ALBERT

Description: We present here a work that applies an automatic construction of ensembles based on the Clustering and Selection (CS) algorithm for time series forecasting. The automatic method, called CSELM, initially finds an optimum number of clusters for training data set and subsequently designates an Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) for each cluster found. For model evaluation, the testing data set are submitted to clustering technique and the nearest cluster to data input will give a supervised response through its associated ELM. Self-organizing maps were used in the clustering phase. Adaptive differential evolution was used to optimize the parameters and performance of the different techniques used in the clustering and prediction phases. The results obtained with the CSELM method are compared with results obtained by other methods in the literature. Five well-known time series were used to validate CSELM. Content Type Journal Article Pages 191-203 DOI 10.3233/HIS-130176 Authors Tiago P.F. Lima, Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil Teresa B. Ludermir, Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 4 / 2013

Description: In this dissertation, we propose solving methods for the job shop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times, considering four different objective functions. The formal properties of the problem are studied. Two new neighborhood structures are proposed, with their respective feasibility and non-improving conditions, as well as an algorithm for fast neighbors' cost estimation. These structures are embedded in local search procedures, and their hybridization with a genetic algorithm is also studied. The experimental results show that the proposed methods obtain excellent results, improving in many cases the state of the art. Content Type Journal Article Category Thesis Pages 419-421 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130571 Authors Miguel A. González, Computing Technologies Group, Department of Computing, Artificial Intelligence Center, University of Oviedo, Campus of Viesques, 33271 Gijón, Spain. E-mail: mig@uniovi.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Research in automated planning is getting more and more focused on empirical evaluation. Likewise the need for methodologies and benchmarks to build solid evaluations of planners is increasing. In 1998 the planning community made a move to address this need and initiated the International Planning Competition – or IPC for short. This competition has typically been conducted every two years in the context of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) and tries to define standard metrics and benchmarks to reliably evaluate planners. In the sixth edition of the competition, IPC 2008, there was an attempt to automate the evaluation of all entries in the competition which was imitated to a large extent and extended in several ways in the seventh edition, IPC 2011. As a result, a software for automatically running planning experiments and inspecting the results is available, encouraging researchers to use it for their own research interests. The software allows researchers to reproduce and inspect the results of IPC 2011, but also to generate and analyze new experiments with private sets of planners and problems. In this paper we provide a gentle introduction to this software and examine the main difficulties, both from a scientific and engineering point of view, in assessing the performance of automated planners. Content Type Journal Article Pages 331-354 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130572 Authors Carlos Linares López, Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. E-mails: {carlos.linares, sergio.jimenez}@uc3m.es Sergio Jiménez, Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. E-mails: {carlos.linares, sergio.jimenez}@uc3m.es Malte Helmert, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Universität Basel, Basel, Switzerland. E-mail: malte.helmert@unibas.ch Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: As statistical data is inherently highly structured and comes with rich metadata (in form of code lists, data cubes etc.), it would be a missed opportunity to not tap into it from the Linked Data angle. At the time of this writing, there exists no simple way to transform statistical data into Linked Data since the raw data comes in different shapes and forms. Given that SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange) is arguably the most widely used standard for statistical data exchange, a great amount of statistical data about our societies is yet to be discoverable and identifiable in a uniform way. In this article, we present the design and implementation of SDMX-ML to RDF/XML XSL transformations, as well as the publication of OECD, BFS, FAO, ECB, and IMF datasets with that tooling. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-130123 Authors Sarven Capadisli, Universität Leipzig, Institut für Informatik, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: info@csarven.ca, auer@informatik.uni-leipzig.de, ngonga@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Sören Auer, Universität Leipzig, Institut für Informatik, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: info@csarven.ca, auer@informatik.uni-leipzig.de, ngonga@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo, Universität Leipzig, Institut für Informatik, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: info@csarven.ca, auer@informatik.uni-leipzig.de, ngonga@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: Argumentation is a powerful paradigm able to formalize commonsense reasoning, finding application in different domains such as automated reasoning, decision making, legal dispute, automated negotiation, etc. However, most of these argumentation-based formalizations do not model the notion of argument accrual, which has been recently gaining importance. This thesis defines a novel formalization of argument accrual, including a declarative characterization of this notion and an associated operational characterization addressing computation. The proposed formalization makes contributions to the existing accrual approaches, mainly concerning the answers obtained, answer explanation, accrual evaluation and comparison, and efficiency of computation. Content Type Journal Article Category Thesis Pages 413-415 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130569 Authors Mauro J. Gómez Lucero, National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, Artificial Intelligence Research & Development Laboratory, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina. E-mail: mjg@cs.uns.edu.ar Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: This work proposes a novel algorithm to extract biclusters from binary datasets: the Bit-Pattern Biclustering Algorithm (BiBit). The selective search performed by BiBit, based on a very fast bits words processing technique, provides very satisfactory results in quality and computational cost. Besides, a new software tool, named CarGene (Characterization of Genes), that helps scientists to validate sets of genes using biological knowledge is introduced too. Content Type Journal Article Category Thesis Pages 417-418 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130570 Authors Domingo S. Rodriguez-Baena, School of Engineering, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain. E-mail: dsrodbae@upo.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Maximal frequent pattern mining has been suggested for data mining to avoid generating a huge set of frequent patterns. Conversely, weighted frequent pattern mining has been proposed to discover important frequent patterns by considering the weighted support. We propose two mining algorithms of maximal correlated weight frequent pattern (MCWP), termed MCWP(WA) (based on Weight Ascending order) and MCWP(SD) (based on Support Descending order), to mine a compact and meaningful set of frequent patterns. MCWP(SD) obtains an advantage in conditional database access, but may not obtain the highest weighted item of the conditional database to mine highly correlated weight frequent patterns. Thus, we suggest a technique that uses additional conditions to prune lowly correlated weight items before the subsets checking process. Analyses show that our algorithms are efficient and scalable. Content Type Journal Article Pages 917-939 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130612 Authors Unil Yun, Department of Computer Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea Keun Ho Ryu, Department of Computer Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: Log information describing the items the users have selected from the set of answers a query engine returns to their queries constitute an excellent form of indirect user feedback that has been extensively used in the web to improve the effectiveness of search engines. In this work we study how the logs can be exploited to improve the ranking of the results returned by an entity search engine. Entity search engines are becoming more and more popular as the web is changing from a web of documents into a "web of things". We show that entity search engines pose new challenges since their model is different than the one documents are based on. We present a novel framework for feature extraction that is based on the notions of entity matching and attribute frequencies. The extracted features are then used to train a ranking classifier. We introduce different methods and metrics for ranking, we combine them with existing traditional techniques and we study their performance using real and synthetic data. The experiments show that our technique provides better results in terms of accuracy. Content Type Journal Article Pages 837-856 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130609 Authors Davide Mottin, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Themis Palpanas, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Yannis Velegrakis, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: A typical problem in the field of moving object (MO) databases consists in discovering interesting trajectory patterns. To solve this problem, data mining techniques are commonly used. Due to the huge volume of these trajectory data, some form of compression facilitates the data processing. One of such compression techniques is based on the notion of stops and moves. In this approach, a set of places that are relevant to the application, denoted Places of Interest (POIs) is selected. If a moving object spends a pre-defined amount of time in a place of interest, this place is considered a stop for the object's trajectory. Thus, raw trajectories given by (O_{id}, t, x, y)-tuples can be replaced by a sequence of application-relevant stops. This leads to the concept of semantic trajectory, in short, a trajectory obtained by replacing raw trajectory data with a sequence of stops, and enriched with metadata of the POIs corresponding to such stops. We present a language based on regular expressions over constraints, denoted RE-SPaM, that can intensionally express sequential patterns. The constraints in RE-SPaM are defined as conjunctions of equalities over metadata of the POIs. In addition, we introduce a data mining algorithm, based on sequential pattern mining techniques, where uninteresting sequences are pruned in advance making use of the automaton that accepts a RE-SPaM expression. This makes the task of the analyst easier, and the mining algorithm more efficient. We also show that RE-SPaM can be extended to support spatial functions, thus integrating spatial data in a moving object setting (proposals so far only account for the MO trajectories themselves). We denote the resulting language RE-SPaM^{+S}. We show that the overhead of this extension is negligible, due to caching techniques that we explain in the paper. We close the paper with a case study over which we perform experiments to study the main variables that impact the performance of the mining algorithm. Content Type Journal Article Pages 857-898 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130610 Authors Leticia Gómez, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina Alejandro A. Vaisman, Department of Computer and Decision Engineering (CoDE) CP 165/15, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: A probabilistic radial basis function (PRBF) network is an effective non-linear classifier. However, similar to most other neural network models it is non-transparent, which makes its predictions difficult to interpret. In this paper we show how a one-variable-at-a-time and an all-subsets explanation method can be modified for an equivalent and more efficient use with PRBF network classifiers. We use several artificial and real-life data sets to demonstrate the usefulness of the visualizations and explanations of the PRBF network classifier. Content Type Journal Article Pages 791-802 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130607 Authors Marko Robnik-Šikonja, Faculty of computer and information science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaska, Ljubljana, Slovenia Erik Štrumbelj, Faculty of computer and information science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaska, Ljubljana, Slovenia Igor Kononenko, Faculty of computer and information science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaska, Ljubljana, Slovenia Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: Customers usually change their purchase interests in the short product life cycle of the e-commerce environment. Therefore, recent transaction patterns should have a greater effect on the customer preferences. From the seller's point of view, an e-commerce recommender system should focus on the profit of recommendation. This study proposes a new sequential pattern mining algorithm that incorporates the concepts of frequency, recency, and profit to discover frequent, recent, and profitable sequential patterns, called FRP-sequences. Based on the discovered sequential patterns, this study develops a collaborative recommender system to improve recommendation accuracy for customers and the profit of recommendation from the seller's perspective. The proposed recommender system clusters customers, discovers FRP-sequences for each cluster, and then recommends items to the target customers based on their frequent, recent, and profitable FRP-sequences. In the stage of discovering FRP-sequences, the transaction patterns near the current time period and profitable items are weighted more heavily to improve profit. This study uses a public food mart database to determine the performance of the proposed approach, and compares it with traditional recommendation models. The proposed system performs better than traditional recommendation models in both recommendation accuracy and profit. Content Type Journal Article Pages 899-916 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130611 Authors Cheng-Lung Huang, Department of Information Management, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Mu-Chen Chen, Institute of Traffic and Transportation, National Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan Wen-Chen Huang, Department of Information Management, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Sheng-Huang Huang, Department of Information Management, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: It is very important when search methods are being designed to know which parameters have the greatest influence on the behaviour and performance of the algorithm. To this end, algorithm parameters are commonly calibrated by means of either theoretic analysis or intensive experimentation. However, due to the importance of parameters and its effect on the results, finding appropriate parameter values should be carried out using robust tools to determine the way they operate and influence the results. When undertaking a detailed statistical analysis of the influence of each parameter, the designer should pay attention mostly to the parameters that are statistically significant. In this paper the ANOVA (ANalysis Of the VAriance) method is used to carry out an exhaustive analysis of an evolutionary algorithm method and the different parameters it requires. Following this idea, the significance and relative importance of the parameters regarding the obtained results, as well as suitable values for each of these, were obtained using ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference tests on four well known function optimization problems. Through this statistical study we have verified the adequacy of parameter values available in the bibliography using parametric hypothesis tests. Content Type Journal Article Pages 771-789 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130606 Authors M.G. Arenas, ETSIIT. CITIC. University of Granada, Granada, Spain N. Rico, ETSIIT. CITIC. University of Granada, Granada, Spain A.M. Mora, ETSIIT. CITIC. University of Granada, Granada, Spain P.A. Castillo, ETSIIT. CITIC. University of Granada, Granada, Spain J.J. Merelo, ETSIIT. CITIC. University of Granada, Granada, Spain Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: In this paper, a novel feature selection algorithm FEAST is proposed based on association rule mining. The proposed algorithm first mines association rules from a data set; then, it identifies the relevant and interactive feature values with the constraint association rules whose consequent is the target concept, detects and eliminates the redundant feature values with the constraint association rules whose consequent and antecedent are both of single feature value. Finally, it obtains the feature subset by mapping the feature values to the corresponding features. As the support and confidence thresholds are two important parameters in association rule mining and play a vital role in FEAST, a partial least square regression (PLSR) based threshold prediction method is presented as well. The effectiveness of FEAST is tested on both synthetic and real world data sets, and the classification results of five different types of classifiers with seven representative feature selection algorithms are compared. The results on the synthetic data sets show that FEAST can effectively identify irrelevant and redundant features while reserving interactive ones. The results on the real world data sets show that FEAST outperforms other feature selection algorithms in terms of classification accuracies. In addition, the PLSR based threshold prediction method is performed on the real world data sets, and the results show it works well in recommending proper support and confidence thresholds for FEAST. Content Type Journal Article Pages 803-835 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130608 Authors Guangtao Wang, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China Qinbao Song, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: Data preprocessing is a main step in data mining because real data can be corrupted for different causes and high performance data mining systems require high quality data. When a database is used for training a neural network, a fuzzy system or a neuro-fuzzy system, a suitable data selection and pre-processing stage can be very useful in order to obtain a reliable result. For instance, when the final aim of a system trained through a supervised learning procedure is to approximate an existing functional relationship between input and output variables, the database that is exploited in the system training phase should not contain input-output patterns for which the same input or similar input sets are associated to very different values of the output variable. In this paper a procedure is proposed for detecting non-coherent associations between input and output patterns: by comparing two distance matrices associated to the input and output patterns, the elements of the available dataset, where similar values of input variables are associated to quite different output values can be pointed out. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm when pre-processing data coming from an industrial database is presented and discussed together with a statistical assessment of the obtained results. Content Type Journal Article Pages 737-751 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130604 Authors Nicola Matarese, Istituto TeCIP, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Ghezzano (PI), Italy Valentina Colla, Istituto TeCIP, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Ghezzano (PI), Italy Marco Vannucci, Istituto TeCIP, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Ghezzano (PI), Italy Leonardo M. Reyneri, Istituto TeCIP, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Ghezzano (PI), Italy Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: Complex emergent systems are known to be ill-managed because of their complex nature. This article introduces a novel interdisciplinary approach towards their study. In this sense, the DeciMaS methodological approach to mining and simulating data in complex information systems is introduced. The DeciMaS framework consists of three principal phases, preliminary domain and system analysis, system design and coding, and simulation and decision making. The framework offers a sequence of steps in order to support a domain expert who is not a specialist in data mining during the knowledge discovery process. With this aim a generalized structure of a decision support system (DSS) has been worked out. The DSS is virtually and logically organized into a three-leveled architecture. The first layer is dedicated to data retrieval, fusion and pre-processing, the second one discovers knowledge from data, and the third layer deals with making decisions and generating output information. Data mining is aimed to solve the following problems: association, classification, function approximation, and clustering. DeciMaS populates the second logical level of the DSS with agents which are aimed to complete these tasks. The agents use a wide range of data mining procedures that include approaches for estimation and prediction: regression analysis, artificial networks (ANNs), self-organizational methods, in particular, Group Method of Data Handling, and hybrid methods. The association task is solved with artificial neural networks. The ANNs are trained with different training algorithms such as backpropagation, resilient propagation and genetic algorithms. In order to assess the proposal an exhaustive experiment, designed to evaluate the possible harm caused by environmental contamination upon public health, is introduced in detail. Content Type Journal Article Pages 753-769 DOI 10.3233/IDA-130605 Authors Marina V. Sokolova, Instituto de Investigación en Informática de Albacete (i3A) and Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain Antonio Fernández-Caballero, Instituto de Investigación en Informática de Albacete (i3A) and Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain Journal Intelligent Data Analysis Online ISSN 1571-4128 Print ISSN 1088-467X Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 5 / 2013

