We present a theory, a system and an application for common sense reasoning based on propositional logic, the probability calculus and the concept of maximum entropy. The task of the system Pit (Probability Induction Tool) is to provide decisions under incomplete knowledge, while keeping the necessary additional assumptions as minimal and clear as possible. We therefore enrich the probability c...

Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) is a species native to Western Asia that is able to pierce intact fruit during egg laying, causing it to be considered a fruit crop pest in many countries. Drosophila suzukii have a rapid expansion worldwide; occurrences were recorded in North America and Europe in 2008, and South America in 2013. Due to this rapid expansion, we modeled the potential distribution ...

Intermetallic γ' precipitates typically strengthen nickel-based superalloys. The shape, size and spatial distribution of strengthening precipitates critically influence alloy strength, while their temporal evolution characteristics determine the high-temperature alloy stability. Combined ultra-small-, small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (USAXS-SAXS-WAXS) analysis can be used to evaluate the ...

Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) language models [1, 2] are linear models that are typically regularized via well-known L1 or L2 terms in the likelihood objective, hence avoiding the need for the kinds of backoff or mixture weights used in smoothed ngram language models using Katz backoff [3] and similar techniques. Even though backoff cost is not required to regularize the model, we investigate the us...

A popular approach to apprenticeship learning (AL) is to formulate it as an inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) problem. The MaxEnt-IRL algorithm successfully integrates the maximum entropy principle into IRL and unlike its predecessors, it resolves the ambiguity arising from the fact that a possibly large number of policies could match the expert’s behavior. In this paper, we study an AL sett...

Probabilistic reasoning under the so-called principle of maximum entropy is a viable and convenient alternative to Bayesian networks, relieving the user from providing complete (local) probabilistic information and observing rigorous conditional independence assumptions. In this paper, we present a novel approach to performing computational MaxEnt reasoning that makes use of symbolic computatio...

Investigation of the relationship between plant species and environmental factors plays an important role in plant ecology. The present study aimed to develop the best predicting model for distribution of Prangos uloptera DC. using logistic regression (LR) and Maximum Entropy Methods (MaxEnt) in its habitat in the southern rangeland of Ardabil province, Iran. Vegetation data (presence and absen...

................................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................... 1 History and Ec...

BACKGROUND Leptospirosis is a water-borne and widespread spirochetal zoonosis caused by pathogenic bacteria called leptospires. Human leptospirosis is an important zoonotic infectious disease with frequent outbreaks in recent years in China. Leptospirosis's emergence has been linked to many environmental and ecological drivers of disease transmission. In this paper, we identified the environmen...