Smart territories

The concept of smart cities is relatively new in research. Thanks to the colossal advances in Artificial Intelligence that took place over the last decade we are able to do all that that we once thought impossible; we build cities driven by information and technologies. In this keynote, we are going to look at the success stories of smart city-related projects and analyse the factors that led them to success. The development of interactive, reliable and secure systems, both connectionist and symbolic, is often a time-consuming process in which numerous experts are involved. However, intuitive and automated tools like “Deep Intelligence” developed by DCSc and BISITE, facilitate this process. Furthermore, in this talk we will analyse the importance of complementary technologies such as IoT and Blockchain in the development of intelligent systems, as well as the use of edge platforms or fog computing

TRIZ Future Conference 2004

TRIZ the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving is a living science and a practical methodology: millions of patents have been examined to look for principles of innovation and patterns of excellence. Large and small companies are using TRIZ to solve problems and to develop strategies for future technologies. The TRIZ Future Conference is the annual meeting of the European TRIZ Association, with contributions from everywhere in the world. The aims of the 2004 edition are the integration of TRIZ with other methodologies and the dissemination of systematic innovation practices even through SMEs: a broad spectrum of subjects in several fields debated with experts, practitioners and TRIZ newcomers

The University Defence Research Collaboration In Signal Processing

This chapter describes the development of algorithms for automatic detection of anomalies from multi-dimensional, undersampled and incomplete datasets. The challenge in this work is to identify and classify behaviours as normal or abnormal, safe or threatening, from an irregular and often heterogeneous sensor network. Many defence and civilian applications can be modelled as complex networks of interconnected nodes with unknown or uncertain spatio-temporal relations. The behavior of such heterogeneous networks can exhibit dynamic properties, reflecting evolution in both network structure (new nodes appearing and existing nodes disappearing), as well as inter-node relations. The UDRC work has addressed not only the detection of anomalies, but also the identification of their nature and their statistical characteristics. Normal patterns and changes in behavior have been incorporated to provide an acceptable balance between true positive rate, false positive rate, performance and computational cost. Data quality measures have been used to ensure the models of normality are not corrupted by unreliable and ambiguous data. The context for the activity of each node in complex networks offers an even more efficient anomaly detection mechanism. This has allowed the development of efficient approaches which not only detect anomalies but which also go on to classify their behaviour

An analysis of administrative reforms in Pakistan’s public sector

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyContext: Despite a long history of reforms, Pakistan‘s public sector (PS) is still considered cumbersome, corrupt, and inefficient by its citizens, government and international development community. Recent reforms were operationalised in 2001 under a new economic policy called the Poverty Reduction Programme (PRP) designed to facilitate the New Public Management (NPM) influenced transformation. The overarching objectives of these reforms were to strengthen the market and public sector simultaneously and so that they complemented each other. The PS reform actions taken under this strategy were mainly based on the World Bank‘s (WB) experience of developing countries which identified the state‘s weak institutional capacity as bottleneck to this transformation. Therefore, with the view to removing these impediments, actions to train the public servants, improve their salaries, and enhanced the use of information technology (IT) were included. However, many recent reports and indicators confirm the situation in Pakistan has remained unchanged. Various generic explanations of these compromised results have been provided; however, the concrete reasons in a Pakistani setting are still unknown. Research Questions: This study aims to investigate the reasons why Pakistan‘s PS organisations appear to be resistant to reform and why the repeated attempts at reform appear to have had so little impact. It addresses the following questions: What effects, if any, have NPM-inspired reform attempts had on the way that public sector organisations function? What have been the intended and unintended consequences of reform attempts? Research approach: This case study aims to bridge this gap through analysing the effects of administrative reforms in the federal tax agency where these actions have been revived as a part of the comprehensive reform programme. This study is qualitative and adopts a social constructionist approach. This case study is ethnographically oriented and works within pragmatist criteria of truth and validity; the case study organisation has been conceptualised as negotiated order (Strauss, 1978); and the initiatives of training, salaries and information technology are understood as managerial attempts to reshape organisational structures, processes, and the employment relationship with employees in line with the requirements of NPM. This research mainly depends on the interpretation and analysis of data gathered through 22 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and documentary sources of information including public and classified reports from donors and government repositories as well as published scholarly articles. The data were analysed in two stages: 1. abstract analysis took place during data collection, arranging, cleaning, and extraction of themes and patterns; and 2. firm analysis happened through an iterative process of comparing these themes, patterns, and field notes to make the sense of data. Findings: The findings suggest that the desired results of efficiency, transparency, fairness, and controlling corruption could not be achieved due to the takeover of prevalent contextual corrupt practices of nepotism, favouritism and recommendation at the time of its implementation. Moreover, this content-focused approach has also ignored the context and processes that led to compromised results. I have supported these findings through the identification of these contextual problems at the organisational and national levels. Contribution: This research contributed to a greater understanding of the initiation and implementation processes of the NPM-inspired PSR in Pakistan through the identification of factors limiting its results at organisational and national levels. In turn, it helped to highlight the problems behind reformer‘s taken for granted assumptions of quick-fixing the institutions through rapid dosage of reform. The results will also be valuable to reformers as they will not only help reformers to understand the reasons affecting its intended results but also help them to include these in the list of safeguard