Description: The Financial Transparency System (FTS) of the European Commission contains information about grants for European Union projects starting from 2007. It allows users to get an overview on EU funding, including information on beneficiaries as well as the amount and type of expenditure and information on the responsible EU department. The original dataset is freely available on the European Commission website, where users can query the data using an HTML form and download it in CSV and most recently XML format. In this article, we describe the transformation of this data to RDF and its interlinking with other datasets. We show that this allows interesting queries over the data, which were very difficult without this conversion. The main benefit of the dataset is an increased financial transparency of EU project funding. The RDF version of the FTS dataset will become part of the EU Open Data Portal and eventually be hosted and maintained by the European Union itself. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-130116 Authors Michael Martin, University of Leipzig, Institute of Computer Science, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: {lastname}@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Claus Stadler, University of Leipzig, Institute of Computer Science, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: {lastname}@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Philipp Frischmuth, University of Leipzig, Institute of Computer Science, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: {lastname}@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Jens Lehmann, University of Leipzig, Institute of Computer Science, AKSW, Postfach 100920, D-04009 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: {lastname}@informatik.uni-leipzig.de Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: Linked Data, Big Data, and the 4th Paradigm Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-130117 Authors Pascal Hitzler, Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University, USA Krzysztof Janowicz, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: The number of digital resources to be used and reused for learning (learning objects) is constantly increasing, therefore describing learning objects with metadata is important to enhance learning object search, retrieval, and usage. Learning objects can be considered not only as resources, providing learning content, but as methodological resources, including teachers' experiences, reflections, examples or instructions of usage of content objects, and descriptions of learning methods. However, existing standards and specifications for learning objects metadata are not intended for including methodological resources and learning method descriptions together with content objects. In this paper, we present the results of a study, carried among general school teachers, which present a view of teachers on methodological resources and their importance, and propose a new model of learning object metadata for the learning object repository to include methodological resources, descriptions of learning methods and their links with content objects. Content Type Journal Article Pages 13-34 Authors Valentina Dagienė, Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4, LT-08663 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: valentina.dagiene@mii.vu.lt, tatjana.jevsikova@mii.vu.lt, svetlana.kubilinskiene@mii.vu.lt Tatjana Jevsikova, Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4, LT-08663 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: valentina.dagiene@mii.vu.lt, tatjana.jevsikova@mii.vu.lt, svetlana.kubilinskiene@mii.vu.lt Svetlana Kubilinskienė, Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4, LT-08663 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: valentina.dagiene@mii.vu.lt, tatjana.jevsikova@mii.vu.lt, svetlana.kubilinskiene@mii.vu.lt Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: Wireless communication techniques provide convenience for users to get desired information. Construction and management costs of information provision systems with low computational-ability devices, such as RFID devices, are low so lightweight authentication protocols are required for information security. In this paper, two lightweight authentication protocols are proposed for reliable information provision systems with low computational-ability devices. The first protocol is for public information, and the other ensures that only authorized users can get information. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 Authors Ya-Fen Chang, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung, Taiwan, e-mail: cyf@cs.ccu.edu.tw Wei-Liang Tai, Department of Information Communications, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan, e-mail: taiwl@cs.ccu.edu.tw Chia-Chen Chen, Department of Management Information Systems, National Chung Hsing University, No. 250, Kuo Kuang Rd., Taichung 402, Taiwan, e-mail: tr.emily@gmail.com Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: Current proposals for preference-based information access seem to ignore that users should be acquainted with the information space and the available choices for describing effectively their preferences. Furthermore users rarely formulate complex (preference or plain) queries. The interaction paradigm of Faceted Dynamic Taxonomies (FDT) allows users to explore an information space and to restrict their focus without having to formulate queries. Instead the users can restrict their focus (object set, or set of choices in general) gradually through a simple set of actions, each corresponding to a more refined query (formulated on-the-fly) which can be enacted by a simple click. In this paper we extend this interaction paradigm with actions that allow users to dynamically express their preferences. The proposed model supports progressive preference elicitation, inherited preferences and scope-based resolution of conflicts over single or multi-valued attributes with hierarchically organized values. Finally we elaborate on the algorithmic perspective and the applicability of the model over large information bases. Content Type Journal Article Pages 357-399 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-794 Authors Yannis Tzitzikas, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH-ICS, Greece, and Computer Science Department, University of Crete, Greece. {tzitzik|papadako}@ics.forth.gr Panagiotis Papadakos, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH-ICS, Greece, and Computer Science Department, University of Crete, Greece. {tzitzik|papadako}@ics.forth.gr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: This article introduces interior and closure operators with inclusion degree considered within a crisp or fuzzy topological framework. First, inclusion degree is introduced in an extension of the interior and closure operators in crisp topology. This idea is then introduced in fuzzy topology by incorporating a relaxed version of fuzzy subsethood. The introduction of inclusion degree leads to a means of dealing with imperfections and small errors, especially in cases such as digital images where boundaries of subsets of an image are not crisp. The properties of the new operators are presented. Applications of the proposed operators are given in terms of rough sets and mathematical morphology. Content Type Journal Article Pages 207-225 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-788 Authors Homa Fashandi, Computational Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 5V6 Canada. {fashandi, jfpeters}@ee.umanitoba.ca James F. Peters, Computational Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 5V6 Canada. {fashandi, jfpeters}@ee.umanitoba.ca Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 3 / 2013

