One recursively enumerable real α dominates another one β if there are nondecreasing recursive sequences of rational numbers (a[n] : n ∈ ω) approximating α and (b[n] : n ∈ ω) approximating β and a positive constant C such that for all n, C(α − a[n]) ≥ (β − b[n]). See [R. M. Solovay, Draft of a Paper (or Series of Papers) on Chaitin’s Work, manuscript, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, 1974, p. 215] and [G. (...) J. Chaitin, IBM J. Res. Develop., 21 (1977), pp. 350–359]. We show that every recursively enumerable random real dominates all other recursively enumerable reals. We conclude that the recursively enumerable random reals are exactly the Ω-numbers [G. J. Chaitin, IBM J. Res. Develop., 21 (1977), pp. 350–359]. Second, we show that the sets in a universal Martin-Lof test for randomness have random measure, and every recursively enumerable random number is the sum of the measures represented in a universal Martin-Lof test. (shrink)

The present paper criticizes Chalmers's discussion of the Singularity, viewed as the emergence of a superhuman intelligence via the self-amplifying development of artificial intelligence. The situated and embodied view of cognition rejects the notion that intelligence could arise in a closed 'brain-in-a-vat' system, because intelligence is rooted in a high-bandwidth, sensory-motor interaction with the outside world. Instead, it is proposed that superhuman intelligence can emerge only in a distributed fashion, in the form of a self-organizing network of humans, computers, and (...) other technologies: the 'Global Brain'. (shrink)

Organisations are computing systems. The university’s sports centre is a computing system for managing sports teams and facilities. The tenure committee is a computing system for assigning tenure status. Despite an increasing number of publications in group ontology, the computational nature of organisations has not been recognised. The present paper is the first in this debate to propose a theory of organisations as groups structured for computing. I begin by describing the current situation in group ontology (...) and by spelling out the thesis in more detail. I then present the example of a sports centre to illustrate why one might intuitively think of organisations as computing systems. To substantiate the thesis, I introduce Piccinini’s restrictive analysis of physical computation. As I show, organisations meet all criteria for being computing systems. Organisations are structured groups with the function of manipulating medium-independent vehicles according to rules. Furthermore, I argue for the modal claim that this is a necessary feature of organisations. Having sketched the computational account of organisations, I compare it to other proposals in the literature. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

For the last four decades much of the world’s most advanced technical resources have been devoted to military systems; but with the end of the Cold War economic and technical resources are being freed to yield the so‐called ‘peace dividend’. This promotes the possibility of a more ethical orientation to many information technologists’ work, and also represents the chance to argue for, and develop, more socially useful and responsible applications of computer technology, in accordance with the development of professional ideals (...) and standards within the computing industry. The author is a member of the Computing Research Centre in the School of Computing and Management Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University, 100 Napier St, Sheffield S11 8HD, England; email: [email protected]. (shrink)

Miscommunication phenomena such as repair in dialogue are important indicators of the quality of communication. Automatic detection is therefore a key step toward tools that can characterize communication quality and thus help in applications from call center management to mental health monitoring. However, most existing computational linguistic approaches to these phenomena are unsuitable for general use in this way, and particularly for analyzing human–human dialogue: Although models of other-repair are common in human-computer dialogue systems, they tend to focus on (...) specific phenomena, missing the range of repair and repair initiation forms used by humans; and while self-repair models for speech recognition and understanding are advanced, they tend to focus on removal of “disfluent” material important for full understanding of the discourse contribution, and/or rely on domain-specific knowledge. We explain the requirements for more satisfactory models, including incrementality of processing and robustness to sparsity. We then describe models for self- and other-repair detection that meet these requirements and investigate how they perform on datasets from a range of dialogue genres and domains, with promising results. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of selected papers presented at the Second Asia-Pacific Computing and Philsosophy Conference, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2005. The conference was organized by the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology, Chulalongkorn University on behalf of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy (www.ia-cap.org). Computing have had a long relationship with philosophy, starting from the problem of how symbols being manipulated in computing bear a relation to the (...) outside world, to those of artificial intelligence, robotics, computer simulation, and so on. Moreover, as computer technologies have become thoroughly pervasive in today's environment, there are also issues concerning social and ethical impacts brought about by them. The papers in the volume represent a wide variety of concerns and various dimensions within which computing and philosophy are related. Furthermore, it also represents some of the first attempts to highlight cultural dimensions of computing and philosophy, which became prominent when the conference was held for the first time within the milieu of an Asian culture. (The First Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy was held in Canberra, Australia.) Hence, many of the papers in the volume address this added dimension. Apart form the usual problems of how computers and human lives are interconnected, the papers here also discuss how computers are related to human lives as lived in a specific culture. Thus the book breaks a new ground and should be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students who are interested, not only on computing and philosophy generally construed, but also on this exciting new dimension of how the cultures of Asia, the West, and others bear upon the traditional issues in computing and philosophy, and on how this dimension raises some new concerns and agenda. Among the topics discussed in this volume are: political online forums in Saudi Arabia, e-democracy and structural transformation of public sphere, the Buddhist informational person, a glance into the lives of computerized generation in Thailand, technology and journalism in the market, local approaches and global potential (?) of information ethics, computer-enhanced good life, computer teaching ethics, and many others. (shrink)

