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Ruiz, April M. "Social information gathering in lemurs /." St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/908.
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Ruiz, April M. "Social information gathering in lemurs." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/908.
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By investigating the cognitive capacities of non-human primates, we can begin to understand the cognitive capacities of the evolutionary ancestors we share with these species. While there is a great deal of research exploring the socio-cognitive abilities of simian primates, prosimians have not been sufficiently studied. Without data from these species, our knowledge about the evolution of the primate mind is limited to the common ancestor shared between simian primates only, precluding understanding of the phylogenetic origins of certain phenomena. I explored the socio-cognitive capacities of lemurs, a type of prosimian primate. I studied several areas of social cognition related to social referencing, defined as the ability to use and seek out social information when appraising objects or events. As social referencing is a popular subject in both human developmental and non-human primate literature, I aimed to determine how prosimians’ capacities compare. My research was conducted with captive lemurs of three species: Eulemur fulvus fulvus, Eulemur macaco macaco, and Eulemur fulvus rufus. I found that lemurs use social cues regarding food palatability to modify their own feeding behaviour and that they visually attend to conspecifics differently when presented with novel, as compared to familiar, foods. Lemurs also visually referred to a human experimenter’s face when presented with an anomalous interaction and went on to engage in gaze alternation. Lemurs failed to use information about the experimenter’s attentional state, however, when modifying their use of a trained gesture. Finally, I found that lemurs are able to visually co-orient with conspecifics, correctly prioritising information from the head over that from the body, and that they go on to use conspecific gaze to locate hidden resources. These results show that lemurs are more cognitively advanced than previously thought and the origins of some social referencing skills may be phylogenetically older than previously hypothesised.
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Shakshuki, Elhadi M. "Cooperative agents for information gathering." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ60566.pdf.
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Russell, Frank Santi. "Information gathering in classical Greece /." Ann Arbor [Mich.] : University of Michigan press, 1999. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb38802665k.
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Jakupovic, Edin. "Alternative Information Gathering on Mobile Devices." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för informations- och kommunikationsteknik (ICT), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-210712.
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Searching and gathering information about specific topics is a time wasting, but vital practise. With the continuous growth and surpassing of desktop devices, the mobile market is becoming a more important area to consider. Due to the portability of mobile devices, certain tasks are more difficult to perform, compared to on a desktop device. Searching for information online is generally slower on mobile devices than on desktop devices, even though the majority of searches are performed on mobile devices. The largest challenges with searching for information online using mobile devices, are the smaller screen sizes, and the time spent jumping between sources and search results in a browser. These challenges could be solved by using an application that focuses on the relevancy of search results, summarizes the content of them, and presents them on a single screen. The aim of this study was to find an alternative data gathering method with a faster and simpler searching experience. This data gathering method was able to quickly find and gather data requested through a search term by a user. The data was then analyzed and presented to the user in a summarized form, to eliminate the need to visit the source of the content. A survey was performed by having a smaller target group of users answer a questionnaire. The results showed that the method was quick, results were often relevant, and the summaries reduced the need to visit the source page. But while the method had potential for future development, it is hindered by ethical issues related to the use of web scrapers.Sökning och insamling av information om specifika ämnen är en tidskrävande, men nödvändig praxis. Med den kontinuerliga tillväxten som gått förbi stationära enheters andel, blir mobilmarknaden ett viktigt område att överväga. Med tanke på rörligheten av bärbara enheter, så blir vissa uppgifter svårare att utföra, jämfört med på stationära enheter. Att söka efter information på Internet är generellt långsammare på mobila enheter än på stationära. De största utmaningarna med att söka efter information på Internet med mobila enheter, är de mindre skärmstorlekarna, och tiden spenderad på att ta sig mellan källor och sökresultat i en webbläsare. Dessa utmaningar kan lösas genom att använda en applikation som fokuserar på relevanta sökresultat och sammanfattar innehållet av dem, samt presenterar dem på en enda vy. Syftet med denna studie är att hitta en alternativ datainsamlingsmetod för attskapa en snabbare och enklare sökupplevelse. Denna datainsamlingsmetod kommer snabbt att kunna hitta och samla in data som begärts via en sökterm av en användare. Därefter analyseras och presenteras data för användaren i en sammanfattad form för att eliminera behovet av att besöka innehållets källa. En undersökning utfördes genom att en mindre målgrupp av användare svarade på ett formulär av frågor. Resultaten visade att metoden var snabb, resultaten var ofta relevanta och sammanfattningarna minskade behovet av att besöka källsidan. Men medan metoden hade potential för framtida utveckling, hindras det av de etiska problemen som associeras med användningen av web scrapers.
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Taylor, Todd M. "Internet influence on sports information gathering." Virtual Press, 2006. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1347737.
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The Internet is changing the way people obtain their information, growing at a faster rate than any previous media outlet. Experts fully expect this growth to continue. The power of the Internet as a new media source has led to research concerning its effect on traditional media (newspaper, television, radio, and magazines) for certain tasks. However, research has yet to focus solely on sports information gathering, which has been identified as the number one reason men between eighteen and thirty-four years of age access the Internet. The purpose of this study was to examine where students get their sports information, to determine whether gathering sports information through the Internet leads to a decrease in gathering sports information through traditional media.Department of Journalism
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Stranders, Ruben. "Decentralised coordination of information gathering agents." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2010. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/172455/.
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Unmanned sensors are rapidly becoming the de facto means of achieving situational awareness---the ability to make sense of, and predict what is happening in an environment---in disaster management, military reconnaissance, space exploration, and climate research. In these domains, and many others besides, their use reduces the need for exposing humans to hostile, impassable or polluted environments. Whilst these sensors are currently often pre-programmed or remotely controlled by human operators, there is a clear trend toward making these sensors fully autonomous, thus enabling them to make decisions without human intervention. Full autonomy has two clear benefits over pre-programming and human remote control. First, in contrast to sensors with pre-programmed motion paths, autonomous sensors are better able to adapt to their environment, and react to a priori unknown external events or hardware failure. Second, autonomous sensors can operate in large teams that would otherwise be too complex to control by human operators. The key benefit of this is that a team of cheap, small sensors can achieve through cooperation the same results as individual large, expensive sensors---with more flexibility and robustness. In light of the importance of autonomy and cooperation, we adopt an agent-based perspective on the operation of the sensors. Within this view, each sensor becomes an information gathering agent. As a team, these agents can then direct their collective activity towards collecting information from their environment with the aim of providing accurate and up-to-date situational awareness. Against this background, the central problem we address in this thesis is that of achieving accurate situational awareness through the coordination of multiple information gathering agents. To achieve general and principled solutions to this problem, we formulate a generic problem definition, which captures the essential properties of dynamic environments. Specific instantiations of this generic problem span a broad spectrum of concrete application domains, of which we study three canonical examples: monitoring environmental phenomena, wide area surveillance, and search and patrol. The main contributions of this thesis are decentralised coordination algorithms that solve this general problem with additional constraints and requirements, and can be grouped into two categories. The first category pertains to decentralised coordination of fixed information gathering agents. For these agents, we study the application of decentralised coordination during two distinct phases of the agents' life cycle: deployment and operation. For the former, we develop an efficient algorithm for maximising the quality of situational awareness, while simultaneously constructing a reliable communication network between the agents. Specifically, we present a novel approach to the NP-hard problem of frequency allocation, which deactivates certain agents such that the problem can be provably solved in polynomial time. For the latter, we address the challenge of coordinating these agents under the additional assumption that their control parameters are continuous. In so doing, we develop two extensions to the max-sum message passing algorithm for decentralised welfare maximisation, which constitute the first two algorithms for distributed constraint optimisation problems (DCOPs) with continuous variables---CPLF-MS (for linear utility functions) and HCMS (for non-linear utility functions). The second category relates to decentralised coordination of mobile information gathering agents whose motion is constrained by their environment. For these agents, we develop algorithms with a receding planning horizon, and a non-myopic planning horizon. The former is based on the max-sum algorithm, thus ensuring an efficient and scalable solution, and constitutes the first online agent-based algorithm for the domains of pursuit-evasion, patrolling and monitoring environmental phenomena. The second uses sequential decision making techniques for the offline computation of patrols---infinitely long paths designed to continuously monitor a dynamic environment---which are subsequently improved on at runtime through decentralised coordination. For both topics, the algorithms are designed to satisfy our design requirements of quality of situational awareness, adaptiveness (the ability to respond to a priori unknown events), robustness (the ability to degrade gracefully), autonomy (the ability of agents to make decisions without the intervention of a centralised controller), modularity (the ability to support heterogeneous agents) and performance guarantees (the ability to give a lower bound on the quality of the achieved situational awareness). When taken together, the contributions presented in this thesis represent an advance in the state of the art of decentralised coordination of information gathering agents, and a step towards achieving autonomous control of unmanned sensors.
