Anticipatory System Research Articles

Answering Questions of Engineering Identity and Topic Relevance Using the Work of Robert Rosen

Some engineering students ask their instructors questions related to the nature of engineering and to the relevance of certain course topics or full courses. Responses to these questions are generally experiential, empirical, and lacking in theoretical rigour. This research paper explores how Robert Rosen’s Modelling Relation and his concept of Anticipatory Systems can be used to understand the nature of engineering in a way that is rigorous, theoretically grounded, and accessible to varied audiences. Abstract engineering and making practices are successfully mapped onto the Modelling Relation, and a concrete example from Civil Engineering is developed. Following from this mapping, engineering is reinterpreted as the actions of an anticipatory system informed by particular predictive models. This mapping and reinterpretation were trialed successfully in an undergraduate engineering design course, and in workshops with participants from a variety of engineering and non-engineering backgrounds. Areas for improvement and exploration include the fractal natural of design, and the challenges associated with complex systems.

Art and the artificial

This paper explores the philosophical implications of machine learning text-to-image synthesis in a practice-based phenomenology of the computational poetics of a visual art process. It is hypothesized that artificial intelligence (AI) facilitated reflective image development fosters an anticipatory esthetics in creative interactivity. The concept of AI-mediated “perspectival affordance” is introduced and its application to affective computing design emphasized. It is proposed that positioning intelligent systems as collaborative creativity tools promotes a dynamic interplay that envisions creativity as an anticipatory system, conceived of as those systems where exchange between artist and tool is mediated by future-oriented affective projection upon the system. The paper aims to establish a cognitive framework for AI-mediated creativity grounded in anticipatory interactivity, enhancing understanding of embodied cognition as mediated by AI in human-centered creativity support systems.

Role of NK cells in circadian regulation of lung inflammation

Abstract Circadian rhythms form an anticipatory system wherein various aspects of cellular physiology oscillate across a 24hrs period; these rhythms have been known to modulate various facets of immunity. We have previously shown that mice infected with Influenza A virus (IAV) at dusk had 3-fold higher mortality than littermates infected at dawn--a hallmark of circadian regulation. This time-of-day specific protection was lost when NK cells were depleted just before the infection, suggesting a role of NK cells in mediating the circadian regulation of IAV infection. We investigated the mechanism underlying the role of NK cells, both cell-intrinsic or extrinsic in circadian regulation of lung injury. We noted that viral clearance was unaffected, but immunopathology was markedly worse in the NK depleted mice than the controls. Next, we investigated the effect of the loss of the circadian clock on NK cell behavior and found that splenic and pulmonary NK cells in naïve mice with a disrupted circadian clock have a less mature phenotype than control NK cells with intact clock. Our transcriptomic profiling of NK cells sorted from clock-intact versus clock-disrupted animals revealed that several genes that regulate cell cycle progression and functional maturity of NK cells were differentially expressed across the two groups. Pulmonary NK cells from clock mutant mice were less mature than clock-intact mice. Finally, the Ncr1cre+Bmal1fl/flmice (core clock gene Bmal1deleted in NK cells) infected with IAV had higher mortality through heightened immunopathology but not delayed viral clearance. In summary, these data show that NK cell-autonomous clock boost host tolerance to mediate circadian protection from IAV infection. Supported by grants from NIH (R01HL155934-01A1, R01HL147472, R01AI137062-01)

Optimizing the delivery of genetic and advanced diagnostic testing in the province of Ontario: challenges and implications for laboratory technology assessment and management in decentralized healthcare systems

Aims The Canadian province of Ontario provides full coverage for its residents (pop.14.8 M) for hospital-based diagnostic testing. Historical governance of the healthcare system and a legacy scheme of health technology assessment (HTA) and financing has led to a suboptimal approach of adopting advanced diagnostic technology (i.e. protein expression, cytogenetic, and molecular/genetic) for guiding therapeutic decisions. The aim of this research is to explore systemic barriers and provide guidance to improve patient and care provider experiences by reducing delays and inequity of access to testing, while benefitting laboratory innovators and maximizing system efficiency. Materials and methods A mixed-methods approach including literature review, semi-structured interviews, and a multi-stakeholder forum involving patient representatives (n = 1), laboratory leaders (n = 6), physicians (n = 5), Ministry personnel (n = 4), administrators (n = 3), extra-provincial experts, and researchers (n = 7), as well as pharmaceutical (n = 5) and diagnostic companies (n = 2). The forum considered evidence of good practices in adoption, implementation, and financing laboratory services and identified barriers as well as feasible options for improving advanced diagnostic testing in Ontario. Results Overarching challenges identified included: barriers to define what is needed; need for a clear approach to adoption; and the need for more oversight and coordination. Recommendations to address these included a shift to an anticipatory system of test adoption, creating a fit-for-purpose system of health technology management that consolidates existing evaluation processes, and modernizing the governance and financing of testing so that it is managed at a care-delivery level. Conclusions The proposals for change in Ontario highlight the role that HTA, governance, and financing of health technology play along the continuum of a health technology life cycle within a healthcare system where decision-making is highly decentralized. Resource availability and capacity were not a concern – instead, solutions require higher levels of coordination and system integration along with innovative approaches to HTA.

