peter

2015-03-01

In this paper, we study spreading of two cooperative SIS epidemics in mean field approximations and also within an agent based framework. Therefore we investigate dynamics on different topologies like Erdos-Renyi networks and regular lattices. We show that cooperativity of two diseases can lead to strongly first order outbreaks, while the dynamics still might present some scaling laws typical for second order phase transitions. We argue how topological network features might be related to this interesting hybrid behaviors.

Emergence of competition and cooperation in an evolutionary resource war model

Science.gov (United States)

Lamantia, Fabio

2018-05-01

In this paper we introduce a simple punishment scheme in the 'great fish war' model with many players. An imitative process regulates how a coalition of cooperators is dynamically updated over time. An intuitive effect of adding sanctions is that they could enlarge the possible sustainable coalitions. However, the evolution toward full cooperation can be sustained by a punishment scheme provided that a critical mass of agents enforces cooperation at the beginning of the game. Moreover, we show the presence of thresholds in sanctions or in the cost for punishing such that if these thresholds are trespassed then dramatic reductions in the resource level and in the agents' welfare may occur as a consequence of free riding effects. We show by some examples that these phenomena are due to the presence of tipping points in the model.

7 CFR 1220.107 - Cooperator organization.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 10 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Cooperator organization. 1220.107 Section 1220.107... CONSUMER INFORMATION Soybean Promotion and Research Order Definitions § 1220.107 Cooperator organization. The term Cooperator Organization means the American Soybean Association, or any successor organization...

Towards Cooperative Predictive Data Mining in Competitive Environments

Science.gov (United States)

Lisý, Viliam; Jakob, Michal; Benda, Petr; Urban, Štěpán; Pěchouček, Michal

We study the problem of predictive data mining in a competitive multi-agent setting, in which each agent is assumed to have some partial knowledge required for correctly classifying a set of unlabelled examples. The agents are self-interested and therefore need to reason about the trade-offs between increasing their classification accuracy by collaborating with other agents and disclosing their private classification knowledge to other agents through such collaboration. We analyze the problem and propose a set of components which can enable cooperation in this otherwise competitive task. These components include measures for quantifying private knowledge disclosure, data-mining models suitable for multi-agent predictive data mining, and a set of strategies by which agents can improve their classification accuracy through collaboration. The overall framework and its individual components are validated on a synthetic experimental domain.

Multilayer quantum secret sharing based on GHZ state and generalized Bell basis measurement in multiparty agents

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xiao-Jun; An, Long-Xi; Yu, Xu-Tao; Zhang, Zai-Chen

2017-10-01

A multilayer quantum secret sharing protocol based on GHZ state is proposed. Alice has the secret carried by quantum state and wants to distribute this secret to multiple agent nodes in the network. In this protocol, the secret is transmitted and shared layer by layer from root Alice to layered agents. The number of agents in each layer is a geometric sequence with a specific common ratio. By sharing GHZ maximally entangled states and making generalized Bell basis measurement, one qubit state can be distributed to multiparty agents and the secret is shared. Only when all agents at the last layer cooperate together, the secret can be recovered. Compared with other protocols based on the entangled state, this protocol adopts layered construction so that secret can be distributed to more agents with fewer particles GHZ state. This quantum secret sharing protocol can be used in wireless network to ensure the security of information delivery.

Coaction versus reciprocity in continuous-time models of cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

van Doorn, G Sander; Riebli, Thomas; Taborsky, Michael

2014-09-07

Cooperating animals frequently show closely coordinated behaviours organized by a continuous flow of information between interacting partners. Such real-time coaction is not captured by the iterated prisoner's dilemma and other discrete-time reciprocal cooperation games, which inherently feature a delay in information exchange. Here, we study the evolution of cooperation when individuals can dynamically respond to each other's actions. We develop continuous-time analogues of iterated-game models and describe their dynamics in terms of two variables, the propensity of individuals to initiate cooperation (altruism) and their tendency to mirror their partner's actions (coordination). These components of cooperation stabilize at an evolutionary equilibrium or show oscillations, depending on the chosen payoff parameters. Unlike reciprocal altruism, cooperation by coaction does not require that those willing to initiate cooperation pay in advance for uncertain future benefits. Correspondingly, we show that introducing a delay to information transfer between players is equivalent to increasing the cost of cooperation. Cooperative coaction can therefore evolve much more easily than reciprocal cooperation. When delays entirely prevent coordination, we recover results from the discrete-time alternating prisoner's dilemma, indicating that coaction and reciprocity are connected by a continuum of opportunities for real-time information exchange. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cooperation for a competitive position: The impact of hospital cooperation behavior on organizational performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Büchner, Vera Antonia; Hinz, Vera; Schreyögg, Jonas

2015-01-01

Several public policy initiatives, particularly those involving managed care, aim to enhance cooperation between partners in the health care sector because it is expected that such cooperation will reduce costs and generate additional revenue. However, empirical evidence regarding the effects of cooperation on hospital performance is scarce, particularly with respect to creating a comprehensive measure of cooperation behavior. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of hospital cooperation behavior on organizational performance. We differentiate between horizontal and vertical cooperation using two alternative measures-cooperation depth and cooperation breadth-and include the interaction effects between both cooperation directions. Data are derived from a survey of German hospitals and combined with objective performance information from annual financial statements. Generalized linear regression models are used. The study findings provide insight into the nature of hospitals' cooperation behavior. In particular, we show that there are negative synergies between horizontal administrative cooperation behavior and vertical cooperation behavior. Whereas the depth and breadth of horizontal administrative cooperation positively affect financial performance (when there is no vertical cooperation), vertical cooperation positively affects financial performance (when there is no horizontal administrative cooperation) only when cooperation is broad (rather than deep). Horizontal cooperation is generally more effective than vertical cooperation at improving financial performance. Hospital managers should consider the negative interaction effect when making decisions about whether to recommend a cooperative relationship in a horizontal or vertical direction. In addition, managers should be aware of the limited financial benefit of cooperation behavior.

Web-based Cooperative Learning in College Chemistry Teaching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bin Jiang

2014-03-01

Full Text Available With the coming of information era, information process depend on internet and multi-media technology in education becomes the new approach of present teaching model reform. Web-based cooperative learning is becoming a popular learning approach with the rapid development of web technology. The paper aims to how to carry out the teaching strategy of web-based cooperative learning and applied in the foundation chemistry teaching.It was shown that with the support of modern web-based teaching environment, students' cooperative learning capacity and overall competence can be better improved and the problems of interaction in large foundation chemistry classes can be solved. Web-based cooperative learning can improve learning performance of students, what's more Web-based cooperative learning provides students with cooperative skills, communication skills, creativity, critical thinking skills and skills in information technology application.

Research of using mobile agents for information discovery in P2P networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lan Yan; Yao Qing

2003-01-01

The technology of P2P is a new network-computing model that has great value of commerce and technology. After analyzing the current information discovery technology in P2P network, a new solution that is based on mobile agent is proposed. The mobile agent solution can reduce the need of bandwidth, be adapt to the dynamic of P2P network, and be asynchronous and be very fault tolerant. (authors)

Robust Feature Selection from Microarray Data Based on Cooperative Game Theory and Qualitative Mutual Information

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Atiyeh Mortazavi

2016-01-01

Full Text Available High dimensionality of microarray data sets may lead to low efficiency and overfitting. In this paper, a multiphase cooperative game theoretic feature selection approach is proposed for microarray data classification. In the first phase, due to high dimension of microarray data sets, the features are reduced using one of the two filter-based feature selection methods, namely, mutual information and Fisher ratio. In the second phase, Shapley index is used to evaluate the power of each feature. The main innovation of the proposed approach is to employ Qualitative Mutual Information (QMI for this purpose. The idea of Qualitative Mutual Information causes the selected features to have more stability and this stability helps to deal with the problem of data imbalance and scarcity. In the third phase, a forward selection scheme is applied which uses a scoring function to weight each feature. The performance of the proposed method is compared with other popular feature selection algorithms such as Fisher ratio, minimum redundancy maximum relevance, and previous works on cooperative game based feature selection. The average classification accuracy on eleven microarray data sets shows that the proposed method improves both average accuracy and average stability compared to other approaches.

基于多智能体协同的角色互换策略的研究应用%Research Application Based on Strategy of Multi-Agent Cooperative Role Exchange

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

章成飞; 程泽凯; 秦锋

2013-01-01

Multi-Agent cooperative technology is an important branch in the field of Artificial Intelligence ( AI) . Robot football race pro-vides a test platform for the study of Multi-Agent cooperative technology. The football player named Agent in the robot simulation foot-ball race has both number attribute and role attribute. It makes Agent in the robot simulation football race as the research subject. Model for Agent with online coach mechanism and put forward the tactics to identify the counterparts as well as the strategy of football players'dynamic role exchange. In the underlying 2D of Agent,programming comes into effect. When one robot simulation football team tests with the other one,the winning probability is going to be raised by a big margin,which demonstrates the efficiency of this algorithm. And the algorithm can also improve attack ability of the football team.%多智能体协同技术是人工智能领域的一个重要分支。机器人足球比赛为多智能体协同技术的研究提供了一个测试平台，仿真机器人足球比赛球员Agent具有号码属性与角色属性。文中以仿真机器人足球比赛中的球员Agent为研究对象，利用在线教练机制对球员Agent进行建模，提出了对手角色识别策略以及基于多智能体协同的球员Agent动态角色互换策略。在Agent2D底层中编程实现，与某球队进行测试，胜率大大增加，结果表明了该算法的有效性，该算法可提高球队的进攻能力。

A Game Theory Approach to Multi-Agent Decentralized Energy Management of Autonomous Polygeneration Microgrids

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christos-Spyridon Karavas

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Energy management systems are essential and indispensable for the secure and optimal operation of autonomous polygeneration microgrids which include distributed energy technologies and multiple electrical loads. In this paper, a multi-agent decentralized energy management system was designed. In particular, the devices of the microgrid under study were controlled as interactive agents. The energy management problem was formulated here through the application of game theory, in order to model the set of strategies between two players/agents, as a non-cooperative power control game or a cooperative one, according to the level of the energy produced by the renewable energy sources and the energy stored in the battery bank, for the purpose of accomplishing optimal energy management and control of the microgrid operation. The Nash equilibrium was used to compromise the possible diverging goals of the agents by maximizing their preferences. The proposed energy management system was then compared with a multi-agent decentralized energy management system where all the agents were assumed to be cooperative and employed agent coordination through Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. The results obtained from this comparison, demonstrate that the application of game theory based control, in autonomous polygeneration microgrids, can ensure operational and financial benefits over known energy management approaches incorporating distributed intelligence.

Security Framework for Agent-Based Cloud Computing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K Venkateshwaran

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Agent can play a key role in bringing suitable cloud services to the customer based on their requirements. In agent based cloud computing, agent does negotiation, coordination, cooperation and collaboration on behalf of the customer to make the decisions in efficient manner. However the agent based cloud computing have some security issues like (a. addition of malicious agent in the cloud environment which could demolish the process by attacking other agents, (b. denial of service by creating flooding attacks on other involved agents. (c. Some of the exceptions in the agent interaction protocol such as Not-Understood and Cancel_Meta protocol can be misused and may lead to terminating the connection of all the other agents participating in the negotiating services. Also, this paper proposes algorithms to solve these issues to ensure that there will be no intervention of any malicious activities during the agent interaction.

Distributed Cooperative Current-Sharing Control of Parallel Chargers Using Feedback Linearization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiangang Liu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a distributed current-sharing scheme to address the output current imbalance problem for the parallel chargers in the energy storage type light rail vehicle system. By treating the parallel chargers as a group of agents with output information sharing through communication network, the current-sharing control problem is recast as the consensus tracking problem of multiagents. To facilitate the design, input-output feedback linearization is first applied to transform the nonidentical nonlinear charging system model into the first-order integrator. Then, a general saturation function is introduced to design the cooperative current-sharing control law which can guarantee the boundedness of the proposed control. The cooperative stability of the closed-loop system under fixed and dynamic communication topologies is rigorously proved with the aid of Lyapunov function and LaSalle invariant principle. Simulation using a multicharging test system further illustrates that the output currents of parallel chargers are balanced using the proposed control.

Swarm intelligence inspired shills and the evolution of cooperation

OpenAIRE

Duan, Haibin; Sun, Changhao

2014-01-01

Many hostile scenarios exist in real-life situations, where cooperation is disfavored and the collective behavior needs intervention for system efficiency improvement. Towards this end, the framework of soft control provides a powerful tool by introducing controllable agents called shills, who are allowed to follow well-designed updating rules for varying missions. Inspired by swarm intelligence emerging from flocks of birds, we explore here the dependence of the evolution of cooperation on s...

Effect of migration based on strategy and cost on the evolution of cooperation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Yan; Ye, Hang

2015-01-01

Highlights: •Propose a migration based on strategy and cost in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. •The level of cooperation without mutation is higher than that with mutation. •Increased costs have no effect on the level of cooperation without mutation. •The level of cooperation decreases with the increase in cost with mutation. •An optimal density value ρ resulting in the maximum level of cooperation exists. -- Abstract: Humans consider not only their own ability but also the environment around them during the process of migration. Based on this fact, we introduce migration based on strategy and cost into the Spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma Game on a two-dimensional grid. The migration means that agents cannot move when all of the neighbors are cooperators; otherwise, agents move with a probability related to payoff and cost. The result obtained by the computer simulation shows that the moving mechanism based on strategy and cost improves the level of cooperation in a wide parameter space. This occurs because movement based on strategy effectively keeps the cooperative clusters and because movement based on cost effectively regulates the rate of movement. Both types of movement provide a favorable guarantee for the evolution of stable cooperation under the mutation rate q = 0.0. In addition, we discuss the effectiveness of the migration mechanism in the evolution of cooperation under the mutation rate q = 0.001. The result indicates that a higher level of cooperation is obtained at a lower migration cost, whereas cooperation is suppressed at a higher migration cost. Our work may provide an effective method for understanding the emergence of cooperation in our society

Choosing the cooperative option

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

English, G. (National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (United States))

1999-06-01

Cooperatives do not ask to be exempted from the law. They do ask that laws and regulations be designed to allow them to meet the needs of their consumer-owners in accordance with cooperative principles, at a time that the marginal consumers being abandoned by for-profit utilities may be ready to gravitate toward cooperatives. The cooperative principles are worth reviewing because they explain the focus on the consumer and the cooperative concept of service: cooperatives are voluntary organizations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership; cooperatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting policies and making decisions, the elected representatives are accountable to the membership; members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their cooperative; cooperatives are autonomous, self-help organizations controlled by their members, if they enter into agreements with other organizations, including governments, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their cooperative autonomy; cooperatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their cooperatives, they inform the general public, particularly young people and opinion leaders, about the nature and benefits of cooperation; cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strength the cooperative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures; and while focusing on member needs, cooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies accepted by their members.

Internet-enabled collaborative agent-based supply chains

Science.gov (United States)

Shen, Weiming; Kremer, Rob; Norrie, Douglas H.

2000-12-01

This paper presents some results of our recent research work related to the development of a new Collaborative Agent System Architecture (CASA) and an Infrastructure for Collaborative Agent Systems (ICAS). Initially being proposed as a general architecture for Internet based collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems), the proposed architecture is very suitable for managing the Internet enabled complex supply chain for a large manufacturing enterprise. The general collaborative agent system architecture with the basic communication and cooperation services, domain independent components, prototypes and mechanisms are described. Benefits of implementing Internet enabled supply chains with the proposed infrastructure are discussed. A case study on Internet enabled supply chain management is presented.

Cooperation Is Not Enough—Exploring Social-Ecological Micro-Foundations for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use

Science.gov (United States)

Wijermans, Nanda; Schlüter, Maja; Lindahl, Therese

2016-01-01

Cooperation amongst resource users holds the key to overcoming the social dilemma that characterizes community-based common-pool resource management. But is cooperation alone enough to achieve sustainable resource use? The short answer is no. Developing management strategies in a complex social-ecological environment also requires ecological knowledge and approaches to deal with perceived environmental uncertainty. Recent behavioral experimental research indicates variation in the degree to which a group of users can identify a sustainable exploitation level. In this paper, we identify social-ecological micro-foundations that facilitate cooperative sustainable common-pool resource use. We do so by using an agent-based model (ABM) that is informed by behavioral common-pool resource experiments. In these experiments, groups that cooperate do not necessarily manage the resource sustainably, but also over- or underexploit. By reproducing the patterns of the behavioral experiments in a qualitative way, the ABM represents a social-ecological explanation for the experimental observations. We find that the ecological knowledge of each group member cannot sufficiently explain the relationship between cooperation and sustainable resource use. Instead, the development of a sustainable exploitation level depends on the distribution of ecological knowledge among the group members, their influence on each other’s knowledge, and the environmental uncertainty the individuals perceive. The study provides insights about critical social-ecological micro-foundations underpinning collective action and sustainable resource management. These insights may inform policy-making, but also point to future research needs regarding the mechanisms of social learning, the development of shared management strategies and the interplay of social and ecological uncertainty. PMID:27556175

Information driving force and its application in agent-based modeling

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Ting-Ting; Zheng, Bo; Li, Yan; Jiang, Xiong-Fei

2018-04-01

Exploring the scientific impact of online big-data has attracted much attention of researchers from different fields in recent years. Complex financial systems are typical open systems profoundly influenced by the external information. Based on the large-scale data in the public media and stock markets, we first define an information driving force, and analyze how it affects the complex financial system. The information driving force is observed to be asymmetric in the bull and bear market states. As an application, we then propose an agent-based model driven by the information driving force. Especially, all the key parameters are determined from the empirical analysis rather than from statistical fitting of the simulation results. With our model, both the stationary properties and non-stationary dynamic behaviors are simulated. Considering the mean-field effect of the external information, we also propose a few-body model to simulate the financial market in the laboratory.

An agent-based model of signal transduction in bacterial chemotaxis.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jameson Miller

2010-05-01

Full Text Available We report the application of agent-based modeling to examine the signal transduction network and receptor arrays for chemotaxis in Escherichia coli, which are responsible for regulating swimming behavior in response to environmental stimuli. Agent-based modeling is a stochastic and bottom-up approach, where individual components of the modeled system are explicitly represented, and bulk properties emerge from their movement and interactions. We present the Chemoscape model: a collection of agents representing both fixed membrane-embedded and mobile cytoplasmic proteins, each governed by a set of rules representing knowledge or hypotheses about their function. When the agents were placed in a simulated cellular space and then allowed to move and interact stochastically, the model exhibited many properties similar to the biological system including adaptation, high signal gain, and wide dynamic range. We found the agent based modeling approach to be both powerful and intuitive for testing hypotheses about biological properties such as self-assembly, the non-linear dynamics that occur through cooperative protein interactions, and non-uniform distributions of proteins in the cell. We applied the model to explore the role of receptor type, geometry and cooperativity in the signal gain and dynamic range of the chemotactic response to environmental stimuli. The model provided substantial qualitative evidence that the dynamic range of chemotactic response can be traced to both the heterogeneity of receptor types present, and the modulation of their cooperativity by their methylation state.

An agent-based model of signal transduction in bacterial chemotaxis.

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Jameson; Parker, Miles; Bourret, Robert B; Giddings, Morgan C

2010-05-13

We report the application of agent-based modeling to examine the signal transduction network and receptor arrays for chemotaxis in Escherichia coli, which are responsible for regulating swimming behavior in response to environmental stimuli. Agent-based modeling is a stochastic and bottom-up approach, where individual components of the modeled system are explicitly represented, and bulk properties emerge from their movement and interactions. We present the Chemoscape model: a collection of agents representing both fixed membrane-embedded and mobile cytoplasmic proteins, each governed by a set of rules representing knowledge or hypotheses about their function. When the agents were placed in a simulated cellular space and then allowed to move and interact stochastically, the model exhibited many properties similar to the biological system including adaptation, high signal gain, and wide dynamic range. We found the agent based modeling approach to be both powerful and intuitive for testing hypotheses about biological properties such as self-assembly, the non-linear dynamics that occur through cooperative protein interactions, and non-uniform distributions of proteins in the cell. We applied the model to explore the role of receptor type, geometry and cooperativity in the signal gain and dynamic range of the chemotactic response to environmental stimuli. The model provided substantial qualitative evidence that the dynamic range of chemotactic response can be traced to both the heterogeneity of receptor types present, and the modulation of their cooperativity by their methylation state.

