233,945 research outputs found
Information and Meaning in Life, Humans and Robots
Information and meaning exist around us and within ourselves, and the same information can correspond to different meanings. This is true for humans and animals, and is becoming true for robots.
We propose here an overview of this subject by using a systemic tool related to meaning generation that has already been published (C. Menant, Entropy 2003).
The Meaning Generator System (MGS) is a system submitted to a constraint that generates a meaningful information when it receives an incident information that has a relation with the constraint. The content of the meaningful information is explicited, and its function is to
trigger an action that will be used to satisfy the constraint of the system.
The MGS has been introduced in the case of basic life submitted to a "stay alive" constraint.
We propose here to see how the usage of the MGS can be extended to more complex living systems, to humans and to robots by introducing new types of constraints, and integrating the MGS into higher level systems.
The application of the MGS to humans is partly based on a scenario relative to the evolution of body self-awareness toward self-consciousness that has already been presented
(C. Menant, Biosemiotics 2003, and TSC 2004).
The application of the MGS to robots is based on the definition of the MGS applied to robots functionality, taking into account the origins of the constraints.
We conclude with a summary of this overview and with themes that can be linked to this systemic approach on meaning generation
How can Francis Bacon help forensic science? The four idols of human biases
Much debate has focused on whether forensic science is indeed a science. This paper is not aimed at answering, or even trying to contribute to, this question. Rather, in this paper I try to find ways to improve forensic science by identifying potential vulnerabilities. To this end I use Francis Bacon's doctrine of idols which distinguishes between different types of human biases that may prevent scientific and objective inquiry. Bacon’s doctrine contains four sources for such biases: Idols Tribus (of the 'tribe'), Idols Specus (of the 'den'/'cave'), Idols Fori (of the 'market'), and Idols Theatre (of the 'theatre'). While his 400 year old doctrine does not, of course, perfectly match up with our current world view, it still provides a productive framework for examining and cataloguing some of the potential weaknesses and limitations in our current approach to forensic science
Research and Development Workstation Environment: the new class of Current Research Information Systems
Against the backdrop of the development of modern technologies in the field
of scientific research the new class of Current Research Information Systems
(CRIS) and related intelligent information technologies has arisen. It was
called - Research and Development Workstation Environment (RDWE) - the
comprehensive problem-oriented information systems for scientific research and
development lifecycle support. The given paper describes design and development
fundamentals of the RDWE class systems. The RDWE class system's generalized
information model is represented in the article as a three-tuple composite web
service that include: a set of atomic web services, each of them can be
designed and developed as a microservice or a desktop application, that allows
them to be used as an independent software separately; a set of functions, the
functional filling-up of the Research and Development Workstation Environment;
a subset of atomic web services that are required to implement function of
composite web service. In accordance with the fundamental information model of
the RDWE class the system for supporting research in the field of ontology
engineering - the automated building of applied ontology in an arbitrary domain
area, scientific and technical creativity - the automated preparation of
application documents for patenting inventions in Ukraine was developed. It was
called - Personal Research Information System. A distinctive feature of such
systems is the possibility of their problematic orientation to various types of
scientific activities by combining on a variety of functional services and
adding new ones within the cloud integrated environment. The main results of
our work are focused on enhancing the effectiveness of the scientist's research
and development lifecycle in the arbitrary domain area.Comment: In English, 13 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, added references in Russian.
Published. Prepared for special issue (UkrPROG 2018 conference) of the
scientific journal "Problems of programming" (Founder: National Academy of
Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Software Systems of NAS Ukraine
A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards
Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard
Criteria for the diploma qualifications in science at advanced level: principal learning
"The purpose of this document is to record a full set of criteria for level 3 principal learning qualifications for the Advanced Diploma in science. It also sets out the overall aims of the Diplomas in science." - purpose
Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity
Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars
around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs),
most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the
differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking
scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more
than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We
divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of
the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the
scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic
complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length
and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of
lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The
observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and
lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure
Multimodal person recognition for human-vehicle interaction
Next-generation vehicles will undoubtedly feature biometric person recognition as part of an effort to improve the driving experience. Today's technology prevents such systems from operating satisfactorily under adverse conditions. A proposed framework for achieving person recognition successfully combines different biometric modalities, borne out in two case studies
Introspective physicalism as an approach to the science of consciousness
Most theories of consciousness are based on vague speculations about the properties of conscious experience. We aim to provide a more solid basis for a science of consciousness. We argue that a theory of consciousness should provide an account of the very processes that allow us to acquire and use information about our own mental states the processes underlying introspection. This can be achieved through the construction of information processing models that can account for Type-C processes. Type-C processes can be specified experimentally by identifying paradigms in which awareness of the stimulus is necessary for an intentional action. The Shallice (1988b) framework is put forward as providing an initial account of Type-C processes, which can relate perceptual consciousness to consciously performed actions. Further, we suggest that this framework may be refined through the investigation of the functions of prefrontal cortex. The formulation of our approach requires us to consider fundamental conceptual and methodological issues associated with consciousness. The most significant of these issues concerns the scientific use of introspective evidence. We outline and justify a conservative methodological approach to the use of introspective evidence, with attention to the difficulties historically associated with its use in psychology
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