First, we describe a polynomial-time algorithm that uses macros to generate plans for the class 3S of planning problems with binary state variables and acyclic causal graphs. This implies that plan generation may be tractable even when a planning problem has an exponentially long minimal solution. We also prove that the problem of plan existence for planning problems with multi-valued variables and chain causal graphs is NP-hard. Finally, we show that plan existence for planning problems with binary state variables and polytree causal graphs is NP-complete.

In this paper, we propose a set of tasks that are relevant for the modular reuse of ontologies. In order to formalize these tasks as reasoning problems, we introduce the notions of conservative extension, safety and module for a very general class of logic-based ontology languages. We investigate the general properties of and relationships between these notions and study the relationships between the relevant reasoning problems we have previously identified. To study the computability of these problems, we consider, in particular, Description Logics (DLs), which provide the formal underpinning of the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL), and show that all the problems we consider are undecidable or algorithmically unsolvable for the description logic underlying OWL DL. In order to achieve a practical solution, we identify conditions sufficient for an ontology to reuse a set of symbols ``safely''---that is, without changing their meaning. We provide the notion of a safety class, which characterizes any sufficient condition for safety, and identify a family of safety classes--called locality---which enjoys a collection of desirable properties. We use the notion of a safety class to extract modules from ontologies, and we provide various modularization algorithms that are appropriate to the properties of the particular safety class in use. Finally, we show practical benefits of our safety checking and module extraction algorithms.

An empty spot refers to an empty hard-to-fill space which can be found in the records of the social interaction, and is the clue to the persons in the underlying social network who do not appear in the records. This contribution addresses a problem to predict relevant empty spots in social interaction. Homogeneous and inhomogeneous networks are studied as a model underlying the social interaction. A heuristic predictor function approach is presented as a new method to address the problem. Simulation experiment is demonstrated over a homogeneous network. A test data in the form of baskets is generated from the simulated communication. Precision to predict the empty spots is calculated to demonstrate the performance of the presented approach.

Levesque proposed a generalization of a database called a proper knowledge base (KB), which is equivalent to a possibly infinite consistent set of ground literals. In contrast to databases, proper KBs do not make the closed-world assumption and hence the entailment problem becomes undecidable. Levesque then proposed a limited but efficient inference method V for proper KBs, which is sound and, when the query is in a certain normal form, also logically complete. He conjectured that for every first-order query there is an equivalent one in normal form. In this note, we show that this conjecture is false. In fact, we show that any class of formulas for which V is complete must be strictly less expressive than full first-order logic. Moreover, in the propositional case it is very unlikely that a formula always has a polynomial-size normal form.

Conjunctive queries play an important role as an expressive query language for Description Logics (DLs). Although modern DLs usually provide for transitive roles, conjunctive query answering over DL knowledge bases is only poorly understood if transitive roles are admitted in the query. In this paper, we consider unions of conjunctive queries over knowledge bases formulated in the prominent DL SHIQ and allow transitive roles in both the query and the knowledge base. We show decidability of query answering in this setting and establish two tight complexity bounds: regarding combined complexity, we prove that there is a deterministic algorithm for query answering that needs time single exponential in the size of the KB and double exponential in the size of the query, which is optimal. Regarding data complexity, we prove containment in co-NP.

This paper analyzes the scaling window of a random CSP model (i.e. model RB) for which we can identify the threshold points exactly, denoted by $r_{cr}$ or $p_{cr}$. For this model, we establish the scaling window $W(n,\delta)=(r_{-}(n,\delta), r_{+}(n,\delta))$ such that the probability of a random instance being satisfiable is greater than $1-\delta$ for $rr_{+}(n,\delta)$. Specifically, we obtain the following result $$W(n,\delta)=(r_{cr}-\Theta(\frac{1}{n^{1-\epsilon}\ln n}), \ r_{cr}+\Theta(\frac{1}{n\ln n})),$$ where $0\leq\epsilon<1$ is a constant. A similar result with respect to the other parameter $p$ is also obtained. Since the instances generated by model RB have been shown to be hard at the threshold, this is the first attempt, as far as we know, to analyze the scaling window of such a model with hard instances.

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) models many important intractable NP-hard problems such as propositional satisfiability problem (SAT). Algorithms with non-trivial upper bounds on running time for restricted SAT with bounded clause length k (k-SAT) can be classified into three styles: DPLL-like, PPSZ-like and Local Search, with local search algorithms having already been generalized to CSP with bounded constraint arity k (k-CSP). We generalize a DPLL-like algorithm in its simplest form and a PPSZ-like algorithm from k-SAT to k-CSP. As far as we know, this is the first attempt to use PPSZ-like strategy to solve k-CSP, and before little work has been focused on the DPLL-like or PPSZ-like strategies for k-CSP.

Multiagent systems is an expanding field that blends classical fields like game theory and decentralized control with modern fields like computer science and machine learning. This monograph provides a concise introduction to the subject, covering the theoretical foundations as well as more recent developments in a coherent and readable manner. The text is centered on the concept of an agent as decision maker. Chapter 1 is a short introduction to the field of multiagent systems. Chapter 2 covers the basic theory of singleagent decision making under uncertainty.

The additive clustering model is widely used to infer the features of a set of stimuli from their similarities, on the assumption that similarity is a weighted linear function of common features. This paper develops a fully Bayesian formulation of the additive clustering model, using methods from nonparametric Bayesian statistics to allow the number of features to vary. We use this to explore several approaches to parameter estimation, showing that the nonparametric Bayesian approach provides a straightforward way to obtain estimates of both the number of features used in producing similarity judgments and their importance.

Finite mixture model is a powerful tool in many statistical learning problems. In this paper, we propose a general, structure-preserving approach to reduce its model complexity, which can bring significant computational benefits in many applications. The basic idea is to group the original mixture components into compact clusters, and then minimize an upper bound on the approximation error between the original and simplified models.