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Focus follows mouse

For Mac OS X 10.3 or later, in your Terminal, execute:

   defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES

Restart.

See, life’s easier. A must-have feature for any emacs+terminal development.

Posted in Development, Work.

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By mariusz – January 30, 2010

Eagle vs. Shark

Eagle vs. Shark. See also on Wikipedia. Easy, infantile and absurd story line with very accurate and often painful study of human emotions with respect to relationships (those romantic ones and family dynamics).

Nice parable of a rotten apple: Lily eats her and leaves out only the rotten part; Jarrod throws entire apple after the first bite.

Posted in Movies and Books, Personal.

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By mariusz – January 30, 2010

7 deadly sins by Gandhi

Seven deadly sins according to Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi:

  • Wealth without Work
  • Pleasure without Conscience
  • Science without Humanity
  • Knowledge without Character
  • Politics without Principle
  • Commerce without Morality
  • Worship without Sacrifice

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal.

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By mariusz – January 27, 2010

On primary function & feeling-good.

If I think of any activity I carry on, there is always a (single) primary function why I conduct this activity. Even if I carry on an activity without being fully aware of that primary function – there is, nevertheless, objectively speaking, always a single most fundamental reason for carrying it out. The complexity of the modern world, self-love and egotism often hides this primary function.

The same activity might be perceived to fulfill various, sometimes contradicting primary functions for different people and in different circumstances. E.g. driving a car may satisfy a desire to get from A to B for one person, may satisfy desire to own and display a material wealth or may satisfy a (seemingly aimless) pastime for a teenage boy driving round and round in a city streets (going nowhere). Some activities are easy to decipher – e.g. eating, supplies nutrients for our body and fuels our metabolism. Drinking water supplies necessary fluids. Clothing and the house around us provides us with shelter and barrier from elements. These are the primary functions. Often, a given activity is (ab)used and acquires a new “primary function” – e.g. people eat not necesserily to satisfy their body needs for nutrients, but their psychological needs for comfort or feeling-good. Many activities therefore seemingly lose their primary function, and are (ab)used to serve auxiliary purpose as if it was a primary one. Eg. clothing, car and house are often used to display the social status, or we cook food and eat for reasons different than being hungry, etc.  There is a wide range of pastimes that are conducted for a sole purpose of “feeling good” (while being stripped off from their primary function). One cannot however lose sight of the primary function of a given activity – even if we do not see it, it is still there. People who eat for psychological reasons often become obese as a side-effect. Eating food, even though designed to make us feel better, is not designed with a primary function to make us feel better. It is a useful side-effect to the primary function of providing us with nutrients. And so on. One of the resolutions for 2010 is to stay true to the primary function of activities I do.

“Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things.”

Book 2, The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius  (see online)


Posted in Monk's mind, Personal.

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By mariusz – January 10, 2010

On running: meditation in motion

One of the resolutions for 2010 for me is to try stay true to what I really know, and what I only imagine I know. Know in a sense of deep, real, true, intimate and personal experience. There is a lot of things I have not experienced, but have opinion on. I shouldn’t.

People who do not run often say they that do not like running hence they do not run. The thing is that I do not like running neither. I think there is nothing like-able in the process of running itself. I do not run because I like running – I run because I like what running does to me: to my body, and to my mind. I do not think that running is something pleasurable that people like. Running a marathon was the hardest thing I ever did – it is extremely physically and emotionally draining. I hated myself for putting my body and mind through it, and every step after I hit the wall I wanted to quit, and I struggle to convince myself to carry on. Every step. There is NOTHING one can like about running a marathon. However, the glorious feel and elevation one feels when one DOES NOT RUN, is worth the effort of running. This is what running does, and this is what I love about running: the non-running time.  I know that through running I appreciate all my non-running time much more than when I do not run. I can experience something that non-runners cannot possibly imagine. And this is the same with everything else: only motorcyclist really know what motobiking is about, only divers really know what diving is about, only pilots really know what gliding is about, etc. The funny thing is, that I always have opinions on things I have never experienced. It is my mind interpolating all my past experiences and making up a story that sounds plausible to me – a best possible “projection” of certain activity or situation that I play in my head without truly, intimately knowing or experiencing before. Funny I am afraid to admit: “I do not know”.

I do run. Just run. To clear my head. To relax. To lose myself.

