The First Battle of Ypres was a battle of the First World War, fought on the Western Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. The battle was part of the First Battle of Flanders, in which German, Belgian armies and the British Expeditionary Force fought from Arras in France to Nieuport on the Belgian coast, from 10 October to mid-November; the battles at Ypres began at the end of the Race to the Sea, reciprocal attempts by the German and Franco-British armies to advance past the northern flank of their opponents. North of Ypres, the fighting continued in the Battle of the Yser, between the German 4th Army, the Belgian army and French marines; the fighting has been divided into five stages, an encounter battle from 19 to 21 October, the Battle of Langemarck from 21 to 24 October, the battles at La Bassée and Armentières to 2 November, coincident with more Allied attacks at Ypres and the Battle of Gheluvelt, a fourth phase with the last big German offensive, which culminated at the Battle of Nonne Bosschen on 11 November local operations which faded out in late November.
Brigadier-General James Edmonds, the British official historian, wrote in the History of the Great War, that the II Corps battle at La Bassée could be taken as separate but that the battles from Armentières to Messines and Ypres, were better understood as one battle in two parts, an offensive by III Corps and the Cavalry Corps from 12 to 18 October against which the Germans retired and an offensive by the German 6th Army and 4th Army from 19 October to 2 November, which from 30 October, took place north of the Lys, when the battles of Armentières and Messines merged with the Battles of Ypres. Attacks by the BEF the Belgians and the French Eighth Army in Belgium made little progress beyond Ypres; the German 4th and 6th Armies took small amounts of ground at great cost to both sides, during the Battle of the Yser and further south at Ypres. General Erich von Falkenhayn, head of the Oberste Heeresleitung tried a limited offensive to capture Ypres and Mont Kemmel, from 19 October to 22 November.
Neither side had moved forces to Flanders fast enough to obtain a decisive victory and by November both sides were exhausted. The armies were short of ammunition, suffering from low morale and some infantry units refused orders; the autumn battles in Flanders had become static, attrition operations, unlike the battles of manoeuvre in the summer. French and Belgian troops in improvised field defences, repulsed German attacks for four weeks. From 21 to 23 October, German reservists had made mass attacks at Langemarck, with losses of up to 70 percent, to little effect. Warfare between mass armies, equipped with the weapons of the Industrial Revolution and its developments, proved to be indecisive, because field fortifications neutralised many classes of offensive weapon; the defensive use of artillery and machine guns, dominated the battlefield and the ability of the armies to supply themselves and replace casualties prolonged battles for weeks. Thirty-four German divisions fought in the Flanders battles, against twelve French, nine British and six Belgian, along with marines and dismounted cavalry.
Falkenhayn reconsidered German strategy over the winter, because Vernichtungsstrategie and a dictated peace against France and Russia had been shown to be beyond German resources. Falkenhayn intended to detach Russia or France from the Allied coalition by diplomatic as well as military action. A strategy of attrition would make the cost of the war too great for the Allies, until one made a separate peace; the remaining belligerents would have to negotiate or face the Germans concentrated on the remaining front, which would be sufficient to obtain a decisive victory. On 9 October, the First German offensive against Warsaw began with the battles of Warsaw and Ivangorod. Four days Przemyśl was relieved by the advancing Austro-Hungarians and the Battle of Chyrow 13 October – 2 November) began in Galicia. Czernowitz in Bukovina was re-occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army on 22 August and lost again to the Russian army on 28 October. On 29 October, the Ottoman Empire commenced hostilities against Russia, when Turkish warships bombarded Odessa and Theodosia.
Next day Stanislau in Galicia was taken by Russian forces and the Serbian army began a retreat from the line of the Drina. On 4 November, the Russian army seized Azap. Britain and France declared war on Turkey on 5 November and next day, Keupri-Keni in Armenia was captured, during the Bergmann Offensive by the Russian army. On 10 October, Przemysl was surrounded again by the Russian army. Keupri-Keni was recaptured by the Ottoman army on 14 November, the Sultan proclaimed Jihad, next day the Battle of Cracow began and the Second Russian Invasion of North Hungary commenced; the Second German Offensive against Warsaw opened with the Battle of Łódź. The Great Retreat was a long withdrawal by the Franco-British armies to the Marne, from 24 August – 28 September 1914, after the success of the German armies in the Battle of the Frontiers. After the defeat of the French Fifth Army at the Battle of Charleroi and the BEF in the Battle of Mons, both armies made a rapid retreat to avoid envelopment. A counter-offensive by the French and the BEF at the First Battle of Guise, failed to end the Ger
Katia Sycara is a professor in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally known for her research in artificial intelligence in the fields of negotiation, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. She directs the Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, she serves as academic advisor for PhD students at both Robotics Institute and Tepper School of Business. Born in Greece, she went to the United States to pursue advanced education through various scholarships, including a Fulbright, she received a B. S. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University, M. S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Ph. D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Aegean in 2004. Sycara is a pioneer in the field of semantic web, case-based reasoning, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, she has authored or co-authored more than 700 technical papers dealing with multi-agent systems, software agents, web services, semantic web, human–computer interaction, human-robot interaction, case-based reasoning and the application of these techniques to crisis action planning, manufacturing, healthcare management, financial planning and e-commerce.