Description: The paper includes a discussion of issues related to the process of global decision-making on the basis of information stored in several local knowledge bases. The local knowledge bases contain information on the same subject, but are defined on different sets of conditional attributes that are not necessarily disjoint. A decision-making system, which uses a number of knowledge bases, makes global decisions on the basis of a set of conditional attributes specified for all of the local knowledge bases used. The paper contains a description of a multi-agent decision-making system with a hierarchical structure. Additionally, it briefly overviews methods of inference that enable global decision-making in this system and that were proposed in our earlier works. The paper also describes the application of the conditional attributes reduction technique to local knowledge bases. Our main aim was to investigate the effect of attribute reduction on the efficiency of inference in such a system. For a measure of the efficiency of inference, we mean mainly an error rate of classification, for which a definition is given later in this paper. Therefore, our goal was to reduce the error rate of classification. Content Type Journal Article Pages 327-355 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-793 Authors Małgorzata Przybyła-Kasperek, Institute of Computer Science, University of Silesia, Będzińska 39, 41-200 Sosnowiec, Poland. malgorzata.przybyla-kasperek@us.edu.pl; alicja.wakulicz-deja@us.edu.pl Alicja Wakulicz-Deja, Institute of Computer Science, University of Silesia, Będzińska 39, 41-200 Sosnowiec, Poland. malgorzata.przybyla-kasperek@us.edu.pl; alicja.wakulicz-deja@us.edu.pl Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Contextual grammars are introduced by Solomon Marcus in 1969 based on the fundamental concept of descriptive linguistics of insertion of strings in given contexts. Internal contextual grammars are introduced by Păun and Nguyen in 1980. For contextual grammars several descriptional complexity measures and levels of ambiguity have been defined. In this paper, we analyze the trade-off between ambiguity and complexity of languages generated by internal contextual grammars. The notion of a pseudo inherently ambiguous language with respect to two complexity measures is introduced and investigated. These languages can be generated by unambiguous grammars which are minimal with respect to one measure and ambiguous if they are minimal with respect to the other measure. An open problem from [15] is solved in this framework. Content Type Journal Article Pages 315-326 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-792 Authors Lakshmanan Kuppusamy, School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632 014, India. klakshma@vit.ac.in Anand Mahendran, School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632 014, India. manand@vit.ac.in Kamala Krithivasan, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai 600 036, India. kamala@iitm.ac.in Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Dealing with cyber-physical systems (CPS) puts a strong emphasis on the interaction between computing and non-computing elements. Since the physical world is characterized by being strongly distributed and concurrent, this is also reflected in the computational world making the design of such systems a challenging task. If a number of tasks shall be executed on a CPS which are bound to time and space, may have dependencies to other tasks and requires a specific amount of computing devices, a solution requires a four-dimensional space-time schedule which includes positioning of the devices resulting in an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we address the problem of spatial-temporal group scheduling using Timed Petri nets. We use Timed Petri nets in order to model the spatial, temporal, ordered and concurrent character of our mobile, distributed system. Our model is based on a discrete topology in which devices can change their location by moving from cell to cell. Using the time property of Petri nets, we model movement in a heterogeneous terrain as well as task execution or access to other resources of the devices. Given the modeling, we show how to find an optimal schedule by translating the problem into a shortest path problem, which is solvable with the known method of dynamic programming. Content Type Journal Article Pages 297-313 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-791 Authors Daniel Graff, Communication and Operating Systems Group, Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany. dgraff@cs.tu-berlin.de; richling@cs.tu-berlin.de Jan Richling, Communication and Operating Systems Group, Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany. dgraff@cs.tu-berlin.de; richling@cs.tu-berlin.de Matthias Werner, Operating Systems Group, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. matthias.werner@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: For a large Markovian model, a “product form” is an explicit description of the steady-state behaviour which is otherwise generally untractable. Being first introduced in queueing networks, it has been adapted to Markovian Petri nets. Here we address three relevant issues for product-form Petri nets which were left fully or partially open: (1) we provide a sound and complete set of rules for the synthesis; (2) we characterise the exact complexity of classical problems like reachability; (3) we introduce a new subclass for which the normalising constant (a crucial value for product-form expression) can be efficiently computed. Content Type Journal Article Pages 147-172 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-786 Authors Serge Haddad, LSV, CNRS UMR 8643, INRIA, ENS Cachan, Cachan, France. haddad@lsv.ens-cachan.fr Jean Mairesse, LIAFA, CNRS UMR 7089, Université Paris 7, Paris, France. {mairesse,ngthach}@liafa.jussieu.fr Hoang-Thach Nguyen, LIAFA, CNRS UMR 7089, Université Paris 7, Paris, France. {mairesse,ngthach}@liafa.jussieu.fr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 1-2 / 2013

Description: Natural populations are dynamic in both time and space. In biological populations such as insects, spatial distribution patterns are often studied as the first step to characterize population dynamics. In nature, the spatial distribution patterns of insect populations are considered as the emergent expression (property) of individual behaviors at population levels and are fine-tuned or optimized by natural selection. This inspiration prompts us to investigate the possibly similar mechanisms in Genetic Algorithms (GA) populations. In this study, we introduce the mathematical models for the spatial distribution patterns of insect populations to GA with the conjecture that the emulation of biological populations in nature may lead to computational improvement. In particular, we introduce three modeling approaches from the research of spatial distribution patterns of insect populations: (i) probability distribution modeling approach, (ii) aggregation index approach, and (iii) Taylor's (1961, 1977) Power Law, Iwao's (1968, 1976) Mean Crowding Model and Ma's (1991c) population aggregation critical density (PACD), to characterize populations in GA. With these three approaches, we investigate four mappings from the research field of insect spatial distribution patterns to GA populations in order to search for possible counterpart mechanisms or features in GA. They are: (i) mapping insect spatial distribution patterns to GA populations or allowing GA populations to be controlled by stochastic distribution models that describe insect spatial distributions; (ii) mapping insect population distribution to GA population fitness distribution via Power Law and PACD modeling; (iii) mapping population aggregation dynamics to GA fitness progression across generations (or fitness aggregation dynamics in GA) via insect population aggregation index; (iv) mapping insect population sampling model to optimal GA population sizing. With regard to the mapping (i), the experiment results show the significant improvements in GA computational efficiency in terms of the reduced fitness evaluations and associated costs. This prompts us to suggest using probability distribution models, or what we call stochastic GA populations, to replace the fixed-size population settings. We also found the counterpart for the second mapping, the wide applicability of Power Law and Mean Crowding model to the fitness distribution in GA populations. The testing of the third and fourth mappings is very preliminary; we use example cases to suggest two further research problems: the potential to use fitness aggregation dynamics for controlling the number of generations iterated in GA searches, and the possibility to use fitness aggregation distribution parameters [(obtained in mapping (ii)] in determining the optimum population size in GA. A third interesting research problem is to investigate the relationship between mapping (i) and (iii), i.e., the controlling of both population sizes and population generations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 173-206 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-787 Authors Zhanshan Sam Ma, Computational Biology and Medical Ecology Lab, State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China and Computer Science Department, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA. ma@vandals.uidaho.edu Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 3 / 2013

Description: A concurrent history represented by a causality structure that captures the intrinsic, invariant dependencies between its actions, can be interpreted as defining a set of closely related observations (e.g., step sequences). Depending on the relationships observed in the histories of a system, the concurrency paradigm to which it adheres may be identified, with different concurrency paradigms underpinned by different kinds of causality structures. Elementary net systems with inhibitor arcs and mutex arcs (ENIM-systems) are a system model that through its process semantics and associated causality structures fits the least restrictive concurrency paradigm. One can also investigate the abstract behaviour of an ENIM-system by grouping together step sequences in equivalence classes (generalised comtraces) using the structural relations between its transitions. The resulting concurrent histories of the ENIM-system are consistent with the generalised stratified order structures underlying its processes. The paper establishes a link between ENIM-systems and trace theory allowing one to discuss different observations of concurrent behaviour in a way that is consistent with the causality semantics defined by the operationally defined processes. Content Type Journal Article Pages 119-146 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-785 Authors Jetty Kleijn, LIACS, Leiden University, P.O.Box 9512, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. kleijn@liacs.nl Maciej Koutny, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, U.K. maciej.koutny@ncl.ac.uk Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 1-2 / 2013

Description: Stepwise refinement is a well-known strategy in system modeling. The refinement rules should preserve essential behavioral properties, such as deadlock freedom, boundedness and weak termination. A well-known example is the refinement rule that replaces a safe place of a Petri net with a sound workflow net. In this case a token on the refined place undergoes a procedure that is modeled in detail by the refining workflow net. We generalize this rule to component-based systems, where in the first, high-level, refinement iterations we often encounter in different components places that represent in fact the counterparts of the same procedure “simultaneously” executed by the components. The procedure involves communication between these components. We model such a procedure as a multi-workflow net, which is actually a composition of communicating workflows. Behaviorally correct multi-workflow nets have the weak termination property. The weak termination requirement is also applied to the system being refined. We want to refine selected places in different components with a multi-workflow net in such a way that the weak termination property is preserved through refinements. We introduce the notion of synchronizable places and show that weak termination is preserved under the refinement of places with multiworks if and only if the refined places are synchronizable. We give a method to decide if a given set of places is synchronizable. Content Type Journal Article Pages 59-83 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-783 Authors Kees M. van Hee, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. {k.m.v.hee, n.sidorova, j.m.e.m.v.d.werf}@tue.nl Natalia Sidorova, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. {k.m.v.hee, n.sidorova, j.m.e.m.v.d.werf}@tue.nl Jan Martijn van der Werf, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. {k.m.v.hee, n.sidorova, j.m.e.m.v.d.werf}@tue.nl Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 1-2 / 2013