I will run in March the Motatapu off-road marathon: … “numerous river crossings, hills to climb, challenges to overcome all taking in spectacular views of the Southern high country” sounds an awesome event and a nice challenge.

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal, Sport.

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By mariusz – January 9, 2010

Otago Campus, people, twitter and lost photos

It’s a true [feel good] story. Last Sunday was the last day of Mariana and Ruman’s stay in Dunedin. The weather was pretty gloomy, so we went for a splash at Moana Pool in the morning. Mariana was not swimming, so she could take lots of great photos in the pool of us playing with the kids. After that, we went for a scenic drive through North Road, Dr.Point and Port Chalmers to show some of the best sceneries and viewpoints around North of Dunedin. Just on the first stop, at Baldwin street, Mariana swapped the filled up memory card with a new one. We carried out the trip, having pretty much an awesome day.
At the last stop, on Otago Campus, where Rumen opted for some compulsory Clock Tower shots to be taken by his brand new Nikon D700, Mariana’s mood deteriorated quickly as she realised she has lost her memory stick with all the photos from the pool (the one swapped in the first stop)! She frantically looked for it on the campus. To no avail. It was really painful to see her despair. I jumped on the motorbike, and retraced our route, stopping in few places and trying to find the lost photos. Nothing.

In the meantime, @classyadele found the card on campus, and she tweeted this:

classyadele@19:32: http://twitpic.com/wm2fg - Found a memory stick on Otago uni grounds. Trying to reach owner – anybody recognize these faces?

kittenypentland@19:32: RT @classyadele: http://twitpic.com/wm2fg – Found a memory stick on Otago uni grounds. Trying to reach owner – anybody recognize these faces? Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/kittenypentland/statuses/7358931076

kittenypentland@19:32: @classyadele It is: @Praeteritio

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/kittenypentland/statuses/7359023760

kittenypentland@19:36: @classyadele It is: @Praeteritio

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/kittenypentland/statuses/7359023760

classyadele@19:46: @kittenypentland Thanks :) He looked pretty familiar, from Infoscience, I think?

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/classyadele/statuses/7359211777

classyadele@19:46: @Praeteritio I found your memory stick – please DM me :) Cheers

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/classyadele/statuses/7359220722

classyadele@19:48: @kittenypentland Good thing about DUD (or Otago Uni) being small. I actually found it right on the Clocktower grounds…

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/classyadele/statuses/7359264592


So, later, on Monday evening Ula got a phonecall from Adele, a person she never met, never knew, telling her that the forever lost photos has been found. How amazing is that?! Thanks!

A good reason to use twitter, to live in Dunedin, and to be around great folks! Thanks to all involved. You guys rock!

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal, Trips.

