Mingzhang Zhu, Alvin Zhu, Jose Victor S. H. Ramos
et al.
Scalable learning of dexterous manipulation remains bottlenecked by the difficulty of collecting natural, high-fidelity human demonstrations of multi-finger hands due to occlusion, complex hand kinematics, and contact-rich interactions. We present WHED, a wearable hand-exoskeleton system designed for in-the-wild demonstration capture, guided by two principles: wearability-first operation for extended use and a pose-tolerant, free-to-move thumb coupling that preserves natural thumb behaviors while maintaining a consistent mapping to the target robot thumb degrees of freedom. WHED integrates a linkage-driven finger interface with passive fit accommodation, a modified passive hand with robust proprioceptive sensing, and an onboard sensing/power module. We also provide an end-to-end data pipeline that synchronizes joint encoders, AR-based end-effector pose, and wrist-mounted visual observations, and supports post-processing for time alignment and replay. We demonstrate feasibility on representative grasping and manipulation sequences spanning precision pinch and full-hand enclosure grasps, and show qualitative consistency between collected demonstrations and replayed executions.
Richard I. Vane-Wright, John D. Taylor, John Jackson
In 1989, John Fordyce Peake (1933–2024) became the first Associate Director for Science at London’s world-famous Natural History Museum (NHMUK). Often considered controversial, Peake was influential throughout his career, proposing and adopting many innovations in collections practice, including data acquisition, storage and management, and general museum policy – not only in the UK but also internationally, following the emergence of biodiversity as a global matter of concern. In his youth, Peake was inspired by the natural history and ecology of the North Norfolk coast, which led to a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1955 and then, from 1959 until his retirement in 1992, a distinguished museum career. This paper presents an overview of John Peake’s early life, formal education, affiliations, fieldwork, zoological research, career as a museologist, and his museum and research activities following retirement.
Museums. Collectors and collecting, Natural history (General)
Schooling fish often self-organize into a variety of collective patterns, from polarized schooling to rotational milling. Mathematical models support the emergence of these large-scale patterns from local decentralized interactions, in the absence of individual memory and group leadership. In a popular model where individual fish interact locally following rules of avoidance, alignment, and attraction, the group exhibits collective memory: changes in individual behavior lead to emergent patterns that depend on the group's past configurations. However, the mechanisms driving this collective memory remain obscure. Here, we combine numerical simulations with tools from bifurcation theory to uncover that the transition from milling to schooling in this model is driven by a noisy transcritical bifurcation where the two collective states intersect and exchange stability. We further show that key features of the group dynamics - the bifurcation character, transient milling, and collective memory - can be captured by a phenomenological model of the group polarization. Our findings demonstrate that collective memory arises from a noisy bifurcation rather than from structural bistability, thus resolving a long-standing ambiguity about its origins and contributing fundamental understanding to collective phase transitions in a prevalent model of fish schooling.
Augusto Júnior Macucule, Marta Lígia Pomim Valentim
Resumo Analisa-se a estrutura conceitual de informação, conhecimento e inteligência organizacional no âmbito da Ciência da Informação, a partir do campo de pesquisa da gestão do conhecimento. A gestão do conhecimento como ponto de partida e de encontro para a reflexão dos referenciais epistemológicos da informação, conhecimento e inteligência organizacional, de modo a elucidar as diferenças e semelhanças conceituais. A inteligência organizacional pode ser intercambiável com a noção de gestão do conhecimento, uma vez que ambas se valem da mesma matéria prima: dados, informação e conhecimento. Do ponto de vista metodológico o trabalho recorreu à revisão da literatura, majoritariamente fez uso de artigos do campo da Ciência da Informação que abordam os conceitos de informação, conhecimento e inteligência organizacional, incluindo referencias teóricos do campo de estudo da gestão do conhecimento e nas disciplinas que recorrem à gestão do conhecimento para a construção do conhecimento disciplinar e interdisciplinar. A construção de conhecimento organizacional tem se alicerçado nos dados, na informação, no conhecimento e na inteligência gerado coletivamente em contextos organizacionais. A clarificação de conceitos intercambiáveis e difusos, tais como: informação, conhecimento, inteligência organizacional e conceitos correlatos parecem ganhar clareza no contexto interdisciplinar oriundo do campo de pesquisa da gestão do conhecimento, bem como da organização do conhecimento, que também intercambiam perspectivas e referenciais teóricos interdisciplinares. A realidade epistemológica dos proponentes do campo de pesquisa da gestão de conhecimento, bem como da organização do conhecimento, procura demarcar o campo com aportes epistemológicos orientais, sem divergir das abordagens ocidentais de construção de conhecimento organizacional, com exemplos empíricos da realidade organizacional e intelectual oriental e ocidental.
