Effect of Target Material Yield Strength on Hypervelocity Perforation and Ballistic Limit

Viscoplastic flow theory in hypervelocity projectile perforation analyses of thin plate

The Fast and the Flexible: training neural networks to learn to follow instructions from small data

Learning to follow human instructions is a long-pursued goal in artificial intelligence. The task becomes particularly challenging if no prior knowledge of the employed language is assumed while relying only on a handful of examples to learn from. Work in the past has relied on hand-coded components or manually engineered features to provide strong inductive biases that make learning in such situations possible. In contrast, here we seek to establish whether this knowledge can be acquired automatically by a neural network system through a two phase training procedure: A (slow) offline learning stage where the network learns about the general structure of the task and a (fast) online adaptation phase where the network learns the language of a new given speaker. Controlled experiments show that when the network is exposed to familiar instructions but containing novel words, the model adapts very efficiently to the new vocabulary. Moreover, even for human speakers whose language usage can depart significantly from our artificial training language, our network can still make use of its automatically acquired inductive bias to learn to follow instructions more effectively

The Verticality of Library Buildings - from the Sacred and a Treasury to an Icon of Marketing

Pierwotna wersja artykułu wygłoszona jako referat podczas międzynarodowej konferencji naukowej Fons Largus - Warszawa, 14-17 maja 2012 r. Tekst złozony do druku u organizatorów konferencji (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie i Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk).This article examines one of the basic elements of library architecture – the tower. The author analyzes the symbolic and social context of vertical forms. Both of them are changing in time and giving new meanings. On the one hand there was a small library in the tower in Périgord which had belonged to Michel de Montaigne and which was used for his seclusion. On the other hand the tower was a repository to keep the books safe. This form we know from The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco but the repositories closed to the readers were still popular in 20’th century. Now we can observe a change because new towers which were built in the late 20’th century up to this day. Those libraries should be open to everyone. Such solutions we can find in Luckenwalde and soon in Copenhagen and Doha. Contemporary library architecture is important from a marketing point of view. Thus there are several projects with high building which have to draw the reader’s attention

Do anthropomorphic service robots affect people’s sense of security? On the sidelines of the reflection on the future of the labour market in LIS

The problem addressed in the paper lies within the field of social robotics of media and social communication studies. The primary objective is to partially verify the occurrence of the phenomenon of the uncanny valley. It would occur in relation to anthropomorphic robots carrying out selected professions of high social respect. The second objective is to establish the level of a person’s sense of security depending on the type of services performed by the robots. The third purpose is to determine the correlation between various professional activities and anxiety of service recipients. The data was collected by means of a survey conducted on a target group of post-millennials by means of a questionnaire which assessed the images of anthropomorphic robots of varying degrees of similarity to humans who performed professions of high social prestige: university professor, physician, nurse, qualified worker, accountant, salesman. Some of the characteristics of the mentioned professions also feature a modern librarian, herein referred to as a librarian – an erudite of the digital era. The inference was carried out based on the distribution of marks and the Chi-squared independence test. The study indicates a premise that there exists the uncanny valley, and that there exists a relationship between the level of trust and confidence and the type of work the robot performs.Il problema affrontato in questo articolo si inserisce nel campo della robotica sociale e degli studi sui media e la comunicazione. L’obiettivo principale è verificare l’occorrenza del fenomeno della 'reazione da uncanny valley', ovvero il basso grado di accettabilità che si potrebbe riscontrare in presenza di robot umanoidi che svolgono professioni di alto rilievo sociale. Il secondo intento è stabilire il senso di sicurezza percepito al variare del servizio offerto dai robot. Il terzo fine è determinare la correlazione fra le diverse attività professionali e il senso di ansietà provato dagli utenti che ricevono il servizio. I dati sono stati raccolti attraverso un’indagine condotta su un gruppo di post-millennial per mezzo di un questionario che valutava le immagini di robot umanoidi, a vari livelli di somiglianza con l’uomo, che ricoprivano ruoli professionali di alto rilievo sociale: professore universitario, medico, infermiera, lavoratore specializzato, contabile, addetto alle vendite. Alcune delle caratteristiche delle professioni valutate si applicano anche al moderno bibliotecario, l’erudito dell’età digitale. Le inferenze statistiche sono state tratte basandosi sulla distribuzione dei valori e sul test chi quadrato di indipendenza. Lo studio suggerisce che esista di fatto la reazione da uncanny valley e che esista anche una relazione fra il livello di fiducia e sicurezza nell’utente e il tipo di lavoro eseguito dal robot