cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
To Be One with Nature
Creators: name: Livrieri, Carlotta
Publisher: name:  JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy)
Year: 2022

description: Southern US literature and African American literature often speak about racialized and dismembered bodies swallowed by the earth and never retrieved; Nature, in these instances, is hostile and “white”, as even trees become problematic symbols of lynching practices. This essay, however, attempts to retrieve and re-signify the concepts of soil and plants by analyzing the relationship between Black bodies and Nature from an Ecoliterary and Ecotheological point of view. This examination especially focuses on West African beliefs and their role in the African American re-appropriation of natural, earthly spaces and instances of the afterlife. Ethnic resistance and spiritual-medical knowledge have been crucial to African American cultural liberation, and the essay highlights this by analyzing the traces of African spiritualism and syncretism in the works of a number of African American authors, namely Toni Morrison and Jesmyn Ward. The result of this re-appropriation is, as I argue, a vivifying, hopeful and ultimately political series of images and literary tropes that overturn mournful and chthonic narratives, resuming positive and life-bearing relationships between Black bodies and Nature.
description: JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), Núm. 6 (2022): The Fractured States of America
Crowdsourcing Impacts: Exploring the Utility of Crowds for Anticipating Societal Impacts of Algorithmic Decision Making
Creators: name: Barnett, Julia
name: Diakopoulos, Nicholas
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Computers and Society (cs.CY)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: With the increasing pervasiveness of algorithms across industry and government, a growing body of work has grappled with how to understand their societal impact and ethical implications. Various methods have been used at different stages of algorithm development to encourage researchers and designers to consider the potential societal impact of their research. An understudied yet promising area in this realm is using participatory foresight to anticipate these different societal impacts. We employ crowdsourcing as a means of participatory foresight to uncover four different types of impact areas based on a set of governmental algorithmic decision making tools: (1) perceived valence, (2) societal domains, (3) specific abstract impact types, and (4) ethical algorithm concerns. Our findings suggest that this method is effective at leveraging the cognitive diversity of the crowd to uncover a range of issues. We further analyze the complexities within the interaction of the impact areas identified to demonstrate how crowdsourcing can illuminate patterns around the connections between impacts. Ultimately this work establishes crowdsourcing as an effective means of anticipating algorithmic impact which complements other approaches towards assessing algorithms in society by leveraging participatory foresight and cognitive diversity.
description: 10 pages, 2 figures. Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (August 2022)
title: A critical analysis of multicultural representations in Portuguese English as a Foreign Language textbooks
Creators: name: Cardoso, Silene
Publisher: name: CETAPS, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Year: 2023

description: The number of foreign students in state basic/secondary education (6 to 17 years old) in Portugal has increased in recent years (Oliveira, 2022); thus, the ability to communicate across cultures is essential. In these multicultural/multilingual classrooms, English often plays a crucial role in connecting students. Therefore, the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is the perfect setting to promote Intercultural Communication (IC) and Intercultural Awareness (ICA; Baker 2015, 2018; Baker Ishikawa, 2021). As textbooks are central to EFL classrooms (Galloway, 2018), this study analyzes two EFL textbooks developed in Portugal, one for learners in the 3rd cycle (year 7, aged 12-13) and another for learners in secondary education (year 10, aged 15-16). The analysis examined how the most significant foreign groups in Portugal and their corresponding cultures are represented in images and texts compared to the traditional target cultures (e.g., American, British, and other English-speaking cultures) and the local Portuguese culture. The findings indicate that cultural representations connected with the UK and the USA continue to dominate as the primary groups represented. Based on this analysis, this study provides two practical examples of how EFL teachers could adapt textbook activities to further develop learners’ IC/ICA in the classroom. Consequently, from this study, EFL teachers can gain a better understanding of how textbook activities can be adapted to promote learners’ IC and ICA.
description: Cardoso, Silene (2023) A critical analysis of multicultural representations in Portuguese English as a Foreign Language textbooks. e-TEALS. An e-journal of Teacher Education and Applied Language Studies. n.º 15. CETAPS, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. ISSN 1647-712X
Hair as a Political Instrument in C.N. Adichie's Americanah and in ABC's How to Get Away With Murder
Creators: name: Puddu, Rachele
Publisher: name:  JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy)
Year: 2022