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Kassir, Abdallah. "Communication Efficiency in Information Gathering through Dynamic Information Flow." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/12113.
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This thesis addresses the problem of how to improve the performance of multi-robot information gathering tasks by actively controlling the rate of communication between robots. Examples of such tasks include cooperative tracking and cooperative environmental monitoring. Communication is essential in such systems for both decentralised data fusion and decision making, but wireless networks impose capacity constraints that are frequently overlooked. While existing research has focussed on improving available communication throughput, the aim in this thesis is to develop algorithms that make more efficient use of the available communication capacity. Since information may be shared at various levels of abstraction, another challenge is the decision of where information should be processed based on limits of the computational resources available. Therefore, the flow of information needs to be controlled based on the trade-off between communication limits, computation limits and information value. In this thesis, we approach the trade-off by introducing the dynamic information flow (DIF) problem. We suggest variants of DIF that either consider data fusion communication independently or both data fusion and decision making communication simultaneously. For the data fusion case, we propose efficient decentralised solutions that dynamically adjust the flow of information. For the decision making case, we present an algorithm for communication efficiency based on local LQ approximations of information gathering problems. The algorithm is then integrated with our solution for the data fusion case to produce a complete communication efficiency solution for information gathering. We analyse our suggested algorithms and present important performance guarantees. The algorithms are validated in a custom-designed decentralised simulation framework and through field-robotic experimental demonstrations.
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Arnott, G. "Information gathering and decisions during agonistic encounters." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.517073.
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Bush, Lawrence A. M. "Decision uncertainty minimization and autonomous information gathering." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85758.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 272-283).
Over the past several decades, technologies for remote sensing and exploration have become increasingly powerful but continue to face limitations in the areas of information gathering and analysis. These limitations affect technologies that use autonomous agents, which are devices that can make routine decisions independent of operator instructions. Bandwidth and other communications limitation require that autonomous differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information in a computationally efficient manner. This thesis presents a novel approach to this problem by framing it as an adaptive sensing problem. Adaptive sensing allows agents to modify their information collection strategies in response to the information gathered in real time. We developed and tested optimization algorithms that apply information guides to Monte Carlo planners. Information guides provide a mechanism by which the algorithms may blend online (realtime) and offline (previously simulated) planning in order to incorporate uncertainty into the decisionmaking process. This greatly reduces computational operations as well as decisional and communications overhead. We begin by introducing a 3-level hierarchy that visualizes adaptive sensing at synoptic (global), mesocale (intermediate) and microscale (close-up) levels (a spatial hierarchy). We then introduce new algorithms for decision uncertainty minimization (DUM) and representational uncertainty minimization (RUM). Finally, we demonstrate the utility of this approach to real-world sensing problems, including bathymetric mapping and disaster relief. We also examine its potential in space exploration tasks by describing its use in a hypothetical aerial exploration of Mars. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate future large-scale missions to extraterrestrial objects for the purposes of scientific advancement and human exploration.
by Lawrence A. M. Bush.
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Li, Yuefeng, and mikewood@deakin edu au. "Modelling intelligent agents for web-based information gathering." Deakin University. School of Computing and Mathematics, 2000. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20051201.151125.
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The recent emergence of intelligent agent technology and advances in information gathering have been the important steps forward in efficiently managing and using the vast amount of information now available on the Web to make informed decisions. There are, however, still many problems that need to be overcome in the information gathering research arena to enable the delivery of relevant information required by end users.
Good decisions cannot be made without sufficient, timely, and correct information. Traditionally it is said that knowledge is power, however, nowadays sufficient, timely, and correct information is power. So gathering relevant information to meet user information needs is the crucial step for making good decisions.
The ideal goal of information gathering is to obtain only the information that users need (no more and no less). However, the volume of information available, diversity formats of information, uncertainties of information, and distributed locations of information (e.g. World Wide Web) hinder the process of gathering the right information to meet the user needs. Specifically, two fundamental issues in regard to efficiency of information gathering are mismatch and overload. The mismatch means some information that meets user needs has not been gathered (or missed out), whereas, the overload means some gathered information is not what users need.
Traditional information retrieval has been developed well in the past twenty years. The introduction of the Web has changed people's perceptions of information retrieval. Usually, the task of information retrieval is considered to have the function of leading the user to those documents that are relevant to his/her information needs. The similar function in information retrieval is to filter out the irrelevant documents (or called information filtering). Research into traditional information retrieval has provided many retrieval models and techniques to represent documents and queries. Nowadays, information is becoming highly distributed, and increasingly difficult to gather. On the other hand, people have found a lot of uncertainties that are contained in the user information needs. These motivate the need for research in agent-based information gathering.
Agent-based information systems arise at this moment. In these kinds of systems, intelligent agents will get commitments from their users and act on the users behalf to gather the required information. They can easily retrieve the relevant information from highly distributed uncertain environments because of their merits of intelligent, autonomy and distribution. The current research for agent-based information gathering systems is divided into single agent gathering systems, and multi-agent gathering systems. In both research areas, there are still open problems to be solved so that agent-based information gathering systems can retrieve the uncertain information more effectively from the highly distributed environments.
The aim of this thesis is to research the theoretical framework for intelligent agents to gather information from the Web. This research integrates the areas of information retrieval and intelligent agents. The specific research areas in this thesis are the development of an information filtering model for single agent systems, and the development of a dynamic belief model for information fusion for multi-agent systems. The research results are also supported by the construction of real information gathering agents (e.g., Job Agent) for the Internet to help users to gather useful information stored in Web sites. In such a framework, information gathering agents have abilities to describe (or learn) the user information needs, and act like users to retrieve, filter, and/or fuse the information.
A rough set based information filtering model is developed to address the problem of overload. The new approach allows users to describe their information needs on user concept spaces rather than on document spaces, and it views a user information need as a rough set over the document space. The rough set decision theory is used to classify new documents into three regions: positive region, boundary region, and negative region. Two experiments are presented to verify this model, and it shows that the rough set based model provides an efficient approach to the overload problem.
In this research, a dynamic belief model for information fusion in multi-agent environments is also developed. This model has a polynomial time complexity, and it has been proven that the fusion results are belief (mass) functions. By using this model, a collection fusion algorithm for information gathering agents is presented. The difficult problem for this research is the case where collections may be used by more than one agent. This algorithm, however, uses the technique of cooperation between agents, and provides a solution for this difficult problem in distributed information retrieval systems.
This thesis presents the solutions to the theoretical problems in agent-based information gathering systems, including information filtering models, agent belief modeling, and collection fusions. It also presents solutions to some of the technical problems in agent-based information systems, such as document classification, the architecture for agent-based information gathering systems, and the decision in multiple agent environments. Such kinds of information gathering agents will gather relevant information from highly distributed uncertain environments.
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Powell, Suzanne Smith. "Infant temperament and cognition: Activity level, information gathering and information processing." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 1994. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1057857675.
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Green, Jonathan Philip. "Information gathering and conflict resolution in Polistes wasps." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2012. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/39436/.
