New Technologies and Mixed-Use Convergence How Humans and Algorithms are Adapting to Each Other

Human experience with technology has shifted from technological contexts requiring occasional intervention by a fraction of people mostly in command of technologies, to technological contexts that require constant ongoing participation from most people to complete tasks. We examine the current state of `mixed-use' new technologies integration with legacy systems, and whether the human assistance required to complete tasks and processes could function as a training ground for future smart systems, or whether increasing `co-dependence with' or `training of' algorithmic systems, enhancing task completion and inadvertently educating systems in human behaviour and intelligence, will simply subsume people into the algorithmic landscape. As the Internet of Things (IoT) arises in conjunction with advancing robotics and drone technology, semi and fully automated algorithmic systems are being developed that intersect with human experience in new and heterogeneous ways. Many new technologies are not yet flexible enough to support the choices people require in their daily lives, due to limitations in the algorithmic `logics' used that restrict options to predetermined pathways conceived of by programmers. This greatly limits human agency, and presently the potential to overcome problems that arise in processes. In this mixed-use period, we have the opportunity to develop new ways to address ethical guidance as knowledge that machines can learn. We explore promoting embedding of ethically-based principles into automated contexts through: (1) developing mutually agreed automated external ethical review systems (human or otherwise) that evaluate conformance across multiple ethical codes and provide feedback to designers, agents, and users on the distribution of conformance; (2) focusing on review systems to drive distributed development of embedded ethical principles in individual services by responding to this feedback to develop ongoing correction through dynamic adaption or incremental releases; and (3) using multi-agent simulation tools to forecast scenarios in real time

Exploring Cooperation with Social Machines

As humans become more and more immersed in a networked world of connected and mobile devices, cooperation and sociability to achieve valued outcomes within geographic locales appears to be waning in favour of extended personal networks and interaction using semi-automated agents to support communications, transportation and other services. From a messaging structure that is complex, multiplexed and much of the time asynchronous, conditions emerge that disrupt symmetry of information exchange. People thus encounter circumstances that seem unpredictable given the information available to them, resulting in limited or failed cooperation and consequent quality of outcomes. We explore the role of Social Machines to support, change, and enhance human cooperation within a blended reality context

Thing Theory: Connecting Humans to Smart Healthcare

Healthcare providers will enter location-aware smart environments with the expectation that their devices will integrate, their location will be incorporated, and the environment that they are within will specifically respond to their needs, as well as to the needs of their patients. Cooperation and coordination in complex environments requires people to have access to appropriate contextually sensitive information, some of which must be shared between them. To plan and design effective location-aware smart environments for healthcare, tools are required for integrating and responding to human needs and anticipating human intents and desires. A location-aware healthcare smart environment is another layer within this already highly heterogeneous system of communication. Each component in a location-aware smart environment network can generate data and send messages that must be processed, understood and responded to in some manner. In a healthcare environment, well placed software agents can help manage critical messages shared between sensors, low level software agents and the people who act on this information, improving care for patients and outcomes for providers. The authors’ propose a framework based on the agency of both humans and environmental components: Thing Theory, a logic-based agent framework that evolves discussion on how to connect humans to a healthcare environment designed to function for their benefit

Inverse Estimation of an Annual Cycle of California's Nitrous Oxide Emissions

Nitrous oxide (N_2O) is a potent long‐lived greenhouse gas (GHG) and the strongest current emissions of global anthropogenic stratospheric ozone depletion weighted by its ozone depletion potential. In California, N_2O is the third largest contributor to the state's anthropogenic GHG emission inventory, though no study has quantified its statewide annual emissions through top‐down inverse modeling. Here we present the first annual (2013–2014) statewide top‐down estimates of anthropogenic N_2O emissions. Utilizing continuous N_2O observations from six sites across California in a hierarchical Bayesian inversion, we estimate that annual anthropogenic emissions are 1.5–2.5 times (at 95% confidence) the state inventory (41 Gg N_2O in 2014). Without mitigation, this estimate represents 4–7% of total GHG emissions assuming that other reported GHG emissions are reasonably correct. This suggests that control of N_2O could be an important component in meeting California's emission reduction goals of 40% and 80% below 1990 levels of the total GHG emissions (in CO_2 equivalent) by 2030 and 2050, respectively. Our seasonality analysis suggests that emissions are similar across seasons within posterior uncertainties. Future work is needed to provide source attribution for subregions and further characterization of seasonal variability

Atmospheric observation-based estimation of fossil fuel CO_2 emissions from regions of central and southern California

Combustion of fossil fuel is the dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere in California. Here, we describe radiocarbon (^(14)CO_2) measurements and atmospheric inverse modeling to estimate fossil fuel CO_2 (ffCO_2) emissions for 2009–2012 from a site in central California, and for June 2013–May 2014 from two sites in southern California. A priori predicted ffCO_2 mixing ratios are computed based on regional atmospheric transport model (WRF-STILT) footprints and an hourly ffCO_2 prior emission map (Vulcan 2.2). Regional inversions using observations from the central California site suggest that emissions from the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) are higher in winter and lower in summer. Taking all years together, the average of a total of fifteen 3-month inversions from 2009 to 2012 suggests ffCO_2 emissions from SFBA were within 6 ± 35% of the a priori estimate for that region, where posterior emission uncertainties are reported as 95% confidence intervals. Results for four 3-month inversions using measurements in Los Angeles South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) during June 2013–May 2014 suggest that emissions in SoCAB are within 13 ± 28% of the a priori estimate for that region, with marginal detection of any seasonality. While emissions from the SFBA and SoCAB urban regions (containing ~50% of prior emissions from California) are constrained by the observations, emissions from the remaining regions are less constrained, suggesting that additional observations will be valuable to more accurately estimate total ffCO_2 emissions from California as a whole

