MULTI AGENT-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL LANDSCAPE (MABEL) - AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SIMULATION MODEL: SOME EARLY ASSESSMENTS

The Multi Agent-Based Environmental Landscape model (MABEL) introduces a Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) systemic methodology, to simulate land use and transformation changes over time and space. Computational agents represent abstract relations among geographic, environmental, human and socio-economic variables, with respect to land transformation pattern changes. A multi-agent environment is developed providing task-nonspecific problem-solving abilities, flexibility on achieving goals and representing existing relations observed in real-world scenarios, and goal-based efficiency. Intelligent MABEL agents acquire spatial expressions and perform specific tasks demonstrating autonomy, environmental interactions, communication and cooperation, reactivity and proactivity, reasoning and learning capabilities. Their decisions maximize both task-specific marginal utility for their actions and joint, weighted marginal utility for their time-stepping. Agent behavior is achieved by personalizing a dynamic utility-based knowledge base through sequential GIS filtering, probability-distributed weighting, joint probability Bayesian correlational weighting, and goal-based distributional properties, applied to socio-economic and behavioral criteria. First-order logics, heuristics and appropriation of time-step sequences employed, provide a simulation-able environment, capable of re-generating space-time evolution of the agents.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)

Knowledge Augmented Machine Learning with Applications in Autonomous Driving: A Survey

The existence of representative datasets is a prerequisite of many successful artificial intelligence and machine learning models. However, the subsequent application of these models often involves scenarios that are inadequately represented in the data used for training. The reasons for this are manifold and range from time and cost constraints to ethical considerations. As a consequence, the reliable use of these models, especially in safety-critical applications, is a huge challenge. Leveraging additional, already existing sources of knowledge is key to overcome the limitations of purely data-driven approaches, and eventually to increase the generalization capability of these models. Furthermore, predictions that conform with knowledge are crucial for making trustworthy and safe decisions even in underrepresented scenarios. This work provides an overview of existing techniques and methods in the literature that combine data-based models with existing knowledge. The identified approaches are structured according to the categories integration, extraction and conformity. Special attention is given to applications in the field of autonomous driving

A framework for assistive communications technology in cross-cultural healthcare

Rural and remote Australian Aboriginal communities suffer seriously adverse life expectancy rates, lifestyle disease complications and hospital treatment needs due to type 2 diabetes. In great part this is due to communications barriers arising from the lack of equitable acculturation within patient-practitioner consultations. This research presents a framework foundation for a computerised patient-practitioner lingua franca. Behavioural and design science ontology development delivers an intercultural patient-practitioner type 2 diabetes assistive communications system, known as P-PAC

Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real

Understanding modes of dwelling: A transdisciplinary approach to phenomenology of landscape

This transdisciplinary PhD addresses the research question: Can some form of phenomenology provide an effective over-arching paradigm for transdisciplinary research in ethnophysiography? Ethnophysiography studies the way people within a language community conceptualise natural landscape, including terms for landscape features and toponyms (placenames). Dwelling involves conceptualisations and affects regarding physical, utilitarian, cultural, spiritual and ethical relationships with landscape. A key achievement is development of an enhanced ethnophysiography case study methodology, supporting the Ethnophysiography Descriptive Model (EDM). Summary phenomenographic tables were prepared from literature reviews of ethnophysiography, transdisciplinarity, phenomenology, concepts of place and relationships with place. The use of tables, summarising key results of literature reviews (via a phenomenographic approach), is integral to the methodology, to operationalize transdisciplinarity. Some tables are utilised in the PTM-ECS, facilitating identification of relevant issues, collection of appropriate data, and hermeneutic analysis processes. To facilitate comparison of landscape terms and toponyms between languages, the EDM was developed and tested. A key contribution is interpretation of the phenomenological concepts of ‘lifeworld’, ‘topology’ and ‘habitus’. Creation of landscape, as place, involves synergistic integration, in a non-deterministic and emergent manner, of the physical attributes of an area of topographic environment (terrain and ecosystem) with the socio-cultural characteristics of a group of people (including linguistic and spiritual aspects). This produces a particular topo-socio-cultural-spiritual mode-of-dwelling (topology). A partial trial of the new methodology is provided, via an ethnophysiography case study with Manyjilyjarra Aboriginal people in Australia’s Western Desert (undertaken by this author with linguist Clair Hill). It demonstrates how the adopted approach facilitates understanding of traditional forms of dwelling and how this relates to Jukurrpa (The Dreaming), the law, lore and social structure of their society. Review of research processes indicates they effectively utilised key features of transdisciplinarity. A summary of the findings, their potential application, a statement of research limitations, and proposals for further research, are provided

