2,167 research outputs found
Politically engaged artistic practice: Strategies and tactics
This paper explores political forms of artistic practice operating within Tate Exchange broadly and within the authorsâ creative practice specifically. It identifies the tensions and obstacles inherent to socially engaged artistic practice and forms of expertise, and proposes a method of practice that is grounded in prefiguration and solidarity
Should we welcome robot teachers?
Abstract Current uses of robots in classrooms are
reviewed and used to characterise four scenarios: (s1)
Robot as Classroom Teacher; (s2) Robot as Companion
and Peer; (s3) Robot as Care-eliciting Companion; and (s4)
Telepresence Robot Teacher. The main ethical concerns
associated with robot teachers are identified as: privacy;
attachment, deception, and loss of human contact; and
control and accountability. These are discussed in terms of
the four identified scenarios. It is argued that classroom
robots are likely to impact childrenâsâ privacy, especially
when they masquerade as their friends and companions,
when sensors are used to measure childrenâs responses, and
when records are kept. Social robots designed to appear as
if they understand and care for humans necessarily involve
some deception (itself a complex notion), and could
increase the risk of reduced human contact. Children could
form attachments to robot companions (s2 and s3), or robot
teachers (s1) and this could have a deleterious effect on
their social development. There are also concerns about the
ability, and use of robots to control or make decisions
about childrenâs behaviour in the classroom. It is concluded
that there are good reasons not to welcome fully fledged
robot teachers (s1), and that robot companions (s2 and 3)
should be given a cautious welcome at best. The limited
circumstances in which robots could be used in the classroom
to improve the human condition by offering otherwise
unavailable educational experiences are discussed
Extracting finite structure from infinite language
This paper presents a novel connectionist memory-rule based model capable of learning the finite-state properties of an input language from a set of positive examples. The model is based upon an unsupervised recurrent self-organizing map [T. McQueen, A. Hopgood, J. Tepper, T. Allen, A recurrent self-organizing map for temporal sequence processing, in: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference in Recent Advances in Soft Computing (RASC2002), Nottingham, 2002] with laterally interconnected neurons. A derivation of functionalequivalence theory [J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, vol. 1, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1979] is used that allows the model to exploit similarities between the future context of previously memorized sequences and the future context of the current input sequence. This bottom-up learning algorithm binds functionally related neurons together to form states. Results show that the model is able to learn the Reber grammar [A. Cleeremans, D. Schreiber, J. McClelland, Finite state automata and simple recurrent networks, Neural Computation, 1 (1989) 372â381] perfectly from a randomly generated training set and to generalize to sequences beyond the length of those found in the training set
The flavour singlet mesons in QCD
We study the flavour singlet mesons from first principles using lattice QCD.
We explore the splitting between flavour singlet and non-singlet for vector and
axial mesons as well as the more commonly studied cases of the scalar and
pseudoscalar mesons.Comment: 12 pages, LATEX, 4 ps figure
Impact of robot responsiveness and adult involvement on children's social behaviours in human-robot interaction
A key challenge in developing engaging social robots is creating convincing, autonomous and responsive agents, which users perceive, and treat, as social beings. As a part of the collaborative project: Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning (EASEL), this study examines the impact of autonomous response to children's speech, by the humanoid robot Zeno, on their interactions with it as a social entity. Results indicate that robot autonomy and adult assistance during HRI can substantially influence children's behaviour during interaction and their affect after. Children working with a fully-autonomous, responsive robot demonstrated greater physical activity following robot instruction than those working with a less responsive robot, which required adult assistance to interact with. During dialogue with the robot, children working with the fully-autonomous robot also looked towards the robot in anticipation of its vocalisations on more occasions. In contrast, a less responsive robot, requiring adult assistance to interact with, led to greater self-report positive affect and more occasions of children looking to the robot in response to its vocalisations. We discuss the broader implications of these findings in terms of anthropomorphism of social robots and in relation to the overall project strategy to further the understanding of how interactions with social robots could lead to task-appropriate symbiotic relationships