Description: We propose a new model of branching processes, suitable for describing the behavior of general Petri nets, without any finiteness or safeness assumption. In this framework, we define a new class of branching processes and unfoldings of a net N, which we call faithful. These coincide with the safe branching processes and unfoldings if N is safe, or weakly safe as in [Engelfriet 1991], but not in general. However, faithful branching processes and processes satisfy the good order-theoretic properties which make the safe processes of safe nets so useful in practice, and which are known not to hold for the safe processes of a general net. Faithful processes represent therefore good candidates to generalize the theory of safe nets to the general case. Content Type Journal Article Pages 31-58 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-782 Authors Jean-Michel Couvreur, Université d'Orléans, LIFO, Orléans, France. jean-michel.couvreur@univ-orleans.fr Denis Poitrenaud, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, LIP6, Paris, France. denis.poitrenaud@lip6.fr Pascal Weil, CNRS, LaBRI, UMR 5800, F-33400 Talence, France; Univ. Bordeaux, LaBRI, UMR 5800, F-33400 Talence, France. pascal.weil@labri.fr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 1-2 / 2013

Description: It is a widely believed, though unproven, conjecture that the capability of postselection increases the language recognition power of both probabilistic and quantum polynomial-time computers. It is also unknown whether polynomial-time quantum machines with postselection are more powerful than their probabilistic counterparts with the same resource restrictions. We approach these problems by imposing additional constraints on the resources to be used by the computer, and are able to prove for the first time that postselection does augment the computational power of both classical and quantum computers, and that quantum does outperform probabilistic in this context, under simultaneous time and space bounds in a certain range. We also look at postselected versions of space-bounded classes, as well as those corresponding to error-free and one-sided error recognition, and provide classical characterizations. It is shown that NL would equal RL if the randomized machines had the postselection capability. Content Type Journal Article Pages 107-134 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-803 Authors Abuzer Yakaryılmaz, Faculty of Computing, University of Latvia, Raina bulv. 19, Rīga, LV-1586, Latvia. abuzer@lu.lv A. C. Cem Say, Department of Computer Engineering, Boğaziçi University, Bebek 34342 İstanbul, Turkey. say@boun.edu.tr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 123 Journal Issue Volume 123, Number 1 / 2013

Description: Due to numerous public information sources and services, many methods to combine heterogeneous data were proposed recently. However, general end-to-end solutions are still rare, especially systems taking into account different context dimensions. Therefore, the techniques often prove insufficient or are limited to a certain domain. In this paper we briefly review and rigorously evaluate a general framework for data matching and merging. The framework employs collective entity resolution and redundancy elimination using three dimensions of context types. In order to achieve domain independent results, data is enriched with semantics and trust. However, the main contribution of the paper is evaluation on five public domain-incompatible datasets. Furthermore, we introduce additional attribute, relationship, semantic and trust metrics, which allow complete framework management. Besides overall results improvement within the framework, metrics could be of independent interest. Content Type Journal Article Pages 119-152 Authors Slavko Žitnik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Tržaska cesta 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, e-mail: {slavko.zitnik, lovro.subelj, dejan.lavbic}@fri.uni-lj.si, marko.bajec@fri.uni-lj.si Lovro Šubelj, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Tržaska cesta 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, e-mail: {slavko.zitnik, lovro.subelj, dejan.lavbic}@fri.uni-lj.si, marko.bajec@fri.uni-lj.si Dejan Lavbič, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Tržaska cesta 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, e-mail: {slavko.zitnik, lovro.subelj, dejan.lavbic}@fri.uni-lj.si, marko.bajec@fri.uni-lj.si Olegas Vasilecas, Information Systems Research Laboratory, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Saulėtekio 11, LT-10223 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: olegas@fm.vgtu.lt Marko Bajec, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Tržaska cesta 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, e-mail: {slavko.zitnik, lovro.subelj, dejan.lavbic}@fri.uni-lj.si, marko.bajec@fri.uni-lj.si Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: Technological advances have allowed all conferees to hold a mobile conference via wireless communication. When designing a conference scheme for mobile communications it should be taken into account that the mobile users are typically using portable devices with limited computing capability. Moreover, wireless communications are more susceptible to eavesdropping and unauthorized access than conversations via wires. Based on elliptic curve cryptography, this article proposes a secure mobile conference scheme which allows a participant to join or quit a teleconference dynamically. Without any interactive protocol among participants are required to construct the common key. This can save on communication overhead. Content Type Journal Article Pages 59-70 Authors Der-Chyuan Lou, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chang Gung University, Kweishan, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan, e-mail: dclouprof@gmail.com Kuo-Ching Liu, Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, China Medical University, Taichung 404, Taiwan, e-mail: kchliu@mail.cmu.edu.tw Hui-Feng Huang, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung 404, Taiwan, e-mail: phoenix@nutc.edu.tw Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: Frequent sequence mining is one of the main challenges in data mining and especially in large databases, which consist of millions of records. There is a number of different applications where frequent sequence mining is very important: medicine, finance, internet behavioural data, marketing data, etc. Exact frequent sequence mining methods make multiple passes over the database and if the database is large, then it is a time consuming and expensive task. Approximate methods for frequent sequence mining are faster than exact methods because instead of doing multiple passes over the original database, they analyze a much shorter sample of the original database formed in a specific way. This paper presents Markov Property Based Method (MPBM) – an approximate method for mining frequent sequences based on kth order Markov models, which makes only several passes over the original database. The method has been implemented and evaluated using real-world foreign exchange database and compared to exact and approximate frequent sequent mining algorithms. Content Type Journal Article Pages 87-102 Authors Julija Pragarauskaitė, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius University, Akademijos 4, LT-08663 Vilnius, e-mail: julija.pragarauskaite@gmail.com, gintautas.dzemyda@mii.vu.lt Gintautas Dzemyda, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius University, Akademijos 4, LT-08663 Vilnius, e-mail: julija.pragarauskaite@gmail.com, gintautas.dzemyda@mii.vu.lt Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: This paper proposes a new multi-attribute ranking procedure based on distance from decision-maker preferences. This method has two phases. In the first phase, the decision maker is asked to define the preferred performance for each attribute. In the second phase, Weighted Sum method and new distance-based normalization procedure are used to determine the overall performance rating of alternatives. Content Type Journal Article Pages 103-118 Authors Dragisa Stanujkic, Faculty of Management Zajecar, Megatrend University, Park Suma “Kraljevica” bb, 19000 Zajecar, Serbia, e-mail: dragisa.stanujkic@fmz.edu.rs Nedeljko Magdalinovic, Faculty of Management Zajecar, Megatrend University, Park Suma “Kraljevica” bb, 19000 Zajecar, Serbia, e-mail: dragisa.stanujkic@fmz.edu.rs Rodoljub Jovanovic, Faculty of Management Zajecar, Megatrend University, Park Suma “Kraljevica” bb, 19000 Zajecar, Serbia, e-mail: dragisa.stanujkic@fmz.edu.rs Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 1 / 2013

Description: In the paper we propose a translation of the existential model checking problem for timed automata and properties expressible in MITL to the existential model checking problem for HLTL. Such a translation, for example, allows to adopt LTL bounded model checking method for verification of the MITL properties. Content Type Journal Article Pages 401-420 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-795 Authors Bożena Woźna-Szcześniak, IM&CS, Jan Długosz University, Al. Armii Krajowej 13/15, 42-200 Częstochowa, Poland. b.wozna@ajd.czest.pl; a.zbrzezny@ajd.czest.pl Andrzej Zbrzezny, IM&CS, Jan Długosz University, Al. Armii Krajowej 13/15, 42-200 Częstochowa, Poland. b.wozna@ajd.czest.pl; a.zbrzezny@ajd.czest.pl Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: In the present paper we estimate the size of a neighbourhood of constant order in the interval graph of a random Boolean function. So far, no bound of this parameter has been known. Content Type Journal Article Pages 275-295 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-790 Authors Jakub Daubner, University of Žilina, Faculty of Management Science and Informatics, Department of Info Communication Networks, Univerzitná 8215/1, 01026 Žilina, Slovakia. jdaubner@gmail.com Eduard Toman, Comenius University, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Department of Computer Science, Mlynská dolina, 842 48 Bratislava, Slovak Republic. toman@dcs.fmph.uniba.sk Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 122 Journal Issue Volume 122, Number 4 / 2013

Description: A recovery monitoring system, based on hybrid computational intelligent techniques, is presented for post anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injured/reconstructed subjects. The case based reasoning methodology has been combined with fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy techniques in order to develop a knowledge base and a learning model for classification of recovery stages and monitoring the progress of ACL-reconstructed subjects during the convalescence regimen. The system records kinematics and neuromuscular parameters from lower limbs of healthy and ACL-reconstructed subjects using body-mounted wireless sensors and a combined feature set is generated by performing data transformation and feature reduction techniques. In order to classify the recovery stage of subjects, fuzzy k-nearest neighbor technique and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system have been applied and results have been compared. The system was successfully tested on a group of healthy and post-operated athletes for analyzing their performance during ambulation and single leg balance testing activities. A semi-automatic process has been employed for case adaptation and retention, requiring input from the physiotherapists and physiatrists. The system can be utilized by physiatrists, physiotherapists, sports trainers and clinicians for multiple purposes including maintaining athletes' profile, monitoring progress of recovery, classifying recovery status, adapting recovery protocols and predicting athletes' sports performance Content Type Journal Article Pages 215-235 DOI 10.3233/HIS-130178 Authors S.M.N. Arosha Senanayke, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, BE, Brunei Darussalam Owais Ahmed Malik, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, BE, Brunei Darussalam Pg. Mohammad Iskandar, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, BE, Brunei Darussalam Dansih Zaheer, Sports Medicine and Research Center, Hassan Bolkiah National Stadium, Berakas, Brunei Darussalam Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 4 / 2013