description: This essay reflects upon the political and cultural significance of hair for Black women. The acclaimed novel Americanah (2013) by the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and ABC's TV Series How to Get Away With Murder (2014-2020), cleverly address this issue as they both display their protagonists' struggles in accepting their natural hair. To be assimilated into the US society, Ifemelu and Annalise Keating feel forced to strighten their hair or wear wigs. I will also discuss how the myth of the melting pot has contributed, since the 18th century, to shape and influence ethnic identities in the US by positing the necessary features of Americanness. Instead, these twenty-first century narratives provocatively challenge the definition of American by giving an inside perspective on this unusual form of emancipation.
description: JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), Núm. 6 (2022): The Fractured States of America
The "Citizen-Savage"
Creators: name: Harrington, Matthew P
Publisher: name:  JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy)
Year: 2022

description: While commonsense tells us that the 19th-century U.S. was obsessed with individual rights and individual success, there remains evidence that civic duty continued to be a significant component of national identity. In fact, we might say that the conflict between individual rights and civic duty organizes one of the most popular forms of literature in the antebellum U.S.: frontier fiction. In this article, I turn to James Hall’s The Pioneer and Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick of the Woods. In these significant narratives, Hall and Bird expose the dangers of negative individualism on the frontier without the checks of civic duty and martial spirit. By closely attending to nineteenth-century politics, Indian policies, and military/militia history, I explore how the Indian-Hater narratives of James Hall and Robert M. Bird are anxious about men whose passion for vengeance and violence transform them into the very “savage” they are hunting and how this “degeneration” bars them from returning to civil society. In this article, I argue that Indian Haters, in the narratives of Bird and Hall, reflect the Whig’s anxieties about the nation. Even though these men provide service by removing Indians, in the process, they abandon the virtues and morals stereotypical of the frontier hero; that is, their emotions and their bloodlust overtake their sense of duty to the polity; such degeneration undermines the nation because it very closely resembles the threat posed by Indians. A close look at Bird and Hall reveals that both authors are attempting to document this irony. Bird and Hall show how the Indian Hater motif highlights the reality of white degeneration of wayward/emotional men without the safeguards of martial virtue and civic duty. Even though the Jacksonian anti-Indian thought celebrates these Indian Haters, literature confronts readers with the self-destructive nature of uncontained Indian Hating. I observe that these narratives do more than present the Indian Hater as a self-sacrificial hero but rather closely diagnose how a man can become lost in his passions and become an Other from society without civic constraints.
description: JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), Núm. 6 (2022): The Fractured States of America
American Nationhood in Transition
Creators: name: Kammerer, Edward F.
name: Barreto, Amílcar Antonio
Publisher: name:  JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy)
Year: 2022

description: The intersection of race, ethnicity and sexuality demarcate the boundaries of American identity. Historically homosexuality was tethered to unpopular racial, ethnic and ideological minorities. In recent years, popular film and television have contributed to redefining non-heterosexuals’ place in the American national imagination: from outcast to partial insider. While the history of the LGBT movement is replete with racial and ethnic diversity the US popular media have repeatedly emphasized one dimension – its white part. As homogenizing agents, the media have helped to generate a false image of an ethnically and racially homogeneous LGBT community, thus reinforcing whiteness as the apex of American authenticity.
description: JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), Núm. 6 (2022): The Fractured States of America
An integrated photonic circuit for color qubit preparation by third-order nonlinear interactions
Creators: name: Aguayo-Alvarado, A. L.
name: Domínguez-Serna, F.
name: De La Cruz, W.
name: Garay-Palmett, K.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: 81V80 (Primary) 81P45, 81P65 (Secondary)

description: This work presents a feasible design of an integrated photonic circuit performing as a device for single-qubit preparation and rotations through the third-order nonlinear process of difference frequency generation (DFG) and defined in the temporal mode basis. The first stage of our circuit includes the generation of heralded single photons by spontaneous four-wave mixing in a micro-ring cavity engineered for delivering a single-photon state in a unique temporal mode. The second stage comprises the implementation of DFG in a spiral waveguide with controlled dispersion properties for reaching color qubit preparation fidelity close to unity. We present the generalized rotation operator related to the DFG process, a methodology for the device design, and qubit preparation fidelity results as a function of user-accessible parameters.
description: 14 pages, 6 figures. Published by Scientific Reports on 25 March 2022
Flexible Defence Cooperation in Europe: FNC, JEF and EI2
Creators: name: Iso-Markku, Tuomas
name: Karjalainen, Tyyne
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: European Union
European Defence
Defence Cooperation
Framework Nations Concept (FNC)
Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF)
European Intervention Initiative (EI2)

