37242657
A Strategy-Proof Mechanism Based on Multiple Auction Support Agents
Agent-mediated electronic commerce has recently commanded much attention. Bidding support agents have been studied very extensively. We envision a future in which many people can trade their goods by using a bidding support agent on Internet auctions. In this paper, we formalize a situation in which people are trading their goods on Internet auctions and employing bidding support agents. Then, we prove that people who use a bidding support agent can successively win trades. Also, we prove that the situation in which every people use a bidding support agent can satisfied strategy proofness and Pareto optimality. Further, we present in the situation, unsupported bidders do not make a positive benefit.
35506309
Scheduling Meetings with Distributed Local Consistency Reinforcement
13087182
A Logic-based Framework for Mobile Intelligent Information Agents
Information agents are computational software systems that provides transparent access to many different information sources in the Internet, and to be able to retrieve, analyze, manipulate, and integrate heterogeneous data and information on demand. Mobile agents are an effective choice for many applications to improve latency and bandwidth of client-server applications and to reduce vulnerability to network disconnection. In this paper, we propose MiLog, a logic-based mobile agent framework for constructing intelligent information agents. In the framework, inference and planning process of an agent is written in a compact logic program. A new generation logic program execution engine provides strong migration capability with reasonable execution speed. The framework has been used to develop a web-based decision support system ’BiddingBot’.
39290569
Implementing a proxy agent based writable web for a dynamic information sharing system
In this paper, we propose a Web based information sharing system called the Proxy Agent-based Information Sharing(PAIS).We also developed a writable Web mechanism called Web browser-based Direct Editing (Wedit), that is a major component of PAIS. Wedit enables public users to effectively edit HTML text on an existing Web browser. Since Wedit was developed with conventional technologies, users quickly learn how to use it. PAIS is implemented by using Wedit and a proxy agent. PAIS enables users to share information via Web pages using Wedit. The proxy agent maintainsusers' editing data. The agent autonomously sends its user's modification data to other agents in the same community. In PAIS, certain confidential information in the community is not publicly shared by using the proxy agent.
1779412
Designing an auction protocol under asymmetric information on nature's selection
Internet auctions are becoming an especially popular part of Electronic Commerce and auction protocols have been studied very widely in the field of multi-agent systems and AI. However, correctly judging the quality of auctioned goods is often difficult for non-experts (amateurs), in particular, on the Internet auctions. In this paper, we formalize such a situation so that Nature selects the quality of the auctioned good. Experts can observe Nature's selection (i.e., the quality of the good) correctly, while amateurs including the auctioneer cannot. In other words, the information on Nature's selection is asymmetric between experts and amateurs. In this situation, it is difficult to attain an efficient allocation, since experts have a clear advantage over amateurs and they would not reveal their valuable information without some reward. Thus, in this paper, we develop a new auction protocol in which truth-telling is a dominant strategy for each expert. This can be done by putting these experts in a situation similar to Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate and tell lies, they can exclude amateurs, but betraying is a dominant strategy. By making experts to elicit their information on the quality of the good, the protocol can achieve a socially desirable, i.e., Pareto efficient allocation if certain assumptions are satisfied.
9544952
An Approach to Building Mobile Intelligent Agents Based on Anytime Migration
In this paper, we present an implementation of a Java-based framework for building mobile agents : MiLog (Mobile intelligent agents using Logic programming). MiLog provides logic programming and Java programming for developing intelligent agents since it helps users to effectively construct intelligent mechanisms. We address how to realize an anytime migration mechanism, a HTTP(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)-based communication mechanism among agents, and web service/access mechanism. Anytime migration enables agents to reactively and autonomously migrate from one computer to another. We present practical applications that have been built on MiLog framework. These applications demonstrate that MiLog is an effective tool for developing practical applications based on mobile intelligent agents.