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3 comments

By mariusz – January 6, 2010

ICCCI2009, Days 2,3/3

* Day 2
** 8:30, session 1, stream A
*** Juan J. Pardo (speaker), Manuel Nunez, M. Carmen Ruiz
A novel formalism to represent collective intelligence in multi-agent
systems
Input Output mapping system for agent actions. Based on state machines
and transitions.
*** Robert Trypuz (speaker), Pawel Garbacz, Piotr Kulicki, Marek Lechniak
A formal model for epistemic interactions
Modal logic, AI puzzles: muddy children
** changing to stream B, Semantic Web
*** Kamil Karwowski, Witold Wysota, Jacek Wytrebowicz
Computer Aided Requirements Management
(Project conducted for Polish Telecom, Telekomunikacja Polska)
Semantic approaches and tools:
- OntoWiki – general tool for visualization and editing of semantic
knowledge base
- SoftWiki – tool for aiding software development
- SEOntology (software engineering ontology). Contains soft.eng and
project management ontology, together with domain specific layer.
System CARM:
Thin-client through a web-browser. Ability to work offline (after
downloading the data to a local storage). Following USA DoD
Architectural Framework (DoDAF), and UK Ministry of Defense AF (MoDAF)
architectural recommendations. JENA ontology engine, Pellet reasoner,
Tomcat for deployment mgmt.
*** Adam Meissner
A simple parallel reasoning system for the alc description logic
(Poznan University of Technology)
the use of Oz multiparadigm programming environment.
Running tests with coordinator and up to five workers on a small
cluster of workstations with Windows OS and Mozart programming
environment. See the paper for results.
** 10:45 – Session 2, Stream A
*** Drago Zagar, slavko Rucic and Snjezana Rimac-Drlje
Agent based architecture for Pricing the services in Dynamic
User/Network Environment
University, Croatia
The studey of dynamic pricing and QoS-enabled pricing. Problem with
estimation and verification of Quality of Service in the context of
accounting (rating) network access.
Classical pricing schemes are outdated:
- the flat schemes do not stimulate improvement in network
- future networks have to deal with numbers of apps with very diverse
QoS.
New, more dynamic pricing schemes are necessary.
Various levels of QoS (Integrated Services and Diff.Services). The
problem is the perceived QoS, the delivered QoS and the value or price
for a given QoS.
Presentation is about the model. Future work: formal specification,
verification, implementation, and building the MAS.
*** Rustam Tagiew
On Multi-Agent Petri net models for Computing Extensive Finite Games
(Technische Universitat, Fraiberg, Germany, originally from Azarbejdzan)
Petri-nets for Strategic Interactions (PNSI). PNSI offers: concurrency
and graphical representation. Petri nets (with weighted transitions)
are extended by the notion of agents.
The game is a strategic interaction between two agents. Description of
the classes of two-player games:
zero-sum, deterministic, perfect information, imperfect information
(not everyone can see every-actions), incompete information (some
players do not know the rules).
Review of existing game description languages:
- Gala = GAme LAnguage (prolog-based), games of imperfect information,
no notion of time, 1997 Pfeffer and Koller
- GDL = Game Description Language Genesereth et al 2005,
- TPN = Time Petri Nets Merlin 1974 and Timed Petri Nets Ramchandi
1974.
- GAMBIT – state of art library for solving games. Representation in
strategic and extensive form.
*** Ali Selamat, Muhammad Tarmizi Lockman
Multi-agent Verification of RFID System
Technical University of Malaysia, www.utm.my
Supply chain mngmt asset tracking, identification of items.
Multi-tag reading. Problems of decoding and verification.
*** David Vallejo Fenandez
A multi-agent architecture for multi-robot survaillance, University of
Castilla, Spain, ORETO (UCLM) – RoboKU (Kingston Iniversity)
Context: evolution of surveillance systems, driven by AI techniques,
intelligent component, distributed components, high-number of
devices.
Specific domain: multi-robot coordination. Coordination same as in
MAS, but extra elements: uncertainty, management, physical
communication, highly dynamic environments.
Describing the architecture: perceptual layer, conceptual layer
together with reasoning core, and the final element for decision making.
See the article for implementation details.
** 13:45 Planary session: Pierre Levy, University of Ottawa.
Toward a Civilization of Collective Intelligence
Royal Society of Canada
twitter: plevy
People as symbol manipulators, placed in a social context. Collective
symbol manipulators.
Cyberspace (scientific observatory/digital mirror of Collective
Intelligence) <-> Reflexive Collective Intelligence (driver of human
development) <-> Human Development (prosperity, health, education,
security, peace, research, heritage, innovation).
The target: 2015, Semantic Space, Interconnection between ideas (via
semantic tags). Uniform Semantic Locator = IEML * concept address.
Collaborative societies of semantic agents, subject-centric
computation. Collective intelligence growth. Augmentation of
sense-making.
The new language, IEML, has the following primitives:
emptiness
virtual
actual
signifier (sign)
referant (the thing)
signified (concept, the being)
(see Aristotle for the last 3. Tertiary trilectic).
** 15:00 Panel Discussion “Is collective better than individual”?
Ngoc Thanh Nguyen:
- When a collective is more intelligent than a single?
- How to determine the intelligence of a collective on the bassi of
its members’ intelligence?
- Is the inconsistency among participants useful for collective intelligence?
Ryszard Kowalczyk:
defines collective intelligence as a behaviour (of a system) that
emerges from interaction of many autonomous individuals.
Two perspectives:
individuals&interactions -> system
system -> individuals&interactions
“sometimes it is better to know less for the system to exhibit optimal
performance and efficiency as a whole”
Piotr Jedrzejowicz
What CI is trying to address?
- no free lunch theorem
- complexity and uncertainty
- technology
- constructing cognitive machines
Roman Slowinski
the problem of aggregation, aggregation of evaluations.
and other speakers…
* Day 3
** Session 1, Stream A (I am the chair)
*** Aziz Aziz, Jan Treur
Modelling Dynamics of Social Support Networks for Mutual Support in
Coping with Stress
** Session 2, Stream A
*** Krzysztof Kulakowski
The rorma game on a model network: a critical line
“The first purpose of any social system is to create incenties for
individuals to conduct more work then the one requiredby their
immediate wants (needs)”.
*** Wojciech Kaminski, Marek Chlebus, Romuald Kotowski
Collective Prisoner’s Dilemma Model of Artificial Society
Polish -Japanese Institue of Information Technology
Prisoner’s dilemma model with mood, emotions, opinions, etc.
Agents interact each time with a different agent.
Modelling personality traits within individual agents:
- rationality: how much emotions influence the decision
- sensitivity: how much actions influence emotions
- openness: the will to interact with strangers
- tolerance:
- activity:
- conformism: publi opinion influence
- morality model: commercial morality, utilitarian morality,
cooperative morality
over 2700 different personalities.
Agent’s current state consists of:
emotions, reputation, memory, economic strength
A surprising result with only IncomeTax enabled – the economy folds
down for many generations, and then boosts suddenly and growth
exponentially.

