Experiences in Expert Systems

This paper describes some work carried out in the Scientific Research and Development Branch (SRDB) of the Home Office, intended to contribute to an overall aim of building up internal expertise in the field of expert systems. This was done by carrying out a number of pilot and demonstrator projects, two of which are described in some detail. The plan, which proved successful, was to build as far as possible on the relevant skills already possessed by an OR group in the branch. The lessons learned from these are summarized in the hope that they will be of use to other groups who wish to become involved in this important area.     

Program explanations and causal relevance

Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit have defended a non-reductive account of causal relevance known as the ‘program explanation account’. Allegedly, irreducible mental properties can be causally relevant in virtue of figuring in non-redundant program explanations which convey information not conveyed by explanations in terms of the physical properties that actually do the ‘causal work’. I argue that none of the possible ways to spell out the intuitively plausible idea of a program explanation serves its purpose, viz., defends non-reductive physicalism against Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument according to which non-reductive physicalism is committed to epiphenomenalism because irreducible mental properties are ‘screened off’ from causal relevance by their physical realizers. Jackson and Pettit’s most promising explication of a program explanation appeals to the idea of invariance of effect under variation of realization, but I show that invariance of effect under variation of realization is neither necessary nor sufficient for causal relevance.     

Certificateless signature and proxy signature schemes from bilinear pairings

Due to avoiding the inherent escrow of identity-based cryptography and yet not requiring certificates to guarantee the authenticity of public keys, certificateless public key cryptography has received a significant attention. Due to various applications of bilinear pairings in cryptography, numerous pairing-based encryption schemes, signature schemes, and other cryptographic primitives have been proposed. In this paper, a new certificateless signature scheme based on bilinear pairings is presented. The signing algorithm of the proposed scheme is very simple and does not require any pairing computation. Combining our signature scheme with certificateless public key cryptography yields a complete solution of certificateless public key system. As an application of the proposed signature scheme, a certificateless proxy signature scheme is also presented. We analyze both schemes from security point of view.__________Published in Lietuvos Matematikos Rinkinys, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 95–103, January–March, 2005.     

Elliptic equations with BMO coefficients in Reifenberg domains

The inhomogeneous Dirichlet problems concerning divergence form elliptic equations are studied. Optimal regularity requirements on the coefficients and domains for the W^1,p theory, 1 < p < ∞, are obtained. The principal coefficients are supposed to be in the John‐Nirenberg space with small BMO seminorms. The domain is a Reifenberg domain. These conditions for the W^1,p theory not only weaken the requirements on the coefficients but also lead to a more general geometric condition on the domains. In fact, these domains might have fractal dimensions. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Crystallographic report: Bis{[diacetyl‐bis(2,6‐isopropylphenylimine)]nickel(I)(µ‐chloro)}

The first α‐diimine nickel(I) complex having a chloro bridge is reported. The centrosymmetric dinuclear structure of {[ArN?C(Me)C(Me)?NAr]NiCl}₂[Ar?2,6?C₆H₃(i‐Pr)₂] features two chelating α‐diimine ligands and two bridged chlorine atoms, so that a distorted tetrahedral N₂Cl₂ coordination geometry for nickel results. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Order restricted randomized designs for control versus treatment comparison

We develop a method of randomizing units to treatments that relies on subjective judgement or on possible coarse modeling to produce restrictions on the randomization. The procedure thus fits within the general framework of ranked set sampling. However, instead of selecting a single unit from each set for full measurement, all units within a set are used. The units within a set are assigned to different treatments. Such an assignment translates the positive dependence among units within a set into a reduction in variation of contrasting features of the treatments. A test for treatment versus control comparison, with controlled familywise error rate, is developed along with the associated confidence intervals. The new procedure is shown to be superior to corresponding procedures based on completely randomized or ranked set sample designs. The superiority appears both in asymptotic relative efficiency and in power for finite sample sizes. Importantly, this test does not rely on perfect rankings; rather, the information in the data on the quality of rankings is exploited to maintain the level of the test when rankings are imperfect. The asymptotic relative efficiency of the test is not affected by estimation of the quality of rankings, and the finite sample performance is only mildly affected.     

When should you sack a football manager? Results from a simple model applied to the English Premiership

What strategy should a football (soccer, in American parlance) club adopt when deciding whether to sack its manager? This paper introduces a simple model assuming that a club's objective is to maximize the number of league points that it scores per season. The club's strategy consists of three choices: the length of the honeymoon period during which it will not consider sacking a new manager, the level of the performance trapdoor below which the manager get the sack, and the weight that it will give to more recent games compared to earlier ones. Some data from the last six seasons of the English Premiership are used to calibrate the model. At this early stage of the research, the best strategy appears to have only a short honeymoon period of eight games (much less than the actual shortest period of 12 games), to set the trapdoor at 0.74 points per game, and to put 47% of the weight on the last five games. A club adopting this strategy would obtain on average 56.8 points per season, compared to a Premiership average of 51.8 points.     

A New Cycloartane from Sphaerophysa salsula

A novel cycloartane,named sphaerophysone A,9,19-cycloart-7β,24β,25-triol-1-en-3-one,was isolated from the ethanol extract of Sphaerophysa salsula DC.The structure was elucidated on the basis of spectral evidences and confirmed by X-ray analysis,the stereochemistry of the compound was also defined by X-ray analysis.