Resolving conflicts in knowledge for ambient intelligence

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 455-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Homola ◽  
Theodore Patkos ◽  
Giorgos Flouris ◽  
Ján Šefránek ◽  
Alexander Šimko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ambient Intelligence ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Knowledge Representation And Reasoning ◽  
Paraconsistent Reasoning ◽  
Context Modelling ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Similar Complex

AbstractAmbient intelligence (AmI) proposes pervasive information systems composed of autonomous agents embedded within the environment who, in orchestration, complement human activity in an intelligent manner. As such, it is an interesting and challenging application area for many computer science fields and approaches. A critical issue in such application scenarios is that the agents must be able to acquire, exchange, and evaluate knowledge about the environment, its users, and their activities. Knowledge populated between the agents in such systems may be contextually dependent, ambiguous, and incomplete. Conflicts may thus naturally arise, that need to be dealt with by the agents in an autonomous way. In this survey, we relate AmI to the area of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR), where conflict resolution has been studied for a long time. We take a look at a number of KR approaches that may be applied: context modelling, multi-context systems, belief revision, ontology evolution and debugging, argumentation, preferences, and paraconsistent reasoning. Our main goal is to describe the state of the art in these fields, and to draw attention of researchers to important theoretical issues and practical challenges that still need to be resolved, in order to reuse the results from KR in AmI systems or similar complex and demanding applications.

scholarly journals Plant-Based Alternatives to Yogurt: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives of New Biotechnological Challenges

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Marco Montemurro ◽  
Erica Pontonio ◽  
Rossana Coda ◽  
Carlo Giuseppe Rizzello
Keyword(s):  
Lactic Acid ◽  
Lactic Acid Bacteria ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Protein Digestibility ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sensory Features ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Biotechnological Processes ◽  
Nutritional Compounds ◽  
Increasing Demand

Due to the increasing demand for milk alternatives, related to both health and ethical needs, plant-based yogurt-like products have been widely explored in recent years. With the main goal to obtain snacks similar to the conventional yogurt in terms of textural and sensory properties and ability to host viable lactic acid bacteria for a long-time storage, several plant-derived ingredients (e.g., cereals, pseudocereals, legumes, and fruits) as well as technological solutions (e.g., enzymatic and thermal treatments) have been investigated. The central role of fermentation in yogurt-like production led to specific selections of lactic acid bacteria strains to be used as starters to guarantee optimal textural (e.g., through the synthesis of exo-polysaccharydes), nutritional (high protein digestibility and low content of anti-nutritional compounds), and functional (synthesis of bioactive compounds) features of the products. This review provides an overview of the novel insights on fermented yogurt-like products. The state-of-the-art on the use of unconventional ingredients, traditional and innovative biotechnological processes, and the effects of fermentation on the textural, nutritional, functional, and sensory features, and the shelf life are described. The supplementation of prebiotics and probiotics and the related health effects are also reviewed.

scholarly journals Career Complexity No Longer on the Rise: Comparing Early- and Mid-Career Complexity Across the 1930s thru 1980s Birth Cohorts in Sweden

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Westerman ◽  
Dirk Witteveen ◽  
Erik Bihagen ◽  
Roujman Shahbazian
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Initial Increase ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Average Complexity ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Gender Convergence

There is a wide-spread idea that contemporary careers continue to become ever more complex. Pioneering research of full-career complexity has shown that work lives have indeed become more complex, yet at modest increasing pace. This paper examines whether career complexity continues to increase using Swedish registry data across an exceptionally long time period, including younger cohorts than in previous research: up to those born in 1983. The full early- and midcareers of selected birth cohorts cover several macroeconomic booms and downturns, a long period of upskilling of the Swedish labor force, as well as the convergence of working hours of women and men. The following conclusions are drawn using state-of-the-art methods of measuring career complexity. For early-careers, an increasing complexity trend is evident between the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, yet complexity fluctuates around a stable trend for the 1970s birth cohorts and onward. For mid-careers, which are considerably more stable on average, complexity has decreased among women born between the 1930s and the early-1950s. However, the opposite trend holds true for men, resulting in gender convergence of complexity. We observe a standstill of the mid-career complexity trend across both genders, followed by a modest decline for the last observed cohorts. Subsequent analyses point to educational expansion as an important driver of the initial increase of early-career complexity. Taken together, our analysis affirms an initial shift to more career complexity in the 20th century, yet we find no unidirectional trend toward more career complexity over the last decades.

