Personal Agents Research Articles

Absolute Biological Needs

Absolute needs (as against instrumental needs) are independent of the ends, goals and purposes of personal agents. Against the view that the only needs are instrumental needs, David Wiggins and Garrett Thomson have defended absolute needs on the grounds that the verb 'need' has instrumental and absolute senses. While remaining neutral about it, this article does not adopt that approach. Instead, it suggests that there are absolute biological needs. The absolute nature of these needs is defended by appeal to: their objectivity (as against mind-dependence); the universality of the phenomenon of needing across the plant and animal kingdoms; the impossibility that biological needs depend wholly upon the exercise of the abilities characteristic of personal agency; the contention that the possession of biological needs is prior to the possession of the abilities characteristic of personal agency. Finally, three philosophical usages of 'normative' are distinguished. On two of these, to describe a phenomenon or claim as 'normative' is to describe it as value-dependent. A description of a phenomenon or claim as 'normative' in the third sense does not entail such value-dependency, though it leaves open the possibility that value depends upon the phenomenon or upon the truth of the claim. It is argued that while survival needs (or claims about them) may well be normative in this third sense, they are normative in neither of the first two. Thus, the idea of absolute need is not inherently normative in either of the first two senses.

Neutrophil extracellular traps, scholarly debates, and public–private partnerships: highlights of the eighth annual Platelet Colloquium

The first of the Colloquium’s three main sessions included discussion of the rising importance of neutrophil extracellular DNA traps (NETs), which represent an intersection of inflammation, infection, and thrombosis. NETs, a network of DNA fibers, histones, and nuclear proteins produced by nucleosome release from activated neutrophils, are a longrecognized component of the body’s innate immune response to infection. It has recently become apparent, however, that NETs form within blood vessels in response to injury and disease, providing a lattice for red cell adherence, platelet activation, and thrombus formation. Both DNAse and heparin have been shown to disrupt the NET structure, preventing thrombosis. This finding might have relevance in the development of novel therapeutic targets. In addition, the fact that polymers have been shown to bind to cell-free DNA in vitro might hold promise in the development of methods to assess thrombotic risk and status. Also in the first session, the Colloquium brought back a popular segment from 2012, a position debate between two leading researchers. This year’s topic was ‘‘Is There a Role for Antiplatelet Therapy in the Management of Atrial Fibrillation?’’ Arguing in favor was Steven R. Steinhubl, MD, of Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pennsylvania; arguing against was Elaine Hylek, MD, of Boston University Medical Center. Table 1 summarizes the main points from both sides of the debate. In the end, the debaters agreed that well-controlled studies will be needed to address many of the knowledge gaps relevant to this question. Session II contemplated the evidence regarding the use of antiplatelet therapies in several high-risk groups, with additional discussions about avenues for future investigation. Despite the available data, substantial knowledge gaps persist for the use of antiplatelet agents in persons with hemoglobinopathies, diabetes, other metabolic disturbances, previous stroke, and deep vein thrombosis. In addition, providers are uncertain about the optimal use of antiplatelet agents during transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), during ‘‘hybrid’’ coronary procedures, and as a bridge to noncardiac surgery. In Session III, the focus turned to regulatory sciences and governmental support of platelet-related research. Regulatory agencies recognize that the clinical trial ecosystem in the United States is under stress (Table 2). Representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health were on hand to outline the roles that government agencies can play in easing these stressors and facilitating the conduct of high-level research that both addresses public health needs and meets regulatory requirements for therapeutics in the U.S. Specific examples of the new approaches and philosophies embraced by the FDA include implementing new concepts to appropriately P. A. French (&) Chapel Hill, NC, USA e-mail: pat.french@leftlanecomm.com

