EU counterterrorism strategy: value added or chimera?

Europe did not wake up to terrorism on 9/11; terrorism is solidly entrenched in Europe's past. The historical characteristics of Europe's counterterrorism approach have been first, to treat terrorism as a crime to be tackled through criminal law, and second, to emphasize the need for understanding the 'root causes' of terrorism in order to be able to prevent terrorist acts. The 9/11 attacks undoubtedly brought the EU into uncharted territory, boosting existing cooperation and furthering political integration-in particular in the field of justice and home affairs, where most of Europe's counterterrorism endeavours are situated-to a degree few would have imagined some years earlier. This development towards European counterterrorism arrangements was undoubtedly event-driven and periods of inertia and confusion alternated with moments of significant organizational breakthroughs. The 2005 London attacks contributed to a major shift of emphasis in European counterterrorism thinking. Instead of an external threat, terrorism now became a home-grown phenomenon. The London bombings firmly anchored deradicalization at the heart of EU counterterrorism endeavours

A Person-Centric Design Framework for At-Home Motor Learning in Serious Games

abstract: In motor learning, real-time multi-modal feedback is a critical element in guided training. Serious games have been introduced as a platform for at-home motor training due to their highly interactive and multi-modal nature. This dissertation explores the design of a multimodal environment for at-home training in which an autonomous system observes and guides the user in the place of a live trainer, providing real-time assessment, feedback and difficulty adaptation as the subject masters a motor skill. After an in-depth review of the latest solutions in this field, this dissertation proposes a person-centric approach to the design of this environment, in contrast to the standard techniques implemented in related work, to address many of the limitations of these approaches. The unique advantages and restrictions of this approach are presented in the form of a case study in which a system entitled the "Autonomous Training Assistant" consisting of both hardware and software for guided at-home motor learning is designed and adapted for a specific individual and trainer. In this work, the design of an autonomous motor learning environment is approached from three areas: motor assessment, multimodal feedback, and serious game design. For motor assessment, a 3-dimensional assessment framework is proposed which comprises of 2 spatial (posture, progression) and 1 temporal (pacing) domains of real-time motor assessment. For multimodal feedback, a rod-shaped device called the "Intelligent Stick" is combined with an audio-visual interface to provide feedback to the subject in three domains (audio, visual, haptic). Feedback domains are mapped to modalities and feedback is provided whenever the user's performance deviates from the ideal performance level by an adaptive threshold. Approaches for multi-modal integration and feedback fading are discussed. Finally, a novel approach for stealth adaptation in serious game design is presented. This approach allows serious games to incorporate motor tasks in a more natural way, facilitating self-assessment by the subject. An evaluation of three different stealth adaptation approaches are presented and evaluated using the flow-state ratio metric. The dissertation concludes with directions for future work in the integration of stealth adaptation techniques across the field of exergames.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Towards formalisation of situation-specific computations in pervasive computing environments

We have categorised the characteristics and the content of pervasive computing environments (PCEs), and demonstrated why a non-dynamic approach to knowledge conceptualisation in PCEs does not fulfil the expectations we may have from them. Consequently, we have proposed a formalised computational model, the FCM, for knowledge representation and reasoning in PCEs which, secures the delivery of situation and domain specific services to their users. The proposed model is a user centric model, materialised as a software engineering solution, which uses the computations generated from the FCM, stores them within software architectural components, which in turn can be deployed using modern software technologies. The model has also been inspired by the Semantic Web (SW) vision and provision of SW technologies. Therefore, the FCM creates a semantically rich situation-specific PCE based on SWRL-enabled OWL ontologies that allows reasoning about the situation in a PCE and delivers situation specific service. The proposed FCM model has been illustrated through the example of remote patient monitoring in the healthcare domain. Numerous software applications generated from the FCM have been deployed using Integrated Development Environments and OWL-API

A Policy Theory Evaluation of the Dutch SME and Entrepreneurship Policy Program between 1982 and 2003

The present paper reconstructs and analyses the assumptions – i.e. the policy theory – underlying the development of the SME and Entrepreneurship Policy Program in general and the Establishment Act and the Loan Guarantee (BBMKB) in particular between 1982-2003. The analysis links these assumptions to policy output results and policy effects. We find that the foundation of the policy theories of the Establishment Act and the Loan Guarantee requires improvement with respect to implicit assumptions and lacking warrants. We also find that the implied policy effects cohere with formal policy objectives.