scholarly journals Towards High-Level Intrinsic Exploration in Reinforcement Learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bougie ◽  
Ryutaro Ichise
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Time Horizon ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Extrinsic Rewards ◽  
Intrinsic Reward ◽  
Long Time ◽  
End To End ◽  
High Level

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods traditionally struggle with tasks where environment rewards are sparse or delayed, which entails that exploration remains one of the key challenges of DRL. Instead of solely relying on extrinsic rewards, many state-of-the-art methods use intrinsic curiosity as exploration signal. While they hold promise of better local exploration, discovering global exploration strategies is beyond the reach of current methods. We propose a novel end-to-end intrinsic reward formulation that introduces high-level exploration in reinforcement learning. Our curiosity signal is driven by a fast reward that deals with local exploration and a slow reward that incentivizes long-time horizon exploration strategies. We formulate curiosity as the error in an agent’s ability to reconstruct the observations given their contexts. Experimental results show that this high-level exploration enables our agents to outperform prior work in several Atari games.

scholarly journals Education à l'image and Medienkompetenz : On the discourses and practices of film education in France and Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Henzler
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
German Film ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Film Education ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Media

This article compares the discourses, practices and politics of film education in France and Germany, and outlines their historical development. The discourses on film education in the two countries are fundamentally different: whereas German film education is anchored in the global politics of media education and around notions of Medienkompetenz (media competence), cinema in France is a field of art education centred on the transmission du cinéma (film mediation) or l'éducation artistique (art mediation). While the first initiatives in film education in both countries date back to the beginning of the twentieth century, this article explores how they developed in significantly different ways. In France, the establishment of film education was promoted and influenced by the culture of cinephilia, which imposed the notion of film as an art form. In Germany, film education – after having been pushed by the Nazi regime – suffered for a long time from sceptical attitudes towards the media and their ideological impact, and was formed by the critical approach of the Frankfurt School. This article details how history and the 'state of the art' of film education are interlinked with the different discourses and cultures of cinema in both countries, as well as the extent to which present political and educational practices draw upon long-standing historical and cultural traditions. In doing so, this article contributes to reflections upon film education at a wider European or international level, where similar debates around film or media literacy are taking place.

Biden Priorities and Possible Strategy for Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Settlement

2021 ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Karasova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
The United States ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
White House ◽  
Long Time ◽  
State Formula ◽  
Policy Priority ◽  
Democrats And Republicans

Israeli-U.S. relations are an important factor in U.S. policy in the Middle East. USA maintain Israel as a strategic ally and Israel was granted American “major non-NATO ally” status. United States actively influenced the Israeli regional policy. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict settlement was always America’ the most priority area. Israelis and Americans share the view that the United States has a predominant role and responsibility in the Palestinians - Israeli dispute peace-making. The two-state outcome and critical issue over Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem was a topic of American concerns for a long time relied on bipartisanship support of Democrats and Republicans. During Osama’s  presidency D. Biden held post of deputy president and supported no new ideas for restarting negotiations between the sides of the conflict but its policies have failed, from Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement. The next Trump administration however was the “most pro-Israel ever”. Trump’s White House led a radical departure from the U.S.’s traditional role as the honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians. Biden’s victory in 2021 signals restructure Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, rehabilitating a durable two-state formula that establishes political, territorial, and demographic separation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). But uunlike the Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden administration doesn't see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a foreign policy priority. The question is: what really a Biden presidency might mean for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

Intermediary and Intermediation

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Saglietto
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The concept of intermediation has existed for a long time and taken numerous different forms. In this introductory chapter, we will therefore start by examining the state of the art of intermediaries through a range of different disciplines (history, management, economics, health, sociology), highlighting their historical evolution and current forms. We will then present the different models and theories of intermediation and their development, to produce an appreciation of their similarities and differences and a comprehensive view of the subject. This will allow us, in the last section, to propose the framework for a general theory of intermediation, in terms of organisational architecture and the services provided.

