Middle school art curricula in many systems still center on skill reproduction, which sits uneasily with the rapid diffusion of generative AI. This study develops a conceptual instructional model that embeds generative AI within the five-stage design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) for an eighth-grade visual communication course. AI is assigned differentiated functions across the stages—analytical, retrieval, generative, assistive, and evaluative—while students retain responsibility for aesthetic judgment, justification of selections, and iterative revision. Three learning outcomes anchor the design and are operationalized in parallel measurement instruments: aesthetic judgment, creative problem-solving in visual communication, and stylistic self-awareness. Communicative intent is treated as the core sub-dimension of creative problem-solving rather than as a separate outcome, since intent is observable only through the design products and decisions that enact it. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest pilot was conducted with 68 eighth-grade students (experimental group n = 34, control group n = 34) over a ten-week intervention at a single school, with both classes taught by the same art teacher. ANCOVA indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group on aesthetic judgment, F(1, 65) = 8.42, p = .005, ηp² = .115, and creative problem-solving, F(1, 65) = 9.17, p = .003, ηp² = .124, with smaller yet significant gains on stylistic self-awareness. Thematic analysis of journals and interviews surfaced three patterns: shifted attention from execution to selection, prompt-based reasoning, and unease about authorship. Findings are presented as encouraging pilot evidence under specific local conditions, pending replication beyond the present site.
Yijun Feng· Intelligent & Human Futures· 0 citations
We propose that consciousness is a phase transition of a non-equilibrium dissipative structure, characterised by two independently controlled channels that must both be driven past threshold. The central result is an exclusion criterion: a macroscopic dissipative structure cannot be conscious unless it satisfies three necessary conditions - (i) an energy channel G > 1 maintaining non-equilibrium pumping, (ii) an information channel G_info(kappa) > 1 maintaining global phase coherence (with analytic critical point kappa_c = 1.8809), and (iii) topological closure via a self-referential triad (|SCC| >= 3). The framework traces a single causal chain: non-equilibrium driving -> Brusselator Hopf bifurcation -> sigmoid threshold -> phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) -> von Mises phase density -> Kuramoto network amplification -> G_info > 1 -> conscious phase transition. Each stage is derived from first principles (Appendices C-G). At the microscopic level, a basis-free trace-distance order parameter O(g) = 1/2 tr|rho+ - rho-| in two-qubit Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad (GKSL) systems rigorously proves that the energy and information channels are independently controllable: a symmetrisation scan collapses O(g) from 0.306 to < 10^-4 as the absorption/emission asymmetry is removed, while a separate dephasing scan destroys coherence-carried asymmetry without affecting the energy flow. The topological closure condition is instantiated at multiple physical scales by a self-referential triad of three irreducible roles - reversible carrier, energy currency, irreversible anchor - which we identify in quantum coherence, aerobic metabolism, neural dynamics, and planetary geochemistry. We demonstrate the framework's explanatory power through clinical neuroscience and artificial intelligence. General anaesthesia abolishes consciousness by selectively collapsing kappa below threshold while metabolic pumping persists - a channel dissociation no single-channel theory predicts. Mindfulness meditation acts as a phase-locking mechanism that elevates kappa past kappa_c by suppressing Default Mode Network noise. Feedforward large language models fail all three conditions: their computational graph is acyclic, sustains no limit cycle, and operates as a closed system at inference. The widely observed model collapse under recursive self-training is the thermodynamic signature of the system relaxing toward equilibrium.
FatJack· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
Context and Justification The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases around the world demands a paradigm change from reactive, episodic clinical diagnosis to ongoing, proactive neuro-monitoring. The possibility for early detection and individualized management is limited by the fact that traditional diagnostic techniques sometimes rely on subjective evaluation or costly, intrusive imaging. An unparalleled chance to identify, evaluate, and interpret the subtle, objective indicators of preclinical cognitive alterations is presented by the convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI). Methods In order to generate a continuous, longitudinal stream of physiological and behavioural data, this study presents a novel, decentralized platform that makes use of a heterogeneous network of IoT devices, such as high-resolution wearables, smart home sensors, and non-contact physiological monitors (digital phenotyping). Large datasets pertaining to sleep architecture, gait variability, social interaction frequency, and speech hesitancy were analysed using deep learning techniques, particularly convolutional neural networks for anomaly detection in sensor data and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for temporal pattern recognition. In order to forecast the start of moderate cognitive impairment months before conventional clinical criteria could be satisfied, the main goal was to train these AI models to recognize minute variations from each person’s unique baseline. Important Results (Hypothetical) With a 92% prediction accuracy, the AI-driven study was able to identify a multivariate biomarker profile associated with early cognitive deterioration. Importantly, the system was able to identify temporary changes in everyday activities, such as increased nocturnal wandering and entropy changes in spoken language, long before carers noticed them or could measure them using conventional paper-and-pencil exams. Real-time anomaly notifications made possible by the incorporation of edge computing enabled prompt triage and focused clinical evaluation. Conclusion The neuro-sensing grid underlines how important AI-powered IoT is to revolutionizing research on brain health. This technique provides a reliable, scalable, and non-invasive method for personalized neuro-surveillance by moving the locus of assessment from the clinic to the lived environment. This opens the door for truly preventive therapies against age-related cognitive decline.
