Generating associative ripples of relevant information from a variety of data streams by throwing a heuristic stone

Recently, the vast dialog in the microblog, such as twitter, Facebook has become increasingly popular. As we post more messages in microblogs, information is spreading more quickly and widely. These widely spread and diversified contents could be viewed as data streams, which have become an important part of the Internet resources. However, these separated data streams are littery and meaningless, so we need to collect and organize them together to provide us with meaningful information. It is hard to imagine that we could find useful information by simply inputting a few keywords into a search engine in such a stream environment. In this study, we try to find a way to seek the information related to users' personal and current interests and needs among these data streams and provide users with other more relevant information. We introduce a set of metaphors to represent a variety of data streams in different levels, and define two new metaphors: heuristic stone and associative ripple to assist the seeking process and describe the results. Based on these, we further propose two algorithms for the information seeking and processing, and discuss a scenario of the information seeking process that utilizes the proposed metaphors and algorithms

Wisdom and Freedom as Reason - Sensitive Action Control

Non peer reviewe

Living with Loss: An Enquiry into the Expression of Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Art Practice

In a secular society, religion no longer dictates the manner in which death and dying is rationalized, nor sets the precedence for observances of grief; how individuals grieve has changed. This thesis formulates two central hypotheses: that a new phenomenon is emerging of the contemporary cenotaph in art, erected either as physical manifestations or digitally on the Internet; that encapsulated within these cenotaphs is a wealth of information concerning the deceased and aspects of artists’ unique grieving processes - the symptoms of loss and trauma are actualized in their work. Artists are reconfiguring religious forms of commemoration and producing secular variants. The aims of this research are threefold: to investigate ways in which artists are forging new approaches to the portrayal of grief and mourning; to explore how these have arisen in an increasingly secular society; to explore through my own practice in response to loss, how art might assume new forms and meanings in a contemporary context. The research aims are investigated through interdisciplinary means including practice-led research, a corpus of wide-ranging artists and artworks, a new methodological approach and theoretical discourses in grief and mourning. The core artists studied are Hannah Wilke, Jo Spence, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Zoe Leonard and Sheridan Horn. Wilke's and Spence’s work is reviewed as the documentation of grief and mourning rather than as feminist polemic. Practice-led research consists of three sculptural expositions. Here-and-Now; Then-and-There was produced to explore how loss registers both overtly and covertly in practitioners' work. It revealed artists embodying experience in materialized forms by mimicking the symptoms of loss, grief and trauma. D(e)ad comprised organic matter ‘performed’ by continuously changing state, actualizing grieving processes. This work was compared to the cenotaphs by Gonzalez-Torres and Leonard and the historical vanitas, itself currently re-emerging as contemporary cenotaph. Grief Shadow represented the dynamic process of grief and mourning in a static work rather than through changes of state. Counterpoint references include the digital cenotaphs of Briony Campbell’s The Dad Project (2009) and the new social phenomenon of extreme embalming. In a society without customary guidelines for grief and mourning, cenotaphs in art are crucial in offering alternative forms of discursive and commemorative practice

Knowledge Modelling and Learning through Cognitive Networks

One of the most promising developments in modelling knowledge is cognitive network science, which aims to investigate cognitive phenomena driven by the networked, associative organization of knowledge. For example, investigating the structure of semantic memory via semantic networks has illuminated how memory recall patterns influence phenomena such as creativity, memory search, learning, and more generally, knowledge acquisition, exploration, and exploitation. In parallel, neural network models for artificial intelligence (AI) are also becoming more widespread as inferential models for understanding which features drive language-related phenomena such as meaning reconstruction, stance detection, and emotional profiling. Whereas cognitive networks map explicitly which entities engage in associative relationships, neural networks perform an implicit mapping of correlations in cognitive data as weights, obtained after training over labelled data and whose interpretation is not immediately evident to the experimenter. This book aims to bring together quantitative, innovative research that focuses on modelling knowledge through cognitive and neural networks to gain insight into mechanisms driving cognitive processes related to knowledge structuring, exploration, and learning. The book comprises a variety of publication types, including reviews and theoretical papers, empirical research, computational modelling, and big data analysis. All papers here share a commonality: they demonstrate how the application of network science and AI can extend and broaden cognitive science in ways that traditional approaches cannot

Proceedings of the 7th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Proceedings of the SMC2010 - 7th Sound and Music Computing Conference, July 21st - July 24th 2010

Hands-on Science. Celebrating Science and Science Education

The book herein aims to contribute to the improvement of Science Education in our schools and to an effective implementation of a sound widespread scientific literacy at all levels of society

Wyrd Ecology

This work investigates what motivates environmental action through developing a case study on how ecological conscience forms in the ritual practices of a new religious movement. I conducted a two-year ethnographic study with a community of contemporary Heathens in eastern and southwestern Ontario to investigate how ritual practices are related to the formation of conscience in the group. I used participant observation and interviews to investigate how ritual is related to conscience formation, and how it can generate a sense of obligation to others, including nonhuman others. I draw on social psychology (especially terror management theory), cognitive science, anthropology, ritual studies, and philosophy to describe and interpret three ritual practices, each of which involve some sort of gift giving. First I discuss high sumbel, a ritual of sharing drinks and giving gifts, then Dísablót, an example of ancestor veneration in which offerings (a type of gift) are given to the dead, and finally the procession of Nerthus, in which offerings are made to a figure participants understand as a power of nature associated with a particular bioregion. I find that giving gifts and expressing thanks in ritual inspires a sense of gratitude and a desire to give in turn in participants. Among these Heathens this gratitude and felt sense of obligation extends beyond human relations to include the more than human world. When one gives a gift one develops an appreciation for what one has already received, and when ritual activities include things that make participants aware of their mortality, the values that come to mind during the activity can be operationalized. In this case, values of inclusion, gratitude, sharing, and generosity are reinforced through ritual practice and influence participants’ dispositions, attitudes, and habitual behaviours