583 research outputs found

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    Exploiting Process Algebras and BPM Techniques for Guaranteeing Success of Distributed Activities

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    The communications and collaborations among activities, pro- cesses, or systems, in general, are the base of complex sys- tems defined as distributed systems. Given the increasing complexity of their structure, interactions, and functionali- ties, many research areas are interested in providing mod- elling techniques and verification capabilities to guarantee their correctness and satisfaction of properties. In particular, the formal methods community provides robust verification techniques to prove system properties. However, most ap- proaches rely on manually designed formal models, making the analysis process challenging because it requires an expert in the field. On the other hand, the BPM community pro- vides a widely used graphical notation (i.e., BPMN) to design internal behaviour and interactions of complex distributed systems that can be enhanced with additional features (e.g., privacy technologies). Furthermore, BPM uses process min- ing techniques to automatically discover these models from events observation. However, verifying properties and ex- pected behaviour, especially in collaborations, still needs a solid methodology. This thesis aims at exploiting the features of the formal meth- ods and BPM communities to provide approaches that en- able formal verification over distributed systems. In this con- text, we propose two approaches. The modelling-based ap- proach starts from BPMN models and produces process al- gebra specifications to enable formal verification of system properties, including privacy-related ones. The process mining- based approach starts from logs observations to automati- xv cally generate process algebra specifications to enable veri- fication capabilities

    IMAGINING, GUIDING, PLAYING INTIMACY: - A Theory of Character Intimacy Games -

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    Within the landscape of Japanese media production, and video game production in particular, there is a niche comprising video games centered around establishing, developing, and fulfilling imagined intimate relationships with anime-manga characters. Such niche, although very significant in production volume and lifespan, is left unexplored or underexplored. When it is not, it is subsumed within the scope of wider anime-manga media. This obscures the nature of such video games, alternatively identified with descriptors including but not limited to ‘visual novel’, ‘dating simulator’ and ‘adult computer game’. As games centered around developing intimacy with characters, they present specific ensembles of narrative content, aesthetics and software mechanics. These ensembles are aimed at eliciting in users what are, by all intents and purposes, parasocial phenomena towards the game’s characters. In other words, these software products encourage players to develop affective and bodily responses towards characters. They are set in a way that is coherent with shared, circulating scripts for sexual and intimate interaction to guide player imaginative action. This study defines games such as the above as ‘character intimacy games’, video game software where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters. To do so, however, player must recognize themselves as playing that type of game, and to be looking to develop that kind of response towards the game’s characters. Character Intimacy Games are contingent upon player developing affective and bodily responses, and thus presume that players are, at the very least, non-hostile towards their development. This study approaches Japanese character intimacy games as its corpus, and operates at the intersection of studies of communication, AMO studies and games studies. The study articulates a research approach based on the double need of approaching single works of significance amidst a general scarcity of scholarly background on the subject. It juxtaposes data-driven approaches derived from fan-curated databases – The Visual Novel Database and Erogescape -Erogē Hyƍron KĆ«kan – with a purpose-created ludo-hermeneutic process. By deploying an observation of character intimacy games through fan-curated data and building ludo-hermeneutics on the resulting ontology, this study argues that character intimacy games are video games where traversal is contingent on players knowingly establishing, developing, and fulfilling intimate bonds with fictional characters and recognizing themselves as doing so. To produce such conditions, the assemblage of software mechanics and narrative content in such games facilitates intimacy between player and characters. This is, ultimately, conductive to the emergence of parasocial phenomena. Parasocial phenomena, in turn, are deployed as an integral assumption regarding player activity within the game’s wider assemblage of narrative content and software mechanics

    Northeastern Illinois University, Academic Catalog 2023-2024

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    https://neiudc.neiu.edu/catalogs/1064/thumbnail.jp

    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

    Max s,ts,t-Flow Oracles and Negative Cycle Detection in Planar Digraphs

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    We study the maximum s,ts,t-flow oracle problem on planar directed graphs where the goal is to design a data structure answering max s,ts,t-flow value (or equivalently, min s,ts,t-cut value) queries for arbitrary source-target pairs (s,t)(s,t). For the case of polynomially bounded integer edge capacities, we describe an exact max s,ts,t-flow oracle with truly subquadratic space and preprocessing, and sublinear query time. Moreover, if (1−ϔ)(1-\epsilon)-approximate answers are acceptable, we obtain a static oracle with near-linear preprocessing and O~(n3/4)\tilde{O}(n^{3/4}) query time and a dynamic oracle supporting edge capacity updates and queries in O~(n6/7)\tilde{O}(n^{6/7}) worst-case time. To the best of our knowledge, for directed planar graphs, no (approximate) max s,ts,t-flow oracles have been described even in the unweighted case, and only trivial tradeoffs involving either no preprocessing or precomputing all the n2n^2 possible answers have been known. One key technical tool we develop on the way is a sublinear (in the number of edges) algorithm for finding a negative cycle in so-called dense distance graphs. By plugging it in earlier frameworks, we obtain improved bounds for other fundamental problems on planar digraphs. In particular, we show: (1) a deterministic O(nlog⁥(nC))O(n\log(nC)) time algorithm for negatively-weighted SSSP in planar digraphs with integer edge weights at least −C-C. This improves upon the previously known bounds in the important case of weights polynomial in nn, and (2) an improved O(nlog⁥n)O(n\log{n}) bound on finding a perfect matching in a bipartite planar graph.Comment: Extended abstract to appear in SODA 202