This article examines how aviation accidents can emerge from the progressive deterioration of organizational and institutional defenses rather than isolated human error. Drawing on the development of crew resource management, safety culture, quality assurance, voluntary reporting, and Safety Management Systems, the analysis explores how regulators, operators, manufacturers, military commands, training and maintenance organizations, airports, and investigative agencies form aviation’s multilayered safety architecture. Particular attention is given to normalization of deviance, staffing and experience pressures, weakened supervision, reporting culture, training deficiencies, organizational drift, and the distinction between regulatory compliance and operational resilience. Contemporary initiatives involving the Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board, manufacturers, the U.S. military, and DARPA are examined alongside the potential of artificial intelligence to identify institutional degradation before it enters an accident sequence. Legal and civil consequences are also considered when organizations recognize hazards but fail to act. The article concludes that the most dangerous safety system may be one that appears functional while progressively losing its ability to recognize and arrest deteriorating conditions. Future aviation safety depends upon detecting organizational drift, preserving institutional memory, protecting professional challenge, and using artificial intelligence to strengthen—not replace—the human and organizational defenses upon which aviation safety depends.
A. F. Clark· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
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This article presents a narrative review of Explainability and Interpretability of Black-Box Models in the context of Artificial Intelligence. The literature on this topic has expanded substantially over recent decades, yet it remains fragmented across subfields, methods, and national research traditions. Drawing on an interpretive synthesis of representative contributions, the review reconstructs the historical development of the area, examines the conceptual foundations and definitional disputes that organize its debates, and maps the contemporary landscape of research, including the methodological shift toward data-intensive approaches and the institutional pressures that shape publication practice. Particular attention is given to the role of explainable AI and interpretability as organizing themes, and to the conditions under which findings from different research traditions can be brought into productive comparison. The review identifies three synthetic conclusions: the literature is cumulatively strong but organizationally weak; methodological pluralism is better understood as a resource than as a defect; and the growing practical salience of the topic raises the stakes of its unresolved conceptual questions. An agenda for future work is proposed, emphasizing integrative research designs, transparent synthesis practices, and the protection of definitional and infrastructural work on which cumulative progress depends. The article is intended as both a reference map for newcomers and a provocation for specialists in Artificial Intelligence.
Zen Revista, 10 IA· Zenodo (CERN European Organi...· 0 citations
Results show that students with stronger AI literacy are generally more motivated to use AI in learning, though this relationship is influenced by socio-economic background, institutional resources, and national digital infrastructure.
Wenna Jo Mantua, Roselyn Cagasan-Bulan, Fiona Bianca Cabradilla et al.· JPAIR Multidisciplinary Rese...· 0 citations
It is shown that fairness and engagement are shaped by cultural experience as much as by individual psychology, which underscores the need for culturally adaptive, ethically governed AI systems to support sustainable talent retention in the UAE aviation sector.
Mayette Coronacion, Mary Jane Sapiendante, Sherwin Diala et al.· JPAIR Multidisciplinary Rese...· 0 citations
Key contributions include proposing a multi-task learning framework for jointly optimizing visual quality and emotion, establishing the inaugural VAWE-Art dataset comprising 5,000 AI-generated images with 20-dimensional emotional annotations, and providing computational foundations for emotion-controllable generative art systems.
