13,468 research outputs found
Is agile project management applicable to construction?
This paper briefly summarises the evolution of Agile Project Management (APM) and differentiates it from lean and agile production and âleagileâ construction. The significant benefits being realized through employment of APM within the information systems industry are stated. The characteristics of APM are explored, including: philosophy, organizational attitudes and practices, planning, execution and control and learning. Finally, APM is subjectively assessed as to its potential contribution to the pre-design, design and construction phases.
In conclusion, it is assessed that APM offers considerable potential for application in predesign and design but that there are significant hurdles to its adoption in the actual construction phase. Should these be overcome, APM offers benefits well beyond any individual project
Robot Consciousness: Physics and Metaphysics Here and Abroad
Interest has been renewed in the study of consciousness, both theoretical and applied, following developments in 20th and early 21st-century logic, metamathematics, computer science, and the brain sciences. In this evolving narrative, I explore several theoretical questions about the types of artificial intelligence and offer several conjectures about how they affect possible future developments in this exceptionally transformative field of research. I also address the practical significance of the advances in artificial intelligence in view of the cautions issued by prominent scientists, politicians, and ethicists about the possible dangers of such sufficiently advanced general intelligence, including by implication the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
EastâWest Perspectives on Privacy, Ethical Pluralism and Global Information Ethics
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are both primary drivers and facilitating technologies of globalizationâand thereby, of exponentially expanding possibilities of cross-cultural encounters. Currently, over one billion persons throughout the planet have access to the Web: of these, Asian users constitute 35.8% of the Web population, while Europeans make up 28.3 % of world usersâand North Americans only 20.9% (Internet World Stats, 2007). Our histories teach us all too well that such encountersâespecially concerning potentially global ethical normsâalways run the risk of devolving into more destructive rather than emancipatory events. Speci?cally, these encounters risk pulling us into one of two contradictory positions. First of all, naĂŻve ethnocentrisms too easily issue in imperialisms that remake âthe Otherâ in oneâs own imageâprecisely by eliminating the irreducible differences in norms and practices that de?ne distinctive cultures. Second, these imperialisms thereby inspire a relativistic turn to the sheerly localâprecisely for the sake of preserving local identities and cultures. Hence the general problem: how we might foster a cross-cultural communication for a global ICE that steers between the two Manichean polarities of ethnocentric imperialism and fragmenting relativism
Beyond the Circle of Life
It seems certain to me that I will die and stay dead. By âIâ, I mean me, Greg Nixon, this person, this self-identity. I am so intertwined with the chiasmus of lives, bodies, ecosystems, symbolic intersubjectivity, and life on this particular planet that I cannot imagine this identity continuing alone without them. However, one may survive oneâs life by believing in universal awareness, perfection, and the peace that passes all understanding. Perhaps, we bring this back with us to the Source from which we began, changing it, enriching it. Once we have lived â if we donât choose the eternal silence of oblivion by life denial, vanity, indifference, or simple weariness â the Source learns and we awaken within it. Awareness, consciousness, is universal â it comes with the territory â so maybe you will be one of the few prepared to become unexpectedly enlightened after the loss of body and self. You may discover your own apotheosis â something you always were, but after a lifetime of primate experience, now much more. Since you are of the Source and since you have changed from life experience and yet retained the dream of ultimate awakening, plus you have brought those chaotic emotions and memories back to the Source with you (though no longer yours), your life & memories will have mattered. Those who awaken beyond the death of self will have changed Reality
Peirce's sign theory as an open-source R package.
Throughout Peirceâs writing, we witness his developing vision of a machine that scientists will eventually be able to create. Nadin (2010) raised the question:Why do computer scientists continue to ignore Peirceâs sign theory? A review of the literature on Peirceâs theory and the semiotics machine reveals that many authors discussed the machine;however, they donot differentiate between a physical computer machine and its software. This paper discusses the problematic issues involved in converting Peirceâs theory into a programming language, machine and software application. We demonstrate this challenge by introducing Peirceâs sign theory as a software application that runs under an open-source R environmen
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