Description: In this paper, Hybrid Elite Genetic Algorithm and Tabu Search (HEGATS) is proposed to automatically generate Fuzzy rule base for fuzzy inference systems. The algorithm is used to simultaneously optimize the premise and consequent parameters of the fuzzy rules for the appropriate design of fuzzy system for Takagi-Sugeno zero-order. After finale selection of the new generation calculated by genetic algorithm, elitist solution is saved. In this step, tabu search is introduced to find the better neighboring of the elitist solution which will be introduced in the new generation. This hybridization of global and local optimization algorithms minimizes the number of iterations and computation time while maintaining accuracy and minimum response time. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, several numerical examples given in the literature for control and modeling systems are examined. Results prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Content Type Journal Article Pages 205-214 DOI 10.3233/HIS-130177 Authors N. Talbi, Faculty of Science and Technology, Jijel University, Jijel, Algeria K. Belarbi, Faculty of Engineering, Mentoury University, Constantine, Algeria Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Goal of feature selection is to find a suitable feature subset that produces higher accuracy for classifier in the user end. Hybrid methods for feature selection comprised of combination of filter and wrapper approaches have recently been emerged as strong techniques for the problem in this domain. In this paper we have presented a novel approach for feature selection based on feature clustering using well known k-means philosophy for the high dimensional gene expression data. Also we have proposed three simple hybrid approaches for reducing data dimensionality while maintaining classification accuracy which combine our basic feature selection through feature clustering (FSFC) approach to other standard approaches of feature selection in different orientation. We have employed popular Box and Whisker plot and ROC curve analysis to evaluate experimental outcome. Our experimental results clearly show suitability of our methods in hybrid approaches of feature selection in micro-array gene expression domain. Content Type Journal Article Pages 165-178 DOI 10.3233/HIS-130172 Authors Choudhury Muhammad Mufassil Wahid, School of Information and Communication Technology, CQUniversity, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia A.B.M. Shawkat Ali, School of Information and Communication Technology, CQUniversity, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia Kevin S. Tickle, School of Information and Communication Technology, CQUniversity, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Intelligent computing has attracted many scientists, decision makers, and practicing researchers in recent years as powerful and novel intelligent techniques for solving unlimited number of complex real-world problems, particularly related to research area of optimization. Under the unpredictable and fuzzy environment, classical and traditional approaches are unable to obtain a complete solution with satisfaction for the practical optimization problems. Therefore, new global optimization methods are required to properly handle these issues. One of such methods is hybrid evolutionary computation, which is a generic, flexible, robust, and versatile method for solving the complex global optimization problems as well as implementing to practical applications. Content Type Journal Article Pages 179-190 DOI 10.3233/HIS-130175 Authors Pandian Vasant, Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia. E-mail: pvasant@gmail.com Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 4 / 2013

Description: A non-functional requirement for model-based diagnosis of active systems is efficient determinization of acyclic automata. In literature, determinization of finite automata is performed by the Subset Construction algorithm (SC): given a nondeterministic automaton

Description: Everyday more and more complex and critical processes of organizations' services and operations are automated by using business process management systems. Thereby, there exists a growing interest in improving the quality of these processes (e.g., by avoiding functional faults) to ensure the reachability of business goals and, consequently, for organizations to become more competitive. To this end, four contributions to apply diagnosis techniques for identifying and isolating functional faults at both design-time and run-time are proposed. Content Type Journal Article Category Thesis Pages 409-411 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130568 Authors Diana Borrego, University of Seville, Seville, Spain. E-mail: dianabn@us.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: In this paper, we present a technique for developing user simulators which are able to interact and evaluate conversational agents. Our technique is based on a statistical model that is automatically learned from a dialog corpus. This model is used by the user simulator to provide the next answer taking into account the complete history of the interaction. The main objective of our proposal is not only to evaluate the conversational agent, but also to improve this agent by employing the simulated dialogs to learn a better dialog model. We have applied this technique to design and evaluate a conversational agent which provides academic information in a multi-agent system. The results of the evaluation show that the proposed user simulation methodology can be used not only to evaluate conversational agents but also to explore new enhanced dialog strategies, thereby allowing the conversational agent to reduce the time needed to complete the dialogs and automatically detect new valid paths to achieve each of the required objectives defined for the task. Content Type Journal Article Pages 355-371 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130573 Authors David Griol, Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA), Department of Computer Science, Carlos III University of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad, 30, 28911, Leganés, Spain. E-mails: {david.griol, javier.carbo, josemanuel.molina}@uc3m.es Javier Carbo, Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA), Department of Computer Science, Carlos III University of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad, 30, 28911, Leganés, Spain. E-mails: {david.griol, javier.carbo, josemanuel.molina}@uc3m.es José M. Molina, Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA), Department of Computer Science, Carlos III University of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad, 30, 28911, Leganés, Spain. E-mails: {david.griol, javier.carbo, josemanuel.molina}@uc3m.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: The ability to effectively reason in the presence of qualitative preferences on literals or formulas is a central issue in Artificial Intelligence. In the last few years, two procedures have been presented in order to reason with propositional satisfiability (SAT) problems in the presence of additional, partially ordered qualitative preferences on literals or formulas: the first requires a modification of the branching heuristic of the SAT solver in order to guarantee that the first solution is optimal, while the second computes a sequence of solutions, each guaranteed to be better than the previous one. The two approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages and when compared on specific classes of instances – each having an empty partial order – the second seems to have superior performance. In this paper we show that the above two approaches for reasoning with qualitative preferences can be combined yielding a new effective procedure. In particular, in the new procedure we modify the branching heuristic – as in the first approach – by possibly changing the polarity of the returned literal, and then we continue the search – as in the second approach – looking for better solutions. We extended the experimental analysis conducted in previous papers by considering a wide variety of problems, having both an empty and a non-empty partial order: the results show that the new procedure performs better than the two previous approaches on average, and especially on the “hard” problems. As a preliminary result, we show that the framework of qualitative preferences on literals is more general and expressive than the framework on quantitative preferences. Content Type Journal Article Pages 395-408 DOI 10.3233/AIC-130575 Authors Emanuele Di Rosa Enrico Giunchiglia Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / 2013

Description: Natural Language Generation (NLG) is concerned with transforming given content input into a natural language output, given some communicative goal. Although this input can take various forms and representations, it is the semantic/conceptual representations that have always been considered as the “natural” starting ground for NLG. Therefore, it is natural that the Semantic Web (SW), with its machine-processable representation of information with explicitly defined semantics, has attracted the interest of NLG practitioners from early on. We attempt to provide an overview of the main paradigms of NLG from SW data, emphasizing how the Semantic Web provides opportunities for the NLG community to improve their state-of-the-art approaches whilst bringing about challenges that need to be addressed before we can speak of a real symbiosis between NLG and the Semantic Web. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-130125 Authors Nadjet Bouayad-Agha, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University, C/Roc Boronat, 138, 08018 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: {nadjet.bouayad,gerard.casamayor,leo.wanner}@upf.edu Gerard Casamayor, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University, C/Roc Boronat, 138, 08018 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: {nadjet.bouayad,gerard.casamayor,leo.wanner}@upf.edu Leo Wanner, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University, C/Roc Boronat, 138, 08018 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: {nadjet.bouayad,gerard.casamayor,leo.wanner}@upf.edu Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: This paper describes the Ontologies of Linguistic Annotation (OLiA) as one of the data sets currently available as part of Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) cloud. Within the LLOD cloud, the OLiA ontologies serve as a reference hub for annotation terminology for linguistic phenomena on a great band-width of languages, they have been used to facilitate interoperability and information integration of linguistic annotations in corpora, NLP pipelines, and lexical-semantic resources and mediate their linking with multiple community-maintained terminology repositories. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-140167 Authors Christian Chiarcos, Applied Computational Linguistics (ACoLi), Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, http://acoli.cs.uni-frankfurt.de Maria Sukhareva, Applied Computational Linguistics (ACoLi), Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, http://acoli.cs.uni-frankfurt.de Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: This paper describes the publication and linking of (parts of) PAROLE SIMPLE CLIPS (PSC), a large scale Italian lexicon, to the Semantic Web and the Linked Data cloud using the lemon model. The main challenge of the conversion is discussed, namely the reconciliation between the PSC semantic structure which contains richly encoded semantic information, following the qualia structure of the Generative Lexicon theory and the lemon view of lexical sense as a reified pairing of a lexical item and a concept in an ontology. The result is two datasets: one consists of a list of lemon lexical entries with their lexical properties, relations and senses; the other consists of a list of OWL individuals representing the referents for the lexical senses. These OWL individuals are linked to each other by a set of semantic relations and mapped onto the SIMPLE OWL ontology of higher level semantic types. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-140168 Authors Riccardo Del Gratta, Istituto Di Linguistica Computazionale ‘A. Zampolli’, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: first.last@ilc.cnr.it Francesca Frontini, Istituto Di Linguistica Computazionale ‘A. Zampolli’, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: first.last@ilc.cnr.it Fahad Khan, Istituto Di Linguistica Computazionale ‘A. Zampolli’, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: first.last@ilc.cnr.it Monica Monachini, Istituto Di Linguistica Computazionale ‘A. Zampolli’, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: first.last@ilc.cnr.it Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: The decentralized many-to-many negotiation for resource allocation in Cloud and multi-agent systems presents numerous challenges, including ones related to the buyer strategy which is the focus of the present paper. Current approaches deriving required resources each bid must ask for aren't in all market cases an optimal choice. For this reason, we have proposed a hybrid negotiation strategy consisting of a combination of two modes of negotiation strategies that generates required resources of each bid in parallel, the first one is an existent fixed negotiation strategy and the second one is a learning selection strategy over the buyer's agreement space. Moreover, acting dynamically in the market place by adjusting appropriately the buyer's resource provisioning times and calling for proposal to hand over contracted resources in order to break some deadlocks involving buyers' tasks has been shown via simulation results to achieve better performances both in terms of social welfare and buyer utility. Content Type Journal Article Pages 165-183 DOI 10.3233/MGS-140221 Authors Mohamed Raouf Habes, Department of Computer Science, University of Badji Mokhtar, Annaba, Algeria Habiba Belleili-Souici, Department of Computer Science, University of Badji Mokhtar, Annaba, Algeria Laurent Vercouter, INSA de Rouen, Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, France Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems Online ISSN 1875-9076 Print ISSN 1574-1702 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 3 / 2014