ANALISIS KELAYAKAN FINANSIAL PENGOPERASIAN ANGKUTAN ANTAR JEMPUT SISWA SEKOLAH PADA KORIDOR JALAN GUNUNG AGUNG DENPASAR

The population increase in Denpasar City causes the increase of peoples’ activities which is followed by the increase of using transportation facilities. It certainly influences the traffic in the city itself. One of the peoples’ activities causing traffic jams on the streets of Denpasar particularly on Gunung Agung Street is the students’ pick-up service. The jam is mainly caused by the use of private vehicles especially motorcycles for picking-up the students. The problem can be overcome with pick up service so that the use of private vehicles can be minimized. Some advantages can be gained from the pick-up service; it can be done door to door in accordance with the students’ schedules and it can help the parents who are in troubles in bringing and picking-up their children to schools. A planning and an evaluation on aspects of financial investment feasibility towards the students’ pick-up service are needed in order to match both the interests of service providers and the customers. This research used field survey method completed with interview method. The interview method was applied to gain primary data from related parties and from related institutions for the secondary data. Tariff calculation analysis based on the vehicle operational cost (VOC) used a method of Transportation Department, and the Ability to Pay (ATP) tariff and Willing to Pay (WTF) tariff were determined based on respondents’ income and their perceptions toward a tariff they expected. The result of the research shows that the ATP tariff for both routes is higher than WTF tariff; on route I the ATP is Rp. 569,76 per kilometer- passenger (Rp. 4,273 per passenger) and the WTP tariff is Rp. 499,67 per kilometer-passenger (Rp. 3,748 per passenger), on route II the ATP tariff is Rp. 594,46 per kilometer-passenger (Rp. 3,864 per passenger) and the WTP tarrif is Rp. 554,56 per kilometer-passenger (Rp. 3,605 per passenger). Based on the estimation of the passengers, there are 97 vehicles estimated for route I and 38 for route II. Based on the tariff analysis, it can be recommended that tariff based on VOC + 15% margins is Rp. 797,47 per kilometer-passenger (Rp. 5,981 per passenger) for route I and Rp. 1,645,08 per kilometer-passanger (Rp. 10,693 per passenger) for route II. The financial evaluation analysis shows that the three criteria such as Net Future Value, Benefit Cost ration, and Internal Rate of Return for route I and route II are not feasible to be operated if they are operated both by personal and corporation agents.

The epidemiology of chemical eye exposures reported to the Victorian Poisons Information Centre

We aimed to determine the epidemiology of chemical eye exposures reported to the Victorian Poisons Information Centre, Australia. This was a prospective case series comprising consecutive calls to the Victorian Poisons Information Centre that related to chemical eye exposures (January 2009-2010). Data included patient demographics, place and cause of exposure, nature of the chemical, symptoms and advice given. Patients were telephoned 48 h later to determine the outcome and whether the advice had been taken. One thousand four hundred and eighty patients were enroled (45.7%, aged <16 years) with 937 (63.3%) followed up. Cleaning agents (32.6%), topical personal products (25.4%), industrial agents (11.8%), herbicides/pesticides (5.7%), petroleum products (4.2%) and miscellaneous agents (20.3%) comprised the exposure groups. Men were exposed to significantly more industrial agents (74.8 vs. 25.2%) and fewer topical personal agents (31.3 vs. 68.7%) than women, (P<0.001). Children were exposed to significantly more topical personal agents (65.2 vs. 34.8%) and fewer industrial agents (28.7 vs. 71.3%) than adults (P<0.001). The median time between exposure and the call for advice was significantly shorter for children (P<0.001). Eight hundred and ten (54.7%) patients were advised that medical care was not required. The remainder were advised to seek care or were already receiving care. At follow-up, only 63 (6.7%) patients were symptomatic. Eight hundred and fifty patients (90.8%) had complied with the advice given. There were no compliance differences between men/women and children/adults (P>0.05). Most exposures are of little consequence. However, there are clear epidemiological differences between sex and age groups. These findings will help inform prevention strategies.

