Matching

Urdu is one of the most widely used languages in the world and there is a need of developing character recognition and word-spotting algorithms, so that Urdu literature can be made easily accessible and searchable to the Urdu reading population. Although there has been a sizeable research for character recognition, very few articles have been published for word-spotting in Urdu language. Unlike English language (with only two alphabets with dots), in Urdu language 17 out of 38 alphabets have dots either above or beneath them. This paper presents a data reduction framework, based on exploiting the dot orientation for word spotting in Urdu scanned documents. After applying the proposed scheme, the number of eligible candidates for the target word is greatly reduced. As demonstrated in the Results and Analysis section, the proposed algorithm has shown promising results with an average data reduction rate of 79.8%.

Exploitation of lower temperature, water-dominated geothermal fields is analyzed, and a methodology for optimizing geothermal binary plants is discussed. The geothermal fluid inlet temperatures considered are in the 110-160 °C range, while the return temperature of the brine is assumed to be between 70 and 100 °C. The analysis shows that the brine specific consumption, ranging from 20 to 120 kg/s for each net MW produced, and the efficiency of the plants, ranging from 20 to 45% in terms of Second Law efficiency, are dictated mainly by the combination of the brine inlet temperature, the brine rejection temperature and the energy conversion cycle being used. For given operating conditions and with correct matching between working fluid and energy conversion cycle, it is possible to obtain very similar performances in a number of different cases. It is shown that optimization of the plant can yield improvements of up to 30-40% in terms of reduction of brine specific consumption compared to conventional design.

Exploitation of lower temperature, water-dominated geothermal fields is analyzed, and a methodology for optimizing geothermal binary plants is discussed. The geothermal fluid inlet temperatures considered are in the 110-160 °C range, while the return temperature of the brine is assumed to be between 70 and 100 °C. The analysis shows that the brine specific consumption, ranging from 20 to 120 kg/s for each net MW produced, and the efficiency of the plants, ranging from 20 to 45% in terms of Second Law efficiency, are dictated mainly by the combination of the brine inlet temperature, the brine rejection temperature and the energy conversion cycle being used. For given operating conditions and with correct matching between working fluid and energy conversion cycle, it is possible to obtain very similar performances in a number of different cases. It is shown that optimization of the plant can yield improvements of up to 30-40% in terms of reduction of brine specific consumption compared to conventional design.

Let G be a graph of order n and let u, v be vertices of G. Let κG(u, v) denote the maximum number of internally disjoint u–v paths in G. Then the average connectivity κ(G) of G, is defined as κ(G) = ∑ {u,v}⊆V (G) κG(u, v)/ ( n 2 ) . If k ≥ 1 is an integer, then G is minimally kconnected if κ(G) = k and κ(G− e) < k for every edge e of G. We say that G is an optimal minimally k-connected graph if G has maximum average connectivity among all minimally k-connected graphs of order n. Based on a recent structure result for minimally 2-connected graphs we conjecture that, for every integer k ≥ 3, if G is an optimal minimally k-connected graph of order n ≥ 2k + 1, then G is bipartite, with the set of vertices of degree k and the set of vertices of degree exceeding k as its partite sets. We show that if this conjecture is true, then κ(G) < 98k for every minimally k-connected graph G. For every k ≥ 3, we describe an infinite family of minimally k-connected graphs whose average connectiv...

We study second-degree price discrimination in markets where the product traded by the monopolist is access to other agents. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the welfareand the profit-maximizing mechanisms to employ a single network or a ...

Online surveys are increasingly common in social and health studies, as they provide fast and inexpensive results in comparison to traditional ones. However, these surveys often work with biased samples, as the data collection is often non-probabilistic because of the lack of internet coverage in certain population groups and the self-selection procedure that many online surveys rely on. Some procedures have been proposed to mitigate the bias, such as propensity score adjustment (PSA) and statistical matching. In PSA, propensity to participate in a nonprobability survey is estimated using a probability reference survey, and then used to obtain weighted estimates. In statistical matching, the nonprobability sample is used to train models to predict the values of the target variable, and the predictions of the models for the probability sample can be used to estimate population values. In this study, both methods are compared using three datasets to simulate pseudopopulations from whi...