Description: In future energy systems, peaks in the daily electricity generation and consumption are expected to increase. The "smart grid" concept aims to maintain high levels of efficiency in the energy system by establishing distributed intelligence. Software agents (operating on devices with unknown computational capabilities) can implement dynamic and autonomous decision making about energy usage and generation, e.g. in domestic households, farms or offices. To reach satisfactory levels of efficiency and reliability, it is crucial to include planning-ahead of the energy-involving activities. Market mechanisms are a promising approach for large-scale coordination problems about energy supply and demand, but existing electricity markets either do not involve planning-ahead sufficiently or require a high level of sophistication and computing power from participants, which is not suitable for smart grid settings. This paper proposes a new market mechanism for smart grids, ABEM (Ahead- and Balancing Energy Market). ABEM performs an ahead market and a last-minute balancing market, where planning-ahead in the ahead market supports both binding ahead-commitments and reserve capacities in bids (which can be submitted as price functions). These features of planning-ahead reflect the features in modern wholesale electricity markets. However, constructing bids in ABEM is straightforward and fast. We also provide a model of a market with the features mentioned above, which a strategic agent can use to construct a bid (e.g. in ABEM), using a decision-theoretic approach. We evaluate ABEM experimentally in various stochastic scenarios and show favourable outcomes in comparison with a benchmark mechanism. Content Type Journal Article Pages 137-163 DOI 10.3233/MGS-140220 Authors Nicolas Höning, Centrum Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Han La Poutré, Centrum Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems Online ISSN 1875-9076 Print ISSN 1574-1702 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 3 / 2014

Description: The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model of agency provides a powerful technique for describing goal-based behavior for both individual agents and, more recently, agent teams. Numerous frameworks have been developed since the model was first proposed in the early 1980's. However, none of these frameworks have explicitly represented intention, which has meant that intention-based reasoning has had no direct framework support. Given the importance of this in the development of practical agent applications, we consider this to be a major shortcoming of existing frameworks. This paper explores how explicitly represented goals can be used as both a unifying modeling concept for the management of intention, and as the basis for a BDI framework. The exploration is grounded both in terms of software – a recently developed BDI framework called GORITE and in application – an execution system for a robotic assembly cell. Both are discussed in detail. Content Type Journal Article Pages 119-136 DOI 10.3233/MGS-140219 Authors D. Jarvis, School of Engineering and Technology, Central Queensland University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia J. Jarvis, School of Engineering and Technology, Central Queensland University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia R. Rönnquist, Intendico Pty. Ltd., Carlton, Australia Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems Online ISSN 1875-9076 Print ISSN 1574-1702 Journal Volume Volume 10 Journal Issue Volume 10, Number 3 / 2014

Description: In recent years, Bayesian Network has become an important modeling method for decision making problems of real-world applications. In this paper learning parameters of a fuzzy Bayesian Network (BN) based on imprecise/fuzzy observations is considered, where imprecise observations particularly refers to triangular fuzzy numbers. To achieve this, an extension to fuzzy probability theory based on imprecise observations is proposed which employs both the "truth" concept of Yager and the Extension Principle in fuzzy set theory. In addition, some examples are given to demonstrate the concepts of the proposed idea. The aim of our suggestion is to be able to estimate joint fuzzy probability and the conditional probability tables (CPTs) of Bayesian Network based on imprecise observations. Two real-world datasets, Car Evaluation Database (CED) and Extending Credibility (EC), are employed where some of attributes have crisp (exact) and some of them have fuzzy observations. Estimated parameters of the CED's corresponding network, using our extension, are shown in tables. Then, using Kullback-Leibler divergence, two scenarios are considered to show that fuzzy parameters preserve more knowledge than that of crisp parameters. This phenomenon is also true in cases where there are a small number of observations. Finally, to examine a network with fuzzy parameters versus the network with crisp parameters, accuracy result of predictions is provided which shows improvements in the predictions. Content Type Journal Article Pages 167-180 DOI 10.3233/KES-140296 Authors Mostafa Ghazizadeh-Ahsaee, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Mahmoud Naghibzadeh, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Bahram Sadeghpour Gildeh, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 3 / 2014

Description: This paper presents an interactive verifier for logic programs. These logic programs are constructed by a schema-based method. Each program is associated with proof schemes due to the program development method. The correctness proof of a program is guided by its associated proof schemes. The main components of the verifier are the prover which carries out the proof steps, the knowledge base (KB) which includes representations of all theories and transformation rules, the KB update which supports the update of KB and the graphical user interface (GUI). The emphasis in the design of this proof checker is on effective guidance of the proof based on the activated proof schemes and on performance by the verifier of tedious, trivial and time consuming tasks. The difficult proof decisions are taken by the user, then, the proof checker applies them. The design of the interface is based on providing the user the required support for the proof of a theorem and for the update of KB. This system is an effective and useful tool for the interactive verification of non-trivial logic programs. Content Type Journal Article Pages 143-156 DOI 10.3233/KES-140294 Authors Emmanouil Marakakis, Department of Informatics Engineering, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Heraklion, Greece Haridimos Kondylakis, Department of Informatics Engineering, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Heraklion, Greece Nikos Papadakis, Department of Informatics Engineering, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Heraklion, Greece Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 3 / 2014

Description: We concern the issue of preference recommendation towards more reliable recommender system. General recommender system provides a collection of items or several bests of them, on the basis of a fixed preference constraint. However, the realistic preference from users may be such complicated that makes conventional recommender system unreliable. In real-world applications, e.g. travel planning or hotel selection, specific constraints may be involved like a limited travel time or an appropriate budget for hotel accommodation. Motivated by these applications, we investigate the constrained preference recommendation (CPR), in which two main types are studied including Threshold-CPR (T-CPR) and Range-CPR (R-CPR). We firstly analyze and define the related problems. Then, we provide solutions with illustration of problem-solving procedure. The results are analogized with other representative techniques. Finally, we provide an extension study on the general CPR problems. Therein, we firstly provide a normalized system for constraint representation. Secondly, we utilize the proposed normalized system to analyze representative literature. Content Type Journal Article Pages 157-165 DOI 10.3233/KES-140295 Authors Anming Li, Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, China Junyi Chai, Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, China Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 3 / 2014

Description: The purpose of security checks at airports is to achieve a reduction in the risk of malevolent attacks on the aviation system. The introduction of new security measures aims at reducing this perceived level of risk, and often takes place as a direct reaction to (attempted) attacks. This procedure means that offenders remain one step ahead of security agents. The aim of the approach presented here is to overcome this shortfall by supporting decision-making in the context of airport security by a systematically created knowledge base. The combination of two well-accepted methods – scenario analysis and structural complexity management – supports a structured knowledge acquisition process that serves as a basis for the proactive identification of system weaknesses. Furthermore, this combination of methods can be applied to the search for optimisation potentials concerned with possible future threats. The basis for the approach is composed of threat scenario components, security measures and dependencies between these elements. A Multiple-Domain Matrix is applied for system modelling. Clustering of threat scenarios and intensity of relations to security measures are used for analysis. The interpretation of findings makes use of portfolio representations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 191-200 DOI 10.3233/KES-140300 Authors Mara Cole, Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V., Munich, Germany Maik Maurer, Institute of Product Development, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 3 / 2014

Description: A generalized Bayesian inference nets model (GBINM) to aid developers to construct self-adaptive Bayesian inference nets for various applications and a new approach of defining and assigning statistical parameters to Bayesian inference nodes needed to calculate propagation of probabilities and address uncertainties are proposed. GBINM and the proposed approach are applied to design an intelligent medical system to diagnose cardiovascular diseases. Thousands of site-sampled clinical data are used for designing and testing such a constructed system. The preliminary diagnostic results show that the proposed methodology has salient validity and effectiveness Content Type Journal Article Pages 181-190 DOI 10.3233/KES-140299 Authors Booma Devi Sekar, Department of ECE, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China Mingchui Dong, Department of ECE, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 3 / 2014

Description: This paper presents a cost optimization model for scheduling scientific workflows on IaaS clouds such as Amazon EC2 or RackSpace. We assume multiple IaaS clouds with heterogeneous virtual machine instances, with limited number of instances per cloud and hourly billing. Input and output data are stored on a cloud object store such as Amazon S3. Applications are scientific workflows modeled as DAGs as in the Pegasus Workflow Management System. We assume that tasks in the workflows are grouped into levels of identical tasks. Our model is specified using mathematical programming languages (AMPL and CMPL) and allows us to minimize the cost of workflow execution under deadline constraints. We present results obtained using our model and the benchmark workflows representing real scientific applications in a variety of domains. The data used for evaluation come from the synthetic workflows, from general purpose cloud benchmarks, as well as from the data measured in our own experiments with Montage, an astronomical application, executed on Amazon EC2 cloud. We indicate how this model can be used for scenarios that require resource planning for scientific workflows and their ensembles. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SPR-140406 Authors Maciej Malawski, Department of Computer Science AGH, Kraków, Poland Kamil Figiela, Department of Computer Science AGH, Kraków, Poland Marian Bubak, Department of Computer Science AGH, Kraków, Poland Ewa Deelman, USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA, USA Jarek Nabrzyski, Center for Research Computing, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA. E-mails: malawski@agh.edu.pl, kfigiela@agh.edu.pl, bubak@agh.edu.pl, deelman@isi.edu, naber@nd.edu Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244

