Exploring Values in Museum Artifacts in the SPICE Project: A Preliminary Study

This document describes the rationale, the implementation and a preliminary evaluation of a semantic reasoning tool developed in the EU H2020 SPICE project to enhance the diversity of perspectives experienced by museum visitors. The tool, called DEGARI 2.0 for values, relies on the commonsense reasoning framework , and exploits an ontological model formalizing the Haidt’s theory of moral values to associate museum items with combined values and emotions. Within a museum exhibition, this tool can suggest cultural items that are associated not only with the values of already experienced or preferred objects, but also with novel items with different value stances, opening the visit experience to more inclusive interpretations of cultural content. The system has been preliminarily tested, in the context of the SPICE project, on the collection of the Hecht Museum of Haifa

Introducing empathy into recommender systems as a tool for promoting social cohesion

Contemporary theories of social cohesion emphasize the importance of people accepting and appreciating differences across social groups. The SPICE project aims to promote social cohesion by researching and developing tools and methods to support citizen curation for groups at risk of exclusion. We define citizen curation as a process in which citizens can interpret cultural objects in order to build representations of their own social group. Other groups can then engage with those interpretations in order to appreciate their perspective. In this position paper we discuss how research into empathy can be used to motivate the design of recommender systems that support people in looking beyond their own group and engaging constructively with alternative perspectives

Chemical basis of Trotter-Suzuki errors in quantum chemistry simulation

Although the simulation of quantum chemistry is one of the most anticipated applications of quantum computing, the scaling of known upper bounds on the complexity of these algorithms is daunting. Prior work has bounded errors due to discretization of the time evolution (known as “Trotterization”) in terms of the norm of the error operator and analyzed scaling with respect to the number of spin orbitals. However, we find that these error bounds can be loose by up to 16 orders of magnitude for some molecules. Furthermore, numerical results for small systems fail to reveal any clear correlation between ground-state error and number of spin orbitals. We instead argue that chemical properties, such as the maximum nuclear charge in a molecule and the filling fraction of orbitals, can be decisive for determining the cost of a quantum simulation. Our analysis motivates several strategies to use classical processing to further reduce the required Trotter step size and estimate the necessary number of steps, without requiring additional quantum resources. Finally, we demonstrate improved methods for state preparation techniques which are asymptotically superior to proposals in the simulation literature.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

Providing Personalized Cultural Heritage Information for the Smart Region -A Proposed methodology

Abstract. In this paper we present a methodology to provide visitors, in smart regions, additional cultural heritage attractions based on prior museum visits using user models and Linked Open Data. Visitor preferences and behavior are tracked via a museum mobile guide and used to create a visitor model. Semantic models and Linked Open Data support the representation of regional assets as Cultural Objects. The visitor model preferences are exploited using a graph similarity approach in order to identify personalized opportunities for visitors by filtering relevant Cultural Objects. Keywords: Personalization, User Models, Linked Open Data, Smart Regions Introduction In this short paper we show a blueprint how semantic models and Linked Open Data (LOD) support the representation of regional assets in order to identify categories of opportunities for visitors based on different personal characteristics determined by previous visits. Having a broad infobase from which to cull possibilities is an arduous task that can benefit from automation. Due to the overwhelming number of possibilities, it is important to personalize the Cultural Heritage (CH) experience. When considering what is requires from a smart, personalized system, it becomes clear that the reasoning process of the system has to focus on identifying opportunities for intervention. When and how to intervene and what information to deliver/service to offer. Having a user model, a context model, and a model of the cultural objects are essential for successful support. These can lead to the interaction of museums and places of cultural heritage to create mega-tourist experience (similar to Verbke and Rekom [6] concept of the "museumpark") which can have a positive market effect for the region. We describe our methodology: First we use exhibits in a museum (we use Castle Buonconsiglio in the Trentino Region as examples throughout this paper) and tag them using semantic concepts. Then a mobile museum guide is used to track visitors

Towards Advanced Interfaces for Citizen Curation

The SPICE project builds on the growing trend for museums, rather than providing an authoritative view, to present multiple voices related to their collection and exhibitions. In SPICE, an approach we term citizen curation is proposed as a way of supporting visitors to share their own interpretations of museum objects and reflect on the variety of interpretations contributed by others. In order to capture a wide range of voices, interfaces will be designed specifically to engage minority groups that tend to be under-represented in cultural activities. To achieve this goal, the interface will need to be intuitive, aesthetic and accessible for different audiences. The paper presents the challenges we face and initial proposals for engaging visitors in citizen curation

FROM A RESEARCH PROTOTYPE TO A DEPLOYED SYSTEM: THE CASE OF THE HECHT MUSEUM VISITOR\u27S GUIDE

Cultural heritage, Deployment, Mobile guides, Research prototype