International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence – Semantic Web, Social Networks & Multiagent Systems

For official information check website: ICCCI 2009.

Day 2, Tuesday, October 6, 2009.

8:30, session 1, stream A

Juan J. Pardo (speaker), Manuel Nunez, M. Carmen Ruiz: A novel formalism to represent collective intelligence in multi-agent systems. Input Output mapping system for agent actions. Based on state machines and transitions.

Robert Trypuz (speaker), Pawel Garbacz, Piotr Kulicki, Marek Lechniak: A formal model for epistemic interactions. Modal logic, AI puzzles: muddy children.

changing to stream B, Semantic Web

Kamil Karwowski, Witold Wysota, Jacek Wytrebowicz: Computer Aided Requirements Management (Project conducted for Polish Telecom, Telekomunikacja Polska). Semantic approaches and tools: OntoWiki – general tool for visualization and editing of semantic knowledge base. SoftWiki – tool for aiding software development, SEOntology (software engineering ontology). Contains soft.eng and project management ontology, together with domain specific layer. System CARM: Thin-client through a web-browser. Ability to work offline (after downloading the data to a local storage). Following USA DoD Architectural Framework (DoDAF), and UK Ministry of Defense AF (MoDAF) architectural recommendations. JENA ontology engine, Pellet reasoner, Tomcat for deployment mgmt.

Adam Meissner (Poznan University of Technology): A simple parallel reasoning system for the alc description logic. The use of Oz multiparadigm programming environment. Running tests with coordinator and up to five workers on a small cluster of workstations with Windows OS and Mozart programming environment. See the paper for results.

10:45 – Session 2, Stream A

Drago Zagar, Slavko Rucic and Snjezana Rimac-Drlje (Environment University, Croatia): Agent based architecture for Pricing the services in Dynamic User/Network. The studey of dynamic pricing and QoS-enabled pricing. Problem with estimation and verification of Quality of Service in the context of accounting (rating) network access. Classical pricing schemes are outdated: (a) the flat schemes do not stimulate improvement in network; (b) future networks have to deal with numbers of apps with very diverse QoS. New, more dynamic pricing schemes are necessary. Various levels of QoS (Integrated Services and Diff.Services). The problem is the perceived QoS, the delivered QoS and the value or price for a given QoS. Presentation is about the model. Future work: formal specification, verification, implementation, and building the MAS.

Rustam Tagiew (Technische Universitat, Fraiberg, Germany, originally from Azarbejdzan): On Multi-Agent Petri net models for Computing Extensive Finite Games. Petri-nets for Strategic Interactions (PNSI). PNSI offers: concurrency and graphical representation. Petri nets (with weighted transitions) are extended by the notion of agents. The game is a strategic interaction between two agents. Description of the classes of two-player games: zero-sum, deterministic, perfect information, imperfect information (not everyone can see every-actions), incompete information (some players do not know the rules). Review of existing game description languages:

  • Gala = GAme LAnguage (prolog-based), games of imperfect information no notion of time, 1997 Pfeffer and Koller
  • GDL = Game Description Language Genesereth et al 2005,
  • TPN = Time Petri Nets Merlin 1974 and Timed Petri Nets Ramchandi (1974).
  • GAMBIT – state of art library for solving games. Representation in strategic and extensive form.

Ali Selamat, Muhammad Tarmizi Lockman (Technical University of Malaysia, www.utm.my): Multi-agent Verification of RFID System. Supply chain mngmt asset tracking, identification of items. Multi-tag reading. Problems of decoding and verification.

