This paper describes ARLO, a representation language loosely modelled after Greiner and Lenant's RLL-1. ARLO is a structure-based representation language for describing structure-based representation languages, including itself. A given representation language is specified in ARLO by a collection of structures describing how its descriptions are interpreted, defaulted, and verified. This high level description is compiles into lisp code and ARLO structures whose interpretation fulfills the specified semantics of the representation. In addition, ARLO itself- as a representation language for expressing and compiling partial and complete language specifications- is described and interpreted in the same manner as the language it describes and implements. This self-description can be extended of modified to expand or alter the expressive power of ARLO's initial configuration. Languages which describe themselves like ARLO- provide powerful mediums for systems which perform automatic self-modification, optimization, debugging, or documentation. AI systems implemented in such a self-descriptive language can reflect on their own capabilities and limitations, applying general learning and problem solving strategies to enlarge or alleviate them.

In previous work, we have investigated privacy-preserving publishing of Description Logic (DL) ontologies in a setting where the knowledge about individuals to be published is an EL instance store, and both the privacy policy and the possible background knowledge of an attacker are represented by concepts of the DL EL. We have introduced the notions of compliance of a concept with a policy and of safety of a concept for a policy, and have shown how, in the context mentioned above, optimal compliant (safe) generalizations of a given EL concept can be computed. In the present paper, we consider a modified setting where we assume that the background knowledge of the attacker is given by a DL different from the one in which the knowledge to be published and the safety policies are formulated. In particular, we investigate the situations where the attacker’s knowledge is given by an FL0 or an FLE concept. In both cases, we show how optimal safe generalizations can be computed. Whereas the complexity of this computation is the same (ExpTime) as in our previous results for the case of FL0, it turns out to be actually lower (polynomial) for the more expressive DL FLE.

This thesis concerns the function of fiction in the creation of an historical myth and the uses that that myth is put to in a number of periods and differing régimes. Its case study is the popular myth of August the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, as a man of extraordinary sexual prowess and the ruler over a magnificent, but frivolous, court in Dresden. It examines the origins of this myth in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and its development up to the twenty-first century in German history writing, fiction, art, and media. The image August created for himself in the art, literature, and festivities of his court as an ideal ruler of extremely broad cultural and intellectual interests and high political ambitions and abilities linked him closely with eighteenth-century notions of galanterie. This narrowed the scope of his image later, especially as nineteenth-century historians selected fictional sources and interpreted them as historical sources to present August as an immoral political failure. Although nineteenth-century popular writers exhibited a more varied response to August’s historical role, the negative historiography continued to resonate in later history writing. Ironically, the myth of August the Strong represented an opportunity in the GDR in creating and fostering a sense of identity, first as a socialist state with historical and cultural links to the east, and then by examining Prusso-Saxon history as a uniquely (East) German issue. Finally, the thesis examines the practice of historical re-enactment as it is currently employed in a number of variations on German TV and in literature, and its impact on historical knowledge. The thesis concludes that, while narrative forms are necessary to history and fiction, and fiction is a necessary part of presenting history, inconsistent combinations of the two can undermine the projects of both.

Ce travail de thèse s'inscrit dans le cadre du projet < personnalisation des environnements informatiques pour l'apprentissage humain (EIAH) > financé par la Région Rhône-Alpes. La personnalisation des EIAH est essentiellement dépendante de la capacité à produire des traces pertinentes et exploitables des activités des apprenants interagissant avec un EIAH. Dans ce domaine, l'exploitation des traces relève explicitement plusieurs problématiques allant de sa représentation de manière normalisée et intelligible à son traitement et interprétation en temps différé ou en temps réel au moment même de l'apprentissage. La multiplication des pratiques et des usages des traces requiert des outils génériques pour soutenir leurs exploitations. L'objectif de cette thèse est de définir les fondements théoriques de tels outils génériques permettant l'exploitation des traces d'interaction. Ceci nous a amené à définir la notion de Systèmes à Base de Trace modélisées : une classe de systèmes à base de connaissances facilitant le raisonnement et l'exploitation des traces modélisées. L'approche théorique proposée pour construire de tels systèmes s'articule autour de deux contributions : (1) La définition d'un cadre conceptuel définissant les concepts, l'architecture et les services mobilisés par les SBT. (2) La définition d'un cadre formel pour les systèmes à base de traces modélisées. Plus précisément, la proposition d'un langage pour l'interrogation et la transformation de trace modélisées à base de règles permettant des évaluations ponctuelles et continues. La sémantique formelle de ce langage est définie sous forme d'une théorie des modèles et d'une théorie de point fixe, deux formalismes habituellement utilisés pour décrire la sémantique formelle des langages de représentation de connaissances / This thesis is funded by the Rhône-Alpes Region as a part of the project < Personalisation of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Systems >. Personalising TEL Systems is, above all, dependent on the capacity to produce relevant and exploitable traces of individual or collaborative learning activities. In this field, exploiting interaction traces addresses several problems ranging from its representation in a normalised and intelligible manner to its processing and interpretation in continuous way during the ongoing TEL activities. The proliferation of trace-based exploitations raises the need of generic tools to support their representation and exploitation. The main objective of this thesis is to define the theoretical foundations of such generic tools. To do that, we define the notion of Trace-Based System (TBS) as a kind of Knowledge-based system whose main source of knowledge is a set of trace of user-system interactions. This thesis investigates practical and theoretical issues related to TBS, covering the spectrum from concepts, services and architecture involved by such TBS (conceptual framework) to language design over declarative semantics (formal framework). The central topic of our framework is the development of a high-level trace transformation language supporting deductive rules as an abstraction and reasoning mechanism for traces. The declarative semantics for such language is defined by a (Tarski-style) model theory with accompanying fixpoint theory