Description: Semantic Web services frameworks provides the means to automatically discover, rank, compose and invoke services according to user requirements and preferences. However, current preference models offer limited expressiveness and they are tightly coupled with underlying discovery and ranking mechanisms. Furthermore, these mechanisms present performance, interoperability and integration issues that prevent the uptake of semantic technologies in these scenarios. In this work, we discuss three interrelated contributions on preference modeling, discovery optimization, and flexible, integrated ranking, tackling specifically the identified challenges on those areas using a lightweight approach. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/AIC-140644 Authors José María García, University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain. E-mail: josemgarcia@us.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126

Description: This work proposes novel methodologies to improve the use of Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) for environmental purposes, especially for thematic mapping (LiDAR only or fused with other remote sensors) and the estimation of forest variables. The methodologies make use of well-known techniques from soft computing (machine learning and evolutionary computation) and their adaptation to develop LiDAR-derived products. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/AIC-140643 Authors Jorge Garcia-Gutierrez, Department of Computer Languages and Systems, University of Seville, Seville, Spain. E-mail: jorgarcia@us.es Journal AI Communications Online ISSN 1875-8452 Print ISSN 0921-7126

Description: The availability in machine-readable form of descriptions of the structure of documents, as well as of the document discourse (e.g. the scientific discourse within scholarly articles), is crucial for facilitating semantic publishing and the overall comprehension of documents by both users and machines. In this paper we introduce DoCO, the Document Components Ontology, an OWL 2 DL ontology that provides a general-purpose structured vocabulary of document elements to describe both structural and rhetorical document components in RDF. In addition to describing the formal description of the ontology, this paper showcases its utility in practice in a variety of our own applications and other activities of the Semantic Publishing community that rely on DoCO to annotate and retrieve document components of scholarly articles. Content Type Journal Article Pages - DOI 10.3233/SW-150177 Authors Alexandru Constantin, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, PFL IC IIF LSIR, BC 159 (Bâtiment BC), Station 14, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. E-mail: alex.constantin@epfl.ch Silvio Peroni, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, Mura Anteo Zamboni 7, 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy. E-mails: silvio.peroni@unibo.it, fabio.vitali@unibo.it Steve Pettifer, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Kilburn Building, M13 9PL Manchester, United Kingdom. E-mail: steve.pettifer@manchester.ac.uk David Shotton, Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, 7 Keble Road, OX1 3QG Oxford, United Kingdom. E-mail: david.shotton@oerc.ox.ac.uk Fabio Vitali, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, Mura Anteo Zamboni 7, 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy. E-mails: silvio.peroni@unibo.it, fabio.vitali@unibo.it Journal Semantic Web Online ISSN 2210-4968 Print ISSN 1570-0844

Description: Elizabeth Haub Prize - Marc Pallemaerts Honoured 16 IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 - Safeguarding the Planet's Natural Assets "Defining the Agenda" (Eustathia Laina and Elsa Tsioumani) 19 Content Type Journal Article Pages 16-22 Journal Environmental Policy and Law Online ISSN 1878-5395 Print ISSN 0378-777X Journal Volume Volume 45 Journal Issue Volume 45, Number 1 / 2015

Description: UNGA-69 - Resolutions on Environmental Policy and Law 2 UN Post-2015 Development Agenda - Final Round of Discussions 6 CMS/CoP-11 - A Watershed for the Conservation of Migratory Species "Bradnee Chambers" 7 UNFCCC/CoP-20 - A Draft Negotiating Text Emerges "Annalisa Savaresi" 10 IPBES - Key Policies and Issues Addressed "Elsa Tsioumani" 13 Content Type Journal Article Pages 2-15 Journal Environmental Policy and Law Online ISSN 1878-5395 Print ISSN 0378-777X Journal Volume Volume 45 Journal Issue Volume 45, Number 1 / 2015

Description: This study presents theoretical proof and empirical evidence of the reduction algorithm convergence for the distance-based inconsistency in pairwise comparisons. Our empirical research shows that the convergence very quick. It usually takes less than 10 reductions to bring the inconsistency of the pairwise comparisons matrix below the assumed threshold of 1/3 (sufficient for most applications). We believe that this is the first Monte Carlo study demonstrating such results for the convergence speed of inconsistency reduction in pairwise comparisons. Content Type Journal Article Pages 355-367 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1184 Authors Waldemar W. Koczkodaj, Computer Science, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada. wkoczkodaj@cs.laurentian.ca Marek Kosiek, Jagiellonian University, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Prof. St. Łojasiewicza 6, 30-348 Kraków, Poland. Marek.Kosiek@im.uj.edu.pl Jacek Szybowski, AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Applied Mathematics, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Kraków, Poland. szybowsk@agh.edu.pl Ding Xu, Computer Science, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 3 / 2015

Description: [Introduction] Schedule management of hospitalization is important to maintain or improve the quality of medical care and application of a clinical pathway is one of the important solutions for the management. Although several kinds of deductive methods for construction for a clinical pathway have been proposed, the customization is one of the important problems. This research proposed an inductive approach to support the customization of existing clinical pathways by using data on nursing actions stored in a hospital information system. [Method] The number of each nursing action applied to a given disease during the hospitalization was counted for each day as a temporal sequence. Temporal sequences were compared by using clustering and multidimensional scaling method in order to visualize the similarities between temporal patterns of clinical actions. [Results] Clustering and multidimensional scaling analysis classified these orders to one group necessary for the treatment for this DPC and the other specific to the status of a patient. The method was evaluated on data sets of ten frequent diseases extracted from hospital information system in Shimane University Hospital. Cataracta and Glaucoma were selected. Removing routine and poorly documented nursing actions, 46 items were selected for analysis. [Discussion] Counting data on executed nursing orders were analyzed as temporal sequences by using similarity-based analysis methods. The analysis classified the nursing actions into the two major groups: one consisted of orders necessary for the treatment and the other consisted of orders dependent on the status of admitted patients, including complicated diseases, such as DM or heart diseases. The method enabled us to inductive construction of standardized schedule management and detection of the conditions of patients difficult to apply the existing or induced clinical pathway. Content Type Journal Article Pages 237-252 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1177 Authors Haruko Iwata, Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, 89-1 Enya-cho Izumo 693-8501, Japan. {haruko23,hirano,tsumoto}@med.shimane-u.ac.jp Shoji Hirano, Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, 89-1 Enya-cho Izumo 693-8501, Japan. {haruko23,hirano,tsumoto}@med.shimane-u.ac.jp Shusaku Tsumoto, Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, 89-1 Enya-cho Izumo 693-8501, Japan. {haruko23,hirano,tsumoto}@med.shimane-u.ac.jp Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 2 / 2015

Description: At the end of the eighties, continuous Petri nets were introduced for: (1) alleviating the combinatory explosion triggered by discrete Petri nets (i.e. usual Petri nets) and, (2) modelling the behaviour of physical systems whose state is composed of continuous variables. Since then several works have established that the computational complexity of deciding some standard behavioural properties of Petri nets is reduced in this framework. Here we first establish the decidability of additional properties like coverability, boundedness and reachability set inclusion. We also design new decision procedures for reachability and lim-reachability problems with a better computational complexity. Finally we provide lower bounds characterising the exact complexity class of the reachability, the coverability, the boundedness, the deadlock freeness and the liveness problems. A small case study is introduced and analysed with these new procedures. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-28 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1168 Authors Estíbaliz Fraca, Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón (I3A), Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. efraca@unizar.es Serge Haddad, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, LSV, CNRS UMR 8643, INRIA, Cachan, France. haddad@lsv.ens-cachan.fr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 1 / 2015

Description: We propose a framework in terms of domain theory for semantic information models. We show how an artificial agent (the computer) can operate within such a model in a multiple attitude environment (fuzziness) where information is conveyed. We illustrate our approach by two examples — taking as the set of the degrees of reliability Kleene's 3-valued strong logic and Belnap-Dunn's 4-valued logic. Content Type Journal Article Pages 207-225 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1208 Authors Alexei Y. Muravitsky, Louisiana Scholars' College, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA 71497, USA. alexeim@nsula.edu Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: Yurii Rogozhin's Biography and Publications Content Type Journal Article Pages 273-284 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1212 Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: We propose and investigate a formal language operation inspired by the naturally occurring phenomenon of DNA primer extension by a DNA-template-directed DNA Polymerase enzyme. Given two DNA strings u and v, where the shorter string v (called primer) is Watson-Crick complementary and can thus bind to a substring of the longer string u (called template) the result of the primer extension is a DNA string that is complementary to a suffix of the template which starts at the binding position of the primer. The operation of DNA primer extension can be abstracted as a binary operation on two formal languages: a template language L 1 and a primer language L 2 . We call this language operation L 1 -directed extension of L 2 and study the closure properties of various language classes, including the classes in the Chomsky hierarchy, under directed extension. Furthermore, we answer the question under what conditions can a given language of target strings be generated from a given template language when the primer language is unknown. We use the canonic inverse of directed extension in order to obtain the optimal solution (the minimal primer language) to this question. Content Type Journal Article Pages 179-192 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1206 Authors Srujan Kumar Enaganti, Department of Computer Science, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada. senagant@uwo.ca; lila.kari@uwo.ca; steffen@csd.uwo.ca Lila Kari, Department of Computer Science, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada. senagant@uwo.ca; lila.kari@uwo.ca; steffen@csd.uwo.ca Steffen Kopecki, Department of Computer Science, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada. senagant@uwo.ca; lila.kari@uwo.ca; steffen@csd.uwo.ca Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: In this paper we investigate the use of general topological spaces in connection with a generalised variant of membrane systems. We provide an approach which produces a fine grain description of local operations occurring simultaneously in sets of compartments of the system by restricting the interactions between objects. This restriction is given by open sets of a topology and multisets of objects associated with them, which dynamically change during the functioning of the system and which together define a notion of vicinity for the objects taking part in the interactions. Content Type Journal Article Pages 193-205 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1207 Authors Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú, Department of Algorithms and Their Applications, Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, 1117 Budapest, Hungary. csuhaj@inf.elte.hu Marian Gheorghe, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 211 Portobello, Sheffield S1 4DP, United Kingdom. m.gheorghe@sheffield.ac.uk, m.stannett@sheffield.ac.uk Mike Stannett, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 211 Portobello, Sheffield S1 4DP, United Kingdom. m.gheorghe@sheffield.ac.uk, m.stannett@sheffield.ac.uk György Vaszil, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Informatics, University of Debrecen, Kassai út 26, 4028 Debrecen, Hungary. vaszil.gyorgy@inf.unideb.hu Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: We discuss simple functional transductions defined by invertible Mealy automata under iteration and in particular the question when the orbit relation defined by iteration is rational. We identify a class of these automata that has relatively complicated orbits, yet some of them are still orbit rational and discuss a number of decision problems associated with these devices. Content Type Journal Article Pages 259-272 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1211 Authors K. Sutner, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. sutner@cs.cmu.edu Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: Elementary cellular automata (ECA) are linear arrays of finite-state machines (cells) which take binary states, and update their states simultaneously depending on states of their closest neighbours. We design and study ECA with memory (ECAM), where every cell remembers its states during some fixed period of evolution. We characterize complexity of ECAM in a case study of rule 126, and then provide detailed behavioural classification of ECAM. We show that by enriching ECA with memory we can achieve transitions between the classes of behavioural complexity. We also show that memory helps to ‘discover’ hidden information and behaviour on trivial (uniform, periodic), and non-trivial (chaotic, complex) dynamical systems. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-16 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1194 Authors Genaro J. Martínez, Escuela Superior de Cómputo, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México D.F., México, International Centre of Unconventional Computing, University of the West of England, BS16 1QY Bristol, United Kingdom. Genaro.Martinez@uwe.ac.uk Andrew Adamatzky, International Centre of Unconventional Computing, University of the West of England, BS16 1QY Bristol, United Kingdom. Andrew.Adamatzky@uwe.ac.uk Ramon Alonso-Sanz, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. ETSIA (Estadistica,GSC), Madrid, Spain. Ramon.Alonso@upm.es Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 138 Journal Issue Volume 138, Number 1-2 / 2015

