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Modeling building semantics: providing feedback and sustainability
Even minor changes in user activity can bring about significant energy savings within built space. Many building performance assessment methods have been developed, however these often disregard the impact of user behavior (i.e. the social, cultural and organizational aspects of the building). Building users currently have limited means of determining how sustainable they are, in context of the specific building structure and/or when compared to other users performing similar activities, it is therefore easy for users to dismiss their energy use. To support sustainability, buildings must be able to monitor energy use, identify areas of potential change in the context of user activity and provide contextually relevant information to facilitate persuasion management. If the building is able to provide users with detailed information about how specific user activity that is wasteful, this should provide considerable motivation to implement positive change. This paper proposes using a dynamic and temporal semantic model, to populate information within a model of persuasion, to manage user change. By semantically mapping a building, and linking this to persuasion management we suggest that: i) building energy use can be monitored and analyzed over time; ii) persuasive management can be facilitated to move user activity towards sustainability
State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity
This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on
the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages
to be carried out within the Rewerse project.
From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of
interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of
the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give
an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs;
in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and
in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks
Persuasive Technology for Learning in Business Context
"Persuasive Design is a relatively new concept which employs general principles of persuasion that can be implemented in persuasive technology. This concept has been introduced by BJ Fogg in 1998, who since then has further extended it to use computers for changing attitudes and behaviour. Such principles can be applied very well in learning and teaching: in traditional human-led learning, teachers always have employed persuasion as one of the elements of teaching. Persuasive technology moves these principles into the digital domain, by focusing on technology that inherently stimulates learners to learn more quickly and effectively. This is very relevant for the area of Business Management in several aspects: Consumer Behavior, Communications, Human Resource, Marketing & Advertising, Organisational Behavior & Leadership. The persuasive principles identified by BJ Fogg are: reduction, tunnelling, tailoring, suggestion, self-monitoring, surveillance, conditioning, simulation, social signals. Also relevant is the concept of KAIROS, which means the just-in-time, at the right place provision of information/stimulus. In the EuroPLOT project (2010-2013) we have developed persuasive learning objects and tools (PLOTs) in which we have applied persuasive designs and principles. In this context, we have developed a pedagogical framework for active engagement, based on persuasive design in which the principles of persuasive learning have been formalised in a 6-step guide for persuasive learning. These principles have been embedded in two tools – PLOTmaker and PLOTLearner – which have been developed for creating persuasive learning objects. The tools provide specific capability for implementing persuasive principles at the very beginning of the design of learning objects. The feasibility of employing persuasive learning concepts with these tools has been investigated in four different case studies with groups of teachers and learners from realms with distinctly different teaching and learning practices: Business Computing, language learning, museum learning, and chemical substance handling. These case studies have involved the following learner target groups: school children, university students, tertiary students, vocational learners and adult learners. With regards to the learning context, they address archive-based learning, industrial training, and academic teaching. Alltogether, these case studies include participants from Sweden, Africa (Madagascar), Denmark, Czech Republic, and UK. One of the outcomes of this investigation was that one cannot apply a common set of persuasive designs that would be valid for general use in all situations: on the contrary, the persuasive principles are very specific to learning contexts and therefore must be specifically tailored for each situation. Two of these case studies have a direct relevance to education in the realm of Business Management: Business Computing and language learning (for International Business). In this paper we will present the first results from the evaluation of persuasive technology driven learning in these two relevant areas.
Teaching Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder: A Review of the Literature
Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) has been examined by the psychological community for many years, but only in recent years has it entered the realm of education and recognizing students with RAD has occurred. Disagreements continue to take place over what types of assessments or interventions may work for children with RAD. Often children with RAD are not diagnosis [sic] because the symptoms reflect other dysfunctional behaviors and teachers reject these students as unwilling to accept instruction. This paper is a literature review of professional articles available with bearing on teaching children with RAD. In addition, this article presents behaviors of RAD and describes recommendations in dealing with students with RAD that teachers may use. Lastly, the article briefly summarizes the content of several research articles
S-Store: Streaming Meets Transaction Processing
Stream processing addresses the needs of real-time applications. Transaction
processing addresses the coordination and safety of short atomic computations.
Heretofore, these two modes of operation existed in separate, stove-piped
systems. In this work, we attempt to fuse the two computational paradigms in a
single system called S-Store. In this way, S-Store can simultaneously
accommodate OLTP and streaming applications. We present a simple transaction
model for streams that integrates seamlessly with a traditional OLTP system. We
chose to build S-Store as an extension of H-Store, an open-source, in-memory,
distributed OLTP database system. By implementing S-Store in this way, we can
make use of the transaction processing facilities that H-Store already
supports, and we can concentrate on the additional implementation features that
are needed to support streaming. Similar implementations could be done using
other main-memory OLTP platforms. We show that we can actually achieve higher
throughput for streaming workloads in S-Store than an equivalent deployment in
H-Store alone. We also show how this can be achieved within H-Store with the
addition of a modest amount of new functionality. Furthermore, we compare
S-Store to two state-of-the-art streaming systems, Spark Streaming and Storm,
and show how S-Store matches and sometimes exceeds their performance while
providing stronger transactional guarantees
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