Di cult real time AI problems require a means for expressing multi dimensional and dy namic goal criteria and a principled model for satis cing to best meet the criteria In the context of the Design to Criteria task scheduling paradigm we de ne a new general client spec i cation metaphor for describing such complex goal criteria or utility attributes and couple it with a principled evaluation m...

1 ARTIFICIAL COMPANIONS Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. The earliest use of the term ‘ontology’ (or ‘ontologia’) seems to have been in 1606 in the book Ogdoas Scholastica by the German Protestant scholastic Jacob Lorhard. For Lorhard, as for many subsequent...

Many academic researchers are interested in obtaining the most current information available when conducting computerized literature searches. A research project was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of providing an online updating service to end-users searching CD-ROM databases. Searchers using Silver Platter's Agricola database were asked to participate in the study. End-user searching st...

Houria is an incremental solver that proposes a new implementation of constraint hierarchies. Houria uses local propagation to maintain sets of required and preferential constraints. It represents constraints between variables by sets of short procedures (methods) and incrementally re-satis es the set of constraints when individual constraints are added and removed. The criteria of comparison u...

Platyxyela unica, gen. et sp. nov., assigned to the Macroxyelinae of Xyelidae is described from the Middle Jurassic Jiulongshan Formation of eastern Inner Mongolia, China. The new genus is characterized by Sc2 of the forewing meeting R at a short distance before the origin of Rs, the first section of Rs being shorter than the first section of M and nearly equal to Sc2, the antennomere 3 being s...

four tylenchid species, namely, aglenchus agricola, malenchus exiguus, psilenchus curcumerus, and p. terextremus are reported from iran. the iranian population of a. agricola is characterized by 542-659 µm long body, 10-12 µm long stylet, excretory pore at 70-87 µm distance from anterior end, prominent lateral fields, with four lines, tail of 170-198 long, and rare males with 15-20 µm long spic...