Cooperative synchronized assemblies enhance orientation discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Samonds, Jason M; Allison, John D; Brown, Heather A; Bonds, A B

2004-04-27

There is no clear link between the broad tuning of single neurons and the fine behavioral capabilities of orientation discrimination. We recorded from populations of cells in the cat visual cortex (area 17) to examine whether the joint activity of cells can support finer discrimination than found in individual responses. Analysis of joint firing yields a substantial advantage (i.e., cooperation) in fine-angle discrimination. This cooperation increases to more considerable levels as the population of an assembly is increased. The cooperation in a population of six cells provides encoding of orientation with an information advantage that is at least 2-fold in terms of requiring either fewer cells or less time than independent coding. This cooperation suggests that correlated or synchronized activity can increase information.

Impact of self interaction on the evolution of cooperation in social spatial dilemmas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ding, Chenxi; Wang, Juan; Zhang, Ying

2016-01-01

Highlights: • A self interaction mechanism is integrated into two classical game models (PDG and SDG). • An additional payoff will be awarded into the cooperative agents for the payoff calculation. • Beyond the fixed interaction strength, distributed interaction strength is considered. • The collective cooperation can be drastically elevated into a higher level. - Abstract: In this paper, a new self interaction mechanism is integrated into two typical pairwise models including the prisoner’s dilemma and snowdrift games, where an additional payoff will be awarded into the cooperative agents. In the prisoner’s dilemma game, we take three types of additional payoffs into account, to be a fixed constant, a random value situated within the positive unilateral interval and a random one uniformly distributed within a bilateral interval. Large quantities of numerical simulations indicate the promotion of cooperation can be very noticeable whether in the case of von Neumann neighborhood or Moore neighborhood. In the meantime, the self interaction will also be extended into the snowdrift game in which two equilibria exist, and the outcomes clearly show that the collective cooperation is still drastically elevated into a higher level. Current results demonstrate that the self interaction might become a potential and effective means to enhance the behavior of cooperation, and be helpful for us to deeply understand the widespread persistence and emergence of cooperation within many animal and human being societies.

Co-creating value through agents interaction within service network

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Okdinawati, L.; Simatupang, T.M.; Sunitiyoso, Y.

2017-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to gives further understanding on value co-creation mechanisms in B-to-B service network by reinforcing the processes, the relationships, and influences of other agents where Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) forms might be best employed. Design/methodology/approach: In order to model the interactions among agents in the collaboration processes and the value co-creation processes, this research used three collaboration cases in Indonesia. Then, the agent-based simulation was used to capture both the collaboration process and the value co-creation process of the three collaboration cases. Findings: The interactions among the agents both inside and outside their collaboration environment determined agent’s role as a value co-creator. The willingness of an agent to accept the opinion of another agent determined the degree of their willingness to co-operate and to change their strategies, and perceptions. Therefore, influenced the size of the value obtained by them in each collaboration process. Research limitations/implications: The findings of the simulations subject to assumptions based on the collaboration cases. Further research is related to how to encourage agents to co-operate and adjust their perceptions. Practical implications: It is crucial for the practitioners to interact with another agent both inside and outside their collaboration environment. The opinions of another agent inside the collaboration environment also need to be considered. Originality/value: This research is derived from its emphasis on how a value is co-created by reinforcing both the collaborative processes and the interactions among agents as well as on how CTM might be best employed.

Co-creating value through agents interaction within service network

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Okdinawati, L.; Simatupang, T.M.; Sunitiyoso, Y.

2017-07-01

The purpose of this paper is to gives further understanding on value co-creation mechanisms in B-to-B service network by reinforcing the processes, the relationships, and influences of other agents where Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) forms might be best employed. Design/methodology/approach: In order to model the interactions among agents in the collaboration processes and the value co-creation processes, this research used three collaboration cases in Indonesia. Then, the agent-based simulation was used to capture both the collaboration process and the value co-creation process of the three collaboration cases. Findings: The interactions among the agents both inside and outside their collaboration environment determined agent’s role as a value co-creator. The willingness of an agent to accept the opinion of another agent determined the degree of their willingness to co-operate and to change their strategies, and perceptions. Therefore, influenced the size of the value obtained by them in each collaboration process. Research limitations/implications: The findings of the simulations subject to assumptions based on the collaboration cases. Further research is related to how to encourage agents to co-operate and adjust their perceptions. Practical implications: It is crucial for the practitioners to interact with another agent both inside and outside their collaboration environment. The opinions of another agent inside the collaboration environment also need to be considered. Originality/value: This research is derived from its emphasis on how a value is co-created by reinforcing both the collaborative processes and the interactions among agents as well as on how CTM might be best employed.

Researches on Agricultural Cooperative Economic Organization Promoting Agricultural Insurance Development

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

2011-01-01

The advantages of cooperative economic organization being the effective carrier of agricultural insurance development are analyzed. Firstly, cooperative economic organization promotes scale management and solves the problem of decentralized operation of small households. Secondly, cooperative economic organization can settle the problem of peasants’ low systematization. Thirdly, cooperative economic organization can largely reduce the costs of agricultural insurance operation. Fourthly, cooperative organization decreases moral risks as well as adverse selection to some extent. Lastly, cooperative organization, to a certain degree, reduces the risks of agricultural production and increases the insurability of agricultural risks. Meanwhile, limitations of agricultural cooperative economic organization being the carrier of agricultural insurance operation are pointed out. Firstly, cooperative economic organization has limited coverage and small size of organization, which is harmful to the diversification of agricultural risks. Secondly, cooperative economic organization lacks capital funds and its development is not standard, which is not perfect for the function exertion as a carrier. Lastly, members of professional cooperative organization have low cultural qualities, which restrict the implementation of agricultural insurance. The modes of farmers’ cooperative economic organization promoting agricultural insurance development are proposed, including mode of agricultural insurance cooperative ( mutual corporation), mode of "leading enterprises (companies) + professional cooperative organization (planting majors) + insurance" and mode of professional cooperatives serving as agricultural insurance agent. Last of all, the promoting role of agricultural insurance in agricultural cooperative economic organization is briefly illustrated.

Cooperative target convergence using multiple agents

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kwok, K.S.; Driessen, B.J.

1997-01-01

This work considers the problem of causing multiple (100''s) autonomous mobile robots to converge to a target and provides a follow-the-leader approach to the problem. Each robot has only a limited-range sensor for sending the target and also larger but also limited-range robot-to-robot communication capability. Because of the small amount of information available to the robots, a practical approach to improve convergence to the target is to have a robot follow the robot with the best quality of information. Specifically, each robot emits a signal that informs in-range robots what its status is. A robot has a status value of 0 if it is itself in range of the target. A robot has a status of 1 if it is not in range of the target but is in communication range of a robot that is in range of the target. A robot has a status of 2 if it is not in range of the target but is within range of another robot that has status 1, and so on. Of all the mobile robots that any given robot is in range of, it follows the one with the best status. The emergent behavior is the ant-like trails of robots following each other toward the target. If the robot is not in range of another robot that is either in range of the target or following another robot, the robot will assign-1 to its quality-of-information, and will execute an exhaustive search. The exhaustive search will continue until it encounters either the target or another robot with a nonnegative quality-of-information. The quality of information approach was extended to the case where each robot only has two-bit signals informing it of distance to in-range robots

Cooperative target convergence using multiple agents

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kwok, K.S.; Driessen, B.J.

1997-10-01

This work considers the problem of causing multiple (100`s) autonomous mobile robots to converge to a target and provides a follow-the-leader approach to the problem. Each robot has only a limited-range sensor for sending the target and also larger but also limited-range robot-to-robot communication capability. Because of the small amount of information available to the robots, a practical approach to improve convergence to the target is to have a robot follow the robot with the best quality of information. Specifically, each robot emits a signal that informs in-range robots what its status is. A robot has a status value of 0 if it is itself in range of the target. A robot has a status of 1 if it is not in range of the target but is in communication range of a robot that is in range of the target. A robot has a status of 2 if it is not in range of the target but is within range of another robot that has status 1, and so on. Of all the mobile robots that any given robot is in range of, it follows the one with the best status. The emergent behavior is the ant-like trails of robots following each other toward the target. If the robot is not in range of another robot that is either in range of the target or following another robot, the robot will assign-1 to its quality-of-information, and will execute an exhaustive search. The exhaustive search will continue until it encounters either the target or another robot with a nonnegative quality-of-information. The quality of information approach was extended to the case where each robot only has two-bit signals informing it of distance to in-range robots.

Is cooperation viable in mobile organisms? Simple Walk Away rule favors the evolution of cooperation in groups

Science.gov (United States)

Aktipis, C. Athena

2011-01-01

The evolution of cooperation through partner choice mechanisms is often thought to involve relatively complex cognitive abilities. Using agent-based simulations I model a simple partner choice rule, the ‘Walk Away’ rule, where individuals stay in groups that provide higher returns (by virtue of having more cooperators), and ‘Walk Away’ from groups providing low returns. Implementing this conditional movement rule in a public goods game leads to a number of interesting findings: 1) cooperators have a selective advantage when thresholds are high, corresponding to low tolerance for defectors, 2) high thresholds lead to high initial rates of movement and low final rates of movement (after selection), and 3) as cooperation is selected, the population undergoes a spatial transition from high migration (and a many small and ephemeral groups) to low migration (and large and stable groups). These results suggest that the very simple ‘Walk Away’ rule of leaving uncooperative groups can favor the evolution of cooperation, and that cooperation can evolve in populations in which individuals are able to move in response to local social conditions. A diverse array of organisms are able to leave degraded physical or social environments. The ubiquitous nature of conditional movement suggests that ‘Walk Away’ dynamics may play an important role in the evolution of social behavior in both cognitively complex and cognitively simple organisms. PMID:21666771

Use of Online Information Resources by RMIT University Economics, Finance, and Marketing Students Participating in a Cooperative Education Program

Science.gov (United States)

Costa, Cathy

2009-01-01

This paper examines the use of online information resources by Economics, Finance, and Marketing 3rd year students in a cooperative education program and explores some possible factors and issues that influence how students use these resources. The nature of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) programs, the business information environment, and the…

Consensus-Based Cooperative Control Based on Pollution Sensing and Traffic Information for Urban Traffic Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Artuñedo, Antonio; Del Toro, Raúl M; Haber, Rodolfo E

2017-04-26

Nowadays many studies are being conducted to develop solutions for improving the performance of urban traffic networks. One of the main challenges is the necessary cooperation among different entities such as vehicles or infrastructure systems and how to exploit the information available through networks of sensors deployed as infrastructures for smart cities. In this work an algorithm for cooperative control of urban subsystems is proposed to provide a solution for mobility problems in cities. The interconnected traffic lights controller ( TLC ) network adapts traffic lights cycles, based on traffic and air pollution sensory information, in order to improve the performance of urban traffic networks. The presence of air pollution in cities is not only caused by road traffic but there are other pollution sources that contribute to increase or decrease the pollution level. Due to the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the different components involved, a system of systems engineering approach is applied to design a consensus-based control algorithm. The designed control strategy contains a consensus-based component that uses the information shared in the network for reaching a consensus in the state of TLC network components. Discrete event systems specification is applied for modelling and simulation. The proposed solution is assessed by simulation studies with very promising results to deal with simultaneous responses to both pollution levels and traffic flows in urban traffic networks.

Consensus-Based Cooperative Control Based on Pollution Sensing and Traffic Information for Urban Traffic Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antonio Artuñedo

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Nowadays many studies are being conducted to develop solutions for improving the performance of urban traffic networks. One of the main challenges is the necessary cooperation among different entities such as vehicles or infrastructure systems and how to exploit the information available through networks of sensors deployed as infrastructures for smart cities. In this work an algorithm for cooperative control of urban subsystems is proposed to provide a solution for mobility problems in cities. The interconnected traffic lights controller (TLC network adapts traffic lights cycles, based on traffic and air pollution sensory information, in order to improve the performance of urban traffic networks. The presence of air pollution in cities is not only caused by road traffic but there are other pollution sources that contribute to increase or decrease the pollution level. Due to the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the different components involved, a system of systems engineering approach is applied to design a consensus-based control algorithm. The designed control strategy contains a consensus-based component that uses the information shared in the network for reaching a consensus in the state of TLC network components. Discrete event systems specification is applied for modelling and simulation. The proposed solution is assessed by simulation studies with very promising results to deal with simultaneous responses to both pollution levels and traffic flows in urban traffic networks.

Cooperation Is Not Enough—Exploring Social-Ecological Micro-Foundations for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use [corrected].

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caroline Schill

Full Text Available Cooperation amongst resource users holds the key to overcoming the social dilemma that characterizes community-based common-pool resource management. But is cooperation alone enough to achieve sustainable resource use? The short answer is no. Developing management strategies in a complex social-ecological environment also requires ecological knowledge and approaches to deal with perceived environmental uncertainty. Recent behavioral experimental research indicates variation in the degree to which a group of users can identify a sustainable exploitation level. In this paper, we identify social-ecological micro-foundations that facilitate cooperative sustainable common-pool resource use. We do so by using an agent-based model (ABM that is informed by behavioral common-pool resource experiments. In these experiments, groups that cooperate do not necessarily manage the resource sustainably, but also over- or underexploit. By reproducing the patterns of the behavioral experiments in a qualitative way, the ABM represents a social-ecological explanation for the experimental observations. We find that the ecological knowledge of each group member cannot sufficiently explain the relationship between cooperation and sustainable resource use. Instead, the development of a sustainable exploitation level depends on the distribution of ecological knowledge among the group members, their influence on each other's knowledge, and the environmental uncertainty the individuals perceive. The study provides insights about critical social-ecological micro-foundations underpinning collective action and sustainable resource management. These insights may inform policy-making, but also point to future research needs regarding the mechanisms of social learning, the development of shared management strategies and the interplay of social and ecological uncertainty.

Cooperation Is Not Enough—Exploring Social-Ecological Micro-Foundations for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use [corrected].

Science.gov (United States)

Schill, Caroline; Wijermans, Nanda; Schlüter, Maja; Lindahl, Therese

2016-01-01

Cooperation amongst resource users holds the key to overcoming the social dilemma that characterizes community-based common-pool resource management. But is cooperation alone enough to achieve sustainable resource use? The short answer is no. Developing management strategies in a complex social-ecological environment also requires ecological knowledge and approaches to deal with perceived environmental uncertainty. Recent behavioral experimental research indicates variation in the degree to which a group of users can identify a sustainable exploitation level. In this paper, we identify social-ecological micro-foundations that facilitate cooperative sustainable common-pool resource use. We do so by using an agent-based model (ABM) that is informed by behavioral common-pool resource experiments. In these experiments, groups that cooperate do not necessarily manage the resource sustainably, but also over- or underexploit. By reproducing the patterns of the behavioral experiments in a qualitative way, the ABM represents a social-ecological explanation for the experimental observations. We find that the ecological knowledge of each group member cannot sufficiently explain the relationship between cooperation and sustainable resource use. Instead, the development of a sustainable exploitation level depends on the distribution of ecological knowledge among the group members, their influence on each other's knowledge, and the environmental uncertainty the individuals perceive. The study provides insights about critical social-ecological micro-foundations underpinning collective action and sustainable resource management. These insights may inform policy-making, but also point to future research needs regarding the mechanisms of social learning, the development of shared management strategies and the interplay of social and ecological uncertainty.

Semiotics, Multi-Agent Systems and Organizations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gazendam, H.W.M.; Jorna, René J.

1998-01-01

Multi-agent systems are promising as models of organization because they are based on the idea that most work in human organizations is done based on intelligence, communication, cooperation, and massive parallel processing. They offer an alternative for system theories of organization, which are

Toward Agent-Based Models of the Development And Evolution of Business Relations and Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Wilkinson, Ian F.; Marks, Robert E.; Young, Louise

Firms achieve competitive advantage in part through the development of cooperative relations with other firms and organisations. We describe a program of research designed to map and model the development of cooperative inter-firm relations, including the processes and paths by which firms may evolve from adversarial to more cooperative relations. Narrative-event-history methods will be used to develop stylised histories of the emergence of business relations in various contexts and to identify relevant causal mechanisms to be included in the agent-based models of relationship and network evolution. The relationship histories will provide the means of assuring the agent-based models developed.

Forgetting constrains the emergence of cooperative decision strategies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jeffrey R. Stevens

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Theoretical studies of cooperative behavior have focused on decision strategies that depend on a partner's last choices. The findings from this work assume that players accurately remember past actions. The kind of memory that these strategies employ, however, does not reflect what we know about memory. Here, we show that human memory may not meet the requirements needed to use these strategies. When asked to recall the previous behavior of simulated partners in a cooperative memory task, participants performed poorly, making errors in 10-24% of the trials. Participants made more errors when required to track more partners. We conducted agent-based simulations to evaluate how well cooperative strategies cope with error. These simulations suggest that, even with few errors, cooperation could not be maintained at the error rates demonstrated by our participants. Our results indicate that the strategies typically used in the study of cooperation likely do not reflect the underlying cognitive capacities used by humans and other animals in social interactions. By including unrealistic assumptions about cognition, theoretical models may have overestimated the robustness of the existing cooperative strategies. To remedy this, future models should incorporate what we know about cognition.

Competing intelligent search agents in global optimization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Streltsov, S.; Vakili, P. [Boston Univ., MA (United States); Muchnik, I. [Rutgers Univ., Piscataway, NJ (United States)

1996-12-31

In this paper we present a new search methodology that we view as a development of intelligent agent approach to the analysis of complex system. The main idea is to consider search process as a competition mechanism between concurrent adaptive intelligent agents. Agents cooperate in achieving a common search goal and at the same time compete with each other for computational resources. We propose a statistical selection approach to resource allocation between agents that leads to simple and efficient on average index allocation policies. We use global optimization as the most general setting that encompasses many types of search problems, and show how proposed selection policies can be used to improve and combine various global optimization methods.

Imitating Cooperation and the Formation of long-term Relationships

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schumacher, Heiner

2013-01-01

We study the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma with the option to maintain or to quit relationships. We show that if agents imitate successful strategies infrequently, defection is not dynamically stable and cooperation emerges regardless of the initial distribution of strategies....

Stability Analysis of Cohesion Properties of Cooperative Agents with Limited Sensor Capability

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Liu, Yanfei

2003-01-01

.... Multiple robots can be designed to coordinate to accomplish certain tasks. Their cooperative behaviors resemble, to a certain extent, those of bacteria, bees and birds that work together for food in the biological world...

Social adaptation in multi-agent model of linguistic categorization is affected by network information flow.

Science.gov (United States)

Zubek, Julian; Denkiewicz, Michał; Barański, Juliusz; Wróblewski, Przemysław; Rączaszek-Leonardi, Joanna; Plewczynski, Dariusz

2017-01-01

This paper explores how information flow properties of a network affect the formation of categories shared between individuals, who are communicating through that network. Our work is based on the established multi-agent model of the emergence of linguistic categories grounded in external environment. We study how network information propagation efficiency and the direction of information flow affect categorization by performing simulations with idealized network topologies optimizing certain network centrality measures. We measure dynamic social adaptation when either network topology or environment is subject to change during the experiment, and the system has to adapt to new conditions. We find that both decentralized network topology efficient in information propagation and the presence of central authority (information flow from the center to peripheries) are beneficial for the formation of global agreement between agents. Systems with central authority cope well with network topology change, but are less robust in the case of environment change. These findings help to understand which network properties affect processes of social adaptation. They are important to inform the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of centralized systems.

