Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning. In various areas, simulation is a safe and low-cost alternative to complex problems. We developed a free online simulation tool which computes and displays spatial self-organizing behavior of individuals in a stepping stone environment.

Flow matrices are widely used in many disciplines, but few methods can estimate them. This paper presents a knowledge-based system as capable of estimating and updating large-size time-evolving flow matrix. The system in this paper consists of two major components with the purposes of matrix estimation and parallel optimization. The matrix estimation algorithm interprets and follows users’ quer...

Location-Based Services (LBSs) provide invaluable aid in the everyday activities of many individuals, however they also pose serious threats to the user' privacy. There is, therefore, a growing interest in the development of mechanisms to protect location privacy during the use of LBSs. Nowadays, the most popular methods are probabilistic, and the so-called optimal method achieves an optimal tr...

While there are several existing agent-based systems addressing the crucial and difficult issues of automated negotiation and auction, this research has designed and engineered a society of trading agents with two distinguishing features: 1) a market-driven negotiation strategy and 2) a deal optimizing auction protocol. Unlike some of the existing systems where users manually select predefined ...

This paper presents a method for video sequence coding, using motion estimation over a triangular object-based mesh. We introduce a novel “crack line” notion to deal with motion discontinuities and to improve representation scalability. The optimization of the nodal motion vectors is performed by means of a multi-resolution differential method, further improved by “backward in forward” tracking...

Hotelling's Rule is the observation that the exploitation of a nonrenewable resource can only be economically e cient if the resource owner's marginal pro t increases at the prevailing discount rate. This has been a perennial topic in the literature of resource economics since the 1970s, with some authors extending the theory and others analyzing empirical data. This paper reports on the result...

State-of-the-art product configuration enables companies to deliver customized products by selecting and assembling predefined configuration elements based on known relationships. This paper introduces an innovative concept, open configuration, in order to assist companies in configuring products that correspond exactly to what customers want. Superior to product configuration, open configurati...

Timing Resistive Plate Chambers in multi-strip configuration, pioneered by the FOPI collaboration [1], are planned for covering the low-granularity part of the CBM-TOF wall. A recent experiment at GSI cave-B has shown that, with an adequate optimization of the strip layout and readout, the multi-strip concept is sound in terms of timing and efficiency, and well suited for a multi-hit environmen...

In this paper, we report the story of the GENCOL team and of the optimization software of the same name. This is first of all the history of a collaboration that has lasted for thirty years between François Soumis and Jacques Desrosiers, HEC Montréal and École Polytechnique de Montréal, the research centers CRT and GERAD, and the spin off companies

While there has been much work on developing frameworks and models of norms and normative systems, consideration of the impact of norms on the practical reasoning of agents has attracted less attention. The problem is that traditional agent architectures and their associated languages provide no mechanism to adapt an agent at runtime to norms constraining their behaviour. This is important beca...