1,725,790 research outputs found
American Society of Mechanical Engineers honors Srinath Ekkad with Fellowship
No full textAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers names Srinath Ekkad, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, as a Fellow of ASME.</p
Strategic issues in the emerging world order
No full textThis lecture was delivered by Dr Srinath Raghavan during the First NIAS-DST Training Programme on ‘Impact of Globalisation’ held during October 20-24, 200
Author Correction Large spontaneous exchange bias in a weak ferromagnet Pb 6 Ni 9 (TeO 6 ) 5 (Scientific Reports, (2017), 7, 1, (8300), 10.1038/s41598-017-09056-w)
No full textIn the original version of this Article, Binoy Krishna Hazra and S. Srinath were incorrectly affiliated with ‘Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, TIRUPATI, 517506, India’. The correct affiliation is listed below School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 500046, India This error has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article, and in the accompanying Supplementary Information file. © 2019, The Author(s)
Professional doctorates: applicability to the construction industry in increasing societal resilience to disasters
No full textWith the increase in occurrence of high impact disasters, the role of Higher Education Institutes
(HEIs) in enhancing the disaster related knowledge and skills of construction professionals is
highly recognised. HEIs are expected to contribute to both theory and practice in the development
of societal resilience to disasters through the development of curricular and modules to update the knowledge and skills that employees have obtained in the past. Doctoral education is identified as one of the methods in upgrading the knowledge of the construction professionals in this regard.
Due to the shortcomings of the traditional doctoral programmes in addressing the needs of the
industry and professionals, professional doctorates have become increasingly recognised. As such professional doctoral programmes have been considered as more appropriate in developing
knowledge and skills of the construction professionals. Accordingly, a EU funded project,
CADRE, aims to develop and test an innovative professional doctoral programme that integrates
professional and academic knowledge in the construction industry to develop societal resilience to disasters. As part of this project, the paper aims to analyse the applicability of professional doctorates to the construction industry in developing societal resilience. Based on an extensive review of literature, paper introduces the concept of professional doctoral programmes and its applicability to the construction industry in developing societal resilience
AI and the sense of self
No full textAfter several winters, AI is center-stage once again, with current advances enabling a vast array of AI applications. This renewed wave of AI has brought back to the fore several questions from the past, about philosophical foundations of intelligence and common sense -- predominantly motivated by ethical concerns of AI decision-making. In this paper, we address some of the arguments that led to research interest in intelligent agents, and argue for their relevance even in today's context. Specifically we focus on the cognitive sense of "self" and its role in autonomous decision-making leading to responsible behaviour. The authors hope to make a case for greater research interest in building richer computational models of AI agents with a sense of self
The Evolution of Computational Agency
No full textAgent-based models have emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing ever increasing complexity of information systems. In its initial days in the 1990s when object-oriented modeling was at its peak, an agent was treated as a special kind of "object" that had a persistent state and its own independent thread of execution. Since then, agent-based models have diversified enormously to even open new conceptual insights about the nature of systems in general. This paper presents a perspective on the disparate ways in which our understanding of agency, as well as computational models of agency have evolved. Advances in hardware like GPUs, that brought neural networks back to life, may also similarly infuse new life into agent-based models, as well as pave the way for advancements in research on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Experimental characterisation of large scale structures in a high Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer
No full textA very large field of view (4δ x 1δ) with a good spatial resolution owing to the use of four 2k x 2k pixel cameras was conducted in a flat plate boundary layer at two Reynolds numbers (Reθ ≈7,500 and 20,000). Comparing the flow statistics with previously obtained hot-wire data under similar flow conditions show good agreement. The goal of this experiment is to detect and characterise the large scale motions which develop in the log region of a high Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer
Cooperation and the globalization-localization dilemmas
No full textEvolution of cooperation among self-interested agents is revisited in this paper in the context of globalization and localization. A globalized society is characterized by disentrenchment—or routine interactions between strangers across subcultures. Such interactions are rich in novelty, but also have high levels of distrust and insecurity. A localized society is comprised of clusters of subcultures where most social interactions happen. Each tightly knit subculture is rich in mutual familiarity and trust, but not conducive to the spread of novel ideas. A second dimension is that of utilitarian knowledge. Historically, social acquaintances were the primary (if not the only) source of utilitarian knowledge. With technologies like the internet, diffusion of utilitarian knowledge in a society is no longer modulated by acquaintance networks. This leads us to two different forms of (dis)entrenchment: (dis)entrenchment of knowledge and (dis)entrenchment of acquaintance, leading to four societal configurations. This paper asks how each of the configurations fares with respect to the evolution of cooperation. Entrenchment is represented using well-known network models from the literature, and evolution of cooperation is modeled by the evolutionary version of the iterated prisoners’ dilemma game. Based on simulation runs, we note that acquaintance and knowledge are characteristically different aspects. We find that disentrenched knowledge is more conducive for evolution of cooperation in networks rather than disentrenched acquaintances
Computational Transcendence: Responsibility and agency
No full textEmergence of responsible behavior is explored in non-cooperative games involving autonomous agents. Rather than imposing constraints or external reinforcements, agents are endowed with an elastic “sense of self” or an elastic identity that they curate based on rational considerations. This approach is called “computational transcendence (CT).” We show that agents using this model make choices for collective welfare instead of individual benefit. First, relevance of this model in game theoretic contexts like Prisoners’ dilemma and collusion is presented. Next, a generic multi-agent framework for simulating dilemmas around responsible agency is also proposed. CT implemented on this framework, is shown to be versatile in acting responsibly to different kinds of circumstances–including modifying their strategy based on their interaction with other agents in the system as well as interacting with adversaries that are rational maximizers, and who have a rationale to exploit responsible behavior from other agents. CT is also shown to outperform reciprocity as a strategy for responsible autonomy. Thus, we present CT as a framework for building autonomous agents which can intrinsically act responsibly in multi-agent systems. The core model for computational ethics presented in this paper can potentially be adapted to the needs of applications in areas like supply chains, traffic management, and autonomous vehicles. This paper hopes to motivate further research on responsible AI, by exploring computational modeling of this elusive concept called the “sense of self” that is a central element of existential inquiry in humans
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