Hybridisation for versatile decision-making in game opponent AI

Hybridisation for versatile decision-making in game opponent A

Considering techne in popular music education: value systems in popular music curricula

Extract from the chapter introduction: This chapter seeks to problematize the value systems attached to multivalent forms of making and playing music in popular music higher education curricula. Specifically, I seek to interrogate the application or “overlaying” of traditional conservatoire values and aesthetics onto popular music education. I argue here that whilst we might expect the advent of popular music as a realm of study and practice in higher education (HE) to precipitate a different ordering of knowledge (including its practical application), what has in fact occurred is the importing of values, practices, and aesthetics from the Western classical tradition. ..

The political economy of Anglo-American naval relations: pirates, slavers and the equatorial Atlantic, 1819 to 1863

This thesis analyses the decisions that affected Anglo-American naval relations from the Gulf of Mexico to the West African coast between 1819 and 1863. It places British and American naval deployment within the context of political and economic goals. The study reveals that Britain and the United States used sea power for commerce protection, but also believed that it could be used to further long-term economic goals. However, the different ways in which Britain and the United States used sea power affected Anglo-American diplomatic and naval relations. In Britain, the government and commercial sectors were unified in their belief that sea power could be used for commerce protection and to push African factors of production into legitimate commerce. In the United States, the government only reached a consensus that sea power could be used, during peacetime, for commerce protection and promotion. When these goals of the nations conflicted, tensions increased as their interests clashed.America abhorred a strong military, but deployed naval force to fight piracy. But Britain combined slave trade suppression with economic policy and wanted American help along the West African coast. The Americans expanded their West African presence from occasional warships diverted from West Indian piracy patrols, to a full squadron, but focussed only on economic goals. These differences strained relations, but their common belief that they could use sea power for long-term commercial objectives in peacetime, provided the nations with a common mechanism through which the accumulated tensions could be mitigated. Naval forces in the equatorial Atlantic were rearranged and offending officers and ships withdrawn, to preserve Anglo-American relations. Anglo-American naval relations in the equatorial Atlantic reveal that the nations were neither friends, nor enemies, but sought to contain their disputes so they could further their individual policy objectives that would be harmed by a war

SEC/DOJ Parallel Proceedings: Contemplating the Propriety of Recent Judicial Trends

The Article examines the simultaneous civil investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and criminal investigation by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) through the United States Attorney’s Office regarding alleged violations of the federal securities laws. Part II of this Article introduces traditional authority, both statutory and case law, for the SEC and DOJ to conduct parallel proceedings. Part III briefly describes the SEC’s methods and procedures for gathering and sharing information with the DOJ. Part IV describes the rights and privileges afforded to suspects, while Part V describes the rights and privileges that suspects are not afforded despite the obviously unfair situations such suspects must face as a result. Part VI describes the procedures used by targets to combat these unfair situations, with particular attention afforded to the procedure of moving for a stay of the civil proceeding pending the resolution of the criminal proceeding. Part VII analyzes the judicial standards utilized by courts in determining whether to grant the stay of the civil proceeding, focusing on apparent recent judicial trends. Part VIII describes criticism of SEC/DOJ parallel proceedings, as well as the effectiveness of such criticism, while Part IX discusses why such criticism is largely inappropriate

High Fidelity Simulation: Panacea or Potential Problem?

An expanding trend in health science education is to replace time spent in traditional clinical settings with high fidelity simulation (HFS). Utilizing a ethnographic methodology to observe students as they engaged in HFS and exploratory interviews to uncover student perceptions, this qualitative work sought to further understand the implications of this trend by exploring what students experienced when they interacted with HFS mannequins in simulated environments. Twenty five students attending a large Ontario community college participated in the twenty two HFS scenarios that were evaluated in this study. While the numerous benefits of HFS identified in the literature were also evident in this work, the results emerging from this study suggested that students do not perceive HFS as they do real life. The implications of this perception on the trend to replace time in clinical learning environments with HFS are presented in the discussion

Mapping Digital Media: Digital Media and Investigative Reporting

Analyzes how digital media are changing the reporting, composition, and distribution of investigative news; audience expectations; content providers' roles; and the ethical criteria for journalism, from objectivity to transparency about motives

Reaction Based Grasp Force Assignment

An iterative method is developed by which the contact forces required to apply an arbitrary wrench (six elements of force and moment) to a stably grasped object may be calculated quickly. The assignment of contact forces, given a required object wrench, is accomplished with the use of fuzzy logic. This concept is referred to as the fuzzy logic reactive system (FLRS). The solution is versatile with respect to goals inherent in the rulebase and the input parameters, and is also applicable for an arbitrary number of contacts. The goal presented in this research, to illustrate the concept of the FLRS, is the minimization of the norm of the contact forces using point contacts with friction. The results comparing the contact force assignment for this method and the optimal method proposed by Nakamura are presented. The results show that FLRS will satisfy the object wrench and frictional contacts while achieving near optimal contact force assignment. This method is shown to require significantly fewer floating point operations than the solution calculated using numerical constrained optimization techniques