A Multiagent Cooperation Model Based on Trust Rating in Dynamic Infinite Interaction Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sixia Fan

2018-01-01

Full Text Available To improve the liveness of agents and enhance trust and collaboration in multiagent system, a new cooperation model based on trust rating in dynamic infinite interaction environment (TR-DII is proposed. TR-DII model is used to control agent’s autonomy and selfishness and to make agent do the rational decision. TR-DII model is based on two important components. One is dynamic repeated interaction structure, and the other is trust rating. The dynamic repeated interaction structure is formed with multistage inviting and evaluating actions. It transforms agents’ interactions into an infinity task allocation environment, where controlled and renewable cycle is a component most agent models ignored. Additionally, it influences the expectations and behaviors of agents which may not appear in one-shot time but may appear in long-time cooperation. Moreover, with rewards and punishments mechanism (RPM, the trust rating (TR is proposed to control agent blindness in selection phase. However, RPM is the factor that directly influences decisions, not the reputation as other models have suggested. Meanwhile, TR could monitor agent’s statuses in which they could be trustworthy or untrustworthy. Also, it refines agent’s disrepute in a new way which is ignored by the others. Finally, grids puzzle experiment has been used to test TR-DII model and other five models are used as comparisons. The results show that TR-DII model can effectively adjust the trust level between agents and makes the solvers be more trustworthy and do choices that are more rational. Moreover, through interaction result feedback, TR-DII model could adjust the income function, to control cooperation reputation, and could achieve a closed-loop control.

Regional cooperation planning. Project planning for JAEA/SNL regional cooperation on remote monitoring

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Olsen, John

2006-01-01

Developing cooperation between the JAEA's NPSTC and the NNCA may take advantage of bilateral activities between those parties and SNL. The merger of JNC and JAERI has affected the schedule for JAEA/SNL cooperation. Also, the evolution of the NNCA as an independent agency has slowed the projected schedule for cooperation between the JAEA and the NNCA. A potential schedule for establishment of a quadrilateral remote monitoring system may include interim activities, securing an agreement of some type, and actual establishment of VPN links. A parallel schedule might exist for informing other regional parties and gaining their interest. (author)

A model of cooperation: the Pact op Zuid information system

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Frans Spierings

2010-06-01

Welzijnsorganisaties, onderzoekinstellingen, overheidsinstellingen en woningcorporaties zijn alle potentiële partners in stedelijke herstructureringsprogramma’s. Het combineren van de belangen van deze organisaties vormt een interessante managementuitdaging. Ook is het een uitdaging om een informatiesysteem te ontwikkelen dat tegemoet komt aan de informatiebehoefte van alle partners, zowel de afzonderlijke organisaties, als het collectief. Dit artikel zal deze uitdaging van informatiemanagement bespreken, door een case study naar cooperative knowledge production te presenteren. De case study heeft betrekking op het Rotterdamse stedelijk investeringssprogramma “Pact op Zuid”, een programma waarin tussen 2006 en 2016 1.5 miljard euro wordt geïnvesteerd in stedelijk gebied met 190.000 inwoners. Dit artikel geeft allereerst inzicht in literatuur over innovatieconfiguraties en lerende netwerken, concepten die belangrijk zijn om de complexiteit van stedelijke renovatie en cooperative knowledge production te begrijpen. Het bespreekt eveneens hoe cooperative knowledge production binnen Pact op Zuid plaatsvond.

Incorporating the information from direct and indirect neighbors into fitness evaluation enhances the cooperation in the social dilemmas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hu, Menglong; Wang, Juan; Kong, Lingcong; An, Kang; Bi, Tao; Guo, Baohong; Dong, Enzeng

2015-01-01

Highlights: •A novel fitness evaluation method integrating environmental information is presented. •The introduction of neighbors’ payoff favors the promotion of cooperation in the PDG. •The role of direct neighbors becomes much more prominent. •In the SDG, the cooperative behavior is also improved by this new mechanism. -- Abstract: We propose an improved fitness evaluation method to investigate the evolution of cooperation in the spatial social dilemmas. In our model, a focal player’s fitness is calculated as the linear combination of his own payoff, the average payoffs of direct and indirect neighbors in which two independent selection parameters (α and β) are used to control the proportion of various payoff contribution to the current fitness. Then, the fitness-based strategy update rule is still Fermi-like, and asynchronous update is adopted here. A large plethora of numerical simulations are performed to validate the behaviors of the current model, and the results unambiguously demonstrate that the cooperation level is greatly enhanced by introducing the payoffs from the surrounding players. In particular, the influence of direct neighbors become more evident when compared with indirect neighbors since the correlation between focal players and their direct neighbors is much closer. Current outcomes are significant for us to further illustrate the origin and emergence of cooperation within a wide variety of natural and man-made systems

Development of internet-based cooperative system for integrity evaluation of reactor pressure vessel

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jong Choon; Choi, Jae Boong; Kim, Young Jin; Choi, Young Hwan

2004-01-01

Since early 1950s fracture mechanics has brought significant impact on structural integrity assessment in a wide range of industries such as power, transportation, civil and petrochemical industries, especially in nuclear power plant industries. For the last two decades, significant efforts have been devoted in developing defect assessment procedures, from which various fitness-for-purpose or fitness-for-service codes have been developed. From another aspect, recent advances in IT (Information Technologies) bring rapid changes in various engineering fields. IT enables people to share information through network and thus provides concurrent working environment without limitations of working places. For this reason, a network system based on internet or intranet bas been appeared in various fields of business. Evaluating the integrity of structures is one of the most critical issues in nuclear industry. In order to evaluate the integrity of structures, a complicated and collaborative procedure is required including regular in-service inspection, fracture mechanics analysis, etc. And thus, experts in different fields have to cooperate to resolve the integrity problem. In this paper, an internet-based cooperative system for integrity evaluation system which adapts IT into a structural integrity evaluation procedure for reactor pressure vessel is introduced. The proposed system uses Virtual Reality (VR) technique, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and agent programs. This system is able to support 3-dimensional virtual reality environment and to provide experts to cooperate by accessing related data through internet

Pressure to cooperate: is positive reward interdependence really needed in cooperative learning?

Science.gov (United States)

Buchs, Céline; Gilles, Ingrid; Dutrévis, Marion; Butera, Fabrizio

2011-03-01

BACKGROUND. Despite extensive research on cooperative learning, the debate regarding whether or not its effectiveness depends on positive reward interdependence has not yet found clear evidence. AIMS. We tested the hypothesis that positive reward interdependence, as compared to reward independence, enhances cooperative learning only if learners work on a 'routine task'; if the learners work on a 'true group task', positive reward interdependence induces the same level of learning as reward independence. SAMPLE. The study involved 62 psychology students during regular workshops. METHOD. Students worked on two psychology texts in cooperative dyads for three sessions. The type of task was manipulated through resource interdependence: students worked on either identical (routine task) or complementary (true group task) information. Students expected to be assessed with a Multiple Choice Test (MCT) on the two texts. The MCT assessment type was introduced according to two reward interdependence conditions, either individual (reward independence) or common (positive reward interdependence). A follow-up individual test took place 4 weeks after the third session of dyadic work to examine individual learning. RESULTS. The predicted interaction between the two types of interdependence was significant, indicating that students learned more with positive reward interdependence than with reward independence when they worked on identical information (routine task), whereas students who worked on complementary information (group task) learned the same with or without reward interdependence. CONCLUSIONS. This experiment sheds light on the conditions under which positive reward interdependence enhances cooperative learning, and suggests that creating a real group task allows to avoid the need for positive reward interdependence. © 2010 The British Psychological Society.

The Application of Intentional Subjective Properties and Mediated Communication Tools to Software Agents in Online Disputes Resolution Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Renzo Gobbin

2004-11-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the use of subjective properties in modeling an architecture for cooperative agents using Agent Communication Language (ACL that is used as a mediating tool for cooperative communication activities between and within software agents. The role that subjective and objective properties have in explaining and modeling agent internalization and externalization of ACL messages is investigated and related to Vygotsky’s developmental learning theories such as Mediated Activity Theory. A novel agent architecture ALMA (Agent Language Mediated Activity based on the integration of agents’ subjective and objective properties within an agent communication activity framework will be presented. The relevance of software agents subjective properties in modeling applications such as e-Law Online Dispute Resolution for e-business contractual arrangements using natural language subject/object relation in their communication patterns will be discussed.

Short-range mobility and the evolution of cooperation: an experimental study.

Science.gov (United States)

Antonioni, Alberto; Tomassini, Marco; Sánchez, Angel

2015-05-20

A pressing issue in biology and social sciences is to explain how cooperation emerges in a population of self-interested individuals. Theoretical models suggest that one such explanation may involve the possibility of changing one's neighborhood by removing and creating connections to others, but this hypothesis has problems when random motion is considered and lacks experimental support. To address this, we have carried out experiments on diluted grids with human subjects playing a Prisoner's Dilemma. In contrast to previous results on purposeful rewiring in relational networks, we have found no noticeable effect of mobility in space on the level of cooperation. Clusters of cooperators form momentarily but in a few rounds they dissolve as cooperators at the boundaries stop tolerating being cheated upon. Our results highlight the difficulties that mobile agents have to establish a cooperative environment in a spatial setting.

International cooperation workshop. Regional workshop for CTBTO international cooperation: Africa

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1999-08-01

Pursuant to the 1999 programme of work, and following the International Cooperation Workshop held in Vienna, Austria, in 1998, the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) of the Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO (Prep Com) held a regional Workshop for CTBTO International Cooperation in Cairo. The purpose of the workshop was to identify how and by what means the Africa region can promote international cooperation in CTBT verification related technologies, and how the region can benefit from and contribute to Prep Com activity. PTS staff briefed the 40 participants from 22 African States who attended the Workshop on general aspects, including costs, of the establishment and operation of the CTBT verification system, including its four monitoring technologies. Participants were informed on opportunities for local institutions in the establishment of monitoring stations and on possible support for national and regional data centres. National experts presented their research and development activities and reviewed existing experiences on bi/multi-lateral cooperation. The main points of the discussion focused on the need to engage governments to advance signature/ratification, and further training opportunities for African states

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative: Multidisciplinary data management from the ground up

Science.gov (United States)

Showalter, L. M.; Gibeaut, J. C.

2015-12-01

As more journals and funding organizations require data to be made available, more and more scientists are being exposed to the world of data science, metadata development, and data standards so they can ensure future funding and publishing success. The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) is the vehicle by which the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GOMRI) is making all data collected in this program publically available. This varied group of researchers all have different levels of experience with data management standards and protocols, thus GRIIDC has evolved to embrace the cooperative nature of our work and develop a number of tools and training materials to help ensure data managers and researchers in the GoMRI program are submitting high quality data and metadata that will be useful for years to come. GRIIDC began with a group of 8 data managers many of which had only ever managed their own data, who were then expected to manage the data of a large group of geographically distant researchers. As the program continued to evolve these data managers worked with the GRIIDC team to help identify and develop much needed resources for training and communication for themselves and the scientists they represented. This essential cooperation has developed a team of highly motivated scientists, computer programmers and data scientists who are working to ensure a data and information legacy that promotes continual scientific discovery and public awareness of the Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem and beyond.

Thirty-five years of successful international cooperation in nuclear knowledge preservation: The International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Atieh, T.; Workman, R.

2006-01-01

This paper describes the operations and main activities of the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), which was established 35 years ago as the international mechanism for exchanging information in the fields of peaceful uses of nuclear sciences and technology. It outlines the system's main features, users and products. International cooperation and decentralisation are the distinguishing features of this system. INIS produces, maintains and preserves Member States knowledge in these fields. The system has been instrumental in supporting national nuclear programmes, and thousands of scientists, researchers and universities students are using INIS products to retrieve current and historical nuclear information. (author)

Support for cooperative control and maintenance operation in advanced nuclear power plant from generalized and intuitive viewpoints

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Numano, Masayoshi; Niwa, Yasuyuki; Miyazaki, Keiko; Fukuto, Junji; Tanaka, Kunihiko; Okazaki, Tadatsugi; Itoh, Hiroko; Matsuoka, Takeshi

2002-01-01

To keep safety and effectiveness in control and maintenance operations of large and complex plants like nuclear power plants, cooperative operation among human and machine agents is proposed. The concept is that the cooperation augments human capability as an individual by closely related team members with adequate interfaces. This paper describes a basic concept of the cooperation, necessary interface functions, infrastructure of the cooperation and communication logging for accumulation and sharing of knowledge. (author)

Multi-agent based distributed control architecture for microgrid energy management and optimization

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Basir Khan, M. Reyasudin; Jidin, Razali; Pasupuleti, Jagadeesh

2016-01-01

Highlights: • A new multi-agent based distributed control architecture for energy management. • Multi-agent coordination based on non-cooperative game theory. • A microgrid model comprised of renewable energy generation systems. • Performance comparison of distributed with conventional centralized control. - Abstract: Most energy management systems are based on a centralized controller that is difficult to satisfy criteria such as fault tolerance and adaptability. Therefore, a new multi-agent based distributed energy management system architecture is proposed in this paper. The distributed generation system is composed of several distributed energy resources and a group of loads. A multi-agent system based decentralized control architecture was developed in order to provide control for the complex energy management of the distributed generation system. Then, non-cooperative game theory was used for the multi-agent coordination in the system. The distributed generation system was assessed by simulation under renewable resource fluctuations, seasonal load demand and grid disturbances. The simulation results show that the implementation of the new energy management system proved to provide more robust and high performance controls than conventional centralized energy management systems.

Exposure to superfluous information reduces cooperation and increases antisocial punishment in reputation-based interactions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miguel edos Santos

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Human cooperation is often based on reputation gained from previous interactions with third parties. Such reputation can be built on generous or punitive actions, and both, one’s own reputation and the reputation of others have been shown to influence decision making in experimental games that control for confounding variables. Here we test how reputation-based cooperation and punishment react to disruption of the cognitive processing in different kinds of helping games with observers. Saying a few superfluous words before each interaction was used to possibly interfere with working memory. In a first set of experiments, where reputation could only be based on generosity, the disruption reduced the frequency of cooperation and lowered mean final payoffs. In a second set of experiments where reputation could only be based on punishment, the disruption increased the frequency of antisocial punishment (i.e. of punishing those who helped and reduced the frequency of punishing defectors. Our findings suggest that working memory can easily be constraining in reputation-based interactions within experimental games, even if these games are based on a few simple rules with a visual display that provides all the information the subjects need to play the strategies predicted from current theory. Our findings also highlight a weakness of experimental games, namely that they can be very sensitive to environmental variation and that quantitative conclusions about antisocial punishment or other behavioral strategies can easily be misleading.

Evidence for strategic cooperation in humans.

Science.gov (United States)

Burton-Chellew, Maxwell N; El Mouden, Claire; West, Stuart A

2017-06-14

Humans may cooperate strategically, cooperating at higher levels than expected from their short-term interests, to try and stimulate others to cooperate. To test this hypothesis, we experimentally manipulated the extent an individual's behaviour is known to others, and hence whether or not strategic cooperation is possible. In contrast with many previous studies, we avoided confounding factors by preventing individuals from learning during the game about either pay-offs or about how other individuals behave. We found clear evidence for strategic cooperators-just telling some individuals that their groupmates would be informed about their behaviour led to them tripling their initial level of cooperation, from 17 to 50%. We also found that many individuals play as if they do not understand the game, and their presence obscures the detection of strategic cooperation. Identifying such players allowed us to detect and study strategic motives for cooperation in novel, more powerful, ways. © 2017 The Author(s).

Cooperation and Coordination in an International Intervention: The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Kosovo

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anne Holohan

2003-01-01

Full Text Available In international interventions that encompass peacekeeping, democratic transition, and institution building, oneorganization cannot do it all. In Kosovo several organizations—the United Nations (UN, nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, the militaries (KFOR, andan international police force—formed a temporary network organization, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo(UNMIK, in which they worked together cooperatively at every level to pursue the goals of the mission. Thisresearch, based on ªeldwork in Kosovo with all the organizations in UNMIK, investigates how well the use ofinformation and communications technologies (ICTs reºected the organizational structure and design of themission. What does this experience tell us about the use of ICTs in an interorganizational setting? What does it tellus about information transfer and knowledge sharing in a temporary network organization that comprisesorganizations of diverse structure and culture? The information and communication infrastructure of UNMIK isexamined to discover how well it met the organizational requirements of both the participating hierarchies in themission and the emerging network organization. The question in Kosovo was whether the introduction and use ofnew technologies helped the organizations move from a hierarchical structure and culture to a more collaborativeone.

Profit allocation among rational players in a cooperative game under ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

research was carried out in two ways on dynamic coalition formation. .... see in a cooperative business that if an agent participates with low quality product then .... solve this question we further need to develop the theory by some definitions.

Agent-Oriented Privacy-Based Information Brokering Architecture for Healthcare Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdulmutalib Masaud-Wahaishi

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Healthcare industry is facing a major reform at all levels—locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Healthcare services and systems become very complex and comprise of a vast number of components (software systems, doctors, patients, etc. that are characterized by shared, distributed and heterogeneous information sources with varieties of clinical and other settings. The challenge now faced with decision making, and management of care is to operate effectively in order to meet the information needs of healthcare personnel. Currently, researchers, developers, and systems engineers are working toward achieving better efficiency and quality of service in various sectors of healthcare, such as hospital management, patient care, and treatment. This paper presents a novel information brokering architecture that supports privacy-based information gathering in healthcare. Architecturally, the brokering is viewed as a layer of services where a brokering service is modeled as an agent with a specific architecture and interaction protocol that are appropriate to serve various requests. Within the context of brokering, we model privacy in terms of the entities ability to hide or reveal information related to its identities, requests, and/or capabilities. A prototype of the proposed architecture has been implemented to support information-gathering capabilities in healthcare environments using FIPA-complaint platform JADE.

Agent-oriented privacy-based information brokering architecture for healthcare environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Masaud-Wahaishi, Abdulmutalib; Ghenniwa, Hamada

2009-01-01

Healthcare industry is facing a major reform at all levels-locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Healthcare services and systems become very complex and comprise of a vast number of components (software systems, doctors, patients, etc.) that are characterized by shared, distributed and heterogeneous information sources with varieties of clinical and other settings. The challenge now faced with decision making, and management of care is to operate effectively in order to meet the information needs of healthcare personnel. Currently, researchers, developers, and systems engineers are working toward achieving better efficiency and quality of service in various sectors of healthcare, such as hospital management, patient care, and treatment. This paper presents a novel information brokering architecture that supports privacy-based information gathering in healthcare. Architecturally, the brokering is viewed as a layer of services where a brokering service is modeled as an agent with a specific architecture and interaction protocol that are appropriate to serve various requests. Within the context of brokering, we model privacy in terms of the entities ability to hide or reveal information related to its identities, requests, and/or capabilities. A prototype of the proposed architecture has been implemented to support information-gathering capabilities in healthcare environments using FIPA-complaint platform JADE.

An Integrated Information Retrieval Support System for Campus Network

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2006-01-01

This paper presents a new integrated information retrieval support system (IIRSS) which can help Web search engines retrieve cross-lingual information from heterogeneous resources stored in multi-databases in Intranet. The IIRSS, with a three-layer architecture, can cooperate with other application servers running in Intranet. By using intelligent agents to collect information and to create indexes on-the-fly, using an access control strategy to confine a user to browsing those accessible documents for him/her through a single portal, and using a new cross-lingual translation tool to help the search engine retrieve documents, the new system provides controllable information access with different authorizations, personalized services, and real-time information retrieval.

76 FR 62312 - Multi-Agency Informational Meeting Concerning Compliance With the Federal Select Agent Program...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-10-07

... interested individuals to obtain specific regulatory guidance and information on standards concerning biosafety and biosecurity issues related to the Federal Select Agent Program. CDC, APHIS, and CJIS...

Modelling financial markets with agents competing on different time scales and with different amount of information

Science.gov (United States)

Wohlmuth, Johannes; Andersen, Jørgen Vitting

2006-05-01

We use agent-based models to study the competition among investors who use trading strategies with different amount of information and with different time scales. We find that mixing agents that trade on the same time scale but with different amount of information has a stabilizing impact on the large and extreme fluctuations of the market. Traders with the most information are found to be more likely to arbitrage traders who use less information in the decision making. On the other hand, introducing investors who act on two different time scales has a destabilizing effect on the large and extreme price movements, increasing the volatility of the market. Closeness in time scale used in the decision making is found to facilitate the creation of local trends. The larger the overlap in commonly shared information the more the traders in a mixed system with different time scales are found to profit from the presence of traders acting at another time scale than themselves.