    Effectual Urban Governance: The Effectuation of Cities for Systems Change Under Uncertainty

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    Three key drivers create the imperative for a new approach to urban governance. Firstly, scientists around the world agree that global ecological systems are at risk of collapse if current development trajectories continue. Secondly, decision-makers are facing a heightened level of uncertainty, due to factors including climate risk, ecosystem changes and geopolitical tensions – and since 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic. And thirdly, given these complexities, current models of forecasting and prediction for strategic decision-making are increasingly constrained and unreliable, particularly for informing urban infrastructure governance decisions with multi-decade legacies. While urban infrastructure decision-makers find uncertainty challenging, for entrepreneurs uncertainty is the basis for opportunity. Entrepreneurs are agents of systems change, especially under conditions of heightened uncertainty. As a result, this thesis turns to the entrepreneurship domain to inform a new approach to urban governance, specifically the entrepreneurial decision-making logic of ‘effectuation’ developed by Saras Sarasvathy through her study of expert entrepreneurs’ approaches to new venture creation. Effectual urban governance includes establishing design principles, beginning with available means, establishing partnerships, and taking effectual action to iteratively increasing the structuration of innovations. In Part 1 - the thesis develops this model by reviewing and synthesizing the literature on sustainability transitions, urban governance, and entrepreneurship, with a historical analysis illustrating the role of entrepreneurship in industrial systems change. Building on a novel taxonomy of urban governance along the axes of uncertainty and systems change, the dynamic model of effectual urban governance combines entrepreneurship theory with sustainability transitions theory and is demonstrated through an illustrative civil infrastructure case study of the Willunga Basin Water Company informed by semi-structured research interviews. Part 2 of the thesis justifies the applicability of this model through focus on four key elements of effectual urban governance with application to urban transport, elaborating the theoretical rationale for each element and providing insights from effectuation literature and supporting complementary academic theories and research conducted during this thesis. In doing so, the thesis makes theoretical and practical contributions to urban governance and the development of civil infrastructure in the 21st century. At a time of heightened uncertainty, when global industrial and economic transformation to avert ecological collapse is imperative, this thesis begins a new conversation by demonstrating how adopting an entrepreneurial approach to civil infrastructure development can help government and civil actors proactively address the world’s shared and complex challenges. Effectual urban governance is this approach.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 202

    Onboard Mission- and Contingency Management based on Behavior Trees for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

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    Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant attention for their potential in various sectors, including surveillance, logistics, and disaster management. This thesis focuses on developing a novel onboard mission and contingency management system based on Behavior Trees for UAVs. The study aims to assert if behavior trees can be effectively applied to this domain and how they perform with respect to other modelling architectures. Furthermore, this document explores which tree structures are more efficient, good-design practices and behavior tree limitations. Overall, this thesis addresses the challenge of autonomous onboard decision-making of UAVs in complex and dynamic environments, particularly in the context of delivery missions in off-shore wind farms. The developed architecture is tested in a simulated environment. The research integrates a Skill Manager, a Mission Planner, and a Mission and Contingency Manager. The architecture leverages Behavior Trees to facilitate both mission execution and contingency management. The thesis also presents a quantitative analysis of key performance indicators, providing a comparative evaluation against traditional architectures like Finite State Machines. The results indicate that the proposed system is efficient in mission execution and effective in handling contingencies. This study offers a comprehensive structure targeting onboard planning, contingency management and concurrent actions execution. It also presents a quantitative analysis of Behavior Trees' performance in UAV mission execution and reactivity to contingent situations. It contributes to the ongoing discourse on UAV autonomy, offering insights beneficial for the broader deployment of UAVs in various industrial applications

    Loss Scaling and Step Size in Deep Learning Optimizatio

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    Deep learning training consumes ever-increasing time and resources, and that isdue to the complexity of the model, the number of updates taken to reach goodresults, and both the amount and dimensionality of the data. In this dissertation,we will focus on making the process of training more efficient by focusing on thestep size to reduce the number of computations for parameters in each update.We achieved our objective in two new ways: we use loss scaling as a proxy forthe learning rate, and we use learnable layer-wise optimizers. Although our workis perhaps not the first to point to the equivalence of loss scaling and learningrate in deep learning optimization, ours is the first to leveraging this relationshiptowards more efficient training. We did not only use it in simple gradient descent,but also we were able to extend it to other adaptive algorithms. Finally, we usemetalearning to shed light on relevant aspects, including learnable lossesand optimizers. In this regard, we developed a novel learnable optimizer andeffectively utilized it to acquire an adaptive rescaling factor and learning rate,resulting in a significant reduction in required memory during training
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