A theoretical agenda for feminist HCI

HCI has a complex and often ambivalent attitude towards the issue of gender and interactive systems. Here I discuss three dominant paradigms for treating gender in HCI, and discuss their limitations. Next, I will present the theoretical perspectives on gender which are on the fringes of HCI - Technology as Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience - and discuss their possible contributions. I will show how this supports a reassessment of the use of gender theory in technological settings and its relevance for framing questions of gender in HCI. My goal in doing so is to argue for the importance of a more direct treatment of gender in HCI and move towards a feminist theory for HCI.     

实体造型的现状与展望

实体造型技术经过了二十多年蓬勃发展,任何对其现状和发展进行综述的试图都是困难的。本文把实体造型的发展分为两个阶段,即基于几何模型的造型(GBSM)和基于特征模型的造型(FBSM)。贯穿这两个阶段的四条线索是:增强形体表示能力、增强建模手段、增强重设计能力和CAD/CAM一体化。文章把实体造型的主要技术纳入一个统一模型,然后从设计过程的角度,就设计语言、设计约束、设计原型和语义信息四个方面分析实体造型的若干问题和研究方向。     

A theoretical perspective on social agency

In interacting with artificial social agents, novel forms of sociality between humans and machines emerge. The theme of Social Agency between humans and robots is of emerging importance. In this paper key theoretical issues are discussed in a preliminary exploration of the concept. We try to understand what Social Agency is and how it is created by, negotiated with, and attributed to artificial agents. This is done in particular considering socially situated robots and by exploring how people recognize and accept social agents. The interplay between humans and agents is investigated through dynamics of interpretation, signification and attribution. The ultimate goal of this research is to explore the challenges and opportunities brought by the design of socially intelligent agents.

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A game theoretical perspective on the quantum probabilities associated with a GHZ state

In the standard approach to quantum games, players’ strategic moves are local unitary transformations on an entangled state that is subsequently measured. Players’ payoffs are then obtained as expected values of the entries in the payoff matrix of the classical game on a set of quantum probabilities obtained from the quantum measurement. In this paper, we approach quantum games from a diametrically opposite perspective. We consider a classical three-player symmetric game along with a known expression for a set of quantum probabilities relevant to a tripartite Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) experiment that depends on three players’ directional choices in the experiment. We define the players’ strategic moves as their directional choices in an EPR setting and then express their payoff relations in the resulting quantum game in terms of their directional choices, the entries of the payoff matrix, and the quantum probability distribution relevant to the tripartite EPR experiment.     

Modelling and analysis using GROOVE

In this paper we present case studies that describe how the graph transformation tool groove has been used to model problems from a wide variety of domains. These case studies highlight the wide applicability of groove in particular, and of graph transformation in general. They also give concrete templates for using groove in practice. Furthermore, we use the case studies to analyse the main strong and weak points of groove.     

Modelling collaboration using complex networks

Collaboration means working together to achieve a common goal or to solve a problem, and in modern businesses, it is an important factor for information sharing and quality. This is due to the ability of collaborations to shape the structure and behaviour of organisations through the pooling of expertise and standardising of work patterns.Grounded on complex network theory and collaborative design research, a mathematical model of information flow for analysing collaboration in organisations is proposed in this article. The model defines concepts for characterising organisational structures for collaboration and proposes indicators for assessing organisational behaviour in terms of collaboration within organisations. The article concludes by discussing the applications and limitations of the proposed model.     

Matching perspective views of a polyhedron using circuits

We present a novel approach for finding corresponding points between two line drawings extracted from perspective views of a moving object whose surface is composed of planar polygons. In our approach, each circuit of the drawings is encoded with a boundary shape code which we call the RLCC code (run length code of convex and concave strings), then a clustering technique is used to obtain the matching result recursively. A series of measures are taken to make the algorithm tolerate considerable dissimilarities which may exist between the two drawings, such as missing lines, scale differences, rotation, perspective shape distortions, etc. Experimental results are presented.     

Modelling and Validating a multiple-configuration railway signalling system using SDL

This paper discusses some issues about the usage of SDL and related commercial SDL support tools for the validation of a railway signalling system: in particular, the issue of the multiple configurations presented by this system is addressed, discussing the possible strategies to validate the system regardless to the actual configuration.     

Knowledge-based systems from a socio-cognitive 1 perspective

. Recent trends in the design and development of knowledge-based systems KBSs are discussed with special emphasis on issues that relate to situated knowledge. A knowledge base is regarded as a model of expertise that acknowledges the embeddedness of expert knowledge in social interaction and in the workplace in general. KBS development is viewed as an instance of socio-technical design. Experience from several European projects is recounted to illustrate the issues addressed. Suggestions for KBS development are presented as methodological guidelines, with special emphasis on systems employing case-based reasoning.     

Knowledge-based systems from a socio-cognitive 1 perspective

Abstract

Recent trends in the design and development of knowledge-based systems KBSs are discussed with special emphasis on issues that relate to situated knowledge. A knowledge base is regarded as a model of expertise that acknowledges the embeddedness of expert knowledge in social interaction and in the workplace in general. KBS development is viewed as an instance of socio-technical design. Experience from several European projects is recounted to illustrate the issues addressed. Suggestions for KBS development are presented as methodological guidelines, with special emphasis on systems employing case-based reasoning.     

Modelling biological processes by using a probabilistic P system software

In this paper we present a probabilistic P system simulator that implements the evolution-communication model proposed in (Cavaliere, 2003) enriched with some probabilistic parameters inspired by the cell biology.After describing the software and its working, we compare the mathematical model used with the biological reality of the cell. Then, we present some mathematical and biological applications showing how one can use this software to simulate simple but interesting biological phenomena, related to respiration and photosynthesis processes in some bacteria.     

