This paper is a summary of analysis work completed during phase of the National Institute of Standards and Technology s NIST Process Speci cation Language PSL project A set of requirements for this language was produced in phase These requirements were divided into separate categories The main categories of interest for this analysis are the core and outer core requirements Each set was then fu...

The Social Security Administration has released a plan to dramatically improve the agency's disability determination process. When fully implemented, this new process will facilitate better and faster service for the millions of individuals who apply for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability benefits each year. The Commissioner recently created a Disability Implementation ...

This paper proposes a framework that enhances domain independent heuristic state-space planners with the ability to plan for multiple criteria simultaneously. A criteria hierarchy, together with preferences among them and boundaries over their values, is defined by the knowledge engineer. For the search process in the state-space, a weighted A* strategy is adopted. The heuristic function uses t...

This paper describes inputs to various international standardisation e orts for process and plan interchange Our approach takes a top down perspective It seeks to add the small but vital overview that can sit above the detailed representations or ontologies already available It seeks to provide a framework within which alternative detailed ontologies can be created and evaluated in use The cont...

Function-based design approaches have been criticised for being too narrow to properly guide design. Specifically, they are said to be unable to cope with non-functional considerations such as cost or maintenance issues without invoking other concepts, such as constraints. This paper investigates two alternative conceptualisations of the design process: the practical affordance-based design app...

When autonomous agents attempt to coordinate action, it is often necessary that they reach some kind of consensus. Reaching consensus has traditionally been dealt with in the Distributed Artiicial Intelligence literature via negotiation. Another alternative is to have agents use a voting mechanism; each agent expresses its preferences, and a group choice mechanism is used to select the result. ...

A knowledge-based process-planning system for generating workplans for idealized lathe CNC machines is discussed. It transforms CAD-like diagrams of rotational-symmetric workpieces into abstract NC programs. To simplify development and evolution , declarative representations are used for all processing stages and steps, including a qualitative simulation of lathe turning. The version presented ...

M Godwin and colleagues are to be congratulated for their survey of the effect of an alternative funding plan on physician referrals; however, we have several concerns. First, the authors state that to interpret the “negative perceptions” of the respondents regarding the alternative funding plan one should “consider the confounding effect of other changes in the health care system in Ontario.” ...