Socionics: Sociological Concepts for Social Systems of Artificial (and Human) Agents

Socionics is an interdisciplinary approach with the objective to use sociological knowledge about the structures, mechanisms and processes of social interaction and social communication as a source of inspiration for the development of multi-agent systems, both for the purposes of engineering applications and of social theory construction and social simulation. The approach has been spelled out from 1998 on within the Socionics priority program funded by the German National research foundation. This special issue of the JASSS presents research results from five interdisciplinary projects of the Socionics program. The introduction gives an overview over the basic ideas of the Socionics approach and summarizes the work of these projects.Socionics, Sociology, Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Social Systems, Hybrid Systems, Social Simulation

Learning, teaching and sophistication in a strategic game

The present study would like to show - among other things - in the spirit of Hyndman, Terracol and Vaksmann (2009), that learning and teaching are still observed in an environment where there is no pure strategy Nash equilibrium (but still, as in any finite game, a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium), which is the case in the majority of real-life situations. The main objective in this paper is to test experimentally the following hypotheses: - First, we want to know if players believe that their opponents can be learners and that their actions might influence their opponent's beliefs. - Second, we would like to investigate the idea that players do use this awareness of their opponent's ability to learn to manipulate their opponents' beliefs. - Third, we want to know if there are other explanations we can provide for the way players behave in our game: "cyclic behaviour", "learning of correlated strategies"? - Last, we think that Inequity and Risk aversion might play a role but that doesn't undermine our teaching strategy hypothesis mentioned above. The paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces our game and experimental procedure. Section III gives some preliminary results and descriptive statistics. Section IV-V and VI shows that subjects might be more sophisticated than the standard theories predict. Section VII-VIII-IX explore the possibility of "cyclic playing behaviours", the existence of a learning of "correlated strategy" and examines the effect of "inequity and risk aversion". Section X concludes the paper

Currents of Time and Universe

Malsch, Carmen, M.F.A., Summer 2014. Fine Art Currents of Time and Universe Chairperson: Professor James Bailey Abstract Currents of Time and Universe explores personal awareness and connection to the universe. Large woodcut and intaglio prints describe a visual vocabulary for universal themes. In this vocabulary, a current is the image for awareness, connection, and motion in space and time. Bird forms frequenting the images represent the habitation of both earth and sky. Less grounded and more of the air than the human, the bird image identifies with the inner life of a person more than with the physical body. However, as with the bird, definite and necessary aspects of each do not exist without the other. A concept of motion pervades the images. Motion of both the universe and of an individual traveling through it, refer to the experience of time. Contrast and luminosity, as well as positive/negative relationships, become part of the visual vocabulary of universe awareness. In night skies appearing black and white, luminosity and contrast define what we know as the universe. Dark is when we see it most vividly. Constellations, galaxies and stars, even our moon are most defined in contrast, lit in the absence of overall light. Contrast is also a metaphor for the related concept of traveling. The space between cities viewed from a car or plane at night is dark; the objects of departure or arrival are lit in glowing centers of light. A journey between points describes time as distance. The subject matter is almost entirely portrayed in black and white contrast. A visual interplay of positive/negative space refers to the Escher-like quality of awareness, and to the nature of human experience. Time/space is defined by both memory and distance. Distance is external space; memory is internal space. A conceptual universe exists both within the person and outside of them. Each of these universes continue to be investigated as they have since our earliest beginnings, yet each largely escapes definition. What we know about the universe is rapidly changing in unexpected ways. On a forefront of possibility, visual thinking does not necessarily preclude scientific, or vice versa

Simulation of droplet-based microfluidic lab-on-a-chip applications

This paper was presented at the 3rd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2011), which was held at the Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute.Miniaturization of biological and chemical assays in lab-on-a-chip systems is a highly topical field of research. Droplet-based microfluidic chips are types of these miniaturized systems. They expand the capability of assays with special features that are unreached by traditional workflows. In particular, small sample volumes, independent separated reaction units, high throughput, automation and parallelization of assays are prominent features of droplet-based microfluidic devices. Full custom centric design of droplet-based microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology implicates a high system integration level and design complexity. Therefore advanced development methodologies are needed, comparable with the methods in electronic design automation. Our design and simulation toolkit meets these requirements for an agile and low-risk development of custom lab-on-a-chip devices. The system simulation approach enables a fast and precise prediction of complex microfluidic networks. This fact is confirmed by reference and benchmark experiments. The results show that the simulation correctly reproduces the experimental measurements.The German BMBF and the EU in the projects DiNaMiD, signature 0315591B and NoE Photonics4Life, Grant Agreement number: 224014