e-Process selection using decision making methods : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The key objective of this research is to develop a selection methodology that can be used to support and aid the selection of development processes for e-Commerce Information Systems (eCIS) effectively using various decision methods. The selection methodology supports developers in their choice of an e-Commerce Information System Development Process (e-Process) by providing them with a few different decision making methods for choosing between defined e-Processes using a set of quality aspects to compare and evaluate the different options. The methodology also provides historical data of previous selections that can be used to further support their specific choice. The research was initiated by the fast growing Information Technology environment, where e-Commerce Information Systems is a relatively new development area and developers of these systems may be using new development methods and have difficulty deciding on the best suited process to use when developing new eCIS. These developers also need documentary support for their choices and this research helps them with these decision-making processes. The e-Process Selection Methodology allows for the comparison of existing development processes as well as the comparison of processes as defined by the developers. Four different decision making methods, the Value-Benefit Method (Weighted Scoring), the Analytical Hierarchy Process, Case-Based Reasoning and a Social Choice method are used to solve the problem of selecting among e-Commerce Development Methodologies. The Value-Benefit Method, when applied to the selection of an e-Process from a set of e-Processes, uses multiple quality aspects. Values are assigned to each aspect for each of the e-Processes by experts. The importance of each of the aspects, to the eCIS, is defined in terms of weights. The selected e-Process is the one with the highest score when the values and weights are multiplied and then summed. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to quantify a selection of quality aspects and then these are used to evaluate alternative e-Processes and thus determining the best matching solution to the problem. This process provides for the ranking and determining of the relative worth of each of the quality aspects. Case-Based Reasoning requires the capturing of the resulting knowledge of previous cases, in a knowledge base, in order to make a decision. The case database is built in such a way that the concrete factual knowledge of previous individual cases that were solved previously is stored and can be used in the decision process. Case-based reasoning is used to determine the best choices. This allows the user to either use the selection methodology or the case base database to resolve their problems or both. Social Choice Methods are based on voting processes. Individuals vote for their preferences from a set of e-Processes. The results are aggregated to obtain a final result that indicates which e-Process is the preferred one. The e-Process Selection Methodology is demonstrated and validated by the development of a prototype tool. This tool can be used to select the most suitable solution for a case at hand. The thesis includes the factors that motivated the research and the process that was followed. The e-Process Selection Methodology is summarised as well as the strengths and weaknesses discussed. The contribution to knowledge is explained and future developments are proposed. To conclude, the lessons learnt and reinforced are considered

Méthodes d'apprentissage inspirées de l'humain pour un tuteur cognitif artificiel