This paper presents Genetic Matching, a method of multivariate matching, that uses an evolutionary search algorithm to determine the weight each covariate is given. Both propensity score matching and matching based on Mahalanobis distance are limiting cases of this method. The algorithm makes transparent certain issues that all matching methods must confront. We present simulation studies that show that the algorithm improves covariate balance, and that it may reduce bias if the selection on observables assumption holds. We then present a reanalysis of a number of datasets in the LaLonde (1986) controversy.

Puji syukur penulis panjatkan kehadirat Allah SWT yang telah melimpahkan rahmat dan hidayah-Nya, sehingga penulis dapat menyusun tugas akhir ini. Tugas akhir yang berjudul "Multiplisitas Sikel dari Graf Total pada Graf Sikel, Graf Path, dan Graf Kipas " ini disusun sebagai salah satu syarat untuk memperoleh gelar Sarjana Strata Satu (S1) pada Jurusan Matematika Fakultas Sains dan Matematika, Universitas Diponegoro Semarang. Pada kesempatan ini penulis mengucapkan terima kasih yang sebesarbesarnya kepada yang terhormat : 1. Drs. Solikhin Zaki, M.Kom selaku Ketua Jurusan Matematika Fakultas Sains dan Matematika UNDIP. 2. Farikhin, S.Si, M.Si, Ph.D selaku dosen pembimbing I yang dengan sabar membimbing dan mengarahkan penulis hingga selesainya penyusunan Tugas Akhir ini. 3. Drs. Bayu Surarso, M.Sc, Ph.D selaku dosen pembimbing II yang dengan sabar membimbing dan mengarahkan penulis hingga selesainya penyusunan Tugas Akhir ini. 4. Semua pihak yang telah memberikan dukungan serta bantuan kepada penulis dalam menyelesaikan Tugas Akhir ini. Penulis menyadari bahwa Tugas Akhir ini masih jauh dari sempurna. Untuk itu, penulis mengharapkan kritik dan saran yang bersifat membangun demi v kesempurnaan Tugas Akhir ini. Semoga Tugas Akhir ini bisa membawa manfaat bagi penulis sendiri khususnya dan bagi pembaca pada umumnya. Semarang, Juli 2013 Penulis vi ABSTRAK Diberikan graf 𝐺 dengan himpunan titik 𝑉(𝐺) dan himpunan sisi 𝐸(𝐺). Graf total dari graf 𝐺 dinotasikan dengan 𝑇(𝐺) didefinisikan sebagai himpunan titik dari 𝑇 𝐺 adalah 𝑉(𝐺) ∪ 𝑈(𝐺), dengan 𝑈(𝐺) adalah himpunan titik yang diperoleh dari penambahan satu titik di setiap sisi 𝑒 = 𝑣 𝑖 𝑣 𝑗 pada graf 𝐺. Sedangkan multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝐺 adalah jumlah maksimal sikel sisi yang disjoin dari graf total pada graf 𝐺. Dalam tugas akhir ini, dipelajari tentang multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝐶 𝑛 , 𝑃 𝑛 , dan dibahas tentang multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝐹 𝑛 . Hasil penelitian ini, telah diketahui bahwa multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝐶 𝑛 adalah 𝑛 + 1 dan multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝑃 𝑛 is 𝑛 -1. Selanjutnya, telah dibuktikan multiplisitas sikel dari graf total pada graf 𝐹 𝑛 adalah 𝑛 2 + 17𝑛-18 6 untuk 𝑛 ganjil atau 𝑛 2 + 16𝑛-18 6 untuk 𝑛 genap, dengan 𝑛 adalah titik pada graf 𝐺.

One of the greatest difficulties meet on the labor market is that it ensures that all the people who want to work can find a job. But it is not the only one. A second difficulty consists to find a social arrangement which approaches as much as possible the social optimum without forgetting that the optimum can be reached with the rejection of certain candidacies. It seems impossible to solve a social optimum problem of the size of the french labor market because this one is furthermore constituted of 26 million job-seekers and that no computer is capable of managing the matching problem which, surprisingly is not of an excessive complexity-it is of order n 3-, but which quickly collides with the computational capacity of machines, however powerful they may be. It's the reason why it is essential to study restricted size markets, that is markets of less than 10000 job-seekers, to observe how practical solutions which can be organized as, for example, a geographical progressive balkanization either geographic or by skill level, leads to a departure from the Pareto optimum. In this context, this paper suggests to compare the level of efficiency of a decentralized actually practicable solution with the optimum which would be if only it was possible to collect all necessary information to implement and compute it.

