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Faculty Publications

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Articles 301 - 321 of 321

Full-Text Articles in Computer Engineering

All Agents Are Not Created Equal, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1998

All Agents Are Not Created Equal, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

As the technology advances, we can expect the development of specialized agents to be used as standardized building blocks for information systems. Two trends lend credence to such a prediction. First, software systems in general are being constructed with larger components, such as ActiveX and JavaBeans, which are becoming closer to being agents themselves. They have more functionality than simple objects, respond to events autonomously, and, most importantly, respond to system builders at development time, as well as to events at runtime. Moreover, there is a move toward more cooperative information systems, in which the architecture itself plays an important …

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Anthropoid Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1998

Anthropoid Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

In the study of agents on the Internet, we often ascribe to them human qualities, such as beliefs and intentions. These qualities are best understood as metaphors that give developers a way to talk about and design the capabilities and applications of agents. Despite all the progress in computing, users have been slow to accept the technology. They have often accepted what was thrown at them, but only under economic duress. Bringing the technology closer to their emotional needs might ease this resistance. So how can we put a human face on computing? Maybe by putting an animated face on …

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Agent Jurisprudence, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1998

Agent Jurisprudence, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

The agent metaphor comes packaged with a number of powerful abstractions. Some of these are psychological, such as beliefs, knowledge, and intentions-abstractions that were traditionally studied in AI. However, there are a number of other abstractions that the agent metaphor brings to the fore. Of these, one has been emphasizing the social abstractions. Close cousins of the social abstractions are the ethical and legal abstractions. These too are being recognized as increasingly important in developing agents that are not only sociable, but also well behaved.

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Singular And Plural Non-Deterministic Parameters, Sigurd Meldal, M. A. Walicki Aug 1997

Singular And Plural Non-Deterministic Parameters, Sigurd Meldal, M. A. Walicki

Faculty Publications

The article defines algebraic semantics of singular (call-time-choice) and plural (run-time-choice) nondeterministic parameter passing and presents a specification language in which operations with both kinds of parameters can be defined simultaneously. Sound and complete calculi for both semantics are introduced. We study the relations between the two semantics and point out that axioms for operations with plural arguments may be considered as axiom schemata for operations with singular arguments.

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An Ontology Tool For Distributed Information Environments, Kuhanandha Mahalingam, Michael N. Huhns Jun 1997

An Ontology Tool For Distributed Information Environments, Kuhanandha Mahalingam, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

This paper describes how ontologies can be used for query formulation and semantic reconciliation in large distributed information environments. It presents a tool, written in Java, that can be used to create and browse ontologies, and construct ontology-based queries. The tool incorporates several abstraction mechanisms that enable users to manage large ontologies, which are typical of large information environments. The tool is being applied to an information system for healthcare administrators, which spans hospitals, clinics, and governmental health departments.

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The Agent Test, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1997

The Agent Test, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

The authors consider agents on the World Wide Web, including information retrieval agents. They propose a test for agenthood, involving communication in multi-agent systems.

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Internet-Based Agents: Applications And Infrastructure, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns Jan 1997

Internet-Based Agents: Applications And Infrastructure, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

Software agents are mitigating the complexity of modern information systems—technically by providing a locus for managing information subsets, and psychologically by providing an abstraction for human interaction with them.

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Mobile Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1997

Mobile Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

A lot of agents are executing on the Web, and some of them are starting to move around. While most agents are static (existing as a single process or thread on one host), others can pick up and move their code and data to a new host where they resume executing.

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Conversational Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1997

Conversational Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

When you build or buy an agent for the Web, you want it to perform as well as possible. Increasingly, this means your agent should take advantage not only of the Web's information resources, but also of all the other agents that might be operating there.

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Agents Are Everywhere!, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1997

Agents Are Everywhere!, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

A decade ago this claim would have evoked images from the Cold War—and probably gotten this column classified! Today, it describes one of the hottest technical areas on the Internet.

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Hierarchical Classification As An Aid To Browsing, John R. Rose, Caroline M. Eastman Jan 1997

Hierarchical Classification As An Aid To Browsing, John R. Rose, Caroline M. Eastman

Faculty Publications

An approach to browsing large chemical reaction databases is presented. The method that is described builds on earlier work in which unsupervised hierarchical classification was used to extract generalizations of reaction classes from reaction databases for use in reaction knowledge bases. The method described in this paper involves classification based on both semantic and topological features. It supports the creation of deep hierarchies in which succeeding levels represent increasing degrees of abstraction. The creation of a hierarchy allows the user to quickly locate interesting items or classes of items by performing a tree traversal as opposed to sequentially scanning a …

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Ontologies For Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh Jan 1997