This book illustrates the program of Logical-Informational Dynamics. Rational agents exploit the information available in the world in delicate ways, adopt a wide range of epistemic attitudes, and in that process, constantly change the world itself. Logical-Informational Dynamics is about logical systems putting such activities at center stage, focusing on the events by which we acquire information and change attitudes. Its contributions show many current logics of information and change at work, often in multi-agent settings where social behavior is (...) essential, and often stressing Johan van Benthem's pioneering work in establishing this program. However, this is not a Festschrift, but a rich tapestry for a field with a wealth of strands of its own. The reader will see the state of the art in such topics as information update, belief change, preference, learning over time, and strategic interaction in games. Moreover, no tight boundary has been enforced, and some chapters add more general mathematical or philosophical foundations or links to current trends in computer science. (shrink)

Reflecting Alan Robinson's fundamental contribution to computational logic, this book brings together seminal papers in inference, equality theories, and logic programming. It is an exceptional collection that ranges from surveys of major areas to new results in more specialized topics. Alan Robinson is currently the University Professor at Syracuse University. Jean-Louis Lassez is a Research Scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Gordon Plotkin is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. Contents: Inference. Subsumption, A (...) Sometimes Undervalued Procedure, Larry Wos, Ross Overbeek, and Ewing Lusk. The Markgraf Karl Refutation Procedure, Hans Jurgen Ohlbach and Jorg H. Siekmann. Modal Logic Should Say More than it Does, Melvin Fitting. Interactive Proof Presentation, W. W. Bledsoe. Intelligent Backtracking Revisited, Maurice Bruynooghe. A Science of Reasoning, Alan Bundy. Inductive Inference of Theories from Facts, Ehud Y. Shapiro. Equality. Solving Equations in Abstract Algebras: A Rule-based Survey of Unification, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud and Claude Kirchner. Disunification: A Survey, Hubert Comon. A Case Study of the Completion Procedure: Proving Ring Commutativity Problems, Deepak Kapur and Hantao Zhang. Computations in Regular Rewriting Systems I and II, Girard Huet and JeanJacques Levy. Unification and ML Type Reconstruction, Paris Kanellakis, Harry Mairson, and John Mitchell. Automatic Dimensional Analysis, Mitchell Wand. Logic Programming. Logic Programming Schemes and Their Implementations, Keith Clark. A Near-Horn Prolog for Compilation, Donald Loveland and David Reed. Unfold/Fold Transformations of Logic Programs, P. A. Gardner and J. C. Shepherdson. An Algebraic Representation of Logic Program Computations, Andrea Corradini and Ugo Montanari. Theory of Disjunctive Logic Programs, Jack Minker, Arcot Rajasekar, and Jorge Lobo. Bottom-Up Evaluation of Logic Programs, Jeffrey Naughton and Raghu Ramakrishnan. Absys, the First Logic Programming Language: A View of the Inevitability of Logic Programming, E. W. Elcock. (shrink)

Alex has written an excellent thesis in the area of computable model theory. The latter is a subject that nicely combines model-theoretic ideas with delicate recursiontheoretic constructions. The results demand good knowledge of both fields. In his thesis, Alex begins by reviewing the essential model-theoretic facts, especially the Baldwin-Lachlan result about uncountably categorical theories. This he follows with a brief discussion of recursion theory, including mention of the priority method. The deepest part of the thesis concerns the study of the (...) recursive spectrum of an uncountably categorical theory, i.e. the set of n ≤ ! such that the n-th model of the theory (in the Baldwin-Lachlan sense) has a computable presentation. This is a deep and very active area of conteporary research in computable model theory which Alex discusses in considerable detail. The exposition is very good and therefore the thesis makes a nice introduction to the subject for a wide community of logicians. (Sy-David Friedman, Professor of Mathematical Logic, Director of the Kurt Godel Research Center for Mathematical Logic, University of Vienna). (shrink)

There has been increasing interest over the last few decades in the study of the effective content of Mathematics. One field whose effective content has been the subject of a large body of work, dating back at least to the early 1960s, is model theory. Several different notions of effectiveness of model-theoretic structures have been investigated. This communication is concerned withcomputablestructures, that is, structures with computable domains whose constants, functions, and relations are uniformly computable.In model theory, we identify isomorphic structures. (...) From the point of view of computable model theory, however, two isomorphic structures might be very different. For example, under the standard ordering of ω the success or relation is computable, but it is not hard to construct a computable linear ordering of type ω in which the successor relation is not computable. In fact, for every computably enumerable degree a, we can construct a computable linear ordering of type ω in which the successor relation has degree a. It is also possible to build two isomorphic computable groups, only one of which has a computable center, or two isomorphic Boolean algebras, only one of which has a computable set of atoms. Thus, for the purposes of computable model theory, studying structures up to isomorphism is not enough. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and (...) use ontologies and terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

Given a graph G, we say that a subset D of the vertex set V is a dominating set if it is near all the vertices, in that every vertex outside of D is adjacent to a vertex in D. A domatic k-partition of G is a partition of V into k dominating sets. In this paper, we will consider issues of computability related to domatic partitions of computable graphs. Our investigation will center on answering two types of questions (...) for the case when k = 3. First, if domatic 3-partitions exist in a computable graph, how complicated can they be? Second, a decision problem: given a graph, how difficult is it to decide whether it has a domatic 3-partition? We will completely classify this decision problem for highly computable graphs, locally finite computable graphs, and computable graphs in general. Specifically, we show the decision problems for these kinds of graphs to be ${\Pi^{0}_{1}}$ -, ${\Pi^{0}_{2}}$ -, and ${\Sigma^{1}_{1}}$ -complete, respectively. (shrink)