Effects of Antiplatelet Therapy on Mortality and Cardiovascular and Bleeding Outcomes in Persons With Chronic Kidney Disease

Background: Antiplatelet agents are used to prevent cardiovascular events; however, treatment effects may differ in persons with chronic kidney disease (CKD) because atherosclerotic disease is less prevalent, whereas bleeding hazards may be increased in this population. Purpose: To summarize the effects of antiplatelet treatment on cardiovascular events, mortality, and bleeding in persons with CKD. Data Sources: Embase and Cochrane databases through November 2011 without language restriction. Study Selection: Randomized trials that included adults with CKD and compared antiplatelet agents with standard care, placebo, or no treatment. Data Extraction: Data for populations, interventions, outcomes, and risk for bias were extracted. Quality of evidence for treatment effects on myocardial infarction, death, and bleeding was summarized by using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation guidelines. Data Synthesis: Nine trials (all post hoc subgroup analyses for CKD) involving 9969 persons who had acute coronary syndromes or were undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and 31 trials involving 11 701 persons with stable or no cardiovascular disease were identified. Low-quality evidence has found that in persons with acute coronary syndromes, glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors or clopidogrel plus standard care compared with standard care alone had little or no effect on all-cause or cardiovascular mortality or on myocardial infarction but increased serious bleeding. Compared with placebo or no treatment in persons with stable or no cardiovascular disease, antiplatelet agents prevented myocardial infarction but had uncertain effects on mortality and increased minor bleeding according to generally low-quality evidence. Limitations: Data for antiplatelet agents in persons with CKD are frequently derived from post hoc analyses of trials of broader populations. Definitions for bleeding outcomes and trial duration were heterogeneous. Conclusion: Benefits for antiplatelet therapy among persons with CKD are uncertain and are potentially outweighed by bleeding hazards. Primary Funding Source: None.

Long-term safety and efficacy of linagliptin as monotherapy or in combination with other oral glucose-lowering agents in 2121 subjects with type 2 diabetes: up to 2 years exposure in 24-week phase III trials followed by a 78-week open-label extension

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term safety, tolerability and efficacy of the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor linagliptin given either alone or in combination with other oral glucose-lowering agents in persons with type 2 diabetes. Methods: A 78-week open-label extension study evaluated subjects who participated in one of four preceding 24-week, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled parent trials and who received linagliptin, linagliptin + metformin, linagliptin + metformin + a sulphonylurea or linagliptin + pioglitazone (all with linagliptin administered orally once daily). Individuals receiving one of these treatments during a previous trial continued the same treatment (n = 1532) for up to a total of 102 weeks, whereas those previously receiving placebo were switched to linagliptin (n = 589). All 2121 participants received at least one dose of the trial medication and were included in the primary safety analysis. Results: In subjects previously receiving active treatment, the glycosylated haemoglobin A(1c) reduction achieved during the 24-week parent trials was sustained through the 78-week extension period (change from baseline to week 102: -0.8%). Drug-related adverse events were experienced by 14.3% of participants. Hypoglycaemia occurred in 13.9% of participants and was similar between those previously receiving treatment (13.6%) and those switching from placebo to linagliptin (14.6%). Hypoglycaemia occurred most frequently with the use of metformin + a sulphonylurea background therapy (11%). Overall, no clinically relevant changes in body weight were observed. Conclusion: Long-term treatment with linagliptin was well tolerated with no change in the safety profile observed during the extension study. Sustained long-term glycaemic control was maintained for up to 102 weeks with either linagliptin monotherapy or linagliptin in combination with other oral glucose-lowering agents.

A listener model: introducing personality traits

We present a computational model that generates listening behaviour for a virtual agent. It triggers backchannel signals according to the user's visual and acoustic behaviour. The appropriateness of the backchannel algorithm in a user-agent situation of storytelling, has been evaluated by naive participants, who judged the algorithm-ruled timing of backchannels more positively than a random timing. The system can generate different types of backchannels. The choice of the type and the frequency of the backchannels to be displayed is performed considering the agent's personality traits. The personality of the agent is defined in terms of two dimensions, extroversion and neuroticism. We link agents with a higher level of extroversion to a higher tendency to perform more backchannels than introverted ones, and we link neuroticism to less mimicry production and more response and reactive signals sent. We run a perception study to test these relations in agent-user interactions, as evaluated by third parties. We find that the selection of the frequency of backchannels performed by our algorithm contributes to the correct interpretation of the agent's behaviour in terms of personality traits.

