A Proposal for Research With the Goal of Formulating a Computational Theory of Rational Action

A theory of rational action can be used to determine the right action to perform in a situation. I will develop a theory of rational action in which an agent has access to an explicit theory of rationality. The agent makes use of this theory when it chooses its actions, including the actions involved in determining how to apply the theory. The Intentional states of the agent are realized in states and processes of its physical body. The body of the agent is a computational entity whose operations are under the control of a program. The agent has full access to that program and controls its actions by manipulating that program. I will illustrate the theory by implementing a system which simulates the actions a rational agent takes in various situations.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laborator

Simulation of an Optional Strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma in Spatial and Non-spatial Environments

This paper presents research comparing the effects of different environments on the outcome of an extended Prisoner's Dilemma, in which agents have the option to abstain from playing the game. We consider three different pure strategies: cooperation, defection and abstinence. We adopt an evolutionary game theoretic approach and consider two different environments: the first which imposes no spatial constraints and the second in which agents are placed on a lattice grid. We analyse the performance of the three strategies as we vary the loner's payoff in both structured and unstructured environments. Furthermore we also present the results of simulations which identify scenarios in which cooperative clusters of agents emerge and persist in both environments.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavio

Artificial Evolution of Syntactic Aptitude

Populations of simple recurrent neural networks were subject to simulations of evolution where the selection criterion was the ability of a network to learn to recognize strings from context free grammars. After a number of generations, networks emerged that use the activation values of the units feeding their recurrent connections to represent the depth of embedding in a string. Networks inherited innate biases to accurately learn members of a class of related context-free grammars, and, while learning, passed through periods during which exposure to spurious input interfered with their subsequent ability to learn a grammar

The celebrification of farmers: celebrity and the new politics of farming

Michelle Phillipov and Michael K. Goodma

Mutual Trust and Cooperation in the Evolutionary Hawks-Doves Game

Using a new dynamical network model of society in which pairwise interactions are weighted according to mutual satisfaction, we show that cooperation is the norm in the Hawks-Doves game when individuals are allowed to break ties with undesirable neighbors and to make new acquaintances in their extended neighborhood. Moreover, cooperation is robust with respect to rather strong strategy perturbations. We also discuss the empirical structure of the emerging networks, and the reasons that allow cooperators to thrive in the population. Given the metaphorical importance of this game for social interaction, this is an encouraging positive result as standard theory for large mixing populations prescribes that a certain fraction of defectors must always exist at equilibrium.Comment: 23 pages 12 images, to appea

The Effectiveness of Perceptual Training as a Corrective Measure for Reading Disability

This study compared the differences in perceptual development found between (1) normal readers and disabled readers, and (2) Indian children of a reservation cultural background and non-Indian children. Subjects were fifty-three children of both Indian and non-Indian backgrounds ranging from the second to the fourth grades at White Swan Grade School

Automatising the learning of lexical patterns: An application to the enrichment of WordNet by extracting semantic relationships from Wikipedia

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal Data & Knowledge Engineering. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal Data & Knowledge Engineering, 61, 3, (2007) DOI: 10.1016/j.datak.2006.06.011This paper describes an automatic approach to identify lexical patterns that represent semantic relationships between concepts in an on-line encyclopedia. Next, these patterns can be applied to extend existing ontologies or semantic networks with new relations. The experiments have been performed with the Simple English Wikipedia and WordNet 1.7. A new algorithm has been devised for automatically generalising the lexical patterns found in the encyclopedia entries. We have found general patterns for the hyperonymy, hyponymy, holonymy and meronymy relations and, using them, we have extracted more than 2600 new relationships that did not appear in WordNet originally. The precision of these relationships depends on the degree of generality chosen for the patterns and the type of relation, being around 60-70% for the best combinations proposed.This work has been sponsored by MEC, project number TIN-2005-0688

THSim v3.2: The Talking Heads simulation tool

The field of language evolution and computation may benefit from using efficient and robust simulation tools that are based on widely exploited principles within the field. The tool presented in this paper is one that could fulfil such needs. The paper presents an overview of the tool -- THSim v3.2 -- and discusses some research questions that can be investigated with it