Brain–Computer Interface research is an interdisciplinary area of study within Neural Engineering. Recent interest in end-user perspectives has led to an intersection with user-centered design. The goal of user-centered design is to reduce the translational gap between researchers and potential end users. However, while qualitative studies have been conducted with end users of BCI technology, little is known about individual BCI researchers’ experience with and attitudes towards UCD. Given the scientific, financial, and ethical imperatives of UCD, we sought to gain (...) a better understanding of practical and principled considerations for researchers who engage with end users. We conducted a qualitative interview case study with neural engineering researchers at a center dedicated to the creation of BCIs. Our analysis generated five themes common across interviews. The thematic analysis shows that participants identify multiple beneficiaries of their work, including other researchers, clinicians working with devices, device end users, and families and caregivers of device users. Participants value experience with device end users, and personal experience is the most meaningful type of interaction. They welcome end-user input, but are skeptical of limited focus groups and case studies. They also recognize a tension between creating sophisticated devices and developing technology that will meet user needs. Finally, interviewees espouse functional, assistive goals for their technology, but describe uncertainty in what degree of function is “good enough” for individual end users. Based on these results, we offer preliminary recommendations for conducting future UCD studies in BCI and neural engineering. (shrink)

Several philosophical issues in connection with computer simulations rely on the assumption that results of simulations are trustworthy. Examples of these include the debate on the experimental role of computer simulations :483–496, 2009; Morrison in Philos Stud 143:33–57, 2009), the nature of computer data Computer simulations and the changing face of scientific experimentation, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Barcelona, 2013; Humphreys, in: Durán, Arnold Computer simulations and the changing face of scientific experimentation, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Barcelona, 2013), and the explanatory power of (...) computer simulations :277–292, 2008; Durán in Int Stud Philos Sci 31:27–45, 2017). The aim of this article is to show that these authors are right in assuming that results of computer simulations are to be trusted when computer simulations are reliable processes. After a short reconstruction of the problem of epistemic opacity, the article elaborates extensively on computational reliabilism, a specified form of process reliabilism with computer simulations located at the center. The article ends with a discussion of four sources for computational reliabilism, namely, verification and validation, robustness analysis for computer simulations, a history of successful implementations, and the role of expert knowledge in simulations. (shrink)

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium. Introduction to HTML: A Self Paced Course on Web Authoring : This is now my favorite online HTML tutorial (which is not to say that I've searched exhaustively, or even extensively). I especially like its Table of HTML (4.01) Character Entities , which gives names and ascii codes for special characters, such as the em-dash, section sign, greek letters, etc. Publishing a Personal Web Page using CU People : Basic information for Cornell people who (...) want to create a personal Web Page. Creating Course Web sites : Cornell faculty wanting to create course websites should look here if they need more space than the 5MB allotted by CU People. Wade's HTML Tutorial : This tutorial makes it easy to get started creating web pages by writing html. Beginner's Guide to HTML : Another good introduction; from the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications). W3C HTML Validator : Check your web pages for errors and compliance with HTML standards. HTML With Style : Biweekly tutorials on making web-pages. Each tutorial contains lots of interesting, opinionated details about the right and wrong way to produce web pages. (shrink)

Shi and Aharonov have shown that the Toffoli gate and the Hadamard gate give rise to an approximately universal set of quantum computational gates. We study the basic algebraic properties of this system by introducing the notion of Shi-Aharonov quantum computational structure. We show that the quotient of this structure is isomorphic to a structure based on a particular set of complex numbers (the closed disc with center \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2})$\end{document} and radius (...) \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$\frac{1}{2}$\end{document} ). (shrink)

Data center technology changes the mode of computing. Traditional DCs consist of a single layer and only have Ethernet connections among switches. Those old-fashioned DCs cannot fulfill the high resource demand compared with today’s DCs. The architectural design of the DCs is getting substantial importance and acting as the backbone of the network because of its essential feature of supporting and maintaining the rapidly increasing Internet-based applications which include search engines and social networking applications. Every application has its (...) parameters, like latency and blocking in the DC network. Every data center network has its specialized architecture. It has a specific arrangement of layers and switches, which increase or decrease the DC network’s efficiency. We develop a simulation tool that comprises two different DC architectures: basic tree architecture and c-Through architecture. Using this simulation, we analyze the traffic behavior and the performance of the simulated DCN. Our main purpose is to focus on mean waiting time, load, and blocking with respect to the traffic within the DCN. (shrink)

Farming computer games enable the ‘desk chair countryside’—millions of people actively engaged in performing farming and rural activities on-line—to co-produce their desired representations of rural life, in line with the parameters set by game creators. In this paper, I critique the narratives and images of farming life expressed in the popular computer game ‘Stardew Valley’. Stardew is based on a scenario whereby players leave a [meaningless] urban desk job to revitalize the family farm. Player are given a choice to invest (...) in the Community Center or to support ‘JojaMart’, a ‘big-box’ development. The farming narrative demonstrates the hallmarks of classical American agrarianism: farming as the basic profession on which other occupations depend, the virtue of hard work, the ‘natural’ and moral nature of agricultural life, and the economic independence of the farmer. More recent discourses of critical agrarianism are noticeably absent, particularly in relation to environmental protection. Conflict is centred on urban-based big business, whereas the farm is represented as a ‘bolt-hole’ or sanctuary from urban life. I argue that embedding issues of big-box development in gameplay enrols players in active reflection and debate on desirable responses, whereas the emphasis on reproducing classical agrarian tropes risks desensitizing game players to contemporary agrarian social and environmental justice issues. However, Stardew Valley gameplay implicitly reinforces the ideal that low input farming is the way that agriculture should be practiced. The success of the game in eliciting on-line debates, and the requirement for active performance and decision-making, demonstrates the specific potential of computer games as mediums for influencing and intervening in ongoing reworking of farming imaginaries, and enabling more critically engagement of the ‘desk chair countryside’ in important global debates. (shrink)

