This book describes research performed in the context of trust/distrust propagation and aggregation, and their use in recommender systems. This is a hot research topic with important implications for various application areas. The main innovative contributions of the work are: -new bilattice-based model for trust and distrust, allowing for ignorance and inconsistency -proposals for various propagation and aggregation operators, including the analysis of mathematical properties -Evaluation of these operators on real data, including a discussion on the data sets and their characteristics. -A novel approach for identifying controversial items in a recommender system -An analysis on the utility of including distrust in recommender systems -Various approaches for trust based recommendations (a.o. base on collaborative filtering), an in depth experimental analysis, and proposal for a hybrid approach -Analysis of various user types in recommender systems to optimize bootstrapping of cold start users.

This book describes research performed in the context of trust/distrust propagation and aggregation, and their use in recommender systems. This is a hot research topic with important implications for various application areas. The main innovative contributions of the work are: -new bilattice-based model for trust and distrust, allowing for ignorance and inconsistency -proposals for various propagation and aggregation operators, including the analysis of mathematical properties -Evaluation of these operators on real data, including a discussion on the data sets and their characteristics. -A novel approach for identifying controversial items in a recommender system -An analysis on the utility of including distrust in recommender systems -Various approaches for trust based recommendations (a.o. base on collaborative filtering), an in depth experimental analysis, and proposal for a hybrid approach -Analysis of various user types in recommender systems to optimize bootstrapping of cold start users.

This book describes how to use expert knowledge-which is often formulated by using imprecise (fuzzy) words from a natural language. In the 1960s, Zadeh designed special "fuzzy" techniques for such use. In the 1980s, fuzzy techniques started controlling trains, elevators, video cameras, rice cookers, car transmissions, etc. Now, combining fuzzy with neural, genetic, and other intelligent methods leads to new state-of-the-art results: in aerospace industry (from drones to space flights), in mobile robotics, in finances (predicting the value of crypto-currencies), and even in law enforcement (detecting counterfeit banknotes, detecting online child predators and in creating explainable AI systems). The book describes these (and other) applications-as well as foundations and logistics of fuzzy techniques. This book can be recommended to specialists-both in fuzzy and in various application areas-who will learn latest techniques and their applications, and to students interested in innovative ideas.

This book comprehensively studies fuzzy temporal and spatial information, starting from the basics on fuzzy set theory and temporal/spatial reasoning, the development of a new model to represent fuzzy temporal/spatial information, the study of efficient and complete reasoning algorithms, and their application in an information retrieval context.

This useful volume presents the first approach that goes beyond merely representing information, by thoroughly addressing a variety of reasoning tasks. It also focuses on applications in the domain of information retrieval, and demonstrating the practical importance of the proposed framework.