Patterns within Patterns within the Smart Living Experience

Modern technology is increasingly being employed to create a “smart” living experience. These “smart” technology entities are producing copious of amounts data, which in turn rely on increased storage, distribution and computation capacity to manage the data. Depending on the scenario, the diversity of piecemeal solutions almost reflects the diversity of problems they address. But some solutions can be reapplied. In the field of computing, design patterns can provide a general, reusable solution to commonly recurring problems within a given context through software design. This work seeks to determine the core elements of a technology-independent design pattern format and an open software framework can be developed to capture, share and redeploy existing successful and reusable strategies for commonly encountered smart environment use cases. Applying in areas such as assistive technology, energy management and environmental monitoring. The underpinning notion of this paper is to introduce “how, where and why” a rule set based in “design pattern” format could contribute to describe a general “understanding” of given cases in the smart environment domain, as well as allow different processes to collaborate with each other

Visualizing practical knowledge: The Haughton-Mars Project

To improve how we envision knowledge, we must improve our ability to see knowledge in everyday life. That is, visualization is concerned not only with displaying facts and theories, but also with finding ways to express and relate tacit understanding. Such knowledge, although often referred to as "common," is not necessarily shared and may be distributed socially in choreographies for working together—in the manner that a chef and a maitre d’hôtel, who obviously possess very different skills, coordinate their work. Furthermore, non-verbal concepts cannot in principle be inventoried. Reifying practical knowledge is not a process of converting the implicit into the explicit, but pointing to what we know, showing its manifestations in our everyday life. To this end, I illustrate the study and reification of practical knowledge by examining the activities of a scientific expedition in the Canadian Arctic—a group of scientists preparing for a mission to Mar

Copyrights in Computer-Generated Works: Whom, if Anyone, Do We Reward?

Computer-generated works raise grave authorship concerns under U.S. copyright law, with arguments in favor of allocating copyrights to the computer user, programmer, the computer itself, or some combination therein. The author discusses the issues and paradoxes inherent in these choices, and assesses the nature of mathematical graphical processes in light of the idea/expression dichotomy

Collaboration and the Ecology of Democracy

This Kettering Foundation report explores the features and implications of citizen-driven, multi-party collaboration. Kettering has called the spaces and opportunities where this type of collaboration takes place the "political wetlands." Kemmis and McKinney embrace this ecological metaphor, seeing the emergence of democracy as similar to the self-organizing phenomena that arise in the natural realm. As democracy has evolved and matured over the millennia, it has become more bureaucratic and structured. Toward the end of the 20th century, citizens' desire for a more authentically engaged and constructive kind of involvement has produced new, less structured forms of deliberative and collaborative democracy.Several case studies of collaboration revolving around natural resources and governing public land are provided. In Idaho, for example, the Henry's Fork Watershed Council brings together competing interests -- farmers, ranchers, anglers, outfitters, guides, and environmentalists -- and provides a forum where they can address challenges that arise along the watershed. For nearly two decades, this group of people, who often stand on opposite sides of the political divide, has resolved problems by tapping into the collective intelligence of its members.The authors suggest that such place-based, collaborative initiatives may evolve into new forms of democratic governance

An Abundance of K3 Fibrations from Polyhedra with Interchangeable Parts

Even a cursory inspection of the Hodge plot associated with Calabi-Yau threefolds that are hypersurfaces in toric varieties reveals striking structures. These patterns correspond to webs of elliptic-K3 fibrations whose mirror images are also elliptic-K3 fibrations. Such manifolds arise from reflexive polytopes that can be cut into two parts along slices corresponding to the K3 fibers. Any two half-polytopes over a given slice can be combined into a reflexive polytope. This fact, together with a remarkable relation on the additivity of Hodge numbers, explains much of the structure of the observed patterns.Comment: 30 pages, 15 colour figure

Repetition and the Power of Simplicity

My art consists of the repetition of patterns, shapes, numbers, text, and found objects that communicate concepts in language, science, and math as art. My work addresses aesthetic and formal aspects of the art itself and embraces the process and experience of creating. I use repetition of lines and shapes to create a complex mass of infinite amounts of shapes, which create what I regard as a peaceful gathering of energy. These patterns can be freely interpreted as the co-dependency between everything in existence, which contributes to the changing balance of life. Similar to my patterns, my sculptures fuse several layers of found objects to form a larger structure with the intention of creating a new meaning and life of those objects. The wide variety of subject matter in my artwork stems from a continuous and honest investigation into our constantly changing world

Repetition and the Power of Simplicity

My art consists of the repetition of patterns, shapes, numbers, text, and found objects that communicate concepts in language, science, and math as art. My work addresses aesthetic and formal aspects of the art itself and embraces the process and experience of creating. I use repetition of lines and shapes to create a complex mass of infinite amounts of shapes, which create what I regard as a peaceful gathering of energy. These patterns can be freely interpreted as the co-dependency between everything in existence, which contributes to the changing balance of life. Similar to my patterns, my sculptures fuse several layers of found objects to form a larger structure with the intention of creating a new meaning and life of those objects. The wide variety of subject matter in my artwork stems from a continuous and honest investigation into our constantly changing world

Landscape patterns and forest island interactions

On March 18, the Field Station welcomed faculty and graduate students involved in the Landscape Pattern Analysis project. This study has both theoretical and practical objectives. The theoretical problems are concerned with island biogeography as outlined by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson were discussed in the Spring 1975 Field Station Bulletin. These questions relate principally to how island size and distance from neighboring islands affect species composition and extinction, i.e., affect the diversity of island communities. These theoretical questions are being approached in a series of studies undertaken jointly by scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rutgers University, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Big Data, Lifelong Learning and Learning Cities: Promoting City-Discourse on Social Inequalities in Learning

The Key Features of Learning Cities, published by UNESCO (2013), laid out possible indicators through which learning communities, cities, and regions could support and evaluate learning engagement and urban success, within a context of international collaboration. This briefing paper presents an overview of Learning Cities from the perspective of operationalising a range of indicators, illustrating the role of ‘Big Data’ in in this pursuit. We also argue for public engagement opportunities to be embedded within social science research. Such discourse and debate regarding individual motivations, decisions and ambitions, may highlight where lifelong learning opportunities are needed, and for the wider value of active citizenship. The present work, of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at the University of Glasgow, is a key investment for researchers to more easily access the potential of big data for addressing city challenges, such as learning inclusion. UBDC exemplifies how novel, open, big data can be applied to assess learning engagement in an urban context, embedded in place and with considerations of demographic and deprivation changes. The principles of our research relate to Learning City frameworks, and have been inspired by the PASCAL Observatory’s Learning City Network, as well as the existence of a Memorandum of Agreement between PASCAL and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Using Learning City Frameworks and applying innovative Big Data approaches offers educationalists avenues for exploring learning engagement in our own regions, as well as future global comparisons of Learning Cities. More importantly, novel and interdisciplinary approaches can help us use our city data, to open discussions about learning inequalities, specifically promoting lifelong learning and lifewide literacies for more engaged citizenry