Ontologies for Tracking Ubiquitous Interest

Within a ubiquitous environment, intelligent displays can select the most appropriate material depending on factors such as the audience's preferences and diversity of interest. In addition, such intelligent displays should adapt according to how the audience responds. To do this, they need to determine the composition of the audience, in terms of numbers and diversity of interest. This can affect the choice of video clip shown, by taking into consideration the number of people in the local region, and the preferences of the individuals in that region. In this paper we introduce BluScreen, an agent-oriented market-place that uses ubiquitous wireless technology to determine an audience composition as part of the bidding process, and present an ontology that is used to describe the wireless devices (used to identify and track users) within the local region of a display

Ecuadorian students’ perception on the use of translation in the EFL classroom

For over half a century, the upward trend to rather demonize the use of the first language (L1) has led to its complete disregard and interdiction by many language institutions around the world due to the ever-so-trendy idea that any use of the L1 will be seen as counter-productive and even damaging to one’s intent on the acquisition of the second language (L2) (Carreres, 2006). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate what students believe as beneficial or unfavorable when it comes to using translation in the classroom either by the teacher, the students themselves or within the lesson in general. A total of 115 Ecuadorian students were surveyed with simple true or false statements regarding their opinion on translation. The students were arranged in two groups: A1 level and B1 level students. The answers from the survey were then averaged out in percentage form. The study suggests that there are indeed different opinions as to the use of translation in class. However, in general, it is perceived that lower-level students believe that normal use of translation in the classroom is a good method of or essential to learning, while most upper-level students prefer either solo use of the L2 or at least minimal use of the L1 in class

Resolutions of local face modules, functoriality, and vanishing of local hh-vectors

We study the local face modules of triangulations of simplices, i.e., the modules over face rings whose Hilbert functions are local $h$-vectors. In particular, we give resolutions of these modules by subcomplexes of Koszul complexes as well as functorial maps between modules induced by inclusions of faces. As applications, we prove a new monotonicity result for local $h$-vectors and new results on the structure of faces in triangulations with vanishing local $h$-vectors.Comment: 15 page

The local motivic monodromy conjecture for simplicial nondegenerate singularities

We prove the local motivic monodromy conjecture for singularities that are nondegenerate with respect to a simplicial Newton polyhedron. It follows that all poles of the local topological zeta functions of such singularities correspond to eigenvalues of monodromy acting on the cohomology of the Milnor fiber of some nearby point, as do the poles of Igusa's local $p$-adic zeta functions for large primes $p$.Comment: 58 page

KK-rings of wonderful varieties and matroids

We study the $K$-ring of the wonderful variety of a hyperplane arrangement and give a combinatorial presentation that depends only on the underlying matroid. We use this combinatorial presentation to define the $K$-ring of an arbitrary loopless matroid. We construct an exceptional isomorphism, with integer coefficients, to the Chow ring of the matroid that satisfies a Hirzebruch--Riemann--Roch-type formula, generalizing a recent construction of Berget, Eur, Spink, and Tseng for the permutohedral variety (the wonderful variety of a Boolean arrangement). As an application, we give combinatorial formulas for Euler characteristics of arbitrary line bundles on wonderful varieties. We give analogous constructions and results for augmented wonderful varieties, and for Deligne--Mumford--Knudsen moduli spaces of stable rational curves with marked points.Comment: 36 pages. Comments welcome

From Common Lands to Second Nature: The Scholarship of Richard W. Judd and the Future of Eastern Environmental History

Renowned environmental historian, Richard Judd, retired from teaching at the University of Maine, May 2018. Professor Judd was one of the UMaine History Department’s most prolific scholars and helped build numerous connections between the sciences and the humanities at UMaine in addition to being a significant force within the interdisciplinary field of environmental history itself for the past three decades. Professor Judd authored dozens of books and articles related to conservation; environmental thought; and the traditional farming, hunting, fishing, and logging cultures of Maine and northern New England. He also served as an editor for a number of projects—most notably among them, the Historical Atlas of Maine—as well as the Journal of Forest History and Maine History. To celebrate and discuss the significance of Professor Judd’s career, some of his current and former students organized a panel discussion featuring five forward-thinking scholars within eastern environmental history. Brian Payne, a former student of Judd’s and a professor of history at Bridgewater State discusses how Judd influenced him as a mentor and introduced him to the field of environmental history. Kate Viens, director of research at the Massachusetts Historical Society, expands on Payne’s comments about Judd’s influence as an educator, discussing the implications of his work to the field of public history in addition to her own graduate research. Matthew McKenzie, professor of history at University of Connecticut and New England Fisheries Management Council appointee, discusses the way in which Judd’s environmental history work intersects with both the sciences and social history and brings new insights to the environmental recovery within many areas of New England over the last several decades. John Cumbler, professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisville and current history faculty at Suffolk University explores, in greater depth, Judd’s contributions to a social-environmental history hybrid field and his work as indicative of environmental history’s emergence from labor and social history. Brian Donahue, chair of the environmental studies program at Brandeis University and director of the Working Landscapes program at Harvard Forest, discusses the ways in which Judd broke new ground within the field of environmental history by highlighting through his research the conservation efforts of ordinary rural people

Logic Simulation using an Asynchronous Parallel Discrete-Event Simulation Model on a SIMD Machine

The Chandy-Misra-Bryant (CMB) model has been applied to logic simulation of synchronous sequential circuits using a massively parallel SIMD computer, a CM-2 Connection Machine. Several methods of reducing message traffic in a logic simulation have been adapted to the SIMD architecture of the CM-2, with the result that each method of reducing message traffic actually decreases the speed of the simulation. This suggests that communication costs required to support logic simulation are small compared to the cost of deciding which messages need not be sent

A Gaming Laboratory to Study Distributed Collaboration Processes.

Current events present many examples of situations where a fast and coordinated response is required from many and diverse organizations and stakeholders. Technology-mediated communication and collaboration may be the only option for getting things done in situations like these. There is a real need for research on the kinds of environments and processes that best support fast response on urgent tasks for virtual teams. The paper presents the development and initial test of a gaming laboratory to study such processes. The laboratory is adaptable to different kinds of situations. We discuss the design principles and implementation of the laboratory environment, along with lessons learned from the first experiences with it

Technical and Environmental Challenges of Collaboration Engineering in Distributed Environments

Collaboration in distributed settings has become a reality in organizational life. Yet we still have much to learn about issues inherent to distributed collaboration. One important area of study is the integration of Collaboration Engineering in distributed virtual teams for helping them in structuring their interaction. The field of Collaboration Engineering offers promising guidelines for process structures, but its application in distributed arenas is just beginning to be studied. We report on the design and development of a new collaboration environment for the incorporation of Collaboration Engineering principles, as well as the results of an initial study that examined leadership and process structure effects on the development of shared understanding. The paper describes the research motivation, the environment, and the results of the study, including an analysis of participants’ feedback and their message exchanges. We discuss both technical and environmental challenges for research on Collaboration Engineering in distributed environments