Les systèmes tuteurs intelligents sont considérés comme un remarquable concentré de technologies qui permettent un processus d'apprentissage. Ces systèmes sont capables de jouer le rôle d'assistants voire même de tuteur humain. Afin d'y arriver, ces systèmes ont besoin de maintenir et d'utiliser une représentation interne de l'environnement. Ainsi, ils peuvent tenir compte des évènements passés et présents ainsi que de certains aspects socioculturels. Parallèlement à l'évolution dynamique de l'environnement, un agent STI doit évoluer en modifiant ses structures et en ajoutant de nouveaux phénomènes. Cette importante capacité d'adaptation est observée dans le cas de tuteurs humains. Les humains sont capables de gérer toutes ces complexités à l'aide de l'attention et du mécanisme de conscience (Baars B. J., 1983, 1988), et (Sloman, A and Chrisley, R., 2003). Toutefois, reconstruire et implémenter des capacités humaines dans un agent artificiel est loin des possibilités actuelles de la connaissance de même que des machines les plus sophistiquées. Pour réaliser un comportement humanoïde dans une machine, ou simplement pour mieux comprendre l'adaptabilité et la souplesse humaine, nous avons à développer un mécanisme d'apprentissage proche de celui de l'homme. Ce présent travail décrit quelques concepts d'apprentissage fondamentaux implémentés dans un agent cognitif autonome, nommé CTS (Conscious Tutoring System) développé dans le GDAC (Dubois, D., 2007). Nous proposons un modèle qui étend un apprentissage conscient et inconscient afin d'accroître l'autonomie de l'agent dans un environnement changeant ainsi que d'améliorer sa finesse. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Apprentissage, Conscience, Agent cognitif, Codelet

E-Learning

Technology development, mainly for telecommunications and computer systems, was a key factor for the interactivity and, thus, for the expansion of e-learning. This book is divided into two parts, presenting some proposals to deal with e-learning challenges, opening up a way of learning about and discussing new methodologies to increase the interaction level of classes and implementing technical tools for helping students to make better use of e-learning resources. In the first part, the reader may find chapters mentioning the required infrastructure for e-learning models and processes, organizational practices, suggestions, implementation of methods for assessing results, and case studies focused on pedagogical aspects that can be applied generically in different environments. The second part is related to tools that can be adopted by users such as graphical tools for engineering, mobile phone networks, and techniques to build robots, among others. Moreover, part two includes some chapters dedicated specifically to e-learning areas like engineering and architecture

Creation and preclinical evaluation of genetically attenuated malaria parasites arresting growth late in the liver.

Whole-sporozoite (WSp) malaria vaccines induce protective immune responses in animal malaria models and in humans. A recent clinical trial with a WSp vaccine comprising genetically attenuated parasites (GAP) which arrest growth early in the liver (PfSPZ-GA1), showed that GAPs can be safely administered to humans and immunogenicity is comparable to radiation-attenuated PfSPZ Vaccine. GAPs that arrest late in the liver stage (LA-GAP) have potential for increased potency as shown in rodent malaria models. Here we describe the generation of four putative P. falciparum LA-GAPs, generated by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene deletion. One out of four gene-deletion mutants produced sporozoites in sufficient numbers for further preclinical evaluation. This mutant, PfΔmei2, lacking the mei2-like RNA gene, showed late liver growth arrest in human liver-chimeric mice with human erythrocytes, absence of unwanted genetic alterations and sensitivity to antimalarial drugs. These features of PfΔmei2 make it a promising vaccine candidate, supporting further clinical evaluation. PfΔmei2 (GA2) has passed regulatory approval for safety and efficacy testing in humans based on the findings reported in this study

Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

Proceedings of a conference held in Huntsville, Alabama, on November 15-16, 1988. The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: space applications of expert systems in fault diagnostics, in telemetry monitoring and data collection, in design and systems integration; and in planning and scheduling; knowledge representation, capture, verification, and management; robotics and vision; adaptive learning; and automatic programming