In this study, the well-known CES-D depression scale was considered as a prototypical tool for assessing an individual’s inclination to respond at random. It was postulated that the set of the responses obtained from the participants of a questionnaire survey could be divided into three classes: the honest responses class; the pure random class, characterized by the same prob- ability of each admissible score; the smart random class, characterized by the same distribution of the probability of scores as in the (...) honest responses class. A two-step classifying procedure was recommended. According to this procedure, the first step should be to separate the pure random responses from the others. As needed, at the second step the smart random responses should be separated from the honest responses. The CES-D scale consists of sixteen direct questions and four reverse questions, each question with four admissible score values, 0, 1, 2, or 3. The material for the analyses includes all of the 4 294 967 296 possible arrangements of the four scores for the sixteen direct questions, and all of the 256 arrangements of the four scores for the four reverse questions, and all of the possible 49 · 13 = 637 pairs of the possible values of the mean scores from the sixteen direct questions and from the four reverse questions, respectively. It was assumed, without loss of generality, that the honest responses to the sixteen direct questions lead to the resulting distribution: P = (8/16; 5/16; 2/16; 1/16), for a score equal to 0, 1, 2, or 3, respectively. The original iterative procedure was used to compute the exact distributions of the mean scores in the pure random class, and in the smart random class. The discriminant ability to dis- tinguish between the two classes was characterized with the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. In result, the excellent discriminant properties of the CES-D were confirmed. The area under the ROC curve was estimated equal to AUC = 0.98 with standard error SE = 0.004 for the screening of the pure random responses from all of the others, and equal to AUC = 0.87 with standard error SE = 0.006 for the purpose of distinguishing the smart random responses from the honest ones. (shrink)

Motor imagery-based brain-computer interfaces have been studied without controlling subjects’ gaze fixation position previously. The effect of gaze fixation and covert attention on the behavioral performance of BCI is still unknown. This study designed a gaze fixation controlled experiment. Subjects were required to conduct a secondary task of gaze fixation when performing the primary task of motor imagination. Subjects’ performance was analyzed according to the relationship between motor imagery target and the gaze fixation position, resulting in three BCI control conditions, (...) i.e., congruent, incongruent, and center cross trials. A group of fourteen subjects was recruited. The average group performances of three different conditions did not show statistically significant differences in terms of BCI control accuracy, feedback duration, and trajectory length. Further analysis of gaze shift response time revealed a significantly shorter response time for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. Meanwhile, the parietal occipital cortex also showed active neural activities for congruent and incongruent trials, and this was revealed by a contrast analysis of R-square values and lateralization index. However, the lateralization index computed from the parietal and occipital areas was not correlated with the BCI behavioral performance. Subjects’ BCI behavioral performance was not affected by the position of gaze fixation and covert attention. This indicated that motor imagery-based BCI could be used freely in robotic arm control without sacrificing performance. (shrink)

In the last half century we have gone from storing data on 5-1/4 inch floppy diskettes to cloud and now fog computing. But one should ask why so much data is being collected. Part of the answer is simple in light of scientific projects but why is there so much data on us? Then, we ask about its “interface” through fog computing. Such questions prompt this chapter on the philosophy of big data and fog computing. After some (...) background on definitions, origins and contemporary applications, the main discussion begins with thinking about modern data collection, management, and applications from a complexity standpoint. Big data is turned into knowledge but knowledge is extrapolated from the past and used to manage the future. Yet it is questionable whether humans have the capacity to manage contemporary technological and social complexity evidenced by our world in crisis and possibly on the brink of extinction. Such calls for a new way of studying societies from a scientific point of view. We are at the center of the observation from which big data emerge and are manipulated, the overall human project being not only to create an artificial brain with an attendant mind but a society that might be able to survive what “natural” humans cannot. (shrink)

Computational visual perception, also known as computer vision, is a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to process digital images and videos in a similar way as biological vision does. It involves methods to be developed to replicate the capabilities of biological vision. The computer vision’s goal is to surpass the capabilities of biological vision in extracting useful information from visual data. The massive data generated today is one of the driving factors for the tremendous growth of computer vision. (...) This survey incorporates an overview of existing applications of deep learning in computational visual perception. The survey explores various deep learning techniques adapted to solve computer vision problems using deep convolutional neural networks and deep generative adversarial networks. The pitfalls of deep learning and their solutions are briefly discussed. The solutions discussed were dropout and augmentation. The results show that there is a significant improvement in the accuracy using dropout and data augmentation. Deep convolutional neural networks’ applications, namely, image classification, localization and detection, document analysis, and speech recognition, are discussed in detail. In-depth analysis of deep generative adversarial network applications, namely, image-to-image translation, image denoising, face aging, and facial attribute editing, is done. The deep generative adversarial network is unsupervised learning, but adding a certain number of labels in practical applications can improve its generating ability. However, it is challenging to acquire many data labels, but a small number of data labels can be acquired. Therefore, combining semisupervised learning and generative adversarial networks is one of the future directions. This article surveys the recent developments in this direction and provides a critical review of the related significant aspects, investigates the current opportunities and future challenges in all the emerging domains, and discusses the current opportunities in many emerging fields such as handwriting recognition, semantic mapping, webcam-based eye trackers, lumen center detection, query-by-string word, intermittently closed and open lakes and lagoons, and landslides. (shrink)