We analyse a model in which agents make investments and match into pairs to create a surplus. The agents can reallocate their pretransfer ownership claims on the surplus. Mailath et al. (2013) showed that when investments are unobservable, equilibrium investments are generally inefficient. We work here with a more structured and tractable model to analyse investment inefficiencies. We provide conditions under which investment is inefficiently high or low and when changes in the pretransfer ownership claims on the surplus will be Pareto improving, and examine how the degree of heterogeneity on either side of the market affects investment efficiency.

Different markets are cleared by different types of prices-a universal price for all buyers and sellers in some markets, seller-specific prices that are uniform across buyers in others, and personalized prices tailored to both the buyer and the seller in yet others. We introduce the notion of premuneration values-the values in the absence of any muneration (payments)-created by the buyer-seller match. We characterize the premuneration values under which uniform-price and personalized-price equilibria agree. In this case, we have efficient allocations, including pre-match investment decisions, without the costs of personalized pricing. We then examine the inefficiencies that arise when the premuneration values preclude the agreement of uniformprice and personalized-price equilibria. We view premuneration values as an important consideration in market design.

We propose a generic method for obtaining nonparametric image warps from noisy point correspondences. Our formulation integrates a huber function into a motion coherence framework. This makes our fitting function especially robust to piecewise correspondence noise (where an image section is consistently mismatched). By utilizing over parameterized curves, we can generate realistic nonparametric image warps from very noisy correspondence. We also demonstrate how our algorithm can be used to help stitch images taken from a panning camera by warping the images onto a virtual push-broom camera imaging plane.

Resume: Nous etudions la puissance en terme de prevision des processus bases sur la methode du noyau en utilisant la version non parametrique du critere « Final Prediction error » pour identifier un processus fonctionnel heteroscedastique. Cette identification necessite une selection rigoureuse des coefficients de Markov et du choix de la fenetre qui determine le degre de lissage de l’estimateur. Cette approche est comparee avec les resultats de l’estimation de modeles integres fractionnaires. Abstract: We study the forecast’s power of the nonparametric processes based on the kernel method by using the nonparametric version of Final Prediction error criterion to identify a heteroscedastic functional process. This identification requires the selection of the Markov coefficients and the choice of bandwidth, which determines the degree of the estimator’s smoothing. This approach is compared with the estimation results of the fractional integrated models.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether domestic and foreign activities of Italian firms are mainly substitutes or complements. We take advantage of a unique firm-level panel data set from the Bank of Italy Survey of Industrial and Service Firms, which provides information on the international activity of a representative sample of Italian enterprises. We use matching methods to compare the performance of firms that become multinationals with that of firms that had considered the possibility to invest abroad, but had not yet done so. Using a different approach, we supplement the counterfactual strategy by studying the conditional overtime correlation between domestic and foreign employment of a sample of multinational firms. Both methods suggest that domestic and foreign activities are more likely to be complements than substitutes. The positive correlation between domestic and foreign employment is higher for the domestic highly-skilled workforce and for firms that have adopted complex strategies of internationalization.

Using keypoint-based features, such as SIFT features, for detecting copy-move image forgeries has yielded promising results. In this paper, our emphasis is on improving the detection and localization of duplicated regions using more powerful keypoint-based features. In this context, we have adopted a more powerful set of keypoint-based features, called MIFT, which share the properties of SIFT features but also are invariant to mirror reflection transformations. To improve localization, we propose estimating the parameters of the affine transformation between copied and pasted regions more accurately using an iterative scheme which finds additional keypoint matches incrementally. To reduce the number of false positives and negatives, we propose using "dense" MIFT features, instead of standard pixel correlation, along with hystereresis thresholding and morphological operations. The proposed approach has been evaluated and compared with competitive approaches through a comprehensive set of experiments using a large dataset of real images. Our results indicate that our method can detect duplicated regions in copy-move image forgery with higher accuracy, especially when the size of the duplicated region is small.

We analyze the consequences of a teenage pregnancy event in the short and long run in Mexico. Using longitudinal and cross-section data, we match females who became pregnant and those who did not based on a propensity score. In the short run, we find that a teenage pregnancy causes a decrease of 0.6-0.8 years of schooling, lower school attendance, fewer hours of work and a higher marriage rate. In the long run, we find that a teenage pregnancy results in a 1-1.2-year loss in years of education, which implies a permanent ef fect on education, and lower household income per capita.

