•A Fuzzy Logic-based Adjustable Autonomy (FLAA) model to manage the autonomy of multi-agent systems.•The FLAA model is implemented in an Automated Elderly Movements Monitoring (AEMM-Care) system.•The ...AEMM-Care system monitors elderly people daily activities and implements fall detection and prevention tasks in a complex environment.•The results show that the model improves the performance of the agents and the accuracy of the fall detection and prevention tasks.
Autonomous agents are being widely used in many systems, such as ambient assisted-living systems, to perform tasks on behalf of humans. However, these systems usually operate in complex environments that entail uncertain, highly dynamic, or irregular workload. In such environments, autonomous agents tend to make decisions that lead to undesirable outcomes. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy-logic-based adjustable autonomy (FLAA) model to manage the autonomy of multi-agent systems that are operating in complex environments. This model aims to facilitate the autonomy management of agents and help them make competent autonomous decisions. The FLAA model employs fuzzy logic to quantitatively measure and distribute autonomy among several agents based on their performance. We implement and test this model in the Automated Elderly Movements Monitoring (AEMM-Care) system, which uses agents to monitor the daily movement activities of elderly users and perform fall detection and prevention tasks in a complex environment. The test results show that the FLAA model improves the accuracy and performance of these agents in detecting and preventing falls.
A Review of Norms and Normative Multiagent Systems Mahmoud, Moamin A.; Ahmad, Mohd Sharifuddin; Mohd Yusoff, Mohd Zaliman ...
The scientific world journal/TheScientificWorldjournal,
01/2014, Volume:
2014
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Norms and normative multiagent systems have become the subjects of interest for many researchers. Such interest is caused by the need for agents to exploit the norms in enhancing their performance in ...a community. The term norm is used to characterize the behaviours of community members. The concept of normative multiagent systems is used to facilitate collaboration and coordination among social groups of agents. Many researches have been conducted on norms that investigate the fundamental concepts, definitions, classification, and types of norms and normative multiagent systems including normative architectures and normative processes. However, very few researches have been found to comprehensively study and analyze the literature in advancing the current state of norms and normative multiagent systems. Consequently, this paper attempts to present the current state of research on norms and normative multiagent systems and propose a norm’s life cycle model based on the review of the literature. Subsequently, this paper highlights the significant areas for future work.
In open normative multi-agent communities, an agent is not usually and explicitly given the norms of the host agents. Thus, when it is not able to adapt the communities＇s norms, it is totally ...deprived of accessing resources and services from the host. Such circumstance severely affects its performance resulting in failure to achieve its goal. Consequently, this study attempts to overcome this deficiency by proposing a technique that enables an agent to detect the host＇s potential norms via self-enforcement and update its norms even in the absence of sanctions from a third-party. The authors called this technique as the potential norms detection technique （PNDT）. The PNDT consists of five components： Agent＇s belief base; observation process; potential norms mining algorithm （PNMA）; verification process; and updating process. The authors demonstrate the operation of the PNMA algorithm by testing it on a typical scenario and analyzing the results on several perspectives. The tests＇ results show that the PNDT performs satisfactorily albeit the success rate depends on the environment variables settings.
Heterogeneous community entails a number of social groups that adopt similar/different social norms. In such community, new individuals who join a new social group should be able to decide with which ...group they could assimilate based on their capabilities/values/manners. Otherwise, they would be penalized by other members in the group for violating some norms which they cannot comply. Using this approach, software agents would have better reasoning in simulating human society. In this paper, the authors propose a norms assimilation theory, in which a new agent attempts to assimilate with a social group’s norms. This theory builds an approach to norm assimilation, analyzes the cases for an agent to decide to assimilate with a social group and develops a mathematical model to measure the assimilation cost and the agent’s ability. The approach is developed based on the agent’s internal belief about its ability and desire, and its external belief about the cost of assimilating with a number of social groups. The significance of this research is two-fold. Firstly, the study paves the way to future design of intelligent systems, i.e., software agents or robots, to closely mimic human social interactions. Secondly, the norm assimilation using agent-based system could be potentially utilized to simulate some social issues such as immigrants, new students, expatriate etc. The experiments that have been conducted demonstrate that an agent in the domain is able to calculate the assimilation cost and decide which social group to join.
Notwithstanding various unsolved questions regarding the structure and function of the ribosome, the process of peptide bond formation is of particular importance, being the heart of protein ...synthesis. Several experimental studies have been carried out on the pre- and post-peptidyl transfer structures in the ribosomal active site. Based on these structures, different reaction mechanisms have been proposed and further investigated using computational techniques. However, the detailed mechanism of peptidyl transfer, as well as the atoms and functional groups involved in this process are still in limbo. Although it was suggested that the A2451 is present in the active site of the ribosome in the previous crystallographic structures, the details of its participation have not been fully investigated. Furthermore, despite the highlighted importance of the P-site A76 2′-OH group in previous studies, its actual role during the process is still unclear. Finally, whether the process of peptidyl transfer is a stepwise mechanism or a concerted one is still under debate. Several computational mechanistic studies have been carried out to investigate the catalytic power of the ribosome, yet, they do not cover all the three concerns mentioned above. Therefore, as well as re-investigating the previously proposed reaction mechanisms with a higher level of theory and basis set (
i.e.