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Signals are used to communicate resource-holding potential (RHP) to rivals during contests across a wide range of taxa. A controversial subset of RHP signals are status signals. In the last decade, research on North American populations of the paper wasp Polistes dominulus has provided evidence for a visual status signal based on variable clypeal patterns. However, observations of P. dominulus in its native European range indicate that the use of status signals across populations might be limited in this species. In Part I of this thesis (Chapters 3-5), I investigate status signalling in a Spanish population of P. dominulus. Using choice experiments, I show that clypeal patterns do not signal RHP in the Spanish population. Using large-scale field observations and microsatellite sequencing, I then show that patterns do not reflect individual quality in the wild. Together, these results strongly suggest that the clypeal pattern does not function in conflict resolution in the Spanish population. I conclude Part I by exploring the development of the clypeal patterns. I show that pattern expression is strongly temperature-dependent. This finding may provide an explanation for the variation in the signal value of clypeal patterns between populations. Contests among paper wasps are not limited to conspecific interactions, but may involve interactions with social parasites. In Parts II and III of this thesis (Chapters 6-7), I explore interactions between P. dominulus and the social parasite P. semenowi in the contexts of nest usurpation and conflict over reproduction. By experimentally staging usurpation contests, I show that neither parasites nor hosts gather information about rivals during nest usurpation. I then compare reproduction in parasitised and unparasitised colonies to test the predictions of competing models of reproductive skew. Incomplete control models receive qualified support; however, assumptions of skew models about players' information gathering abilities are questioned.
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Evans, Laurel. "Deliberation time-sink : the rationality of gathering information." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2010. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55046/.
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A key feature of rationality is the use of an optimal (or normative) strategy, i.e. the strategy that is most likely to maximize the fulfillment of one's goals. Numerous such strategies have been explored in the literature across a wide range of problems, and many researchers have argued that humans approach several problems irrationally. Recently, researchers have begun to study individual differences in rational responding to these tasks, crucially discovering that both fluid intelligence and individual thinking styles - such as the Need for Cognition (NFC) - contribute uniquely to rational performance. Fluid intelligence is proposed as one's capacity for manipulating information in a slow, serial manner, while NFC plays a role in the engagement of such deliberative thinking. Although the problems studied typically benefit from this type of thinking, I explore whether there might be a problem for which deliberative thinking is non- normative: sampling-based choice, in which the participant must gather information for two options before deciding which is better. I first demonstrate in two experiments that higher NFC is related to spending more time at this task - without any significant gain in accuracy - and this relationship is separate from fluid intelligence. In subsequent experiments, I explore the potential reasons for this relationship. I search for, but find no evidence that it is due to ability failure, and clear evidence shows that it is not due to boredom. I find some evidence that those high in NFC tend to focus more on accuracy. Finally, I find that the NFC-time relationship is partially mediated by social desirability, i.e. the tendency to try to promote a positive impression of one's self. Overall, this excessive focus on accuracy, and the mediator role of social desirability, suggest NFC is related to irrational performance on this task.
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Liu, X. D. "A NUMERICAL CONTROL AND INFORMATION GATHERING TRANSMISSION SYSTEM." International Foundation for Telemetering, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/613186.
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International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / November 04-07, 1991 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, NevadaThis paper describes a numerical control and information gathering transmission system. The system is designed around an Intel MSC51 single chip microcomputer. The system has proven to be simple and dependable in a user environment. The system is described first, followed by descriptions of the hardware, the memory assignment, and the software strategy.
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Khalil, Fahad Ahmed. "Essays on information gathering in principal-agent contracts." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/37236.
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This dissertation is a collection of essays on principal-agent contracts under asymmetry of information. The papers investigate how the possibility of acquiring information influences contracts.
The first essay analyzes the contract between a principal and an agent, when the principal can conduct an audit of the agent's cost of production. The principal can choose an audit policy after output is produced - but he cannot commit to an audit policy at the beginning. The probability of audit is a best reply to the agent's probability of misreporting given the contract. The interaction between the contract, the audit strategy and the reporting strategy is analyzed. The main result obtained is that, when the cost of production is high the optimal contract requires the agent to produce an amount greater than the output under full information. The principal audits randomly and truthful cost announcements cannot be induced with certainty. It is also shown that the principal audits with a higher probability when he cannot commit as compared to when he can.
The second essay considers an effort monitoring problem. It analyzes the contract the principal will offer an agent when the monitoring strategy cannot be committed to. Given the contract, the monitoring strategy is a best reply to the agent's effort strategy. The interaction between the contract, the monitoring strategy and the effort strategy is analyzed. The source of the principal's gain from monitoring is explained. It is shown that the wage payments to the agent may be decreasing in the outcome of the agent's effort.
The third essay endogenizes the amount of information the agent will rely on when deciding whether or not to accept the contract. By incurring an observation cost, the agent can observe the state of nature after the contract is offered. If he does so he will be able to turn it down whenever his payoff is negative. It is shown that the principal will always find it in his best interest to offer a contract such that the agent has no incentive to use his ability to observe the state of nature. Furthermore. an increase in the cost of observation is very valuable to the principal. The paper also looks at the case in which the principal is allowed to put several agents in competition for the contract. It is shown that, though the principal has monopoly power and can force the single agent to his reservation utility, having several agents compete for the contract increases the principal's payoff.Ph. D.
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Renoux, Jennifer. "Contribution to multiagent planning for active information gathering." Caen, 2015. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01206920.
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Dans cette thèse, nous considérons le problème de l'exploration d'événements. Nous définissons l'exploration d'événements comme le processus d'explorer un environnement topologiquement connu dans le but de récolter de l'information à propos d'événements dans environnement. Les systèmes multiagents sont habituellement utilisés dans les applications de collecte d'informations, mais posent certains problèmes tels que la coordination des agents et la communication. Notre travail propose un modèle décentralisé de planification multiagents pour la collecte d'informations. Dans ce modèle les agents utilisent un état de croyance étendu qui contient leurs propres croyances sur l'environnement, mais également des approximations des croyances des autres agents du système. Cet état de croyance étendu est utilisé pour quantifier la pertinence d'une information, pour eux ou pour un autre agent. Ils peuvent ainsi décider d'explorer l'environnement ou de communiquer une information, en fonction de l'action qui apporte de plus au système dans sa globalité. L'inconvénient majeur de ce modèle est sa complexité. En effet, la taille de l'espace des états de croyances augmente exponentiellement avec le nombre d'agents et la taille de l'environnement. Nous proposons un algorithme de résolution utilisant l'hypothèse couramment adoptée de l'indépendance des variables. Enfin, nous considérons le fait que lors de l'exploration d'événements, les agents doivent réévaluer leurs croyances régulièrement. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous proposons une fonction de lissage permettant aux agents d'oublier régulièrement les informations trop vieilles et pouvant être obsolètesIn this thesis, we address the problem of performing event exploration. We define event exploration as the process of exploring a topologically known environment to gather information about dynamic events in this environment. Multiagent systems are commonly used for information gathering applications, but bring important challenges such as coordination and communication. This thesis proposes a new fully decentralized model of multiagent planning for information gathering. In this model, called MAPING, the agents use an extended belief state that contains not only their own beliefs but also approximations of other agents' beliefs. With this extended belief state they are able to quantify the relevance of a piece of information for themselves but also for others. They can then decide to explore a specific area or to communicate a specific piece of information according to the action that brings the most information to the system in its totality. The major drawback of this model is its complexity: the size of the belief states space increases exponentially with the number of agents and the size of the environment. To overcome this issue, we also suggest a solving algorithm that uses the well-known adopted assumption of variable independence. Finally we consider the fact that event exploration is usually an open-ended problem. Therefore the agents need to check again their beliefs even after they reached a good belief state. We suggest a smoothing function that enables the agents to forget gradually old observations that can be obsolete
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Visuri, A. (Aku). "Smartphone based contextual symptom tracking and data gathering." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2016. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201609142777.