Museums. Collectors and collecting, Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
Bohan Wu-Zhang, Dmitry A. Fedosov, Gerhard Gompper
Bacteria in biofilms form complex structures and can collectively migrate within mobile aggregates, which is referred to as swarming. This behavior is influenced by a combination of various factors, including morphological characteristics and propulsive forces of swimmers, their volume fraction within a confined environment, and hydrodynamic and steric interactions between them. In our study, we employ the squirmer model for microswimmers and the dissipative particle dynamics method for fluid modeling to investigate the collective motion of swimmers in thin films. The film thickness permits a free orientation of non-spherical squirmers, but constraints them to form a two-layered structure at maximum. Structural and dynamic properties of squirmer suspensions confined within the slit are analyzed for different volume fractions of swimmers, motility types (e.g., pusher, neutral squirmer, puller), and the presence of a rotlet dipolar flow field, which mimics the counter-rotating flow generated by flagellated bacteria. Different states are characterized, including a gas-like phase, swarming, and motility-induced phase separation, as a function of increasing volume fraction. Our study highlights the importance of an anisotropic swimmer shape, hydrodynamic interactions between squirmers, and their interaction with the walls for the emergence of different collective behaviors. Interestingly, the formation of collective structures may not be symmetric with respect to the two walls. Furthermore, the presence of a rotlet dipole significantly mitigates differences in the collective behavior between various swimmer types. These results contribute to a better understanding of the formation of bacterial biofilms and the emergence of collective states in confined active matter.
Mert Hidayetoglu, Simon Garcia de Gonzalo, Elliott Slaughter
et al.
HiCCL (Hierarchical Collective Communication Library) addresses the growing complexity and diversity in high-performance network architectures. As GPU systems have envolved into networks of GPUs with different multilevel communication hierarchies, optimizing each collective function for a specific system has become a challenging task. Consequently, many collective libraries struggle to adapt to different hardware and software, especially across systems from different vendors. HiCCL's library design decouples the collective communication logic from network-specific optimizations through a compositional API. The communication logic is composed using multicast, reduction, and fence primitives, which are then factorized for a specified network hieararchy using only point-to-point operations within a level. Finally, striping and pipelining optimizations applied as specified for streamlining the execution. Performance evaluation of HiCCL across four different machines$\unicode{x2014}$two with Nvidia GPUs, one with AMD GPUs, and one with Intel GPUs$\unicode{x2014}$demonstrates an average 17$\times$ higher throughput than the collectives of highly specialized GPU-aware MPI implementations, and competitive throughput with those of vendor-specific libraries (NCCL, RCCL, and OneCCL), while providing portability across all four machines.
Efficient patient-doctor interaction is among the key factors for a successful disease diagnosis. During the conversation, the doctor could query complementary diagnostic information, such as the patient's symptoms, previous surgery, and other related information that goes beyond medical evidence data (test results) to enhance disease diagnosis. However, this procedure is usually time-consuming and less-efficient, which can be potentially optimized through computer-assisted systems. As such, we propose a diagnostic dialogue system to automate the patient information collection procedure. By exploiting medical history and conversation logic, our conversation agents, particularly the doctor agent, can pose multi-round clinical queries to effectively collect the most relevant disease diagnostic information. Moreover, benefiting from our two-stage recommendation structure, carefully designed ranking criteria, and interactive patient agent, our model is able to overcome the under-exploration and non-flexible challenges in dialogue generation. Our experimental results on a real-world medical conversation dataset show that our model can generate clinical queries that mimic the conversation style of real doctors, with efficient fluency, professionalism, and safety, while effectively collecting relevant disease diagnostic information.
Seven new species of Cirratulidae are described from deep waters off the east coast of Australia. Samples were collected as part of the RV Investigator voyage IN2017_V03 in May/June 2017 using a Brenke sledge and 0.25 m2 box core. Sample depths reported in the present study were from the lower continental slope of about 2100 m to abyssal depths up to 4170 m. These collections provide the first cirratulid polychaetes to be described from deep water off Australia. The new species of Cirratulidae are in the genera Aphelochaeta (2), Chaetocirratulus (2), Chaetozone (2), and Kirkegaardia (1). Each of the new species is compared and contrasted with their known congeners. The bitentaculate Cirratulidae known from abyssal depths of 3000 m and greater are reviewed and discussed.
Raquel Acaz Mendive, María Alonso Lescún, Beatriz Campderá Gutiérrez
et al.