Using science of conceptual systems to guide policy and theory of social change: a push towards more accurate anticipatory system modelling

In Rosen’s Anticipatory systems theory, it is generally accepted that modelling relations correctly is important to improve anticipatory capacity. Recently it was accepted that social systems can also be seen as anticipatory systems in which their internal predictive models are generally meaning facilitated through information. However, it is not clear how these externalised models in social systems are measured, thus how “good or bad” they are before deciding on a course of action. Drawing on the Science of Conceptual Systems, these models are regarded as conceptual systems, which include, policies, theories, code of ethics, etc. that guide human decisions and action. In this study using the Integrative Propositional Analysis methodology, the structure of the models provides a useful measure for their anticipatory capacity. The more structured models encode the natural environment more accurately, enhancing their social utility. This research is expected to support inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary scholars and practitioners.

Conceptualization of a new generation of smart energy systems and the transition toward them using anticipatory systems

Emerging energy systems are inherently different from their conventional counter-parts. To address all issues of these systems, comprehensive approaches of transdisciplinary and post-normal sciences are needed. This article tries to re-conceptualize emerging energy systems using Robert Rosen’s theory of anticipatory system and introduces the concept of the anticipatory smart energy system (ASES). Three important features of an ASES are described and socio-technical considerations for realization of these features are discussed. The article also considers realization of such systems under society 5.0 paradigm and spime techno-culture. In ASESs, the identity of users evolves and new identities are created for energy users, based on the production, consumption, storage, and distributed management of energy. An Anticipatory energy system can manage a common pool of prosumaging.

Towards an anticipatory system incorporating corporate foresight and competitive intelligence in creating knowledge: a longitudinal Moroccan bank case study

Since banks are competing in challenging and dynamic market environments, an anticipatory system generating futures-relevant knowledge is of primordial importance for an effective bank strategy. The objective of this research is to investigate how corporate foresight and competitive intelligence, considered as parts of an anticipatory system, create knowledge. Our main contribution lies in arriving at a better understanding of these processes in the mainstream of knowledge creation grounded in the SECI model. To this end, we followed a longitudinal case-study methodology for more than eight months within a leading bank in Morocco. The findings show that while the competitive intelligence unit focuses more on commercial and competitor intelligence targeting hence other banks market strategies, the corporate foresight unit tries to identify the bank market weak signals and major trends in the banking sector. Knowledge creation is mainly triggered in the social interaction context in the competitive intelligence unit, while the externalization phase involving interacting Bas is critical to knowledge creation in the corporate foresight unit. The results also confirm the presence of a black hole strategy problem and a lack of coordination between competitive intelligence and corporate foresight processes, thus highlighting the need for dynamic integrated anticipatory systems.

Quickest Change Detection of Time Inconsistent Anticipatory Agents. Human-Sensor and Cyber-Physical Systems

In behavioral economics, human decision makers are modeled as anticipatory agents that make decisions by taking into account the probability of future decisions (plans). We consider cyber-physical systems involving the interaction between anticipatory agents and statistical detection. A sensing device records the decisions of an anticipatory agent. Given these decisions, how can the sensing device achieve quickest detection of a change in the anticipatory system? From a decision theoretic point of view, anticipatory models are time inconsistent meaning that Bellman's principle of optimality does not hold. The appropriate formalism is the subgame Nash equilibrium. We show that the interaction between anticipatory agents and sequential quickest detection results in unusual (nonconvex) structure of the quickest change detection policy. Our methodology yields a useful framework for situation awareness systems and anticipatory human decision makers interacting with sequential detectors.

Redundancies in the communication of music: An operationalization of Schutz's ‘Making Music Together’

We elaborate Alfred Schutz's theory of musical communication empirically. Our technique for analysing musical communication aligns Schutz's sociological theory with the mathematics of anticipatory systems. Music, we argue, can be considered as an anticipatory system that articulates through its diachronic unfolding, fundamental symmetries which can be traced back to its initial moments. Following Bohm and Dubois, we argue that these symmetries are present in fractal structures that gradually increase in definition as the music progresses. Critically, we focus on the role of redundancy in this process of providing increasing definition. By analysing the entropy of musical data, we show how graphs of relative entropies can be produced from which a fractal is constructed. In arguing that coherence in music can be established through the alignment of self‐similar patterns, the connection between Dubois's anticipatory systems and Schutz's characterization of the dimensions of musical communication shows how redundancy underlies musical coherence.