Regarding the continuous development of high-speed trains and the increase of running speeds, the aerodynamic design of high-speed trains has become significantly important, while reduction of drag and noise comprises a significant challenge in order to optimize aerodynamic design of high-speed trains. The design form factor of a high-speed train is highly influenced by aerodynamic aspects including aerodynamic drag, lift force, and noise. With the high-speed train as the object, the paper aims to take bionic concept as the entry point, (...) selecting the hummingbird as the bionic prototype and extracting bionic elements to establish a bionic train model. Then, the finite volume method was used for numerical simulation and analysis of the aerodynamic performance and aerodynamic noise of the bionic high-speed train. Computational results prove that drag and noise of the bionic head type were lower than those of the original train; drag of the head train of the bionic model was reduced by 2.21% in comparison with the original model, while the whole-train drag was reduced by 3.53%, indicating that drag reduction effects are available and implying that the bionic head type could reduce drag and noise. Noise sources of the bionic train are mainly located at positions with easy airflow separation and violent turbulence motion. Large turbulence energy is in bogie areas and mainly exists at the leeward side of the bogie area. Obviously, the bogie area is the major noise source of the train. Aerodynamic noise of the bionic train in far-field comprises a wide-frequency range. Noises were concentrated within 613 Hz~3150 Hz. When the bionic high-speed train ran at 350 km/h, through comparative analysis of total noise levels at observed points of the high-speed train, it is found that this position with the maximum noise level was 25 m away from the head train nose tip, with the maximum value of 88.4 dB. When the bionic train ran at 600 km/h, the maximum sound pressure level at the longitudinal point was 99.7 dB and the average noise level was 96.6 dB. When the running speed increased from 350 km/h to 600 km/h, the maximum noise level increased by 11.3 dB and the average noise level increased by 11.6 dB. Computation results of aerodynamic noise at the point which is 7.5 m away from the rail center show that the maximum aerodynamic noise level existed at the first-end bogie of the head train, while the noise level was larger at the position closer to the ground. (shrink)

Climatology is a paradigmatic complex systems science. Understanding the global climate involves tackling problems in physics, chemistry, economics, and many other disciplines. I argue that complex systems like the global climate are characterized by certain dynamical features that explain how those systems change over time. A complex system's dynamics are shaped by the interaction of many different components operating at many different temporal and spatial scales. Examining the multidisciplinary and holistic methods of climatology can help us better understand the nature (...) of complex systems in general. -/- Questions surrounding climate science can be divided into three rough categories: foundational, methodological, and evaluative questions. "How do we know that we can trust science?" is a paradigmatic foundational question (and a surprisingly difficult one to answer). Because the global climate is so complex, questions like "what makes a system complex?" also fall into this category. There are a number of existing definitions of `complexity,' and while all of them capture some aspects of what makes intuitively complex systems distinctive, none is entirely satisfactory. Most existing accounts of complexity have been developed to work with information-theoretic objects (signals, for instance) rather than the physical and social systems studied by scientists. -/- Dynamical complexity, a concept articulated in detail in the first third of the dissertation, is designed to bridge the gap between the mathematics of contemporary complexity theory (in particular the formalism of "effective complexity" developed by Gell-Mann and Lloyd [2003]) and a more general account of the structure of science generally. Dynamical complexity provides a physical interpretation of the formal tools of mathematical complexity theory, and thus can be used as a framework for thinking about general problems in the philosophy of science, including theories, explanation, and lawhood. -/- Methodological questions include questions about how climate science constructs its models, on what basis we trust those models, and how we might improve those models. In order to answer questions about climate modeling, it's important to understand what climate models look like and how they are constructed. Climate model families are significantly more diverse than are the model families of most other sciences (even sciences that study other complex systems). Existing climate models range from basic models that can be solved on paper to staggeringly complicated models that can only be analyzed using the most advanced supercomputers in the world. I introduce some of the central concepts in climatology by demonstrating how one of the most basic climate models might be constructed. I begin with the assumption that the Earth is a simple featureless blackbody which receives energy from the sun and releases it into space, and show how to model that assumption formally. I then gradually add other factors (e.g. albedo and the greenhouse effect) to the model, and show how each addition brings the model's prediction closer to agreement with observation. After constructing this basic model, I describe the so-called "complexity hierarchy" of the rest of climate models, and argue that the sense of "complexity" used in the climate modeling community is related to dynamical complexity. -/- With a clear understanding of the basics of climate modeling in hand, I then argue that foundational issues discussed early in the dissertation suggest that computation plays an irrevocably central role in climate modeling. "Science by simulation" is essential given the complexity of the global climate, but features of the climate system--the presence of non-linearities, feedback loops, and chaotic dynamics--put principled limits on the effectiveness of computational models. This tension is at the root of the staggering pluralism of the climate model hierarchy, and suggests that such pluralism is here to stay, rather than an artifact of our ignorance. Rather than attempting to converge on a single "best fit" climate model, we ought to embrace the diversity of climate models, and view each as a specialized tool designed to predict and explain a rather narrow range of phenomena. Understanding the climate system as a whole requires examining a number of different models, and correlating their outputs. This is the most significant methodological challenge of climatology. -/- Climatology's role contemporary political discourse raises an unusually high number of evaluative questions for a physical science. The two leading approaches to crafting policy surrounding climate change center on mitigation (i.e. stopping the changes from occurring) and adaptation (making post hoc changes to ameliorate the harm caused by those changes). Crafting an effective socio-political response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change, however, requires us to integrate multiple perspectives and values: the proper response will be just as diverse and pluralistic as the climate models themselves, and will incorporate aspects of both approaches. I conclude by offering some concrete recommendations about how to integrate this value pluralism into our socio-political decision making framework. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers studying the great mysteries of human subjectivity have focused on the mind/body problem and the difference between human beings and animals. Now a new ontological question takes center stage: to what extent can a manufactured object (a computer) exhibit qualities of mind? There have been passionate exchanges between those who believe that a "manufactured mind" is possible and those who believe that mind cannot exist except as a living, socially situated, embodied person. As with earlier arguments, (...) this one shows no sign of being resolved. But the fight over computationalism (the belief that all mental processes can be generated by computer programs) has immediate, "hard" consequences for technological research and development, social- and cognitive-science methodology, and for our everyday experience of the world and ourselves. This special issue consists of papers presented at a conference of the same title held at the Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo, 22-23 May 1990. The authors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (Computer Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, etc.), and bring a wide variety of perspectives to the topic. (shrink)