Progress of international cooperation of nuclear power generation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sasaki, Sadaaki; Ishikawa, Hidetaka; Eda, Hisao; Noda, Hiroshi; Kobayashi, Ichiro; Kawahara, Akira; Nagano, Akira

1999-01-01

International cooperation on nuclear power technology under promotion of the Japan Electric Power Information Center can be divided roughly to two items: one is an assistant project of Japan Keirin Association and another is an international training of operation management and so forth on nuclear power plant trusted by Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Among upgrading needs of technical cooperation on nuclear power to the developing nations, the electric companies were received a request on private cooperation by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In 1985, it was decided that the nuclear power technical cooperation through an subsidy project of the Japan Keirin Association was advanced mainly by every electric companies as a window of the Japan Electric Power Information Center in Japan Electric Industry Association. And, by receiving another request, the Japan Electric Power Information Center began an international training on operation management and so one of the nuclear power plant since October, 1992. Here were introduced outlines of both technical cooperation on nuclear power and international training on operation management. (G.K.)

Self-organization in a simple model of adaptive agents playing 2 x 2 games with arbitrary payoff matrices.

Science.gov (United States)

Fort, H; Viola, S

2004-03-01

We analyze, both analytically and numerically, the self-organization of a system of "selfish" adaptive agents playing an arbitrary iterated pairwise game (defined by a 2 x 2 payoff matrix). Examples of possible games to play are the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game, the chicken game, the hero game, etc. The agents have no memory, use strategies not based on direct reciprocity nor "tags" and are chosen at random, i.e., geographical vicinity is neglected. They can play two possible strategies: cooperate (C) or defect (D). The players measure their success by comparing their utilities with an estimate for the expected benefits and update their strategy following a simple rule. Two versions of the model are studied: (1) the deterministic version (the agents are either in definite states C or D) and (2) the stochastic version (the agents have a probability c of playing C). Using a general master equation we compute the equilibrium states into which the system self-organizes, characterized by their average probability of cooperation c(eq). Depending on the payoff matrix, we show that c(eq) can take five different values. We also consider the mixing of agents using two different payoff matrices and show that any value of c(eq) can be reached by tuning the proportions of agents using each payoff matrix. In particular, this can be used as a way to simulate the effect of a fraction d of "antisocial" individuals--incapable of realizing any value to cooperation--on the cooperative regime hold by a population of neutral or "normal" agents.

76 FR 39901 - Notice Pursuant to the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993-Cooperative...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-07-07

... Production Act of 1993--Cooperative Research Group on Development of a Predictive Model for Corrosion-Fatigue...(a) of the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, 15 U.S.C. 4301 et seq. (``the... applicability and robustness, it will be (1) Based on scientific principles, (2) informed by fundamental...

Cooperation under indirect reciprocity and imitative trust.

Science.gov (United States)

Saavedra, Serguei; Smith, David; Reed-Tsochas, Felix

2010-10-27

Indirect reciprocity, a key concept in behavioral experiments and evolutionary game theory, provides a mechanism that allows reciprocal altruism to emerge in a population of self-regarding individuals even when repeated interactions between pairs of actors are unlikely. Recent empirical evidence show that humans typically follow complex assessment strategies involving both reciprocity and social imitation when making cooperative decisions. However, currently, we have no systematic understanding of how imitation, a mechanism that may also generate negative effects via a process of cumulative advantage, affects cooperation when repeated interactions are unlikely or information about a recipient's reputation is unavailable. Here we extend existing evolutionary models, which use an image score for reputation to track how individuals cooperate by contributing resources, by introducing a new imitative-trust score, which tracks whether actors have been the recipients of cooperation in the past. We show that imitative trust can co-exist with indirect reciprocity mechanisms up to a threshold and then cooperation reverses -revealing the elusive nature of cooperation. Moreover, we find that when information about a recipient's reputation is limited, trusting the action of third parties towards her (i.e. imitating) does favor a higher collective cooperation compared to random-trusting and share-alike mechanisms. We believe these results shed new light on the factors favoring social imitation as an adaptive mechanism in populations of cooperating social actors.

Cooperation under indirect reciprocity and imitative trust.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Serguei Saavedra

Full Text Available Indirect reciprocity, a key concept in behavioral experiments and evolutionary game theory, provides a mechanism that allows reciprocal altruism to emerge in a population of self-regarding individuals even when repeated interactions between pairs of actors are unlikely. Recent empirical evidence show that humans typically follow complex assessment strategies involving both reciprocity and social imitation when making cooperative decisions. However, currently, we have no systematic understanding of how imitation, a mechanism that may also generate negative effects via a process of cumulative advantage, affects cooperation when repeated interactions are unlikely or information about a recipient's reputation is unavailable. Here we extend existing evolutionary models, which use an image score for reputation to track how individuals cooperate by contributing resources, by introducing a new imitative-trust score, which tracks whether actors have been the recipients of cooperation in the past. We show that imitative trust can co-exist with indirect reciprocity mechanisms up to a threshold and then cooperation reverses -revealing the elusive nature of cooperation. Moreover, we find that when information about a recipient's reputation is limited, trusting the action of third parties towards her (i.e. imitating does favor a higher collective cooperation compared to random-trusting and share-alike mechanisms. We believe these results shed new light on the factors favoring social imitation as an adaptive mechanism in populations of cooperating social actors.

Evolution of cooperation in Axelrod tournament using cellular automata

Science.gov (United States)

Schimit, P. H. T.; Santos, B. O.; Soares, C. A.

2015-11-01

Results of the Axelrod Tournament were published in 1981, and since then, evolutionary game theory emerged as an idea for understanding relations, like conflict and cooperation, between rational decision-makers. Robert Axelrod organized it as a round-robin tournament where strategies for iterated Prisoner's Dilemma were faced in a sequence of two players game. Here, we attempt to simulate the strategies submitted to the tournament in a multi-agent context, where individuals play a two-player game with their neighbors. Each individual has one of the strategies, and it plays the Prisoner's Dilemma with its neighbors. According to actions chosen (cooperate or defect), points of life are subtracted from their profiles. When an individual dies, some fitness functions are defined to choose the most successful strategy which the new individual will copy. Although tit-for-tat was the best strategy, on average, in the tournament, in our evolutionary multi-agent context, it has not been successful.

77 FR 56845 - Multi-Agency Informational Meeting Concerning Compliance With the Federal Select Agent Program...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-09-14

... regulatory guidance and information on standards concerning biosafety, biosecurity and incident response... Laboratory Registration for Possession, Use, and Transfer of Select Agents and Toxins (APHIS/CDC Form 1...

How the indirect reciprocity with co-evolving norm and strategy for 2 × 2 prisoner's dilemma game works for emerging cooperation

Science.gov (United States)

Tanimoto, Jun; Sagara, Hirokji

2015-11-01

We built a new indirect reciprocity model based on binary image scores, where an agent's strategy and norm co-evolve. The norm, meaning what behavior is evaluated as "good" or "bad," stipulates how image scores of two agents playing a game is altered, which has been presumed to be a fixed value in most previous studies. Also, unlike former studies, our model allows an agent to play with an agent who has a different norm. This point of relaxing the freedom of the model pulls down cooperation level vis-à-vis the case where an agent always plays with another one having same norm. However, it is observed that a rather larger dilemma shows robust cooperation establishing compared with a smaller dilemma, since a norm that punishes a so-called second-order free-rider is prompted. To encourage the evolution of norms to be able to punish second-order free-riders, a society needs a small number of defectors. This is elucidated by the fact that cases with action error are more cooperative than those without action error.

MA-IS: Design of Information System in a Multi-Agents Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roberto Paiano

2009-08-01

Full Text Available The complexity of the information systems has recently had a remarkable increase, mostly thanks to the enormous impact that it has had in the multi-agent system (MAS area; hence the need to integrate two systems and obtain an IS that takes advantage of the potentialities of the MAS. To this purpose, a methodology to analyze and design a multi-agent system is needed. In order to define such a methodology, which should take into account all the aspects of the MAS, first we need to establish not only a conceptual model of the system but also a communication level model. In this paper we propose the use of DDS framework for the communication level and the use of the BWW ontology for representation and design of the domain knowledge base. The idea of the above-mentioned methodology was conceived in the SISTDE project, which uses the ontology for the description of the domain, so as to provide the agents with a knowledge base that concurs to define their behaviour according to external events. In addition to this, the experience we have matured in the IS modelling using the BWW ontology is a key-point of our approach.

Audio-Visual Aids for Cooperative Education and Training.

Science.gov (United States)

Botham, C. N.

Within the context of cooperative education, audiovisual aids may be used for spreading the idea of cooperatives and helping to consolidate study groups; for the continuous process of education, both formal and informal, within the cooperative movement; for constant follow up purposes; and for promoting loyalty to the movement. Detailed…

Network public goods with asymmetric information about cooperation preferences and network degree

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, Jacob; van Assen, Marcus

2013-01-01

We propose a game theoretical model of one-shot network public goods formalizing the 'closure argument' that cooperation is more frequent in denser groups or networks. Equilibrium analyses show that (i) an 'inefficiency problem' exists: players all preferring mutual cooperation need not all

Emergence of heterogeneity and political organization in information exchange networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Guttenberg, Nicholas; Goldenfeld, Nigel

2010-04-01

We present a simple model of the emergence of the division of labor and the development of a system of resource subsidy from an agent-based model of directed resource production with variable degrees of trust between the agents. The model has three distinct phases corresponding to different forms of societal organization: disconnected (independent agents), homogeneous cooperative (collective state), and inhomogeneous cooperative (collective state with a leader). Our results indicate that such levels of organization arise generically as a collective effect from interacting agent dynamics and may have applications in a variety of systems including social insects and microbial communities.

Cooperation and Phase Separation Driven by a Coevolving Snowdrift Game

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Du Peng; Xu Chen; Zhang Wen

2015-01-01

We investigate the cooperative behavior and the phase separation in a coevolving system. Agents in the system constructed by a regular random network initially play the snowdrift game with their neighbors. They try to obtain a better competing environment by imitating a neighbor's more successful strategy or cutting the connection to a defective neighbor and randomly rewiring to another agent so as to seek a better neighborhood. The dynamic process of strategy imitation and relationship among agents due to rewiring neighbors may drive the system into different states. The simulation results show that there are three different phases in the q-r plane, where q is the rewiring probability and r is the cost-to-benefit ratio. One is a static phase of a pure cooperative cluster with a few isolated defectors. The other two belong to active phases with one of a main mixed-strategy cluster and the other of a pure defective state. We find that a simple mean field theory can predict correctly the static phase and the active phase of the main mixed-strategy cluster. The theoretical boundary line between the two phases is in good agreement with the simulation result. (paper)

I Reach Faster When I See You Look: Gaze Effects in Human-Human and Human-Robot Face-to-Face Cooperation.

Science.gov (United States)

Boucher, Jean-David; Pattacini, Ugo; Lelong, Amelie; Bailly, Gerrard; Elisei, Frederic; Fagel, Sascha; Dominey, Peter Ford; Ventre-Dominey, Jocelyne

2012-01-01

Human-human interaction in natural environments relies on a variety of perceptual cues. Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly refined in their sensorimotor capabilities, and thus should now be able to manipulate and exploit these social cues in cooperation with their human partners. Previous studies have demonstrated that people follow human and robot gaze, and that it can help them to cope with spatially ambiguous language. Our goal is to extend these findings into the domain of action, to determine how human and robot gaze can influence the speed and accuracy of human action. We report on results from a human-human cooperation experiment demonstrating that an agent's vision of her/his partner's gaze can significantly improve that agent's performance in a cooperative task. We then implement a heuristic capability to generate such gaze cues by a humanoid robot that engages in the same cooperative interaction. The subsequent human-robot experiments demonstrate that a human agent can indeed exploit the predictive gaze of their robot partner in a cooperative task. This allows us to render the humanoid robot more human-like in its ability to communicate with humans. The long term objectives of the work are thus to identify social cooperation cues, and to validate their pertinence through implementation in a cooperative robot. The current research provides the robot with the capability to produce appropriate speech and gaze cues in the context of human-robot cooperation tasks. Gaze is manipulated in three conditions: Full gaze (coordinated eye and head), eyes hidden with sunglasses, and head fixed. We demonstrate the pertinence of these cues in terms of statistical measures of action times for humans in the context of a cooperative task, as gaze significantly facilitates cooperation as measured by human response times.

Study on a cooperative active sensing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tsukune, Hideo; Kita, Nobuyuki; Kuniyoshi, Yasuo; Hara, Isao; Matsui, Toshihiro; Matsushita, Toshio; Nagata, Kazuyuki; Nagakubo, Akihiko

1997-01-01

This study was made as a part of the research project ''Study on the evaluation of applicability of information collection·processing system to autonomous plant''. Previously, the basic techniques for 3-dimensional geometric modeling of working environments and for systemizing of information collection and processing have been developed. Thus, this study aimed to establish the techniques for a decentralized and cooperatively intellectualized system which allows to automatically perform patrol for inspection and maintenance in complicated plants. First, developments of cooperative active sensing for functioning in a multi-robot system and real-time active visual sensing were attempted and then the both were integrated to produce a prototype system for cooperative active sensing. The outcomes of the project in this year were as follows; a mobile platform with expanded functions, acoustic information processing, parallel EusLisp, a simulator for moving robot's behaviors, a visual monitoring system for moving objects, etc. All of these were usable for general purpose. (M.N.)

Establishment of International Cooperative Network and Cooperative Research Strategy Between Korea and USA on Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Baek, Won Pil; Song, Chul Hwa; Jeong, Jae Jun; Choi, Ki Yong; Kang, Kyoung Ho

2004-07-01

1. Scope and Objectives of the Project - Successful holding of the NURETH-10 - Analysis of the international trends in technology development and applications for nuclear thermal-hydraulics - Establishment of the international cooperative network and cooperative research strategy between Korea and USA on nuclear thermal-hydraulics 2. Research Results - Successful holding of the NURETH-10 - Analysis of the international trends in technology development and applications for nuclear thermal-hydraulics: - Establishment of international cooperative network and cooperative research strategy focused between Korea and USA on nuclear thermal-hydraulics: 3. Application Plan of the Research Results - Utilization as the basic data/information in establishing the domestic R and D directions and the international cooperative research strategy, - Application of the relevant experiences and data bases of NURETH-10 for holding future international conferences, - Promote more effective and productive research cooperation between Korea and USA

Avatars and virtual agents - relationship interfaces for the elderly.

Science.gov (United States)

Shaked, Nava A

2017-06-01

In the Digital Era, the authors witness a change in the relationship between the patient and the care-giver or Health Maintenance Organization's providing the health services. Another fact is the use of various technologies to increase the effectiveness and quality of health services across all primary and secondary users. These technologies range from telemedicine systems, decision making tools, online and self-services applications and virtual agents; all providing information and assistance. The common thread between all these digital implementations, is they all require human machine interfaces. These interfaces must be interactive, user friendly and inviting, to create user involvement and cooperation incentives. The challenge is to design interfaces which will best fit the target users and enable smooth interaction especially, for the elderly users. Avatars and Virtual Agents are one of the interfaces used for both home care monitoring and companionship. They are also inherently multimodal in nature and allow an intimate relation between the elderly users and the Avatar. This study discusses the need and nature of these relationship models, the challenges of designing for the elderly. The study proposes key features for the design and evaluation in the area of assistive applications using Avatar and Virtual agents for the elderly users.

Passive solar energy information user study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Belew, W.W.; Wood, B.L.; Marle, T.L.; Reinhardt, C.L.

1980-11-01

The results of a series of telephone interviews with groups of users of information on passive solar heating and cooling are described. These results, part of a larger study on many different solar technologies, identify types of information each group needed and the best ways to get information to each group. The overall study provides baseline data about information needs in the solar community. An earlier study identified the information user groups in the solar community and the priority (to accelerate solar energy commercialization) of getting information to each group. In the current study only high-priority groups were examined. Results from seven passive groups respondents are analyzed in this report: Federally Funded Researchers, Manufacturer Representatives, Architects, Builders, Educators, Cooperative Extension Service County Agents, and Homeowners. The data will be used as input to the determination of information products and services the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Solar Energy Information Data Bank Network, and the entire information outreach community should be preparing and disseminating.

International cooperation in nuclear safety

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rosen, M.

1991-01-01

The mechanisms of international co-operations, co-ordinated by International Atomic Energy Agency, are presented. These co-operations are related to international safety standards, to the safety of the four hundred existing reactors in operation, to quick help and information in case of emergency, and to the already valid international conventions. The relation between atomic energy and environmental protection is also discussed briefly. (K.A.)

Agent based energy management systems

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wolter, Martin

2012-07-01

In liberalized, regulated energy markets, the different participants - namely producers and consumers of energy, transmission and distribution system operators as well as regulatory authorities - have partly divergent and partly convergent interests. Loads, power plants and grid operators try to maximize their own benefit in this highly complex environment accepting to act detrimentally to others. Although the relationship between the participants is mostly competitive, there are some fundamental shared interests, e.g. voltage stability, a constant system frequency or efficient energy production, transmission and distribution, which are endangered e.g. by increased injection of volatile sources in low and medium voltage grids, displacement of stabilizing bulk generation and the slowly progressing extension of the electric grid. There is a global consensus, that the resulting challenges can efficiently be faced using information and communication technologies to coordinate grid utilization and operation. The basic idea is to benefit from unused reserves by participating in deployment of system services e.g. reactive power supply to keep the voltage within certain bounds. The coordination can best be done by the grid operator. All activities of that kind are summarized under the umbrella term ''Smart Grid''. To simultaneously model the behavior and interests of different types of market participants and their convergent and divergent interests, multi-agent systems are used. They offer a perfectly fitting framework for this sort of game theory and can easily be adapted to all kinds of new challenges of electricity markets. In this work, multi-agent systems are used to either cooperatively or competitively solve problems in distribution and transmission systems. Therefore, conventional algorithms have to be modified to converge into multiple local optima using only small pieces of the entire system information. It is clearly stated, that personal

Applying Science: opportunities to inform disease management policy with cooperative research within a One Health framework

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jason K. Blackburn

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the current saiga antelope die off in Kazakhstan each represent very real and difficult to manage public or veterinary health crises. They also illustrate the importance of stable and funded surveillance and sound policy for intervention or disease control. While these two events highlight extreme cases of infectious disease (Ebola or (possible environmental exposure (saiga, diseases such as anthrax, brucellosis, tularemia, and plague are all zoonoses that pose risks and present surveillance challenges at the wildlife-livestock-human interfaces. These four diseases are also considered important actors in the threat of biological terror activities and have a long history as legacy biowarfare pathogens. This paper reviews recent studies done cooperatively between American and institutions within nations of the Former Soviet Union (FSU focused on spatiotemporal, epidemiological, and ecological patterns of these four zoonoses. We examine recent studies and discuss the possible ways in which techniques, including ecological niche modeling, disease risk modeling, and spatio-temporal cluster analysis, can inform disease surveillance, control efforts and impact policy. Our focus is to posit ways to apply science to disease management policy and actual management or mitigation practices. Across these examples, we illustrate the value of cooperative studies that bring together modern geospatial and epidemiological analyses to improve our understanding of the distribution of pathogens and diseases in livestock, wildlife, and humans. For example, ecological niche modeling can provide national level maps of pathogen distributions for surveillance planning, while space-time models can identify the timing and location of significant outbreak events for defining active control strategies. We advocate for the need to bring the results and the researchers from cooperative studies into the meeting rooms where policy is

International relations and co-operation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2002-01-01

This bulletin contains information about activities of the Nuclear Regulatory Authority of the Slovak Republic (UJD). In this leaflet the international relations and co-operation of the UJD are presented. International community is aware of the fact that nuclear energy shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and on condition of high standard of nuclear safety. Therefore, the long-term aim of UJD in the area of international relations is to maintain and develop internationally recognised system of state supervision upon the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to reach internationally accepted level of nuclear safety in the Slovak Republic. There are many important international treaties (Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Convention on Nuclear Safety, etc.) to which slovakia is a party. In order to meet the obligations of these treaties UJD has the main aim for contribute to the process of international disarmament, and to a mutually advantageous co-operation. By means of the most important international organisations (e.g. International Atomic Energy Agency) the Slovak Republic actively participates in the international co-operation. Under the leadership of UJD, Slovak institutions participate in many projects and activities which have the aim to improve the safety of nuclear international obligations. In addition, UJD actively participates in the integration process of the Slovak Republic into European and Trans-Atlantic structures. Since 1993 the co-operation with the European Commission and the Nuclear Energy Agency of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development (OECD/NEA) has been successfully implemented. Besides multilateral co-operation UJD attaches extraordinary importance to bilateral co-operation, in particular with neighbouring countries. Regular meetings of senior Slovak experts with foreign experts are organised, with the aim to exchange the newest experiences and information on peaceful use of nuclear energy. Also in

Individual choice and reputation distribution of cooperative behaviors among heterogeneous groups

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lu, Peng

2015-01-01

Highlights: •Cooperation macrocosmically refers to the overall cooperation rate, while reputation microcosmically records individual choices. •Therefore, reputation should be preferred in order to investigate how individual choices evolve. •Both the mean and standard deviation of reputation follow clear patterns, and some factors have quadratic effects on them. -- Abstract: Cooperation is vital for our society, but the temptation of cheating on cooperative partners undermines cooperation. The mechanism of reputation is raised to countervail this temptation and therefore promote cooperation. Reputation microcosmically records individual choices, while cooperation macrocosmically refers to the group or averaged cooperation level. Reputation should be preferred in order to investigate how individual choices evolve. In this work, we study the distribution of reputation to figure out how individuals make choices within cooperation and defection. We decompose reputation into its mean and standard deviation and inspect effects of their factors respectively. To achieve this goal, we construct a model where agents of three groups or classes play the prisoners’ dilemma game with neighbors on a square lattice. It indicates in outcomes that the distribution of reputation is distinct from that of cooperation and both the mean and standard deviation of reputation follow clear patterns. Some factors have negative quadratic effects on reputation's mean or standard deviation, and some have merely linear effects

Cooperative endeavors: A case study of success

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Baker, J. [Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, MI (United States)

1997-12-31

Partnerships and cooperative agreements abound in the environmental arena today. This paper briefly highlights the collaborative approach used by the International Cooperative for Ozone Layer Protection (ICOLP). ICOLP has helped international members and non-members to eliminate most of the ozone-depleting solvents from manufacturing processes through the exchange of technical information in a non-proprietary manner. By using alternatives, companies and governments have realized savings in the multiple millions of dollars. Advantages of participating in cooperative environmental partnerships may include: (1) improved access and exchange of information, (2) cost minimization, (3) promotion and facilitation of business opportunities, (4) improved dialogue between groups, (5) coordinated approach to complex issues, and (6) technology development and transfer opportunities.

