If we are to understand how we can build machines capable of broad purpose learning and reasoning, we must first aim to build systems that can represent, acquire, and reason about the kinds of commonsense knowledge that we humans have…

In this research line we are exploring the possibility of having multiple preference criteria to compare arguments in in Defeasible Argumentation. In this work we are assuming a goaloriented Argumentative System, to which an application or an agent may seek…

by Tung Chan., Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1995., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102).

Heterogeneous azeotropic distillation is a widely used technique to separate binary azeotropic mixtures into their components. One of its most important applications is the dehydration of ethanol, which is blended with gasoline to obtain automobile fuel. Among all the compounds…

Banking channel management has become a crucial component in the drive for improved efficiency. Since the channel is the interlocutor between customers and products, banks are leveraging their knowledge of channels to efficiently address perfect product portfolio through the most…

This dissertation considers three implications of collective self-government for just foreign policies in an imperfect world. Individuals are the appropriate moral unit of analysis, constrained to govern themselves justly, together with compatriots. First I derive limits to state autonomy that…

The incorporation of ethnopedological knowledge in soil science and the inclusion of indigenous communities as beneficiaries of the agricultural technology are indispensable premises to make a better use of soil. However, to achieve this, it is necessary to have clearer…

In various species of crayfish it has been proposed that different extra-retinal photoreceptors and pacemakers could be involved in the photo entrainment mechanisms. The identity of the neural structures responsible for this phenomenon is not known. The objective of this…

Increasingly, knowledge-based tasks such as new product development and market research are being conducted by geographically dispersed teams. Early evidence from knowledge-based view of the firm and geographically dispersed work literatures suggests that at least four kinds of knowledge gaps---transactive…

Knowledge-based Cascade-correlation is a neural network algorithm that combines inductive learning and knowledge transfer (Shultz & Rivest, 2001). In the present thesis, this algorithm is tested on several real-world and artificial problems, and extended in several ways. The first extension…