Tax morale, eastern Europe and European enlargement

This study tries to remedy the current lack of tax compliance research analyzing tax morale in 10 Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in 2004 or 2007. By exploring tax morale differences between 1999 and 2008, it shows that tax morale has decreased in 7 out of 10 Eastern European countries. This lack of sustainability may support the incentive based conditionality hypothesis that the European Union only has a limited ability to influence tax morale over time. The author observes that events and processes at the country level are crucial to understanding tax morale. Factors such as perceived government quality and trust in the justice system and the government are positively correlated with tax morale in 2008.Taxation&Subsidies,Debt Markets,Subnational Economic Development,Emerging Markets,National Governance

Foundations of Human-Aware Planning -- A Tale of Three Models

abstract: A critical challenge in the design of AI systems that operate with humans in the loop is to be able to model the intentions and capabilities of the humans, as well as their beliefs and expectations of the AI system itself. This allows the AI system to be "human- aware" -- i.e. the human task model enables it to envisage desired roles of the human in joint action, while the human mental model allows it to anticipate how its own actions are perceived from the point of view of the human. In my research, I explore how these concepts of human-awareness manifest themselves in the scope of planning or sequential decision making with humans in the loop. To this end, I will show (1) how the AI agent can leverage the human task model to generate symbiotic behavior; and (2) how the introduction of the human mental model in the deliberative process of the AI agent allows it to generate explanations for a plan or resort to explicable plans when explanations are not desired. The latter is in addition to traditional notions of human-aware planning which typically use the human task model alone and thus enables a new suite of capabilities of a human-aware AI agent. Finally, I will explore how the AI agent can leverage emerging mixed-reality interfaces to realize effective channels of communication with the human in the loop.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Future benefits and applications of intelligent on-board processing to VSAT services

The trends and roles of VSAT services in the year 2010 time frame are examined based on an overall network and service model for that period. An estimate of the VSAT traffic is then made and the service and general network requirements are identified. In order to accommodate these traffic needs, four satellite VSAT architectures based on the use of fixed or scanning multibeam antennas in conjunction with IF switching or onboard regeneration and baseband processing are suggested. The performance of each of these architectures is assessed and the key enabling technologies are identified

Little Black Boxes: Legal Anthropology and the Politics of Autonomy in Tort Law

[Excerpt] Law’s interdisciplinary turn toward social sciences suggests a growing realization that jurists may not be independently equipped to explain the world in and upon which they act. But if law embraces empirical social science for its usable output, it struggles to make sense of the more interpretive disciplines such as anthropology. This has proven to be a major setback for both law and anthropology and confounds the historically productive rapport between the two fields stretching back more than a century. While it may be tempting to conclude that today’s legal academic misunderstands the interpretive turn in anthropology, that conclusion offers little to facilitate a rapport of the kind badly needed today

Chatbot for digital marketing and customer support: an artificial intelligence approach

Dissertação de mestrado em Computer ScienceHuman interaction with machines has never been so frequent as nowadays. In order to reduce the redundant workload of a human being that answers repeated and trivial questions regarding customer support on a digital marketing website, this work has the purpose of replacing this tedious job with an informatics tool, a dialogue tool. A dialogue tool like a Chatbot that could handle customer support to a digital marketing website, provides the opportunity of placing human resources on ”non mechanical tasks”. Given that Chatbots exchange messages directly with customers, they could collect required protocol information in all the interactions. In spite of the possibility of needing human assistance, he will not need to ask these standard questions and will improve its efficiency. By automating these required dialogues to answer questions about certain products, that would otherwise be responded by a human, the organizations will have the opportunity to place human resources in another sectors that are not so easily automated.A interação humana com máquinas nunca foi tão frequente como nos dias de hoje. Com a intenção de reduzir a quantidade de trabalho de um ser humano que receberia ao responder a questões triviais e repetidas no que diz respeito a Suporte ao Cliente, este trabalho tem o propósito de substituir um trabalho entediante por uma ferramenta informática, uma ferramenta que possibilite o diálogo entre o cliente e o serviço de suporte. Uma ferramenta como um Chatbot que poderia fornecer suporte ao cliente num website de marketing digital iria providenciar às empresas a oportunidade de alocar trabalhadores para tarefas ”menos mecânicas”. Dado que os Chatbots trocam mensagens diretamente com os clientes, estes podem recolher informações que são sempre necessárias e protocolares em todas as interações. Assim sendo, mesmo que este diálogo requira possivelmente um ser humano, este irá prescindir de fazer estas perguntas padrão, melhorando assim a eficiência deste trabalho (Suporte ao Cliente). Ao automatizar diálogos necessários para responder a questões acerca de produtos que, de outra forma seriam respondidas por um ser humano, as organizações estarão a poupar tempo e dinheiro que podem ser aplicados noutros sectores menos propícios a serem automatizados

The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War

The authors concede that the revolution in military affairs holds great promise for conventional, combined-arms warfare, but conclude that its potential value in conflict short of war, whether terrorism, insurgency, or violence associated with narcotrafficking, is not so clear-cut. Given this, national leaders and strategists should proceed cautiously and only after a full exploration of the ethical, political, and social implications of their decisions. To illustrate this, the authors develop a hypothetical future scenario--a history of U.S. efforts in conflict short of war during the first decade of the 21st century. It is too early to offer concrete policy prescriptions for adapting many aspects of the revolution in military affairs to conflict short of war, but the authors do suggest an array of questions that should be debated. In order to decide whether to apply new technology and emerging concepts or how to employ them, the United States must first reach consensus on ultimate objectives and acceptable costs.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1893/thumbnail.jp