David Vallejo Fenandez:A multi-agent architecture for multi-robot survaillance, University of Castilla, Spain, ORETO (UCLM) – RoboKU (Kingston Iniversity). Context: evolution of surveillance systems, driven by AI techniques, intelligent component, distributed components, high-number of devices. Specific domain: multi-robot coordination. Coordination same as in MAS, but extra elements: uncertainty, management, physical communication, highly dynamic environments. Describing the architecture: perceptual layer, conceptual layer together with reasoning core, and the final element for decision making. See the article for implementation details.

13:45 Planary session: Pierre Levy, University of Ottawa.

Toward a Civilization of Collective Intelligence Royal Society of Canada. Twitter: @plevy

People as symbol manipulators, placed in a social context. Collective symbol manipulators. Cyberspace (scientific observatory/digital mirror of Collective Intelligence) <-> Reflexive Collective Intelligence (driver of human development) <-> Human Development (prosperity, health, education, security, peace, research, heritage, innovation). The target: 2015, Semantic Space, Interconnection between ideas (via semantic tags). Uniform Semantic Locator = IEML * concept address. Collaborative societies of semantic agents, subject-centric computation. Collective intelligence growth. Augmentation of sense-making. The new language, IEML, has the following primitives: emptiness, virtual, actual, signifier (sign), referant (the thing), signified (concept, the being) (see Aristotle for the last 3. Tertiary trilectic).

15:00 Panel Discussion “Is collective better than individual”?

Ngoc Thanh Nguyen:

  • When a collective is more intelligent than a single?
  • How to determine the intelligence of a collective on the bassi of its members’ intelligence?
  • Is the inconsistency among participants useful for collective intelligence?

Ryszard Kowalczyk: defines collective intelligence as a behaviour (of a system) that emerges from interaction of many autonomous individuals. Two perspectives: individuals&interactions -> system, system -> individuals&interactions, ”sometimes it is better to know less for the system to exhibit optimal performance and efficiency as a whole”.

Piotr Jedrzejowicz: What CI is trying to address?

  • no free lunch theorem
  • complexity and uncertainty
  • technology
  • constructing cognitive machines

Roman Slowinski: the problem of aggregation, aggregation of evaluations.

Other speakers…

Day 3, Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

Session 1, Stream A (I am the chair)

Aziz Aziz, Jan Treur: Modelling Dynamics of Social Support Networks for Mutual Support in Coping with Stress

Session 2, Stream A

Krzysztof Kulakowski: The rorma game on a model network: a critical line ”The first purpose of any social system is to create incenties for individuals to conduct more work then the one requiredby their immediate wants (needs)”.

Wojciech Kaminski, Marek Chlebus, Romuald Kotowski (Polish -Japanese Institue of Information Technology): Collective Prisoner’s Dilemma Model of Artificial Society. Prisoner’s dilemma model with mood, emotions, opinions, etc. Agents interact each time with a different agent. Modelling personality traits within individual agents: - rationality: how much emotions influence the decision; - sensitivity: how much actions influence emotions; - openness: the will to interact with strangers; - tolerance:  - activity: - conformism: public opinion influence; - morality model: commercial morality, utilitarian morality; - cooperative morality over 2700 different personalities. Agent’s current state consists of: emotions, reputation, memory, economic strength.

A surprising result with only IncomeTax enabled – the economy folds down for many generations, and then boosts suddenly and growth exponentially.

Posted in Reports, Work.