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Mobile devices are increasingly used for self-monitoring in areas of health, mood, and exercise tracking. The capabilities of modern devices also enable automation of this monitoring on a brand new scale. This thesis outlines the design, implementation, and evaluation via two-month long deployment of a system aimed to help both individual users and researchers to efficiently gather self-reported data. The name of the presented system is LifeTracker. LifeTracker is a two-tier system consisting of an Android application, used to gather data for personal or academic use, and a web dashboard, used to define parameters for studies. The main focus of the application is a novel input mechanism for self-reported data, leveraging notification popups as reactive input methods, that are presented to the user at opportune times. The thesis explains the design process of the system in detail in terms of use cases, requirements, and interface wireframes and the implementation process for both the web dashboard as well as the Android application. The Android application is evaluated in terms of usability and data gathering efficiency using interviews and the Standard Usability Survey. We also perform quantitative analysis of the machine learning classifiers used to predict user interruptibility. The results of the deployment show that users with prior experience with life logging applications appreciate the novel input mechanism and its strengths. Predicting user interruptibility can be performed at a reasonable rate, still considering personal variance of each individualMobiililaitteita käytetään suurenevissa määrin henkilökohtaisen terveyden, mielentilan ja fyysisten aktiviteettien seuraamiseen. Modernien laitteiden suorituskykykapasiteetti sallii myös tämänkaltaisen seurannan automatisoinnin. Tämä diplomityö hahmottaa suunnittelun, toteutuksen ja arvioinnin kahden kuukauden mittaisen käyttöönoton avulla järjestelmälle, jonka tarkoitus on auttaa yksittäisiä käyttäjiä ja tutkijoita keräämään tämänkaltaista seuraamistietoa. Työssä esitetyn järjestelmän nimi on LifeTracker. LifeTracker on kaksitasoinen järjestelmä, joka sisältää Android applikaation, jota käytetään tiedon keräämiseen henkilökohtaiseen ja tutkimuskäyttöön, ja Webkäyttöliittymän, jota käytetään tutkimusten parametrien määrittelemiseen. Applikaation fokus on uudenlaisessa syöttömekanismissa seurantatiedolle, joka käyttää ponnahdusikkunoita reaktiivisena syöttömekanismina, jotka esitetään käyttäjille sopivina aikoina. Työ selittää järjestelmän suunnittelun yksityiskohtaisesti käyttötapausten, vaatimusmäärittelyn ja käyttöliittymämallien avulla, ja toteutuksen sekä Web-käyttöliittymälle ja Android applikaatiolle. Android applikaatio arvioidaan käytettävyyden ja tiedonkeruun tehokkuuden suhteen käyttäen käyttäjähaastatteluja ja SUS-menetelmää. Suoritamme myös kvantitatiivisen analyysin koneoppimismalleista, joita käytetään käyttäjän keskeyttämisen ennakoimiseen. Käyttöönoton tulokset kertovat, että käyttäjät joilla on aikaisempaa kokemusta elämänhallintasovellusten kanssa ymmärtävät uudenlaisen syöttömekanismin edut ja vahvuudet. Käyttäjän keskeyttäminen voidaan myös ennakoida riittävällä tarkkuudella, ottaen huomioon muutokset yksittäisten käyttäjien välillä
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Aksakal, Baris. "Makeshift Information Constructions: Information Flow and Undercover Police." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2005. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4823/.
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This dissertation presents the social virtual interface (SVI) model, which was born out of a need to develop a viable model of the complex interactions, information flow and information seeking behaviors among undercover officers. The SVI model was created from a combination of various philosophies and models in the literature of information seeking, communication and philosophy. The questions this research paper answers are as follows: 1. Can we make use of models and concepts familiar to or drawn from Information Science to construct a model of undercover police work that effectively represents the large number of entities and relationships? and 2. Will undercover police officers recognize this model as realistic? This study used a descriptive qualitative research method to examine the research questions. An online survey and hard copy survey were distributed to police officers who had worked in an undercover capacity. In addition groups of officers were interviewed about their opinion of the SVI model. The data gathered was analyzed and the model was validated by the results of the survey and interviews.
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Stalmakou, Artsiom. "UAV/UAS path planning for ice management information gathering." Thesis, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Institutt for teknisk kybernetikk, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-13232.
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The key objective of this work is the proposition of the path planning strategy for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended for information gathering in Arctic environments / ice-infested regions. Two different path planning strategies are considered; one for analysis of the surveillance area defined as a grid and the other for analysis of the surveillance area defined as a sector. The mixed integer linear programming (MILP), YALMIP modeling language and GUROBI optimizer are used for formulation and solution of the path planning optimization problems. Furthermore, both path planning strategies are tested for the cases of constant and variable ice flow, respectively; the following are investigated in each simulation case: flight path of the UAV, coverage of the surveillance area, speed and acceleration of the UAV and the solver-time. Moreover, throughout this work only a planar motion is considered, with one single UAV used in each simulation case.
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Canevet, Catherine. "Automating the gathering of relevant information from biomedical text." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3849.
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More and more, database curators rely on literature-mining techniques to help them gather and make use of the knowledge encoded in text documents. This thesis investigates how an assisted annotation process can help and explores the hypothesis that it is only with respect to full-text publications that a system can tell relevant and irrelevant facts apart by studying their frequency. A semi-automatic annotation process was developed for a particular database - the Nuclear Protein Database (NPD), based on a set of full-text articles newly annotated with regards to subnuclear protein localisation, along with eight lexicons. The annotation process is carried out online, retrieving relevant documents (abstracts and full-text papers) and highlighting sentences of interest in them. The process also offers a summary Table of the facts found clustered by type of information. Each method involved in each step of the tool is evaluated using cross-validation results on the training data as well as test set results. The performance of the final tool, called the “NPD Curator System Interface”, is estimated empirically in an experiment where the NPD curator updates the database with pieces of information found relevant in 31 publications using the interface. A final experiment complements our main methodology by showing its extensibility to retrieving information on protein function rather than localisation. I argue that the general methods, the results they produced and the discussions they engendered are useful for any subsequent attempt to generate semi-automatic database annotation processes. The annotated corpora, gazetteers, methods and tool are fully available on request of the author (catherine.canevet@bbsrc.ac.uk).
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Stroeymeyt, Nathalie. "Information gathering prior to emigration in house-hunting ants." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.529832.
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Javdani, Shervin. "Acting under Uncertainty for Information Gathering and Shared Autonomy." Research Showcase @ CMU, 2017. http://repository.cmu.edu/dissertations/1061.
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Acting under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge for any decision maker in the real world. As uncertainty is often the culprit of failure, many prior works attempt to reduce the problem to one with a known state. However, this fails to account for a key property of acting under uncertainty: we can often gain utility while uncertain. This thesis presents methods that utilize this property in two domains: active information gathering and shared autonomy. For active information gathering, we present a general framework for reducing uncertainty just enough to make a decision. To do so, we formulate the Decision Region Determination (DRD) problem, modelling how uncertainty impedes decision making. We present two methods for solving this problem, differing in their computational efficiency and performance bounds. We show that both satisfy adaptive submodularity, a natural diminishing returns property that imbues efficient greedy policies with near-optimality guarantees. Empirically, we show that our methods outperform those which reduce uncertainty without considering how it affects decision making. For shared autonomy, we first show how the general problem of assisting with an unknown user goal can be modelled as one of acting under uncertainty. We then present our framework, based on Hindsight Optimization or QMDP, enabling us assist for a distribution of user goals by minimizing the expected cost. We evaluate our framework on real users, demonstrating that our method achieves goals faster, requires less user input, decreases user idling time, and results in fewer user-robot collisions than those which rely on predicting a single user goal. Finally, we extend our framework to learn how user behavior changes with assistance, and incorporate this model into cost minimization.
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Macaulay, Catriona. "Inside the palimpsest : a study of newsroom information gathering." Thesis, Edinburgh Napier University, 2000. http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/7241.
