4,478 research outputs found
Digital Ecosystems: Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures
We view Digital Ecosystems to be the digital counterparts of biological
ecosystems. Here, we are concerned with the creation of these Digital
Ecosystems, exploiting the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems
to evolve high-level software applications. Therefore, we created the Digital
Ecosystem, a novel optimisation technique inspired by biological ecosystems,
where the optimisation works at two levels: a first optimisation, migration of
agents which are distributed in a decentralised peer-to-peer network, operating
continuously in time; this process feeds a second optimisation based on
evolutionary computing that operates locally on single peers and is aimed at
finding solutions to satisfy locally relevant constraints. The Digital
Ecosystem was then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures
originating from theoretical ecology, evaluating its likeness to biological
ecosystems. This included its responsiveness to requests for applications from
the user base, as a measure of the ecological succession (ecosystem maturity).
Overall, we have advanced the understanding of Digital Ecosystems, creating
Ecosystem-Oriented Architectures where the word ecosystem is more than just a
metaphor.Comment: 39 pages, 26 figures, journa
An Autonomous Software Agent for Navy Personnel Work: A Case Study
IDA is an autonomous software agent whose task is to assign a sailor to a new tour of duty at the end of the old. Her task input is most often initiated by an email from the sailor; thereafter she acts completely autonomously. The task requires IDA to access databases, to deliberate, to perform complex constraint satisfaction, and to negotiate with the sailor in natural language. IDA’s architecture and mechanisms are motivated by a variety of computational paradigms and implement a number of cognitive models including the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. IDA is able to interact in depth with sailors in a relatively complex real-world environment involving job requirements, Navy policy, location, travel, training, dates, costs, preferences, etc. Here we briefly describe the ID
OpenCFU, a New Free and Open-Source Software to Count Cell Colonies and Other Circular Objects
Counting circular objects such as cell colonies is an important source of
information for biologists. Although this task is often time-consuming and
subjective, it is still predominantly performed manually. The aim of the
present work is to provide a new tool to enumerate circular objects from
digital pictures and video streams. Here, I demonstrate that the created
program, OpenCFU, is very robust, accurate and fast. In addition, it provides
control over the processing parameters and is implemented in an in- tuitive and
modern interface. OpenCFU is a cross-platform and open-source software freely
available at http://opencfu.sourceforge.net
The Role of Consciousness in Memory
Conscious events interact with memory systems in learning, rehearsal and retrieval (Ebbinghaus 1885/1964; Tulving 1985). Here we present hypotheses that arise from the IDA computional model (Franklin, Kelemen and McCauley 1998; Franklin 2001b) of global workspace theory (Baars 1988, 2002). Our primary tool for this exploration is a flexible cognitive cycle employed by the IDA computational model and hypothesized to be a basic element of human cognitive processing. Since cognitive cycles are hypothesized to occur five to ten times a second and include interaction between conscious contents and several of the memory systems, they provide the means for an exceptionally fine-grained analysis of various cognitive tasks. We apply this tool to the small effect size of subliminal learning compared to supraliminal learning, to process dissociation, to implicit learning, to recognition vs. recall, and to the availability heuristic in recall. The IDA model elucidates the role of consciousness in the updating of perceptual memory, transient episodic memory, and procedural memory. In most cases, memory is hypothesized to interact with conscious events for its normal functioning. The methodology of the paper is unusual in that the hypotheses and explanations presented are derived from an empirically based, but broad and qualitative computational model of human cognition
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