The usual approach to p laus ib le reasoning is to associate a v a l i d i t y measure wi th each fac t or r u l e , and to compute from these a v a l i d i t y measure for any deduction tha t is made. This approach is shown to be inappropr iate for some classes of problems, p a r t i c u l a r l y those in which the evidence is not i n t e r n a l l y cons is tent . Two current p laus ib le re...

Common object models select method implementations based on the class of the receiver. If an object belongs to several classes, more than one implementation is applicable for a method call. We present a conflict resolution strategy to get exactly one implementation per call. This is achieved by adding derived classes with method redefinitions.

A powerful reply to a range of familiar anti-physicalist arguments has recently been developed. According to this reply, our possession of phenomenal concepts can explain the facts that the anti-physicalist claims can only be explained by a non-reductive account of phenomenal consciousness. Chalmers (2006) argues that the phenomenal concept strategy is doomed to fail. This paper presents the ph...

Motivated by parallel optimization, we experiment EDA-like adaptation-rules in the case of λ large. The rule we use, essentially based on estimation of multivariate normal algorithm, is (i) compliant with all families of distributions for which a density estimation algorithm exists (ii) simple (iii) parameter-free (iv) better than current rules in this framework of λ large. The speed-up as a fu...

INTRODUCTION Philosophers, cognitive and social psychologists and laypeople often subscribe to the view that willpower is central to recovery from addiction. But there are reasons to suspect that willpower is much less important to explaining recovery than this view suggests. METHODS Here we report findings from a qualitative longitudinal study on how substance dependent people see their agen...

The escalation in test cost has been given a great deal of attention recently and several approaches have been pursued to alter test strategy to lower cost of test. The large independent device manufacturers are replacing the requirement for every increasing frequency, accuracy and pin count in their ATE equipment with design-for-test (DFT) solutions. This approach may be successful for high vo...

Route selection is governed by various strategies which often allow minimizing the required memory capacity. Previous research showed that navigators primarily remember information at route decision points and at route turns, rather than at intersections which required straight walking. However, when actually navigating the route or indicating directional decisions, navigators make fewer errors...

This paper deals with a new approach to modify software process models and their software processes. Such an approach, in contrast with existing ones, supports the different evolution strategies for the software process models, and allows the adaptation of software process during execution. The integration of these two types of evolution is based on a chaining of phases (generation/evolution/si...

A rewrite sequence is said to be outermost-fair if every out-ermost redex occurrence is eventually eliminated. O'Donnell has shown that outermost-fair rewriting is normalising for almost orthogonal rst-order term rewriting systems. In this paper we extend this result to the higher-order case.

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between the pattern of fiscal policy and the demand for international reserves in developing countries, and how this relationship is associated with political risk and conditional access to global capital markets. It finds evidence that for developing countries with low political risk, countercyclical (procyclical) fiscal policies are associa...