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The methodologies of systems design, rooted in engineering and in cognitivist conceptions of human action, have been stretched to the limit by the complexity of uses to which information and communication technologies are being turned. Within segments of the broader design community there has been a 'turn to the social' - a perception that there is a need now for richer stories about the everyday practices systems designers build tools to support. This thesis is presented as a contribution to the corpus of 'richer stories' about the what, how, why, when and where of information gathering. The thesis presents findings from an ethnographic study of newsroom information gathering at a UK daily newspaper. Adopting an analytical perspective based upon cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), it describes and analyses journalistic information gathering on two mutually constitutive levels; that of activity and that of artefact mediation. Its starting point is that neither information gathering, nor the artefacts of information gathering, can be understood without consideration of the social, cultural and historical contexts within which they are situated. Ethnographic data is drawn upon to argue that journalistic information gathering can only be understood within the particular context of the 'story lifecycle'. Stories are the principal object of journalistic enterprise, and the thesis examines in detail how everyday working practices are oriented towards this lifecycle. Based on an analysis of the artefacts of newsroom information gathering, and of the discourses of information systems designers, it is also argued that the discourses of systems designers over-emphasise the importance of the category 'information'. In palticular it is argued that sources are how journalists orient themselves in the vast, heterogeneous information spaces they simultaneously inhabit and populate. The background to these discussions is the often controversial relationship between ethnography, theory and systems design. This relationship is examined and it is argued that the CHAT perspective provides design ethnographers with an opportunity to move from ethnographic intuition to design insight. It is also argued that at a more pragmatic level, CHAT helps the fieldworker navigate the apparently never-ending mass of 'potentially interesting material' any field experience throws up.
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Tao, Xiaohui. "Personalised ontology learning and mining for web information gathering." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2009. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/30278/1/Xiaohui_Tao_Thesis.pdf.
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Over the last decade, the rapid growth and adoption of the World Wide Web has further exacerbated user needs for e±cient mechanisms for information and knowledge location, selection, and retrieval. How to gather useful and meaningful information from the Web becomes challenging to users. The capture of user information needs is key to delivering users' desired information, and user pro¯les can help to capture information needs. However, e®ectively acquiring user pro¯les is di±cult. It is argued that if user background knowledge can be speci¯ed by ontolo- gies, more accurate user pro¯les can be acquired and thus information needs can be captured e®ectively. Web users implicitly possess concept models that are obtained from their experience and education, and use the concept models in information gathering. Prior to this work, much research has attempted to use ontologies to specify user background knowledge and user concept models. However, these works have a drawback in that they cannot move beyond the subsumption of super - and sub-class structure to emphasising the speci¯c se- mantic relations in a single computational model. This has also been a challenge for years in the knowledge engineering community. Thus, using ontologies to represent user concept models and to acquire user pro¯les remains an unsolved problem in personalised Web information gathering and knowledge engineering. In this thesis, an ontology learning and mining model is proposed to acquire user pro¯les for personalised Web information gathering. The proposed compu- tational model emphasises the speci¯c is-a and part-of semantic relations in one computational model. The world knowledge and users' Local Instance Reposito- ries are used to attempt to discover and specify user background knowledge. From a world knowledge base, personalised ontologies are constructed by adopting au- tomatic or semi-automatic techniques to extract user interest concepts, focusing on user information needs. A multidimensional ontology mining method, Speci- ¯city and Exhaustivity, is also introduced in this thesis for analysing the user background knowledge discovered and speci¯ed in user personalised ontologies. The ontology learning and mining model is evaluated by comparing with human- based and state-of-the-art computational models in experiments, using a large, standard data set. The experimental results are promising for evaluation. The proposed ontology learning and mining model in this thesis helps to develop a better understanding of user pro¯le acquisition, thus providing better design of personalised Web information gathering systems. The contributions are increasingly signi¯cant, given both the rapid explosion of Web information in recent years and today's accessibility to the Internet and the full text world.
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Tao, Xiaohui. "Personalised ontology learning and mining for web information gathering." Queensland University of Technology, 2009. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/30278/.
Full textAbstract:
Over the last decade, the rapid growth and adoption of the World Wide Web has further exacerbated user needs for e±cient mechanisms for information and knowledge location, selection, and retrieval. How to gather useful and meaningful information from the Web becomes challenging to users. The capture of user information needs is key to delivering users' desired information, and user pro¯les can help to capture information needs. However, e®ectively acquiring user pro¯les is di±cult. It is argued that if user background knowledge can be speci¯ed by ontolo- gies, more accurate user pro¯les can be acquired and thus information needs can be captured e®ectively. Web users implicitly possess concept models that are obtained from their experience and education, and use the concept models in information gathering. Prior to this work, much research has attempted to use ontologies to specify user background knowledge and user concept models. However, these works have a drawback in that they cannot move beyond the subsumption of super - and sub-class structure to emphasising the speci¯c se- mantic relations in a single computational model. This has also been a challenge for years in the knowledge engineering community. Thus, using ontologies to represent user concept models and to acquire user pro¯les remains an unsolved problem in personalised Web information gathering and knowledge engineering. In this thesis, an ontology learning and mining model is proposed to acquire user pro¯les for personalised Web information gathering. The proposed compu- tational model emphasises the speci¯c is-a and part-of semantic relations in one computational model. The world knowledge and users' Local Instance Reposito- ries are used to attempt to discover and specify user background knowledge. From a world knowledge base, personalised ontologies are constructed by adopting au- tomatic or semi-automatic techniques to extract user interest concepts, focusing on user information needs. A multidimensional ontology mining method, Speci- ¯city and Exhaustivity, is also introduced in this thesis for analysing the user background knowledge discovered and speci¯ed in user personalised ontologies. The ontology learning and mining model is evaluated by comparing with human- based and state-of-the-art computational models in experiments, using a large, standard data set. The experimental results are promising for evaluation. The proposed ontology learning and mining model in this thesis helps to develop a better understanding of user pro¯le acquisition, thus providing better design of personalised Web information gathering systems. The contributions are increasingly signi¯cant, given both the rapid explosion of Web information in recent years and today's accessibility to the Internet and the full text world.
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Webster, Michael Munro. "Foraging behaviour of shoaling fishes : information gathering and prey competition." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/29743.
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Firstly I investigated the use of asocial and social information use; the potential for inexpensively acquiring information about prey resources is one advantage of social foraging. Threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) assimilated and used private information about prey distribution between different social information cues, and when these conflicted with their private information, they based their foraging decisions upon the former, suggesting that there are costs associated with non-conformist foraging behaviour. Secondly, I investigated prey competition, a major cost associated with social foraging. I found that increasing group stability, and by inference familiarity, led to a decrease in the rate of kleptoparasitic prey competition within shoals when they were foraging for dispersed prey. When prey were concentrated however there was no effect of group stability upon prey competition level. Prey competition was less intense between familiar individuals that were embedded in unfamiliar shoals than it was between these and their unfamiliar shoal mates. Finally I investigated the role of individual behavioural variation in relation to social information use and prey competition. Boldness across a number of contexts was seen to correlate with individual competitive ability, predicting the outcomes of both inter- and intra-specific prey competition interactions. Interestingly, the use of public information, a risk-averse strategy consistent with the shy behavioural phenotype, was not seen to be related to individual boldness. The broader significance of the findings of this thesis is considered in the context of previous research, and directions for future work are identified and discussed.
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Phelps, John. "Knowledge-Based Task Structure Planning for an Information Gathering Agent." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2003. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/phelpsJ2003.pdf.
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Karaoguz, Cem [Verfasser]. "Learning of information gathering in modular intelligent systems / Cem Karaoguz." Bielefeld : Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld, 2012. http://d-nb.info/1036111636/34.
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Corato, Luca Di. "Essays on information gathering and the use of natural resources." Thesis, University of York, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.487841.
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Flaspohler, Genevieve Elaine. "Statistical models and decision making for robotic scientific information gathering." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120607.
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Thesis: S.M., Joint Program in Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), 2018.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 97-107).