This paper provides a dynamic analysis of the market for academic publications. Given imperfect information about journals' editorial line, authors can sometimes target a wrong journal; in turn, the editor will desk-reject their paper. An equilibrium is de…ned as a situation where both editors and authors implement their optimal publication strategies, given the matching technology and the prevailing surplus sharing rule. The model can be solved for the equilibrium submission fee, desk rejection rate and ratio between the number of editors and the number of authors.

We initiate the study of extended bicolorings of Steiner triple systems (STS) which start with a $k$-bicoloring of an STS($v$) and end up with a $k$-bicoloring of an STS($2v+1$) obtained by a doubling construction, using only the original colors used in coloring the subsystem STS($v$). By producing many such extended bicolorings, we obtain several infinite classes of orders for which there exist STSs with different lower and upper chromatic number.

This study undertakes a comprehensive examination of Copula constructions in Idoma, a Nigerian language. The research explores the grammatical functions, prototypical copular usage, and transformational processes of Copula constructions in Idoma. The study consists of five chapters, with a focus on the central theme of Copula construction. The analysis reveals the complexities of Copula constructions in Idoma, shedding light on their syntactic properties and behaviors. The findings of this research contribute significantly to the understanding of Idoma syntax and provide a foundation for further research in the field.

Keywords: Copula constructions, Idoma language, syntactic analysis, transformational processes.

In this paper, we assess the impact of firms introducing part-time work schemes for gradual labour market exit of elderly workers on their employees' labour market outcomes. The analysis is based on unique linked employer-employee data that combine high-quality survey and administrative data. Our results suggest that partial or gradual retirement options offered by firms are an important tool to alleviate the negative effects of low labour market attachment of elderly workers in ageing societies. When combined with financial incentives to hire unemployed or young jobseekers as replacement, they seem to be particularly beneficial, especially when labour market conditions are difficult. Under such circumstances, they can even have positive spill-over effects on younger workers. Firms should thus be encouraged to offer such schemes.

In East Germany, active labour market policies (ALMPs) are used on a large scale to contain fast rising unemployment after unification. This paper evaluates the effects for participants in public employment programmes (PEPs), that are an important part of ALMPs. It focuses on individual unemployment probabilities. By concentrating on the state of Sachsen-Anhalt, the econometric analysis can use a new and large panel, the $UEHLWVPDUNWPRQLWRU 6DFKVHQ $QKDOW. We aim at nonparametric identification of the effects of PEPs by combining the use of comparison groups with differencing over time to correct for selection effects. Our results indicate that PEP participation reduces the unemployment risk of the participants.

The Finite Sample Performance of Inference Methods for Propensity Score Matching and Weighting Estimators This paper investigates the finite sample properties of a range of inference methods for propensity score-based matching and weighting estimators frequently applied to evaluate the average treatment effect on the treated. We analyse both asymptotic approximations and bootstrap methods for computing variances and confidence intervals in our simulation design, which is based on large scale labor market data from Germany and varies w.r.t. treatment selectivity, effect heterogeneity, the share of treated, and the sample size. The results suggest that in general, the bootstrap procedures dominate the asymptotic ones in terms of size and power for both matching and weighting estimators. Furthermore, the results are qualitatively quite robust across the various simulation features.

In this paper we summarise our previous results on the effectiveness of different kinds of labour market training programmes as well as employment programmes in East Germany after unification. All the studies use the microeconometric evaluation approach and are based on different types of matching estimators. We find some positive earnings effect for on-the-job training and also some positive employment effects for employment programmes. No such effects appear for public sector sponsored (off-the-job) training programmes. Generally, the scope of such analysis is very much hampered by the insufficient quality and quantity of the data available for East Germany. Although in particular the results for public sector sponsored training programmes raise serious doubts about the effectiveness of these programmes, any definite policy conclusion from this and other studies about active labour market policy in East Germany would probably be premature.

Ontology matching is a main step for integrating overlapping domains of knowledge and establishing interoperation among semantic web application. As information sources grow rapidly, manual ontology matching becomes more tedious and time-consuming and consequently leads to errors and frustration. In this paper we developed the new lexical and semantic similarity measure by using the lexical database ConceptNet. The proposed strategy used new lexical and semantic matching for finding the correspondence entities. In the semantic approach we use the electronic lexical database, ConceptNet for identifying the similar entities and create similarity matrices according to that. We evaluate the proposed measure using standard methods of precision and recall, tested on a well-known benchmark and also compared to other algorithms presented in the paper. The experimental results show the proposed algorithm is effective and outperforms other algorithms.

for their valuable guidance, sympathy and cooperation and finally help for providing necessary facilities and sources during the entire period of this project. We wish to convey my sincere gratitude to the faculty of Computer Science Engineering Department who have enlightened me during my studies. The facilities and cooperation received from the technical staff of Computer Science Engg. Dept. is thankfully acknowledged. We express our thanks to all those who helped me in one way or other. Last, but not least, we would like to thank the authors of various research articles and book that referred to.

