15117666
Minority game strategies in dynamic multi-agent role assignment
In a team-based competitive game, agents cooperate to enhance their collective performance in winning the game. An interesting research problem in a team-based game is the role assignment problem (RAP). The problem requires agents to decide their respective roles based on real-time feedback from a dynamically changing environment. The minority game (MG), as used in modeling financial marketing problems, has shown similar characteristics that meet the fundamental requirements of RAP. We propose a formulation of MG strategies for studying RAP in a specific team-based game: RoboCup simulation league (RSL). Through experimentation, we demonstrate that MG strategies improve the effectiveness of role assignment among agents. The improvement validates some characteristics, e.g., the phase transition phenomenon on the memory size, as discovered in the theoretical MG model.
18067929
Multiagent SAT (MASSAT): Autonomous Pattern Search in Constrained Domains
In this paper, we present an autonomous pattern search approachto solving Satisfiability Problems (SATs). Our approach is essentially a multiagent system. To solve a SAT problem, we first divide variables into groups, and represent each variable group with an agent. Then, we randomly place each agent onto a position in the correspoding local space which is composed of the domains of the variables that are represented by this agent. Thereafter, all agents will autonomously make searchdecisions guided by some reactive rules in their local spaces until a special pattern (i.e., solution) is found or a time step threshold is reached. Experimental results on some benchmark SAT test-sets have shown that by employing the MASSAT approach, we can obtain performances comparable to those of other popular algorithms.
5692814
Mining associated implication networks: computational intermarket analysis
Current attempts to analyze international financial markets include the use of financial technical analysis and data mining techniques. In this paper, we propose a new approach that incorporates implication networks and association rules to form an associated network structure. The proposed approach explicitly addresses the issue of local vs. global influences between financial markets.
33842812
Anycast-Based Cooperative Proxy Caching
As one of the most popular applications currently running on the Internet, the World Wide Web is of an exponential growth in size, which results in the network congestion and server overloading. Web caching as an important technique aims at reducing network traffic, server load, and user-perceived retrieval delays by replicating popular contents on proxy caches. In our paper, we develop an anycast-based cooperative web proxy caching mechanism. It puts response time, hop counts, self-organized load balancing, adaption, and self-configuration as primary concerns. In our scheme, anycast is used to bring a server “nearest” to a client to improve overall performance, all proxies in a local network consists an anycast group. The object placement and replacement problems are formulated as an optimization problem and the solution is obtained by using an anycast-based cooperative proxy caching algorithm. Some simulation experiments have been conduced to evaluate the proposed scheme in terms of a wide range of performance metrics. Analytical and experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms some existing algorithms in response time, hop counts.
14178256
Distributed Problem Solving Without Communication - An Examination of Computationally Hard Satisfiability Problems
In this paper, we extend and modify the ERA approach proposed in Ref. 13 to solve Propositional Satisfiability Problems (SATs). The new ERA approach involves a multiagent system where each agent only senses its local environment and applies some self-organizing rules for governing its movements. The environment, which is a two-dimensional cellular environment, records and updates the local values that are computed and affected according to the movements of individual agents. In solving a SAT with the ERA approach, we first divide variables into several groups, and represent each variable group with an agent whose possible positions correspond to the elements in a Cartesian product of variable domains, and then randomly place each agent onto one of its possible positions. Thereafter, the ERA system will keep on dispatching agents to choose their movements until an exact or approximate solution emerges. The experimental results on some benchmark SAT test-sets have shown that the ERA approach can obtain comparable results as well as stable performances for SAT problems. In particular, it can find approximate solutions for SAT problems in only a few steps. The real value of this approach is that it is a distributed asynchronous approach without any centralized control or evaluation, where the agents can cooperate to solve problems without explicit communication.
