Learning business strategies for competitive electronic marketplaces

This paper presents a Multi-Agent Market simulator designed for developing new agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviors, preference models and pricing algorithms, considering user risk preferences and game theory for scenario analysis. This tool studies negotiations based on different market mechanisms and, time and behavior dependent strategies. The results of the negotiations between agents are analyzed by data mining algorithms in order to extract rules that give agents feedback to improve their strategies. The system also includes agents that are capable of improving their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions, and capable of considering other agent reactions.

Agent-based simulation of electronic marketplaces with decision support

This paper presents a Multi-Agent Market simulator designed for analyzing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviors, preference models and pricing algorithms, considering user risk preferences and game theory for scenario analysis. The system includes agents that are capable of improving their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions, and capable of considering other agents reactions.

Multi-agent systems and birtual producers in electronic marketplaces

This paper presents an agent-based simulator designed for analyzing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviours, preference models and pricing algorithms, considering user risk preferences. The system includes agents that are capable of improving their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions. In the simulated market agents interact in several different ways and may joint together to form coalitions. In this paper we address multi-agent coalitions to analyse Distributed Generation in Electricity Markets

ISEM: a multi-agent system that simulates competitive electronic marketplaces

With the increasing importance of large commerce across the Internet it is becoming increasingly evident that in a few years the Iternet will host a large number of interacting software agents. a vast number of them will be economically motivated, and will negociate a variety of goods and services. It is therefore important to consider the economic incentives and behaviours of economic software agents, and to use all available means to anticipate their collective interactions. This papers addresses this concern by presenting a multi-agent market simulator designed for analysing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviours, preference models and pricing algorithms, consideting risk preferences. The system includes agents that are capable of increasing their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions. The results of the negotiations between agents are analysed by data minig algorithms in order to extract rules that give agents feedback to imprive their strategies.

Oxidative Leaching of metals from electronic waste with solutions based on quaternary ammonium salts

The treatment of electric and electronic waste (WEEE) is a problem which receives ever more attention. An inadequate treatment results in harmful products ending up in the environment. This project intends to investigate the possibilities of an alternative route for recycling of metals from printed circuit boards (PCBs) obtained from rejected computers. The process is based on aqueous solutions composed of an etchant, either 0.2 M CuCl2.2H2O or 0.2 M FeCl3.6H2O, and a quaternary ammonium salt (quat) such as choline chloride or chlormequat. These solutions are reminiscent of deep eutectic solvents (DES) based on quats. DES are quite similar to ionic liquids (ILs) and are used as well as alternative solvents with a great diversity of physical properties, making them attractive for replacement of hazardous, volatile solvents (e.g. VOCs). A remarkable difference between genuine DES and ILs with the solutions used in this project is the addition of rather large quantities of water. It is shown the presence of water has a lot of advantages on the leaching of metals, while the properties typical for DES still remain. The oxidizing capacities of Cu(II) stem from the existence of a stable Cu(I) component in quat based DES and thus the leaching stems from the activity of the Cu(II)/Cu(I) redox couple. The advantage of Fe(III) in combination with DES is the fact that the Fe(III)/Fe(II) redox couple becomes reversible, which is not true in pure water. This opens perspectives for regeneration of the etching solution. In this project the leaching of copper was studied as a function of gradual increasing water content from 0 - 100w% with the same concentration of copper chloride or iron(III) chloride at room temperature and 80ºC. The solutions were also tested on real PCBs. At room temperature a maximum leaching effect for copper was obtained with 30w% choline chloride with 0.2 M CuCl2.2H2O. The leaching effect is still stronger at 80°C, b ut of course these solutions are more energy consuming. For aluminium, tin, zinc and lead, the leaching was faster at 80ºC. Iron and nickel dissolved easily at room temperature. The solutions were not able to dissolve gold, silver, rhodium and platinum.

Robotic manipulators with vibrations: short time fourier transform of fractional spectra

This paper analyzes the signals captured during impacts and vibrations of a mechanical manipulator. In order to acquire and study the signals an experimental setup is implemented. The signals are treated through signal processing tools such as the fast Fourier transform and the short time Fourier transform. The results show that the Fourier spectrum of several signals presents a non integer behavior. The experimental study provides valuable results that can assist in the design of a control system to deal with the unwanted effects of vibrations.