No comments

By mariusz – October 8, 2009

ICCCI2009 – Day 1/3

ICCCI 2009
212 submissions
71 accepted
21 accepted to be published in LNAI
25 countries
3 days, 3 concurrent trucks
Next year ICCCI2010 will be in September in Taiwan.
Speakers:
Nguyen
Ryszard Kowalczyk, Melbourne
Swiatek
Zbigniew Huzar
Wroclaw has 11 universities
* Day 1 – Monday, October 5, 2009
** Planary session: Roman Slowinski
Poznan University of Technology, PAN
Rough Sets, Zdzislaw Pawlak, 1926-2006
The problem of inconsistencies in the data sets.
The proposed approach is to use rough sets.
- granules
- indiscernible objects
- lower approximations
- higher approximations
Tools: Rose, 4eMka, JAMM, jMAF
http://idss.cs.put.poznan.pl/site/software.html
** First session, stream B
*** Helena harlotta Kainanen
Hedonic Coalition Games
Coalition formation, metropolitan algorithm, stable coalition
structures. Comparison of AMS and RII algorithms. Stochastic Local
Search proposed as future work.
*** Luca Longo, Stephen Barrett, Pyerpaolo Dondio
Foraging theory for modelling user behaviour when browsing the web
three generation of web search: content, link analysis, behaviour
analysis (collaborative ranking).
Using the behaviour of users to estimate the usefulness of web
pages. User-behaviour is observed and measured via proprietary
web-browser plugin (Firefox), which records all the actions the user
undertakes. All actions are weighted in an arbitrary way into a single
effort measure, which is then used to estimate/predict future user
behaviour.
*** Krissada Maleewong, Chutiporn Anutaryya, Vilas Wuwonges
Semantic Argumentation based Model for Collaborative Knovwlege Creation
and Sharing System.
Study of question-answer systems.
*** Szymon Lukasik, Slawomir Zak
Firefly Algorithm for Continuous Constraned Optimization Tasks
See the book: Nature-inspired Metaheuristic algorithms by Xin-She Yang
(Luniver Press, 2008)
*** Marcin Gorawski, Ewa Pluciennik-Psota
Distributed Data Mining Methodogy with Classification Model Example
NO SPEAKER
** Planary session: Piotr Jedrzejowicz, A-Teams
A-Teams and their applications
Gdynia Maritime University
Read the paper:
+ Talukdar, S. et al Journal of Heuristics 4 295-321 (1998)
invented the concept of A-Teams.
+ Akkiraju, R. et al, Applied Intelligence, 2001
+ Meneses et al 2008 (next generation A-Teams framework)
+ Jedrzejowicz, Werzbowska, 2006 (JABAT, JADE-based A-Team
environment.
+ Barbucha, 2006, 2008
+ Czarnowski 2009
Start by generating the example solutions plus shared memobry.
Writing operations.
Reading operations.
Agents are asynchronous, heterogenous, and organised into star-like
topology. There is an elected supervisor (controller) chosen per
assembly. This central agent works as facilitator.
Disadvantages: facilitator is a single-point-of-failure, communication
bottleneck, communication overheads.
Related architectures:
- Architectures for evolutionary and coevolutionary multi-agent
systems (EMAS, CoEMAS).
- Adaptive memory programming (AMP).
- Decision Making Library (Agent-DMSL), written in Java
- Swarm intelligence systems
First generation tools:
- IBM A-Team written in C++ (1999)
- Matlab-based A-Teams shell (Talukdar)
Constructors, improvers, destroyers.
A-Teams theoretical analysis vey rudementary.
Third-generation should allow self-optimisation mechanisms.
** Second session, stream A
*** Zulfiqar A. Memon, Jan Treur
Designing Social Agents with Empathic Understanding
Vrije University of Amsterdam
Theory of Mind (mindreading). Two perspectives: simulation-theory and
theory-theory.
Empathy: the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another
person to understand his/her emotions and feelings (Goldman, 1993).
3 mental states of empathy for the observing person:
feeling without understanding
understanding without feeling
both, feeling and understanding.
Read the book: Antonio Damasio (1999)
Modelling empathy in MAS, by replicating internal processing and
in-mind and body-based mental loops (see the book above).
*** Jaroslaw Was, AGH Krakow
MAS in Pedestrian Dynamics Modeling
Review of the pedestrian models:
+ Dijkstra 1990
+ SBBPedis
+ Situated CAs
+ Navigation dynamics
+ Alpsim
*** Grzegorz Skorupa, Katarzyniak
Towards a Model for Extraction of Possible Worlds and Accessibility
Relation from Cognitive

Day 1 – Monday, October 5, 2009

International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence – Semantic Web, Social Networks & Multiagent Systems

For official information check website: ICCCI 2009. Conference statistics: 212 submissions, 71 accepted, 21 accepted to be published in LNAI, 25 countries, 3 days, 3 concurrent tracks. Next year ICCCI2010 will be September in Taiwan.