Effects of Antiplatelet Therapy on Mortality and Cardiovascular and Bleeding Outcomes in Persons With Chronic Kidney Disease

Antiplatelet agents are used to prevent cardiovascular events; however, treatment effects may differ in persons with chronic kidney disease (CKD) because atherosclerotic disease is less prevalent, whereas bleeding hazards may be increased in this population. To summarize the effects of antiplatelet treatment on cardiovascular events, mortality, and bleeding in persons with CKD. Embase and Cochrane databases through November 2011 without language restriction. Randomized trials that included adults with CKD and compared antiplatelet agents with standard care, placebo, or no treatment. Data for populations, interventions, outcomes, and risk for bias were extracted. Quality of evidence for treatment effects on myocardial infarction, death, and bleeding was summarized by using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation guidelines. Nine trials (all post hoc subgroup analyses for CKD) involving 9969 persons who had acute coronary syndromes or were undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and 31 trials involving 11,701 persons with stable or no cardiovascular disease were identified. Low-quality evidence has found that in persons with acute coronary syndromes, glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors or clopidogrel plus standard care compared with standard care alone had little or no effect on all-cause or cardiovascular mortality or on myocardial infarction but increased serious bleeding. Compared with placebo or no treatment in persons with stable or no cardiovascular disease, antiplatelet agents prevented myocardial infarction but had uncertain effects on mortality and increased minor bleeding according to generally low-quality evidence. Data for antiplatelet agents in persons with CKD are frequently derived from post hoc analyses of trials of broader populations. Definitions for bleeding outcomes and trial duration were heterogeneous. Benefits for antiplatelet therapy among persons with CKD are uncertain and are potentially outweighed by bleeding hazards. None.

An exploration of the use of infant observation methods to research the identities of severely learning-disabled adolescents and to enhance relationship-based practice for professional social work

This paper considers how infant observation methods may be adapted to explore and research the identities of severely learning-disabled adolescents, a group of young people whose experiences are poorly represented in the literature. Through focusing on emotion and relationship, this ‘practice-near’ research method also offers a way for social workers to develop their reflective capacity in relation to the often hidden, uncomfortable emotions aroused by experiencing impairment and difference, but without the defences usually involved in assuming the professional role. The importance of taking time to get on a disabled child's ‘wavelength’ is illustrated through extracts from the research which show how a young person's agency and identity can be appreciated. The method also has the potential to develop social workers’ awareness of the powerful undercurrent of emotions apparent at times within families of severely disabled young people, and tentative suggestions are made about the projective processes and hidden hostilities at work within one of the families observed as part of the research project. Professionals may be able to use this knowledge to become resilient and reflective practitioners and the observation method itself has something to offer by way of a containing experience for families.

Educating avatars: on virtual worlds and pedagogical intent

Virtual world technology is now being incorporated into various higher education programs, often with enthusiastic claims about the improvement of students’ abilities to experience learning problems and tasks in computer-mediated virtual reality through the use of computer-generated personal agents or avatars. The interactivity of the avatars with each other is the central learning experience, but serious questions arise about the possible instability of the identity of the avatars and their dubious relations to the learners controlling them. Another problem is the questionable transference of experiential learning from the virtual world to the actual world. A final problem is the meaning of the possibility of avatars engaging in immoral activities. This paper reflects on these matters and attempts to relate the use of avatars to the five principal experiential learning paradigms: constructivism, psychoanalytic intervention, situative learning, critical emancipation, and complex co-emergence.

