Interacting Unities: An Agent-Based System

Recently architects have been inspired by Thompsonis Cartesian deformations and Waddingtonis flexible topological surface to work within a dynamic field characterized by forces. In this more active space of interactions, movement is the medium through which form evolves. This paper explores the interaction between pedestrians and their environment by regarding it as a process occurring between the two. It is hypothesized that the recurrent interaction between pedestrians and environment can lead to a structural coupling between those elements. Every time a change occurs in each one of them, as an expression of its own structural dynamics, it triggers changes to the other one. An agent-based system has been developed in order to explore that interaction, where the two interacting elements, agents (pedestrians) and environment, are autonomous units with a set of internal rules. The result is a landscape where each agent locally modifies its environment that in turn affects its movement, while the other agents respond to the new environment at a later time, indicating that the phenomenon of stigmergy is possible to take place among interactions with human analogy. It is found that it is the environmentis internal rules that determine the nature and extent of change

Major Impact of Classroom Environment in Students’ Learning

The cultural environment provides a pattern of living conditions in accordance with the life patterns of its citizens. Active learning is an alternative that is in line with the new paradigm of learning processes that stimulate, challenge and encourage and motivate student creativity. Types of Classroom environment are Assessment-Centered Environments, Face-to-Face Environment, Online Environment, Learner-Centered Environments, Knowledge-Centered Environments, Face-to-face learning environment and Hybrid learning environment. Students will interact with the environment during the learning process. The environment provides a stimulus to the individual and on the other hand the individual responds to the environment. In the process of interaction, behavior changes can occur in individuals. Behavioral changes that occur can be a positive change and can also be negative. The learning environment in the classroom has an influence on improving student learning outcomes. A good classroom learning environment makes students feel comfortable and motivated when carrying out learning activities &nbsp

ICE: Enabling Non-Experts to Build Models Interactively for Large-Scale Lopsided Problems

Quick interaction between a human teacher and a learning machine presents numerous benefits and challenges when working with web-scale data. The human teacher guides the machine towards accomplishing the task of interest. The learning machine leverages big data to find examples that maximize the training value of its interaction with the teacher. When the teacher is restricted to labeling examples selected by the machine, this problem is an instance of active learning. When the teacher can provide additional information to the machine (e.g., suggestions on what examples or predictive features should be used) as the learning task progresses, then the problem becomes one of interactive learning. To accommodate the two-way communication channel needed for efficient interactive learning, the teacher and the machine need an environment that supports an interaction language. The machine can access, process, and summarize more examples than the teacher can see in a lifetime. Based on the machine's output, the teacher can revise the definition of the task or make it more precise. Both the teacher and the machine continuously learn and benefit from the interaction. We have built a platform to (1) produce valuable and deployable models and (2) support research on both the machine learning and user interface challenges of the interactive learning problem. The platform relies on a dedicated, low-latency, distributed, in-memory architecture that allows us to construct web-scale learning machines with quick interaction speed. The purpose of this paper is to describe this architecture and demonstrate how it supports our research efforts. Preliminary results are presented as illustrations of the architecture but are not the primary focus of the paper

Spreading Leader Knowledge: Investigating a Participatory Mode of Knowledge Dissemination among Management Undergraduates

In this paper we discuss the need for a practitioner–academic partnership in disseminating leader knowledge among undergraduate management students, and find that in order to cultivate actionable skill development, business and academic communities should collaborate to offer a participatory approach to leadership education. The core objective is to discover sources of actionable knowledge and to decipher its optimum dissemination among management students, encompassing technical, conceptual and human kill development, through interaction with both theory and practice, in order to prepare students for active participation, and potential leadership, in the business environment. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we propose a participatory leader knowledge dissemination model, where business leaders can stimulate the academic environment, and leadership skill development can be promoted through practitioners’ active involvement in the education process. The article concludes with a perspective on the evolution of knowledge transfer among management students and the current trend towards dynamic collaboration between academics and corporate leaders

The memory of a tree; an interactive visual storytelling installation

Over the centuries, people have combined fields, leading to the creation of new domains. For example, artists have used technology to widen the range of their medium to express ideas in new ways. Similarly, technology has leveraged art to expand its range of application. Both art and technology continue to inspire innovation in each other. A contemporary example of this process is evident in interactive art era; this article covers this topic focusing on tangible interface pieces. There have been many compelling demonstrations that involve tangible interaction to increase audience interests through their embodied interaction. However, most existing approaches are limited to engaging a user’s immediate, temporary experience with setting some context of the environment with story elements. This article presents an interactive installation that engages the audience, building an immersive environment based on the synergy between embodied interaction and storytelling in a more active and meaningful way. It is based on the belief that tangible interfaces have the potential to convey narratives more meaningfully based on physical interaction and human senses and fundamentally, aims to supply another potential of tangible interfaces to spark further discussion in this area