Introduction and opening

Speakers: Ngoc Thanh Nguyen (Wroclaw), Ryszard Kowalczyk (Melbourne), Swiatek, Zbigniew Huzar (Wroclaw)

First plenary session: Roman Slowinski, Poznan University of Technology, PAN

Introduction to Rough Sets, see Zdzislaw Pawlak (1926-2006)

The problem of inconsistencies in the data sets. The proposed approach is to use rough sets.Important concepts: granules, indiscernible objects, lower approximations, higher approximations, Tools: Rose, 4eMka, JAMM, jMAF, see http://idss.cs.put.poznan.pl/site/software.html

First session, stream B, Hedonic Coalition Games

Helena Harlotta Kainanen: Coalition formation, metropolitan algorithm, stable coalition structures. Comparison of AMS and RII algorithms. Stochastic Local Search proposed as future work.

Luca Longo, Stephen Barrett, Pyerpaolo Dondio: Foraging theory for modelling user behaviour when browsing the web three generation of web search: content, link analysis, behaviour analysis (collaborative ranking). Using the behaviour of users to estimate the usefulness of web pages. User-behaviour is observed and measured via proprietary web-browser plugin (Firefox), which records all the actions the user undertakes. All actions are weighted in an arbitrary way into a single effort measure, which is then used to estimate/predict future user behaviour.

Krissada Maleewong, Chutiporn Anutaryya, Vilas Wuwonges: Semantic Argumentation based Model for Collaborative Knovwlege Creation and Sharing System. Study of question-answer systems.

Szymon Lukasik, Slawomir Zak: Firefly Algorithm for Continuous Constraned Optimization Tasks

Note: see the book: Nature-inspired Metaheuristic algorithms by Xin-She Yang (Luniver Press, 2008)

Marcin Gorawski, Ewa Pluciennik-Psota: Distributed Data Mining Methodogy with Classification Model Example

NO SPEAKER


Plenary session: Piotr Jedrzejowicz, A-Teams

A-Teams and their applications, Gdynia Maritime University

Read papers:

  • Talukdar, S. et al Journal of Heuristics 4 295-321 (1998). Talukdar invented the concept of A-Teams.
  • Akkiraju, R. et al, Applied Intelligence, 2001
  • Meneses et al 2008 (next generation A-Teams framework)
  • Jedrzejowicz, Werzbowska, 2006 (JABAT, JADE-based A-Teams environment.
  • Barbucha, 2006, 2008
  • Czarnowski 2009

Start by generating the example solutions plus shared memobry. writing operations. reading operations. Agents are asynchronous, heterogenous, and organised into star-like topology. There is an elected supervisor (controller) chosen per assembly. This central agent works as facilitator. Disadvantages: facilitator is a single-point-of-failure, communication bottleneck, communication overheads. Related architectures:

  • Architectures for evolutionary and coevolutionary multi-agent systems (EMAS, CoEMAS).
  • Adaptive memory programming (AMP).
  • Decision Making Library (Agent-DMSL), written in Java
  • Swarm intelligence systems

First generation tools: IBM A-Team written in C++ (1999),  Matlab-based A-Teams shell (Talukdar). Constructors, improvers, destroyers. A-Teams theoretical analysis vey rudimentary. Third-generation should allow self-optimisation mechanisms.

Second session, stream A

Zulfiqar A. Memon, Jan Treur: Designing Social Agents with Empathic Understanding, Vrije University of Amsterdam. Theory of Mind (mindreading). Two perspectives: simulation-theory and theory-theory. Empathy: the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand his/her emotions and feelings (Goldman, 1993). 3 mental states of empathy for the observing person: feeling without understanding, understanding without feeling, both, feeling and understanding. Modelling empathy in MAS, by replicating internal processing and in-mind and body-based mental loops (see the book below).

Read the book: Antonio Damasio (1999)

Jaroslaw Was, AGH Krakow: MAS in Pedestrian Dynamics Modeling. Review of the pedestrian models: Dijkstra 1990, SBBPedis, Situated CAs, Navigation dynamics, Alpsim.

Grzegorz Skorupa, Radoslaw Katarzyniak: Towards a Model for Extraction of Possible Worlds and Accessibility. Relation from Cognitive Agent. Discussion about possible worlds. No implementation yet, the authors are looking for sufficiently powerful algorithms that could be used to analyze the search space.

Posted in Reports, Work.

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By mariusz – October 6, 2009

Crossing the finish line.

My first marathon. It is hard to express in words all the emotions, all the physical and mental efforts that is require to reach the finish line. I am not sure I can.