As we live in a culture where “everything can be commodified, measured and calculated and can be put in the competitive market for sale, detached from its roots and purpose,” there is need to redefine our humanness in terms of the changing nature of science, technology, and their deeper impact on human life. More than anything else, it is Information Technology that now has tremendous influence on all spheres of our life, and in a sense, IT has become the destiny (...) of our life. And this is where the real trauma lies. On the one hand, our being in the cyberspace opens up new and exciting horizons before us; on the other hand, we ourselves are changed and transformed in the process. The virtual world transforms human users to a problem-solver technocrat. The speed at which Information Technology is changing the way that youth around the world are socializing, playing, and researching, it is the common practice now for a 15-year old to go home and update their MySpace page, followed by playing online games, or looking up the new trendy YouTube video. These forms of technology are often the topic of adolescent conversations as YouTube, blogs, e-magazines, Face book, MySpace, iPhones, and iPods dominate the commercial and social networking market. Some researchers refer to this phenomenon as ubiquitous technology drawing attention to the fact that ubiquitous technology acknowledges the speedy adoption of day-to-day use of technology as a global phenomenon. In this background, this article aims at revisiting the question, “What is to be human in the era of Ubiquitous Technology?” From a feminist perspective, one can still redefine the boundaries between femininity and masculinity in the context of IT and its impact on our lifestyle and thought style. While examining the ways in which our definitions of “woman” and “man” are shifting in this new communication environment, Elizabeth Lane Lawley observes that we cannot fix a single center from which the experiences of women with computer and communication systems can be viewed and that such fixity would only serve to deepen inequities rather than exposing and removing them. She finally submits, “It is possible to use new theoretical perspectives on the shifting boundaries of gender definitions to rethink a previously deterministic view of the effect of new technologies on society, and particularly the effect of those technologies on women. While the gradual absence of the subject from the field of Artificial Intelligence leads to the invisibility of feminine care along with social and relational nature of man, some feminists dismiss the biological sex distinction on such issues and encourage females to ‘imitate man’ and to become more aggressive, assertive and dominating” (Lawley 1993 ). What are the possible impacts of this new technology on the so-called feminine traits of our human nature? How far our definitions of “woman” and “man” are shifting in this new communication environment? This is what this article seeks to explore. (shrink)

This article proposes a new bi-directional way of understanding the convergence of biology and computing. It argues for a reciprocal interaction in which biology and computing have shaped and are currently reshaping each other. In so doing, we qualify both the view of a natural marriage and of a digital shaping of biology, which are common in the literature written by scientists, STS, and communication scholars. The DNA database is at the center of this interaction. We argue (...) that DNA databases are spaces of convergence for computing and biology that change in form, meaning, and function from the 1960s to the 2000s. The first part of the article shows how, in the 1980s, DNA sequencing shifted from passively incorporating computers to be increasingly modeled in digital coding and decoding. Information retrieval algorithms, reciprocally, were altered according to the peculiarities of DNA in the first sequence-storage databases. The second part of the article investigates the impact of these reciprocal interactions and globalization on the organization of research centers, ways of conducting big science, and scientific values. Through convergence and new technologies such as data mining, biology and computing were transformed technologically, institutionally, and culturally into a new bio-data enterprise called genomics. (shrink)

Towards the end of the 1960s—a period of intense creative, technological and political changes—the Argentinian art critic and entrepreneur Jorge Glusberg founded the CAyC in Buenos Aires. CAyC was an interdisciplinary experimental project that explored the relationship between art, technology and society. It sought to articulate a network of discussions and productions by a new style of Latin American artist, deeply influenced by science, technology and society. Glusberg defined such practice as Systems Art, which appeared in three ways, namely as (...) a system of collective representation; a system of meaning that defied formal categories; and a system of relationships and processes for social inquiry. In doing so, the artist became a researcher who reflected on their social context and the latter’s processes of production. This paper will discuss CAyC’s pioneering work and its global influence through three main initiatives: its exhibitions Art and Cybernetics, Systems Art in Latin America and the International Open Encounters on Video. These events were driven by the revolutionary artistic and experimental promotion of the distinctive ways in which Latin American artists were using technology to respond to local issues at a time when computer systems and cybernetic models for management and organizational practices were being introduced across the region. (shrink)

