It is becoming more widely acknowledged that in order to build appropriate decision support systems (DSSs) and models, stakeholder consultation is an important part of the model development process, promoting shared learning and final acceptance of the model. The degree to which stakeholders are engaged in the development of such models can vary from information sessions about the model that is...

(Only in case the thesis is approved) The Thesis at instance is hereby approved as a creditable study of an engineering subject carried out and presented in a manner satisfactory to warrant its acceptance as a prerequisite to the degree for which it has been submitted. It is understood that by this approval the undersigned does not necessarily endorse or approve any statement made, opinion expr...

Belief seems to be connected to truth and to the acceptance of the content of belief as true. If a person accepts as true that the cat is on the mat, then it might seem that he must also believe that the cat is on the mat, and conversely. However, the connections here should be investigated in terms that are more precise and should be properly argued for. This is my main aim in this paper. I wi...

We distinguish between a collective’s goal and a collective goal, concentrating on the latter. Its relations to collective intention and action are spelled out. It is shown how a given goal, when additional predicates are ascribed to it, yields collective goals of increasing complexity. Our main task is to answer the question, “What makes a goal collective?” To this end, we will deal with the n...

This paper delves into the state of the art in technology acceptance research at the individual level in Malaysia and makes suggestion into the future researches that can be undertaken to extend the frontiers of research of technology acceptance at the individual level. Several popular models used to predict technology acceptance are also discussed before exploring the myriad of research done o...

In this paper I develop a strategy for representing epistemic states and epistemic changes that seeks to be sensitive to the difference between voluntary and involuntary aspects of our epistemic life, as well as to the role of pragmatic factors in epistemology. The model relies on a particular understanding of the distinction between full belief and acceptance, which makes room for the idea tha...

The behaviors of heavy vehicles drivers in mandatory and discretionary lane changes are analyzed in this paper. 640 mandatory and 2,035 discretionary lane change events were extracted from a naturalistic driving database. Variations in gap acceptance and lane change duration were investigated. Statistical analysis showed that mandatory lane changes are more aggressive in gap acceptance and lane...

Despite the rapid evolution of Web technologies and development tools and skills, most Web sites fail (to varying degrees) to achieve their true business goals. This is at least partially due to our inability to effectively define Web acceptance criteria (from both a client perspective and a developers perspective). These criteria cover those characteristics that the final system must possess, ...

In the present paper we examine the effects of noise on Monte Carlo algorithms, a problem raised previously by Kennedy and Kuti (Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 2473 (1985)). We show that the effects of introducing unbiased noise into the acceptance/rejection phase of the conventional Metropolis approach are surprisingly modest, and, to a significant degree, largely controllable. We present model condense...