M06-2X/6-31++G(d,p)//M06-2X/6-311++G(d,p)) in this study, we propose three new reaction mechanisms based on three different pre- and post-peptidyl transfer structures obtained from previous experimental studies. The results of this study highlights the important role played by the P-site A76 2′-OH group in catalyzing the reaction. However, instead of acting as a so-called proton shuttle, this group acts as a polypeptidyl shuttle, transferring the growing polypeptide chain from the leaving 3′-O to the attacking nucleophile through a mechanism known as transesterification. This reaction is aided by the A2451 3′-OH rRNA base, acting as a proton shuttle between the P-site 3′-O and the 2′-O and further stabilizing the transition structure.
In a complex adaptive system, norms are widely used to regulate agents' behavior within a society in which the agents are not explicitly given the norms of different host systems, but instead detect ...and adapt the norms autonomously. Thus, failing to adopt a host's norms resulting in deprived of accessing resources and services that would severely affect their performance. Few attempts have been made to overcome this problem but proposed solutions lack accuracy in identifying the norms of a domain. Consequently, this paper demonstrates a new effective technique called Regulative Norms Detection Technique (RNDT) to detect norms by analyzing odd events that trigger reward or penalty. Several tests have been conducted on agents exploiting the technique to detect norms in a virtual domain under varying environmental settings. The tests' results show that the RNDT achieve well although the rate of success relies on the environmental variables settings. Specifically, the result shows that the rate of adopting the domain's norms using RNDT is 78.0%. The rate of rewarded agents in three testing cycles increased from 30% to 70%, the rate of neutral agents also increased from 35% to 45%. The most noticeable change is in the penalty case in which 35% of agents are penalized in cycle 1, while in cycle 2 and 3 the rate is maintained at 0.0%.
Introduction: The bi-directional relationship between periodontitis (PD) and diabetes mellitus (DM) has been confirmed. Medical practitioners (MPs) serve an important role in relaying this ...information to patients. This study aimed to investigate the awareness, knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) in the management of DM patients with PD in primary care clinics under the Ministry of Health (MOH) of Malaysia.
Methods: A self-administered questionnaire on KAP in the management of DM patients with PD was posted to 725 medical officers (MOs) and family medicine specialists (FMSs) in MOH clinics in Kedah, Terengganu, Johor and Negeri Sembilan. Collected data were tabulated and analysed using descriptive and regression analyses (simple and multiple). Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05.
Results: A total of 549 MPs responded. The majority of MPs were MOs (92.6%) and female (75.8%). FMSs had a greater awareness of PD when compared to MOs (p = 0.002). All MPs had good knowledge, except for the incorrect notion that excessive sugar causes PD (94.3%). Overall, FMSs had better knowledge when compared to MOs (p=0.026). The majority of MPs agreed that ‘they should update their knowledge on the association between systemic disease and PD’ (89.6%) and claimed that ‘it was not their responsibility to examine DM patients for PD’ (83.1%). Most MPs did not enquire or examine for PD in their DM patients. More FMSs (67.5%) referred patients to dentists compared to MOs (31.6%).
Conclusion: Most MPs have sufficient knowledge on PD, but a negative attitude in the management of PD in DM patients. The reasons for not referring included workload and patients refusing referral.
Every student has his/her learning styles. Understanding students’ learning styles is an important factor to improve both learning and teaching. Teachers need to identify students’ learning styles to ...enable them to prepare materials that match their styles of learning. This paper discusses the development of a survey instrument that solicits information on teachers’ observations of their students’ preferences and behaviors in the classrooms to detect students’ learning styles. The instrument solicits observation data from teachers using a survey questionnaire that is developed based on the four layers of Curry’s Onion model. We argue that, in a state where clear detection of learners’ styles is not available, teachers’ observations in the classroom could offer significant contribution to detecting students’ learning styles.
Software agent is autonomous technology that helps a lot the human being in performing the task. The capability of agent to take actions on behalf of human is one of the reasons why researchers or ...developers of autonomous systems adapt the human characteristics either in the form of physical or behaviours. Sincerity is one of ethical human behaviour that can be instilled in software agent environment system. To instil the ethical behaviour such as sincerity, the belief-desire-intention (BDI) architecture should be designed. This paper explains the BDI architecture for sincere software agent environment system during performing task.
Finding a proper transition structure for the peptide bond formation process can lead one to a better understanding of the role of ribosome in catalyzing this reaction. Using computer simulations, we ...performed the potential energy surface scan on the ester bond dissociation of P-site aminoacyl-tRNA and the peptide bond formation of P-site and A-site amino acids. The full fragments of initiator tRNA
i
met
and elongator tRNA
phe
are attached to both cognate and non-cognate amino acids as the P-site substrate. The A-site amino acid for all four calculations is methionine. We used ONIOM calculations to reduce the computational cost. Our study illustrates the reduced rate of peptide bond formation for misacylated tRNA
i
met
in the absence of ribosomal bases. The misacylated elongator tRNA
phe
, however, did not show any difference in its PES compared with that for the phe-tRNA
phe
. This demonstrates the structural specification of initiator tRNA
i
met
for the amino acids side chain.
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