Hengju Gang· Journal of Engineering, Proj...· 0 citations
Audits of LLM judges certify a bias by contrasting matched conditions, and the strongest designs difference twice: a within-item contrast between two candidate responses, differenced again across a manipulated attribute, read off a bounded rating scale. We show that this endpoint is not identified on the scale that reports it. Each term of the double difference is censored by its own share, so the observed statistic confounds differential preference with differential attenuation: a severity shift common to both responses manufactures an interaction whenever the two censor it unequally, as unequal distances from the bounds make them, exactly where good stimuli place them. We exhibit the failure inside a pre-registered audit of a frozen pedagogy judge, sealed before the first of its 990 calls. The registered primary endpoint, the effect of a stated learner profile on the judge's scaffolding preference, is null: $+0.085$ points (95\% BCa $[-0.167, +0.353]$, $p = 0.684$). The audit's one nominally significant interaction, $+0.378$ ($p = 0.002$), is not identified as preference: a construction containing zero differential preference reproduces 79 to 85\% of it from the observed severity shift and the scale floor alone. We derive the mechanism in closed form and show that its contribution is measurable from an audit's own ratings.
Shu-Yi Fan, Boyuan Deng, Mengyu Xu et al.· 0 citations
Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) is a prominent fine-tuning method for large models, achieving competitive performance with reduced memory overhead. However, a persistent performance gap remains between LoRA and full fine-tuning. Recent studies have sought to narrow this gap by employing one-step gradient approximations of pretrained weights to align LoRA updates with the principal directions or intrinsic dimensionalities of full fine-tuning updates. Nevertheless, these approaches fail to capture the full dynamics of the gradients. In this paper, we propose LoRA-GA$^2$, an effective fine-tuning algorithm that fully leverages multi-step gradient information. Specifically, we introduce a lightweight probe for multi-step gradients of pretrained weights that incurs no additional GPU memory cost and only marginal time overhead. We further employ a spectrum-aware, importance-based rank allocation and optimal initialization derived from multi-step gradients. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that LoRA-GA$^2$ consistently outperforms existing LoRA variants while preserving the efficiency advantages of vanilla LoRA. For instance, LoRA-GA$^2$ surpasses the leading baseline by an average of 0.66 points on the GLUE benchmark, and outperforms the strongest baseline by 1.03 points on GSM8K and 0.87 points on HumanEval, respectively.
Developing dialogue systems capable of engaging in multi-turn, goal-oriented conversations remains a significant challenge, especially in specialized domains with limited data. This research proposes a novel framework called Preference Tree Optimization (PTO), designed to iteratively improve agent models in such dialogue systems, by generating preference data using a method called Preference Tree with Look-Ahead. Focusing on Motivational Interviewing (MI) -- a counseling technique aimed at facilitating behavioral change -- we leverage virtual patients and an oracle evaluator to simulate conversations and generate rich preference datasets. By combining this method with Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), we aim to enhance the agent's decision-making capabilities over iterative training cycles. The proposed framework addresses data scarcity and advances the development of more nuanced and effective dialogue systems in goal-oriented domains. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the PTO framework enhances dialogue agents' performance in goal-oriented conversations within the domain of Motivational Interviewing (MI). Models trained with PTO consistently outperformed the baseline in key metrics such as session satisfaction and working alliance. Additionally, incorporating look-ahead simulations led to improved long-term planning and more effective conversational strategies, with deeper look-ahead configurations yielding the most stable and high-scoring results.
Lior Baruch, Moshe Butman, Kfir Bar et al.· 0 citations
Modern vision systems must operate in"open-world"settings, where models must recognize known categories and detect unseen or anomalous content. Conventional semantic segmentation models operate under a"closed-world"assumption, often producing overconfident misclassifications on novel content. We address open-world semantic segmentation, the joint task of segmenting known classes while detecting and grouping novel or anomalous content without additional supervision, by extending a dual-decoder baseline with a third, complementary decoder within a unified encoder-decoder design. The first decoder performs closed-set segmentation using Gaussian prototypes for known categories. The second uses contrastive feature learning to isolate unknown regions in embedding space. The third, our key contribution, is a sensitivity decoder that captures fine-grained texture irregularities and activation instabilities indicative of semantic uncertainty, which neither semantic prototypes nor contrastive norms can reliably detect. The three decoders provide genuinely complementary signals: class-level OOD distance in logit space, global feature energy in embedding space, and local activation instability across encoder scales. Experiments on Cityscapes and BDD-Anomaly show that our method improves anomaly segmentation and novel-class discovery while maintaining competitive closed-set accuracy, with gains of +2.4% AUROC and a 2.5 pp. reduction in FPR@95TPR on BDD-Anomaly over the baseline.
Anastasios Romanos Varvarigos, Nikos Giakoumoglou, Tania Stathaki· 0 citations