37683026
Web Intelligence (WI)
The 21st century is the age of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Web revolutionizes the way we gather, process, and use information. At the same time, it also redefines the meanings and processes of business, commerce, marketing, finance, publishing, education, research, development, as well as other aspects of our daily life. The revolution is just beginning. Although individual Web based information systems are constantly being deployed, advanced issues and techniques for developing and for benefiting from Web intelligence still remain to be systematically studied. The article defines a new research field, namely Web Intelligence (WI) by giving a complete picture of WI related topics for systematic study on advanced Web technology and developing Web based intelligent information systems. Roughly speaking, WI exploits AI and advanced information technology on the Web and Internet. It is the key and the most urgent research field of IT for business intelligence.
1410914
Collective problem solving through coordinated reaction
We present a methodology, called Constraint Partition and Coordinated Reaction (CP&CR), for collective, evolutionary problem solving. Problem solving is viewed as an emergent functionality from the evolving process of a group of diverse, interacting, and well-coordinated reactive agents. Cheap and effective search knowledge is extracted from local interactions and embedded in the coordination mechanism. Our domain of problem solving is constraint satisfaction problems. We have applied the methodology to job shop scheduling, an NP-complete constraint satisfaction problem. Experimental results on a benchmark suite of problems show that CP&CR outperformed three other state-of-the-art direct search scheduling techniques, in both efficiency and number of problems solved. In addition, CP&CR was experimentally tested on problems of larger sizes and showed favorable scaling-up characteristics.<<ETX>>
1291895
A proxy-assisted adaptation framework for object video multicasting
Video multicast is a challenging problem due to the heterogeneous and best-effort nature of the Internet. In this paper, we present a novel video multicast framework that exploits the potential of object scalability offered by MPEG-4. Specifically, we introduce the concept of object transmission proxy (OTP), which filters incoming streams using object-based bandwidth adaptation to meet dynamic network conditions. Multiple OPTs can form an overlay network that interconnects diverse multicast islands with semi-uniform demands within each single island. We concur with the wisdom that an application best knows the utility of its data. Hence, the bandwidth-adaptation algorithm for the OTPs adaptively allocates bandwidth among video objects according to their respective utilities and then performs application-level filtering based on an effective stream classification and packetization scheme. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that our framework has substantial performance improvement over conventional bandwidth-adaptation schemes. It is particularly suitable for object-based video multicasting where the objects are of different importance.
6664531
Analysis of sparse-partial wavelength conversion in wavelength-routed WDM networks
Wavelength conversion has been shown as one of the key techniques to improve blocking performance in a wavelength-routed all-optical network. Given that wavelength converters nowadays remain very expensive, how to make effective use of a limited number of wavelength converters becomes an important issue. We propose sparse-partial wavelength conversion (SPWC) network architecture with the inherent flexibility that can facilitate network carriers to migrate the optical backbone to support wavelength conversion. We demonstrate that this network architecture can significantly save the number of wavelength converters, yet achieving excellent blocking performance. Theoretical and simulation results indicate that, the performance of a wavelength-routed WDM network with only 1-5%of wavelength conversion capability is very close to that with full-complete wavelength conversion capability.
16004119
A Graph-Based Method for Face Identification from a Single 2D Line Drawing
The faces in a 2D fine drawing of an object provide important information for the reconstruction of its 3D geometry. In this paper, a graph-based optimization method is proposed for identifying the faces is a line drawing. The face identification is formulated as a maximum weight clique problem. This formulation is proven to be equivalent to the formulation proposed by Shpitalni and Upson (1996). The advantage of our formulation is that it enables one to develop a much faster algorithm to find the faces in a drawing. The significant improvement in speed is derived from two algorithms provided: the depth-first graph search for quickly generating possible faces from a drawing; and the maximum weight clique finding for obtaining the optimal face configurations of the drawing. The experimental results shown that our algorithm generates the same results of face identification as Shpitalni and Lipson's method, but is much faster when dealing with objects of more than 20 faces.
20735579
Kinetically stable task assignment for networks of microservers
• Job titles for all employees • Most recent payroll data (wages, hours, job codes, and dates of hire) • Union contracts • Employee handbooks or benefit descriptions • Summary plan descriptions for health and retirement plans • Benefit costs summaries or insurance bills For a detailed listing of information that BLS economists typically request, please visit the National Compensation Survey Web site at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/collection.htm. What is the National Compensation Survey (NCS)?