Understanding Stories in their Social Context

Stories concerning multiple agents with interacting goals and plans are difficult to understand;the task can be simplified however, if a program is given sufficient knowledge of social structures. Representations of social aspects of the story may also be necessary components of a satisfactory understanding of the story; here, we consider the distinctions which must be representable to support the task of advice-giving in the social-domain.This paper elaborates on established goal taxonomies in order to capture distinctions among goals embedded in a social context;these distinctions serve both as the basis for choosing advice and as inferential shortcuts.It goes on to explore ways in which such social goals can be predicted from a detailed understanding of the conventions defining social structures linking the various agents. Social units,social-situations, and triangles are introduced as conceptual structures which organize interpersonal-themes. The goals predicted by these themes provide a focus for motivational and impact inferences which would otherwise be lacking. These and related structures also allow some direct predictions of actions, as when a social-situation provides scriptal specification of action sequences or when a contract underlying a social-unit licenses specific recourses in response to obligation failures

Adaptive Distributed Environment for Procedure Training (ADEPT)

ADEPT (Adaptive Distributed Environment for Procedure Training) is designed to provide more effective, flexible, and portable training for NASA systems controllers. When creating a training scenario, an exercise author can specify a representative rationale structure using the graphical user interface, annotating the results with instructional texts where needed. The author's structure may distinguish between essential and optional parts of the rationale, and may also include "red herrings" - hypotheses that are essential to consider, until evidence and reasoning allow them to be ruled out. The system is built from pre-existing components, including Stottler Henke's SimVentive instructional simulation authoring tool and runtime. To that, a capability was added to author and exploit explicit control decision rationale representations. ADEPT uses SimVentive's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)- based interactive graphic display capability as the basis of the tool for quickly noting aspects of decision rationale in graph form. The ADEPT prototype is built in Java, and will run on any computer using Windows, MacOS, or Linux. No special peripheral equipment is required. The software enables a style of student/ tutor interaction focused on the reasoning behind systems control behavior that better mimics proven Socratic human tutoring behaviors for highly cognitive skills. It supports fast, easy, and convenient authoring of such tutoring behaviors, allowing specification of detailed scenario-specific, but content-sensitive, high-quality tutor hints and feedback. The system places relatively light data-entry demands on the student to enable its rationale-centered discussions, and provides a support mechanism for fostering coherence in the student/ tutor dialog by including focusing, sequencing, and utterance tuning mechanisms intended to better fit tutor hints and feedback into the ongoing context

Carbon Neutrality Should Not Be the End Goal: Lessons for Institutional Climate Action From U.S. Higher Education

Aggressive climate action pledges from governments, businesses and institutions have increasingly taken the form of commitments to net carbon neutrality. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are uniquely positioned to innovate in this area, and over 800 U.S. colleges and universities have pledged to achieve net carbon neutrality. Eleven leading U.S. HEIs have already attained this status. Here, we examine their approaches to achieving net carbon neutrality, highlighting risks associated with treating emissions reduction approaches such as carbon offsets, renewable energy certificates, and bioenergy as best practice in isolation from broader policy frameworks. While pursuing net carbon neutrality has led to important institutional shifts toward sustainability, the mix of approaches used by HEIs is out of alignment with a broader U.S. decarbonization roadmap; in aggregate, these carbon neutral schools underutilize electrification and new zero-carbon electricity. We conclude by envisioning how HEIs can refocus climate mitigation efforts towards decarbonization (with net carbon neutrality as a possible milestone), with an emphasis on actions that will help shift policy and markets at larger scales

A cytotoxic and cytostatic gold(III) corrole

We have synthesized and characterized a water-soluble gold(III) corrole (1-Au) that is highly toxic to cisplatin-resistant cancer cells. Relative to its 1-Ga analogue, axial ligands bind only weakly to 1-Au, which likely accounts for its lower affinity for human serum albumin (HSA). We suggest that the cytotoxicity of 1-Au may be related to this lower HSA affinity

Palmar-divergent dislocation of the scaphoid and the lunate

We describe a patient with palmar-divergent dislocation of the scaphoid and lunate. After successful closed reduction, the scapholunate and lunotriquetral ligaments were sutured through the dorsal approach, and the anterior capsule was sutured through the palmar approach. The scapholunate and lunotriquetral joints were fixed with Kirschner wires for 7 weeks. At the 1-year follow-up, magnetic resonance imaging showed no evidence of avascular necrosis of the scaphoid or lunate, and radiographs showed no evidence of the dorsal and volar intercalated segment instability patterns associated with carpal instability. However, flexion of the scaphoid and a break in Gilula’s line remained. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing treatment of palmar-divergent dislocation of the scaphoid and lunate by suturing the carpal interosseous ligaments

Emissions and Energy Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act

If goals set under the Paris Agreement are met, the world may hold warming well below 2 C; however, parties are not on track to deliver these commitments, increasing focus on policy implementation to close the gap between ambition and action. Recently, the US government passed its most prominent piece of climate legislation to date, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), designed to invest in a wide range of programs that, among other provisions, incentivize clean energy and carbon management, encourage electrification and efficiency measures, reduce methane emissions, promote domestic supply chains, and address environmental justice concerns. IRA's scope and complexity make modeling important to understand impacts on emissions and energy systems. We leverage results from nine independent, state-of-the-art models to examine potential implications of key IRA provisions, showing economy wide emissions reductions between 43-48% below 2005 by 2035