Modelling of piezoelectric transducers applied to piezoelectric motors: a comparative study and new perspective

There has been a great deal of interest devoted to modelling and simulation of electromechanical transducers, and in particular to piezoelectric transducers, during the last decades. Modelling of the electro-mechanical phenomena is a complex matter: transducers comprise laminated structures of varying thickness, consideration of piezoelectric forcing, non-uniform electric field inside the ceramic … Several approaches for modelling the laminate structure have been reported, i.e. classical lamination theory, first order and higher order shear deformation theories. Likewise, the constitutive equations of the piezoelectric media have been included in FEA approaches. In addition, non-uniform electric fields, both linear and quadratic, were analysed. The particular case of travelling wave ultrasonic motors is addressed. This paper reports the comparative results of modelling all these plus additional transducer effects on the accuracy and presents the application to the classical electro-mechanical modelling of the stator of piezoelectric motors. Modelling results are compared with experimental data.     

Modelling using an extended Yule distribution

A biparametric discrete distribution that extends the Yule distribution is presented. It belongs to the family of distributions generated by the Gaussian hypergeometric function and it can be expressed as a generalized beta mixture of a geometric distribution. The introduction of a new parameter makes the model very suitable to fit the empiric distribution tails and the effect of infinite variance is not possible. Several examples show more accurate fits when the extended distribution is used and the results are compared with other biparametric extensions of the Yule distribution.     

Modelling sequences using pairwise relational features

We propose a new framework for the modelling of sequences that generalizes popular models such as hidden Markov models. Our approach relies on the use of relational features that describe relationships between observations in a sequence. The use of such relational features allows implementing a variety of models from traditional Markovian models to richer models that exhibit robustness to various kinds of deformation in the input signal. We derive inference and training algorithms for our framework and provide experimental results on on-line handwriting data. We show how the models we propose may be useful for a variety of traditional tasks such as sequence classification but also for applications more related to diagnosis such as partial matching of sequences.     

Modelling automated manufacturing systems using a modification of coloured petri nets

Automated manufacturing systems (AMS) are a class of systems exhibiting concurrency, asynchronicity and distributedness, and can be modelled using Petri nets. The advantage of using Petri nets is that they provide graphical models, with formal methods of analysis. However, graphical representation of Petri net models becomes difficult even for medium-sized systems since such graphs tend to become inconveniently large. Coloured Petri nets (CPN) are a variant which enables a more concise representation with the same modelling power. This paper develops a model for simulation of AMS whose correctness can be formally established, and which can be graphically represented and visually understood. It presents a modelling approach for AMS, based on a modified version of CPN, with enhanced modelling power. The proposed modifications result in highly compact graphical representations, and also render the model dynamic, i.e. capable of changing dynamically to reflect currently selected system parameters. These features make the proposed model ideally suited for discrete event simulation.     

Modelling a nationwide crop planning problem using a multiple criteria decision making tool

Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) tools have been used in recent years to solve a wide variety of problems. In this paper we consider a nation-wide crop-planning problem and show how an MCDM tool can be used efficiently and effectively for these types of problems. A crop-planning problem is usually formulated as a single objective linear programming model. The objective is either the maximization of return from cultivated land or the minimization of cost of cultivation. This type of problem, however, normally involves more than one goal. We thus formulate a crop-planning problem as a goal program (an MCDM tool) and discuss the importance of three different goals for a case problem. We solve the goal program with a real world data set, and compare the solution with that of linear program. We argue that the goal program provides better insights to the problem and thus allows better decision support.     

Large-margin minimum classification error training: A theoretical risk minimization perspective

Large-margin discriminative training of hidden Markov models has received significant attention recently. A natural and interesting question is whether the existing discriminative training algorithms can be extended directly to embed the concept of margin. In this paper, we give this question an affirmative answer by showing that the sigmoid bias in the conventional minimum classification error (MCE) training can be interpreted as a soft margin. We justify this claim from a theoretical classification risk minimization perspective where the loss function associated with a non-zero sigmoid bias is shown to include not only empirical error rates but also a margin-bound risk. Based on this perspective, we propose a practical optimization strategy that adjusts the margin (sigmoid bias) incrementally in the MCE training process so that a desirable balance between the empirical error rates on the training set and the margin can be achieved. We call this modified MCE training process large-margin minimum classification error (LM-MCE) training to differentiate it from the conventional MCE. Speech recognition experiments have been carried out on two tasks. First, in the TIDIGITS recognition task, LM-MCE outperforms the state-of-the-art MCE method with 17% relative digit-error reduction and 19% relative string-error reduction. Second, on the Microsoft internal large vocabulary telephony speech recognition task (with 2000 h of training data and 120 K words in the vocabulary), significant recognition accuracy improvement is achieved, demonstrating that our formulation of LM-MCE can be successfully scaled up and applied to large-scale speech recognition tasks.     

Evaluation of EIS from a managerial perspective1

Abstract. While executive information systems (EIS) constitute a rising trend in the use of information technology in organizations, much is still unknown in terms of the attributes an EIS should possess in order to increase the probability of successful implementation. A survey was conducted on 28 Canadian organizations, with 52 users giving their perceptions on the various attributes of EIS. Results indicate that the more important aspects relate to the quality of information and the benefits provided by EIS. Less important are the user-interface and technical capabilities. User satisfaction with the attributes of their present system was also measured. In this regard, managers were more content with the quality of information and the user-interface than with the benefits and the technical capabilities of their EIS. Overall, top-managers were less satisfied with the present system than lower-level managers.