description: Defence cooperation between European Union member states has long been characterised by a high level of fragmentation. To manage, and potentially overcome, some of the existing divides, differentiation has been recognised as one way forward, exemplified by the activation of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and discussions about the use of Article 44 of the Treaty on European Union. However, beyond treaty-based forms of differentiation, EU member states have also joined extra-EU frameworks for defence cooperation such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, the Framework Nations Concept and the European Intervention Initiative, which embody different levels of formalisation, diverse memberships and foci, as well as varying links to the EU and NATO. This Policy Brief analyses whether this kind of differentiated cooperation outside the EU structures contributes to the long-term prospects of European integration in security and defence, or whether it adds to the existing fragmentation within the EU and European defence more broadly. The paper argues that the flexible defence frameworks bear some potential for enhancing defence cooperation among EU member states, but also present challenges. Moreover, their ability to manage diversity in European defence remains largely unproven.
Polar Pilot Federated Search Roadmap: Year 1 in Review
Creators: name: Verhey, Chantelle
name: Minch, Melinda
name: Payne, Karen
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: POLDER
Federated Search
Pilot
Metadata
Arctic
Antarctic
Data
Polar
World Data System

description: This document is a synopsis of the tasks completed in the first year of the Polar Pilot Federated Search (PPFS) project. The WDS-ITO developed this set of tools and portal for the POLDER Working Group with the goal to provide a single search interface for both Arctic and Antarctic metadata. This document aims to ensure the PPFS stays relevant and valuable to the research data management (RDM) community. The document begins by briefly describing the pilot federated search, and then lays out a plan for the disposition and development of the project, particularly the steps to success, milestones, hosting documentation, and next steps.
description: World Data System - International Technology Office Funded under Digital Research Alliance of Canada (formerly the Canadian New Digital Research Infrastructure Organization - NDRIO)
Exploiting Domain Transferability for Collaborative Inter-level Domain Adaptive Object Detection
Creators: name: Do, Mirae
name: Jeon, Seogkyu
name: Lee, Pilhyeon
name: Hong, Kibeom
name: Ma, Yu-seung
name: Byun, Hyeran
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Domain adaptation for object detection (DAOD) has recently drawn much attention owing to its capability of detecting target objects without any annotations. To tackle the problem, previous works focus on aligning features extracted from partial levels (e.g., image-level, instance-level, RPN-level) in a two-stage detector via adversarial training. However, individual levels in the object detection pipeline are closely related to each other and this inter-level relation is unconsidered yet. To this end, we introduce a novel framework for DAOD with three proposed components: Multi-scale-aware Uncertainty Attention (MUA), Transferable Region Proposal Network (TRPN), and Dynamic Instance Sampling (DIS). With these modules, we seek to reduce the negative transfer effect during training while maximizing transferability as well as discriminability in both domains. Finally, our framework implicitly learns domain invariant regions for object detection via exploiting the transferable information and enhances the complementarity between different detection levels by collaboratively utilizing their domain information. Through ablation studies and experiments, we show that the proposed modules contribute to the performance improvement in a synergic way, demonstrating the effectiveness of our method. Moreover, our model achieves a new state-of-the-art performance on various benchmarks.
description: Accepted to Expert Systems with Applications. The first three authors contributed equally
legal status of co-generated data
Creators: name: Van Erp, Sjef
name: Swinnen, Koen
Publisher: name: Technology and Regulation
Year: 2022

description: A major problem when trying to resolve questions surrounding the legal status of data is how they should be defined, classified and specified. By defining we mean making a statement regarding the meaning of a term, classification refers to arranging data in classes following particular criteria, specification means delineating data such that both between parties to a contract (‘inter partes’ or bilaterally) and to a considerable and relevant group of third parties (multilaterally) it is clear which data are referred to. Most data cannot be captured as easily as a block on a blockchain or data on your USB stick, because they are in constant motion. How to create a legal object, in the stricter sense of an object as to which a subject may claim a right against a considerable and relevant group of other subjects, out of this continuous flow of streams, activities, services? Legal objects tend to be static, such as a house or a car, but a flow by its very nature is dynamic. Do we not need a re-thinking of what can be a legal object given that the number of such flows is ever growing? What does the dynamic nature of such objects mean for the entitlement to any economic benefits? These are the questions we face when looking at data more generally. However, even more questions arise, in particular in terms of regulating the use of and access to the data, when data emanate from different sources in the sense that more than one party can be said to have (somehow) contributed to their generation, in other words: co-generated data. This contribution aims to shed some light on how longstanding principles of (among others) Dutch, German and Belgian property law could prove useful in finding a way to regulate the use of and access to co-generated data. These property law principles are in place, and have been in place for a very long time, to solve the ownership issue that arises when, as is the case with co-generated data, more than one party can be said to have somehow contributed to the creation of something, that something in the case of traditional property law being a tangible.
description: Technology and Regulation, Vol. 2022 (2022)
title: Elektronenstruktur angelernt
Creators: name: von Rudorff, Guido Falk
Publisher: name: KOBRA Universität Kassel
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Dichtefunktionaltheorie
subject: Dichtefunktional
subject: Maschinelles Lernen
subject: Quantenchemie
subject: Quantenalchemie
classificationCode: 530
subject: 530
classificationCode: Dichtefunktionalformalismus
subject: Dichtefunktionalformalismus
classificationCode: Dichtefunktional
subject: Dichtefunktional
classificationCode: Maschinelles Lernen
subject: Maschinelles Lernen
classificationCode: Quantenchemie
subject: Quantenchemie

