In this article, I present a software architecture for intelligent agents. The essence of AI is complex information processing. It is impossible, in principle, to process complex information as a whole. We need some partial processing strategy that is still somehow connected to the whole. We also need flexible processing that can adapt to changes in the environment. One of the candidates for both of these is situated reasoning, which makes use of the fact that an agent is in a (...) situation, so it only processes some of the information – the part that is relevant to that situation. The combination of situated reasoning and context reflection leads to the idea of organic programming, which introduces a new building block of programs called a cell. Cells contain situated programs and the combination of cells is controlled by those programs. (shrink)

This is a study of the development of Christian symbolic use of the Cross. Early depictions were anastasic, the empty cross symbolizing the resurrection and hiding the manner of Jesus’ death. As the Christian community itself became more violent, and first practiced and then justified the practice of war, the Crucifix showed Christ on the Cross increasingly graphically. The writer compares this with a set of images in and around the chapel at Central American University in San Salvador. The images (...) record a memory of suffering and terror. The article ends by locating the experience of writing about these images in the context of global grass-roots protest against the war in Iraq. (shrink)

Web-based learning resources provide learners with hyperspace where they can navigate in a self-directed way to learn the contents included in the Web pages. The navigation involves making a sequence of the pages visited, which is called navigation path. However, learners often fail in making the navigation path due to a cognitive overload, which is caused by diverse cognitive efforts at comprehending the contents in Web pages, and monitoring the navigation process such as planning and reflection of navigation path. In (...) the self-directed learning, in particular, it is difficult for learners to maintain the navigation monitoring. Focusing on navigation planning, this paper addresses the issue of how to facilitate learners' navigation monitoring to promote their learning in hyperspace provided by Web-based learning resources. Our approach to this issue is to provide learners with a space, in which they can see through the learning resources to plan a navigation path, apart from hyperspace. In this paper, we also demonstrate an assistant system for the navigation planning, which is composed of hyperspace map, page previewer, and path previewer. These facilities give learners an overview of Web pages and navigation path to help them make a navigation path plan without visiting Web pages in hyperspace. This paper also describes a case study with the assistant system. The results indicate that the system facilitates navigation particularly in a more complicated hyperspace. (shrink)

This paper explores the psychological motivations behind collectivist behavior in Japan and the U.S. Using data from a large-scale questionnaire survey, we examine the causes of collectivist behavior (i.e., group conformity) at workplaces and at home. Our key findings are as follows: (i) in Japan, people conform to their groups, both at work and at home, because they consider that cooperation with others will result in greater achievement; (ii) in both Japan and the U.S., people conform to their groups, both (...) at work and at home, because behaving similarly to others makes them feel comfortable; and (iii) in both Japan and the U.S., people conform to their family’s opinion at home because they value cooperation with family members. Our findings suggest that institutional differences between Japan and the U.S. give rise to the differences in psychological motivations for collectivist behavior. (shrink)

Quantum walks exhibit different properties compared with classical random walks, most notably by linear spreading and localization. In the meantime, random walks that replicate quantum walks, which we refer to as quantum-walk-replicating random walks, have been studied in the literature where the eventual properties of QWRW coincide with those of QWs. However, we consider that the unique attributes of QWRWs have not been fully utilized in the former studies to obtain deeper or new insights into QWs. In this paper, we (...) highlight the directivity of one-dimensional discrete quantum walks via QWRWs. By exploiting the fact that QWRW allows trajectories of individual walkers to be considered, we first discuss the determination of future directions of QWRWs, through which the effect of linear spreading and localization is manifested in another way. Furthermore, the transition probabilities of QWRWs can also be visualized and show a highly complex shape, representing QWs in a novel way. Moreover, we discuss the first return time to the origin between RWs and QWs, which is made possible via the notion of QWRWs. We observe that the first return time statistics of QWs are quite different from RWs, caused by both the linear spreading and localization properties of QWs. (shrink)

Rather than regarding dreams as "things" or property, and grammatically treating them as nouns, the suggestion is to formulate a dream as an activity, label it "dreaming" and more specifically accept dreaming as interactional. For dreaming to be of importance, several psychological factors must be considered, including retention and selection, as well as external factors, such as to whom dreams are reported and their style of communication. Examples from anthropological writers on dreams are provided. It is noted that societal beliefs (...) about dreams tend to influence the amount and types of dreams that are communicated. (shrink)