An Analytical Approach to Programs as Data Objects

This essay accompanies a selection of 32 articles (referred to in bold face in the text and marginally marked in the bibliographic references) submitted to Aarhus University towards a Doctor Scientiarum degree in Computer Science.The author's previous academic degree, beyond a doctoral degree in June 1986, is an "Habilitation à diriger les recherches" from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) in France; the corresponding material was submitted in September 1992 and the degree was obtained in January 1993.The present 32 articles have all been written since 1993 and while at DAIMI.Except for one other PhD student, all co-authors are or have been the author's students here in Aarhus

The Ithacan, 1988-01-28

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/ithacan_1987-88/1013/thumbnail.jp

Boosting children's creativity through creative interactions with social robots

Creativity is an ability with psychological and developmental benefits. Creative levels are dynamic and oscillate throughout life, with a first major decline occurring at the age of 7 years old. However, creativity is an ability that can be nurtured if trained, with evidence suggesting an increase in this ability with the use of validated creativity training. Yet, creativity training for young children (aged between 6-9 years old) appears as scarce. Additionally, existing training interventions resemble test-like formats and lack of playful dynamics that could engage children in creative practices over time. This PhD project aimed at contributing to creativity stimulation in children by proposing to use social robots as intervention tools, thus adding playful and interactive dynamics to the training. Towards this goal, we conducted three studies in schools, summer camps, and museums for children, that contributed to the design, fabrication, and experimental testing of a robot whose purpose was to re-balance creative levels. Study 1 (n = 140) aimed at testing the effect of existing activities with robots in creativity and provided initial evidence of the positive potential of robots for creativity training. Study 2 (n = 134) aimed at including children as co-designers of the robot, ensuring the robot’s design meets children’s needs and requirements. Study 3 (n = 130) investigated the effectiveness of this robot as a tool for creativity training, showing the potential of robots as creativity intervention tools. In sum, this PhD showed that robots can have a positive effect on boosting the creativity of children. This places social robots as promising tools for psychological interventions.Criatividade é uma habilidade com benefícios no desenvolvimento saudável. Os níveis de criatividade são dinâmicos e oscilam durante a vida, sendo que o primeiro maior declínio acontece aos 7 anos de idade. No entanto, a criatividade é uma habilidade que pode ser nutrida se treinada e evidências sugerem um aumento desta habilidade com o uso de programas validados de criatividade. Ainda assim, os programas de criatividade para crianças pequenas (entre os 6-9 anos de idade) são escassos. Adicionalmente, estes programas adquirem o formato parecido ao de testes, faltando-lhes dinâmicas de brincadeira e interatividade que poderão motivar as crianças a envolverem-se em práticas criativas ao longo do tempo. O presente projeto de doutoramento procurou contribuir para a estimulação da criatividade em crianças propondo usar robôs sociais como ferramenta de intervenção, adicionando dinâmicas de brincadeira e interação ao treino. Assim, conduzimos três estudos em escolas, campos de férias, e museus para crianças que contribuíram para o desenho, fabricação, e teste experimental de um robô cujo objetivo é ser uma ferramenta que contribui para aumentar os níveis de criatividade. O Estudo 1 (n = 140) procurou testar o efeito de atividade já existentes com robôs na criatividade e mostrou o potencial positivo do uso de robôs para o treino criativo. O Estudo 2 (n = 134) incluiu crianças como co-designers do robô, assegurando que o desenho do robô correspondeu às necessidades das crianças. O Estudo 2 (n = 130) investigou a eficácia deste robô como ferramenta para a criatividade, demonstrando o seu potencial para o treino da criatividade. Em suma, o presente doutoramento mostrou que os robôs poderão ter um potencial criativo em atividades com crianças. Desta forma, os robôs sociais poderão ser ferramentas promissoras em intervenções na psicologia

Proceedings of the Workshop on the lambda-Prolog Programming Language

The expressiveness of logic programs can be greatly increased over first-order Horn clauses through a stronger emphasis on logical connectives and by admitting various forms of higher-order quantification. The logic of hereditary Harrop formulas and the notion of uniform proof have been developed to provide a foundation for more expressive logic programming languages. The λ-Prolog language is actively being developed on top of these foundational considerations. The rich logical foundations of λ-Prolog provides it with declarative approaches to modular programming, hypothetical reasoning, higher-order programming, polymorphic typing, and meta-programming. These aspects of λ-Prolog have made it valuable as a higher-level language for the specification and implementation of programs in numerous areas, including natural language, automated reasoning, program transformation, and databases

Accumulating Risk: Environmental Justice And The History Of Capitalism In Detroit, 1880-2015

This dissertation is an environmental history of Detroit, Michigan from the 19th century to the present. Recent scholarship on the history of capitalism has largely ignored the problem of environmental inequality, and the negative externalities of economic growth. In contrast, studies of the environmental justice movement have richly documented race, class, and gender inequalities in environmental risk exposure. However, they have neglected the relationship between the development of the environmental justice movement and the restructuring of American capitalism since the 1970s, including deindustrialization and the shift to neoliberalism. Bringing these fields together, this dissertation connects Detroit’s long-term economic transformation to the accumulation of environmental health risks in urban neighborhoods. It argues that environmental conflicts in metropolitan Detroit have historically determined who would pay for the negative externalities of industrial and real estate development. Over the course of the 20th century, corporations, real estate developers, and affluent white residents increasingly shifted the environmental costs of regional growth onto working-class and low-income communities of color. Between the Civil War and World War II, Detroit’s industrialization generated massive air, water, and soil pollution. Because of housing and job segregation, African Americans disproportionately paid the costs of this pollution, in the form of lower property values and higher rates of disease. After World War II, the movement of capital out of Detroit enabled manufacturers to reduce regulatory compliance costs, while leaving a legacy of polluted brownfield sites that the city could not afford to clean up. While manufacturers disinvested from Detroit, they used the threat of job loss to divide workers and environmentalists. In response, United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders formed a coalition for “Environmental and Economic Justice and Jobs” with civil rights and environmental groups. In the 1980s, this coalition broke down in the context of ongoing deindustrialization, metropolitan racial segregation and inequality, and the neoliberal restructuring of the United States economy. In the 1990s and 2000s, the decline of industrial unions altered the political economy of environmental justice activism in Detroit. Increasingly, the movement divided into non-profits and organizations based in a shrinking public sector. The dependence of non-profits on private grant funding became problematic in the 2000s, as local foundations began to support a policy of urban triage, as expressed in the 2010 Detroit Works Project and the 2013 Detroit Future City plan. Meanwhile, as Detroit became one of the epicenters of the nation’s subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis, more and more Detroit residents became vulnerable to losing their homes, or their ability to pay water bills. Neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, and austerity exacerbated environmental health risks for low-income Detroiters, especially African American women and children. This trend culminated in 2012-2015, when the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department shut off water for over 100,000 residents. From auto manufacturing to subprime lending, processes of capital accumulation in Detroit have produced negative externalities for vulnerable populations. For the majority of Detroiters, this dissertation ultimately argues, the history of capitalism has not been a story of accumulating wealth, but of accumulating risk