40835687
Partitioning trees of supply and demand
Assume that a tree T has a number ns of "supply vertices" and all the other vertices are "demand vertices." Each supply vertex is assigned a positive number called a supply, while each demand vertex is assigned a positive number called a demand. One wishes to partition T into exactly ns subtrees by deleting edges from T so that each subtree contains exactly one supply vertex whose supply is no less than the sum of demands of all demand vertices in the subtree. The "partition problem" is a decision problem to ask whether T has such a partition. The "maximum partition problem" is an optimization version of the partition problem. In this paper, we give three algorithms for the problems. The first is a linear-time algorithm for the partition problem. The second is a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm for the maximum partition problem. The third is a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the maximum partition problem.
3208882
Partitioning a Weighted Graph to Connected Subgraphs of Almost Uniform Size
Assume that each vertex of a graph G is assigned a nonnegative integer weight and that l and u are nonnegative integers. One wish to partition G into connected components by deleting edges from G so that the total weight of each component is at least l and at most u. Such an “almost uniform” partition is called an $(l, u) \mbox{-}$partition. We deal with three problems to find an $(l, u) \mbox{-}$partition of a given graph. The minimum partition problem is to find an $(l, u) \mbox{-}$partition with the minimum number of components. The maximum partition problem is defined similarly. The p-partition problem is to find an $(l, u) \mbox{-}$partition with a fixed number p of components. All these problems are NP-complete or NP-hard even for series-parallel graphs. In this paper we show that both the minimum partition problem and the maximum partition problem can be solved in time O(u4n) and the p-partition problem can be solved in time O(p2u4n) for any series-parallel graph of n vertices. The algorithms can be easily extended for partial k-trees, that is, graphs with bounded tree-width.
751173
Approximability of Partitioning Graphs with Supply and Demand
Suppose that each vertex of a graph G is either a supply vertex or a demand vertex and is assigned a positive real number, called the supply or the demand. Each demand vertex can receive “power” from at most one supply vertex through edges in G. One thus wishes to partition G into connected components so that each component C either has no supply vertex or has exactly one supply vertex whose supply is at least the sum of demands in C, and wishes to maximize the fulfillment, that is, the sum of demands in all components with supply vertices. This maximization problem is known to be NP-hard even for trees having exactly one supply vertex and strongly NP-hard for general graphs. In this paper, we focus on the approximability of the problem. We first show that the problem is MAXSNP-hard and hence there is no polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for general graphs unless P=NP. We then present a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for series-parallel graphs having exactly one supply vertex. The FPTAS can be easily extended for partial k-trees, that is, graphs with bounded treewidth.
43460576
Partitioning graphs of supply and demand
Assume that each vertex of a graph G is either a supply vertex or a demand vertex and is assigned a positive integer, called a supply or a demand. Each demand vertex can receive "power" from at most one supply vertex. One thus wishes to partition G into connected components by deleting edges from G so that each component C has exactly one supply vertex whose supply is no less than the sum of demands of all demand vertices in C. If G has no such partition, one wishes to partition G into connected components so that each component C either has no supply vertex or has exactly one supply vertex whose supply is no less than the sum of demands in C, and wishes to maximize the sum of demands in all components with supply vertices. We deal with such a maximization problem, which is NP-hard even for trees and strong NP-hard for general graphs. In this paper, we give a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm to solve the problem for series-parallel graphs. The algorithm can be easily extended for partial k-trees, that is, graphs with bounded tree-width.
11122815
Algorithms for the Multicolorings of Partial k-Trees
Let each vertex v of a graph G have a positive integer weight ?(v). Then a multicoloring of G is to assign each vertex v a set of ?(v) colors so that any pair of adjacent vertices receive disjoint sets of colors. A partial k-tree is a graph with tree-width bounded by a fixed constant k. This paper presents an algorithm which finds a multicoloring of any given partial k-tree G with the minimum number of colors. The computation time of the algorithm is bounded by a polynomial in the number of vertices and the maximum weight of vertices in G.