On similarities in infrared spectra of complex drugs

A chromatographic separation of active ingredients of Combivir, Epivir, Kaletra, Norvir, Prezista, Retrovir, Trivizir, Valcyte, and Viramune is performed on thin layer chromatography. The spectra of these nine drugs were recorded using the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. This information is then analyzed by means of the cosine correlation. The comparison of the infrared spectra in the perspective of the adopted similarity measure is possible to visualize with present day computer tools, and the emerging clusters provide additional information about the similarities of the investigated set of complex drugs.

A New Electronic Approach for the Surgical Safety Checklist

To improve surgical safety, and to reduce the mortality and surgical complications incidence, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC). The SSC is a support of information that aids health professionals to reduce the number of complications, induction of anaesthesia, period before skin incision and period before leaving the operating room (OR). The SSC was tested in several countries of the world and their results shown that after introduction of the SSC the incidence of patient complication lowered from 11.0% to 7.0% (P<0.001), the rate of death declined from 1.5% to 0.8% (P = 0.003) and the nurses recognized that patients identity was more often con rmed (81.6% to 94.2%, P<0.01) in many institutions. Recently the SSC was also implemented in Portuguese hospitals, which led us to its study in the real clinical environment. An observational study was performed: several health professionals were observed and interviewed, to understand the functioning of the SSC in an OR, during the clinical routine. The objective of this study was to understand the current use of the SSC, and how it may be improved in terms of usability, taking advantage of the technological advancements such as mobile applications. During two days were observed 14 surgeries, only 2 surgeries met the requirements for the three phases of the SSC, as de ned by the WHO. Of the remaining 12 observed surgeries, 9 surgeries completed the last phase at the correct time. It was also observed that only in 2 surgeries all the phases of the SSC were read aloud to the team and that, in 7 surgeries, several items were read aloud and answered but no one was checking the SSC, only after the end of the phase. The observational study results disclose that several health professionals do not meet with rules of the WHO manual. This study demonstrates that it is urgent to change the mindset of health professionals, and that di erent features in the SSC may be useful to make it more easy to use. With the results of the observational study, a SSC application proposal was developed with new functionalities to improve and aid the health professional in its use. In this application the user can chose between a SSC already created to a speci c surgery or to create a new SSC, adding and adapting some questions from the WHO standard. To create a new SSC, the application is connected to an online questionnaire builder (JotForm). The choice for this online questionnaire builder went through three essential characteristics: number of types of questions, mainly checkbox, radio button and text; the possibility of to create sections inside sections and the API. In addition, in this proposal the improvements are focused in forcing the user to focus in the work ow of the SSC and to save the input timestamps and any actions made by them. Therefore, the following features was implemented to achieve that goal: display one item of the SSC at a time; display the stage where the SSC is; do not allow going back to the previous step; do not allow going forward to the next item if the current is not lled; do not allow going forward to the next item if the time it took to ll the item was too short and log any action made by the user.

On the analysis of data emerging in non-linear and complex systemscomparison of two X-Ray prony spectra

New arguments proving that successive (repeated) measurements have a memory and actually remember each other are presented. The recognition of this peculiarity can change essentially the existing paradigm associated with conventional observation in behavior of different complex systems and lead towards the application of an intermediate model (IM). This IM can provide a very accurate fit of the measured data in terms of the Prony's decomposition. This decomposition, in turn, contains a small set of the fitting parameters relatively to the number of initial data points and allows comparing the measured data in cases where the “best fit” model based on some specific physical principles is absent. As an example, we consider two X-ray diffractometers (defined in paper as A- (“cheap”) and B- (“expensive”) that are used after their proper calibration for the measuring of the same substance (corundum a-Al2O3). The amplitude-frequency response (AFR) obtained in the frame of the Prony's decomposition can be used for comparison of the spectra recorded from (A) and (B) - X-ray diffractometers (XRDs) for calibration and other practical purposes. We prove also that the Fourier decomposition can be adapted to “ideal” experiment without memory while the Prony's decomposition corresponds to real measurement and can be fitted in the frame of the IM in this case. New statistical parameters describing the properties of experimental equipment (irrespective to their internal “filling”) are found. The suggested approach is rather general and can be used for calibration and comparison of different complex dynamical systems in practical purposes.

