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Simple Summary The history of veterinary medicine starts from ancient times. The lack of professional veterinarian education and institutional veterinary services from the Middle Ages to modernity resulted in, partially, a basic realization of these duties by blacksmiths, herders, butcher guilds, municipal doctors, and executioners. Therefore, the archaeological excavations carried out at gallows in three towns of Lower Silesia, together with the archaeozoological analysis of unearthed animal skeletal remains, brought valuable information on human–animal–environment relationships in the past. This includes the role of an executioner or a knacker (in animal population control), the utilization of stray animals, and the use of animal products accessible in a knacker’s yard. This work highlights the history of early modern towns that attempted to solve the problems surrounding the lack of veterinary care, before the rise of modern professional veterinary education, and the introduction of the veterinarian profession in modern human society. The results show that the majority of investigated animal skeletal remains came from adult and healthy animals, and after animal death, some parts of animal bodies were used (e.g., leather, fat, bones) by knackers as sources of additional profits, but the main sanitary problems could not be permanently eliminated. Abstract In the past, executioners played an important role in the legal system. Besides sentence executions, they also worked as dogcatchers (i.e., eliminating stray animals or cadavers of dead animals from towns), and were responsible for sanitary conditions within their towns and closest neighborhoods. Archaeological explorations of gallows in the towns of Lower Silesia (Poland) provide evidence of such activities, including animal skeletal remains. Archaeozoological analysis of these materials from the towns Kamienna Góra (Landeshut), Złotoryja (Goldberg), and Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg) are the subjects of this study. Our work also stresses the nature of the executioner’s profession in animal health control and town hygiene maintenance before the development of modern veterinary services. The results show significant differences in the frequency of species and distribution of anatomical elements in accessible assemblages compared with animal skeletal remains unearthed in typical waste pits or classical inhumation, allowing the assumption that the animals were anatomically adults, and their health statuses were generally good. The dominant species, equids and dogs, were represented by skeletal remains, with the predominance of less valuable body parts (distal parts of appendices, caudal parts of the vertebral column). The fragmentation of accessible bone assemblages narrows the ability of larger conclusions (i.e., minimum number of individual estimations). The work enlightens the complex role of executioners pertaining to the hygiene of early modern town communities, a role later replaced by professional veterinarians with all of the consequences of the transition process.

In this paper, a new machine learning algorithm for multi-agent systems is introduced. The algorithm is based on associative arrays, thus it becomes less complex and more efficient substitute of artificial neural networks and Bayesian networks, which is confirmed by performance measurements. Implementation of machine learning algorithm in multi-agent system for aided design of selected control systems allowed to improve the performance by reducing time of processing requests, that were previously acknowledged and stored in learning module. This article contains an insight into different machine learning algorithms and includes the classification of learning techniques regarding the criteria depicted by multi-agent systems. The publication is also an attempt to provide the answer for a question posted by Shoham, Powers and Grenager: “If multi-agent learning is the answer, what is the question?”

This three-volume set of books presents advances in the development of concepts and techniques in the area of new technologies and contemporary information system architectures. It guides readers through solving specific research and analytical problems to obtain useful knowledge and business value from the data. Each chapter provides an analysis of a specific technical problem, followed by the numerical analysis, simulation and implementation of the solution to the problem. The books constitute the refereed proceedings of the 2017 38th International Conference “Information Systems Architecture and Technology,” or ISAT 2017, held on September 17–19, 2017 in Szklarska Poręba, Poland. The conference was organized by the Computer Science and Management Systems Departments, Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. The papers have been organized into topical parts: Part I— includes discourses on topics including, but not limited to, Artificial Intelligence Methods, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Big Data, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Knowledge Based Management, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and High Performance Computing, Distributed Computer Systems, Content Delivery Networks, and Service Oriented Computing. Part II—addresses topics including, but not limited to, System Modelling for Control, Recognition and Decision Support, Mathematical Modelling in Computer System Design, Service Oriented Systems and Cloud Computing and Complex Process Modeling. Part III—deals with topics including, but not limited to, Modeling of Manufacturing Processes, Modeling an Investment Decision Process, Management of Innovation, Management of Organization.

This report presents canid cranial skeletal pathology from an excavation associated with the Przeworsk culture (III c. BC – V c. AD). The dog skull, an intentional inhumation, was dated to the Roman influence and the Migration period (I – V c. AD. The dog was a relatively large animal with a shoulder height calculated as approximately 60 cm. Massive bone changes localized on the facial surface of the left maxilla required a multistage diagnostic protocol. In addition to traditional macroscopic and morphometric evaluation, we used modern diagnostic imaging techniques such as digital radiography, computed tomography and 3D reconstruction. These, along with histopathological studies, allowed us to identify a primary malignant bone tumor: telangiectatic osteosarcoma.

A design process and accepted solutions made during this process, often base on non-formalized knowledge, obtained from designer (expert) intuition and practice. There are no formalized rules assuring the correctness of design solutions. The analysis of design process of ship automation, including ship power system, shows that this process can be supported by application of the artificial intelligence elements. The article presents two artificial intelligence technologies of computer-aided design regarding ship’s power subsystems automation (expert system and the multi-agent environment). The paper discusses applications developed using both approaches and presents their performance comparison concerning requests processing efficiency.