Background: Dementia is one the major problems of aging societies, and, novel and effective non-drug therapies are required as interventions in the oldest-old to prevent cognitive decline.Objective: This study aims to examine the efficacy and safety of reminiscence using immersive virtual reality focusing on anxiety that often appears with cognitive decline. The secondary objective is to reveal the preference for VR image types for reminiscence: live-action or computer graphics.Methods: This was a pilot, open-label, and randomized crossover study which was conducted (...) on January 2020 at a single nursing home. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups in equal numbers, and they alternately viewed two types of VR images themed on the mid- to late Showa era in Japan. In group A, the CG images were viewed first, and then the LA images were viewed. In group B, the images were viewed in the opposite order. Before VR viewing, subjects responded to Mini-Mental State Examination Japanese version and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Japanese version. After viewing the first and second VR, subjects responded to STAI and the numerical rating scale for satisfaction and side effects.Results: Ten subjects participated in this study. The values of analyses are presented in the mean. The age was 87.1 years, and the MMSE was 28.5. The total STAI score before VR viewing was 36.1, but it significantly decreased to 26.8 after the first VR viewing, and further decreased to 23.4 after the second VR viewing. The NRS score for satisfaction tended to be higher after viewing LA in group A vs. 8.6, P = 0.0993), while in group B, the score after CG was slightly lower than that after LA. There were no serious side effects.Conclusions: This study suggests that iVR reminiscence can reduce anxiety in the oldest-old without causing serious side effects. Furthermore, the impacts might be better with LA images. (shrink)

A collection of essays discussing the philosophical perspectives of thinking and education, this book considers such subjects as the development of education, the role of micro-computers in science education and theories of education.

The diverse number of N-space theories and the unrestrained growth of the number of spaces within the multiple space models has incurred general skepticism about the new search space variants within the search space paradigm of psychology. I argue that any N-space theory is computationally equivalent to a single space model. Nevertheless, the N-space theories may explain the systematic behavior of human problem solving better than the original one search space theory by identifying relationships between the tasks that occur in (...) problem solving. These tasks are independent of the particular process and may not be explicitly represented by the problem solver. N-space theorists seem to overlook their own reason for distinguishing N-space theories from single space models, namely the presupposition that these tasks must have a unified, underlying search space architecture. This assumption is ill-founded and may implement a procedural restraint that could impede psychological research. (shrink)

Transfer learning can improve the robustness of deep learning in the case of small samples. However, when the semantic difference between the source domain data and the target domain data is large, transfer learning easily introduces redundant features and leads to negative transfer. According the mechanism of the human brain focusing on effective features while ignoring redundant features in recognition tasks, a brain-like classification method based on adaptive feature matching dual-source domain heterogeneous transfer learning is proposed for the preoperative aided (...) diagnosis of lung granuloma and lung adenocarcinoma for patients with solitary pulmonary solid nodule in the case of small samples. The method includes two parts: (1) feature extraction and (2) feature classification. In the feature extraction part, first, By simulating the feature selection mechanism of the human brain in the process of drawing inferences about other cases from one instance, an adaptive selected-based dual-source domain feature matching network is proposed to determine the matching weight of each pair of feature maps and each pair of convolution layers between the two source networks and the target network, respectively. These two weights can, respectively, adaptive select the features in the source network that are conducive to the learning of the target task, and the destination of feature transfer to improve the robustness of the target network. Meanwhile, a target network based on diverse branch block is proposed, which made the target network have different receptive fields and complex paths to further improve the feature expression ability of the target network. Second, the convolution kernel of the target network is used as the feature extractor to extract features. In the feature classification part, an ensemble classifier based on sparse Bayesian extreme learning machine is proposed that can automatically decide how to combine the output of base classifiers to improve the classification performance. Finally, the experimental results (the AUCs were 0.9542 and 0.9356, respectively) on the data of two center data show that this method can provide a better diagnostic reference for doctors. (shrink)

This essay explores how mid-twentieth-century mathematicians at New York University envisioned their discipline, cultural identities and social roles, and how these self-constructed identities materialized in the planning of their new academic building, Warren Weaver Hall. These mathematicians considered their research to be a ‘living part of the stream of science’, requiring a mathematics research library which they equated to a scientific laboratory and a complex of computing rooms which served as an interdisciplinary research centre. Identifying as ‘scientists’, they understood (...) their societal value to be that of researchers, outputting mathematics research valuable to the natural sciences, the emerging field of computer science and the United States government and military, as well as educators. When the building opened in 1965, it was touted by the university administration as an ‘example of excellence’; it later, in 1970, became the site of heated negotiations when university student and faculty protestors staged a sit-in rebuking the Atomic Energy Commission's Computing Center housed on the second floor. A close study of the correspondence between the mathematicians and their peers in the university's administration, private foundations, government agencies and an architectural firm not only illuminates the day-to-day work practices of this eminent group of mathematicians, but also sheds light on their own self-constructed academic and social identities within their contemporaneous Cold War culture. (shrink)

