Constraint-Based Personalization For Business Applications

This paper reports on extensions of previous work applying personalization techniques and constraint-based methods within an intelligent agent framework. The Wise Net Inc. has developed an intelligent agent framework specifically for providing advanced scalable collaborative capabilities for easy integration with existing web-enabled enterprise applications. Since the summer of 2001, the author, his colleagues, and his research assistants, have been conducting applied research aimed at discovering the desired personalization models and effects to support collaborative e-business systems. Intelligent agents are being developed to implement these personalization effects through constraint-satisfaction methods and solvers. This paper documents the approach, progress achieved to date, and future directions. This work is being supported by The Wise Net Inc., the BC Advanced Systems Institute (BC ASI), and the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) through the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP).

Visit by the assistant secretary to some North American scientific institutions

Following a visit to the U.S.A. by the Society’s Foreign Secretary JL (then Professor E. D. Adrian) an invitation was received in October 1950 from Dr D. W. Bronk, For.Mem.R.S., President of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., suggesting I should visit Washington and spend some time meeting the staff of the Academy and the National Research Council and give an address on the Royal Society and its relationship to science in the State. The Officers and Council kindly agreed to my acceptance of the invitation and to my suggestion that I should also visit the Canadian National Research Council headquarters at Ottawa. In February 1951 Dr E. W. R. Steacie, F.R.S., Scientific Vice-President of the National Research Council of Canada wrote on behalf of the President, Dr C. J. Mackenzie, F.R.S., inviting me to extend my visit to include most of the universities of Canada where scientific work is being carried out. This further generous invitation was accepted with the warm approval of the Officers and Council and I planned to make the visit to North America in September and October 1951. I made preparations for the visit by acquainting myself with written accounts of scientific organizations, both in the U.S.A. and Canada. In this connexion I found the report of a Royal Commission on the cultural life of Canada a most valuable and interesting document. This Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences 1949-1951 is colloquially known as The Massey Report after the name of the Chairman of the Commission.

Relationship between Laboratory Abrasion Tests and Service Performance

In development work on GR-S commercial recapping compounds originated in 1943 by the Directorate of Mechanical Engineering, Department of National Defence, Ottawa, Canada, in which an attempt was made to correlate road performance with physical properties as determined in the laboratory, it was found that no relationship whatever existed between the results of road tests carried out under the supervision of that directorate and standard laboratory abrasion resistance tests carried out in the Canadian National Research Council Rubber Laboratory at Ottawa. In the laboratory test the sandpaper in the abrasion machine became coated with a smear of tacky viscous material which the air jet was unable to remove. Under these conditions the rubber tends to slide over the sandpaper surface, with relatively little actual abrasion of the rubber. The effect remains even after a considerable overcure of the sample. It was felt that the removal of the tacky viscous material from vulcanized GR-S by extraction might give more reliable abrasion resistance results, inasmuch as, on the road, rubber is constantly coming in contact with a new surface and such viscous material is thus being continually removed as it migrates to the surface of the rubber. From this point of view, then, the tread surface while being abraded on the road may be looked upon as extracted rubber and may be considered as conforming closely to the extracted laboratory specimen.