The Pace of Aesthetic Process: A Comparative Approach

Traditionally, western theory of art has been equipped with a set of dualisms such as subject-object, artistic process-artistic product, active artist-passive spectator, that has supposed a rejection of a plenary notion of the human integrated with nature and the cosmos. In this context, John Dewey, who presented his theory of art in 1934 in Art as Experience, showed how the “art has been set in a remote pedestal”, separated from the low activities which we realized in our ordinary lives. He refused the way aesthetics has separated the live creature from the world in which it lives, and proposes a new approach which begin from the raw, from everyday human activities. The aim of this paper is to focus interest in Dewey’s notion of rhythm, because this characteristic set the pace of the aesthetic process. This paper explores Dewey’s proposal from a comparative approach, because the rejection of art-centred discourse to the rich aesthetic dimensions of our lives is not common in all cultural traditions. I begin defining the deweyan notion of rhythm in contrast to the vital rhythm of Taoist aesthetics. Both Dewey and Taoists postulate that Human beings are affected and participate in nature’s rhythms and the reality is a continually changing balance. Secondly, I would like to consider a specific classic Chinese work of aesthetics, written by Shí Tāo (石涛) in the seventeenth century, which was developed fundamental aspects of rhythm in capturing the spirit resonance of the world and revealed its immensity through the method of the one-stroke. Through this paper’s presentation, I wish to show the importance of the rhythm in the creative process, because rhythm marks not only our interaction with the environment and with other people, but also the impulse of the aesthetic world-making process

End-User Visual Design of Web-Based Interactive Applications Making Use of Geographical Information: the WINDMash Approach

International audienceVisual instructional design languages currently provide notations for representing the intermediate and final results of a knowledge engineering process. This paper reports on a visual framework (called WIND - Web INteraction Design) that focuses on both designers' creativity and model executability. It only addresses Active Reading Learning Scenarios making use of localized documents (travel stories, travel guides). Our research challenge is to enable the teachers to design by themselves interaction scenarios for such a domain, avoiding any programmer intervention. The WIND framework provides a conceptual model and its associated Application Programming Interface (API). The WIND interaction scenarios are encoded as XML documents which are automatically transformed into code thanks to the provided API, thus providing designers with a real application that they can immediately assess and modify (prototyping techniques). The WIND conceptual model only provides designers with an abstract syntax and a semantics. Users of such a Domain Specific Language (DSL) need a concrete syntax. Our choice is to produce a Web-Based Mashup Environment providing designers with visual functionality

Interactive Concept Acquisition for Embodied Artificial Agents

An important capacity that is still lacking in intelligent systems such as robots, is the ability to use concepts in a human-like manner. Indeed, the use of concepts has been recognised as being fundamental to a wide range of cognitive skills, including classification, reasoning and memory. Intricately intertwined with language, concepts are at the core of human cognition; but despite a large body or research, their functioning is as of yet not well understood. Nevertheless it remains clear that if intelligent systems are to achieve a level of cognition comparable to humans, they will have to posses the ability to deal with the fundamental role that concepts play in cognition. A promising manner in which conceptual knowledge can be acquired by an intelligent system is through ongoing, incremental development. In this view, a system is situated in the world and gradually acquires skills and knowledge through interaction with its social and physical environment. Important in this regard is the notion that cognition is embodied. As such, both the physical body and the environment shape the manner in which cognition, including the learning and use of concepts, operates. Through active partaking in the interaction, an intelligent system might influence its learning experience as to be more effective. This work presents experiments which illustrate how these notions of interaction and embodiment can influence the learning process of artificial systems. It shows how an artificial agent can benefit from interactive learning. Rather than passively absorbing knowledge, the system actively partakes in its learning experience, yielding improved learning. Next, the influence of embodiment on perception is further explored in a case study concerning colour perception, which results in an alternative explanation for the question of why human colour experience is very similar amongst individuals despite physiological differences. Finally experiments, in which an artificial agent is embodied in a novel robot that is tailored for human-robot interaction, illustrate how active strategies are also beneficial in an HRI setting in which the robot learns from a human teacher

