Rich Socio-Cognitive Agents for Immersive Training Environments: Case of NonKin Village

Demand is on the rise for scientifically based human-behavior models that can be quickly customized and inserted into immersive training environments to recreate a given society or culture. At the same time, there are no readily available science model-driven environments for this purpose (see survey in Sect. 2). In researching how to overcome this obstacle, we have created rich (complex) socio-cognitive agents that include a large number of social science models (cognitive, sociologic, economic, political, etc) needed to enhance the realism of immersive, artificial agent societies. We describe current efforts to apply model-driven development concepts and how to permit other models to be plugged in should a developer prefer them instead. The current, default library of behavioral models is a metamodel, or authoring language, capable of generating immersive social worlds. Section 3 explores the specific metamodels currently in this library (cognitive, socio-political, economic, conversational, etc.) and Sect. 4 illustrates them with an implementation that results in a virtual Afghan village as a platform-independent model. This is instantiated into a server that then works across a bridge to control the agents in an immersive, platform-specific 3D gameworld (client). Section 4 also provides examples of interacting in the resulting gameworld and some of the training a player receives. We end with lessons learned and next steps for improving both the process and the gameworld. The seeming paradox of this research is that as agent complexity increases, the easier it becomes for the agents to explain their world, their dilemmas, and their social networks to a player or trainee

Physical Background for Luminescence Thermometry Sensors Based on Pr3+:LaF3 Crystalline Particles

The main goal of this study was creating multifunctional nanoparticles based on rare-earth doped LaF3 nanocrystals, which can be used as fluorescence thermal sensors operating over the 80–320 K temperature range including physiological temperature range (10–50°C). The Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 1%) microcrystalline powder and the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 12%, 20%) nanoparticles were studied. It was proved that all the samples were capable of thermal sensing into the temperature range from 80 to 320 K. It was revealed that the mechanisms of temperature sensitivity for the microcrystalline powder and the nanoparticles are different. In the powder, the 3P1 and 3P0 states of Pr3+ ion share their electronic populations according to the Boltzmann and thermalization of the 3P1 state takes place. In the nanoparticles, two temperature dependent mechanisms were suggested: energy migration within 3P0 state in the temperature range from 80 K to 200 K followed by quenching of 3P0 state by OH groups at higher temperatures. The values of the relative sensitivities for the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 1%) microcrystalline powder and the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 12%, 20%) nanoparticles into the physiological temperature range (at 45°C) were 1, 0.5, and 0.3% °C−1, respectively

Coprecipitation Method of Synthesis, Characterization, and Cytotoxicity of Pr 3+

The Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 3, 7, 12, 20, 30%) nanoparticles were characterized by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, optical spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, and MTT assay. It was revealed that the average diameter of all the NPs is around 14–18 nm. The hydrodynamic radius of the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 7%) nanoparticles strongly depends on the medium. It was revealed that hydrodynamic radii of the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 7%) nanoparticles in water, DMEM, and RPMI-1640 biological mediums were 18 ± 5, 41 ± 6, and 186 ± 8 nm, respectively. The Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 7%) nanoparticles were nontoxic at micromolar concentrations toward COLO-320 cell line. The lifetime curves were fitted biexponentially, and for the Pr3+:LaF3 (CPr = 7%) NPs, the luminescence lifetimes of Pr3+ ions were 480 ± 2 and 53 ± 5 nanosec