A medium-range air combat game solution by a pilot advisory system

Air-to-air combat between two aggressive aircraft , both equipped with medium-range guided missiles, is .a key element of future air warfare. This dynamic coni lict can be viewed as an interaction of a twotarget diiferential game (between the air--craft) and two independent missileaircraft pursuit-evasion games. The information structure is, however, rather intricate: though perfect information can be assumed between the two aircraft, the missiles have a limited detection range, beyond which information has to be forwarded by the launching aircraft. Moreover, missile firing cannot be assumed detectable. Problems of such complexity haven't been treated yet in the frame of\ud classical differential game theory. In this paper a prototype Pilot Advisory\ud System (PADS), designed to solve the problems facing the pilot in such an\ud engagement, is described. PADS proposed to be an expert System, which operates in real--time and has a "knowledge base" incorporating differential game concepts and solution elements. PADS simultaneously evalua.tes potential success with the respective risks and advises the pilot when to fire his missile and when to start an evasive maneuver. This advisory system can guarantee survival when so desired by the pilot. but in most situations it maximizes the probability of victory with an accepted level of' risk

H-alpha Survey of the Local Volume: Isolated Southern Galaxies

We present our H-alpha observations of 11 isolated southern galaxies: SDIG, PGC 51659, E 222-010, E 272-025, E 137-018, IC 4662, Sag DIG, IC 5052, IC 5152, UGCA 438, and E149-003, with distances from 1 to 7 Mpc. We have determined the total H-alpha fluxes from these galaxies. The star formation rates in these galaxies range from 10^{-1} (IC 4662) to 10^{-4}_{\odot}/yr (SDIG) and the gas depletion time at the observed star formation rates lies within the range from 1/6 to 24 Hubble times H_0^{-1} .Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Reading Videogames as (authorless) Literature

This article presents the outcomes of research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in England and informed by work in the fields of new literacy research, gaming studies and the socio-cultural framing of education, for which the videogame L.A. Noire (Rockstar Games, 2011) was studied within the orthodox framing of the English Literature curriculum at A Level (pre-University) and Undergraduate (degree level). There is a plethora of published research into the kinds of literacy practices evident in videogame play, virtual world engagement and related forms of digital reading and writing (Gee, 2003; Juul, 2005; Merchant, Gillen, Marsh and Davies, 2012; Apperley and Walsh, 2012; Bazalgette and Buckingham, 2012) as well as the implications of such for home / school learning (Dowdall, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Potter, 2012) and for teachers’ own digital lives (Graham, 2012). Such studies have tended to focus on younger children and this research is also distinct from such work in the field in its exploration of the potential for certain kinds of videogame to be understood as 'digital transformations' of conventional ‘schooled’ literature. The outcomes of this project raise implications of such a conception for a further implementation of a ‘reframed’ literacy (Marsh, 2007) within the contemporary curriculum of a traditional and conservative ‘subject’. A mixed methods approach was adopted. Firstly, students contributing to a gamplay blog requiring them to discuss their in-game experience through the ‘language game’ of English Literature, culminating in answering a question constructed with the idioms of the subject’s set text ‘final examination’. Secondly, students taught their teachers to play L.A. Noire, with free choice over the context for this collaboration. Thirdly, participants returned to traditional roles in order to work through a set of study materials provided, designed to reproduce the conventions of the ‘study guide’ for literature education. Interviews were conducted after each phase and the outcomes informed a redrafting of the study materials which are now available online for teachers – this being the ‘practical’ outcome of the research (Berger and McDougall, 2012). In the act of inserting the study of L.A. Noire into the English Literature curriculum as currently framed, this research moves, through a practical ‘implementation’ beyond longstanding debates around narratology and ludology (Frasca, 2003; Juul, 2005) in the field of game studies (Leaning, 2012) through a direct connection to new literacy studies and raises epistemological questions about ‘subject identity’, informed by Bernstein (1996) and Bourdieu (1986) and the implications for digital transformations of texts for both ideas about cultural value in schooled literacy (Kendall and McDougall, 2011) and the politics of ‘expertise’ in pedagogic relations (Ranciere, 2009, Bennett, Kendall and McDougall, 2012a)

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games

A computational approach towards conflict resolution for serious games

Conflict is an unavoidable feature of life, but the development of conflict resolution management skills can facilitate the parties involved in resolving their conflicts in a positive manner. The goal of our research is to develop a serious game in which children may experiment with conflict resolution strategies and learn how to work towards positive conflict outcomes. While serious games related to conflict exist at present, our work represents the first attempt to teach conflict resolution skills through a game in a manner informed by sociological and psychological theories of conflict and current best practice for conflict resolution. In this paper, we present a computational approach to conflict generation and resolution. We describe the five phases involved in our conflict modeling process: conflict situation creation, conflict detection, player modeling and conflict strategy prediction, conflict management, and conflict resolution, and discuss the three major elements of our player model: assertiveness, cooperativeness, and relationship. Finally, we overview a simple resource management game we have developed in which we have begun experimenting with our conflict model concepts.peer-reviewe

From 'event-led' to 'event-themed' regeneration: the 2002 Commonwealth Games Legacy Programme

Hosting large events has long been associated with the physical regeneration of cities. To supplement these ‘hard’ impacts, cities are now attempting to use events to stimulate ‘softer’ social and economic regeneration. This paper evaluates the impacts of a regeneration Programme adopted in conjunction with the 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester, UK. Alongside its emphasis on social and economic regeneration, this Programme was unusual in that the projects were Games-themed, rather than being directly linked to the event. Despite some concerns about the organisational structures employed and the sustainability of impacts, target beneficiaries have received valuable assistance from the Programme. As such there appears to be valuable lessons that other cities can learn from this example of event regeneration

Unveiling modern board games: an ML-based approach to BoardGameGeek data analysis

There has been growing interest in modern board games, which have been increasing in complexity with respect to their classic counterparts (e.g. Chess, Go), by utilizing new mechanics and novel ways to interact with them, resulting in richer player interaction. Boardgamegeek.com (BGG) is the biggest forum for board games and it now has registered 191 different mechanics. Users can rate games on the forum and BGG will rank them accordingly. This work aims to investigate how mechanics relate to player ratings using a Decision Regression Tree (RT) to predict the expected rating based on a game’s mechanics. To achieve this we collect mechanics and player ratings data of all ranked games on BGG and train our Regression Tree. After training the RT and further extending it with Random Forest (RF), we use Mean Decrease in Impurity (MDI) and Permutation Feature Importance (PFI) to evaluate how much each mechanic influences the player ratings. We show that, using only game mechanics, Regression Tree and Random Forest can account for 28% and 32% of the variance in games’ ratings, respectively. We highlight the interpretability of RT and how it can be used to gain insights into the relationship between game mechanics and player ratings