Distributed reconfigurable control strategies for switching topology networked multi-agent systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Gallehdari, Z; Meskin, N; Khorasani, K

2017-11-01

In this paper, distributed control reconfiguration strategies for directed switching topology networked multi-agent systems are developed and investigated. The proposed control strategies are invoked when the agents are subject to actuator faults and while the available fault detection and isolation (FDI) modules provide inaccurate and unreliable information on the estimation of faults severities. Our proposed strategies will ensure that the agents reach a consensus while an upper bound on the team performance index is ensured and satisfied. Three types of actuator faults are considered, namely: the loss of effectiveness fault, the outage fault, and the stuck fault. By utilizing quadratic and convex hull (composite) Lyapunov functions, two cooperative and distributed recovery strategies are designed and provided to select the gains of the proposed control laws such that the team objectives are guaranteed. Our proposed reconfigurable control laws are applied to a team of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) under directed switching topologies and subject to simultaneous actuator faults. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed distributed reconfiguration control laws in compensating for the effects of sudden actuator faults and subject to fault diagnosis module uncertainties and unreliabilities. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Japan's international cooperation programs on seismic safety of nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sanada, Akira

1997-01-01

MITI is promoting many international cooperation programs on nuclear safety area. The seismic safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) is a one of most important cooperation areas. Experts from MITI and related organization join the multilateral cooperation programs carried out by international organization such as IAEA, OECD/NEA etc. MITI is also promoting bilateral cooperation programs such as information exchange meetings, training programs and seminars on nuclear safety with several countries. Concerning to the cooperation programs on seismic safety of NPPs such as information exchange and training, MITI shall continue and expand these programs. (J.P.N.)

Cloud model construct for transaction-based cooperative systems ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Cloud model construct for transaction-based cooperative systems. ... procure cutting edge Information Technology infrastructure are some of the problems faced ... Results also reveal that credit cooperatives will benefit from the model by taking ...

Cooperative Localization for Multi-AUVs Based on GM-PHD Filters and Information Entropy Theory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lichuan Zhang

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Cooperative localization (CL is considered a promising method for underwater localization with respect to multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (multi-AUVs. In this paper, we proposed a CL algorithm based on information entropy theory and the probability hypothesis density (PHD filter, aiming to enhance the global localization accuracy of the follower. In the proposed framework, the follower carries lower cost navigation systems, whereas the leaders carry better ones. Meanwhile, the leaders acquire the followers’ observations, including both measurements and clutter. Then, the PHD filters are utilized on the leaders and the results are communicated to the followers. The followers then perform weighted summation based on all received messages and obtain a final positioning result. Based on the information entropy theory and the PHD filter, the follower is able to acquire a precise knowledge of its position.

Biomass energy systems information user study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Belew, W.W.; Wood, B.L.; Marle, T.L.; Reinhardt, C.L.

1981-02-01

The results of a series of telephone interviews with groups of users of information on biomass energy systems are described. These results, part of a larger study on many different solar technologies, identify types of information each group needed and the best ways to get information to each group. This report is 1 of 10 discussing study results. The overall study provides baseline data about information needs in the solar community. Results from 12 biomass groups of respondents are analyzed in this report: Federally Funded Researchers (2 groups), Nonfederally Funded Researchers (2 groups), Representatives of Manufacturers (2 groups), Representatives of State Forestry Offices, Private Foresters, Forest Products Engineers, Educators, Cooperative Extension Service County Agents, and System Managers. The data will be used as input to the determination of information products and services the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Solar Energy Information Data Bank Network, and the entire information outreach community should be preparing and disseminating.

Manufacturing technology supported by advanced and integrated information system through international cooperation in fiscal 1994; Kan`i sosagata denshi sekkei seisan shien system no kaihatsu ni kansuru kenkyu kyoryoku

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1995-03-01

Among NEDO`s international research cooperation projects, the paper described Japan`s cooperation with Asian countries in development of an easy-operated electronic design/production supporting system. The project aims to realize information realtime technology by which data for design/manufacturing of machine/electronics/fiber/apparel can mutually be used among countries. For it, design data standard and electronic information exchange standard are developed. A production information integrated database system is developed for sharing processing data. Parts data are put into a library. Graphic user interface and multi-media technology are developed so as to comply with the environment of different usages. In fiscal 1994, emphasis of activities was placed on survey of the status quo of the institution of the party country, fermentation of mutual understanding, and study of a cooperative project plan. Memorandums on research cooperation were concluded with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. In addition, understanding of this project by the party country was able to be enhanced

Regional cooperation on nuclear safety

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kato, W.Y.; Chen, J.H.; Kim, D.H.; Simmons, R.B.V.; Surguri, S.

1985-01-01

A review has been conducted of a number of multi-national and bilateral arrangements between governments and between utility-sponsored organizations which provide the framework for international cooperation in the field of nuclear safety. These arrangements include the routine exchange operational data, experiences, technical reports and regulatory data, provision of special assistance when requested, collaboration in safety research, and the holding of international conferences and seminars. Areas which may be better suited for cooperation on a regional basis are identified. These areas include: exchange of operational data and experience, sharing of emergency planning information, and collaboration in safety research. Mechanisms to initiate regional cooperation in these areas are suggested

Decentralized Planning for Autonomous Agents Cooperating in Complex Missions

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-01

is a " lawn mower " search path. The world is divided into N, rectangles, and each agent traverses its own rectangle by sweeping back and forth in a...mission. Furthermore, the random walk never found more than three targets for the 50 missions simulated, as seen in Figure 5-7. The lawn mower search...that both the random walk and the lawn mower search seem to find targets at a linear rate with respect to time, whereas the other four strategies are

Information and Informality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsson, Magnus; Segerstéen, Solveig; Svensson, Cathrin

2011-01-01

leaders on the basis of their possession of reliable knowledge in technical as well as organizational domains. The informal leaders engaged in interpretation and brokering of information and knowledge, as well as in mediating strategic values and priorities on both formal and informal arenas. Informal...... leaders were thus seen to function on the level of the organization as a whole, and in cooperation with formal leaders. Drawing on existing theory of leadership in creative and professional contexts, this cooperation can be specified to concern task structuring. The informal leaders in our study...... contributed to task structuring through sensemaking activities, while formal leaders focused on aspects such as clarifying output expectations, providing feedback, project structure, and diversity....

Evolution of Cooperation in Continuous Prisoner's Dilemma Games on Barabasi—Albert Networks with Degree-Dependent Guilt Mechanism

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xian-Jia; Quan, Ji; Liu, Wei-Bing

2012-05-01

This paper studies the continuous prisoner's dilemma games (CPDG) on Barabasi—Albert (BA) networks. In the model, each agent on a vertex of the networks makes an investment and interacts with all of his neighboring agents. Making an investment is costly, but which benefits its neighboring agents, where benefit and cost depend on the level of investment made. The payoff of each agent is given by the sum of payoffs it receives in its interactions with all its neighbors. Not only payoff, individual's guilty emotion in the games has also been considered. The negative guilty emotion produced in comparing with its neighbors can reduce the utility of individuals directly. We assume that the reduction amount depends on the individual's degree and a baseline level parameter. The group's cooperative level is characterized by the average investment of the population. Each player makes his investment in the next step based on a convex combination of the investment of his best neighbors in the last step, his best history strategies in the latest steps which number is controlled by a memory length parameter, and a uniformly distributed random number. Simulation results show that this degree-dependent guilt mechanism can promote the evolution of cooperation dramatically comparing with degree-independent guilt or no guilt cases. Imitation, memory, uncertainty coefficients and network structure also play determinant roles in the cooperation level of the population. All our results may shed some new light on studying the evolution of cooperation based on network reciprocity mechanisms.

Evolution of Cooperation in Continuous Prisoner's Dilemma Games on Barabasi-Albert Networks with Degree-Dependent Guilt Mechanism

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Xianjia; Quan Ji; Liu Weibing

2012-01-01

This paper studies the continuous prisoner's dilemma games (CPDG) on Barabasi-Albert (BA) networks. In the model, each agent on a vertex of the networks makes an investment and interacts with all of his neighboring agents. Making an investment is costly, but which benefits its neighboring agents, where benefit and cost depend on the level of investment made. The payoff of each agent is given by the sum of payoffs it receives in its interactions with all its neighbors. Not only payoff, individual's guilty emotion in the games has also been considered. The negative guilty emotion produced in comparing with its neighbors can reduce the utility of individuals directly. We assume that the reduction amount depends on the individual's degree and a baseline level parameter. The group's cooperative level is characterized by the average investment of the population. Each player makes his investment in the next step based on a convex combination of the investment of his best neighbors in the last step, his best history strategies in the latest steps which number is controlled by a memory length parameter, and a uniformly distributed random number. Simulation results show that this degree-dependent guilt mechanism can promote the evolution of cooperation dramatically comparing with degree-independent guilt or no guilt cases. Imitation, memory, uncertainty coefficients and network structure also play determinant roles in the cooperation level of the population. All our results may shed some new light on studying the evolution of cooperation based on network reciprocity mechanisms. (interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)

CTBT and the international technical cooperation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Lixing

1999-01-01

Having in mind the basic aim of the CTBTO this presentation covers the fields of international co-operation as one of the most important and the cooperation of China and some International research and development institutions concerning the related subjects. One of the most important among international organizations being the IAEA, detailed list of general circumstances in the Chinese cooperation with IAEA is presented. It covers nuclear power plants construction and operation, safety of nuclear facilities, nuclear fuel cycle, radiation protection and waste management, industrial application, agricultural application, human health, fundamental research and information dissemination

Considering individual satisfaction levels enhances cooperation in a spatial prisoner’s dilemma game

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tanimoto, Jun

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A new model for the SPD game considering an individual’s satisfaction level is presented. • Simulation results show a non-trivial enhancement of cooperation. • The enhancement found results from a stochastic resonance effect. - Abstract: Based on the observance in human society, the satisfaction level of an individual as a result of an obtained payoff depends on personal tendency to some extent; we establish a new model for spatial prisoner’s dilemma games. We describe individual satisfaction as a stochastically deviated value around each of the four payoffs stipulated by a payoff matrix, which is maintained throughout the life of a certain agent. When strategy updating, an agent who refers to his own satisfaction level cannot see neighbors’ satisfaction levels but can only observe neighbors’ accumulated payoffs. By varying the update rule and underlying topology, we perform numerical simulations that reveal cooperation is significantly enhanced by this change. We argue that this enhancement of cooperation is analogous to a stochastic resonance effect, like the payoff noise effects Perc (2006).

Thou should not know too much. When lack of information promotes co-operative behaviour. The case of oil-fields in Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hassler, B

1998-12-31

Proper assumptions of information levels are of vital importance in all kinds of analysis of interdependent decision-making. In most cases the rule is; the more information the better. In this paper, however, it is shown that such is not always the case. Lack of information can enhance resource utilisation of resources, when the problem of co-operation is of a Prisoner`s dilemma type, and when iteration of the interaction game is unlikely. The case of oil-fields in the United States has been chosen as an empirical example of the latter. Optimal drilling procedures tend to be chosen more often the less the drillers know about the resource characteristics. This outcome is explained by the structure of the decision-making problem, where low levels of information render it advantageous to choose co-operative strategies 16 refs, 4 figs

Thou should not know too much. When lack of information promotes co-operative behaviour. The case of oil-fields in Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hassler, B.

1997-12-31

Proper assumptions of information levels are of vital importance in all kinds of analysis of interdependent decision-making. In most cases the rule is; the more information the better. In this paper, however, it is shown that such is not always the case. Lack of information can enhance resource utilisation of resources, when the problem of co-operation is of a Prisoner`s dilemma type, and when iteration of the interaction game is unlikely. The case of oil-fields in the United States has been chosen as an empirical example of the latter. Optimal drilling procedures tend to be chosen more often the less the drillers know about the resource characteristics. This outcome is explained by the structure of the decision-making problem, where low levels of information render it advantageous to choose co-operative strategies 16 refs, 4 figs

Study on cooperative active sensing system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tsukune, Hideo; Kita, Nobuyuki; Hirai, Shigeoki; Kuniyoshi, Yasuo; Hara, Isao; Matsui, Toshihiro

1999-01-01

In order to realize autonomous type nuclear plant, three-dimensional geometrical modelling method, and a basic technology on information collection and processing system preparation in some nuclear basic technology developments such as 'study on system evaluation of nuclear facility furnished with artificial intelligence for nuclear power' and 'study on adaptability evaluation of information collection and processing system into autonomous type plant' had already been developed. In this study, a study on sensing system required for constructing robot groups capable of conducting autonomously traveling inspection and maintenance in large scale, complicated and diverse plant has been processed by aiming at establishment of dispersed cooperative intelligent system technology. In 1997 fiscal year, integration of cooperative visual sensing technique was attempted. And, at the same time, upgrading of individual element technology and transportation method essential to the integrated system were investigated. As a result, an operative active sensing prototype system due to transportation robot groups furnished with real time processing capacity on diverse informations by integration of cooperative active sensing technique and real time active sensing technique developed independently plural transportation robot. (G.K.)

Cycles of cooperation and defection in imperfect learning

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Galla, Tobias

2011-01-01

We investigate a model of learning the iterated prisoner's dilemma game. Players have the choice between three strategies: always defect (ALLD), always cooperate (ALLC) and tit-for-tat (TFT). The only strict Nash equilibrium in this situation is ALLD. When players learn to play this game convergence to the equilibrium is not guaranteed, for example we find cooperative behaviour if players discount observations in the distant past. When agents use small samples of observed moves to estimate their opponent's strategy the learning process is stochastic, and sustained oscillations between cooperation and defection can emerge. These cycles are similar to those found in stochastic evolutionary processes, but the origin of the noise sustaining the oscillations is different and lies in the imperfect sampling of the opponent's strategy. Based on a systematic expansion technique, we are able to predict the properties of these learning cycles, providing an analytical tool with which the outcome of more general stochastic adaptation processes can be characterised

Smartphone-Based Cooperative Indoor Localization with RFID Technology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fernando Seco

2018-01-01

Full Text Available In GPS-denied indoor environments, localization and tracking of people can be achieved with a mobile device such as a smartphone by processing the received signal strength (RSS of RF signals emitted from known location beacons (anchor nodes, combined with Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR estimates of the user motion. An enhacement of this localization technique is feasible if the users themselves carry additional RF emitters (mobile nodes, and the cooperative position estimates of a group of persons incorporate the RSS measurements exchanged between users. We propose a centralized cooperative particle filter (PF formulation over the joint state of all users that permits to process RSS measurements from both anchor and mobile emitters, as well as PDR motion estimates and map information (if available to increase the overall positioning accuracy, particularly in regions with low density of anchor nodes. Smartphones are used as a convenient mobile platform for sensor measurements acquisition, low-level processing, and data transmission to a central unit, where cooperative localization processing takes place. The cooperative method is experimentally demonstrated with four users moving in an area of 1600 m 2 , with 7 anchor nodes comprised of active RFID (radio frequency identification tags, and additional mobile tags carried by each user. Due to the limited coverage provided by the anchor beacons, RSS-based individual localization is inaccurate (6.1 m median error, but this improves to 4.9 m median error with the cooperative PF. Further gains are produced if the PDR information is added to the filter: median error of 3.1 m (individual and 2.6 m (cooperative; and if map information is also considered, the results are 1.8 m (individual and 1.6 m (cooperative. Thus, for each version of the particle filter, cooperative localization outperforms individual localization in terms of positioning accuracy.

Dialogue and Decision Games for Information Exchanging Agents

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lebbink, Henk-Jan

2006-01-01

Our aim is to model the decision-making and communication of software agents, such that justifications of their beliefs are preserved. To model this, we address the following issues. We provide a use-semantics for epistemic statements such that we can express what it means for an agent to believe

Multi-agent simulation of competitive electricity markets: Autonomous systems cooperation for European market modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Santos, Gabriel; Pinto, Tiago; Morais, Hugo

2015-01-01

The electricity market restructuring, and its worldwide evolution into regional and even continental scales, along with the increasing necessity for an adequate integration of renewable energy sources, is resulting in a rising complexity in power systems operation. Several power system simulators...... have been developed in recent years with the purpose of helping operators, regulators, and involved players to understand and deal with this complex and constantly changing environment. The main contribution of this paper is given by the integration of several electricity market and power system models......, respecting to the reality of different countries. This integration is done through the development of an upper ontology which integrates the essential concepts necessary to interpret all the available information. The continuous development of Multi-Agent System for Competitive Electricity Markets platform...

What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents' Access to Socially Strategic and Non-Strategic Information

Science.gov (United States)

Purzycki, Benjamin G.; Finkel, Daniel N.; Shaver, John; Wales, Nathan; Cohen, Adam B.; Sosis, Richard

2012-01-01

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about…

Transgranichnoe sotrudnichestvo nepravitel'stvennyh organizacij v Pomorskom i Varmin'sko-Mazurskom voevodstvah [Cross-border cooperation between nongovernmental organisations in the Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gomulka Christina

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This article is devoted to the issues of cross-border cooperation carried out by agents resident in the Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships. Among such agents there are non-governmental organizations. This article aims to identify the role of NGOs in cross-border cooperation and the predominant fields of their cooperation, as well as to assess their activity in attracting funding from European budgets. The article widely applies the results of surveys of NGOs conducted by the author, compares the results of performance reports submitted by these organisations within international projects, and offers the data presented in relevant publications (Euroregion Baltic documents and Phare CBC reports, Interreg IIIA and, Interreg IIIB, NMF, and Polish-Swiss Cooperation reports, as well as the data of the Central Department of Statistics. The research covers the period from the late 90s to 2012. The article highlights the difficulties agents face in forging and implementing cross-border cooperation, resulting from the mismatching definitions of the tertiary sector in Poland’s neighbour states.