Mobile robots and autonomous sensors have seen increasing use in scientific applications, from planetary rovers surveying for signs of life on Mars, to environmental buoys measuring and logging oceanographic conditions in coastal regions. This thesis makes contributions in both planning algorithms and model design for autonomous scientific information gathering, demonstrating how theory from machine learning, decision theory, theory of optimal experimental design, and statistical inference can be used to develop online algorithms for robotic information gathering that are robust to modeling errors, account for spatiotemporal structure in scientific data, and have probabilistic performance guarantees. This thesis first introduces a novel sample selection algorithm for online, irrevocable sampling in data streams that have spatiotemporal structure, such as those that commonly arise in robotics and environmental monitoring. Given a limited sampling capacity, the proposed periodic secretary algorithm uses an information-theoretic reward function to select samples in real-time that maximally reduce posterior uncertainty in a given scientific model. Additionally, we provide a lower bound on the quality of samples selected by the periodic secretary algorithm by leveraging the submodularity of the information-theoretic reward function. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach by employing the periodic secretary algorithm to select samples irrevocably from a seven-year oceanographic data stream collected at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory off the coast of Cape Cod, USA. Secondly, we consider how scientific models can be specified in environments - such as the deep sea or deep space - where domain scientists may not have enough a priori knowledge to formulate a formal scientific model and hypothesis. These domains require scientific models that start with very little prior information and construct a model of the environment online as observations are gathered. We propose unsupervised machine learning as a technique for science model-learning in these environments. To this end, we introduce a hybrid Bayesian-deep learning model that learns a nonparametric topic model of a visual environment. We use this semantic visual model to identify observations that are poorly explained in the current model, and show experimentally that these highly perplexing observations often correspond to scientifically interesting phenomena. On a marine dataset collected by the SeaBED AUV on the Hannibal Sea Mount, images of high perplexity in the learned model corresponded, for example, to a scientifically novel crab congregation in the deep sea. The approaches presented in this thesis capture the depth and breadth of the problems facing the field of autonomous science. Developing robust autonomous systems that enhance our ability to perform exploratory science in environments such as the oceans, deep space, agricultural and disaster-relief zones will require insight and techniques from classical areas of robotics, such as motion and path planning, mapping, and localization, and from other domains, including machine learning, spatial statistics, optimization, and theory of experimental design. This thesis demonstrates how theory and practice from these diverse disciplines can be unified to address problems in autonomous scientific information gathering.
by Genevieve Elaine Flaspohler.
S.M.
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Fabule, Deborah Kory. "Information-gathering and the strategic use of culture in Herodotus." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6853.
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Thesis (MPhil (Ancient Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The main purpose of this thesis is to examine examples of information-gathering and political intelligence in Herodotus' Histories. In Herodotus' account, dialogues, anecdotes, and even inserted authorial commentary describe how leaders obtain politically relevant and timely information about other individuals and nations (intelligence). Herodotus links political decisions, based on gathered information, with his presentation of historical causation. In his multi-themed account, Herodotus provides tales of commissioned information-gathering missions, espionage, secret messages, and even disguises as nations and political leaders attempt to find out about their enemies and their allies. While the various anecdotes of information-gathering may not be historically precise, they may, in fact, infer real goals and problems of ancient Greek intelligence practices. The second purpose of this thesis is to explore Herodotus' use of cultural information within decision-making and statecraft. Herodotus presents nomos (culture or custom) as a compelling force for human behavior and military action. By articulating the importance of cultural information to political and military intelligence, Herodotus' work foreshadows modern intelligence theories and practices. This nomos-aspect of Herodotus' information-gathering anecdotes is especially relevant to current post-modern trend of culturally-based intelligence solutions to western counter-insurgency efforts.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die hoofdoel van hierdie tesis is om voorbeelde van inligtingversameling en politieke intellegensie in Herodotus se Histories te ondersoek. In Herodotus se verslae, dialoë, anekdotes en selfs ingevoegde ouktoriele kommentaar word daar beskryf hoe leiers polities relevante en aktuele inligting oor ander indiwidue en nasies (intellegensie) verkry. Herodotus verbind politieke besluite, gebaseer op ingewinde inligting, met sy voorstelling van historiese kousaliteitsleer. In sy vertellings met meervoudige temas, verskaf Herodotus verhale van opdragte wat gegee is vir inligtingsinwinningsendings, spioenasiewerk, geheime boodskappe en selfs vermommings waarmee nasionale en politieke leiers gepoog het om uit te vind oor hul vyande en bondgenote. Terwyl die verskeie anekdotes van inligtinginwinning moontlik nie histories presies is nie, is hulle dalk in werklikheid afgelei van regte doelstellings en probleme van antieke Griekse intellegensiepraktyke. Die tweede doel van hierdie tesis is om ondersoek in te stel na Herodotus se gebruik van kulturele inligting in besluitneming en regeerkuns. Herodotus stel nomos (kultuur of gebruik) as ‟n dwingende krag vir menslike gedrag en militêre aksie voor. Deur die belangrikheid van kulturele inligting vir politieke en militêre intellegensie te artikuleer, is Herodotus se werk ‟n voorafskaduwing van moderne intellegensie teorieë en praktyke. Hierdie nomos-aspek van Herodotus se inligtingsinwinningsanekdotes is veral relevant vir die huidige post-modernistiese neiging van kultuur-gebaseerde intellegensieoplossings vir westerse teen-insergensie pogings.
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Chung, Timothy Hahndeut Burdick Joel Wakeman Burdick Joel Wakeman Murray Richard M. "Intelligent information gathering : using control for sensing and decision making /." Diss., Pasadena, Calif. : Caltech, 2007. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-05312007-024822.
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Schultz, James S. "Identifying methods of gathering and sharing hazardous air containment information." Online version, 2000. http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/2000/2000schultzj.pdf.
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Di, Corato Luca. "Essays on information gathering and the use of natural resources." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Padova, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/11577/3425994.
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The objective in this thesis is to pose and to answer to some questions concerning the role played by information in decisions on the economic allocation of natural resources.
In chapter 2 the design of a voluntary incentive scheme for the provision of ecosystem services is considered, having in mind the forested areas in developing countries where a governmental agency plans to introduce a set-aside policy.
Payments are offered to the landowners to compensate the economic loss for not converting land to agriculture. The information asymmetry between the agency and the landowners on the opportunity cost of conservation gives incentive to
the landowners to misreport their own "type". A principal - agent analysis is developed, adapted and extended to capture real issues concerning conservation programs in developing countries. I show that the information asymmetry may seriously impact on the optimal scheme performance and, under certain conditions, may lead to pay a compensation even if any additional conservation is induced with respect to that in absence of the scheme.
In chapter 3 an intergenerational dynamic game is solved under time- inconsistency. The optimal harvest timing for a natural forest is determined under uncertainty on the flow of amenity value derived from conservation and irreversibility.
Due to time-varying declining discount rates intertemporal inconsistent harvest strategies arise. The value of the option to harvest is eroded and earlier harvest occurs under both the assumptions of naïve and sophisticated belief on future generations time-preferences. This results in a bias toward the current generation gratification which affects the intergenerational allocation of benefits and costs from harvesting and conserving.
In chapter 4 a forest owner with hyperbolic time preferences is considered. At each period the irreversible decision to harvest an old-growth forest could be taken, while conservation is the alternative. Flows of future amenity value are uncertain while the net value of stumpage timber is known and constant. The decision problem is expressed as an optimal stopping problem and solved analytically in a time-inconsistent framework under the assumption of sophisticated belief on future trigger strategies. Premature harvesting occurs. To avoid socially undesirable harvesting the impact of hyperbolic discounting must be accounted and a modified optimal pigovian tax on the wood revenues is proposed.
Finally, in chapter 5 a government bargains a mutually convenient agreement with a foreign firm to extract a natural resource. The firm bears the initial investment in field research and infrastructures and earns as a return a share on the profits. The firm must cope with uncertainty due to market conditions and, as initial investment is totally sunk, also due to the risk of successive expropriation.
In a real options framework where the government holds an American call option on expropriation I show under which conditions Nash bargaining is feasible and leads to attain a cooperative agreement maximizing the joint venture surplus keeping into account both the sources of uncertainty on profit realizations. I show that the investment trigger does not change under the threat of expropriation, while the set of feasible bargaining outcomes is restricted and the distributive parameter is adjusted to account for the additional risk of expropriation.
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聶可欣 and Ho-yan Nip. "Information-gathering strategies in trait diagnosis: the role of implicit theories." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31225020.
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Alur, Abhijit. "Gathering Information about Network Infrastructure from DNS Names and Its Applications." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/18700.
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DNS (Domain Name System) names contain a wide variety of information, such as geographic location, speed of the interface, type of interface, etc. However, extracting this information is challenging since this information does not have a consistent format across different ISPs (internet service providers) or even a particular ISP.