Ontologies For Agents, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

An ontology is a computational model of some portion of the world. It is often captured in some form of a semantic network-a graph whose nodes are concepts or individual objects and whose arcs represent relationships or associations among the concepts. This network is augmented by properties and attributes, constraints, functions, and rules that govern the behavior of the concepts. Formally, an ontology is an agreement about a shared conceptualization, which includes frameworks for modeling domain knowledge and agreements about the representation of particular domain theories. Definitions associate the names of entities in a universe of discourse (for example, classes, …

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Detection For A Statistically-Known, Time-Varying Dispersive Channel, David W. Matolak, S. G. Wilson Dec 1996

Detection For A Statistically-Known, Time-Varying Dispersive Channel, David W. Matolak, S. G. Wilson

Faculty Publications

Detection for the statistically known channel (SKC) is aimed at obtaining good performance in situations where our statistical knowledge of a time-varying channel is good, and where other equalization/detection schemes are either too complex to implement, or their performance is limited due to the rapidity of channel fading, or where we are simply unable to perform channel estimation. By using a statistical characterization of the channel, we develop a new detector that performs maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) (given the channel model) on blocks of N symbols. Both symbol-spaced and fractionally spaced samples are used, to obtain two different detectors, that …

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Remotely Possible? Simple Remote Access To The Network, Margaret Sylvia Nov 1996

Remotely Possible? Simple Remote Access To The Network, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Remote access to the library is possible without a magic wand. we have seen increased use of the library in recent years, either because of, or despite, the possibility of remote access. One reason may be that some full-text material is still only available inside the library. Remote access was first implemented in the St. Mary's University Academic Library in 1991, shortly after the installation of the first network in the library. Various options for remote access are compared and contrasted, including the EA/2 solution.

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Upgrading A Cd-Rom Network For Multimedia Applications, Margaret Sylvia Jun 1995

Upgrading A Cd-Rom Network For Multimedia Applications, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Checking the servers, PCs, and network connections for bottlenecks in serving multimedia across the network are steps that will alleviate speed and connectivity issues for users.

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Automating Workflows For Service Provisioning: Integrating Ai And Database Technologies, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns Oct 1994

Automating Workflows For Service Provisioning: Integrating Ai And Database Technologies, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

Workflows are the structured activities that take place in information systems in typical business environments. These activities frequently involve several database systems, user interfaces, and application programs. Traditional database systems do not support workflows to any reasonable extent: usually human beings must intervene to ensure their proper execution. We have developed an architecture based on AI technology that automatically manages workflows. This architecture, which executes on top of a distributed computing environment, has been applied to automating service provisioning workflows; an implementation that operates on one such workflow has been developed. This work advances the Carnot Project’s goal of developing …

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Declarative Representations Of Multiagent Systems, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens Oct 1993

Declarative Representations Of Multiagent Systems, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens

Faculty Publications

This paper explores the specification and semantics of multiagent problem-solving systems, focusing on the representations that agents have of each other. It provides a declarative representation for such systems. Several procedural solutions to a well-known test-bed problem are considered, and the requirements they impose on different agents are identified. A study of these requirements yields a representational scheme based on temporal logic for specifying the acting, perceiving, communicating, and reasoning abilities of computational agents. A formal semantics is provided for this scheme. The resulting representation is highly declarative, and useful for describing systems of agents solving problems reactively.

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Networking Your Cd-Roms: A Texas Tale, Margaret Sylvia Aug 1993

Networking Your Cd-Roms: A Texas Tale, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Installation of a CD-ROM network at St. Mary's University Academic Library created a revolution in the way students and faculty do research.

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Three Points Of Great Height On Elliptic Curves, Andrew Bremner, Duncan A. Buell Jul 1993

Three Points Of Great Height On Elliptic Curves, Andrew Bremner, Duncan A. Buell

Faculty Publications

We give three elliptic curves whose generators have great height, demonstrating along the way a moderately efficient method for finding such points.

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Building A Gateway For The Cd-Rom Network: A Step Toward The Virtual Library With The Virtual Microsystems V-Server, Margaret Sylvia Jun 1993

Building A Gateway For The Cd-Rom Network: A Step Toward The Virtual Library With The Virtual Microsystems V-Server, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Describes one college library's experience with a gateway for dial-in access to its CD-ROM network to increase access to automated index searching for students off-campus. Hardware and software choices are discussed in terms of access, reliability, affordability, and ease of use. Installation problems are discussed, and an appendix lists product information.

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Resource Integration Using A Large Knowledge Base In Carnot, Christine Collet, Michael N. Huhns, Wei-Min Shen Dec 1991

Resource Integration Using A Large Knowledge Base In Carnot, Christine Collet, Michael N. Huhns, Wei-Min Shen

Faculty Publications

A method for integrating separately developed information resources that overcomes incompatibilities in syntax and semantics and permits the resources to be accessed and modified coherently is described. The method provides logical connectivity among the information resources via a semantic service layer that automates the maintenance of data integrity and provides an approximation of global data integration across systems. This layer is a fundamental part of the Carnot architecture, which provides tools for interoperability across global enterprises.

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