Altruistic Behavior and Cooperation: The Role of Intrinsic Expectation When Reputational Information is Incomplete

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jacintha Ellers

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Altruistic behavior is known to be conditional on the level of altruism of others. However, people often have no information, or incomplete information, about the altruistic reputation of others, for example when the reputation was obtained in a different social or economic context. As a consequence, they have to estimate the other's altruistic intentions. Using an economic game, we showed that without reputational information people have intrinsic expectations about the altruistic behavior of others, which largely explained their own altruistic behavior. This implies that when no information is available, intrinsic expectations can be as powerful a driver of altruistic behavior as actual knowledge about other people's reputation. Two strategies appeared to co-exist in our study population: participants who expected others to be altruistic and acted even more altruistically themselves, while other participants had low expected altruism scores and acted even less altruistically than they expected others to do. We also found evidence that generosity in economic games translates into benefits for other social contexts: a reputation of financial generosity increased the attractiveness of partners in a social cooperative game. This result implies that in situations with incomplete information, the fitness effects of indirect reciprocity are cumulative across different social contexts.

Cooperative Learning for Distributed In-Network Traffic Classification

Science.gov (United States)

Joseph, S. B.; Loo, H. R.; Ismail, I.; Andromeda, T.; Marsono, M. N.

2017-04-01

Inspired by the concept of autonomic distributed/decentralized network management schemes, we consider the issue of information exchange among distributed network nodes to network performance and promote scalability for in-network monitoring. In this paper, we propose a cooperative learning algorithm for propagation and synchronization of network information among autonomic distributed network nodes for online traffic classification. The results show that network nodes with sharing capability perform better with a higher average accuracy of 89.21% (sharing data) and 88.37% (sharing clusters) compared to 88.06% for nodes without cooperative learning capability. The overall performance indicates that cooperative learning is promising for distributed in-network traffic classification.

Active solar heating and cooling information user study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Belew, W.W.; Wood, B.L.; Marle, T.L.; Reinhardt, C.L.

1981-01-01

The results of a series of telephone interviews with groups of users of information on active solar heating and cooling (SHAC). An earlier study identified the information user groups in the solar community and the priority (to accelerate solar energy commercialization) of getting information to each group. In the current study only high-priority groups were examined. Results from 19 SHAC groups respondents are analyzed in this report: DOE-Funded Researchers, Non-DOE-Funded Researchers, Representatives of Manufacturers (4 groups), Distributors, Installers, Architects, Builders, Planners, Engineers (2 groups), Representatives of Utilities, Educators, Cooperative Extension Service County Agents, Building Owners/Managers, and Homeowners (2 groups). The data will be used as input to the determination of information products and services the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Solar Energy Information Data Bank Network, and the entire information outreach community should be preparing and disseminating.

E-learning paradigms and applications agent-based approach

CERN Document Server

Jain, Lakhmi

2014-01-01

Teaching and learning paradigms have attracted increased attention especially in the last decade. Immense developments of different ICT technologies and services have paved the way for alternative but effective approaches in educational processes. Many concepts of the agent technology, such as intelligence, autonomy, and cooperation, have had a direct positive impact on many of the requests imposed on modern e-learning systems and educational processes. This book presents the state-of-the-art of e-learning and tutoring systems, and discusses their capabilities and benefits that stem from integrating software agents. We hope that the presented work will be of a great use to our colleagues and researchers interested in the e-learning and agent technology.    

Social penalty promotes cooperation in a cooperative society.

Science.gov (United States)

Ito, Hiromu; Yoshimura, Jin

2015-08-04

Why cooperation is well developed in human society is an unsolved question in biological and human sciences. Vast studies in game theory have revealed that in non-cooperative games selfish behavior generally dominates over cooperation and cooperation can be evolved only under very limited conditions. These studies ask the origin of cooperation; whether cooperation can evolve in a group of selfish individuals. In this paper, instead of asking the origin of cooperation, we consider the enhancement of cooperation in a small already cooperative society. We ask whether cooperative behavior is further promoted in a small cooperative society in which social penalty is devised. We analyze hawk-dove game and prisoner's dilemma introducing social penalty. We then expand it for non-cooperative games in general. The results indicate that cooperation is universally favored if penalty is further imposed. We discuss the current result in terms of the moral, laws, rules and regulations in a society, e.g., criminology and traffic violation.

Modeling and simulation of virtual human's coordination based on multi-agent systems

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Mei; Wen, Jing-Hua; Zhang, Zu-Xuan; Zhang, Jian-Qing

2006-10-01

The difficulties and hotspots researched in current virtual geographic environment (VGE) are sharing space and multiusers operation, distributed coordination and group decision-making. The theories and technologies of MAS provide a brand-new environment for analysis, design and realization of distributed opening system. This paper takes cooperation among virtual human in VGE which multi-user participate in as main researched object. First we describe theory foundation truss of VGE, and present the formalization description of Multi-Agent System (MAS). Then we detailed analyze and research arithmetic of collectivity operating behavior learning of virtual human based on best held Genetic Algorithm(GA), and establish dynamics action model which Multi-Agents and object interact dynamically and colony movement strategy. Finally we design a example which shows how 3 evolutional Agents cooperate to complete the task of colony pushing column box, and design a virtual world prototype of virtual human pushing box collectively based on V-Realm Builder 2.0, moreover we make modeling and dynamic simulation with Simulink 6.

Securing cooperation from persons supplying statistical data.

Science.gov (United States)

AUBENQUE, M J; BLAIKLEY, R M; HARRIS, F F; LAL, R B; NEURDENBURG, M G; DE SHELLY HERNANDEZ, R

1954-01-01

Securing the co-operation of persons supplying information required for medical statistics is essentially a problem in human relations, and an understanding of the motivations, attitudes, and behaviour of the respondents is necessary.Before any new statistical survey is undertaken, it is suggested by Aubenque and Harris that a preliminary review be made so that the maximum use is made of existing information. Care should also be taken not to burden respondents with an overloaded questionnaire. Aubenque and Harris recommend simplified reporting. Complete population coverage is not necessary.Neurdenburg suggests that the co-operation and support of such organizations as medical associations and social security boards are important and that propaganda should be directed specifically to the groups whose co-operation is sought. Informal personal contacts are valuable and desirable, according to Blaikley, but may have adverse effects if the right kind of approach is not made.Financial payments as an incentive in securing co-operation are opposed by Neurdenburg, who proposes that only postage-free envelopes or similar small favours be granted. Blaikley and Harris, on the other hand, express the view that financial incentives may do much to gain the support of those required to furnish data; there are, however, other incentives, and full use should be made of the natural inclinations of respondents. Compulsion may be necessary in certain instances, but administrative rather than statutory measures should be adopted. Penalties, according to Aubenque, should be inflicted only when justified by imperative health requirements.The results of surveys should be made available as soon as possible to those who co-operated, and Aubenque and Harris point out that they should also be of practical value to the suppliers of the information.Greater co-operation can be secured from medical persons who have an understanding of the statistical principles involved; Aubenque and Neurdenburg

Theories about architecture and performance of multi-agent systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gazendam, Henk W.M.; Jorna, René J.

1998-01-01

Multi-agent systems are promising as models of organization because they are based on the idea that most work in human organizations is done based on intelligence, communication, cooperation, and massive parallel processing. They offer an alternative for system theories of organization, which are

Optimal Contract Design for Cooperative Relay Incentive Mechanism under Moral Hazard

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nan Zhao

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Cooperative relay can effectively improve spectrum efficiency by exploiting the spatial diversity in the wireless networks. However, wireless nodes may acquire different network information with various users’ location and mobility, channels’ conditions, and other factors, which results in asymmetric information between the source and the relay nodes (RNs. In this paper, the relay incentive mechanism between relay nodes and the source is investigated under the asymmetric information. By modelling multiuser cooperative relay as a labour market, a contract model with moral hazard for relay incentive is proposed. To effectively incentivize the potential RNs to participate in cooperative relay, the optimization problems are formulated to maximize the source’s utility while meeting the feasible conditions under both symmetric and asymmetric information scenarios. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed contract design scheme for cooperative relay.

We can work it out: An enactive look at cooperation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valentina eFantasia

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The past years have seen an increasing debate on cooperation and its unique human character. Philosophers and psychologists have proposed that cooperative activities are characterized by shared goals to which participants are committed through the ability to understand each other’s intentions. Despite its popularity, some serious issues arise with this approach to cooperation. First, one may challenge the assumption that high-level mental processes are necessary for engaging in acting cooperatively. If they are, then how do agents that do not possess such ability (preverbal children, or children with autism who are often claimed to be mind-blind engage in cooperative exchanges, as the evidence suggests? Secondly, to define cooperation as the result of two de-contextualized minds reading each other’s intentions may fail to fully acknowledge the complexity of situated, interactional dynamics and the interplay of variables such as the participants’ relational and personal history and experience. In this paper we challenge such accounts of cooperation, calling for an embodied approach that sees cooperation not only as an individual attitude towards the other, but also as a property of interaction processes. Taking an enactive perspective, we argue that cooperation is an intrinsic part of any interaction, and that there can be cooperative interaction before complex communicative abilities are achieved. The issue then is not whether one is able or not to read the other’s intentions, but what it takes to participate in joint action. From this basic account, it should be possible to build up more complex forms of cooperation as needed. Addressing the study of cooperation in these terms may enhance our understanding of human social development, and foster our knowledge of different ways of engaging with others, as in the case of autism.

Japan`s international cooperation programs on seismic safety of nuclear power plants

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sanada, Akira [Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, Tokyo (Japan)

1997-03-01

MITI is promoting many international cooperation programs on nuclear safety area. The seismic safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) is a one of most important cooperation areas. Experts from MITI and related organization join the multilateral cooperation programs carried out by international organization such as IAEA, OECD/NEA etc. MITI is also promoting bilateral cooperation programs such as information exchange meetings, training programs and seminars on nuclear safety with several countries. Concerning to the cooperation programs on seismic safety of NPPs such as information exchange and training, MITI shall continue and expand these programs. (J.P.N.)

FY 2000 report on the research cooperation project on the research cooperative follow-up for development of the manufacturing technology supported by advanced and integrated information system through cooperation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2001-03-01

The manufacturing technology supported by advanced and integrated information system through cooperation (MATIC), that is, a project supporting the production technology including the international information system and CAD/CAM system, etc. was carried out from FY 1994 to FY 1998. From FY 1999, the follow-up project is being implemented for the spread of the MATIC results, support for the independent R and D and the technical guidance. China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore participated in this project, by which the support and technical guidance were given in three fields: automobiles/the parts; household electric appliances/the parts; fiber/apparel. At present, each country is continuing its own activity for using the system developed in the MATIC project in its country. In this fiscal year, researchers were sent to each country for supporting the activities. Further, the MATIC follow-up committee was established to conduct the drawing-up of a business plan, grasp of the state of the spread/R and D, discussion about problems/subjects, comprehensive evaluation of the MATIC project, etc. (NEDO)

Assessment of a cooperative workstation.

OpenAIRE

Beuscart, R. J.; Molenda, S.; Souf, N.; Foucher, C.; Beuscart-Zephir, M. C.

1996-01-01

Groupware and new Information Technologies have now made it possible for people in different places to work together in synchronous cooperation. Very often, designers of this new type of software are not provided with a model of the common workspace, which is prejudicial to software development and its acceptance by potential users. The authors take the example of a task of medical co-diagnosis, using a multi-media communication workstation. Synchronous cooperative work is made possible by us...

O espaço da cooperativa "amigos do meio ambiente": cooperativa de trabalho ou cooperfraude? "Friends of the environment" co-operative: work co-operative or fraud co-operative?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shirla Patrícia Weber Sterchile

2011-06-01

Full Text Available O presente artigo é resultado de pesquisa acadêmica que tem como objeto de estudo-pesquisa "A forma de existir e de ser da Cooperativa dos Agentes Ambientais de Santa Helena 'Amigos do Meio Ambiente' e sua imbricação na Usina de Beneficiamento de Resíduos Sólidos do município de Santa Helena-PR". Verificando o cotidiano profissional, o descontentamento de trabalhadores catadores de matérias recicláveis, o incentivo do gestor municipal para a instalação da usina e a formação da cooperativa, aliado aos postulados do capitalismo, em sua fase tardia, propusemos desconstruir e reconstruir o movimento do objeto em questão a partir da pesquisa teórica e empírica. Para coletar os dados utilizando a técnica de gravação, recorremos à análise documental e à observação. Após esse processo descrevemos e analisamos os conteúdos presentes. Concluímos em nosso estudo-pesquisa, que a Cooperativa - "Amigos do Meio Ambiente", é uma "cooperfraude", legitimada pelo Estado, que suprime os princípios do cooperativismo e exime o capital da raiz da exploração da força de trabalhoThis article resulted from a research aiming at "The form of existence and being of the Co-operative of Environmental Agents from St. Helena - 'Friends of the Environment' - and its imbrication in the Processing Plant of Solid Waste in the city of Santa Helena-PR". Checking the professional practice, the dissatisfaction of workers who collect recycling materials and the City Hall's encouragement to install the plant and to form the Co-operative, together with the tenets of capitalism in its late stage, we proposed to deconstruct and reconstruct the motion of the object studied from the empirical research. After analyzing our data we concluded that the "Friends of the Environment" Co-operative is a "fraud co-operative" legitimized by the State, that suppressed the principles of co-operativism and exempted the capital from the root of exploitation of the workforce

Consensus pursuit of heterogeneous multi-agent systems under a directed acyclic graph

Science.gov (United States)

Yan, Jing; Guan, Xin-Ping; Luo, Xiao-Yuan

2011-04-01

This paper is concerned with the cooperative target pursuit problem by multiple agents based on directed acyclic graph. The target appears at a random location and moves only when sensed by the agents, and agents will pursue the target once they detect its existence. Since the ability of each agent may be different, we consider the heterogeneous multi-agent systems. According to the topology of the multi-agent systems, a novel consensus-based control law is proposed, where the target and agents are modeled as a leader and followers, respectively. Based on Mason's rule and signal flow graph analysis, the convergence conditions are provided to show that the agents can catch the target in a finite time. Finally, simulation studies are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

From the Mountains of the Moon to the Grand Renaissance: misinformation, disinformation and, finally, information for cooperation in the Nile River basin

Science.gov (United States)

Zaitchik, B. F.; Habib, S.; Anderson, M. C.; Ozdogan, M.

2012-12-01

The Nile River basin is shared by 11 nations and approximately 200 million people. Eight of the riparian States are defined as Least Developed Countries by the United Nations, and about 50% of the total basin population lives below the international poverty line. In addition, eight of the eleven countries have experienced internal or external wars in the past 20 years, six are predicted to be water scarce by 2025, and, at present, major water resource development projects are moving forward in the absence of a fully recognized basin-wide water sharing agreement. Nevertheless, the Nile basin presents remarkable opportunities for transboundary water cooperation, and today—notwithstanding significant substantive and perceived disagreements between stakeholders in the basin—this cooperation is beginning to be realized in topics ranging from flood early warning to hydropower optimization to regional food security. This presentation will provide an overview of historic and present challenges and opportunities for transboundary water management in the Nile basin and will present several case studies in which improved hydroclimatic information and communication systems are currently laying the groundwork for advanced cooperation. In this context climate change acts as both stress and motivator. On one hand, non-stationary hydrology is expected to tax water resources in the basin, and it undermines confidence in conventionally formulated water sharing agreements. On the other, non-stationarity is increasingly understood to be an exogenous threat to regional food and water security that will require informed, flexible cooperation between riparian states.

Knowledge Sharing for the Provision of sustainable Cooperation ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

pc

2018-03-05

Mar 5, 2018 ... knowledge sharing imitation model and prototype for sustainable cooperation between ... enterprises. The goal involves innovative methods and web-based ..... rather informative and motivating for everyone to return to the cooperative ... communication style and activity between involved parties. The main ...

On the deployment of agents by binary information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

De Persis, Claudio; Cao, Ming; Ceragioli, Francesca

2011-01-01

We study the problem of deploying on a line a group of N agents with kinematic continuous-time model x˙i = ui , i = 1,...,N , (1) with xi ,ui ∈ R. The agents are connected through an undirected chain graph G = (V ,E ), with V = {1,2,...,N} and E = {(1,2),...,(i,i + 1),...,(N − 1,N)}. Moreover, we

Nondestructive Intervention to Multi-Agent Systems through an Intelligent Agent

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Jing; Wang, Lin

2013-01-01

For a given multi-agent system where the local interaction rule of the existing agents can not be re-designed, one way to intervene the collective behavior of the system is to add one or a few special agents into the group which are still treated as normal agents by the existing ones. We study how to lead a Vicsek-like flocking model to reach synchronization by adding special agents. A popular method is to add some simple leaders (fixed-headings agents). However, we add one intelligent agent, called ‘shill’, which uses online feedback information of the group to decide the shill's moving direction at each step. A novel strategy for the shill to coordinate the group is proposed. It is strictly proved that a shill with this strategy and a limited speed can synchronize every agent in the group. The computer simulations show the effectiveness of this strategy in different scenarios, including different group sizes, shill speed, and with or without noise. Compared to the method of adding some fixed-heading leaders, our method can guarantee synchronization for any initial configuration in the deterministic scenario and improve the synchronization level significantly in low density groups, or model with noise. This suggests the advantage and power of feedback information in intervention of collective behavior. PMID:23658695

Nondestructive intervention to multi-agent systems through an intelligent agent.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jing Han

Full Text Available For a given multi-agent system where the local interaction rule of the existing agents can not be re-designed, one way to intervene the collective behavior of the system is to add one or a few special agents into the group which are still treated as normal agents by the existing ones. We study how to lead a Vicsek-like flocking model to reach synchronization by adding special agents. A popular method is to add some simple leaders (fixed-headings agents. However, we add one intelligent agent, called 'shill', which uses online feedback information of the group to decide the shill's moving direction at each step. A novel strategy for the shill to coordinate the group is proposed. It is strictly proved that a shill with this strategy and a limited speed can synchronize every agent in the group. The computer simulations show the effectiveness of this strategy in different scenarios, including different group sizes, shill speed, and with or without noise. Compared to the method of adding some fixed-heading leaders, our method can guarantee synchronization for any initial configuration in the deterministic scenario and improve the synchronization level significantly in low density groups, or model with noise. This suggests the advantage and power of feedback information in intervention of collective behavior.

A Hybrid Three Layer Architecture for Fire Agent Management in Rescue Simulation Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alborz Geramifard

2005-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a new architecture called FAIS for implementing intelligent agents cooperating in a special Multi Agent environment, namely the RoboCup Rescue Simulation System. This is a layered architecture which is customized for solving fire extinguishing problem. Structural decision making algorithms are combined with heuristic ones in this model, so it's a hybrid architecture.

When does inferring reputation probability countervail temptation in cooperative behaviors for the prisoners’ dilemma game?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dai, Yu; Lu, Peng

2015-01-01

In evolutionary games, the temptation mechanism reduces cooperation percentage while the reputation mechanism promotes it. Inferring reputation theory proposes that agent's imitating neighbors with the highest reputation takes place with a probability. Although reputation promotes cooperation, when and how it enhances cooperation is still a question. This paper investigates the condition where the inferring reputation probability promotes cooperation. Hence, the effects of reputation and temptation on cooperation are explored under the spatial prisoners’ dilemma game, utilizing the methods of simulation and statistical analysis. Results show that temptation reduces cooperation unconditionally while reputation promotes it conditionally, i.e. reputation countervails temptation conditionally. When the inferring reputation probability is less than 0.5, reputation promotes cooperation substantially and thus countervails temptation. However, when the inferring reputation probability is larger than 0.5, its contribution to cooperation is relatively weak and cannot prevent temptation from undermining cooperation. Reputation even decreases cooperation together with temptation when the probability is higher than 0.8. It should be noticed that inferring reputation does not always succeed to countervail temptation and there is a specific interval for it to promote cooperation

Aspects of agents for safeguards

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kotte, U.