La reapertura de la sala de Reinos Cristianos del Museo Arqueológico Nacional viene acompañada de novedades museográficas. Transcurridos diez años de su inauguración en 2014, las necesidades de conservación preventiva y las nuevas adquisiciones han llevado a remodelaciones expositivas en las que han estado implicados los diferentes departamentos y agentes que firman esta contribución
History of the arts, Museums. Collectors and collecting
The border between Spain and Portugal is a vast cultural space of great heritage interest, characterized by the existence of historically shared traditions and social practices. This article analyses, in the geographical context of two clearly delimited territories in the Spanish-Portuguese north-eastern stripe (the “Meseta Ibérica” and “Gerês-Xurés” Transfrontier Biosphere Reserves), two museological spaces included within a broader inventory: the Mixed Couto Interpretation Centre and the Touro House. These cases are chosen because they constitute institutional projects that respond to territorial heritage processes around community customs and historical self-government practices that took place in this border area, between Tras-Os-Montes (Portugal), Zamora and Ourense. (Spain). The objective of this paper is to highlight the social function of small local museums on the border and propose new relationships with their cultural heritage. We use qualitative methodology, carrying out field visits and informal interviews, to learn about the processes and difficulties of these projects. From the case studies, a desire of the inhabitants of small towns to safeguard and disseminate their social memory emerges; However, we identify a lack of cultural and pedagogical action that relates these heritages to contemporary problems. To conclude, we propose possible lines of action from which to generate critical approaches to heritage that allow us to imagine more sustainable and solidary futures.
The identity of Melita festiva (Chilton, 1885) is established with the redescription and re-illustration of material collected from near the type locality Port Jackson [Sydney Harbour], New South Wales, Australia. In 1916, Chilton supplemented the original description, using misidentified material from Auckland Harbour, New Zealand. This material is described as Melita lowryi sp. nov. Melita festiva (Chilton, 1885) was tentatively placed in the genus Ledoyeromelita Labay, 2016, based on tenuous evidence and the reasons for the exclusion of Melita festiva based on current redescriptions are discussed. Melita festiva was previously known only from the type locality. New Australian distribution records extend its range to southern New South Wales and Victoria.
Conor Heins, Beren Millidge, Lancelot da Costa
et al.
Collective motion is ubiquitous in nature; groups of animals, such as fish, birds, and ungulates appear to move as a whole, exhibiting a rich behavioral repertoire that ranges from directed movement to milling to disordered swarming. Typically, such macroscopic patterns arise from decentralized, local interactions among constituent components (e.g., individual fish in a school). Preeminent models of this process describe individuals as self-propelled particles, subject to self-generated motion and 'social forces' such as short-range repulsion and long-range attraction or alignment. However, organisms are not particles; they are probabilistic decision-makers. Here, we introduce an approach to modelling collective behavior based on active inference. This cognitive framework casts behavior as the consequence of a single imperative: to minimize surprise. We demonstrate that many empirically-observed collective phenomena, including cohesion, milling and directed motion, emerge naturally when considering behavior as driven by active Bayesian inference -- without explicitly building behavioral rules or goals into individual agents. Furthermore, we show that active inference can recover and generalize the classical notion of social forces as agents attempt to suppress prediction errors that conflict with their expectations. By exploring the parameter space of the belief-based model, we reveal non-trivial relationships between the individual beliefs and group properties like polarization and the tendency to visit different collective states. We also explore how individual beliefs about uncertainty determine collective decision-making accuracy. Finally, we show how agents can update their generative model over time, resulting in groups that are collectively more sensitive to external fluctuations and encode information more robustly.
PurposeThis study aims to elucidate the role of nostalgia in collecting behavior and evaluate its effects during the collecting process in the context of an online collecting community.Design/methodology/approachA netnographic study was conducted to enhance the understanding of the online collecting community for vintage toys on YouTube. The study analyzed more than 40,000 comments from 9,028 users. Data were then analyzed, codified and grouped to determine the coexistence of collecting and nostalgia within the community.FindingsNostalgia influences collecting mainly in three stages: beginning of a collection, progression of a collection and the end of the collecting process (as a barrier). Additionally, new information about collecting behavior is presented: Collectors are mainly influenced by the people around them during the collecting process, and they are highly oriented toward obtaining information about pieces in their collection.Originality/valueThis study builds on the premise of nostalgia as a motivator for collecting and describes its effect in depth during the collecting process. Specifically, netnography was used to analyze this phenomenon within the context of the online collecting community.
Caliel Cardoso de OLIVEIRA, Maurício Coelho da SILVA, Caterina Marta Groposo PAVÃO
et al.
Resumo: Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, de caráter qualitativo, que buscou identificar o estado da arte acerca da teoria da citação dos dados na produção científica conduzida na América Latina. Para tanto, foram estabelecidas expressões em português, inglês e espanhol acerca da referida temática, que foram utilizadas para explorar as seguintes bases de dados, repositórios e buscadores: Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações, OasisBR, La referencia, Redalyc, Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, Portal de Periódicos Capes, Google Acadêmico, SciELO e Brapci (Base de Dados Referenciais de Artigos de Periódicos em Ciência da Informação). Após a análise dos trabalhos recuperados, foram considerados somente aqueles que discutiam a temática de citação de dados de pesquisa de maneira aprofundada, com a finalidade de contribuírem para a reflexão acerca de uma teoria da citação de dados, totalizando 19 trabalhos. Conclui-se que existe uma ausência significativa de trabalhos na América Latina concernente à teoria da citação de dados, ao mesmo tempo em que foram identificados trabalhos que, embora não se refiram a uma teoria propriamente, oferecem contribuições significativas para a temática de citação de dados de pesquisa e que podem servir de base para o desenvolvimento de trabalhos sobre a teoria da citação de dados. Constatou-se ainda que o Brasil se destacou na produção de trabalhos sobre citação de dados de pesquisa, sendo que dos 19 trabalhos analisados nesta pesquisa, 17 eram produções brasileiras.
Museums. Collectors and collecting, Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
New or not new to experimental archaeology and microwear methodology in archaeology? Pots and Practices presents a succinct methodology to the analysis developed by archaeologists and a practicing ceramic artist, an investigation into working together on the relationship between two sites, their similarities and differences. Use-wear analysis insights are demonstrated by recreating vessels from the two sites by seven universities working together.
O artigo propõe uma base teórico-semiótica para representação descritiva e temática de figurinos de ópera. Trata-se de uma pesquisa vinculada a um projeto institucional desenvolvido na Universidade Federal do Amazonas para criação de um Catálogo Virtual da Ópera Manauara. Tem como objetivo a elaboração de uma ferramenta de representação descritiva e temática para figurinos de ópera. A pesquisa utiliza-se da semiótica da cultura para embasamento teórico da ferramenta proposta. A ficha elaborada foi aplicada a um total de 48 espetáculos de ópera e quatro musicais realizados entre os anos de 1997 e 2011 por ocasião do Festival Amazonas de Ópera. Espera-se, desta feita, contribuir para o resgate e manutenção do patrimônio artístico e cultural da cidade de Manaus, de modo a proporcionar sua recuperabilidade em sistemas de informação.
Diplomatics. Archives. Seals, Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
Within the human-robot interaction (HRI) community, many researchers have focused on the careful design of human-subjects studies. However, other parts of the community, e.g., the technical advances community, also need to do human-subjects studies to collect data to train their models, in ways that require user studies but without a strict experimental design. The design of such data collection is an underexplored area worthy of more attention. In this work, we contribute a clearly defined process to collect data with three steps for machine learning modeling purposes, grounded in recent literature, and detail an use of this process to facilitate the collection of a corpus of referring expressions. Specifically, we discuss our data collection goal and how we worked to encourage well-covered and abundant participant responses, through our design of the task environment, the task itself, and the study procedure. We hope this work would lead to more data collection formalism efforts in the HRI community and a fruitful discussion during the workshop.
Christopher Blier-Wong, Hélène Cossette, Etienne Marceau
We study copula-based collective risk models when the dependence structure is defined by a Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern (FGM) copula. By leveraging a one-to-one correspondence between the class of FGM copulas and multivariate symmetric Bernoulli distributions, we find convenient representations for the moments and Laplace-Stieltjes transform for the aggregate random variable defined from collective risk models with FGM dependence. We examine different components of this collective risk model, aiming to better understand the impact of the assumed dependence between a claim's frequency and severity. Relying on stochastic ordering, we analyze the impact of dependence on the aggregate claim amount random variable. Even if the FGM copula may only induce moderate dependence, we illustrate through numerical examples that the cumulative effect of FGM dependence can lead to substantial variations in key risk measures on aggregate random variables defined from collective risk models.
American university museums became important institutions for the study and popularisation of Byzantine art in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Largely confined to major East Coast universities, university museums, led by Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks, acquired significant amount of Byzantine art between the two World Wars and sponsored excavations. For the most part this interest was motivated not from personal connections with Greek culture or the lands of the Byzantine Empire, but because of the aesthetic significance and scholarly interest of this art. The French and English Mandates in Syria and Palestine aided these acquisitions, a colonial heritage of Byzantine studies that has remained little studied.