Starting from McCarthy’s seminal proposal for the construction of an advice-taking machine, we show how tools from abstract argumentation and computational learning can help disambiguate and formalize that goal. Our focus is on establishing provable guarantees on the realizability of the advice taker, and on implementing an actual prototype system.

BACKGROUND In Germany, the coverage of officially recommended vaccinations for the elderly is below a desirable level. It is known that advice provided by General Practitioners and Physician Assistants influences the uptake in patients ≥60 years. Therefore, the predictors of advice-giving behavior by these professions should be investigated to develop recommendations for possible actions for im...

Likewise, this project would not have been possible without the support and direction of my dissertation advisor Dr. John Penn, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for the opportunity and freedom to pursue my research interests over the last 5 years. I also owe a great deal of thanks to the other members of the Penn Lab, especially Sara Savage, who has been a constant collaborator and sounding bo...

Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants is a joint statement by Health Canada, the Canadian Paediatric Society, Dietitians of Canada and the Breastfeeding Committee for Canada. It was republished in September 2012, with recommendations on infant feeding from birth to six months of age. The statement was most recently updated in April 2014, with recommendations for feeding older infants and young chi...

Physicians who counsel women for preconception concerns are in an excellent position to give advice to couples regarding the optimal timing of intercourse to achieve pregnancy. The currently available evidence suggests that methods that prospectively identify the window of fertility are likely to be more effective for optimally timing intercourse than calendar calculations or basal body tempera...

Abstract Purpose of Review Young women who carry a genetic predisposition to breast cancer need balance surgical and nonsurgical risk reducing options with childbearing. In this review, we explore how make decisions without the benefit official guidelines in context frequently contradictory strategies. Recent Findings Women reproductive age known BRCA mutations receive incomplete conflicting ad...