1999-01-01

With the development of the Internet and the WWW, information treatment has gained a new dimension. (Intelligent) software agents are one of the means expected to relieve human staff of the burden of information overload, and in the future to contribute to safeguards data acquisition, data evaluation and decision-making. An overview is given for the categories of Internet, intranet and desktop agents. Aspects of the potential application of agents are described in three fields: information access and delivery, collaboration and workflow management, adaptive interfaces and learning assistants. Routine application of agents is not yet in sight, but the scientific and technical progress seems to be encouraging. (author)

MARS, a Multi-Agent System for Assessing Rowers’ Coordination via Motion-Based Stigmergy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mario G. C. A. Cimino

2013-09-01

Full Text Available A crucial aspect in rowing is having a synchronized, highly-efficient stroke. This is very difficult to obtain, due to the many interacting factors that each rower of the crew must perceive. Having a system that monitors and represents the crew coordination would be of great help to the coach during training sessions. In the literature, some methods already employ wireless sensors for capturing motion patterns that affect rowing performance. A challenging problem is to support the coach’s decisions at his same level of knowledge, using a limited number of sensors and avoiding the complexity of the biomechanical analysis of human movements. In this paper, we present a multi-agent information-processing system for on-water measuring of both the overall crew asynchrony and the individual rower asynchrony towards the crew. More specifically, in the system, the first level of processing is managed by marking agents, which release marks in a sensing space, according to the rowers’ motion. The accumulation of marks enables a stigmergic cooperation mechanism, generating collective marks, i.e., short-term memory structures in the sensing space. At the second level of processing, information provided by marks is observed by similarity agents, which associate a similarity degree with respect to optimal marks. Finally, the third level is managed by granulation agents, which extract asynchrony indicators for different purposes. The effectiveness of the system has been experimented on real-world scenarios. The study includes the problem statement and its characterization in the literature, as well as the proposed solving approach and initial experimental setting.

Crowd Computing as a Cooperation Problem: An Evolutionary Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Christoforou, Evgenia; Fernández Anta, Antonio; Georgiou, Chryssis; Mosteiro, Miguel A.; Sánchez, Angel

2013-05-01

Cooperation is one of the socio-economic issues that has received more attention from the physics community. The problem has been mostly considered by studying games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma or the Public Goods Game. Here, we take a step forward by studying cooperation in the context of crowd computing. We introduce a model loosely based on Principal-agent theory in which people (workers) contribute to the solution of a distributed problem by computing answers and reporting to the problem proposer (master). To go beyond classical approaches involving the concept of Nash equilibrium, we work on an evolutionary framework in which both the master and the workers update their behavior through reinforcement learning. Using a Markov chain approach, we show theoretically that under certain----not very restrictive—conditions, the master can ensure the reliability of the answer resulting of the process. Then, we study the model by numerical simulations, finding that convergence, meaning that the system reaches a point in which it always produces reliable answers, may in general be much faster than the upper bounds given by the theoretical calculation. We also discuss the effects of the master's level of tolerance to defectors, about which the theory does not provide information. The discussion shows that the system works even with very large tolerances. We conclude with a discussion of our results and possible directions to carry this research further.

Short versus long term benefits and the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Markus Brede

Full Text Available In this paper I investigate the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma when individuals change their strategies subject to performance evaluation of their neighbours over variable time horizons. In the monochrome setting, in which all agents per default share the same performance evaluation rule, weighing past events strongly dramatically enhances the prevalence of cooperators. For co-evolutionary models, in which evaluation time horizons and strategies can co-evolve, I demonstrate that cooperation naturally associates with long-term evaluation of others while defection is typically paired with very short time horizons. Moreover, considering the continuous spectrum in between enhanced and discounted weights of past performance, cooperation is optimally supported when cooperators neither give enhanced weight to past nor more recent events, but simply average payoffs. Payoff averaging is also found to emerge as the dominant strategy for cooperators in co-evolutionary models, thus proposing a natural route to the evolution of cooperation in viscous populations.

76 FR 17617 - Multi-Agency Informational Meeting Concerning Compliance With the Federal Select Agent Program...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-30

... assessments, biosafety requirements, and security measures. DATES: The meeting will be held on May 10, 2011...) and other interested individuals to obtain specific regulatory guidance and information on standards concerning biosafety and biosecurity issues related to the Federal Select Agent Program. CDC, APHIS, and FBI...

Distributed cooperative control of AC microgrids

Science.gov (United States)

Bidram, Ali

In this dissertation, the comprehensive secondary control of electric power microgrids is of concern. Microgrid technical challenges are mainly realized through the hierarchical control structure, including primary, secondary, and tertiary control levels. Primary control level is locally implemented at each distributed generator (DG), while the secondary and tertiary control levels are conventionally implemented through a centralized control structure. The centralized structure requires a central controller which increases the reliability concerns by posing the single point of failure. In this dissertation, the distributed control structure using the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems is exploited to increase the secondary control reliability. The secondary control objectives are microgrid voltage and frequency, and distributed generators (DGs) active and reactive powers. Fully distributed control protocols are implemented through distributed communication networks. In the distributed control structure, each DG only requires its own information and the information of its neighbors on the communication network. The distributed structure obviates the requirements for a central controller and complex communication network which, in turn, improves the system reliability. Since the DG dynamics are nonlinear and non-identical, input-output feedback linearization is used to transform the nonlinear dynamics of DGs to linear dynamics. Proposed control frameworks cover the control of microgrids containing inverter-based DGs. Typical microgrid test systems are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control protocols.

Towards an International Code for administrative cooperation in tax matter and international tax governance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eva Andrés Aucejo

2017-12-01

Full Text Available There is not a “Global Code” that encodes the duty of cooperation between tax authorities in the world, concerning the global tax system. This article addresses this issue by proposing a global Code of administrative cooperation in tax matters including both tax relations: between States, and between States, taxpayers and intermediary’s agents. It follows a wide concept of tax governance. The findings of this research have highlighted several practical applications for future practice. article analyses, firstly, the State of the question, starting with the legal sources (international and European sources of hard law and soft law reviewing the differences with the Code as here proposed. It also examines some important Agents who emit relevant normative in international administrative tax cooperation and the role that these agents are developing nowadays (sometimes international organizations but also States like the United States, which Congress enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA. Overlapping and gaps between different regulations are underlined. Finally, the consequences of this “General Code” lack for the functioning of a good international governance, are described. Hence, the need to create an International Cooperation Code on tax matters and international fiscal governance is concluded. That Code could be proposed by any International Organization as the World Bank nature, for instance, or the International Monetary Fund or whichever International or European Organization. This instrument could be documented through a multilateral instrument (soft law, to be signed by the States to become an international legal source (hard law. Filling this Code as Articulated Text (form could be very useful for the International Community towards an International Tax Governance.

Discovery and information-theoretic characterization of transcription factor binding sites that act cooperatively.

Science.gov (United States)

Clifford, Jacob; Adami, Christoph

2015-09-02

Transcription factor binding to the surface of DNA regulatory regions is one of the primary causes of regulating gene expression levels. A probabilistic approach to model protein-DNA interactions at the sequence level is through position weight matrices (PWMs) that estimate the joint probability of a DNA binding site sequence by assuming positional independence within the DNA sequence. Here we construct conditional PWMs that depend on the motif signatures in the flanking DNA sequence, by conditioning known binding site loci on the presence or absence of additional binding sites in the flanking sequence of each site's locus. Pooling known sites with similar flanking sequence patterns allows for the estimation of the conditional distribution function over the binding site sequences. We apply our model to the Dorsal transcription factor binding sites active in patterning the Dorsal-Ventral axis of Drosophila development. We find that those binding sites that cooperate with nearby Twist sites on average contain about 0.5 bits of information about the presence of Twist transcription factor binding sites in the flanking sequence. We also find that Dorsal binding site detectors conditioned on flanking sequence information make better predictions about what is a Dorsal site relative to background DNA than detection without information about flanking sequence features.

Cooperative courseware authoring support

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dicheva, D.; Aroyo, L.M.; Cristea, A.I.

2003-01-01

We refined our knowledge classification and indexing approach applied in our previously developed system AIMS (Agentbased Information Management System) by introducing ontology-oriented support for cooperative courseware authoring. In order to provide a basis for formal semantics and reasoning in

Genetic architecture promotes the evolution and maintenance of cooperation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antoine Frénoy

Full Text Available When cooperation has a direct cost and an indirect benefit, a selfish behavior is more likely to be selected for than an altruistic one. Kin and group selection do provide evolutionary explanations for the stability of cooperation in nature, but we still lack the full understanding of the genomic mechanisms that can prevent cheater invasion. In our study we used Aevol, an agent-based, in silico genomic platform to evolve populations of digital organisms that compete, reproduce, and cooperate by secreting a public good for tens of thousands of generations. We found that cooperating individuals may share a phenotype, defined as the amount of public good produced, but have very different abilities to resist cheater invasion. To understand the underlying genetic differences between cooperator types, we performed bio-inspired genomics analyses of our digital organisms by recording and comparing the locations of metabolic and secretion genes, as well as the relevant promoters and terminators. Association between metabolic and secretion genes (promoter sharing, overlap via frame shift or sense-antisense encoding was characteristic for populations with robust cooperation and was more likely to evolve when secretion was costly. In mutational analysis experiments, we demonstrated the potential evolutionary consequences of the genetic association by performing a large number of mutations and measuring their phenotypic and fitness effects. The non-cooperating mutants arising from the individuals with genetic association were more likely to have metabolic deleterious mutations that eventually lead to selection eliminating such mutants from the population due to the accompanying fitness decrease. Effectively, cooperation evolved to be protected and robust to mutations through entangled genetic architecture. Our results confirm the importance of second-order selection on evolutionary outcomes, uncover an important genetic mechanism for the evolution and

Emergent oscillations assist obstacle negotiation during ant cooperative transport

Science.gov (United States)

Gelblum, Aviram; Pinkoviezky, Itai; Fonio, Ehud; Gov, Nir S.; Feinerman, Ofer

2016-01-01

Collective motion by animal groups is affected by internal interactions, external constraints, and the influx of information. A quantitative understanding of how these different factors give rise to different modes of collective motion is, at present, lacking. Here, we study how ants that cooperatively transport a large food item react to an obstacle blocking their path. Combining experiments with a statistical physics model of mechanically coupled active agents, we show that the constraint induces a deterministic collective oscillatory mode that facilitates obstacle circumvention. We provide direct experimental evidence, backed by theory, that this motion is an emergent group effect that does not require any behavioral changes at the individual level. We trace these relaxation oscillations to the interplay between two forces; informed ants pull the load toward the nest whereas uninformed ants contribute to the motion’s persistence along the tangential direction. The model’s predictions that oscillations appear above a critical system size, that the group can spontaneously transition into its ordered phase, and that the system can exhibit complete rotations are all verified experimentally. We expect that similar oscillatory modes emerge in collective motion scenarios where the structure of the environment imposes conflicts between individually held information and the group’s tendency for cohesiveness. PMID:27930304

Metodologia de rating em cooperativas agropecuárias: um estudo de caso Rating methodology in agricultural cooperatives: a case study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Davi Rogério de Moura Costa

2009-12-01

information asymmetry among cooperatives and the financial markets agents. In this way, developing a rating methodology applied to agricultural cooperatives in Brazil to reduce moral hazard and adverse selection that creates business and contractual organizational inefficiency among cooperatives and financial markets agents. The 'five C' method was used which considers organizational financial capacity, corporate governance characteristics, relations with members, and commodity market characteristics, among others. A weighting and evaluation were associated with each variable. The result was applied to an agricultural cooperative case study which concluded that this methodology is applicable and that results, evaluations and weights, could be discussed in cooperative rating committees. As a final consideration, an agenda is discussed for new applications of this methodology, for testing in other agricultural cooperative organizations and to consolidate it as a market financial information signal.

Coevolution of honest signaling and cooperative norms by cultural group selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Scheuring, István

2010-08-01

Evolution of cooperative norms is studied in a population where individual and group level selection are both in operation. Individuals play indirect reciprocity game within their group and follow second order norms. Individuals are norm-followers, and imitate their successful group mates. Aside from direct observation individuals can be informed about the previous actions and reputations by information transferred by others. A potential donor estimates the reputation of a potential receiver either by her own observation or by the opinion of the majority of others (indirect observation). Following a previous study (Scheuring, 2009) we assume that norms determine only the probabilities of actions, and mutants can differ in these probabilities. Similarly, we assume that individuals follow a stochastic information transfer strategy. The central question is whether cooperative norm and honest social information transfer can emerge in a population where initially only non-cooperative norms were present, and the transferred information was not sufficiently honest. It is shown that evolution can lead to a cooperative state where information transferred in a reliable manner, where generous cooperative strategies are dominant. This cooperative state emerges along a sharp transition of norms. We studied the characteristics of actions and strategies in this transition by classifying the stochastic norms, and found that a series of more and more judging strategies invade each other before the stabilization of the so-called generous judging strategy. Numerical experiments on the coevolution of social parameters (e.g. probability of direct observation and the number of indirect observers) reveal that it is advantageous to lean on indirect observation even if information transfer is much noisier than for direct observation, which is because to follow the majorities' opinion suppresses information noise meaningfully.

Improved Sparse Channel Estimation for Cooperative Communication Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guan Gui

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Accurate channel state information (CSI is necessary at receiver for coherent detection in amplify-and-forward (AF cooperative communication systems. To estimate the channel, traditional methods, that is, least squares (LS and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO, are based on assumptions of either dense channel or global sparse channel. However, LS-based linear method neglects the inherent sparse structure information while LASSO-based sparse channel method cannot take full advantage of the prior information. Based on the partial sparse assumption of the cooperative channel model, we propose an improved channel estimation method with partial sparse constraint. At first, by using sparse decomposition theory, channel estimation is formulated as a compressive sensing problem. Secondly, the cooperative channel is reconstructed by LASSO with partial sparse constraint. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to confirm the superiority of proposed methods over global sparse channel estimation methods.

Smart Grid Cost-Emission Unit Commitment via Co-Evolutionary Agents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaohua Zhang

2016-10-01

Full Text Available In this paper, the uncertainty of wind, solar and load; smart charging and discharging of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs to and from various energy sources; and the coordination of wind, solar power, PHEVs and cost-emission are considered in the smart grid unit commitment (UC. First, a multi-scenario simulation is used in which a set of valid scenarios is considered for the uncertainties of wind and solar energy sources and load. Then the UC problem for the set of scenarios is decomposed into the optimization of interactive agents by multi-agent technology. Agents’ action is represented by a genetic algorithm with adaptive crossover and mutation operators. The adaptive co-evolution of agents is reached by adaptive cooperative multipliers. Finally, simulation is implemented on an example of a power system containing thermal units, a wind farm, solar power plants and PHEVs. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Thermal units, wind, solar power and PHEVs are mutually complementarily by the adaptive cooperative mechanism. The adaptive multipliers’ updating strategy can save more computational time and further improve the efficiency.

Effect of self-interaction on the evolution of cooperation in complex topologies

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Yu'e.; Zhang, Zhipeng; Chang, Shuhua

2017-09-01

Self-interaction, as a significant mechanism explaining the evolution of cooperation, has attracted great attention both theoretically and experimentally. In this text, we consider a new self-interaction mechanism in the two typical pairwise models including the prisoner's dilemma and the snowdrift games, where the cooperative agents will gain extra bonus for their selfless behavior. We find that under the mechanism the collective cooperation is elevated to a very high level especially after adopting the finite population analogue of replicator dynamics for evolution. The robustness of the new mechanism is tested for different complex topologies for the prisoner's dilemma game. All the presented results demonstrate that the enhancement effects are independent of the structure of the applied spatial networks and the potential evolutionary games, and thus showing a high degree of universality. Our conclusions might shed light on the understanding of the evolution of cooperation in the real world.

A User Cooperation Stimulating Strategy Based on Cooperative Game Theory in Cooperative Relay Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ping Zhang

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a user cooperation stimulating strategy among rational users. The strategy is based on cooperative game theory and enacted in the context of cooperative relay networks. Using the pricing-based mechanism, the system is modeled initially with two nodes and a Base Station (BS. Within this framework, each node is treated as a rational decision maker. To this end, each node can decide whether to cooperate and how to cooperate. Cooperative game theory assists in providing an optimal system utility and provides fairness among users. Under different cooperative forwarding modes, certain questions are carefully investigated, including “what is each node's best reaction to maximize its utility?” and “what is the optimal reimbursement to encourage cooperation?” Simulation results show that the nodes benefit from the proposed cooperation stimulating strategy in terms of utility and thus justify the fairness between each user.

A User Cooperation Stimulating Strategy Based on Cooperative Game Theory in Cooperative Relay Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiang Fan

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a user cooperation stimulating strategy among rational users. The strategy is based on cooperative game theory and enacted in the context of cooperative relay networks. Using the pricing-based mechanism, the system is modeled initially with two nodes and a Base Station (BS. Within this framework, each node is treated as a rational decision maker. To this end, each node can decide whether to cooperate and how to cooperate. Cooperative game theory assists in providing an optimal system utility and provides fairness among users. Under different cooperative forwarding modes, certain questions are carefully investigated, including "what is each node's best reaction to maximize its utility?" and "what is the optimal reimbursement to encourage cooperation?" Simulation results show that the nodes benefit from the proposed cooperation stimulating strategy in terms of utility and thus justify the fairness between each user.

Persuasion Model and Its Evaluation Based on Positive Change Degree of Agent Emotion

Science.gov (United States)

Jinghua, Wu; Wenguang, Lu; Hailiang, Meng

For it can meet needs of negotiation among organizations take place in different time and place, and for it can make its course more rationality and result more ideal, persuasion based on agent can improve cooperation among organizations well. Integrated emotion change in agent persuasion can further bring agent advantage of artificial intelligence into play. Emotion of agent persuasion is classified, and the concept of positive change degree is given. Based on this, persuasion model based on positive change degree of agent emotion is constructed, which is explained clearly through an example. Finally, the method of relative evaluation is given, which is also verified through a calculation example.

Ontological Model-Based Transparent Access To Information In A Medical Multi-Agent System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Felicia GÎZĂ-BELCIUG

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Getting the full electronic medical record of a patient is an important step in providing a quality medical service. But the degree of heterogeneity of data from health unit informational systems is very high, because each unit can have a different model for storing patients’ medical data. In order to achieve the interoperability and integration of data from various medical units that store partial patient medical information, this paper proposes a multi-agent systems and ontology based approach. Therefore, we present an ontological model for describing the particular structure of the data integration process. The system is to be used for centralizing the information from a patient’s partial medical records. The main advantage of the proposed model is the low ratio between the complexity of the model and the amount of information that can be retrieved in order to generate the complete medical history of a patient.

Bargaining babblers: vocal negotiation of cooperative behaviour in a social bird

Science.gov (United States)

Bell, M. B. V.; Radford, A. N.; Smith, R. A.; Thompson, A. M.; Ridley, A. R.

2010-01-01

Wherever individuals perform cooperative behaviours, each should be selected to adjust their own current contributions in relation to the likely future contributions of their collaborators. Here, we use the sentinel system of pied babblers (Turdoides bicolor) to show that individuals anticipate contributions by group mates, adjusting their own contribution in response to information about internal state broadcast by others. Specifically, we show that (i) short-term changes in state influence contributions to a cooperative behaviour, (ii) individuals communicate short-term changes in state, and (iii) individuals use information about the state of group mates to adjust their own investment in sentinel behaviour. Our results demonstrate that individual decisions about contributions to a cooperative effort can be influenced by information about the likely future contribution of others. We suggest that similar pre-emptive adjustments based on information obtained from collaborators will be a common feature of cooperative behaviour, and may play an important role in the development of complex communication in social species. PMID:20519221

A Hybrid Three Layer Architecture for Fire Agent Management in Rescue Simulation Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alborz Geramifard

2008-11-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a new architecture called FAIS for imple- menting intelligent agents cooperating in a special Multi Agent environ- ment, namely the RoboCup Rescue Simulation System. This is a layered architecture which is customized for solving fire extinguishing problem. Structural decision making algorithms are combined with heuristic ones in this model, so it's a hybrid architecture.

