The extension to new languages is a well known bottleneck for rule-based systems. Considerable human effort, which typically consists in re-writing from scratch huge amounts of rules, is in fact required to transfer the knowledge available to the system from…

Information Retrieval Systems normally deal with keywordbased technologies. Although those systems reach satisfactory results, they aren’t able to answer more complex queries done by users, especially those directly in natural language. To do that, there are the KnowledgeBased Systems, which…

We describe an adaptation of the knowledge gradient, originally developed for discrete ranking and selection problems, to the problem of calibrating continuous parameters for the purpose of tuning a simulator. The knowledge gradient for continuous parameters uses a continuous approximation…

In the last decade several ways to formalize defeasible reasoning have been studied. A particular approach, defeasible argumentation, has been particularly successful to achieve this goal.
The inference process of argument-based systems is based on the interaction of ar- guments…

Adaptive websites usually change as effect of user navigational actions. Most current web engineering approaches (which consider personalization) allow to detect basic user browsing behaviour (e.g. user click on a link) but don’t consider the definition of (complex) behaviour events…

The tools for fault impact analysis are important for the deployment of critical mission systems. These tools can be also used as a development phase aid. We introduce several concepts related to "business alarms". Business alarms are an approximation to…

The analysis of changes in land cover and land use over time as sources of information and geographical diagnosis at a regional scale, is primary to improving knowledge of land cover and land use modelling in Mediterranean environments. The study…

Personalization of web sites has become an important issue in web modeling methods. Many of these methods use similar approaches to specify personalization. However even with similar (personalization) requirements the resulting implementations differ. The consequence is that we cannot reuse…

The aim of this work is to relate two apparently independent concepts as belief revision and relevance. We propose a formal characterization for the notion of (ir)relevance by means of a set of postulates. Then we define (ir)relevance using change…

This dissertation sets a detailed, technical history of ideas of Dutch-born lens maker and natural philosopher Nicolas Hartsoeker (1656-1725). Hartsoeker's case exemplifies the kinds of intellectual journeys a university-educated man with technical skills undertook to navigate the chaos and uncertainty…