People often act together with a shared purpose; they collaborate on a group action or activity. An increasing number of computer applications also require collaboration among various systems and users. The plans for such collaborative activities must be formed with others, not in isolation. Groups may persist over long periods of time (as do orchestras, sports teams, and systems administration...

In the convoy formation problem, two embodied agents are negotiating the synchronization of their movement for a portion of their respective paths from source to destinations. In this paper, we consider a setting in which the negotiation happens in physical time, thus the agents have the opportunity to perform actions, such as movement, while negotiating. In these settings, the agent’s behavior...

1. Analogies between knowledge and action Knowledge and its Limits starts its exposition of the knowledge-first approach to epistemology with a structural analogy between knowledge and action as the two key relations between mind and world (Williamson 2000, pp. 1, 6-8). The aim of this chapter is to reconsider the relation between knowledge and action, and refine the analogy. 2 Consider the opp...

Highly purified bovine TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) was labelled with 125I by using very low concentrations of chloramine-T. Human thyroid membranes prepared by discontinuous sucrose-density-gradient centrifugation were homogeneous on examination by electron microscopy. Incubation of radioiodinated TSH with the membranes showed that radioactivity could be bound to the membranes. Under the ...

Different kinds of insulin analogues, both short acting as well as long acting, are now available which offer several benefits over human insulins including improved physiologic profile, greater convenience, reduced risk of hypoglycemia and, in some instances, less weight gain. Combined, these elements may increase a patient’s adherence to treatment, potentially increasing the level of glycemic...

background: increasing number of women in reproductive ages and tending small families will result in demand for using contraception in near future. the study tried to assess the demand for contraceptive methods and its determinants among kurdish women in mahabad city. methods: a sample of over 700 households in mahabad surveyed for the study using questionnaire with interview technique. the va...

Plant actuators move organs, allowing the plant to respond to environmental cues or perform other mechanical tasks. In Cardamine hursuta the dispersal of seeds is accomplished by explosive opening of the fruit. The biomechanical mechanism relies on a complex interplay between turgor regulation and cell wall mechanical properties.

Joint action by a team does not consist merely of simultaneous and coordinated individual actions; to act together, a team must be aware of and care about the status of the group effort as a whole. We present a formal definition of what it could mean for a group to jointly commit to a common goal, and explore how these joint commitments relate to the individual commitments of the team members. ...