description:
Die Dichtefunktionaltheorie (DFT) ist spätestens seit den 1990er-Jahren ein gängiges Werkzeug der Quantenchemie und der Materialforschung. Inzwischen kommt Maschinelles Lernen als weiteres Werkzeug hinzu, das sich mit der DFT kombinieren lässt. Dieser Beitrag stellt verschiedene Strategien hierfür vor. Vor allem ergänzt das Maschinelle Lernen die empirische Seite, zum Beispiel bei der Entwicklung neuer Funktionale als zentrale Bausteine. Auch in der Verfeinerung der DFT-Ergebnisse kann Maschinelles Lernen gewinnbringend eingesetzt werden.
LibOCS – Open and Citizen Science in Baltic academic libraries
Creators: name: Lembinen, Liisi
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: libocs
libraries
citizen science
open science
baltics
academic libraries

description: Slides from Multiplier Event "Strengthening the Role of Libraries for Rising Citizen Science: LibOCS shares knowledge and experience", took place at Kaunas University of Technology Campus Library (Studentų St. 48, Kaunas, Lithuania). 

 

Project Number: 2021-1-EE01-KA220-HED-000031125

Project Acronym: LibOCS

Project Title: University libraries strengthening the academia-society connection through citizen science in the Baltics

This project is funded under the Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnerships program.
Mapping Depth to Bedrock, Shear Stiffness, and Fundamental Site Period at CentrePort, Wellington using Surface Wave Methods: Implications for Local Seismic Site Amplification
Creators: name: Vantassel, Joseph P.
name: Cox, Brady R.
name: Wotherspoon, Liam
name: Stolte, Andrew
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Wellington's port (CentrePort) experienced significant damage from the $M_w$ 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake as a result of soil liquefaction, lateral spreading, and shaking-induced damage to structures. To investigate these ill effects, and propose mitigation measures to prevent similar damage in future earthquakes, there was a need to quantify the variations in the depth to bedrock, shear stiffness, and fundamental site period ($T_0$) across the port. In order to characterize $T_0$ and develop shear wave velocity (Vs) profiles for use in seismic site response analyses, horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) spectral ratio measurements and active-source and passive-wavefield surface wave testing (i.e., MASW and MAM, respectively) were performed across the port. A site period map developed from 114 H/V spectral ratio measurements indicates several areas of rapidly changing, complex subsurface structure. Deep (200-plus meters) Vs profiles developed at six reference locations across the port were used to estimate the depth to soft (Vs $>$ 760 m/s) and hard (Vs $>$ 1500 m/s) rock. $T_0$ estimates from H/V spectral ratio measurements ($T_{0,H/V}$) at the six reference locations are shown to be related to the depth of hard rock based on linear viscoelastic transfer functions calculated from Vs profiles truncated at several depths. $T_{0,H/V}$ measurements at two ground motion stations near the port are also shown to be in reasonably good agreement with predominant periods of maximum spectral amplification recorded during both the 2016 Kaikōura and 2013 Cook Strait earthquakes, despite these sites also being effected by soil nonlinearity and potential 3D basin edge effects.
description: Main: 21 pages, 11 figures; Appendix: 8 pages, 6 figures; Final accepted manuscript of Vantassel et al. (2018) published in Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, released in compliance with Seismological Society of America's green open access policy
Narcissistic Personality Features and Contingencies of Self-Worth: What are the Foundations of Narcissistic Self-Esteem?
Creators: name: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: The purpose of this study will be to serve as a pre-registered replication of the four studies that are already included in “Narcissistic Personality Features and Contingencies of Self-Worth: What are the Foundations of Narcissistic Self-Esteem?” That is, this pre-registered study will be included as “Study 5” in that manuscript.
Modelling the Turtle Python library in CSP
Creators: name: MacConville, Dara
name: Farrell, Marie
name: Luckcuck, Matt
name: Monahan, Rosemary
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Software verification is an important tool in establishing the reliability of critical systems. One potential area of application is in the field of robotics, as robots take on more tasks in both day-to-day areas and highly specialised domains. Robots are usually given a plan to follow, if there are errors in this plan the robot will not perform reliably. The capability to check plans for errors in advance could prevent this. Python is a popular programming language in the robotics domain, through the use of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and various other libraries. Python's Turtle package provides a mobile agent, which we formally model here using Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). Our interactive toolchain CSP2Turtle with CSP model and Python components, enables Turtle plans to be verified in CSP before being executed in Python. This means that certain classes of errors can be avoided, and provides a starting point for more detailed verification of Turtle programs and more complex robotic systems. We illustrate our approach with examples of robot navigation and obstacle avoidance in a 2D grid-world.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
Careful Autonomous Agents in Environments With Multiple Common Resources
Creators: name: Condurache, Rodica