scholarly journals Use of Exogenous and Endogenous Photomediators as Efficient ROS Modulation Tools: Results and Perspectives for Therapeutic Purposes

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Rosa Antognazza ◽  
Ilaria Abdel Aziz ◽  
Francesco Lodola
Keyword(s):  
Oxidative Stress ◽  
Reactive Oxygen Species ◽  
Cardiovascular Diseases ◽  
Fluorescent Probes ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Polymeric Materials ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Oxygen Species ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Long Time

Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) play an essential dual role in living systems. Healthy levels of ROS modulate several signaling pathways, but at the same time, when they exceed normal physiological amounts, they work in the opposite direction, playing pivotal functions in the pathophysiology of multiple severe medical conditions (i.e., cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, and aging). Therefore, the research for methods to detect their levels via light-sensitive fluorescent probes has been extensively studied over the years. However, this is not the only link between light and ROS. In fact, the modulation of ROS mediated by light has been exploited already for a long time. In this review, we report the state of the art, as well as recent developments, in the field of photostimulation of oxidative stress, from photobiomodulation (PBM) mediated by naturally expressed light-sensitive proteins to the most recent optogenetic approaches, and finally, we describe the main methods of exogenous stimulation, in particular highlighting the new insights based on optically driven ROS modulation mediated by polymeric materials.

scholarly journals Comparison of Two Efficient Methods for Calculating Partition Functions

Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 1050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Le-Cheng Gong ◽  
Bo-Yuan Ning ◽  
Tsu-Chien Weng ◽  
Xi-Jing Ning
Keyword(s):  
Sampling Method ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Condensed Matter ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Integral Approach ◽  
Partition Functions ◽  
Direct Integral ◽  
Nested Sampling ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Solid Argon

In the long-time pursuit of the solution to calculating the partition function (or free energy) of condensed matter, Monte-Carlo-based nested sampling should be the state-of-the-art method, and very recently, we established a direct integral approach that works at least four orders faster. In present work, the above two methods were applied to solid argon at temperatures up to 300 K. The derived internal energy and pressure were compared with the molecular dynamics simulation as well as experimental measurements, showing that the calculation precision of our approach is about 10 times higher than that of the nested sampling method.

The experimental investigation of syllable structure

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce L. Derwing ◽  
David Eddington
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This paper is a selective state-of-the-art report on a variety of issues related to the adoption of experimental methods to the study of syllable structure. The rationale for an experimental approach is presented in the first section, followed by a brief section on of some of the main theoretical issues involved. Section three then presents a recap of the most important empirical findings, focusing on the key factors involved, rather than the details of the specific results. Section four then presents an illustrative case where the experimental results seem to conflict, along with discussion of some of the factors that are likely responsible for this. Finally, in the last section, an appeal is made for a deeper theoretical perspective than the one that has guided research in this area heretofore.

scholarly journals English Teaching Practices and Intercultural Issues

Linguaculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-102
Author(s):  
Nicoleta-Mariana Iftimie
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Foreign Language Education ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Long Time ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Post War ◽  
Theoretical Issues

Saying that English has become a language of global communication has become a truism. Some of us may wonder: Why English? Why not another language? The reasons that brought about its status as a lingua franca are many, but the main ones have to do with the growth of the British Empire and its expansion as a colonial power, England’s economic development as a result of the Industrial Revolution and America’s growth as an economic and scientific power in the post-war era. Communication in English has expanded to multiple settings that include native-to-native, native to nonnative and nonnative to nonnative interactions. As a result, the new role of English as a language of international communication shared by people with different national and cultural backgrounds has brought to the fore discussions regarding the neat relationship between a particular language and a particular culture, which was for a long time one of the central tenets of foreign language education. Thus, the concept of one language has been challenged by the multilingual nature of English in various countries, which brought about the concept of new Englishes. The idea of one culture, on the other hand, has been challenged by the multinational and multicultural nature of the English speaking community, spread all over the globe. The article examines the global spread of English and discusses its implications for teaching practices, which need to cater for the dimension of intercultural communication set against global issues of standardization and intelligibility and local issues connected to a specific social, cultural and educational context. The analysis is based both on the theoretical issues dealt with in the literature and on the author’s own experience as a teacher of English in Romania and abroad.

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