Handbook of Mathematical Geosciences

This Open Access handbook published at the IAMG's 50th anniversary, presents a compilation of invited path-breaking research contributions by award-winning geoscientists who have been instrumental in shaping the IAMG. It contains 45 chapters that are categorized broadly into five parts (i) theory, (ii) general applications, (iii) exploration and resource estimation, (iv) reviews, and (v) reminiscences covering related topics like mathematical geosciences, mathematical morphology, geostatistics, fractals and multifractals, spatial statistics, multipoint geostatistics, compositional data analysis, informatics, geocomputation, numerical methods, and chaos theory in the geosciences

Teaching/Learning Physics: Integrating Research into Practice

The GIREP-MPTL International conference on Teaching/Learning Physics: Integrating Research into Practice [GIREP-MPTL 2014] was held from 7 to 12 July 2014 at the University of Palermo, Italy. The conference has been organised by the Groupe International de Recherche sur l’Enseignement de la Physique [GIREP] and the Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning [MPTL] group and it has been sponsored by the International Commission on Physics Education [ICPE] – Commission 14 of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics [IUPAP], the European Physical Society – Physics Education Division [EPS-PED], the Latin American Physics Education Network [LAPEN] and the Società Italiana di Fisica [SIF]. The theme of the conference, Teaching/Learning Physics: Integrating Research into Practice, underlines aspects of great relevance in contemporary science education. In fact, during the last few years, evidence based Physics Education Research provided results concerning the ways and strategies to improve student conceptual understanding, interest in Physics, epistemological awareness and insights for the construction of a scientific citizenship. However, Physics teaching practice seems resistant to adopting adapting these findings to their own situation and new research based curricula find difficulty in affirming and spread, both at school and university levels. The conference offered an opportunity for in-depth discussions of this apparently wide-spread tension in order to find ways to do better. The purpose of the GIREP-MPTL 2014 was to bring together people working in physics education research and in physics education at schools from all over the world to allow them to share research results and exchange their experience. About 300 teachers, educators, and researchers, from all continents and 45 countries have attended the Conference contributing with 177 oral presentations, 15 workshops, 11 symposia, and around 60 poster presentations, together with 11 keynote addresses (general talks). After the conference, 147 papers have been submitted for the GIREP-MPTL 2014 International Conference proceedings. Each paper has been reviewed by at least two reviewers, from countries that are different to those of the authors and on the basis of criteria described on the Conference web site. Papers were subsequently revised by authors according to reviewers’ comments and the accepted papers are reported in this book, divided in 8 Sections on the basis of the keywords suggested by authors. The other book section (actually, the first one) contains the papers that six of the keynote talkers sent for publication in this Proceedings Book. We would like to thank all the authors that contributed with their papers to the realization of this book and all the referees that with their criticism helped authors to improve the quality of the papers

Research on Teaching and Learning In Biology, Chemistry and Physics In ESERA 2013 Conference

This paper provides an overview of the topics in educational research that were published in the ESERA 2013 conference proceedings. The aim of the research was to identify what aspects of the teacher-student-content interaction were investigated frequently and what have been studied rarely. We used the categorization system developed by Kinnunen, Lampiselkä, Malmi and Meisalo (2016) and altogether 184 articles were analyzed. The analysis focused on secondary and tertiary level biology, chemistry, physics, and science education. The results showed that most of the studies focus on either the teacher’s pedagogical actions or on the student - content relationship. All other aspects were studied considerably less. For example, the teachers’ thoughts about the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards the goals and the content, and the teachers’ conceptions of the students’ actions towards achieving the goals were studied only rarely. Discussion about the scope and the coverage of the research in science education in Europe is needed.Peer reviewe