name: Dima, Catalin
name: Jitaru, Madalina
name: Oualhadj, Youssouf
name: Troquard, Nicolas
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Careful rational synthesis was defined in (Condurache et al. 2021) as a quantitative extension of Fisman et al.'s rational synthesis (Fisman et al. 2010), as a model of multi-agent systems in which agents are interacting in a graph arena in a turn-based fashion. There is one common resource, and each action may decrease or increase the resource. Each agent has a temporal qualitative objective and wants to maintain the value of the resource positive. One must find a Nash equilibrium. This problem is decidable. In more practical settings, the verification of the critical properties of multi-agent systems calls for models with many resources. Indeed, agents and robots consume and produce more than one type of resource: electric energy, fuel, raw material, manufactured goods, etc. We thus explore the problem of careful rational synthesis with several resources. We show that the problem is undecidable. We then propose a variant with bounded resources, motivated by the observation that in practical settings, the storage of resources is limited. We show that the problem becomes decidable, and is no harder than controller synthesis with Linear-time Temporal Logic objectives.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
RV4JaCa -- Runtime Verification for Multi-Agent Systems
Creators: name: Engelmann, Debora C.
name: Ferrando, Angelo
name: Panisson, Alison R.
name: Ancona, Davide
name: Bordini, Rafael H.
name: Mascardi, Viviana
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)
subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: This paper presents a Runtime Verification (RV) approach for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) using the JaCaMo framework. Our objective is to bring a layer of security to the MAS. This layer is capable of controlling events during the execution of the system without needing a specific implementation in the behaviour of each agent to recognise the events. MAS have been used in the context of hybrid intelligence. This use requires communication between software agents and human beings. In some cases, communication takes place via natural language dialogues. However, this kind of communication brings us to a concern related to controlling the flow of dialogue so that agents can prevent any change in the topic of discussion that could impair their reasoning. We demonstrate the implementation of a monitor that aims to control this dialogue flow in a MAS that communicates with the user through natural language to aid decision-making in hospital bed allocation.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
Temporal Planning with Incomplete Knowledge and Perceptual Information
Creators: name: Carreno, Yaniel
name: Petillot, Yvan
name: Petrick, Ronald P. A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: In real-world applications, the ability to reason about incomplete knowledge, sensing, temporal notions, and numeric constraints is vital. While several AI planners are capable of dealing with some of these requirements, they are mostly limited to problems with specific types of constraints. This paper presents a new planning approach that combines contingent plan construction within a temporal planning framework, offering solutions that consider numeric constraints and incomplete knowledge. We propose a small extension to the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) to model (i) incomplete, (ii) knowledge sensing actions that operate over unknown propositions, and (iii) possible outcomes from non-deterministic sensing effects. We also introduce a new set of planning domains to evaluate our solver, which has shown good performance on a variety of problems.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
Towards VEsNA, a Framework for Managing Virtual Environments via Natural Language Agents
Creators: name: Gatti, Andrea
name: Mascardi, Viviana
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Automating a factory where robots are involved is neither trivial nor cheap. Engineering the factory automation process in such a way that return of interest is maximized and risk for workers and equipment is minimized, is hence of paramount importance. Simulation can be a game changer in this scenario but requires advanced programming skills that domain experts and industrial designers might not have. In this paper we present the preliminary design and implementation of a general-purpose framework for creating and exploiting Virtual Environments via Natural language Agents (VEsNA). VEsNA takes advantage of agent-based technologies and natural language processing to enhance the design of virtual environments. The natural language input provided to VEsNA is understood by a chatbot and passed to a cognitive intelligent agent that implements the logic behind displacing objects in the virtual environment. In the VEsNA vision, the intelligent agent will be able to reason on this displacement and on its compliance to legal and normative constraints. It will also be able to implement what-if analysis and case-based reasoning. Objects populating the virtual environment will include active objects and will populate a dynamic simulation whose outcomes will be interpreted by the cognitive agent; explanations and suggestions will be passed back to the user by the chatbot.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
The Need for a Meta-Architecture for Robot Autonomy
Creators: name: Gutiérrez, Stalin Muñoz
name: Steinbauer-Wagner, Gerald
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Robotics

