This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors…

Complex control tasks may be solved by dividing them into a more specific and more easily handled subtasks hierarchy. Several authors have demonstrated that the incremental layered evolution paradigm allows obtaining controllers capable of solving this type of tasks. In…

This work is focussed on the development and analysis of a new class of algorithms, called cellular memetic algorithms (cMAs), which will be evaluated here on the satisfiability problem (SAT). For describing a cMA, we study the effects of adding…

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are merely blind search algorithms, which only make use of the relative fitness of solutions, but completely ignore the nature of the problem. Their performance can be improved by using new multirecombinative approaches, which provide a good…

Knowledge representation models are very important in the design of intelligent agents because they provide with mechanisms to manage beliefs and their dynamics. In this paper, we propose the use of AnsProlog* as a knowledge representation language, and develop a…

The Internet and Technology Revolution has created a new business environment, one in which traditional business rules are being challenged, and even repudiated. Information Communication Technology (ICT) has made a major impact to many business sectors, ranging from retail, stock…

The study evaluates the use of medications by pregnant women attended at health centers in the city of Campina Grande-PB, Brazil. The sample consisted of 250 patients. The number of prescribed medications ranged from 1 to 5, folic acid and…

This paper describes the development of an image retrieval
system that combines probabilistic and ontological information1. The
process is divided in two different stages: indexing and retrieval. Three
information flows have been created with different kind of information
each one:…

Since huge amounts of spatial data can be easily collected from various applications, ranging from remote sensing technology to geographical information system, the extraction and comprehension of spatial knowledge is a more and more important task. Many excellent studies on…

Following the deaths of Victoria Climbié and of Peter Connelly (Baby P) the media has raged about social work competence, the public have expressed dismay and the government has responded with proposals designed to alter practice procedures. Altering procedures gives…