Etologicamente, os animais expressam repostas de medo frente a um predador ou a um co-especifico e a organização neural de respostas defensivas intraespecíficas são pouco conhecidas. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho foi estudar o papel hipotalâmico na organização da defesa intraespecífica. Observamos que o núcleo pré-mamilar dorsal do hipotálamo também está ativo durante nesse tipo de defesa, porém porções distintas do mesmo. A lesão desse núcleo em ratos expostos a derrota social levou a importantes alterações comportamentais, praticamente abolindo comportamentos de defesa passiva. Notamos que regiões do hipotálamo lateral são as principais projeções aferentes do núcleo pré-mamilar dorsal e o principal alvo eferente é a coluna dorsomedial da matéria cinzenta periaquedutal. Concluímos que o hipotálamo é fundamental para a organização da defesa intraespecífica e que comportamentos defensivos inter e intra-específicos se utilizam de caminhos neurais distintos. / In nature, animals express fear responses toward a predator or a co-specific and not much is known about the neural organization of intra-specific defense. Therefore, the aim of this work was to analyze the role that the hypothalamus plays during the intra-specific defense expression. We observed that the dorsal premammilary nucleus is also mobilized during the agonistic encounter, but a different portion. Dorsal premammilary nucleus lesioned intruders led to important defense alterations, almost abolishing passive forms of defensive behavior. Notably, regions in lateral hypothalamus are particularly important for activating the dorsal premammilary nucleus and its efferent projection to the dorsomedial column of periaqueductal gray matter is the most important outcome for the defensive behavior expression. Concluding, the hypothalamus is fundamental for the neural organization of intra-specific defense and inter and intra-specific defensive behaviors are organized by distinct neural pathways.

Web accessibility guidelines have textual representation and provide little support in systematic analysis and usage. The study hypothesizes that the guidelines can be reorganized and represented using the goal oriented technique and design patterns which will allow their usage in a more systematic manner and accommodate detailed analysis of the guidelines with other competing goals. For this study, knowledge from web designers’ experiences in using the guidelines, researchers’ findings, and the actual guidelines have been amalgamated. Six web designers have been consulted on a one-on-one basis and difficulties in using the guidelines for (1) specific scenarios, (2) systematic application, and (3) detailed systems analysis have been reported. Goal oriented modeling and design patterns have been introduced for (1) graphical representation of the guidelines using goal graphs, and (2) keeping the technical details separate from the goal graphs. The proposed representation allows for the accessibility guidelines to be systematically applied into interface design, and systems design using the goal oriented modeling technique.

Web accessibility guidelines have textual representation and provide little support in systematic analysis and usage. The study hypothesizes that the guidelines can be reorganized and represented using the goal oriented technique and design patterns which will allow their usage in a more systematic manner and accommodate detailed analysis of the guidelines with other competing goals. For this study, knowledge from web designers’ experiences in using the guidelines, researchers’ findings, and the actual guidelines have been amalgamated. Six web designers have been consulted on a one-on-one basis and difficulties in using the guidelines for (1) specific scenarios, (2) systematic application, and (3) detailed systems analysis have been reported. Goal oriented modeling and design patterns have been introduced for (1) graphical representation of the guidelines using goal graphs, and (2) keeping the technical details separate from the goal graphs. The proposed representation allows for the accessibility guidelines to be systematically applied into interface design, and systems design using the goal oriented modeling technique.

<p>An entity capable of assessing its and others action capabilities possess the power to predict how the involved entities may change their world. Through this knowledge and higher level of situation awareness, the assessing entity may choose the actions that have the most suitable effect, resulting in that entity’s desired world state.</p><p>This thesis covers aspects and concepts of an arbitrary planning system and presents a threat analyzer architecture built on the novel planning system Goal-Oriented Action Planning (GOAP). This planning system has been suggested for an application for improved missile route planning and targeting, as well as being applied in contemporary computer games such as F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Assault Recon and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. The GOAP architecture realized in this project is utilized by two agents that perform action planning to reach their desired world states. One of the agents employs a modified GOAP planner used as a threat analyzer in order to determine what threat level the adversary agent constitutes. This project does also introduce a conceptual schema of a general planning system that considers orders, doctrine and style; as well as a schema depicting an agent system using a blackboard in conjunction with the OODA-loop.</p>

Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches are widely used in several domains such as telecommunications systems, information systems, and even regulatory compliance. However, they are rarely applied in healthcare beyond requirements elicitation. Healthcare is a multidisciplinary environment in which clinical processes are often performed across multiple units. Introducing a new Information Technology (IT) system or a new process in such an environment is a very challenging task, especially in the absence of recognized RE practices. Currently, many IT systems are not welcomed by caregivers and are considered to be failures because they change what caregivers are familiar with and bring new tasks that often consume additional time. This thesis introduces a new RE-based approach aiming to evaluate and estimate the potential impact of new system integrations on current practices, organizational goals,and user satisfaction using goal modelling and process modelling techniques. This approach is validated with two case studies conducted in real hospitals and a usability study involving healthcare practitioners. The contributions of the thesis are: • Major: a novel Activity-based Process Integration (AbPI) framework that enables the integration of a new process into existing practices incrementally, in a way that permits continuous analysis and evaluation. AbPI also provides several alternatives to a given integration to ensure effective flowing and minimal disturbance to current practices. AbPI has a Goal Integration Method to integrate new goals, an Integration Method to integrate new processes, and an Alternative Evaluation Method exploiting multi-criteria decision-making algorithms to select among strategies. The modelling concepts of AbPI are supported by a profile of the User Requirements Notation augmented with a new distance-based goal-oriented approach to alternative selection and a new data-quality-driven algorithm for the propagation of confidence levels in goal models. • Minor: a usability study of AbPI to investigate the usefulness of the framework in a healthcare context. This usability study is part of the validation and is also a minor contribution due to: 1) the lack of usability studies when proposing requirements engineering frameworks, and 2) an intent to discover the potential usefulness of the framework in a context where recognized RE practices are seldom used.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:06:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5226.pdf: 3993089 bytes, checksum: a0750877fc955b7274271f1326ade7b3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-24 / One of the benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture is to make business processes adaptable when this architecture is adopted during software development. For reaching this purpose, it is essential to have a support for services identification in order to meet the business goals. However, many available services found on web environment are too specific and can hardly be reused in different applications. This happens because there is a lack of systematic approaches for supporting generic services identification in a systematic way. Objective: Presenting a strategy for identifying generic services that support business processes. The identification is supported by Goal Diagrams and Business Process Models and is composed by a set of guidelines which assist the domain engineer in extracting the services. The identified services are generic enough to be reused in similar applications of a specific domain. Methodology: To elaborate our strategy, some domain-specific business process were analyzed, aiming at extracting key tasks and turn them into generic web services. This analysis was supported by an extended version of goal diagrams (GTR) and conventional BPM models. Results: As a proof-of-concept we applied our strategy for identifying services in the planning processes domain and we developed a real e-gov web portal based on the identified services. The web portal was used successfully by two different schools for elaborating their planning processes. Conclusion: We claim that our strategy is generic and can be applied to other business processes providing software suitability to the organization dynamics, besides the potential reuse of services in different instances of the same business process. / Um dos benefícios da Arquitetura Orientada a Serviços é tornar os processos de negócios adaptáveis quando esta arquitetura é adotada durante o desenvolvimento de software. Para atingir este propósito, é essencial ter um suporte para a identificação de serviços a fim de atender os objetivos de negócio. No entanto, muitos serviços disponíveis encontrados no ambiente web dificilmente podem ser reutilizados em diferentes aplicações. Isso acontece porque faltam abordagens sistemáticas de apoio à identificação de serviços genéricos de uma forma sistemática. Objetivo: Apresentar uma estratégia para identificar serviços genéricos que dêem suporte aos processos de negócios. A identificação é apoiada por diagramas de objetivos e modelos de processos de negócios, e é composto por um conjunto de diretrizes que auxiliam o engenheiro de domínio na extração dos serviços. Os serviços identificados são genérico o suficiente para serem reutilizados em aplicações semelhantes de um domínio específico. Metodologia: Para elaborar a nossa estratégia, um processo de negócio específico de domínio foi analisado, com o objetivo de extrair tarefas chaves deste processo e transformá-las em serviços web genéricos. Esta análise foi apoiada por uma versão estendida de diagramas de objetivos (GTR) e modelos BPM convencionais. Resultados: Como prova de conceito, aplicamos a nossa estratégia para a identificação de serviços no domínio do processo de planejamento e desenvolvemos um portal web real com base nos serviços identificados. O portal foi utilizado com sucesso por duas escolas diferentes para a elaboração de seus processos de planejamento. Conclusão: Afirmamos que nossa estratégia é genérica e pode ser aplicada a outros processos de negócios provendo a adequação do software à dinâmica organização, além do potencial de reúso de serviços em diferentes instâncias do mesmo processo de negócio.