description: Long-term autonomy of robotic systems implicitly requires dependable platforms that are able to naturally handle hardware and software faults, problems in behaviors, or lack of knowledge. Model-based dependable platforms additionally require the application of rigorous methodologies during the system development, including the use of correct-by-construction techniques to implement robot behaviors. As the level of autonomy in robots increases, so do the cost of offering guarantees about the dependability of the system. Certifiable dependability of autonomous robots, we argue, can benefit from formal models of the integration of several cognitive functions, knowledge processing, reasoning, and meta-reasoning. Here we put forward the case for a generative model of cognitive architectures for autonomous robotic agents that subscribes to the principles of model-based engineering and certifiable dependability, autonomic computing, and knowledge-enabled robotics.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
The Small Worlds of Multiculturalism: Tracing Gradual Policy Change in the Australian and Canadian Federations
Creators: name: Brassard-Dion, Nikola
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2020
Subjects: Multiculturalism
Federalism
Historical Institutionalism
Policy Change

description: Competing narratives on the “rise and fall of multiculturalism” (Kymlicka 2010) confuse our understanding of the evolution of multiculturalism policy, particularly in the case of federations like Canada and Australia. Part of the issue is the sharp separation between stability and change and prevailing focus on national multiculturalism policies. This overlooks important and simultaneous developments in the constituent units of these two federations. We therefore ask how and why have multiculturalism policies changed in the constituent units of Australia and Canada? First, we argue that amid a noticeable decline in support for multiculturalism on the part of the central government in both countries, constituent unit governments have become a crucial source of multiculturalism policy development in Australia and Canada. Because many of the economic, labour, civil rights and social policy challenges involve state/provincial or shared responsibilities, multiculturalism policies are developed and implemented in large part by constituent units. Thus, we cannot comment on multiculturalism policies in federations without paying attention to the experiences and contributions of constituent units. Second, we argue this process of multiculturalism policy change can be conceptualized along four modes of gradual institutional change referred to as policy drift, layering, displacement, and conversion. These incremental modes of policy change are the result of a distinct combination of contextual, structural, and agency-based factors. More precisely, (1) a shift in the socio-political context marks the opening of a critical juncture as new ideas and demands for reform emerge; (2) institutional rules with separate compliance and enforcement standards structure reform pathways; and (3) the relationship between policy and political entrepreneurship activates the causal mechanisms that consolidate the separate modes of gradual institutional change. The dissertation therefore offers a more complete theoretical explanation of the processes of institutional change, their ideational influences and causal mechanisms through fresh empirical observation. Building on Mahoney and Thelen’s (2010) theory on gradual institutional change, the dissertation applies a process-tracing method over the period 1989 to 2019 to four case studies: Nova Scotia, South Australia, New South Wales, and British Columbia. In sum, generating inquiry that looks beyond national policies allows us to capture concurrent processes happening within and across State/provincial boundaries, which in turn shape their shared citizenship.
Towards Plug'n Play Task-Level Autonomy for Robotics Using POMDPs and Generative Models
Creators: name: Wertheim, Or
name: Suissa, Dan R.
name: Brafman, Ronen I.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Robotics (cs.RO)
subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: To enable robots to achieve high level objectives, engineers typically write scripts that apply existing specialized skills, such as navigation, object detection and manipulation to achieve these goals. Writing good scripts is challenging since they must intelligently balance the inherent stochasticity of a physical robot's actions and sensors, and the limited information it has. In principle, AI planning can be used to address this challenge and generate good behavior policies automatically. But this requires passing three hurdles. First, the AI must understand each skill's impact on the world. Second, we must bridge the gap between the more abstract level at which we understand what a skill does and the low-level state variables used within its code. Third, much integration effort is required to tie together all components. We describe an approach for integrating robot skills into a working autonomous robot controller that schedules its skills to achieve a specified task and carries four key advantages. 1) Our Generative Skill Documentation Language (GSDL) makes code documentation simpler, compact, and more expressive using ideas from probabilistic programming languages. 2) An expressive abstraction mapping (AM) bridges the gap between low-level robot code and the abstract AI planning model. 3) Any properly documented skill can be used by the controller without any additional programming effort, providing a Plug'n Play experience. 4) A POMDP solver schedules skill execution while properly balancing partial observability, stochastic behavior, and noisy sensing.
