Many systems have been developed for constructing decision trees from collections of examples. Although the decision trees generated by these methods are accurate and efficient, they often suffer the disadvantage of excessive complexity that can render them incomprehensible to experts.…

Consider a world of 'objects.' Our goal is to place these objects into categories that are useful to the observer using sensory data. One criterion for utility is that the categories allow the observer to infer the object's potential behaviors,…

This thesis focuses on the cultural construction of cancer experience in a modern clinical context. A French Canadian center, specializing in cancer treatment, was the main source of information for this study. Facts obtained from this setting served for the…

The use of ribonucleoside phosphoramidites protected at the 2$ sp prime$-hydroxyl with alkylsilyl ethers was developed for the solid phase synthesis of oligoribonucleotides. A series of pentadecameric oligomers of various base composition was synthesized using this methodology and a complete…

We have developed a method and prototype program for assisting two experts in their attempts to construct a single, consensus knowledge base. We show that consensus building can be effectively facilitated by a debugging approach that identifies, explains, and resolves…

This paper examines the issues and the solutions that have been studied in database (DB) integration research and tries to draw lessons from them for knowledge base (KB) integration.

This paper deals with the "Calculus of Knowledge", an extension of the propositional calculus in which one may reason about what other people know. Semantic and Syntactic systems are developed, certain theorems are proven, and a formal solution in the…

This paper studies the relationship of Artificial Intelligence to the study of language and the representation of the underlying knowledge which supports the comprehension process. It develops the view that intelligence is based on the ability to use large amounts…

Trying to capture intuitive knowledge is a little like trying to capture the moment between what just happened and what is about to happen. Or to quote a famous philosopher, "You can't put your foot in the same river once."…

This paper analyzes the suitability of reinforcement learning (RL) for both programming and adapting situated agents. We discuss two RL algorithms: Q-learning and the Bucket Brigade. We introduce a special case of the Bucket Brigade, and analyze and compare its…