This thesis describes the architecture of an adaptive goal-oriented AI system that can be used for Real-Time Strategy games. The system is at the end tested against a single opponent on three different maps with different sizes to test the ability of the AI opposed to the &apos;standard&apos; Finite State Machines and the likes in Real-Time Strategy games. The system consists of a task handler agent that manages all the active and halted tasks. A task is either low-level; used for ordering units, or high-level that can form advanced strategies. The General forms plans that are most beneficial at the moment. For creating effective units against the opponent a priority system is used; where the unit priorities are calculated dynamically. / Den här uppsatsen beskriver en adaptiv målorienterad AI-arkitektur som kan tillämpas på &quot;Real-Time Strategy&quot; spel. Systemet testat mot en annan AI som använder mer traditionella &quot;Finite State Machines&quot; in sin arkitekture. Testet utförs på tre olika banor som är olika stora. Systemet består utav en &quot;Uppgiftshanterare&quot; som har hand om alla aktiva och inaktiva uppgifter. En uppgift kan antingen vara utav låg-nivå, som används för att skicka kommandon till enheterna, eller utav hög-nivå för att göra mer avancerade strategier. Generalen planerar och skapar uppgifter som är mest fördelaktig för tillfället. För att skapa enheter som är effektiva mot fiendens enheter används ett prioritetssystem, där enhetens prioritet kalkyleras ut dynamiskt under spelets gång.

An architecture for actionbased planning and cooperation between multiple AI-agents based on the GOAP-architecture was developed together with a system to be used in advanced AI-courses at Linköping unversity. The architecture was implemented in this system to show the possibilities of our work.

The field of artificial intelligence has gained much knowledge through the implementation of decision-making systems in video games. One of these systems was the Goal Oriented Action Planning system (GOAP) which directs the behavior of an AI-agent through multiple digital artifacts categorized as goals, actions, and plans. The aim of the thesis is to aid in the understanding and creation of GOAP driven AI-agents in a video game setting to promote research on this topic. The research question of this thesis was about finding out how the GOAP architecture compares to other video game decision-making systems. The theoretical framework introduces the concept of the illusion of intelligence in video games and presents a discussion focused on the different components which make up a GOAP system and other components that support it. Additionally, the theoretical framework explains the need for a comparison between different decision-making systems and explains the social impact of game AI research. The methods section introduces the criteria for the comparison between GOAP and other decision-making systems and presents a comparison process that was driven by a literature review. A GOAP system was designed for this thesis using the unified modeling language and concept maps. It was then implemented using C# code in a free-of-charge game engine called Unity. We present the pseudocode for the implementation of the GOAP system and show that this framework is a modular, customizable, and reusable system that enables AI-agents to create plans from a varied set of actions. Finally, the paper suggests further research within game decision-making AI and emphasizes the importance of game AI research for communities of game developers, hobbyists, and others who could benefit from game AI in their projects.

Introduction: Primary care in Flanders is undergoing reform. Researchers are looking at ways to understand the context in order to be able to implement person-centred and goal-oriented care approaches such as reablement. Aim: The aim was to illuminate the lived experiences of older people with chronic conditions and what it means to receive paid care at home. Method: Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, this study aimed to understand the lived experience of someone living at home receiving paid care. Results: Six in depth interviews were analysed generating nine themes and related subthemes. Conclusions: The study illuminated the experiences of six people who received care at home and generated themes around autonomy, adaptability, respect, identity, flexibility, self determination, power, acceptance, and control that reflected the literature and concepts around person-centred and goal-oriented care as well as the importance of the role of occupational therapy. Significance: In the Flemish context, this was the first study looking at the experiences of people living at home with paid care and the chances and barriers to reablement and occupational therapy in the community setting.