Biological warfare agents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Duraipandian Thavaselvam

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The recent bioterrorist attacks using anthrax spores have emphasized the need to detect and decontaminate critical facilities in the shortest possible time. There has been a remarkable progress in the detection, protection and decontamination of biological warfare agents as many instrumentation platforms and detection methodologies are developed and commissioned. Even then the threat of biological warfare agents and their use in bioterrorist attacks still remain a leading cause of global concern. Furthermore in the past decade there have been threats due to the emerging new diseases and also the re-emergence of old diseases and development of antimicrobial resistance and spread to new geographical regions. The preparedness against these agents need complete knowledge about the disease, better research and training facilities, diagnostic facilities and improved public health system. This review on the biological warfare agents will provide information on the biological warfare agents, their mode of transmission and spread and also the detection systems available to detect them. In addition the current information on the availability of commercially available and developing technologies against biological warfare agents has also been discussed. The risk that arise due to the use of these agents in warfare or bioterrorism related scenario can be mitigated with the availability of improved detection technologies.

Biological warfare agents

Science.gov (United States)

Thavaselvam, Duraipandian; Vijayaraghavan, Rajagopalan

2010-01-01

The recent bioterrorist attacks using anthrax spores have emphasized the need to detect and decontaminate critical facilities in the shortest possible time. There has been a remarkable progress in the detection, protection and decontamination of biological warfare agents as many instrumentation platforms and detection methodologies are developed and commissioned. Even then the threat of biological warfare agents and their use in bioterrorist attacks still remain a leading cause of global concern. Furthermore in the past decade there have been threats due to the emerging new diseases and also the re-emergence of old diseases and development of antimicrobial resistance and spread to new geographical regions. The preparedness against these agents need complete knowledge about the disease, better research and training facilities, diagnostic facilities and improved public health system. This review on the biological warfare agents will provide information on the biological warfare agents, their mode of transmission and spread and also the detection systems available to detect them. In addition the current information on the availability of commercially available and developing technologies against biological warfare agents has also been discussed. The risk that arise due to the use of these agents in warfare or bioterrorism related scenario can be mitigated with the availability of improved detection technologies. PMID:21829313

Skew Information for a Single Cooper Pair Box Interacting with a Single Cavity Field

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Metwally, N.; Al-Mannai, A.; Abdel-Aty, M.

2013-01-01

The dynamics of the skew information (SI) is investigated for a single Cooper Pair Box (CPB) interacting with a single cavity field. By suitably choosing the system parameters and precisely controlling the dynamics, novel connection is found between the SI and entanglement generation. It is shown that SI can be increased and reach its maximum value either by increasing the number of photons inside the cavity or considering the far off-resonant case. The number of oscillations of SI is increased by decreasing this ratio between the Josephson junction capacity and the gate capacity. This leads to significant improvement of the travelling time between the maximum and minimum values. (condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties)

Potential cooperative measures on nuclear issues in Asia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Olsen, J.

1997-01-01

Cooperation on nuclear issues is receiving increased attention in Asia. In Northeast Asia, where the nuclear industry is well-developed, cooperation in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle could help deal with issues such as disposition of spent fuel and long term storage options. In Southeast Asia, where countries are just beginning to introduce nuclear energy, cooperation would be useful in developing standards for the nuclear industry. Throughout Asia, nuclear research and power activities can raise concerns about safety, environmental pollution and proliferation. The sharing of relevant information, i.e. cooperative monitoring, will be essential to addressing these issues. In fact, a number of regional interactions on nuclear issues are already occurring. These range from training exchanges sponsored by the more advanced states to participation in environmental monitoring of the East Sea (Sea of Japan). Several states are considering sharing information from their nuclear facilities; some exchanges of radiation data are already in place. The KEDO reactor project will involve close working relations between the nuclear experts of South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US. Areas for further regional cooperation are discussed

Design and Implementation of Multi Agent-based Information Fusion System for Supporting Decision Making (A Case Study on Military Operation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arwin Datumaya Wahyudi Sumari

2008-05-01

Full Text Available Quick, accurate, and complete information is highly required for supporting strategically impact decision making in a Military Operation (MO in order to reduce the decision cycle and to minimize the loss. For that purpose, we propose, design and implement a hierarchical Multi Agent-based Information Fusion System for Decision Making Support (MAIFS-DMS. The information fusion is implemented by applying Maximum Score of the Total Sum of Joint Probabilities (MSJP fusion method and is done by a collection of Information Fusion Agents (IFA that forms a multiagent system. MAIFS uses a combination of generalization of Dasarathy and Joint Director’s Laboratory (JDL process models for information fusion mechanism. Information fusion products that are displayed in graphical forms provide comprehensive information regarding the MO area dynamics. By observing the graphics resulted from the information fusion, the commandant will have situational awareness and knowledge in order to make the most accurate strategic decision as fast as possible

Soft cooperative spectrum sensing performance under imperfect and non identical reporting channels

KAUST Repository

Ben Ghorbel, Mahdi; Nam, Haewoon; Alouini, Mohamed-Slim

2015-01-01

in cooperative spectrum sensing techniques assume perfect channels between the cooperating users, this paper studies the effect of imperfect channels when local users report their sensed information to the fusion center. Cooperative detection and false

The Perception of Cooperativeness Without Any Visual or Auditory Communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Dong-Seon; Burger, Franziska; Bülthoff, Heinrich H; de la Rosa, Stephan

2015-12-01

Perceiving social information such as the cooperativeness of another person is an important part of human interaction. But can people perceive the cooperativeness of others even without any visual or auditory information? In a novel experimental setup, we connected two people with a rope and made them accomplish a point-collecting task together while they could not see or hear each other. We observed a consistently emerging turn-taking behavior in the interactions and installed a confederate in a subsequent experiment who either minimized or maximized this behavior. Participants experienced this only through the haptic force-feedback of the rope and made evaluations about the confederate after each interaction. We found that perception of cooperativeness was significantly affected only by the manipulation of this turn-taking behavior. Gender- and size-related judgments also significantly differed. Our results suggest that people can perceive social information such as the cooperativeness of other people even in situations where possibilities for communication are minimal.

The Perception of Cooperativeness Without Any Visual or Auditory Communication

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dong-Seon Chang

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Perceiving social information such as the cooperativeness of another person is an important part of human interaction. But can people perceive the cooperativeness of others even without any visual or auditory information? In a novel experimental setup, we connected two people with a rope and made them accomplish a point-collecting task together while they could not see or hear each other. We observed a consistently emerging turn-taking behavior in the interactions and installed a confederate in a subsequent experiment who either minimized or maximized this behavior. Participants experienced this only through the haptic force-feedback of the rope and made evaluations about the confederate after each interaction. We found that perception of cooperativeness was significantly affected only by the manipulation of this turn-taking behavior. Gender- and size-related judgments also significantly differed. Our results suggest that people can perceive social information such as the cooperativeness of other people even in situations where possibilities for communication are minimal.

Predicting Human Cooperation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John J Nay

Full Text Available The Prisoner's Dilemma has been a subject of extensive research due to its importance in understanding the ever-present tension between individual self-interest and social benefit. A strictly dominant strategy in a Prisoner's Dilemma (defection, when played by both players, is mutually harmful. Repetition of the Prisoner's Dilemma can give rise to cooperation as an equilibrium, but defection is as well, and this ambiguity is difficult to resolve. The numerous behavioral experiments investigating the Prisoner's Dilemma highlight that players often cooperate, but the level of cooperation varies significantly with the specifics of the experimental predicament. We present the first computational model of human behavior in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games that unifies the diversity of experimental observations in a systematic and quantitatively reliable manner. Our model relies on data we integrated from many experiments, comprising 168,386 individual decisions. The model is composed of two pieces: the first predicts the first-period action using solely the structural game parameters, while the second predicts dynamic actions using both game parameters and history of play. Our model is successful not merely at fitting the data, but in predicting behavior at multiple scales in experimental designs not used for calibration, using only information about the game structure. We demonstrate the power of our approach through a simulation analysis revealing how to best promote human cooperation.

Evolution of group-wise cooperation: Is direct reciprocity insufficient?

Science.gov (United States)

Kurokawa, Shun; Ihara, Yasuo

2017-02-21

Group-wise cooperation, or cooperation among three or more individuals, is an integral part of human societies. It is likely that group-wise cooperation also played a crucial role in the survival of early hominins, who were confronted with novel environmental challenges, long before the emergence of Homo sapiens. However, previous theoretical and empirical studies, focusing mainly on modern humans, have tended to suggest that evolution of cooperation in sizable groups cannot be explained by simple direct reciprocity and requires some additional mechanisms (reputation, punishment, etc.), which are cognitively too demanding for early hominins. As a partial resolution of the paradox, our recent analysis of a stochastic evolutionary model, which considers the effect of random drift, has revealed that evolution of group-wise cooperation is more likely to occur in larger groups when an individual's share of the benefit produced by one cooperator does not decrease with increasing group size (i.e., goods are non-rivalrous). In this paper, we further extend our previous analysis to explore possible consequences of introducing rare mistakes in behavior or imperfect information about behavior of others on the model outcome. Analyses of the extended models show that evolution of group-wise cooperation can be facilitated by large group size even when individuals intending to cooperate sometimes fail to do so or when all the information about the past behavior of group members is not available. We argue, therefore, that evolution of cooperation in sizable groups does not necessarily require other mechanisms than direct reciprocity if the goods to be produced via group-wise cooperation are non-rivalrous. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social rank and social cooperation: Impact of social comparison processes on cooperative decision-making.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xu Gong

Full Text Available Successful navigation of our complex social world requires the capability to recognize and judge the relative status of others. Hence, social comparison processes are of great importance in our interactions, informing us of our relative standing and in turn potentially motivating our behavior. However, so far few studies have examined in detail how social comparison can influence interpersonal decision-making. One aspect of social decision-making that is of particular importance is cooperative behavior, and identifying means of maintaining and promoting cooperation in the provision of public goods is of vital interest to society. Here, we manipulated social comparison by grading performance rankings on a reaction time task, and then measured cooperative decisions via a modified Public Goods Game (PGG. Findings revealed that individuals ranked highest tended to be more cooperative as compared to those who placed in the bottom rank. Interestingly, this effect was regardless of whether the comparison group members were the subsequent players in the PGG or not, and this effect was stronger in those with higher social orientation. In summary, the present research shows how different social comparison processes (assessed via social rankings can operate in our daily interaction with others, demonstrating an important effect on cooperative behavior.

Agricultural Cooperatives and Dilemmas of Survival

OpenAIRE

Gray, Thomas W.; Heffernan, William D.; Hendrickson, Mary K.

2001-01-01

The context of agricultural cooperatives is undergoing major change with the development of various food and information monitoring technologies. Large multi-nationals have moved to take advantage of these developments with the construction of agri-food chains. These chains are being facilitated via various mergers, acquisitions, and alliances, with the power, and deepening power of such deep-pocket organizations as Cargill, ADM, and ConAgra. Cooperatives have been integrated into these chain...

From Focus on Price to the Pyramid of Innovation, Information, Cooperation, Value and Trust: A Success Story of Five Swedish Building Material Manufacturers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan Sundquist

2010-07-01

In the building sector, value for the customer, is often regarded as being value for money and this, in turn, is achieved by means of competitive tendering. However, there are companies that also focus on innovation as a competitive parameter in their contribution; hereafter referred to as innovative companies. Five managing directors from innovative companies in Sweden were interviewed about how innovation is dealt with in their respective companies. As well as the importance of information, this study points to two additional important factors for innovation, namely cooperation with a carefully chosen partner and the transference of values to the employees. Those innovative companies made careful choices and use means of information, cooperation, value and vision to create innovation in order to build trust for the company and for its products and services.

Affordability and Paradigms in Agent-Based Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Boldur E. Barbat

2007-07-01

Full Text Available The paper aims at substantiating that in universities with scarce resources, applied Information Technologies (IT research is affordable, even in most advanced and dynamic sub-domains. This target is split into four specific objectives: a to set up a framework for IT research affordability in universities representative for current East-European circumstances; b to outline a workable approach based on synergistic leverage and to assess the paradigms prevalent in modern artificial intelligence through this ``affordability filter''; c to describe the evolution and the current stages of two undertakings exploiting paradigms founded on emergence (the sub-domains are stigmergic coordination and agent self-awareness; d to summarise for both sub domains the mechanisms and the architectonics (the focus is on computer science aspects; implementation details will be given in future papers. The results in both directions appear as promising and reveal significant potential for transdisciplinarity. From this perspective, the paper is a call to improved cooperation.

Agent Based Control of Electric Power Systems with Distributed Generation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Saleem, Arshad

and subsystems that are able to coordinate, communicate, cooperate, adapt to emerging situations and self organize in an intelligent way. At the same time, rapid development in information and and communication technologies (ICT) have brought new opportunities and elucidations. New Technologies and standards...... control strategies. The results have been discussed from case studies of multiagent based distributed control scenarios in electric power systems. The main contribution of this work is a proposal for system design methodology for application of intelligent agent technology in power systems....... Situation in Denmark is even more interesting, with a current 20% penetration of wind energy it is moving towards an ambitious goal of 50% penetration by the year 2050. Realization of these concepts requires that power systems should be of distributed nature { consisting of autonomous components...

Bee Swarm Optimization for Medical Web Information Foraging.

Science.gov (United States)

Drias, Yassine; Kechid, Samir; Pasi, Gabriella

2016-02-01

The present work is related to Web intelligence and more precisely to medical information foraging. We present here a novel approach based on agents technology for information foraging. An architecture is proposed, in which we distinguish two important phases. The first one is a learning process for localizing the most relevant pages that might interest the user. This is performed on a fixed instance of the Web. The second takes into account the openness and the dynamicity of the Web. It consists on an incremental learning starting from the result of the first phase and reshaping the outcomes taking into account the changes that undergoes the Web. The whole system offers a tool to help the user undertaking information foraging. We implemented the system using a group of cooperative reactive agents and more precisely a colony of artificial bees. In order to validate our proposal, experiments were conducted on MedlinePlus, a benchmark dedicated for research in the domain of Health. The results are promising either for those related to Web regularities and for the response time, which is very short and hence complies the real time constraint.

THE COOPERATIVE WORK AND FAMILY FARMING ECOLOGICALLY BASED: ACTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FROM THE LOCAL REALITY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fabiana da Silva Andersson

2012-11-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to characterize the associated farmers to Cooperativa Sul Ecológica de Agricultores Familiares Ltda., and to understand the organization of the cooperative institution. For this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the family farmers ecological base and development agents along Cooperative, together the use of secondary sources. Since the Cooperative presents their work ethics and press for horizontal beginning, it allows collective decision making. In addition, your audience - family farmers ecological base - has an active history of sustainable and cooperative work. Therefore, we can measure both the public research on the family farm as the institution Cooperativa Sul Ecológica actual actions and what Costabeber & Caporal established as ecologically based agriculture.

Securing co-operation from persons supplying statistical data

Science.gov (United States)

Aubenque, M. J.; Blaikley, R. M.; Harris, F. Fraser; Lal, R. B.; Neurdenburg, M. G.; Hernández, R. de Shelly

1954-01-01

Securing the co-operation of persons supplying information required for medical statistics is essentially a problem in human relations, and an understanding of the motivations, attitudes, and behaviour of the respondents is necessary. Before any new statistical survey is undertaken, it is suggested by Aubenque and Harris that a preliminary review be made so that the maximum use is made of existing information. Care should also be taken not to burden respondents with an overloaded questionnaire. Aubenque and Harris recommend simplified reporting. Complete population coverage is not necessary. Neurdenburg suggests that the co-operation and support of such organizations as medical associations and social security boards are important and that propaganda should be directed specifically to the groups whose co-operation is sought. Informal personal contacts are valuable and desirable, according to Blaikley, but may have adverse effects if the right kind of approach is not made. Financial payments as an incentive in securing co-operation are opposed by Neurdenburg, who proposes that only postage-free envelopes or similar small favours be granted. Blaikley and Harris, on the other hand, express the view that financial incentives may do much to gain the support of those required to furnish data; there are, however, other incentives, and full use should be made of the natural inclinations of respondents. Compulsion may be necessary in certain instances, but administrative rather than statutory measures should be adopted. Penalties, according to Aubenque, should be inflicted only when justified by imperative health requirements. The results of surveys should be made available as soon as possible to those who co-operated, and Aubenque and Harris point out that they should also be of practical value to the suppliers of the information. Greater co-operation can be secured from medical persons who have an understanding of the statistical principles involved; Aubenque and

Using social network analysis and agent-based modelling to explore information flow using common operational pictures for maritime search and rescue operations.

Science.gov (United States)

Baber, C; Stanton, N A; Atkinson, J; McMaster, R; Houghton, R J

2013-01-01

The concept of common operational pictures (COPs) is explored through the application of social network analysis (SNA) and agent-based modelling to a generic search and rescue (SAR) scenario. Comparing the command structure that might arise from standard operating procedures with the sort of structure that might arise from examining information-in-common, using SNA, shows how one structure could be more amenable to 'command' with the other being more amenable to 'control' - which is potentially more suited to complex multi-agency operations. An agent-based model is developed to examine the impact of information sharing with different forms of COPs. It is shown that networks using common relevant operational pictures (which provide subsets of relevant information to groups of agents based on shared function) could result in better sharing of information and a more resilient structure than networks that use a COP. SNA and agent-based modelling are used to compare different forms of COPs for maritime SAR operations. Different forms of COP change the communications structures in the socio-technical systems in which they operate, which has implications for future design and development of a COP.

International cooperation in production inspections

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Limousin, S.

2009-01-01

Nuclear pressure equipment, like the reactor pressure vessel or steam generators, are manufactured in many countries all around the world. As only few reactors were built in the 90's, most of the nuclear safety authorities have lost part of their know how in component manufacturing oversight. For these two reasons, vendor inspection is a key area for international cooperation. On the one hand, ASN has bilateral relationships with several countries (USA, Finland, China...) to fulfill specific purposes. On the other hand, ASN participates in international groups like the MDEP ( Multinational Design Evaluation Program). A MDEP working group dedicated to vendor inspection cooperation enables exchanges of informations (inspection program plan, inspection findings...) among the regulators. Join inspections are organized. International cooperation could lead in the long term to an harmonization of regulatory practices. (author)

Interacting agents through a web-based health serviceflow management system

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leonardi, G.; Panzarasa, S.; Quaglini, S.; Stefanelli, M.; Aalst, van der W.M.P.

2007-01-01

The management of chronic and out-patients is a complex process which requires the cooperation of different agents belonging to several organizational units. Patients have to move to different locations to access the necessary services and to communicate their health status data. From their point of

To cooperate or not to cooperate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wessels, Josepha Ivanka

To Cooperate or not to Cooperate...? discusses results of a research project to study the rehabilitation of 1500-year old water tunnels, so called "qanats", in Syria. Communities all over the world are using traditional technologies to extract drinkingwater, irrigate their lands and feed...... their livestock. But these often sustainable and ancient ways to make use of groundwater are in rapid decline worldwide. A research project started in 1999 to study the rehabilitation of 1500-year old water tunnels called "qanats"in Syria. To Cooperate or not to Cooperate...? discusses results and outcomes...

Investigation of autistic traits through strategic decision-making in games with adaptive agents

OpenAIRE

Craig, Alexis B.; Grossman, Emily; Krichmar, Jeffrey L.

2017-01-01

Autism Spectrum Disorders are characterized by difficulties in communicating and cooperating with other people. Impairment in Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to infer what another person is thinking, may contribute to these social deficits. The present study assesses the relationship between autistic traits and decision-making in a socioeconomic game environment that measures ToM and cooperation. We quantified participant strategy during game play with computer agents that simulated aspects...

Monopolizing sanctioning power under noise eliminates perverse punishment but does not increase cooperation

OpenAIRE

Sven Fischer; Kristoffel Grechenig; Nicolas Meier

2016-01-01

We run several experiments which allow us to compare cooperation under perfect and imperfect information in a centralized and decentralized punishment regime. Under perfect and extremely noisy information, aggregate behavior does not differ between institutions. Under intermediate noise, punishment escalates in the decentralized peer-to-peer punishment regime which badly affects efficiency while sustaining cooperation for longer. Only decentralized punishment is often directed at cooperators ...