Proceed with Caution : Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems

Publisher PD

The race between education and catastrophe: creating climate-sensitive cities

‘History is a race between education and catastrophe’ (Gurría, 2013). This is the essence of the climate-change dilemma in human settlements today. How can cities act effectively to live with climate change? After a century, the world is bracing for a perfect storm with burgeoning populations drifting to the cities, resulting in anthropogenic greenhouse gases multiplying exponentially. Rapid urban development breaks down natural systems that sequester greenhouse gases, making cities unhealthy, unbalanced, and undesirable (Blakely & Carbonell, 2012). It is reported that ‘more people are killed from poor urban design and climate-change than terrorism’ (Birkeland, 2008), which is an immense ethical problem. My focus is on creating resilient Climate-Sensitive-Cities®. This approach to tackling the urgency of climate change in cities is five-fold: 1. It audits vulnerability and coping capacity. 2. It addresses audit gaps by investing in accelerated learning for professions and communities to build capacity for resilience. 3. It appreciates that every individual can make a unique contribution to interdisciplinary capacity-building for addressing climate education through their own organisations and regions. 4. It realises that accelerated learning for the long-term investment in individuals within organisations includes collaborative coaching and partnering. 5. It recognises that optimism for a preferred future can be achieved in a world full of perverse incentives. Although there are many perspectives and prescribed actions from each discipline, my approach is founded on meta-scanning, with principle-based options that emerge from broad lessons from international and local successes. The crucial part of my work is to convert research into desirable actions in a way that demonstrates learning for better climate governance. The results of my endeavours include influence of policy and practices in fourteen countries and through professional bodies across disciplines. My contribution to transformational guidelines for international climate action transparency is recognised widely. This thesis comprises an exploration of philosophies, revisiting values, seeking answers to four research questions, a new lens with three perspectives, and project design to ensure higher fidelity with my statement of intent. My Doctorate establishes a framework that enables individuals to lead the way in climate-change practices. I intend to be a living example of such frameworks. The thesis concludes with new definitions for Climate-Sensitive-Cities® and Accelerated Learning. It also overlays triple loop policy development with the Climate Policy in Practice Cycle® as a means for funding and evaluating action. Finally, a manual for Master Classes delivered across fourteen countries works with a transformational change trajectory that articulates the journey from passive bystanding, to advocacy, to tipping points, to coping with success. Independent evaluations accelerate the uptake of these skills in governments, communities, professions, and most importantly, individuals. We need to learn, question old thinking, and relearn in order to adapt and live with the many facets of climate-change. Based on this rationale, I have structured my Doctorate to advance a deeper understanding of the technical, intellectual, and interpersonal skills required of an effective Sustainability Commissioner. Alvin Toffler stated ‘the illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn’ (ISLS, 2013). This is how we win the race of education over catastrophe

Computational Approaches to Drug Profiling and Drug-Protein Interactions

Despite substantial increases in R&D spending within the pharmaceutical industry, denovo drug design has become a time-consuming endeavour. High attrition rates led to a long period of stagnation in drug approvals. Due to the extreme costs associated with introducing a drug to the market, locating and understanding the reasons for clinical failure is key to future productivity. As part of this PhD, three main contributions were made in this respect. First, the web platform, LigNFam enables users to interactively explore similarity relationships between ‘drug like’ molecules and the proteins they bind. Secondly, two deep-learning-based binding site comparison tools were developed, competing with the state-of-the-art over benchmark datasets. The models have the ability to predict offtarget interactions and potential candidates for target-based drug repurposing. Finally, the open-source ScaffoldGraph software was presented for the analysis of hierarchical scaffold relationships and has already been used in multiple projects, including integration into a virtual screening pipeline to increase the tractability of ultra-large screening experiments. Together, and with existing tools, the contributions made will aid in the understanding of drug-protein relationships, particularly in the fields of off-target prediction and drug repurposing, helping to design better drugs faster

Benchmarking VisualStudio.NET for the development and implementation of a manufacturing execution system