Divergent neural and endocrine responses in wild-caught and laboratory-bred Rattus norvegicus

Although rodents have represented the most intensely studied animals in neurobiological investigations for more than a century, few studies have systematically compared neural and endocrine differences between wild rodents in their natural habitats and laboratory strains raised in traditional laboratory environments. In the current study, male and female Rattus norvegicus rats were trapped in an urban setting and compared to weight-and sex-matched conspecifics living in standard laboratory housing conditions. Brains were extracted for neural assessments and fecal boli were collected for endocrine [corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)] assays. Additionally, given their role in immune and stress functions, spleen and adrenal weights were recorded. A separate set of wild rats was trapped at a dairy farm and held in captivity for one month prior to assessments; in these animals, brains were processed but no hormone data were available. The results indicated that wild-trapped rats exhibited 31% heavier brains, including higher densities of cerebellar neurons and glial cells in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. The wild rats also had approximately 300% greater spleen and adrenal weights, and more than a six-fold increase in corticosterone levels than observed in laboratory rats. Further research on neurobiological variables in wild vs. lab animals will inform the extensive neurobiological knowledge base derived from laboratory investigations using selectively bred rodents in laboratory environments, knowledge that will enhance the translational value of preclinical laboratory rodent studies

DARIAH Beyond Europe

International audienceDARIAH, the digital humanities infrastructure with origins and an organisational home in Europe, is nearing the completion of its implementation phase. The significant investment from the European Commission and member countries has yielded a robust set of technical and social infrastructures, ranging from working groups, various registries, pedagogical materials, and software to support diverse approaches to digital humanities scholarship. While the funding and leadership of DARIAH to date has come from countries in, or contiguous with, Europe, the needs that drive its technical and social development are widely shared within the international digital humanities community beyond Europe. Scholars on every continent would benefit from well-supported technical tools and platforms, directories for facilitating access to information and resources, and support for working groups.The DARIAH Beyond Europe workshop series, organised and financed under the umbrella of the DESIR project (“DARIAH ERIC Sustainability Refined,” 2017–2019, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program), convened three meetings between September 2018 and March 2019 in the United States and Australia. These workshops served as fora for cross-cultural exchange, and introduced many non-European DH scholars to DARIAH; each of the workshops included a significant delegation from various DARIAH bodies, together with a larger number of local presenters and participants. The local contexts for these workshops were significantly different in their embodiment of research infrastructures: on the one hand, in the U.S., a private research university (Stanford) and the de facto national library (the Library of Congress), both in a country with a history of unsuccessful national-scale infrastructure efforts; and in Australia, a system which has invested substantially more in coordinated national research infrastructure in science and technology, but very little on a national scale in the humanities and arts. Europe is in many respects ahead of both host countries in terms of its research infrastructure ecosystem both at the national and pan-European levels.The Stanford workshop had four main topics of focus: corpus management; text and image analysis; geohumanities; and music, theatre, and sound studies. As the first of the workshops, the Stanford group also took the lead in proposing next steps toward exploring actionable “DARIAH beyond Europe” initiatives, including the beginnings of a blog shared among participants from all the workshops, extra-European use of DARIAH’s DH Course Registry, and non-European participation in DARIAH Working Groups.The overall theme of the Library of Congress workshop was “Collections as Data,” building on a number of U.S.-based initiatives exploring how to enhance researcher engagement with digital collections through computationally-driven research. In Washington, D.C., the knowledge exchange sessions focussed on digitised newspapers and text analysis, infrastructural challenges for public humanities, and the use of web-archives in DH research. As at Stanford, interconnecting with DARIAH Working Groups was of core interest to participants, and a new Working Group was proposed to explore global access and use of digitised historical newspapers. A further important outcome was the agreement to explore collaboration between the U.S.-based “Collections as Data” initiatives and the Heritage Data Reuse Charter in Europe. The third and final workshop in the series took place in March 2019 in Australia, hosted by the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Convened by the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), together with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and DARIAH, this event was co-located with the Academy’s second annual Humanities, Arts and Culture Data Summit. The first day of the event, targeted at research leadership and policy makers, was intended to explore new horizons for data-driven humanities and arts research, digital cultural collections and research infrastructure. The two subsequent days focused on engaging with a wide variety of communities, including (digital) humanities researchers and cultural heritage professionals. Organised around a series of Knowledge Exchange Sessions, combined with research-led lightning talks, the participants spoke in detail about how big ideas can be implemented practically on the ground. This poster reflects on the key outcomes and future directions arising from these three workshops, and considers what it might look like for DARIAH to be adopted as a fundamental DH infrastructure in a complex variety of international, national, and regional contexts, with diverse funding models, resources, needs, and expectations. One major outcome of all workshops was the shared recognition that, in spite of extensive funding, planning, and goodwill, these workshops were not nearly global enough in their reach: most importantly they were not inclusive of the Global South. Our new DARIAH beyond Europe community has a strong shared commitment to address this gap