Intermanual Transfer of a Novel Writing Task in Young Adults without Disability: a Kinematic Perspective

The complexities of motor learning are an important and integral part of the practice of occupational therapy. Intermanual transfer of motor learning is a specific area of interest that has significant relevance to the specificity of clinical motor training activities utilized in therapy. The term refers to the transfer of upper extremity motor skills previously learned by one cerebral hemisphere of the brain to the other cerebral hemisphere. Understanding the complexities of motor learning is important to occupational therapists as they develop strategies to be used with applicable clients with motor disabilities. Integral to this premise is the notion that clients who have lost function in one limb may relearn motor behaviors by accessing previously learned skills from the relatively unaffected contra-lateral cerebral hemisphere. Recent research indicates an inter-hemispheric dependence for the development of upper extremity motor skills and intermanual transfer. This study investigates intermanual transfer in a group of ten right-handed subjects with no known motor disabilities. Each subject learned to perform a novel motor task that included practice, original learning, and transfer learning involving distal muscle groups The task required the writing of an alphabet letter of a foreign language. During the practice sessions, the subjects traced the letter six times either with their right or left hand. In the original learning sessions, the subjects used the same hand as in the practice sessions to reproduce the skill without the letter in view. In the transfer learning sessions, the subjects reproduced the skill with the contralateral hand. Once that protocol had been completed, subjects switched hands to begin the sessions again using the opposite hand. Movements of the pen were recorded using the search coil system to assess kinematic performance. Simultaneous electromyography (EMG) recordings of the first dorsal interosseus muscle were performed to measure distal muscle activity. EMG and kinematic data were analyzed to compare motor learning between the dominant hand transfer of learning to the non-dominant hand and the non-dominant hand transfer of learning to the dominant hand. Analysis indicates an almost full transfer of the learned motor task between hands, ranging from 80-100% for left to right and right to left conditions. Findings strongly suggest that the contralateral motor learning resulting from inter-manual transfer functions might be useful for promoting unilateral or bilateral upper extremity motor rehabilitation

Autonomy in the real real-world: A behaviour based view of autonomous systems control in an industrial product inspection system

The thesis presented in this dissertation appears in two sequential parts that arose from an exploration of the use of Behaviour Based Artificial Intelligence (BBAI) techniques in a domain outside that of robotics, where BBAI is most frequently used. The work details a real-world physical implementation of the control and interactions of an industrial product inspection system from a BBAI perspective. It concentrates particularly on the control of a number of active laser scanning sensor systems (each a subsystem of a larger main inspection system), using a subsumption architecture. This industrial implementation is in itself a new direction for BBAI control and an important aspect of this thesis. However, the work has also led on to the development of a number of key ideas which contribute to the field of BBAI in general. The second part of the thesis concerns the nature of physical and temporal constraints on a distributed control system and the desirability of utilising mechanisms to provide continuous, low-level learning and adaptation of domain knowledge on a sub-behavioural basis. Techniques used include artificial neural networks and hill-climbing state-space search algorithms. Discussion is supported with examples from experiments with the laser scanning inspection system. Encouraging results suggest that concerted design effort at this low level of activity will benefit the whole system in terms of behavioural robustness and reliability. Relevant aspects of the design process that should be of value in similar real-world projects are identified and emphasised. These issues are particularly important in providing a firm foundation for artificial intelligence based control systems

An investigation into how ICT is used in teaching and learning by Initial Teacher Educators on the Primary BEd and PGCE courses in the School of Education at a British University

MA EducationThe purpose of this study was to explore the use of ICT in teaching and learning by initial teacher educators, on Primary PGCE and BEd courses, in one British university. The aim was to determine what and where good practice with ICT already existed on the Primary education courses and to identify points of action to make improvements. The world now is technology-rich and as such beginning teachers need to be prepared for the ever-changing demands of ICT in their future careers in schools, especially as their pupils are becoming ever-more digitally 'native'. This study wanted to find out what it meant to use ICT well in teaching and learning on an Initial Teacher Education course for the primary age ranges. It also wanted to ascertain the barriers to the successful embedding of ICT into the curriculum of the Primary education course. Finally, it sought to make recommendations to the case study institution as to what and how improvements could be made. The research was carried out through a thorough review of current literature as well as an analysis of the policy documents at both a local and national level. Staff who taught on the Primary education courses completed a questionnaire which allowed them to comment on their attitudes, views and usage of ICT in their teaching and learning. These results were then cross-referenced to PGCE students' evaluations of the ICT on their course, from the previous year. It was found that ICT in teaching and learning should be made explicit through the sharing of aims for learning. These aims should include as a minimum, coverage through subject areas of national curriculum for ICT for Key Stages 1 and 2, allowing students to see how ICT is supported in a particular field. Also, the curriculum should include the explicit modelling of ICT for teaching and learning in university sessions and also including activities for school experience which will strengthen students' understanding further. This will involve a curriculum review. In order to ensure that staff are competent, both at a personal level and for their embedding of ICT in their curriculum planned CPO at an appropriate level and in a meaningful context will be necessary, on an ongoing basis to keep up with the changes in technology. This would be supported by time for collaboration between colleagues to develop ideas for the curriculum