Spatial and temporal variability of biogenic isoprene emissions from a temperate estuary
[1] Isoprene is important for its atmospheric impacts and the ecophysiological benefits it affords to emitting organisms; however, isoprene emissions from marine systems remain vastly understudied compared to terrestrial systems. This study investigates for the first time drivers of isoprene production in a temperate estuary, and the role this production may play in enabling organisms to tolerate the inherently wide range of environmental conditions. Intertidal sediment cores as well as high and low tide water samples were collected from four sites along the Colne Estuary, UK, every six weeks over a year. Isoprene concentrations in the water were significantly higher at low than high tide, and decreased toward the mouth of the estuary; sediment production showed no spatial variability. Diel isoprene concentration increased with light availability and decreased with tidal height; nighttime production was 79% lower than daytime production. Seasonal isoprene production and water concentrations were highest for the warmest months, with production strongly correlated with light (r2 = 0.800) and temperature (r2 = 0.752). Intertidal microphytobenthic communities were found to be the primary source of isoprene, with tidal action acting as a concentrating factor for isoprene entering the water column. Using these data we estimated an annual production rate for this estuary of 681 ÎŒmol mâ2 yâ1. This value falls at the upper end of other marine estimates and highlights the potentially significant role of estuaries as isoprene sources. The control of estuarine isoprene production by environmental processes identified here further suggests that such emissions may be altered by future environmental change
Social Roles and Baseline Proxemic Preferences for a Domestic Service Robot
© The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. The work described in this paper was conducted within the EU Integrated Projects LIREC (LIving with Robots and intEractive Companions, funded by the European Commission under contract numbers FP7 215554, and partly funded by the ACCOMPANY project, a part of the European Unionâs Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007â2013) under grant agreement n287624The goal of our research is to develop socially acceptable behavior for domestic robots in a setting where a user and the robot are sharing the same physical space and interact with each other in close proximity. Specifically, our research focuses on approach distances and directions in the context of a robot handing over an object to a userPeer reviewe
Nrf2-mediated neuroprotection response to recurrent hypoglycemia is insufficient to prevent cognitive impairment in a rodent model of type 1 diabetes
It remains uncertain whether recurrent nonsevere hypoglycemia (Hypo) results in long-term cognitive impairment in type 1 diabetes (T1D). This study tested the hypothesis that specifically in the T1D state, Hypo leads to cognitive impairment via a pathological response to oxidative stress. Wild-type (Control) and nuclear factorâerythroid 2 p45ârelated factor 2 (Nrf2) null mice were studied. Eight groups of mice (Control and Nrf2â/â ± T1D and ± Hypo) were subject to recurrent, twice-weekly, insulin or saline injections over 4 weeks, after which cognitive function was assessed and brain tissue analyzed. Recurrent moderate hypoglycemia in T1D, but not Control, mice significantly impaired cognitive performance, and this was associated with hippocampal oxidative damage and inflammation despite an enhanced expression of Nrf2 and its target genes Hmox1 and Nqo1. In Nrf2â/â mice, both T1D and Hypo independently resulted in impaired cognitive performance, and this was associated with oxidative cell damage and marked inflammation. Together, these data suggest that Hypo induces an Nrf2-dependent antioxidant response in the hippocampus, which counteracts oxidative damage. However, in T1D, this neuroprotective mechanism is insufficient to prevent neuronal oxidative damage, resulting in chronic deficits in working and long-term memory.</jats:p
Reply: In vitro and in vivo anticancer efficacy of unconjugated humanised anti-CEA monoclonal antibodies
Tracking Performance of the Scintillating Fiber Detector in the K2K Experiment
The K2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment uses a Scintillating
Fiber Detector (SciFi) to reconstruct charged particles produced in neutrino
interactions in the near detector. We describe the track reconstruction
algorithm and the performance of the SciFi after three years of operation.Comment: 24pages,18 figures, and 1 table. Preprint submitted to NI
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