Metals are directly a n d / o r indirectly involved in all aspects of microbial growth, metabolism and differentiation. Many metals are essential, e.g. K, Na, Mg, Ca, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Mo, whereas others have no known essential biological function(s), e.g. AI, Ag, Cd, Sn, Au, Sr, Hg, T1, Pb. All these elements can interact with microbial cells and be accumulated as a result of physico-che...

Multi-agent learning refers to settings in which multiple agents learn simultaneously. Usually defined in a game theoretic setting, specifically in repeated games or stochastic games, the key feature that distinguishes multi-agent learning from single-agent learning is that in the former the learning of one agent impacts he learning of others. As a result neither the problem definition for mutl...

Poor definition and uncertainty are primary characteristics of conceptual design processes. During the initial stages of these generally human-centric activities, little knowledge pertaining to the problem at hand may be available. The degree of problem definition will depend on information available in terms of appropriate variables, constraints, and both quantitative and qualitative objective...

The Virtual Secretary project focuses on the construction of an environment for secure software agents. As a research vehicle, i.e., to enable full-scale experiments in realistic settings, some major secretarial tasks have been chosen. Our environment for secure software agents will include propagation mechanisms, mechanisms for authentication and control, and common user software. A key elemen...