Modelling learning behaviour of intelligent agents using UML 2.0

This thesis aims to explore and demonstrate the ability of the new standard of structural and behavioural components in Unified Modelling Language (UML 2.0 / 2004) to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents. The thesis adopts the research direction that views agent-oriented systems as an extension to object-oriented systems. In view of the fact that UML has been the de facto standard for modelling object-oriented systems, this thesis concentrates on exploring such modelling potential with Intelligent Agent-oriented systems. Intelligent Agents are Agents that have the capability to learn and reach agreement with other Agents or users. The research focuses on modelling the learning behaviour of a single Intelligent Agent, as it is the core of multi-agent systems. During the writing of the thesis, the only work done to use UML 2.0 to model structural components of Agents was from the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA). The research builds upon, explores, and utilises this work and provides further development to model the structural components of learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents. The research also shows the ability of UML version 2.0 behaviour diagrams, namely activity diagrams and sequence diagrams, to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents that use learning from observation and discovery as well as learning from examples of strategies. The research also evaluates if UML 2.0 state machine diagrams can model specific reinforcement learning algorithms, namely dynamic programming, Monte Carlo, and temporal difference algorithms. The thesis includes user guides of UML 2.0 activity, sequence, and state machine diagrams to allow researchers in agent-oriented systems to use the UML 2.0 diagrams in modelling the learning components of Intelligent Agents. The capacity for learning is a crucial feature of Intelligent Agents. The research identifies different learning components required to model the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents such as learning goals, learning strategies, and learning feedback methods. In recent years, the Agent-oriented research has been geared towards the agency dimension of Intelligent Agents. Thus, there is a need to conduct more research on the intelligence dimension of Intelligent Agents, such as negotiation and argumentation skills. The research shows that behavioural components of UML 2.0 are capable of modelling the learning behaviour of Intelligent Agents while structural components of UML 2.0 need extension to cover structural requirements of Agents and Intelligent Agents. UML 2.0 has an extension mechanism to fulfil Agents and Intelligent Agents for such requirements. This thesis will lead to increasing interest in the intelligence dimension rather than the agency dimension of Intelligent Agents, and pave the way for objectoriented methodologies to shift more easily to paradigms of Intelligent Agent-oriented systems.The British Council, the University of Plymouth and the Arab-British Chamber Charitable Foundation

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Artificial Intelligence Research Branch future plans

This report contains information on the activities of the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch (FIA) at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) in 1992, as well as planned work in 1993. These activities span a range from basic scientific research through engineering development to fielded NASA applications, particularly those applications that are enabled by basic research carried out in FIA. Work is conducted in-house and through collaborative partners in academia and industry. All of our work has research themes with a dual commitment to technical excellence and applicability to NASA short, medium, and long-term problems. FIA acts as the Agency's lead organization for research aspects of artificial intelligence, working closely with a second research laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and AI applications groups throughout all NASA centers. This report is organized along three major research themes: (1) Planning and Scheduling: deciding on a sequence of actions to achieve a set of complex goals and determining when to execute those actions and how to allocate resources to carry them out; (2) Machine Learning: techniques for forming theories about natural and man-made phenomena; and for improving the problem-solving performance of computational systems over time; and (3) Research on the acquisition, representation, and utilization of knowledge in support of diagnosis design of engineered systems and analysis of actual systems

Nontraditional teachers: Personal learning styles and teaching styles

Growing numbers of career change adults are entering alternative certification programs to become teachers. These adults bring to the classroom many of the same characteristics of traditionally-prepared teachers. They also come with some unique characteristics, among them age, reasons for entering teaching, prior career experience and well-developed personalities that include learning preferences; This study conceptualized non-traditional teachers as mature adults, persons whose personality types and learning styles preferences had been well developed and also reinforced by their previous career choices. The study explored the effect of non-traditional teachers\u27 personal learning styles on their teaching styles. Four participants for this multiple-case study were identified through the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Each participant chosen for the study was representative of one of four learning styles quadrants based on the 16-type MBTI. Observations and interviews were used to gather data from the participants and their supervisors using the methodology framework of Yin (1991), and the methods of qualitative data analysis developed by Lecompte and Preissle (1993). In addition, videotaped teaching sessions were viewed and coded by the researcher and a peer for triangulation; Consistent with previous findings on the relationship between teaching and learning styles of traditional teachers, this study found that non-traditional teachers tend to select instructional strategies and media that support their preferred learning styles. They do so regardless of other influences such as administrative support, availability of resources, and educational coursework. They were found to comply with school district and school curriculum mandates in ways uniquely their own, again, drawing on their preferred modes of learning to plan curricula, teach and assess; The findings suggest that learning styles are an important consideration for teacher educators. Not only is it important for teacher educators to consider prior experience and learning styles in developing teacher education courses, it is also important for them to communicate the impact of personal learning styles preferences to preservice and inservice teachers for their future work in the classroom