Agent-Based Team Aiding in a Time Critical Task

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of agent-based aiding in support of a time-critical team-planning task for teams of both humans and heterogeneous software agents. The team task consists of human subjects playing the role of military commanders and cooperatively planning to move their respective units to a common rendezvous point, given time and resource constraints. The objective of the experiment was to compare the effectiveness of agent-based aiding for individual and team tasks as opposed to the baseline condition of manual route planning. There were two experimental conditions: the Aided condition, where a Route Planning Agent (RPA) finds a least cost plan between the start and rendezvous points for a given composition of force units; and the Baseline condition, where the commanders determine initial routes manually, and receive basic feedback about the route. We demonstrate that the Aided condition provides significantly better assistance for individual route planning and team-based re-planning

Unions, Associations and Twenty-First Century Professionals

[Excerpt] Unions that represent professional and technical workers are at a critical juncture in their evolution. On the one hand, there is tremendous opportunity; disproportionate employment growth can be expected for professional and technical occupations in health care, education, science and technology, performing arts, media and communication. On the other hand, there are clear challenges. Professional labor markets and the contemporary workplace are being reconfigured by neoliberal economic policies, technological change, and the spread of contingent employment arrangements. Twenty-first century professional workers will respond positively to unions only if they see organizations that are agile enough to adapt to the workers\u27 own shifting concerns

Australia at the crossroads: A review of school science practical work

In Australia we are at a crossroad in science education. We have come from a long history of adopting international curricula, through to blending international and Australian developed materials, to the present which is a thoroughly unique Australian curriculum in science. This paper documents Australia’s journey over the past 200 years, as we prepare for the unveiling of our first truly Australian National Curriculum. One of the unique aspects of this curriculum is the emphasis on practical work and inquiry-based learning. This paper identifies seven forms of practical work currently used in Australian schools and the purposes aligned with each form by 138 pre-service and experienced in-service teachers. The paper explores the question “What does the impending national curriculum, with its emphasis on practical inquiry mean to the teachers now, are they ready?” The study suggests that practical work in Australian schools is multifaceted, and the teacher aligned purposes are dependent not only upon the age of the student, but also on the type of practical work being undertaken. It was found that most teachers are not ready to teach using inquiry-based pedagogy and cite lack of content knowledge, behaviour management, and lack of physical resources and availability of classroom space as key issues which will hinder their implementation of the inquiry component of Australia’s pending curriculum in science

Workplace Accommodations for Persons with Musculoskeletal Disorders

This brochure is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, Director, Employment and Disability Institute, Cornell University ILR School. The original was written by Frank N. Morosky, M.S., P.T., the coordinator of the Cornell University Back Injury Prevention Program, Ithaca, NY. It was revised and updated in 2000, and again in 2010, by Sheryl Ulin, Ph.D., CPE, Research Investigator, The University of Michigan Center for Ergonomics. It recieved legal review in 2011 by Beth Reiter, an independent legal consultant from Ithaca, N.Y., with assistance from Sara Furguson, a Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute student research assistant

Design of an embedded microcomputer based mini quadrotor UAV

This paper describes the design and realization of a mini quadrotor UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that has been initiated in the Systems and Control Laboratory at the Computer and Automation Research institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science in collaboration with control departments of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The mini quadrotor UAV is intended to use in several areas such as camera-based air-surveillance, traffic control, environmental measurements, etc. The paper focuses upon the embedded microcomputer-based implementation of the mini UAV, describes the elements of the implementation, the tools realized for mathematical model building, as well as obtains a brief outline of the control design