The empirical analysis of a macro-level anticipatory system emergence: The construction of a national system for skill needs anticipation and matching

This paper provides an empirical analysis of a particular social anticipatory system emergence. Considering the anticipation phenomenon on a macro level as an intrinsic property of a social system, the authors exemplify its embodiment in interrelated constructs. The anticipation naturally spans various managerial domains of socio-economic space, bringing to it the time as a constructive element. How is the a posteriori anticipatory system empirically constructed? The study looks for evidence-based answers to this research question on the ground of the social constructionism. Following the attributive feature of any anticipatory system, the suggested approach highlights the contextual and performative aspects of the linkage between an image of the future and present social action. The model case under consideration is the Russian system for Skill Needs Anticipation and Matching (SNAM). We divide the system emergence into five distinct periods. Each period added a substantive new quality to the anticipatory function deployment, which ultimately led to the formation of a current modular structure of SNAM. The vulnerability of such structure appears at the junctures of the modules, where the conversion of SNAM constructs accompanies the shifts of the skill needs encoding layers.

Role of NK cells in circadian regulation of lung inflammation

Abstract Influenza is a leading cause of respiratory mortality and morbidity. While inflammation is necessary for fighting influenza, a fine balance of anti-viral defense and host tolerance is crucial to successful recovery from the same. Circadian rhythms form an anticipatory system wherein various aspects of cellular physiology oscillate across a 24hrs period; these rhythms have been known to modulate various facets of immunity. We have recently demonstrated that circadian rhythms control lung inflammation and injury in influenza A virus (IAV) infection. A hallmark of circadian regulation is a difference in outcomes based on time of day of infection. Indeed, we found that C57bl6 mice infected with IAV (PR8) at the beginning of their active phase (ZT11) had 3-fold higher mortality than littermates infected at the beginning of the rest phase (ZT23). This difference disappeared when NK cells were depleted (with NK1.1 antibody) prior to the infection, confirming the role of NK cells in mediating the circadian regulation of IAV infection. Next, we investigated the mechanism underlying the role of NK cells in circadian regulation of lung injury. We determined viral titers in the lungs from days 1, 2, 4 and 6 following IAV infection and found that there was no difference between the NK depleted and control animals. This suggests that NK directed circadian control of lung inflammation is not mediated through control of viral replication or burden. We then quantified lung pathology in NK depleted and control animals and found that histological injury was worse in the NK depleted group. In summary, these data suggest that NK cells mediate circadian regulation of outcomes in IAV through control of host tolerance rather than through direct influence on IAV burden.

Staying Together: A Bidirectional Delay-Coupled Approach to Joint Action.

To understand how individuals adapt to and anticipate each other in joint tasks, we employ a bidirectional delay-coupled dynamical system that allows for mutual adaptation and anticipation. In delay-coupled systems, anticipation is achieved when one system compares its own time-delayed behavior, which implicitly includes past information about the other system's behavior, with the other system's instantaneous behavior. Applied to joint music performance, the model allows each system to adapt its behavior to the dynamics of the other. Model predictions of asynchrony between two simultaneously produced musical voices were compared with duet pianists' behavior; each partner performed one voice while auditory feedback perturbations occurred at unpredictable times during live performance. As the model predicted, when auditory feedback from one musical voice was removed, the asynchrony changed: The pianist's voice that was removed anticipated (preceded) the actions of their partner. When the auditory feedback returned and both musicians could hear each other, they rapidly returned to baseline levels of asynchrony. To understand how the pianists anticipated each other, their performances were fitted by the model to examine change in model parameters (coupling strength, time-delay). When auditory feedback for one or both voices was removed, the fits showed the expected decrease in coupling strength and time-delay between the systems. When feedback about the voice(s) returned, the coupling strength and time-delay returned to baseline. These findings support the idea that when people perform actions together, they do so as a coupled bidirectional anticipatory system.

Operation of the Information Monitoring System for the Optimization of the Processing Time and the Dissemination of Financial Data

In this paper, we propose the concept of "information monitoring system "; we indicate its usefulness in the process of informative anticipatory system, in the face of the problem of financial information overload caused by the use of ICT. We present a grid of analysis of the accounting process in an indebted company. The concept is useful when the information intelligence is oriented "exploitation of the information anticipatory" for the anticipation, these being embedded in large financial data. Our experimentation on the problem studied will show us that these tools are effective to optimize the time of processing and dissemination of financial information for decision-making.

