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Key feature of a context-aware application is the ability to adapt based on the change of context. Two approaches that are widely used in this regard are the context-action pair mapping where developers match an action to execute for a particular context change and the adaptive learning where a context-aware application refines its action over time based on the preceding action’s outcome. Both these approaches have limitation which makes them unsuitable in situations where a context-aware application has to deal with unknown context changes. In this paper we propose a framework where adaptation is carried out via concurrent multi-action evaluation of a dynamically created action space. This dynamic creation of the action space eliminates the need for relying on the developers to create context-action pairs and the concurrent multi-action evaluation reduces the adaptation time as opposed to the iterative approach used by adaptive learning techniques. Using our reference implementation of the framework we show how it could be used to dynamically determine the threshold price in an e-commerce system which uses the name-your-own-price (NYOP) strategy.

The large number of Web pages on many Web sites has raised\ud navigational problems. Markov chains have recently been used to model user navigational behavior on the World Wide Web (WWW). In this paper, we propose a method for constructing a Markov model of a Web site based on past\ud visitor behavior. We use the Markov model to make link predictions that assist new users to navigate the Web site. An algorithm for transition probability\ud matrix compression has been used to cluster Web pages with similar transition behaviors and compress the transition matrix to an optimal size for efficient probability calculation in link prediction. A maximal forward path method is used to further improve the efficiency of link prediction. Link prediction has been implemented in an online system called ONE (Online Navigation Explorer) to assist users' navigation in the adaptive Web site.

User evaluations of search engines are expensive and not easy to replicate. The problem is even more pronounced when assessing adaptive search systems, for example system-generated query modification suggestions that can be derived from past user interactions with a search engine. Automatically predicting the performance of different modification suggestion models before getting the users involved is therefore highly desirable. AutoEval is an evaluation methodology that assesses the quality of query modifications generated by a model using the query logs of past user interactions with the system. We present experimental results of applying this methodology to different adaptive algorithms which suggest that the predicted quality of different algorithms is in line with user assessments. This makes AutoEval a suitable evaluation framework for adaptive interactive search engines.

This paper describes GET (Graph Editor and Tools), a tool based on Sowa's conceptual structures, which can be used for generic knowledge acquisition and representation. The system enabled the acquisition of semantic information (restrictions) for a lexicon used by a semantic interpreter for Portuguese sentences featuring some deduction capabilities. GET also enables the graphical representation of conceptual relations by incorporating an X-Windows based editor.

Drawing on critical realism, complexity theory, and emergence, this chapter supports the call to re-imagine doctoral writing by arguing that academic writing in general is a complex open and emergent social system that can change. Several reasons to re-imagine doctoral writing are discussed. The first reason is that academic writings already exhibit considerable diversity. This suggests that the conditions of possibility for re-imagining them are already in place and provide a conceptual space from which to further imagine. Second, there are\ud epistemic reasons for re-thinking how we write, as evidenced by research on socio-semiotics. Several examples of doctoral writers\ud who have re-imagined their writing for epistemic reasons are given. To explain how change in social phenomena is possible and how it can continue to be justified, I draw on the theory of complex permeable open systems. These systems are emergent and, as such, allow us to think of social phenomena, such as writing, as non-reductive organic unities whose characteristics emerge from but cannot be reduced to any single constituent feature (such as grammar or lexis). By re-thinking academic writings in this way, we can provide a rationale to explain how they can continue to change. The chapter concludes by sharing the work of scholars engaged in re-imagining doctoral writings. The significance for writing studies is that critical realism offers a systematic and critical space within which to explain change\ud in social phenomena and provides a theoretical foundation for continuing to re-imagine conditions of possibility.

Part 12: Workshops; International audience; The manipulation of information and the dissemination of “fake news” are practices that trace back to the early records of human history. Significant changes in the technological environment enabling ubiquity, immediacy and considerable anonymity, have facilitated the spreading of misinformation in unforeseen ways, raising concerns around people’s (mis)perception of social issues worldwide. As a wicked problem, limiting the harm caused by misinformation goes beyond technical solutions, requiring also regulatory and behavioural changes. This workshop proposes to unpack the challenge at hand by bringing together diverse perspectives to the problem. Based on participatory design principles, it will challenge participants to critically reflect the limits of existing socio-technical approaches and co-create scenarios in which digital platforms support misinformation resilience.

Recent scholarship has tended to focus on the perceived inadequacies of recording to represent live jazz performance. Nevertheless, recordings are dominant in the dissemination of jazz and as such demand our critical attention to understand the social potential of jazz in the twenty-first century. This chapter examines the ability of recordings to influence perceptions of jazz when evaluated in different ways: firstly, retrospectively, for example when writing jazz history; secondly, historically, within their original context (that is at the time at which they were first disseminated); and thirdly, in their present context, when they are encountered by new audiences. In this chapter, these three particular temporal perspectives of listeners are explored in relation to recordings chosen deliberately for their quantifiable status in the jazz canon: ‘Livery Stable Blues’ (1917) recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New Orleans is widely cited as the first jazz recording; Miles Davis’s album Kind of Blue (1959) is understood as the best selling and most popular jazz recording of all time.

In this chapter, I deepen the exploration of care and caring leadership as relationships of power. Connecting with care ethicists’ discussions of the interplay between care and justice, I probe some of the ways in which care can involve and inscribe injustice. This provides some scene-setting for the book as a whole, because many of the chapters engage both explicitly and implicitly\ud with the risk and/or reality of injustice, and how the dynamics of care can bring about advantage and disadvantage for both leaders and followers.