The focus of this thesis is to show the utility of Microsoft\u27s\u27 .NET framework in developing and implementing a MES system. The manufacturing environment today, more than ever, is working towards achieving better yields, productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. Companies such as DELL are rapidly outgrowing their competition due to better management of their product lifecycles. The time between receiving a new order to the time the final product is shipped is getting shorter. Historically, business management applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been implemented without too much importance given to the operational and shop floor needs. The fact is that these business systems can be successful only when they are properly integrated with real-time data from the shop floor, which is the core of any manufacturing set-up. A Manufacturing Execution System or a MES is this link between the shop floor and the top floor. MESA international defines MES as Systems that deliver information enabling the optimization of production activities from order launch to finished goods Thus, a MES provides the right information to the right people at the right time in a right format, to help them make well-informed decisions. Thus, a necessity for an efficient MES is high capability of integration with the existing systems on the operational level. This is where Microsoft\u27s\u27 VS.NET fits in. Microsoft defines .NET as A set of software technologies for connecting information, people, systems and devices . The vision of .NET is to enable the end user to connect to information from any place at anytime, using any device and in a manner that is independent of the platform on which the service is based. The building block of the .NET framework is the Common Language Runtime or CLR, which is capable of converting data from its original format into a format understandable to .NET and then use that format to interface with its client. This feature that .NET provides holds the key in the context of a MES development and implementation. The aim of this applied research is to design a MES using VS.NET to control the working of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) namely CAMCELL. The architecture used for the MES will then be gauged against an MES implementation done previously using a Siemens\u27 PC-based automation technology and Visual FoxPro. This study will integrate the Siemens\u27 technology with the .NET framework to enhance the resulting MES efficiency. The shop floor details or the real-time data collection will be done using the databases from WinCC and data aggregation and manipulation will be done within the .NET framework. The software architecture used for this study will achieve vertical integration between the CAMCELL ERP layer, the MES layer and the Control layer. The study will demonstrate how the data stored in a high level ERP database can be converted into useful information for the control layer for process control and also how real-time information gathered from the control layer can be filtered into useful information up to the ERP layer to facilitate the decision making process. VS.NET user interface screens will be proposed to support these activities. The performance of the proposed architecture will be compared to that from previous studies, thus benchmarking VS.NET for the implementation of the MES

Intuitive interaction: Steps towards an integral understanding of the user experience in interaction design

A critical review of traditional practices and methodologies demonstrates an underplaying of firstly the role of emotions and secondly aspects of exploration in interaction behaviour in favour of a goal orientated focus in the user experience (UX). Consequently, the UX is a commodity that can be designed, measured, and predicted. An integral understanding of the UX attempts to overcome the rationalistic and instrumental mindset of traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) on several levels. Firstly, the thesis seeks to complement a functional view of interaction with a qualitative one that considers the complexity of emotions. Emotions are at the heart of engagement and connect action irreversibly to the moment it occurs; they are intettwined with cognition, and decision making. Furthermore, they introduce the vague and ambiguous aspects of experience and open it up to potentiality of creation. Secondly, the thesis examines the relationship between purposive and non-purposive user behaviour such as exploration, play and discovery. The integral position proposed here stresses the procedurally relational nature and complexity of interaction experience. This requires revisiting and augmenting key themes of HCI practice such as interactivity and intuitive design. Intuition is investigated as an early and unconscious form of learning, and unstructured browsing discussed as random interaction mechanisms as forms of implicit learning. Interactivity here is the space for user's actions, contributions and creativity, not only in the design process but also during interaction as co-authors of their experiences. Finally, I envisage integral forms of usability methods to embrace the vague and the ambiguous, in order to enrich HCI's vocabulary and design potential. Key readings that inform this position cut across contemporary philosophy, media and interaction studies and professional HCI literature. On a practical level, a series of experimental interaction designs for web-browsing aim to augment the user's experience, and create space for user's intuition

Computational Approaches to Explainable Artificial Intelligence:Advances in Theory, Applications and Trends

Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tasks, including clinical diagnostics, and has unlocked solutions to previously intractable problems in virtual agent design, robotics, genomics, neuroimaging, computer vision, and industrial automation. In this paper, the most relevant advances from the last few years in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and several applications to neuroscience, neuroimaging, computer vision, and robotics are presented, reviewed and discussed. In this way, we summarize the state-of-the-art in AI methods, models and applications within a collection of works presented at the 9 International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (IWINAC). The works presented in this paper are excellent examples of new scientific discoveries made in laboratories that have successfully transitioned to real-life applications

E4 Thematic Network

This Thematic Network aims at developing the European dimension of Higher Engineering Education by enhancing the compatibility of the many diverse routes to the profession of engineer, by facilitating greater mobility and integration of skilled personnel throughout Europe, by favouring a mutual exchange of skills and competences and providing a platform for communication between academics and professionals. Five main activities have been organised under the overall umbrella of the Thematic Network.The work contains 6 volumes