Over the last decade, a new idea challenging the classical self-non-self viewpoint has become popular amongst immunologists. It is called the Danger Theory. In this conceptual paper, we look at this theory from the perspective of Artificial Immune System practitioners. An overview of the Danger Theory is presented with particular emphasis on analogies in the Artificial Immune Systems world. A number of potential application areas are then used to provide a framing for a critical assessment of the concept, and its relevance for Artificial Immune Systems.

It has previously been shown that a recommender based on immune system idiotypic principles can out perform one based on correlation alone. This paper reports the results of work in progress, where we undertake some investigations into the nature of this beneficial effect. The initial findings are that the immune system recommender tends to produce different neighbourhoods, and that the superior performance of this recommender is due partly to the different neighbourhoods, and partly to the way that the idiotypic effect is used to weight each neighbours recommendations.

Ontologies and automated reasoning are the building blocks of the Semantic Web initiative. Derivation rules can be included in an ontology to define derived concepts, based on base concepts. For example, rules allow to define the extension of a class or property, based on a complex relation between the extensions of the same or other classes and properties. On the other hand, the inclusion of negative information both in the form of negation-as-failure and explicit negative information is also needed to enable various forms of reasoning. In this paper, we extend RDF graphs with weak and strong negation, as well as derivation rules. The ERDF stable model semantics of the extended framework (Extended RDF) is defined, extending RDF(S) semantics. A distinctive feature of our theory, which is based on Partial Logic, is that both truth and falsity extensions of properties and classes are considered, allowing for truth value gaps. Our framework supports both closed-world and open-world reasoning through the explicit representation of the particular closed-world assumptions and the ERDF ontological categories of total properties and total classes.

We propose a framework for analyzing and comparing distributions, allowing us to design statistical tests to determine if two samples are drawn from different distributions. Our test statistic is the largest difference in expectations over functions in the unit ball of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We present two tests based on large deviation bounds for the test statistic, while a third is based on the asymptotic distribution of this statistic. The test statistic can be computed in quadratic time, although efficient linear time approximations are available. Several classical metrics on distributions are recovered when the function space used to compute the difference in expectations is allowed to be more general (eg. a Banach space). We apply our two-sample tests to a variety of problems, including attribute matching for databases using the Hungarian marriage method, where they perform strongly. Excellent performance is also obtained when comparing distributions over graphs, for which these are the first such tests.

ABSTRACT: This study, fundamentals of fuzzy block theory, and its application in assessment of stability in underground openings, has surveyed. Using fuzzy topics and inserting them in to key block theory, in two ways, fundamentals of fuzzy block theory has been presented. In indirect combining, by coupling of adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (NFIS) and classic block theory, we could extract possible damage parts around a tunnel. In direct solution, some principles of block theory, by means of different fuzzy facets theory, were rewritten. The underlying axiom of block theory is that failure of an excavation begins at the boundary with the movement of a block in to the excavated space.

We study the performance of approximate Nash equilibria for linear congestion games. We consider how much the price of anarchy worsens and how much the price of stability improves as a function of the approximation factor $\epsilon$. We give (almost) tight upper and lower bounds for both the price of anarchy and the price of stability for atomic and non-atomic congestion games. Our results not only encompass and generalize the existing results of exact equilibria to $\epsilon$-Nash equilibria, but they also provide a unified approach which reveals the common threads of the atomic and non-atomic price of anarchy results. By expanding the spectrum, we also cast the existing results in a new light. For example, the Pigou network, which gives tight results for exact Nash equilibria of selfish routing, remains tight for the price of stability of $\epsilon$-Nash equilibria but not for the price of anarchy.

A simple and computationally efficient scheme for tree-structured vector quantization is presented. Unlike previous methods, its quantization error depends only on the intrinsic dimension of the data distribution, rather than the apparent dimension of the space in which the data happen to lie.

In this paper we show how taking advantage of autonomous agents' capability to maintain parallel interactions with others, and incorporating it into the cooperative economic search model results in a new search strategy which outperforms current strategies in use. As a framework for our analysis we use the electronic marketplace, where buyer agents have the incentive to search cooperatively. The new search technique is quite intuitive, however its analysis and the process of extracting the optimal search strategy are associated with several significant complexities. These difficulties are derived mainly from the unbounded search space and simultaneous dual affects of decisions taken along the search. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the model, highlighting, demonstrating and proving important characteristics of the optimal search strategy. Consequently, we manage to come up with an efficient modular algorithm for extracting the optimal cooperative search strategy for any given environment. A computational based comparative illustration of the system performance using the new search technique versus the traditional methods is given, emphasizing the main differences in the optimal strategy's structure and the advantage of using the proposed model.

Affinity propagation clustering (AP) has two limitations: it is hard to know what value of parameter 'preference' can yield an optimal clustering solution, and oscillations cannot be eliminated automatically if occur. The adaptive AP method is proposed to overcome these limitations, including adaptive scanning of preferences to search space of the number of clusters for finding the optimal clustering solution, adaptive adjustment of damping factors to eliminate oscillations, and adaptive escaping from oscillations when the damping adjustment technique fails. Experimental results on simulated and real data sets show that the adaptive AP is effective and can outperform AP in quality of clustering results.

In this manner, on a simple system, the evolution of contact states, by parallelization of DDA, h as been investigated. So, a comparison between NFIS and SOM results has been presented. The results show appli cability of the proposed methods, by different accuracy, on detection of contact's distribution.