Reperceiving the Future

The future is an aspect of time and like clock time tends to be taken for granted unquestioned as an experience. There is a tendency for both futurists and management scientists inadvertently to adopt a first-order paradigm. In this article, I introduce a second-order approach in which the presence of the decision maker is acknowledged. In this approach, the phenomenology of time consciousness provides a basis for expanding time into a present moment with richer dimensionality, enlarging linear causality to a set of multiple influences on the present moment, some of which originate in aspects of what we call the future. We need to extend the scope of futures methods by considering the interaction between agency and uncertainty. High agency combined with high uncertainty is not yet well supplied with appropriate methods. In this region, the act of reperception is fundamental; algorithmic decision methods are out of their depth. In this different paradigm of time, anticipatory systems are crucial. Practice needs the capacity to navigate in a constantly shifting landscape that distinguishes three qualities of the future symbolized as three horizons. One is the future as seen from the dominant present situation. The second is a future desirable emergent states. The third is a future that holds the powerful and turbulent dilemmas between the other two and requires the navigation skill of the decision maker as an anticipatory system. At the core of this anticipatory system is a multidimensional future consciousness with the capacity to see into the future through different lenses of awareness in the present moment.

Neo-pragmatism: an ethical anticipatory system

In 1906 and 1907 William James delivered a series of lectures in Boston and New York. Those lectures later were distilled into a paper entitled PRAGMATISM A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. In 1972 Robert Rosen began to develop the model that resulted in the publication of his breakthrough work Anticipatory Systems. Seven years later, with the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Richard Rorty began to develop the interpretation of Pragmatism, which has come to be known as neo-Pragmatism. The theory of anticipatory systems as articulated by Robert Rosen argues that the activity of anticipation occurs through the encoding of models of the future and so, a deciduous tree will lose its leaves upon the shortening of daylight—an environmentally neutral event—which is the precursor to winter. The tree anticipates (through the process of encoding its environmental cycle) the coming of winter and diverts sap, its lifeblood, underground to its roots and essentially hibernates during the cold time. Rosen shows that this quality of anticipation can be said to be the defining element of all life. Ethics are models that encode our values and operate upon the contingencies of the past in the adjudicatory function or the possible contingencies of the future in the heuristic function. Of all the mainstream ethical models pragmatism is the only approach that expressly acknowledges that the results of our decisions may either conflict with or harmonize with our values. The form of pragmatism known as neo-pragmatism looks to the communicative justification of our past or future actions in relationship to our values to determine whether they are good or bad. In this sense neo-pragmatism constitutes moral anticipation, as much encoded in human society as the dropping of leaves is encoded in a deciduous tree.

The anthroposphere as an anticipatory system: Open questions on steering the climate

Climate change research and action counteracting it affect everyone and would involve cross-societal transformations reshaping the anthroposphere in its entirety. Scrutinizing climate-related science and policies, we recognize attempts to steer the evolution of climate according to expected (or modelled) futures. Such attempts would turn the anthroposphere into a large “anticipatory system”, in which human society seeks to anticipate and, possibly, to govern climate dynamics.The chief aim of this discussion paper is to open a critical debate on the climate change paradigm (CCP) drawing on a strategic and systemic framework grounded in the concept of anticipatory system sensu Rosen (1991). The proposed scheme is ambitiously intended to turn an intricate issue into a complex but structured problem that is to say, to make such complexity clear and manageable. This framework emerges from concepts borrowed from different scientific fields (including future studies and system dynamics) and its background lies in a simple quantitative literature overview, relying upon a broad level of analysis.The proposed framework will assist researchers and policy makers in thinking of CCP in terms of an anticipatory system, and in disentangling its interrelated (and sometimes intricate) aspects. In point of fact, several strategic questions related to CCP were not subjected to an adequate transdisciplinary discussion: what are the interplays between physical processes and social-political interventions, who is the observer (what he/she is looking for), and which paradigm is being used (or who defines the desirable future).The proposed scheme allows to structure such various topics in an arrangement which is easier to communicate, highlighting the linkages in between, and making them intelligible and open to verification and discussion. Furthermore, ideally developments will help scientists and policy makers address the strategic gaps between the evidence-based climatological assessments and the plurality of possible answers as applied to the geopolitical contingencies.