Enhancing Agent Mediated Electronic Markets with Ontology Matching Services and Social Network Support

Os Mercados Eletrónicos atingiram uma complexidade e nível de sofisticação tão elevados, que tornaram inadequados os modelos de software convencionais. Estes mercados são caracterizados por serem abertos, dinâmicos e competitivos, e constituídos por várias entidades independentes e heterogéneas. Tais entidades desempenham os seus papéis de forma autónoma, seguindo os seus objetivos, reagindo às ocorrências do ambiente em que se inserem e interagindo umas com as outras. Esta realidade levou a que existisse por parte da comunidade científica um especial interesse no estudo da negociação automática executada por agentes de software [Zhang et al., 2011]. No entanto, a diversidade dos atores envolvidos pode levar à existência de diferentes conceptualizações das suas necessidades e capacidades dando origem a incompatibilidades semânticas, que podem prejudicar a negociação e impedir a ocorrência de transações que satisfaçam as partes envolvidas. Os novos mercados devem, assim, possuir mecanismos que lhes permitam exibir novas capacidades, nomeadamente a capacidade de auxiliar na comunicação entre os diferentes agentes. Pelo que, é defendido neste trabalho que os mercados devem oferecer serviços de ontologias que permitam facilitar a interoperabilidade entre os agentes. No entanto, os humanos tendem a ser relutantes em aceitar a conceptualização de outros, a não ser que sejam convencidos de que poderão conseguir um bom negócio. Neste contexto, a aplicação e exploração de relações capturadas em redes sociais pode resultar no estabelecimento de relações de confiança entre vendedores e consumidores, e ao mesmo tempo, conduzir a um aumento da eficiência da negociação e consequentemente na satisfação das partes envolvidas. O sistema AEMOS é uma plataforma de comércio eletrónico baseada em agentes que inclui serviços de ontologias, mais especificamente, serviços de alinhamento de ontologias, incluindo a recomendação de possíveis alinhamentos entre as ontologias dos parceiros de negociação. Este sistema inclui também uma componente baseada numa rede social, que é construída aplicando técnicas de análise de redes socias sobre informação recolhida pelo mercado, e que permite melhorar a recomendação de alinhamentos e auxiliar os agentes na sua escolha. Neste trabalho são apresentados o desenvolvimento e implementação do sistema AEMOS, mais concretamente: • É proposto um novo modelo para comércio eletrónico baseado em agentes que disponibiliza serviços de ontologias; • Adicionalmente propõem-se o uso de redes sociais emergentes para captar e explorar informação sobre relações entre os diferentes parceiros de negócio; • É definida e implementada uma componente de serviços de ontologias que é capaz de: • o Sugerir alinhamentos entre ontologias para pares de agentes; • o Traduzir mensagens escritas de acordo com uma ontologia em mensagens escritas de acordo com outra, utilizando alinhamentos previamente aprovados; • o Melhorar os seus próprios serviços recorrendo às funcionalidades disponibilizadas pela componente de redes sociais; • É definida e implementada uma componente de redes sociais que: • o É capaz de construir e gerir um grafo de relações de proximidade entre agentes, e de relações de adequação de alinhamentos a agentes, tendo em conta os perfis, comportamento e interação dos agentes, bem como a cobertura e utilização dos alinhamentos; • o Explora e adapta técnicas e algoritmos de análise de redes sociais às várias fases dos processos do mercado eletrónico. A implementação e experimentação do modelo proposto demonstra como a colaboração entre os diferentes agentes pode ser vantajosa na melhoria do desempenho do sistema e como a inclusão e combinação de serviços de ontologias e redes sociais se reflete na eficiência da negociação de transações e na dinâmica do mercado como um todo.