Dealing with large datasets is increasingly becoming a problem for natural language processing researchers. For our class project we investigate applying the opensource Hadoop MapReduce framework to the problem of information retrieval using TFIDF.

The advances observed in the last years in telecommunication technologies rapidly brought along new ways of doing business. This new reality, however, has not been so rapidly followed by the entities responsible for dealing with the conflicts that arise from these interactions, now undertaken in an electronic format. Traditional paper-based courts, designed for the industrial era, are now outda...

We introduce into the Penna Model for biological ageing one of the possible male mechanisms used to maximize the ability of their sperm to compete with sperm from other males. Such a selfish mechanism increases the male reproduction success but may decrease the survival probability of the whole female population, depending on how it acts. We also find a dynamic phase transition induced by the e...

We explore the problem of network interconnection in local telecommunications. We develop a model with a competitive business sector and a regulated residential sector. The model is used to analyse the celebrated New Zealand antitrust case between Clear and Telecom. We discuss implications of the model for the eonomics of antitrust, including issues of competition versus efficiency and the use ...

In this paper, we present some guidelines for implementing various financial instruments for the purposes of credit and payment, including protocols for commercial transactions, dispute resolution, and establishing credit reputation. We strive to employ only widely used, standardized cryptography and keep the proposed procedures as simple as possible on the conceptual level. Also, we want all t...

Mediation is a process, in which both parties agree to resolve their dispute by negotiating over alternative solutions presented by a mediator. In order to construct such solutions, mediation brings more information and knowledge, and, if possible, resources to the negotiation table. The contribution of this paper is the automated mediation machinery which does that. It presents an argumentatio...

The nature of the construction business makes the industry one of the most litigious. Most recent studies of dispute settlement assistant system have applied case-based reasoning (CBR) models to identify similar dispute cases that may be used as references in dispute settlements. Typically, either Euclidean distance (EUD) or cosine angle distance (CAD) has been employed in CBR to measure simila...

Is there a distinction between questions of fact and questions of language? Many philosophers have said no. But a version of the distinction is ubiquitous, in philosophy and elsewhere, in the notion of a verbal dispute. Intuitively, a dispute between two parties is verbal when the two parties agree on the relevant facts about a domain of concern, and just disagree about the language used to des...