She has led multimillion-dollar research effort funded by DARPA, NASA, AFOSR, ONR, AFRL, NSF and industry. Through an ONR MURI program and though the COABS DARPA program, Prof. Sycara's group has developed the RETSINA multiagent infrastructure, a toolkit that enables the development of heterogeneous software agents that can dynamically coordinate in open information environments. RETSINA has been used in multiple applications including supporting human joint mission teams for crisis response. Sycara is one of the contributors to the development of OWL-S, the Darpa-sponsored language for Semantic Web services, as well as matchmaking and brokering software for agent discovery, service integration and semantic interoperation. Sycara is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Sycara is the recipient of the 2002 ACM/SIGART Agents Research Award, she is the recipient of the 2015 Group Decision and Negotiation Award of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences GDN Section for her outstanding contributions to the field of group decision and negotiation.
According to the citation of the award: Katia Sycara is acknowledged as one of the leading researchers in the field of autonomous software agents and in particular on problems related to joint decision making and negotiations of such agents. Her work is characterized by a unique combination of methods from Artificial Intelligence and research on human negotiations, thus has contributed to significant advances in both fields. Sycara's robot teams have won multiple international awards. In the 2005 Robocup Urban Search and Rescue held in Atlanta, her team won the First-in-Class Award for Autonomy, the First-in-Class Award for Mobility. Two years again in Atlanta, she led another team that became a world champions in the 2007 International Robocup Search and Rescue Simulation League Competition. In 2008, her robotic team placed third in the Worldwide Robocup Championship Competition in the Urban Search and Rescue Virtual robots League held in Beijing, China. In 2005, she received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Sycara is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. She is a member of the Editorial Board, the Kluwer book series on "Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies and Simulated Organizations", she was on the Editorial Board of "IEEE Intelligent Systems and their Applications", "AI in Engineering". She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of France Telecom, 2003-2009, she was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Foundation of Multiagent Systems, founding member of the Semantic Web Science Association. Sycara served as the program chair of the Second International Semantic Web Conference. Homepage The Intelligent Software Agents Lab Robotics Institute International computing e
Sir Roger Spencer Jones OBE FLSW is a British researcher and manager in the pharmaceutical industry. He has been a board member of many public bodies. Roger Spencer Jones was born on 2 July 1943 and brought up in a small, predominantly Welsh speaking village in the Dee valley, he was educated at the Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff. After his B. Pharm he completed his professional qualifications and went to Bradford Management School, where he gained his MSc, he joined the Wellcome Foundation and worked in Consumer Products Marketing before taking up a line management job in Wellcome Nigeria. He continued in line management in a regional capacity in West Africa and the Middle East, he became responsible for Eastern Europe and the Communist Bloc where he became versed in technology transfer. He was appointed Marketing Planning Manager and was a member of the corporate R&D committees, he left Wellcome in 1982 to establish his own Contract Development company, Penn Pharmaceuticals Ltd, which became one of the leading international companies in this field.
This he sold to the management team in 1999. He realised the importance of staff training at the leading edge of technology and became active in the s and was Chairman of Gwent TEC and TEC Southeast Wales, he was appointed to be one of the Governors of the BBC in 1996. He was appointed Chairman of the Welsh Development Agency. With but little access to capital funding, he recognised the need for Contract Development in the pharmaceutical industry and was instrumental in bringing seventeen molecules into clinical use on behalf of clients, his unpublished work on thalidomide and his understanding of the effects of polymorphic variation on bioavailability assisted Cellgene's development of the molecule. He was the developer of high specification activated charcoal for the treatment of acute poisoning by establishing an intestinal dialysis using the gut wall as a semipermeable membrane, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2009, he became a "Qualified Person" under EEC regulations in 1991.
He has established several successful life science companies including ZooBiotic Ltd and Phytovation Ltd. He received an OBE in 1996, was knighted in 2005 "for services to business and training in Wales", he received an honorary DSc from the University of Wales Cardiff in 2000. Sir Roger is a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and in July 2010 he was appointed as its inaugural Treasurer. Pro Chancellor and Chair of Swansea University Trustee of the National Botanic Garden of Wales Chairman of Carmarthenshire Heritage Trust Trustee of Carmarthenshire Rivers Trust President of YMCA in Wales Governor of Christ College, Brecon Nature conservation. Club: The Athenaeum Roger Jones: Executive Profile and Biography, Bloomberg