agents, in a multi agent system, communicate with each other through the process of exchanging messages which is called dialogue. multi agent organization is generally used to optimize agents’ communications. holonic organization demonstrates a self-similar recursive and hierarchical structure in which each holon may include some other holons. in a holonic system, lateral communication occurs b...

This paper explores the relationship between the topology of a network of agents and how efficiently they can learn a common unknown parameter. Agents repeatedly make private observations which are possibly informative about the unknown parameter; they also communicate their beliefs over the set of conceivable parameter values to their neighbors. It has been shown that for agents to learn the r...

To act optimally in a partially observable, stochastic and multi-agent environment, an autonomous agent needs to maintain a belief of the world at any given time. An extension of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), called interactive POMDPs (I-POMDPs), provides a principled framework for planning and acting in such settings. I-POMDP augments the POMDP beliefs by including m...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES National experts have defined the elements of quality health care, but community-based physicians have not been systematically asked their opinions about quality. This study explored primary care clinicians' beliefs about the elements of quality care. METHODS Responses from structured interviews with 12 primary care clinicians and open-ended comments in a subsequent ...

Combining knowledge and beliefs of autonomous peers in distributed settings, is a major challenge. In this paper we consider peers that combine ontologies and reason jointly with their coupled knowledge. Ontologies are within the SHIQ fragment of Description Logics. Although there are several representation frameworks for modular Description Logics, each one makes crucial assumptions concerning...

Previous studies (2, 5) have shown that merely giving a person arguments supporting his belief, without even a mention of possible counterarguments against the belief, has little efficiency in making that belief resistant to persuasion. The present study is designed to show that supportive defenses, when employed in specified ways, can contribute appreciably to belief maintenance. The hypothese...