ΑΝΩΜΑΛΗ ΕΞΕΛΙΞΗ ΝΑΥΤΙΛΙΑΚΟΥ ΔΑΝΕΙΟΥ

Η ναυτιλία ως οικονομικός τομέας χαρακτηρίζεται κατεξοχήν ως εντάσεως κεφαλαίου, έχοντας αυξημένες ανάγκες χρηματοδότησης συγκριτικά με άλλους επιχειρηματικούς κλάδους, ενώ ανέκαθεν υπήρξε στενά συνυφασμένη με την τραπεζική χρηματοδότηση. Η παρούσα εστιάζει στη βασική μορφή τραπεζικής ναυτιλιακής χρηματοδότησης, το ναυτιλιακό δάνειο, εξετάζοντας αρχικά τη δομή και τους βασικούς πυλώνες της εν λόγω σύμβασης που άπτονται του ιδιαίτερου χαρακτήρα της ναυτιλίας, με έμφαση στις οικονομικές ρήτρες. Βασικό αντικείμενο εξέτασης είναι η ανώμαλη εξέλιξη της συγκεκριμένης πιστωτικής σύμβασης και οι τρόποι αντιμετώπισής της. Με σημείο αναφοράς και εκκίνησης τον μεγάλο όγκο Μη Εξυπηρετούμενων Δανείων, εξετάζονται επιμέρους περιπτώσεις ανώμαλης εξέλιξης. Αρχικά, με κατάφαση της αδυναμίας εξυπηρέτησης της δανειακής οφειλής, μελετάται το ενδεχόμενο της αναδιάρθρωσης. Ποια τα διαρθρωτικά μέτρα που χρησιμοποιούνται από τα πιστωτικά ιδρύματα και που ανευρίσκονται, ποιες οι πιθανές νομικές βάσεις στις οποίες θα μπορούσε να θεμελιωθεί η υποχρέωση προς αναδιαπραγμάτευση, ποιοι οι κίνδυνοι που ενέχει η διαδικασία. Συναφώς, άμα ο πιστοδότης προχωρήσει σε καταγγελία της συμβάσεως και ενεργοποίηση των εξασφαλίσεων, πότε αυτή η ενέργεια κρίνεται καταχρηστική κατ’ άρθρο 281ΑΚ ή αντικείμενη στα χρηστά ήθη κατ’ άρθρο 919ΑΚ; Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, εξετάζεται η σχέση πιστοδότη-πιστούχου και οι παρεπόμενες αυτής υποχρεώσεις, ενώ αναλύεται μια σειρά νομολογιακών αποφάσεων που έχουν αποκρυσταλλώσει το περιεχόμενο των δύο αυτών διατάξεων στο πεδίο της ναυτιλιακής χρηματοδότησης. Τέλος, αναλύεται ο πρόσφατος Νόμος 4354/2015 που στοχεύει στην ανάπτυξη της δευτερογενούς αγοράς Μη Εξυπηρετούμενων Δανείων, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των ναυτιλιακών και προβλέπει τη μεταβίβαση ανοιγμάτων που δεν εξυπηρετούνται σε επενδυτικά σχήματα, με στόχο την αποσυμφόρηση των τραπεζικών ιδρυμάτων. Εδώ αναλύεται η διαδικασία που ακολουθείται, οι κίνδυνοι, οι προστατευτικές για τον οφειλέτη διατάξεις, ενώ υπογραμμίζεται η μέχρι τώρα έλλειψη εμπράκτου εφαρμογής του Νόμου.Shipping is a financial sector characterized as capital intensive. This means that is greatly dependent on its funding and is closely connected to the banking sector, which has always constituted its main source of capital. The main subject presented herein is the shipping loan and cases of non-performance. Firstly, the structure and the main clauses of a shipping loan are examined, emphasizing on financial (monitoring) covenants and securities. Then, based on the fact that the term loan agreement cannot be normally performed, different scenarios are examined. Restructuring is the first option. Which forms of restructuring are mainly preferred, which are the legal bases “imposing” restructuring and what dangers the procedure presents, are the main features. Once the bank does not proceed to restructuring and chooses to terminate the agreement, what are the dangers? The study examines the ancillary obligations of the parties, in order to answer in which cases a termination may be abusive (art. 281 Civil Code of Greece) or may consist a tort (art. 919 Civil Code of Greece). Finally, the recent Law 4354/2015, concerning the secondary market of non-performing loans, is analyzed, emphasizing on the need of protection of the debtor and the lack of its application in Greece so far