The Existence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Microenvironment of Bone

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an obligate aerobe bacteria requiring oxygen in its metabolism. In normal condition, bones have pH of 6.9–7.4 and temperature of 37°C. With the composition mentioned, bones fall in the group of tissue with less rich oxygen (<35%) which theoretically means, M. tuberculosis is hard to grow in the bone environment. Bone microliving environment is formed by the cells constructing the bone itself and the active cells which periodically interact with the bone cells. Activation of these cells gives impact to the temperature, pH, gas concentration, and liquid concentration, and at the same time triggers calcium, phosphor, and other minerals to be deposited in the bone. In the process of new bone formation, the osteoblast cells produce matrix and release them to the microenvironment that needs a high concentration of calcium and phosphor. The survival of M. tuberculosis in the microenvironment of bone is reflected in interaction of the bacteria and the non-immune cells, the bacteria and the organic environment, and the bacteria and the inorganic environment. In addition, the immune system also threatens the survival of M. tuberculosis. The results of these interactions will affect the lives of bacteria and has an impact on the bone microenvironment

Характерные черты образовательной среды технического университета в контексте формирования интеллектуальной мобильности

У статті розглядаються особливості освітнього середовища технічного університету та його роль у формуванні особистісних якостей майбутніх інженерів, інтелектуальної мобільності зокрема. Аналізується поняття «середовище», представлено структуру освітнього середовища. З’ясовано важливість розуміння інтелектуально-освітнього середовища технічного університету як цілісного системно-синергетично організованого інтелектуально-освітнього простору взаємодії учасників освітнього процесу, що дозволяє розкрити та сформувати інтелектуальні якості майбутніх інженерів, необхідні у сучасній ситуації глобальних трансформацій. Поряд з інтелектуальною відповідальністю, інтелектуальною активністю, однією з таких особистісних якостей є інтелектуальна мобільність, що визначається автором як інтегрована особистісна якість, що забезпечує готовність фахівця швидко віднаходити й застосовувати інформацію, оперативно обирати ефективні способи виконання завдань як репродуктивного, так і творчого характеру та швидко змінювати види та форми інтелектуальної діяльності без зниження ефективності та результативності останньої. Автором визначені характерні риси сучасного освітнього середовища технічного університету, а саме: глибока інтеграція навчального, наукового та інноваційного процесів; комунікативність освітнього середовища, що передбачає участь всіх суб’єктів у конструюванні та оптимізації освітнього процесу, суб’єкт-суб’єктну взаємодію викладача й студентів, широке впровадження у навчально-виховний процес інформаційних комп’ютерних технологій, а також здатність середовища до саморозвитку й самооновлення. З’ясовано, що освітнє середовище виступає продуктом спільного конструювання у межах актуальної комунікації: воно є і процесом, і результатом власної діяльності індивіда.The article deals with the characteristics of the modern educational environment of a technical university and its role in the development of intellectual qualities of future engineers, among which is intellectual mobility. The concept “environment” and the structure of an educational environment are considered. Much attention is given to understanding the modern educational environment of a technical university as a holistic system and synergistically organized area of interaction between all the participants of the educational process, which helps to develop intellectual qualities of future engineers, necessary in a knowledge-based society. Together with intellectual responsibility and intellectual intuition, one of such personality qualities is intellectual mobility, which makes it possible for a professional to change quickly the types of intellectual activity without reducing its efficiency. The author distinguishes the following characteristics of a technical university educational environment: deep integration of educational, scientific and innovative processes; communicativeness which means the optimization of an educational process by all of its participants, subject-to-subject interaction between a teacher and a student, wide implementation of information technologies, and the ability of the environment for self-development and self-renewal. It is concluded that the environment is an active participant of the educational interaction: it is both a process and a result of individual activities.В статье анализируется роль образовательной среды технического университета в формировании личностных качеств будущих инженеров, в частности - интеллектуальной мобильности. Определены следующие основные особенности современной образовательной среды технических университетов: глубокая интеграция учебного, научного и инновационного процессов; коммуникативность образовательной среды, которая предусматривает участие всех ее субъектов в создании и оптимизации образовательного процесса, субъект-субъектное взаимодействие преподавателя и студента, широкое внедрение информационных компьютерных технологий в учебно-воспитательный процесс, а также способность среды к саморазвитию и самообновлению. Выявлено, что образовательная среда является продуктом совместного конструирования в пределах актуальной коммуникации: она является и процессом, и результатом собственной деятельности индивида