In this paper, we report on an empirical study on initiative conflicts in human-human conversation. We examined these conflicts in two corpora of task-oriented dialogues. The results show that conversants try to avoid initiative conflicts, but when these conflicts occur, they are efficiently resolved by linguistic devices, such as volume.

Conflicts of interest are unavoidable in dentistry. A set of five questions is offered to help sort through such conflicts. The potential harm and the likelihood of such harm caused by secondary interests (the potentially conflicting ones) must be considered against the potential harm and the likelihood of damage caused by withholding services in which secondary interests are present. The use o...

In abstract argumentation traditionally directed attacks might also be called conflicts if the direction of the attack is not of importance. Recent publications emphasize that argumentation graphs when combined with some semantics feature semantic conflicts that might not coincide with syntactic conflicts defined by attacks. We elaborate on characteristics of various semantics and investigate p...

Let us say that a normative conflict is a situation in which an agent ought to perform an action A, and also ought to perform an action B, but in which it is impossible for the agent to perform both A and B. Not all normative conflicts are moral conflicts, of course. It may be that the agent ought to perform the action A for reasons of personal generosity, but ought to perform the action B for ...

Multi-agent path finding has been proven to be a PSPACE-hard problem. Generating such a centralised multi-agent plan can be avoided, by allowing agents to plan their paths separately. However, this results in an increased number of collisions and agents must replan frequently. In this paper we present a framework for multi-agent path planning, which allows agents to plan independently and solve...

Available online 19 September 2012 JEL classification: C72 D72 D74

Without a well-de$ned set of quality-attribute FequiYemen ts, so&aye pmjects aye vulnerable to failure. The authors have developed QARCC, a knowledge-based too,? that helps users, developers, and customem analyze Yequivements and iden tzfi conflicts among them. IEEE SOFTWARE espite well-specified functional and interface requirements, many software projects have failed because they had a poor s...

T he UK readership of Archives will remember October 2004 for CharlotteWyatt 2 and LukeWinstonJones. 4 Charlotte was severely disabled following complications of extreme prematurity, and Luke with trisomy 18. In each case the clinical teams believed that active, life prolonging medical interventions would not be in the best interests of the baby. The cases were brought to the civil courts becau...

An explanation of Conflicts of Interest, why they must be avoided, and guidance for doing so. • Lincoln Laboratory is contractually required to be free of actual or apparent conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest undermine the objectivity, independence, and integrity of the Laboratory's work. • Therefore, Laboratory staff shall avoid situations that cause actual or apparent conflicts of i...