Running is the oldest sport. I am sure our hunter-gatherer ancestors practiced it long before the concept of “sport” has been invented. Marathon run has been the first discipline in the modern era olympics, and it is one of the few sports that continues to be dominated by amateurs. It comes close to the pure idea of mental and physical challenge. A challenge with oneself, and with others. The run is long enough so that it engages a person “soul”. It is not about the run itself. It goes deep into your very being.

The origins of the run itself trace back to ancient Greece, with many possible explanations. These, together with the nice motivation for the official distance are well explained eg. on Wikipedia.

To me, for as long as I remember, marathon runners were always covered in a thick mist of mystery. Watching them starting and finishing the race, watching their faces with unimaginable effort yet strong determination was always inspiring. I knew early on that one day I will cross the boundary between the two worlds: the worlds of the spectators, and the world of the runners. But the decision wasn’t easy, and as with all big decisions, it was always put up for later.

I have been running for fun since as long as I remember. Perhaps it is a form of active meditation. An easy way to lose myself. Letting the legs work and the mind wonder was always a way to put a smile on my face. Afterwords. Not necessary during the run. When running I stop being an individual, but I have the sense of being part of something more. Something much older. Something much larger. The concept of Marathon running is maintained by thousands of people participating. Vast majority of them participate for the sake of participation. For the sake of the challenge. Opportunity to be among like-minded people that share the same joy of the activity itself. It is simple, yet complex and sophisticated.

I have, for the first time, officially participated in a running event last year. I’ve done half-marathon with a friend (Melanie). The second half-marathon was the first run when I cared for time. I have been preparing myself mentally and physically for the last 3 months for the full marathon, together with two friends: Peter (#81) and Tony (#200). I have covered over 250km of trail runs, with the longest distance of 25kms.

Stomach flu 2 days before the race reduced substantially the actual capabilities on the race day itself. Fever, dehydration and inability to eat anything during Friday and Saturday put the entire race into question. I had little chance building up carbohydrate reserves or even maintaining a normal body resources. Saturday night with severe diarrhea was not a good start for the race neither. Despite the physical conditions, my spirit was eager to run. So I did. My body was not going to like what was about to happen to it. Yet, I wanted to run, despite the condition my body was in. The first 30kms passed like a breeze. I did not have a great time, but I was doing physically and mentally fine. Then it hit me. Within 2kms my performance dropped virtually to zero, and strong cramps in legs and back muscles forced me to stop to stretch few times. The effort to continue running, despite the cramps, seems like a really bad dream now. For about 7kms or so, I really struggled to keep moving, maintaining the progress forward. Slowly, I have worked my way back to running again. The final 4 or so kms were definitely better. I have passed the worst of my nightmares. I have passed it successfully, and reached the finish line. With tears in my eyes.

It is hard to say weather the mental efforts were bigger than the physical discomfort. They go together. For sure, I have been physically beaten up before on many runs or long tramping trips, but I have never reached such a low mental state as during this race. A real character building exercise.

The tears of joy, of relief, of pride. Of accomplishment. Truly, the hardest thing I have ever managed to achieve.

Sharing the experience with Peter and Tony just added extra value. Some vents and emotions you simply cannot describe talk about. You cannot share these with your friends in any other way but to experience them with your friends.

(Note: all photos from the event available at seenindunedin.co.nz)

Update: 2 weeks later, 25th of September

The recovery took about 7 days. The stomach bug passed and I was able to eat normal food on Monday. The knees recovered within the first week, and I have managed to run short runs the following week. Everything (work-wise and life-wise) seems easier now. Less scary. I guess going through a major mental torment puts things into perspective. I will definitely never run a marathon ever again without feeling generally healthy. So here it is. My first marathon. My personal best. 3:56:58. Looking forward to improving my time in the next run in few months.

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal, Sport.

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By mariusz – September 13, 2009

Moja pierwsza wizyta w kinie.

Dziś byłam z tatą w kinie. To była mój pierwszy w życiu pobyt w kinie. Poszliśmy do Regent Theatre, na Japoński film “Ponyo”. Ponyo ta taka mała dziewczynka, która kiedyś była rybką, ale później zamieniła się w dziewczynkę. Film bardzo mi się podobał i oglądałam go z przejęciem. Na niektórych scenach, szczególnie jak pokazywali wzburzone morze i te olbrzymie czarne ryby, to się bałam i troszkę się trzęsłam. Było to dla mnie wielkie przeżycie.

Posted in Emilia's Diary, Personal.

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By emilia – August 2, 2009