description: In Proceedings AREA 2022, arXiv:2207.09058
Orthogonality Deficiency Compensation for Improved Frequency Selective Image Extrapolation
Creators: name: Seiler, Jürgen
name: Meisinger, Katrin
name: Kaup, André
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Image and Video Processing (eess.IV)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: This paper describes a very efficient algorithm for image signal extrapolation. It can be used for various applications in image and video communication, e.g. the concealment of data corrupted by transmission errors or prediction in video coding. The extrapolation is performed on a limited number of known samples and extends the signal beyond these samples. Therefore the signal from the known samples is iteratively projected onto different basis functions in order to generate a model of the signal. As the basis functions are not orthogonal with respect to the area of the known samples we propose a new extension, the orthogonality deficiency compensation, to cope with the non-orthogonality. Using this extension, very good extrapolation results for structured as well as for smooth areas are achievable. This algorithm improves PSNR up to 2 dB and gives a better visual quality for concealment of block losses compared to extrapolation algorithms existent so far.
Spatio-temporal prediction in video coding by best approximation
Creators: name: Seiler, Jürgen
name: Lakshman, Haricharan
name: Kaup, André
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Image and Video Processing (eess.IV)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: Within the scope of this contribution we propose a novel efficient spatio-temporal prediction algorithm for video coding. The algorithm operates in two stages. First, motion compensation is performed on the block to be predicted in order to exploit temporal correlations. Afterwards, in order to exploit spatial correlations, this preliminary estimate is spatially refined by forming a joint model of the motion compensated block and spatially adjacent already decoded blocks. Compared to an earlier refinement algorithm, the novel one only needs very little iteration, leading to a speedup of factor 17. The implementation of this new algorithm into the H.264/AVC leads to a maximum reduction in data rate of up to nearly 13% for the considered sequences.
Spatio-temporal prediction in video coding by non-local means refined motion compensation
Creators: name: Seiler, Jürgen
name: Richter, Thomas
name: Kaup, André
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Image and Video Processing (eess.IV)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: The prediction step is a very important part of hybrid video codecs. In this contribution, a novel spatio-temporal prediction algorithm is introduced. For this, the prediction is carried out in two steps. Firstly, a preliminary temporal prediction is conducted by motion compensation. Afterwards, spatial refinement is carried out for incorporating spatial redundancies from already decoded neighboring blocks. Thereby, the spatial refinement is achieved by applying Non-Local Means de-noising to the union of the motion compensated block and the already decoded blocks. Including the spatial refinement into H.264/AVC, a rate reduction of up to 14 % or respectively a gain of up to 0.7 dB PSNR compared to unrefined motion compensated prediction can be achieved.
Optimized processing order for 3D hole filling in video sequences using frequency selective extrapolation
Creators: name: Seiler, Jürgen
name: Schöll, Susanne
name: Schnurrer, Wolfgang
name: Kaup, André
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Image and Video Processing (eess.IV)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: A problem often arising in video communication is the reconstruction of missing or distorted areas in a video sequence. Such holes of unavailable pixels may be caused for example by transmission errors of coded video data or undesired objects like logos. In order to close the holes given neighboring available content, a signal extrapolation has to be performed. The best quality can be achieved, if spatial as well as temporal information is used for the reconstruction. However, the question always is in which order to process the extrapolation to obtain the best result. In this paper, an optimized processing order is introduced for improving the extrapolation quality of Three-dimensional Frequency Selective Extrapolation. Using the proposed optimized order, holes in video sequences can be closed from the outer margin to the center, leading to a higher reconstruction quality, and visually noticeable gains of more than 0.5 dB PSNR are possible.
Hydrodynamics of flow sensing in plankton
Creators: name: Eloy, Christophe
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