We present a new tool, GINIE, which extracts useful information and some common dictionary words from a DNS name. We use three ISPs and a CAIDA (Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis) dataset to demonstrate these capabilities.
Information extracted with GINIE provides valuable insight about the infrastructure of the three ISPs and shows the availability and type of information in a collection of DNS names from many ISPs that exist in a typical dataset. The embedded information from DNS names can be used (with some additional active measurements) to infer the geo-aware topology of an ISP.
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Nip, Ho-yan. "Information-gathering strategies in trait diagnosis hthe role of implicit theories /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B22826099.
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Arora, Akash. "Multi-Modal Active Perception for Robotic Information Gathering in Science Missions." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/18415.
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Information gathering using mobile robots in dangerous and remote environments such as deep sea, underground, and outer space has significantly improved humanity's ability to understand the world. Typically in such science missions, a robot's role is limited to that of a sensing platform which passively gathers data along prescribed waypoints. Higher level decision making such as planning where to go in the context of mission objectives, making inferences from observations, and deciding which sensing modalities to deploy, is largely handled by a supervisory science team working remotely. However, communication constraints can hinder these processes and hence the rate of scientific progress. This thesis presents a novel active perception approach to science missions that aims to reduce robots' reliance on human supervision and improve science productivity by encoding an approximation of scientists' domain knowledge, inference, and decision making processes on-board the robot. Science missions can involve two complexities that are not addressed by existing approaches to robotic information gathering. Firstly, the variables of scientific interest may not be directly observable from on-board sensors, and instead require combining multi-modal proxy measurements with non-trivial amounts of scientific domain knowledge to infer. Secondly, robots may be equipped with multiple sensing modalities which measure different environmental variables and have some sensing cost associated with their usage. The first contribution of the thesis is the formulation of these requirements into a new information gain maximization sensor planning problem called scientific information gathering. An initial solution is presented which addresses scientific information gathering as two separate subproblems- estimating the variables of interest from sensor data by encoding an approximation of scientific domain knowledge, and planning paths and sensing actions that maximize the information gained on the variable of interest. Efficient solutions to these subproblems form the next two contributions. To tackle the first subproblem, a Bayesian network (BN) architecture that creates a probabilistic mapping between observations and the variables of scientific interest is proposed. The BN intuitively and jointly models critical aspects of scientific knowledge, as well as other prior knowledge such as sensor and classifier models, while the proposed network structure allows the robot to robustly handle noisy observations, has fast inference times, allows recursive estimation of key variables, and can utilize online parameter tuning to overcome initial modeling uncertainties. To address the second subproblem, a sampling-based forward simulation approach based on Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is proposed, which exploits the domain knowledge encoded in the BN and efficiently plans informative sensing actions with multiple sensing modalities in partially observable environments. The computational complexity of the BN-MCTS active perception framework does not grow with the number of observations taken, and allows long horizon planning in an anytime manner, making it highly applicable to field robots operating in large scale environments. The final contribution of the thesis is the application and evaluation of the proposed approach to three instances of scientific information gathering with unique mission constraints. The first is a Mars exploration mission where the robot is required to infer the geological type of locations in the environment by autonomously planning informative paths and observing geological features. The second scenario is modelled on the NASA Mojave Volatiles Prospector (MVP) project, where the robot attempts to autonomously refine errors in prior scientific knowledge during the mission. The final scenario explores how the active perception approach can be applied to next generation autonomous entry descent and landing (EDL) missions, which requires reasoning about temporal constraints. Extensive simulation results with synthetic and real data show that the proposed active perception approach significantly outperforms both myopic and passive approaches. Algorithms were also implemented on a prototype planetary rover along with supporting subsystems such as image processing modules, localization, and control. Autonomous end to end planning and execution of a science mission is demonstrated on an analog Mars environment, and key practical challenges in deploying the approach on real systems are discussed.
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Bostain, Dyanne Strohkorb. "Information gathering by trustees for decision-making: Informal and formal sources." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539618597.
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The purpose of this study was to clarify the structure of information systems employed by trustees in higher education and to evaluate the relationships of these systems to decision-making. Communication and organizational theories characterizing the role of informal and formal information used by policy makers and top management in organizational decision-making provided the framework for this study. Studies of top-level corporate executives (Adams 1975; Quinn 1980; Jones and McLeod 1986) revealed executives' strong preferences for and substantial use of information from informal channels for planning and decision-making. These theories were integrated with the research of Ingram (1980) and Schmidtlein (1977) concerning information source use by trustees in higher education governance.;Trustees from a small public college and a small private college comprised the sample for this study. The 25 trustees who participated in the research had served at least one academic year on their respective college boards. A biographical questionnaire requesting certain demographic data was given to the study participants. Individual interviews asking the trustees to specify the sources of information they use when making decisions for their institution were conducted.;Frequencies and percentages were calculated to identify distinctive patterns of informal and formal information source use by trustees. Results illustrate similar preferences and use of informal information in decision-making by the trustees and senior executives. The study's findings verify that informal information plays an important role in the decision processes of trustees in higher education. Notable differences in information source use were identified among trustees from the public college and the private college.;Further systematic study and development of a theory describing the role of informal information in decision processes of trustees is needed in order to fully explain all aspects of trusteeship and governance of colleges and universities.
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Al-Jaljouli, Raja Computer Science & Engineering Faculty of Engineering UNSW. "A proposed security protocol for data gathering mobile agents." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Computer Science and Engineering, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/23999.
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We address the security issue of the data which mobile agents gather as they are traversing the Internet. Our goal is to devise a security protocol that truly secures the data which mobile agents gather. Several cryptographic protocols were presented in the literature asserting the security of gathered data. Formal verification of the protocols reveals unforeseen security flaws, such as truncation or alteration of the collected data, breaching the privacy of the gathered data, sending others data under the private key of a malicious host, and replacing the collected data with data of similar agents. So the existing protocols are not truly secure. We present an accurate security protocol which aims to assert strong integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of the gathered data. The proposed protocol is derived from the Multi-hops protocol. The protocol suffers from security flaws, e.g. an adversary might truncate/ replace collected data, or sign others data with its own private key without being detected. The proposed protocol refines the Multi-hops protocol by implementing the following security techniques: utilization of co-operating agents, scrambling the gathered offers, requesting a visited host to clear its memory from any data acquired as a result of executing the agent before the host dispatches the agent to the succeeding host in the agent???s itinerary, and carrying out verifications on the identity of the genuine initiator at the early execution of the agent at visited hosts, in addition to the verifications upon the agent???s return to the initiator. The proposed protocol also implements the common security techniques such as public key encryption, digital signature, etc. The implemented security techniques would rectify the security flaws revealed in the existing protocols. We use STA, an infinite-state exploration tool, to verify the security properties of a reasonably small instance of the proposed protocol in key configurations. The analysis using STA reports no attack. Moreover, we carefully reason the correctness of the security protocol for a general model and show that the protocol would be capable of preventing or at least detecting the attacks revealed in the existing protocols.
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Necşulescu, Silvia. "Automatic acquisition of lexical-semantic relations: gathering information in a dense representation." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/374234.
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Lexical-semantic relationships between words are key information for many NLP tasks, which require this knowledge in the form of lexical resources. This thesis addresses the acquisition of lexical-semantic relation instances. State of the art systems rely on word pair representations based on patterns of contexts where two related words co-occur to detect their relation. This approach is hindered by data sparsity: even when mining very large corpora, not every semantically related word pair co-occurs or not frequently enough.
In this work, we investigate novel representations to predict if two words hold a lexical-semantic relation. Our intuition was that these representations should contain information about word co-occurrences combined with information about the meaning of words involved in the relation. These two sources of information have to be the basis of a generalization strategy to be able to provide information even for words that do not co-occur.Les relacions lexicosemàntiques entre paraules són una informació clau per a moltes tasques del PLN, què requereixen aquest coneixement en forma de recursos lingüístics. Aquesta tesi tracta l’adquisició d'instàncies lexicosemàntiques. Els sistemes actuals utilitzen representacions basades en patrons dels contextos en què dues paraules coocorren per detectar la relació que s'hi estableix. Aquest enfocament s'enfronta a problemes de falta d’informació: fins i tot en el cas de treballar amb corpus de grans dimensions, hi haurà parells de paraules relacionades que no coocorreran, o no ho faran amb la freqüència necessària. Per tant, el nostre objectiu principal ha estat proposar noves representacions per predir si dues paraules estableixen una relació lexicosemàntica. La intuïció era que aquestes representacions noves havien de contenir informació sobre patrons dels contextos, combinada amb informació sobre el significat de les paraules implicades en la relació. Aquestes dues fonts d'informació havien de ser la base d'una estratègia de generalització que oferís informació fins i tot quan les dues paraules no coocorrien.
