Belief revision for adaptive negotiation agents

Existing negotiation agents are primitive in terms of what they can learn and how responsive they are towards the changing negotiation contexts. These weaknesses can be alleviated if an expressive representation language is used to represent negotiation contexts and a sound inference mechanism is applied to reason about the preferential changes arising in these negotiation contexts. This paper illustrates a novel adaptive negotiation agent model, which is underpinned by the well-known AGM belief revision logic. Our preliminary experiments show that the performance of the belief-based adaptive negotiation agents is promising.

Vertical handovers as adaption methods in pervasive systems

Pervasive systems need to be context aware and need to adapt to context changes, including network disconnections and changes in network Quality of Service (QoS). Vertical handover (handover between heterogeneous networks) is one of possible adaptation methods. It allows users to roam freely between heterogeneous networks while maintaining continuity of their applications. This paper proposes a vertical handover approach suitable for multimedia applications in pervasive systems. It describes the adaptability decision making process which uses vertical handovers to support users mobility and provision of QoS suitable for users’ applications. The process evaluates context information regarding user devices, User location, network environment, and user perceived QoS of applications.

Active node supporting context-aware vertical handover in pervasive computing environment with redundant positioning

A major requirement for pervasive systems is to integrate context-awareness to support heterogeneous networks and device technologies and at the same time support application adaptations to suit user activities. However, current infrastructures for pervasive systems are based on centralized architectures which are focused on context support for service adaptations in response to changes in the computing environment or user mobility. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical architecture based on active nodes, which maximizes the computational capabilities of various nodes within the pervasive computing environment, while efficiently gathering and evaluating context information from the user's working environment. The migratable active node architecture employs various decision making processes for evaluating a rich set of context information in order to dynamically allocate active nodes in the working environment, perform application adaptations and predict user mobility. The active node also utilizes the Redundant Positioning System to accurately manage user's mobility. This paper demonstrates the active node capabilities through context-aware vertical handover applications.

Online trendy topics detection in microblogs with selective user monitoring under cost constraints

As microblog services such as Twitter become a fast and convenient communication approach, identification of trendy topics in microblog services has great academic and business value. However detecting trendy topics is very challenging due to huge number of users and short-text posts in microblog diffusion networks. In this paper we introduce a trendy topics detection system under computation and communication resource constraints. In stark contrast to retrieving and processing the whole microblog contents, we develop an idea of selecting a small set of microblog users and processing their posts to achieve an overall acceptable trendy topic coverage, without exceeding resource budget for detection. We formulate the selection operation of these subset users as mixed-integer optimization problems, and develop heuristic algorithms to compute their approximate solutions. The proposed system is evaluated with real-time test data retrieved from Sina Weibo, the dominant microblog service provider in China. It's shown that by monitoring 500 out of 1.6 million microblog users and tracking their microposts (about 15,000 daily) with our system, nearly 65% trendy topics can be detected, while on average 5 hours earlier before they appear in Sina Weibo official trends.

A Formação de professores nas tramas do virtual

This study aims to reflect on the cultural and aesthetics formation of teacher, and how they act as a co-author in the virtual environment. The reflection permeates on topics such as: The Information Age and the challenges of the teacher in the twenty-first century; teacher professional development and the multiple personal identities; the importance of cultural repertoire for teaching practice and the role of the teacher as co-author in the informational network. In addition to the theoretical reflections were conducted two focus groups with the participation of teachers with different graduations and working in various levels of education to discuss the presented topics. It was proposed to create a website for the teacher to sail and collaborate with posts on many cultural artifacts. For the construction of the content for the site, it developed a “daily creation”, which is the search information storage from multiple sources, such as academic papers, songs, websites, magazines, comics, blogs, books, photographs, advertisements, finally everything that can increase imagination and serve for the production of content. Data analysis of the focus group showed that teachers recognize the varied cultural repertoire makes for a good professional aplomb, but cannot actively participate in the local culture. It was also found that the teacher has difficulty manipulating information technology and communication and therefore, distance themselves from an active production network. The focus group contributed to building a website and posts on cultural artifacts. Production can be accessed at www.digitaldoprofessor.com.

Formação inicial do professor de matemática com uso de tecnologias da informação e comunicação no contexto da escola pública

This paper intends to analyze which contribution for teachers formative training the participation on extension projects can bring to the bachelors in Mathematics teaching. The research was conducted during the developing of a Project from the Program of Extension - Programa de Extensão UFU/Comunidade (PEIC) in a municipal school located in a country zone from Uberlândia-MG. The research was constituted by a series of activities with students from the ninth year of the Fundamental Education, Middle School. The main focus is the work developed by two bachelors of Mathemactics teaching from the Federal University from Uberlândia who were part of the PEIC team. This present research intends to answer the following question: How the extension project “Information technology and communication on Mathematics problem resolution in country zone schools” has contribited to reinforce and to (re)criate the fomative experiences of students from the Mathematics teaching course who have developed such project? The presente study is from a qualitative nature and has made use of the partaker searching methodology. The presente paper was organized in three chapters. On chapter I evidence is given to theoretical discussion made, having as main references the works of Larrosa, Ponte e Shön. Chapter II brings the description of the three activities that were developed and aplied during the PEIC Project, which are: Problems in the Park, Inaccessible Hight and Lili Game. On chapter III, the data analysis is presented. The data was obtained through instruments of registration such as: camera recording, photografic material, meetings reports, field notes, surveys and semi-structured interviews. The initial hypothesis aim is on the fact that the participation on extention projects during the graduation course can bring rich contribution for the teachers to be, since it’s going to provide the knowledge and chalenge close to the one from the future profession. With the analysis of the obtained results from the colected data, it was possible to conclude that the PEIC has provided the bachelors in Mathematics teching the opportunity of recreate and potenciate their formative experiences. Such opportunity happened in situations that involved, for example, planning makings, development of colective work, softwares usage, different school spaces and the direct interaction with school bureaucracy. Beyond that, it was possible to work with the cocepts of reflection in action in a way to contribute to the professional development of the future Mathematics teachers. Thereby, in our final considerations, is possible to conclude that extension projects performed during the graduation course can bring great contributions to the professional formation of the bachelors in Mathematics teaching, among them we highlight the potentiation of the previous formative experiences and the development of colective work and behavior related to a reflexive teacher.