subject: Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Planktonic organisms, despite their passive drift in the ocean, exhibit complex responses to fluid flow, including escape behaviors and larval settlement detection. But what flow signals can they perceive? This paper addresses this question by considering an organism covered with sensitive cilia and immersed in a background flow. The organism is modeled as a spherical particle in Stokes flow, with cilia assumed to measure the local shear at the particle surface. This study reveals that, while these organisms can always measure certain components of the flow strain, bottom-heaviness is necessary to measure the horizontal component of vorticity. These findings shed light on flow sensing by plankton, contributing to a better understanding of their behavior.
Drivable Volumetric Avatars using Texel-Aligned Features
Creators: name: Remelli, Edoardo
name: Bagautdinov, Timur
name: Saito, Shunsuke
name: Simon, Tomas
name: Wu, Chenglei
name: Wei, Shih-En
name: Guo, Kaiwen
name: Cao, Zhe
name: Prada, Fabian
name: Saragih, Jason
name: Sheikh, Yaser
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Photorealistic telepresence requires both high-fidelity body modeling and faithful driving to enable dynamically synthesized appearance that is indistinguishable from reality. In this work, we propose an end-to-end framework that addresses two core challenges in modeling and driving full-body avatars of real people. One challenge is driving an avatar while staying faithful to details and dynamics that cannot be captured by a global low-dimensional parameterization such as body pose. Our approach supports driving of clothed avatars with wrinkles and motion that a real driving performer exhibits beyond the training corpus. Unlike existing global state representations or non-parametric screen-space approaches, we introduce texel-aligned features -- a localised representation which can leverage both the structural prior of a skeleton-based parametric model and observed sparse image signals at the same time. Another challenge is modeling a temporally coherent clothed avatar, which typically requires precise surface tracking. To circumvent this, we propose a novel volumetric avatar representation by extending mixtures of volumetric primitives to articulated objects. By explicitly incorporating articulation, our approach naturally generalizes to unseen poses. We also introduce a localized viewpoint conditioning, which leads to a large improvement in generalization of view-dependent appearance. The proposed volumetric representation does not require high-quality mesh tracking as a prerequisite and brings significant quality improvements compared to mesh-based counterparts. In our experiments, we carefully examine our design choices and demonstrate the efficacy of our approach, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods on challenging driving scenarios.
Ketamine, at low dose, decrease behavioural alterations in epileptic diseases induced by pilocarpine in mice
Creators: name: Tannich, Fatma
name: Barhoumi, Kamel
name: Rejeb, Ahmed
name: Aouichri, Mohamed
name: Ouajdi Souilem
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Neuroscience
subject: Physiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Pharmacology
subject: 111714 Mental Health
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Objective: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of low-dose of ketamine, in short-term, on behavioral impairment and acute neuronal death in the cerebral cortex during the acute phase in a model of epileptic mouse induced by pilocarpine. Methods:Ketamine was administrated (10 mg/kg) intraperitoneally, 30 min before pilocarpine injection (100 mg/kg) in the first group. The second group received the same dose of ketamine 30 min after pilocarpine injection. The effect of ketamine on behavioral disorders and cerebral neuronal integrity in epileptic mice was evaluated. Results:Clinical observations and behavioural tests relate a reduction in behavioural dysfunctions in mice treated with ketamine. Interestingly, treatment of mice with low dose of ketamine decreased the clinical symptoms (movements of the vibrios, nods of the head, and movements of the whiskers), especially when administered before epilepsy induction. Furthermore, the administration of ketamine limits oedema in the hippocampus, neuronal degeneration and gliosis in the different cortical layers. These results could be explained by NMDA receptors inhibition by ketamine. Conclusion:Therefore, it appears that ketamine is endowed with a potential neuroprotective effect and can reduce the severity of neurodegeneration, especially when administrated before Status Epilepticus (SE) installation.
สถานะพหุวัฒนธรรมศึกษาในโรงเรียนชายแดนไทย-สปป.ลาว : กรณีศึกษาโรงเรียนในอำเภอเชียงของ จังหวัดเชียงราย
Creators: name: วสันต์ สรรพสุข
Publisher: name: คณะศึกษาศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น
Year: 2563
Subjects: พหุวัฒนธรรมศึกษา ชาติพันธุ์ สัญชาติ โรงเรียนชายแดน Multicultural Education, Ethnic, Nationality, Border School

description: วารสารศึกษาศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น, 43, 2, 1-14
การพัฒนาความสามารถในการแก้ปัญหาและความคิดสร้างสรรค์ทางคณิตศาสตร์ เรื่อง ความน่าจะเป็นของเหตุการณ์ โดยใช้กระบวนการแก้ปัญหาเชิงสร้างสรรค์ ของนักเรียนชั้นมัธยมศึกษาปีที่ 3
Creators: name: ดารินทร์ งามสันเทียะ
Publisher: name: คณะศึกษาศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น
Year: 2563
Subjects: การแก้ปัญหาเชิงสร้างสรรค์ การแก้ปัญหาทางคณิตศาสตร์ ความคิดสร้างสรรค์ทางคณิตศาสตร์ Creative Problem Solving, Problem solving ability, Mathematical creativity

description: วารสารศึกษาศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น, 43, 2, 15-29