MECA: A Multi-agent Environment for Cognitive Agents

Many fully functional multi-agent systems have been developed and put to use over the past twenty years, but few of them have been developed to succesfully facilitate social research through the use of social agents. There are three important difficulties that must be dealt with to successfully create a social system for use in social research. First, the system must have an adaptable agent framework that can successfully make intuitive and deliberative decisions much like a human participant would. Secondly, the system must have a robust architecture that not only ensures its functioning no matter the simulation, but also provides an easily understood interface that researchers can interact with while running their simulations. Finally, the system must be effectively distributed to handle the necessary number of agents that social research requires to obtain meaningful results. This paper presents our work on creating a multi-agent simulation for social agents that overcomes these three difficulties

Ethics, Online Learning and Stakeholder Responsibility for a Code of Conduct in Higher Education

The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues related to the code of ethics in online learning, and responsibilities of students, faculty, and administrators. Students must recognize the ethical imperatives of online learning, and faculty and administrators should enforce the code of ethics requirements consistently, and effectively. How does a professor know that the student who enrolled in the course is the same as the one doing the work online from a distant location? Does the administration explain the mechanisms for dealing with infringements such as plagiarism, and the consequences? Should Professors teach about ethical behavior regardless of the discipline? Do professors teaching online classes use state of the art software to detect ethical misdemeanors in students’ work? Should professors who suspect student dishonesty confront and report those students. The questions are simple, and the reader would assume that institutions of higher education have addressed them all. However, have these institutions addressed these issues as effectively as they should? Students cheat in assignments and examinations, and faculty and administrators are too busy to enforce consequences in codes of ethics. There is a need to discuss these issues from time to time to safeguard the integrity of online teaching and learning. The discussion is organized in the following order – introduction, student responsibilities for ethical behavior in online learning, assessing student work, student discussions, responsibilities of faculty and administrators, disciplinary action committees, and conclusion

Using Discrete System Simulation to Model and Illustrate Lean Production Concepts

Lean production systems are certainly not a new concept in the manufacturing industry. However, there are still a great number of production associates that do not yet have a true understanding of lean because the lean concepts have never been adequately demonstrated to them. Instead, lean training is often reserved for production management, and the results are merely forced upon production operators during lean implementation events. Lack of proper training causes a lack of understanding, which prevents the associate from buying in to the implementation. Without associate buy-in, a worthy project can easily fall short of its potential. Organizations must find a balance somewhere between sending every production associate to a full lean training course, which would be cost prohibitive, and the opposite extreme of imposing lean processes without providing any explanation whatsoever. A solution must be found that can convey the key tenets of lean quickly and effectively. Written or oral training will not always get the complete message across, or if it is fully expounding, then it is not typically concise. For this reason, the prospect of developing a set of animated simulations that would demonstrate lean concepts both quantitatively and visually was investigated. The purpose of this research project, and for that matter this paper, is not to serve in itself as a comprehensive introduction to lean manufacturing concepts, but rather to provide a means to better illustrate some of the waste elimination principles of lean to production associates to encourage understanding and buy-in. For the purposes of this paper, it will be assumed that the reader has already had an introduction to lean manufacturing concepts

BREAKING THE SILENCE HYMNS AND FOLK SONGS IN O. E. RØLVAAG\u27S IMMIGRANT TRILOGY

In an essay written in 1933 Einar Haugen briefly mentions that RØlvaag\u27s most delicate observations take the form of music, and rhythmic sound becomes to him the highest form of beauty. Haugen refers merely to the sonorous qualities of the prairie and never delves into the songs-both Norwegian folk songs and hymns-that surface through O. E. RØlvaag\u27s immigrant trilogy. Since 1933, critics have explored a multitude of themes related to Giants in the Earth, Peder Victorious, and Their Father\u27s God, and much attention has been given to the issue of cultural integrity as espoused by RØlvaag. Language, religion, and folklore often stand as the three primary focal points of cultural identity for critics of his novels, while music is mentioned only in passing, as a subset of religious folklore. But the music within the text-both its tradition and its lyrics-effectively unites language, religion, and folklore to communicate more concisely RØlvaag\u27s feelings concerning cultural identity while simultaneously mirroring thematic and character developments within the novels

The Impact of Coaching On The Leadership Practicum Process

A challenge exists to fully utilize practicum experiential learning due to the nature of a practicum and lack of adequate supervision and guided reflection. Students engaged in leadership practicums apply theoretical concepts and models while advancing their personal leadership. Often, students could obtain a more thorough learning experience if guided by a coach who asks critical questions and creates a venue for more in-depth self-reflecting. This paper discusses the impact coaching has on undergraduate leadership practicums and the benefits students can gain from the guidance provided by leadership coaches. A practical application provided a means to qualitatively evaluate the benefits of coaching during leadership practicums while highlighting the resources needed and limitations

The Magic Flute

Program listing performers and works performe

Processing of endogenous pre-mRNAs in association with SC-35 domains is gene specific

Analysis of six endogenous pre-mRNAs demonstrates that localization at the periphery or within splicing factor-rich (SC-35) domains is not restricted to a few unusually abundant pre-mRNAs, but is apparently a more common paradigm of many protein-coding genes. Different genes are preferentially transcribed and their RNAs processed in different compartments relative to SC-35 domains. These differences do not simply correlate with the complexity, nuclear abundance, or position within overall nuclear space. The distribution of spliceosome assembly factor SC-35 did not simply mirror the distribution of individual pre-mRNAs, but rather suggested that individual domains contain both specific pre-mRNA(s) as well as excess splicing factors. This is consistent with a multifunctional compartment, to which some gene loci and their RNAs have access and others do not. Despite similar molar abundance in muscle fiber nuclei, nascent transcript trees of highly complex dystrophin RNA are cotranscriptionally spliced outside of SC-35 domains, whereas posttranscriptional tracks of more mature myosin heavy chain transcripts overlap domains. Further analyses supported that endogenous pre-mRNAs exhibit distinct structural organization that may reflect not only the expression and complexity of the gene, but also constraints of its chromosomal context and kinetics of its RNA metabolism

Should college education play a significant role in teaching students about ethics?

Abstract A ten question survey was administered to a medium size university in the Midwest. The responses were fashioned in a 5-item Likert Scale ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. The results were interpreted by SPSS and relationships, frequencies, and descriptive statistics were drawn from the results of this program. The purpose of this study was to investigate the findings of this survey that indicated that one's education institution should be responsible for ethics training and whether one's sex or race would determine their stand on ethics education. Several items of interest were derived from this study including science and engineering as the only discipline that indicated ethical training could be achieved before one enters university life as indicated in the appendices