The ‘demented other’ or simply ‘a person’? Extending the philosophical discourse of Naue and Kroll through the situated self

This article presents a critique of an article previously featured in Nursing Philosophy (10: 26-33) by Ursula Naue and Thilo Kroll, who suggested that people living with dementia are assigned a negative status upon receipt of a diagnosis, holding the identity of the 'demented other'. Specifically, in this critique, we suggest that unwitting use of the adjective 'demented' to define a person living with the condition is ill-informed and runs a risk of defining people through negative (self-)attributes, which has a deleterious impact upon that person's social and relational personae. Moreover, use of the locution 'demented' reinforces a divide between the 'demented' (them) and the 'healthy others' (us). Social constructionist theory, malignant positioning and viewing people with dementia as semiotic subjects are the philosophical pillars through which we construct the main arguments of the critique. The article concludes with the voice of one of the authors, a younger person with dementia, asking for language in dementia care to be carefully reconsidered and reframed and for the recognition of the diagnosed person's agency in the conduct of their day-to-day lives.

Multi Agent System based TCP for Wireless Networks

to the rapid evolution of networking and electronic capabilities, the use of wireless devices is becoming ubiquitous. Most of the wireless networks have fixed infrastructure and requires higher data rates. Due to high data rate in wireless networks the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) performance has a broad and significant impact on data applications, and is essential towards massive deployment of service-providing agents and their widespread social acceptance. Wireless link losses result in poor TCP throughput since losses are professed as congestion by TCP. In order to increase the throughput, a Multi agent System (MAS) named Reusable Environment for Task-Structured Intelligent Networked Agents (RETSINA) has been introduced. This agent has the capability to reduce the impact of losses on TCP throughput and latency. In this work, we considered a video game application in which a networked virtual environment with high fidelity sound and video is created. Moreover, to efficiently use the video game application in a wireless environment, an Unreal Tournament Semi-Automated Force (UTSAF) multi agent has been proposed. UTSAF is a middleware written to take advantage of the power of gaming application systems by allowing them to participate in distributed simulations. The personal agent communicates wirelessly, in order to find the most appropriate option to serve the user. In addition, we comprehensively evaluated the performance of TCP with and without these multi agent platforms as technology choice and investigated its efficiency in a number of cases. We find that the simulations with the multi agent can reach the TCP throughput by as much as 95 % and the latency get reduced by 1-2 % as the simulation time steps in for every 100 seconds.

Pronouns and Progress: A Psychoanalytic Primer

Psychoanalytic psychotherapists have the role responsibility to hover evenly over everything that is said--and not said--in the analytic situation. Pronouns may be worthy of special attention. Just as children demonstrate a predictable course in the acquisition and mastery of pronouns, it may be that the analytic patient also shows a predictable sequence in the deployment of pronouns over the course of a successful treatment. The analytic patient will move from a focus on "They," to joining the analyst in "We," before ultimately separating to become an "I." A third person focus in the opening phase, may, with familiarity, move to second person intimacy, ultimately yielding to first person agency. These grammatical markers occur in the opening, middle and termination/follow-up phases of a successful psychoanalytic treatment, during which the pre-morbid introjects are identified, chewed up, and, eventually nudged aside by the healthier therapeutic-introject, from which a new or renewed identity may emerge. Analysis of the Grimm's fairy tale "The Wolf and the Kids" illustrations the importance of metabolizing old introjects.

Employment: It is Everybody's Business

The Alliance for Full Participation (AFP) is a coalition of 14 national organizations organized with the purpose of focusing separate constituencies on long-term initiatives for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. At the current time, AFP is emphasizing employment and real jobs. Current AFP members include the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR), The Arc, Association of University Centers on Disability (AUCD), Autism Society of America (ASA), Association for Persons in Supported Employment (ASPE), Council on Quality and Leadership (CQL), National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD), National Association of Direct Support Professionals (NADSP),

Ontology-based user profile learning

Personal agents gather information about users in a user profile. In this work, we propose a novel ontology-based user profile learning. Particularly, we aim to learn context-enriched user profiles using data mining techniques and ontologies. We are interested in knowing to what extent data mining techniques can be used for user profile generation, and how to utilize ontologies for user profile improvement. The objective is to semantically enrich a user profile with contextual information by using association rules, Bayesian networks and ontologies in order to improve agent performance. At runtime, we learn which the relevant contexts to the user are based on the user's behavior observation. Then, we represent the relevant contexts learnt as ontology segments. The encouraging experimental results show the usefulness of including semantics into a user profile as well as the advantages of integrating agents and data mining using ontologies.