Background and Objectives Although it has become standard to include the views of older people when assessing their well-being, most existing methods are ill-suited to estimate the relative importance of well-being dimensions. This article investigates the potential of the factorial survey method to estimate the relative importance of six well-being dimensions (health, income, social relations, leisure, engaging activities, and religion) based on the views of older people themselves. Research Design and Methods We implemented a factorial survey in a repeated survey experiment among 800 older adults in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium). We performed several within-sample test–retests to investigate the consistency of the estimated coefficients over time (i.e., temporal reliability). In addition, we tested the feasibility of the factorial survey by studying two indicators of cognitive load: response time and response consistency. Results We estimated the relative ...

Forecasting volcanic ash atmospheric pathways is of utmost importance for aviation. Volcanic ash can interfere with aircraft navigational instruments and can damage engine parts. Early warning systems, activated after volcanic eruptions can alleviate the impacts on aviation by providing forecasts of the volcanic ash plume dispersion. The quality of these short-term forecasts is subject to the accuracy of the meteorological wind fields used for the initialization of regional models. Here, we use wind profiling data from the first high spectral resolution lidar in space, Aeolus, to examine the impact of measured wind fields on regional NWP and subsequent volcanic ash dispersion forecasts, focusing on the case of Etna’s eruption on March 2021. The results from this case study demonstrate a significant improvement of the volcanic ash simulation when using Aeolus-assimilated meteorological fields, with differences in wind speed reaching up to 8 m/s when compared to the control run. When ...

We compare equilibrium allocations in directed search models where prices are determined alternatively by posting and by competing auctions, with the following results. With finite numbers of players, sellers' expected payoffs are higher when all sellers auction than when all sellers post. This difference is largest in the 2-by-2 case, where payoffs to sellers are 1/3 higher if they auction. The difference in the payoffs decreases rapidly with market size and vanishes in the limit "large" economy. When sellers can choose whether to post prices or auction in the 2-by-2- case, all combinations (auction-auction, post-post, and auction-post) can occur in equilibrium if sellers choose mechanism and price simultaneously. However, if sellers choose mechanism before price then the dominant strategy equilibrium has both sellers auctioning.

How much of residual wage dispersion can be explained by an absence of coordination among firms? To answer, we construct a dynamic directed search model with identical workers where firms can create high‐ or low‐productivity jobs and are uncoordinated in their offers to workers, calibrated to the U.S. economy. Workers can exploit ex post opportunities once approached by firms, and can conduct on‐the‐job search. The stationary equilibrium wage distribution is hump‐shaped, skewed significantly to the right, and, with baseline parameters, generates residual dispersion statistics 75–90% of those found empirically. However, the model underestimates the average duration of unemployment.

Given the myriad of journal titles in economics and business administration, scholars can sometimes target the wrong journal. This paper provides a dynamic analysis of the market for academic publications that brings into the picture this type of informational friction. The key modelling device is a paper-tojournal matching function, similar to the matching function traditional in labor economics. An equilibrium is defined as a situation where both editors and authors implement their optimal publication strategies. The model is then solved for the equilibrium submission fee, desk rejection rate and ratio between the number of editors and the number of authors.

This paper develops and structurally estimates a dynamic model of learning in which a firm can acquire information about a worker's ability by observing his performance over time. Ability determines both the profitability of a job and the job-dependent distribution of performance outcomes. Different output signals about a worker's productivity can be generated by the firm by assigning the worker to different jobs. Because of the trade-off between learning and shortrun profit maximization, the firm's optimal information acquisition strategy is the solution to an experimentation problem (a multi-armed Bandit problem with dependent and independent arms). Under the firm's optimal employment policy, the worker is assigned to jobs of decreasing degree of informativeness, as measured by the dispersion in posterior beliefs. The purpose of the analysis is to investigate to what extent uncertainty about ability affects the dynamic pattern of a worker's transition across jobs within a firm, i.e., the timing and job characteristics of a career. To this end the model is structurally estimated using longitudinal data from a single U.S. firm, on the cohorts of managers who enter the firm at the lowest managerial level between 1970 and 1979. Estimation results confirm that a theoretically restricted learning model can succeed in fitting the dynamic profile of the probability of retention and promotion at the major job positions within the firm. The estimated model is then used to compute the firm's value of information and to evaluate the effect on this value, the pattern of job assignments, and on turnover rates of (i) changes in the discount rate, which reflect changes in market interest rates, and (ii) alternative information structures.