The 21st century has seen a much-increased focus on the importance of ethical behaviour in business, driven by major scandals, calls for stricter regulation and increased demands for improved governance and reporting. In parallel, there are calls for the incorporation of moral and ethical elements in business education and university accreditation bodies and schools are responding. In particular, the explosion of technology change, particularly Internet, social media and beyond have raised many challenges for individuals, organizations and legislators. However, educational responses (...) are varied and little has been done to determine the effectiveness of what has been done. Most responses to this need to provide ethical education follow a cognitive, rule-based approach, often using case-based techniques. This can improve knowledge and understanding of ethical issues, but it may have limited influence on actual behaviour. A relatively new field – Positive Psychology -- provides an alternate perspective, focusing on what is good rather than what is poor behaviour. One Positive Psychology approach, that of Appreciative Inquiry, which has not previously been used in ICT ethics education, offers a promising technique to develop improved moral attitudes and behaviour. This paper reports on a large-scale pedagogical research project that: examines ethical perspectives from philosophy, psychology and pedagogy in the context of ICT professional education; describes the development and multistage implementation of an ethics course in an undergraduate business ICT program delivered to more than 1,200 students; discusses the formal evaluation of changes in moral attitude following a Positive Psychology intervention in the education of some 300 Business ICT students using the Defining Issues Test, Version 2 and the IMIS Survey developed at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility. The project results demonstrate that a well-designed applied ICT ethics course produces measureable positive changes in the ethical stances of participants and that the use of Appreciative Inquiry increases the impact of these changes. In addition to the relevance of the findings for educators they can provide guidance to those in organisations responsible for the ethical behaviour of their ICT employees. (shrink)

Many studies in big data focus on the uses of data available to researchers, leaving without treatment data that is on the servers but of which researchers are unaware. We call this dark data, and in this article, we present and discuss it in the context of high-performance computing facilities. To this end, we provide statistics of a major HPC facility in Europe, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart. We also propose a new position tailor-made for coping with (...) dark data and general data management. We call it the scientific data officer and we distinguish it from other standard positions in HPC facilities such as chief data officers, system administrators, and security officers. In order to understand the role of the SDO in HPC facilities, we discuss two kinds of responsibilities, namely, technical responsibilities and ethical responsibilities. While the former are intended to characterize the position, the latter raise concerns—and proposes solutions—to the control and authority that the SDO would acquire. (shrink)

The versatility and adaptability of information technology offer many potential benefits to society, its organisations and its citizens; but there are also many associated risks. The social and ethical implications of this technology warrant special attention and have resulted in the creation of information ethics as a discrete area complementary to business ethics. Simon Rogerson is Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK.

“The overall goal of information ethics is to integrate information technology and human values in such a way that IT advances and protects human values rather than doing damage to them” . We are pleased to present in this issue five papers from a recent European conference on information ethics edited and introduced by Simon Rogerson, Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, England.We are also pleased to announce a major new feature of (...) the Review, entitled Business Ethics on the Internet, which will be contributed from time to time by members of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. This will provide regular up‐to‐date information and comment on the resources which are becoming increasingly available on the Internet relating to the study of business ethics and the practice of ethical business. It will be launched in our July issue in an article entitled “Business Ethics on the Internet”. (shrink)

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics' (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of environmental ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical (...) question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse. (shrink)

Many studies in big data focus on the uses of data available to researchers, leaving without treatment data that is on the servers but of which researchers are unaware. We call this dark data, and in this article, we present and discuss it in the context of high-performance computing facilities. To this end, we provide statistics of a major HPC facility in Europe, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart. We also propose a new position tailor-made for coping with (...) dark data and general data management. We call it the scientific data officer and we distinguish it from other standard positions in HPC facilities such as chief data officers, system administrators, and security officers. In order to understand the role of the SDO in HPC facilities, we discuss two kinds of responsibilities, namely, technical responsibilities and ethical responsibilities. While the former are intended to characterize the position, the latter raise concerns—and proposes solutions—to the control and authority that the SDO would acquire. (shrink)

The world is currently facing a wave of data centre construction. Fuelled by an explosion of data production and the emergence of edge computing, our cities are witnessing the materialisation of new architectural typologies that increasingly convolute notions of digital and bodily distinction. Whilst the last 2 decades have seen the proliferation of separate human and post-human urban environments, here we consider the agency and performativity of human communities within increasingly tangled contexts. As edge computing continues to bring (...) the material reality of data processing closer to our physical bodies, perhaps its time to reassess who, or what, our cities now serve. In an age of unprecedented digital transformation, when our identities seem to be ever more intangible, how we might perform within environments that are increasingly catering to our digital rather than bodily needs? Today, the Anthropocene expels nature to the periphery. Tomorrow, humans become marginalised—“weeds”, thriving in an epoch of data. (shrink)

The increasing importance of computational techniques in post-genomic life science research calls for new forms and combinations of expertise that cut across established disciplinary boundaries between computing and biology. These are most marked in large scale gene sequencing facilities. Here new ways of organising knowledge production, drawing on industrial models, have been perceived as pursuing efficiency and control to the potential detriment of academic autonomy and scientific quality. We explore how these issues are played out in the case of (...) BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute prior to 2008). BGI (in Pinyin, Hua Da Jiyin– Big China Genome) is today the world’s largest centre for gene sequencing research. Semi-detached from traditional academic institutions, BGI has developed distinctive models for organising research and for developing expertise, informed by practices in US Information Technology and Life Science Laboratories, that differ from existing models of interdisciplinary research in academic institutions. (shrink)

The versatility and adaptability of information technology offer many potential benefits to society, its organisations and its citizens; but there are also many associated risks. The social and ethical implications of this technology warrant special attention and have resulted in the creation of information ethics as a discrete area complementary to business ethics. Simon Rogerson is Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK.