When Sentiment Gives Way to Common Sense" The Emergent Joint Training Culture within the U.S. Military""

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose M. Robles
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Jörg Richter ◽  
Jurij Poelchau

A crucial experience during my time at university— computer science (with focus on AI) and linguistics—was the documentary “Maschinenträume” (1988) by Peter Krieg. It features the long-term AI project “Cyc,” in which Doug Lenat and his team try to represent common sense knowledge in a computer. When Cyc started, in 1984, it was already known that many AI projects failed due to the machine’s lack of common sense knowledge. Common sense knowledge includes, for example, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, or that people die, or what happens at a children’s birthday party. During the night, while the researchers are sleeping, Cyc tries to create new knowledge from its programmed facts and rules. One morning the researchers were surprised by one of Cyc’s new findings: “Most people are famous.” Well, this was simply a result of the researchers having entered, besides themselves, only celebrities like, for example, Einstein, Gandhi, and the U.S. presidents. The machine-dreaming researchers, however, were in no way despondent about this obviously wrong finding, because they figured they would only have to enter the rest of the population, too. The underlying principle behind this thought is that it is possible to model the whole world in the form of ontologies. The meaning of the world can be captured in its entirety in the computer. From that moment the computer can know everything that humans know and can produce unlimited new insights. At the end of the film Peter Krieg nevertheless asks: “If one day the knowledge of the whole world is represented in a machine, what can humans do with it, the machine having never seen the world.”


2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 711-714
Author(s):  
Heather A. Parker-Hall ◽  
Timothy P. Holmes ◽  
Norma A. Hernandez Ramirez

ABSTRACT Exercise and evaluation of the Pacific Annex of the Joint Contingency Plan Between the United Mexican States and the United States of America Regarding Pollution of the Marine Environment by Discharges of Hydrocarbons or Other Hazardous Substances (MEXUSPLAN) uncovered a significant need for joint training between spill responders, planners, decision-makers and stakeholders on both sides of our border. Sponsored by U.S. Coast Guard District 11 (USCG Dll) and the Second Mexican Naval Zone (ZN2), a series of training sessions were held for Mexican officials from the Northern Baja California region and Mexico City in early 2003. The first of these well-attended sessions was held in two locations: San Diego, CA and Ensenada, Mexico in February 2003. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hazmat facilitated the first session, the Joint Mexico-United States Oil Spill Science Forum. It provided a scientific view of oil spills. The following joint session facilitated by USCG Dll and held in Ensenada was a tabletop exercise designed in preparation for the signing of the MEXUSPAC Annex. Through the use of a spill drill scenario, this session included instruction and dialogue about the roles and responsibilities of both U.S. and Mexican spill responders. Both sessions included presentations from several agencies of the Regional Response Team IX/Joint Response Team: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, U.S. Dept. of the Interior and California's Office of Spill Prevention and Response. Industry partners also contributed topics of discussion, further complementing the U.S. response landscape. Mexican response agencies, including PEMEX, SAGARPA, SEMARNAT and PROFEPA, provided valuable input ensuring dialogue helping to identify additional joint response gaps. Upon the most significant gaps brought to light was the need for additional information regarding dispersant use by Mexican agencies, particularly in light of the approaching international SONS Exercise in April 2004. To this end, USCG Dll and NOAA HAZMAT developed and presented a modified Ecological Risk Assessment for their Mexican counterparts. Hosted by ZN2 in October 2003, this highly successful workshop brought together many key decision makers, planners and stakeholders from both sides of the border to discuss tradeoffs inherent in the use of existing spill response tools, including dispersants. Joint training and discussion sessions such as these are key to ensuring any measure of success in a joint spill response. Several additional training and discussion topics designed for the Mexican-U.S. joint response forum have been identified with many in the planning phase. Acknowledging the similarities as well as differences in response systems of our two nations' is essential to the success of these joint collaborations. Such continued efforts will help bridge existing gaps.


Author(s):  
Annelise Orleck

By telling the story of working women’s involvement in the campaign for woman suffrage in the U.S., this chapter shatters the conventional notion that the women’s suffrage movement was merely a middle-class project. Tracing how the “Common Sense of working women” was cast in opposition to the “sentimentality of Senators,” this chapter offers a fresh interpretation of suffrage history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2017 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane C Burns

[first paragraph of article]The mainstay of therapy for acute Kawasaki disease (KD) is intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), which was first described in a case series from Japan and later proven through a nationwide clinical trial in the U.S. published in 1986. Since completion of the initial clinical trials, many questions have arisen regarding the nuances of KD treatment. In the absence of an evidence base, what follows is an attempt to devise rational responses to these questions that draw upon common sense and the personal experience of this author. 


Author(s):  
R. D. Heidenreich

This program has been organized by the EMSA to commensurate the 50th anniversary of the experimental verification of the wave nature of the electron. Davisson and Germer in the U.S. and Thomson and Reid in Britian accomplished this at about the same time. Their findings were published in Nature in 1927 by mutual agreement since their independent efforts had led to the same conclusion at about the same time. In 1937 Davisson and Thomson shared the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating the wave nature of the electron deduced in 1924 by Louis de Broglie.The Davisson experiments (1921-1927) were concerned with the angular distribution of secondary electron emission from nickel surfaces produced by 150 volt primary electrons. The motivation was the effect of secondary emission on the characteristics of vacuum tubes but significant deviations from the results expected for a corpuscular electron led to a diffraction interpretation suggested by Elasser in 1925.


Author(s):  
Eugene J. Amaral

Examination of sand grain surfaces from early Paleozoic sandstones by electron microscopy reveals a variety of secondary effects caused by rock-forming processes after final deposition of the sand. Detailed studies were conducted on both coarse (≥0.71mm) and fine (=0.25mm) fractions of St. Peter Sandstone, a widespread sand deposit underlying much of the U.S. Central Interior and used in the glass industry because of its remarkably high silica purity.The very friable sandstone was disaggregated and sieved to obtain the two size fractions, and then cleaned by boiling in HCl to remove any iron impurities and rinsed in distilled water. The sand grains were then partially embedded by sprinkling them onto a glass slide coated with a thin tacky layer of latex. Direct platinum shadowed carbon replicas were made of the exposed sand grain surfaces, and were separated by dissolution of the silica in HF acid.


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