We present in this paper, an automatic query translation system in cross-language information retrieval (Arabic-French). For the lexical disambiguation, our system combines between two resources: a bilingual dictionary and a parallel corpus. To select the best translation, our method is based on a correspondence measure between two semantic networks. The first one represents the senses of ambiguous terms of the query. The second one is a semantic network contextually enriched, representing the collection of sentences responding to the query. This collection forms the knowledge base of our disambiguation method and it is obtained by alignment with the relevant sentences in Arabic. The evaluation of the proposed system shows the advantage of the contextual enrichment on the quality of the translation. We obtained a high precision, relatively proportional to the precision provided by the used alignment. Finally, our translation demonstrates its potential by comparing its Bleu score with that of Google translate.

Le NDYP (The New Deal for Young People) est le principal programme d’aide sociale au travail au Royaume-Uni destiné aux chômeurs âgés de 18 à 24 ans recevant une allocation de demandeur d’emploi (JSA) pendant au moins six mois.
L’objectif naturel du programme est d’améliorer l’employabilité à la fois extensive (trouver un emploi) et intensive (emploi durable de haute qualité), tout en acquérant des compétences et de la motivation.
Les principales questions auxquelles répond ce document sont les suivantes : « La politique améliore-t-elle réellement les perspectives d’emploi des jeunes ? » et « Les effets de la politique perdurent-ils sur différentes cohortes ? ».

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This paper investigates the determinants of human capital investment in the form of formal training (off-the-job training) and estimates effects of this investment on productivity using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. We use data from a survey of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam (completed in 2010) with detailed information about training and several firm characteristics. Our estimates reveal that investment in human capital currently does not have the considerable contribution to the improvement in productivity of SMEs. This result does not support the universalistic perspective in strategic human resource management (SHRM) theoretical model.

Our aim in 'Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness?' was to call attention to some problematic assumptions of one widespread approach to investigating the relation between consciousness and the brain-the research programme based on trying to find neural correlates of the contents of consciousness (content-NCCs). Our aim was not to cast doubt on the importance of neuroscientific research on consciousness in general (contrary to Baars's impresssion). Nor was it to engage in philosophical debates far removed from the concerns of scientists (as McLaughlin & Bartlett may think). Rather, it was to target some problematic assumptions of a particular empirical research programme, and by bringing them to light, to suggest that there may be other, more profitable ways to investigate the contribution of brain processes to conscious experience than searching for content NCCs. Most of the commentators (Bayne, Freeman, Hardcastle, Haynes & Rees, Hohwy & Frith, Metzinger, Myin, Roy, Searle, Van Gulick), though certainly not all (Baars, Jack & Prinz, McLaughlin & Bartlett) seem to have read us this way, and we are grateful for their critical reflections on our article. In this Authors' Reply, we cannot respond in detail to every point raised by the commentators, so we shall limit ourselves to addressing the most important issues that we see arising from the commentaries collectively. I: The NCC Research Programme Most neuroscientists believe that experience happens in the brain. For every experience, it is assumed, there is a neural process whose occurrence is sufficient for that experience. Moreover, most scientists assume that if we could understand what is going on at the neural substrate of an experience, then we would understand how the brain's action produces states of consciousness.

We introduce a framework based on Description Logics, which can be used to encode and solve decision problems in terms of combining inference services in DL and utility theory to represent preferences of the agent. The novelty of the approach is that we consider ABoxes as alternatives and weighted concept and role assertions as preferences in terms of possible outcomes. We discuss a relevant use case to show the benefits of the approach from the decision theory point of view.

Financial support of the starting point of this work by INSEE ("Markets and Firm Strategies" Division) is gratefully acknowledged. We thank B. Dormont and the participants at the 19 th Journées de Microéconomie Appliquée (Rennes and Saint-Malo, june 2002) to the GEMMA-LERE seminar (Caen University) and to the EUREQua seminar