Implicit Working Memory: Implications for Assessment and Treatment

Working memory (WM) impacts a gamut of cognitive abilities, but implicit WM is typically not considered in assessment or treatment, which may explain the variability of results in reviews of WM training. The role of implicit WM in adaptive behavior is reviewed. All we do is action based. Explicit WM plays a major role when we are required to “think”; that is, when we apply previously learned perception-action linkages in new ways to unique situations. Implicit WM is involved in the automation of behavior, which occurs through interaction with cortical and subcortical systems that guide sensory-motor anticipation and the prediction of reward. This article reviews evidence that implicit WM interacts with cortical-cerebellar and cortical-basal ganglia connections to form perception-action linkages. The cerebellum forms an internal model of cortical WM, corrects the content of this internal model, and then projects the improved representation back to the cortex, where it is retained for future use. The basal ganglia also form an anticipatory system, controlling cortical access to WM by allowing or restricting the information that is released based on the probability of reward. This framework is applied to the assessment and treatment of individuals with WM deficits. The ability to automate behavior can be assessed through repeated trials of existing testing instruments, such as the Trails B and Stroop tasks. Application of skill learning emphasizing automation as an end goal offers a model for the development of new types of WM training.

Two-phase anticipatory system design based on extended species abundance model of biogeography for intelligent battlefield preparation

This paper presents an extended model of biogeography based optimization (BBO) as opposed to the classical BBO wherein the HSI value of a habitat is not solely dependent upon the emigration and immigration rates of species but the HSI value is a function of different combinations of SIVs depending upon the characteristics of the habitat under consideration. The extended model also introduces a new concept of efforts required in migration from a low HSI solution to a high HSI solution for optimization in BBO. Hence, the proposed extended model of BBO presents an advanced optimization technique that was originally proposed by Dan Simon as BBO in December, 2008. Based on the concepts introduced in our extended model of BBO and its mathematics, we design a two – phase anticipatory system architecture for intelligent preparation of the battlefield which is the targeted optimization problem in our case. The proposed anticipatory system serves a dual purpose by predicting the deployment strategies of enemy troops in the battlefield and also finding the shortest and the best feasible path for attack on the enemy base station. Hence, the proposed anticipatory system can be used to improve the traditional approaches, since they lack the ability to predict the destination and can only find a suitable path to the given destination, leading to coordination problems and target misidentification which can lead to severe casualties. The designed system can be of major use for the commanders in the battlefield who have been using traditional decision making techniques of limited accuracy for predicting the destination. Using the above natural computation technique can help in enabling the commanders in the battlefield for intelligent preparation of the battlefield by automating the process of assessing the likely base stations of the enemy and the ways in which these can be attacked, given the environment and the terrain considerations. The results on two natural terrain scenarios that of plain/desert region of Alwar and hilly region of Mussourie are taken to demonstrate the performance of the technique where the proposed technique clearly outperforms the traditional methods and the other EAs like ACO, PSO, SGA, SOFM, FI, GA, etc. that have been used till date for path planning applications on satellite images with the smallest pixel count of 351 and 310 respectively. For location prediction application, the highest prediction efficiencies of the traditional method on Alwar and Mussourie was only 13% and 8% respectively as compared to the proposed method.

Hyperincursive Cogitata and Incursive Cogitantes: Scholarly Discourse as a Strongly Anticipatory System

Strongly anticipatory systems — that is, systems which use models of themselves for their further development — and which additionally may be able to run hyperincursive routines — that is, develop only with reference to their future states — cannot exist in res extensa, but can only be envisaged in res cogitans. One needs incursive routines in cogitantes to instantiate these systems. Unlike historical systems (with recursion), these hyper-incursive routines generate redundancies by opening horizons of other possible states. Thus, intentional systems can enrich our perceptions of the cases that have happened to occur. The perspective of hindsight codified at the above-individual level enables us furthermore to intervene technologically. The theory and computation of anticipatory systems have made these loops between supra-individual hyper-incursion, individual incursion (in instantiation), and historical recursion accessible for modeling and empirical investigation.

Multiobjective Cuckoo Search for Anticipating the Enemy's Movements in the Battleground

Since ages nations have been trying to improve their military effectiveness by adopting various measures. Having an anticipatory system, which can not only accurately predict the most probable location for the enemy's base station but also finds the best route to that point, will lead to improved military operations. This paper aims to propose an integrated framework for developing an efficient anticipatory system. In the first phase of the framework, it proposes Anticipatory Multi objective Cuckoo Search (AMOCS) algorithm to identify the best probable location for deployment of enemy forces. For the second phase a hybrid CS-ACO algorithm is developed for obtaining the most suitable path to the location identified in the first phase. To test the proposed system, satellite image of regions of different terrain types namely plain/desert and mountainous respectively, are chosen. Experimental results demonstrate that the system makes accurate predictions.