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Kim, Hyung-Jin 1975. "SeMole : a robust framework for gathering information from the World Wide Web." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80070.
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Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-61).
by Hyung-Jin Kim.
S.B.and M.Eng.
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Ayton, Benjamin James. "Risk-bounded autonomous information gathering for localization of phenomena in hazardous environments." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113744.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-150).
Exploration of new environments is often conducted in search of some phenomenon of interest. Examples include the search for extreme forms of life in the deep ocean or under the ice on Europa, or localizing resource deposits on the ocean floor. Exploration of all these environments is dangerous because of uncertainty in the environment and poorly characterized disturbances that can damage the exploration vehicle. Autonomous vehicles allows exploration in those environments where it is too dangerous or expensive to send a human-operated craft. Autonomous exploration has been well-studied from the perspective of information maximization, but information gathering has not been considered with the intention of localizing specific phenomena, nor has it been considered in environments where exploration can threaten the vehicle. This thesis addresses both challenges by introducing Risk-Bounded Adaptive Search, which maximizes the number of phenomena located while bounding the probability of mission failure by a user-defined threshold. The first innovation of this thesis is the development of a new information measure that focuses on locating instances of a specific phenomenon. Search for phenomena of interest is framed as a discrete space Markov Decision Process that is solved using forward search and receding horizon planning, with a reward function specified as the information gained about unobserved instances of the phenomenon of interest from measurements. Using this reward function, the number of phenomena located is increased compared to maximizing conventional information, as it steers the agent towards locations where phenomena are thought to exist so they are not bypassed when the belief state is high. The second innovation is a method of applying risk bounds as a function of the expected information gain of a policy over a planning horizon, in contrast to a static bound. This 'Performance-Guided Risk Bounding' system allows an MDP policy to be found that is slightly suboptimal if it has a substantially lower probability of failure, or accept more risk if the reward payoff is large. When applied to information gathering, it allows an autonomous agent to capitalize on high risk and high reward opportunities when they are seen, instead of ignoring them in an effort to conserve risk for the future, when it is ultimately less useful. Since interesting phenomena are often found in risky locations, the ability to take more risk when it is worthwhile results in more phenomena found overall. Finally, a modification to Monte Carlo Tree Search is introduced that implements Performance-Guided Risk Bounding. This allows Risk-Bounded Adaptive Search to be planned in an anytime manner. The output policy is limited to the states that are explored, but risk bounds that scale with the expected information gained over the explored states in the policy are still applied. The resulting policies are shown to converge to the results of forward search, and a few percent differences in phenomena found with an order of magnitude reduction in planning time.
by Benjamin James Ayton.
S.M.
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Hudson, Cassie. "Migration Information Gathering by Mexican-origin Immigrants in the Pre-migration Phase." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc822813/.
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U.S. immigration procedures are complex and may elude the average individual seeking admission to the United States. Understanding this, the current study investigates how information resources are used by potential migrants to learn about the migratory process. Using a mixed-methods approach, I interviewed 30 Mexican immigrants with unauthorized immigration experience about the process of gathering migration information in the pre-migration phase. Qualitative data were coded using seven themes generated from the primary research questions, including: Information Resources, Resources Used During Migration, Motivation for Migration, Method of Migration, Lack of Information/Misinformation, Types of Help and Types of Information. Findings suggest that the factors motivating migrants to come to the U.S. are combined in complex ways and lack of information about legal alternatives to unauthorized migration is an important factor influencing method of migration. Also, while access to new information resources is increasing, these resources are not being tapped for migration information.
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Chetzron, Jackie B. "Student Information Gathering: Examining What Happens when School Librarians Attempt to Convey Online Information Search Strategies to Meet Information Needs." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2019. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1505227/.
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There is a growing expectation that school librarians function within their job descriptions beyond the role of reading promoter and resource manager. With college and career readiness standards, technology use and digital learning standards and information literacy standards now in place for student learning expectations, it is vital that students have opportunities to acquire, develop and practice such skills for future success in the global market economy. For students to receive such opportunities, there should be designed instruction delivered to students that allows for them to learn and practice information gathering techniques to access, use and apply information effectively, efficiently and ethically while developing technology skills within context of their content learning and real-world connections authentically. This study examined how school librarians conveyed information gathering techniques to students through a qualitative, constant comparative approach. Five middle school librarians in an urban school district participated in an observation and interview. Findings suggest that school librarians do claim an instructional role regarding information gathering and technology usage, although it manifests in diverse ways. Implications for future studies and practice suggest that the position become more defined such that the expectation to function in these roles is widely accepted by all stakeholders, and for the effectiveness of the instruction on the development of these skills. As school librarians embrace and adopt new and emerging technologies within their instructional delivery, examining the effectiveness of that instruction would be of interest.
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Luo, Tong. "Towards Simpler Argument Binding : Knowledge Gathering by Mining Logic Program Repositories." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informatik och media, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-296131.
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The compositional relational programming (CRP) is a purely declarative and naturally compositional programming paradigm, but the low readability and some binding issues limit its use. The main purpose in this thesis is utilizing the common binding patterns identified from Prolog programs to improve current argument binding mechanism in CRP. In order to collect relevant Prolog rules and convert them to a measurable form, a data mining tool is built and applied to extract data from Prolog code repository. After the analysis, two kinds of patterns are identified respectively, based on the binding outside and inside the logical combination. Correspondingly, the projection operator make is optimized for highlighting the dummy argument; three extended and combinators are proposed to handle common binary combinations; the join operator is modified to efficiently and flexibly combine multiple predicates. In the future, the usability of those improved operators should be carefully evaluated.
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Gonzalez-George, Victor. "Information retrieval and gathering : an experimental prototype for Mac OS X : undergraduate dissertation." Bath Univ. of Bath, Department of Computer Science, 2006. http://opus.bath.ac.uk/16779/.
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Thesis (Ph.D)-University of Bath, 2006.Title appears on item as: Undergraduate dissertation: Information retrieval and gathering: An experimental prototype for Mac OS X. Includes bibliographical references.
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Roberg, Abigail M. "Data Visualizations: Guidelines for Gathering, Analyzing, and Designing Data." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1524826335755109.
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Xu, Changxin. "Are you informed?: State information management and autonomy in local China." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108024.
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Thesis advisor: Gerald M. EasterDoes the emergence of these newly informatics practices by the Chinese state indicate a future abolishment of the Xinfang mechanism? In order to answer these questions and foster an understanding of today’s state information management in China, this thesis first employs the method of historical analysis. The thesis provides an initial effort in English literature to answer how and why societal petitioning was gradually translated into state-dominated action and whether or not informational engagement impacted state autonomy. The thesis then moves on to field work conducted in S Province since 2014 through 2017 that counted approximately 20 weeks altogether. With such first-hand empirical evidence, the thesis develops three main arguments as below: First and foremost, I find that there exist an increasing number of information seekers among petitioners from the background databases of both Governor’s Mailbox and the Provincial Bureau for Letters and Calls’ online complaint system. Such informational needs of today’s Chinese public may be in need of higher attention from policy makers and scholars. Second, the leadership, whether at central or any local level, have sought to establish various apparatuses, and charged them with building information channels and providing an information stream for policy making. the apparatuses hereby develop two strategies to draw more societal actors to their offices and guarantee their informational supplies to above. Such competition eventually results in a champion among all the informatics offices in the arena. Last but not least, apparatus autonomy cannot be equated with individual official autonomy. While an office is assigned with increased autonomy, the very officials’ individual autonomy may fall down to a lesser degree
Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Political Science