Search

This paper briefly describes AIF-EL, an OWL2-EL compliant ontology for the Argument Interchange Format. Publisher PDF

Argument technologies started a few decades ago as a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence, in which philosophical theories of arguments were leveraged to handle key computational challenges, such as the modelling of non-monotonic reasoning and the design of robust coordination protocols among large numbers of autonomous agents. This soon led to several theoretical breakthroughs, which in turn fostered the development of argument-based applications in a variety of domains, e.g., education, healthcare, policy making, and risk management. As a result, argument technologies have now become a thriving interdisciplinary enterprise, with its own variety of sub-fields and methodologies. This volume offers an updated overview of the current state-of-the-art in this research area, looking at both novel theoretical insights (Part I), new applications specifically tailored for the Social Web (Part II), and innovative tools designed to serve key purposes in various domains (Part III).

Since the OpenLaws portal is envisioned as an open environment for collaboration between legal professionals, recommendation will eventually become a collaborative filtering problem. This paper addresses the cold start problem for such a portal, where initial recommendations will have to be given, while collaborative filtering data is initially too sparse to produce recommendations. We implemented a hybrid recommendation approach, starting with a latent dirichlet allocation topic model, and progressing to collaborative filtering, and critically evaluated it. Main conclusion is that giving recommendations, even bad ones, will influence user selections.

Contains fulltext : 161870.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

Online social networks (OSN) have become a widespread phenomenon used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. OSNs such as Facebook are used to, for example, tell friends one’s personal expe-riences, and users report merits such as enjoyment and establishing social relationships. However, violation of the user’s privacy by OSNs is considered by many to be a major problem. As a response to this OSNs have implemented features that support users in controlling their privacy. What is still un-clear is if such privacy controls influence online disclosure behavior by users of OSNs. While previous research has focused on the relation between privacy concern and online disclosure or between priva-cy concern and privacy control use, existing research on the relation between privacy control use and online disclosure remains inconclusive. The current study aims to fill this gap using a research model that includes relations between privacy concern, knowledge about privacy controls, use of privacy controls and online disclosure. We present an online survey to collect data among Facebook users. Structural equation modelling is then proposed to test our hypotheses. With our research we aim to provide more insight in the possible role of use of privacy controls in online disclosure behavior.

A growing number of Dutch court judgments is openly distributed on Rechtspraak.nl. Currently, many documents are not marked up or marked up only very sparsely, hampering our ability to process these documents automatically. In this paper, we explore the problem of automatic assignment of a section structure to these texts. We experiment with Linear-Chain Conditional Random Fields to label text elements with their roles in the document (text, title or numbering). In this subtask, we report F1 scores of around 0.91 for tagging section titles, and around 1.0 for the other types. Given a list of labels, we experiment with Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars to generate a parse tree which represents the section hierarchy of a document. In this task, we report an F1 score of 0.92.

When reasoning about the facts of a case, we typically use stories to link the known events into coherent wholes. One way to establish coherence is to appeal to past examples, real or fictitious. These examples can be chosen and critiqued using the case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques from the AI and Law literature. In this paper, we apply these techniques to factual stories, assessing a story about the facts using precedents. We thus show how factual and legal reasoning can be combined in a CBR model.

Human papillomavirus type 16 is commonly implicated in cervical cancers. The viral genome encodes potential targets like the oncoprotein E7, expressed in transformed cells but thought to represent a poorly immunogenic antigen. We describe in this work a DNA-based vaccination protocol aimed at inducing an efficient anti-E7 immune response in vivo. Plasmids allowing the expression of the E7 protein in distinct cellular compartments were generated and assayed in an in vivo model of tumor growth. Our data demonstrate that mice vaccinated with a plasmid encoding for an E7 protein fused to a domain of the MHC class II-associated invariant chain (IiE7) were protected against tumor challenge. Mice immunized against an ubiquitinated form of E7 (Ub(Ala)E7) failed to control tumor growth. Protection induced by IiE7 was correlated with the development of CD8+ CTL and required the presence of CD4+ cells. In vitro studies confirmed that the IiE7 fusion protein was expressed at high levels in the endosomal compartment of transfected cells, while the natural and the ubiquitin-modified form of E7 were mainly nuclear. The present study suggests that an efficient anti-tumor response can be induced in vivo by DNA constructs encoding for E7 protein forms localizing at the endosomal compartment.

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) is a malignancy of mature activated T cells resistant to conventional chemotherapy. The viral transactivator protein Tax plays a critical role in HTLV-I-induced transformation and apoptosis resistance by inducing I kappa B-alpha degradation, resulting in the activation of the NF-kappa Bpathway. In these HTLV-I-transformed cells, arsenic trioxide (As) and interferon (IFN)-alpha synergize to induce cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. We demonstrate that cell death induction is only partly dependent upon caspase activation and is not associated with modulation of bcl-2, bax, or p53 expression. However, combined As and IFN induce the degradation of Tax, associated with an up-regulation of I kappa B-alpha resulting in a sharp decrease in RelA DNA binding nuclear factor (NF)-kappa B complexes because of the cytoplasmic retention of RelA. Taken the role of Tax in HTLV-I-induced transformation, its down-regulation probably accounts for cell death induction through inactivation of the NF-kappa B pathway. Such specific targeting of the viral oncoprotein by As-IFN treatment, reminiscent of As targeting of promyelocytic leukemia/retinoic acid receptor-alpha in acute promyelocytic leukemia, provides strong rational for combined As-IFN therapy in ATL patients. (Blood. 2000;96:2849-2855)

A large number of recombinant of viral and bacterial systems have been engineered as vectors to express foreign genes for vaccination and/or gene therapy. A common problem is the immune response to the vector itself. The presence of anti-vector immune responses may preclude sufficient 'priming' or immunogenicity if pre-existing immune responses are present, or they may impair optimal 'boosting' upon repeated immunization or delivery with the same vector. To circumvent this problem we developed a strategy using different chimeric vectors which share only the expression of common specific antigens desired for immunization. This approach not only has the advantage of avoiding increased anti-vector responses, but allows the use of combinations of vectors which could subsequently present the same or related antigen differently to the immune system as well as at alternative sites to induce the optimal type of immunity against the pathogen of interest.