A component-level self-configuring personal agent platform for pervasive computing

Mobile agents have been widely used in distributed computing to take care of the task execution for the user. It is also suitable for mobile and pervasive computing. However, a pervasive computing environment is characterised by high diversity and dynamism, which gives rise to the requirement that a mobile agent executed in such environments has the self-configuring capability. In this paper, we study the problem, when an object providing a service enters the environment, how a mobile agent without prior knowledge about the object can interact with the service. We describe a method for the mobile agent to obtain the corresponding interaction codes and instantiate them for the interaction at runtime with minimal human involvement. We call this component-level self-configuration. Currently, no existing system renders a mobile agent with such capability. We propose a framework, which consists of a unified model for all the participating objects and mechanisms for a mobile agent to dynamically obtain interaction code and self-configuring it for execution. A prototype platform has been implemented and a preliminary performance study has also been carried out. Our experimental results show that the overhead caused by the component-level self-configuration is acceptable.

How the Ocean personality model affects the perception of crowds.

This approach extends the HiDAC (High-Density Autonomous Crowds) system by providing each agent with a personality model based on the Ocean (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) personality model. Each personality trait has an associated nominal behavior. Specifying an agent's personality leads to an automation of low-level parameter tuning.

Tactical Agent Personality

This paper proposes a novel agent personality representation model used to provide interagent adaptation in modern games, coined as the Tactical Agent Personality (TAP). The TAP represents the tactical footprints of a game agent using a weighted network of actions. Directly using the action probabilities to model an agent's personality, removes the time and effort required by experts to craft the model as well as eliminates the performance dependency on expert knowledge. The effectiveness, versatility, generality, scalability, and robustness claims of the TAP architecture and its variations are applied and evaluated across a variety of game scenarios, namely, First-person shooters (FPSs), real-time strategy (RTS) games, and role-playing games (RPG), where they are shown to exhibit plausible adaptive behavior.

Automatic Reasoning about Causal Events in Surveillance Video

We present a new method for explaining causal interactions among people in video. The input to the overall system is video in which people are low/medium resolution. We extract and maintain a set of qualitative descriptions of single-person activity using the low-level vision techniques of spatiotemporal action recognition and gaze-direction approximation. This models the input to the sensors of the person agent in the scene and is a general sensing strategy for a person agent in a variety of application domains. The information subsequently available to the reasoning process is deliberately limited to model what an agent would actually be able to sense. The reasoning is therefore not a classical all-knowing strategy but uses these sensed facts obtained from the agents, combined with generic domain knowledge, to generate causal explanations of interactions. We present results from urban surveillance video.

The Study of Relationship Between Sense of Humor and General Health in Students

Background: the subject of humor in the ancient days of life and social relations is there and it seems that since the size of human social life has existed a kind of joking communication tool between individuals and groups can have beliefs and deep emotions and feelings tendencies of individuals subject to various specified. Purpose of Study: This study investigated the relationship between humor and general healths are among the students. Methods: is descriptive and correlational study sample of 100 male students in high school is Babylon, which randomly selected for data collection from two general health questionnaire humor to analyze the descriptive and inferential methods SPSS software was used. Results: The results show that the scale factor humor mental health symptoms including physical symptoms of anxiety and depressive symptoms humor above, the symptoms decreased and vice versa, and the scale is increased social function social function could be a result your sense of humor as one of the factors effective in reducing psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression and decrease in physical symptoms and social functioning also increased in all hypotheses was emphasized. Conclusions: It can be concluded that with the personal agent (humor) in the limit is reasonable and acceptable to society in terms of mental and physical limits and reasonable in terms of daily function, social function and a high level is what the operating result up sense of humor against the decrease of the above symptoms and social function are increased.