The purpose of this paper is to explore a new deontic operator for representing what an agent ought to do; the operator is cast against the background of a modal treatment of action developed by Nuel Belnap and Michael Perloff, which itself relies on Arthur Prior's indeterministic tense logic. The analysis developed here of what an agent ought to do is based on a dominance ordering adapted from...

Did I tell you about the back pain patient who paused in our waiting room after being discharged just long enough to steal the coin change machine? He didn’t get away with it though, because he stopped in the parking lot for a smoke, where security found him. He ran, but got caught and roughed up by the police, and ended up back in the ED for worsening back pain. What a world we live in! I have...

We explore the view that coordinated behavior is driven by the social constraints (e.g. obligations and interdictions) that agents in organizations are subject to. In this framework, agents adopt those goals that are requested by their obligations, knowing that not ful lling obligations induces a price to pay or a loss of utility. Based on this idea we build an integrated agent coordination sys...

Currently, sponsors are not required to report the outcomes of clinical research on drugs or devices that do not lead to an approved product. Consequently, the public cannot benefit from scientific information derived from all failed or abandoned drugs and devices. Provisions in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 provide an opportunity for the Department of Health and ...