Description: We introduce a filtering methodology based on locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) and whitening transformation to reduce candidate tuples between which encrypted vector databases (EVDBs) must compute similarity for query processing. The LSH hashing methodology is efficient for estimating similarities between two vectors. It hashes a vector space using randomly chosen vectors. We can filter vectors that are less similar to the querying vectors by recording which hashed space each vector belongs to. However, if vectors in EVDBs are found locally, then most vectors are in the same hashed space, so the filter will not work. Because we can treat those cases using whitening transformation to distribute the vectors broadly, our proposed filtering methodology will work effectively on any vector space. We also show that our filter reduces the server's query processing cost. Content Type Journal Article Pages 291-304 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1180 Authors Junpei Kawamoto, Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Japan. junpei@mdl.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 2 / 2015

Description: This paper introduces a novel, interactive and exploratory, approach to information retrieval (search engines) based on clustering. Presented method allows users to change the clustering structure by applying a free-text clustering context query that is treated as a criterion for document-to-cluster allocation. Exploration mechanisms are delivered by redefining the interaction scenario in which the user can interact with data on the level of topic discovery or cluster labeling. In this paper, the presented idea is realized by a graph structure called the Query-Summarize Graph. This data structure is useful in the definition of the similarity measure between the snippets as well as in the snippet clustering algorithm. The experiments on real-world data are showing that the proposed solution has many interesting properties and can be an alternative approach to interactive information retrieval. Content Type Journal Article Pages 273-290 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1179 Authors Michał Meina, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland. mich@mat.umk.pl Hung Son Nguyen, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw, Banacha 2, Warsaw, Poland. son@mimuw.edu.pl Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 2 / 2015

Description: A formal framework for data mining with association rules is introduced. The framework is based on a logical calculus of association rules which is enhanced by several formal tools. The enhancement allows the description of the whole data mining process, including formulation of analytical questions, application of an analytical procedure and interpretation of its results. The role of formalized domain knowledge is discussed. Content Type Journal Article Pages 171-217 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1175 Authors Jan Rauch, University of Economics, Prague, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic. rauch@vse.cz Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 2 / 2015

Description: Administrative services such social care, tax reduction, and many others using complex decision processes, request individuals to provide large amounts of private data items, in order to calibrate their proposal to the specific situation of the applicant. This data is subsequently processed and stored by the organization. However, all the requested information is not needed to reach the same decision. We have recently proposed an approach, termed Minimum Exposure, to reduce the quantity of information provided by the users, in order to protect her privacy, reduce processing costs for the organization, and financial lost in the case of a data breach. In this paper, we address the case of decision making processes based on sets of classifiers, typically multi-label classifiers. We propose a practical implementation using state of the art multi-label classifiers, and analyze the effectiveness of our solution on several real multi-label data sets. Content Type Journal Article Pages 219-236 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1176 Authors Nicolas Anciaux, INRIA and University of Versailles SMIS team, Domaine de Voluceau, 78153 Le Chesnay, France. nicolas.anciaux@inria.fr Danae Boutara, INRIA and Ecole Polytechnique, Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Ecole Polytechnique, 91128, Palaiseau, France. dboutara@gmail.com Benjamin Nguyen, INRIA and University of Versailles SMIS team, Domaine de Voluceau, 78153 Le Chesnay, France. benjamin.nguyen@inria.fr Michalis Vazirgiannis, Ecole Polytechnique and Athens University of Economics and Business, Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Ecole Polytechnique, 91128, Palaiseau, France. mvazirg@aueb.gr Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 2 / 2015

Description: In this paper, a solution is given to the problem proposed by Järvinen in [8]. A smallest completion of the rough sets system determined by an arbitrary binary relation is given. This completion, in the case of a quasi order, coincides with the rough sets system which is a Nelson algebra. Further, the algebraic properties of this completion has been studied. Content Type Journal Article Pages 413-424 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1188 Authors Dwaraganathan Umadevi, Department of Mathematics, Kamaraj College of Engineering and Technology, Virudhunagar - 626 001, Tamil Nadu, India. umavasanthy@yahoo.com Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 3 / 2015

Description: We introduce ω-Petri nets (ωPN), an extension of plain Petri nets with ω-labeled input and output arcs, that is well-suited to analyse parametric concurrent systems with dynamic thread creation. Most techniques (such as the Karp and Miller tree or the Rackoff technique) that have been proposed in the setting of plain Petri nets do not apply directly to ωPN because ωPN define transition systems that have infinite branching. This motivates a thorough analysis of the computational aspects of ωPN. We show that an ωPN can be turned into a plain Petri net that allows us to recover the reachability set of the ωPN, but that does not preserve termination (an ωPN terminates iff it admits no infinitely long execution). This yields complexity bounds for the reachability, boundedness, place boundedness and coverability problems on ωPN. We provide a practical algorithm to compute a coverability set of the ωPN and to decide termination by adapting the classical Karp and Miller tree construction. We also adapt the Rackoff technique to ωPN, to obtain the exact complexity of the termination problem. Finally, we consider the extension of ωPN with reset and transfer arcs, and show how this extension impacts the decidability and complexity of the aforementioned problems. Content Type Journal Article Pages 29-60 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1169 Authors Gilles Geeraerts, Université libre de Bruxelles, Département d'informatique, Bruxelles, Belgium. gigeerae@ulb.ac.be Alexander Heußner, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany. alexander.heussner@uni-bamberg.de M. Praveen, Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI), France. praveen.manjunatha@labri.fr Jean-François Raskin, Université libre de Bruxelles, Département d'informatique, Bruxelles, Belgium. jraskin@ulb.ac.be Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 1 / 2015

Description: Most real life situations need some sort of approximation to fit mathematical models. The beauty of using topology in approximation is achieved via obtaining approximation for qualitative subsets without coding or using assumption. The aim of this paper is to introduce different approaches to near sets by using general relations and special neighborhoods. Some fundamental properties and characterizations are given. We obtain a comparison between these new approximations and traditional approximations introduced by Peters [23]. Content Type Journal Article Pages 387-402 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1186 Authors Emad A. Marei, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science and Art, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia. via_marei@yahoo.com Mohamed E. Abd El-Monsef, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Egypt Hassan M. Abu-Donia, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Zagazig University, Egypt Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 3 / 2015

Description: A concurrent system is persistent if throughout its operation no activity which became enabled can subsequently be prevented from being executed by any other activity. This is often a highly desirable (or even necessary) property; in particular, if the system is to be implemented in hardware. Over the past 40 years, persistence has been investigated and applied in practical implementations assuming that each activity is a single atomic action which can be represented, for example, by a single transition of a Petri net. In this paper we investigate the behaviour of GALS (Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous) systems in the context of VLSI circuits. The specification of a system is given in the form of a Petri net. Our aim is to re-design the system to optimise signal management, by grouping together concurrent events. Looking at the concurrent reachability graph of the given Petri net, we are interested in discovering events that appear in ‘bundles’, so that they all can be executed in a single clock tick. The best candidates for bundles are sets of events that appear and re-appear over and over again in the same configurations, forming ‘persistent’ sets of events. Persistence was considered so far only in the context of sequential semantics. In this paper, we move to the realm of step based execution and consider not only steps which are persistent and cannot be disabled by other steps, but also steps which are nonviolent and cannot disable other steps. We then introduce a formal definition of a bundle and propose an algorithm to prune the behaviour of a system, so that only bundled steps remain. The pruned reachability graph represents the behaviour of a re-engineered system, which in turn can be implemented in a new Petri net using the standard techniques of net synthesis. The proposed algorithm prunes reachability graphs of persistent and safe nets leaving bundles that represent maximally concurrent steps. Content Type Journal Article Pages 143-170 DOI 10.3233/FI-2015-1173 Authors Johnson Fernandes, School of Electrical & Electronic Eng., Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, U.K. Maciej Koutny, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, U.K. Łukasz Mikulski, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Chopina 12/18, Poland Marta Pietkiewicz-Koutny, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, U.K. Danil Sokolov, School of Electrical & Electronic Eng., Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, U.K. Alex Yakovlev, School of Electrical & Electronic Eng., Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, U.K. Journal Fundamenta Informaticae Online ISSN 1875-8681 Print ISSN 0169-2968 Journal Volume Volume 137 Journal Issue Volume 137, Number 1 / 2015