Probability Distributions.- Linear Models for Regression.- Linear Models for Classification.- Neural Networks.- Kernel Methods.- Sparse Kernel Machines.- Graphical Models.- Mixture Models and EM.- Approximate Inference.- Sampling Methods.- Continuous Latent Variables.- Sequential Data.- Combining Models.

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

The power of feedback.

Emotion and Adaptation

Trust allows the behavior evaluation of individuals by setting confidence values, which are used in decisions about whether or not to interact. They have been used in several fields, and many trust and reputation models were developed recently. We perceived that most of them were built upon the numeric and cognitive paradigms, which do not use affective aspects to build trust or help in decision making. Studies in psychology argued that personality, emotions, and mood are important in decision making and can change the behaviors of individuals. Based on that, we present links between trust and affective computing, showing relations of trust dimensions found in trust models with affective aspects, and presenting why affective computing approaches fit trust issues often addressed by research in this field. We also discuss trust relationships and decision making, emotions, and personality. Affective computing concepts have been used in a dispersed way and specifically in some models, so we aim to bring them together to encourage the growth of fuller trust models similar to those used by humans. We aim to find relations between both fields so it will be possible to employ such concepts to develop trust models using this new paradigm, defined as the affective paradigm.

The Need for Affective Trust Applied to Trust and Reputation Models

In this article, we address the particular issue of authoring interactive narrative with respect to video-games and interactive storytelling . We first introduce the narrative paradox between interactivity and narrative content in virtual environments and consider its impact on game design and development. We then introduce the concept of the Emergent Narrative (EN) and the particular phil osophy it has been developed upon. Finally, we describe an authoring process for this approach that reflects on the characteristics of interacting within such a narrat ive framework.

Authoring emergent narrative-based games

For the past few years, the storytelling research domain has raised the interest of several researchers from different areas (such as interactive drama, computer games, intelligent learning environment etc.), mainly because stories are an important vehicle to structure the human knowledge and past experience, and even to help people to behave in a social context. In this paper, we present a storytelling approach, which is based on the premise that story and narrative may emerge from characters’ interactions during the creation activity, but such characters may either act autonomously or be controlled by children. Since we position our research in an educational context, we argue that in such creation activities children’s thoughts and needs must be respected and contribute directly to the achievement of the story. Therefore, children should be provided with some support and guidance directives to help them to better understand and reflect on the role-taking situations they experience during such activity. To prove the validity of our approach we developed a generic architecture—Support And Guidance Architecture (SAGA). SAGA aims not only to provide support and guidance to children during the story telling activities, by combining the roles of a dynamic script writer and a drama manager, but also to provide such services to already existing story creation applications. To illustrate this, we have integrated SAGA with Teatrix, a collaborative virtual environment for story creation, and an evaluation study was conducted in order to find the impact of SAGA in children’s storytelling activities.

Tell Me a Story

Characters that cross dimensions have elicited an avid interest in literature and cinema. In analogy to these characters, we explore the concept of migration: Process by which an agent moves between embodiments, being active in only one at a time. We developed an autonomous artificial pet with two embodiments: A virtual within a smartphone and a physical robotic embodiment. Considering that owners' interactions with real pets lead to emotional attachment and potentially related health benefits, we conducted a user study with elementary school students to assess their attachment to the prototype and how natural they felt the interaction was. By the end of the experiment children felt closer to the artificial pet and 43.3% considered the two embodiments to correspond to the same entity, although migration was never explained to them. As a result, this paper presents a novel generic methodology that allows the evaluation of other implemented prototypes that support migration. Furthermore, we created a set of design guidelines for migrating agents.

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Migration between two embodiments of an artificial pet

Environment expression is about going beyond the usual Human emotion expression channels in virtual worlds. This work proposes an integrated storytelling model – the environment expression model – capable of expressing emotions through three channels: cinematography, illumination and music. Stories are organized into prioritized points of interest which can be characters or dialogues. Characters synthesize cognitive emotions based on the OCC emotion theory. Dialogues have collective emotional states which reflect the participant’s emotional state. During storytelling, at each instant, the highest prioritypoint of interest is focused through the expression channels. The cinematography channel and the illumination channel reflect the point of interest’s strongest emotion type and intensity. The music channel reflectsthe valence of the point of interest’s mood. Finally, a study was conducted to evaluate the model. Results confirm the influence of environment expression on emotion perception and reveal moderate success of this work’s approach.

Ana Paiva

Papers

The Need for Affective Trust Applied to Trust and Reputation Models

Authoring emergent narrative-based games

Tell Me a Story

Migration between two embodiments of an artificial pet

Environment expression: expressing emotions through cameras, lights and music