The first communitiy I would like to introduce is AAAI. Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (formerly the American Association for Artificial Intelligence) is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines [1]. The community of AAAI publishes books, proceedings, reports and grants.

The second community I may joint in in the future may be HCI community. Although my research is more close to technology, the current trend is combining technology and people. HCI as an interface between people and machine will achieve more and more attentions from technical persons. One community in HCI is CHI conference, which is the leading international forum for the exchange of ideas and information about human-computer interaction (HCI). [2]

The third community related to me is a community around NLP (natural language processing). Now more and more contents represented in an electronic form are availabe on the internet. Search engines provide us a convenient tool to find the webpages we want to read. However, in order to achieve better results, NLP should be used in order to understand the detailed information embeded in webpages. One community about NLP is conference, which covers a broad spectrum of disciplines working towards enabling intelligent systems to interact with humans using natural language, and towards enhancing human-human communication through services such as speech recognition, automatic translation, information retrieval, text summarization, and information extraction.[3]

Reference:

[1] AAAI, http://www.aaai.org/home.html

[2] CHI,  www.acm.org/pubs/contents/proceedings/series/chi/

[3] ACL, http://www.aclweb.org/

I-School is a product of information age, which is a result of the global economy's shift from the production of goods to the manipulation of information. Hence, I-School needs to eductate people who can make contribution to the information age. More specifically, I-School need to mainly cultivate three kinds of people: scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. Scientists cultivated by I-School are to develop theories for our information society, help people to understand the information age and predict the future of our information society. Engineers are to develop tools which make people life easier and better. And entrepreneurs are to build informaiton companies to lead the development of our information society.

This article highlights three points for research in the behavior and social science. The first point is that all methods have limitaions. Hence, any set of results is limited. The second point is that it is not possible to maximize all desireable features of method in any one study and thus tradeoffs and dilemmas are involves. The third point is that each study must be interpreted in relation to other evidence bearing on the same questions.  This article also illustrats that each piece of information gained through those techniques is not certain and not general. Each piece information is contigent on other information and can only be viwed in the context of the accumulated body of information.

Summary on "Writing Good Software Engineering Research papers":

This article highlights that a good software engineering research paper should answer a number of following questions. The first is: what, precisely, was your contribution. The second is what is your own results. The third is why should the reader believe your results? and the last one is that what concrete evidence shows that your result satisfies your claim. The main point is that how to convince readers using your own results. Those results may be piece information, and thus should be interpreted in an accumulated context.

Compare between them:

Both in social science and software engineering, it is importance to organize your findings or results to convince your readers. Those findings and results may be piece information and need to be accumulated in a certain way to present to readers. So the same problem faced by both social science and software engineering are how to organized seperated results and findings to an accumulated context.

reference:

[1] Joseph E. Mcgrath, "Methdology matters: Doing Research in the Behavioral and Social Science",1994

[2] Mary Shaw, "Writing Good Software Engineering Research papers", IEEE Computer Society, 2003

This article introduces that science and technology transfrom the practice of humaniarian aid. This article introduces the advatanges brought by the development of science and technology. Information technology, satellite imaging and research carried out in disaster-relief areas have begun to transform humanitarian aid into a more efficient and less haphazard endeavor. Take the war in Kosovo as an example, the author present that judicious deployment of computer and communications technology, DNA analysis and social science survey technology have greatly assisted the multitude of aid organizations that arrive on the scene in location people who need help, as well as avoiding duplication of efforts and labors. Further more, with the expandition of web access to the poorest areas, endangered remote villages may one day gain early warning of impending attackes, enabling evacuations or expediting calls for help. However, this article also said that the failure of using communications equipment by aid officials may exacerbate the inherent chaos of a crisis.

Summary on "I, Robot ":

I, Robot is a science fiction film produced in the United States, filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and released on July16 2007. The tone of the movie is based on the Asimov's Robot stories.  This movie is a kind of reflection of modern popular culture, particularly with respect to science fiction and technology. Human's fear comes from the fact that our own evolution to be static, while intelligence tools progress. The emergence of artificial intelligence has made it possible for human beings challenged by the man made creatures with high intelligence.

Comparison: These two articles are both about the impact of science and technology on our modern society. Science and technology themselves are neutral. The impact of them on our society, whether good or not,  is decided by ourselves.

These two article introduce two of the most influential persons in history, Ts'ai Lun and Leonardo da vinci. Ts'ai Lun is the man who invented paper. Ts'ai Lun is among the ten most influential people who ever lived by the author, since the author thinks the invent of paper makes the progress of civilization quicker. However, unlike the technique for the mass production of books was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the West, China stayed with block printing and the culture progressed relatively slowly. This view is one of explanations for why did China eventually fall behind the West. Another person is Leonardo da Vinci, the most fascinating figure of the Renaissance. He had so many titles, such as an Italian polymath; a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. He greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Summary on "Zu Chongzhi and the Chinese Calendar Reform of 462 AD by Yang Shaoyun"

Zu Chongzhi is one of the most famous ancient Chinese mathematicians in both China and the Western world, but his contributions in the field of astronomy are largely ignored outside Asia. This article introduces the life and work of Zu because the author thinks the life background will influence the achievements of a person. Zu was born in Jiankang. His family had historically been involved in astronomy research, and from childhood Zu was exposed to both astronomy and mathematics. When he was only a youth his talent earned him much repute. Zu Chongzhi won himself credit for three approximations of p: 22/7, 355/113, and the interval 3.1415926 < p < 3.1415927; the third result remained the best in the world until improved by the Arab mathematician al-Kashi.

Comparison

These three articles are all about the most influential people for the progress of the civilization in history. The research and investigation on them will give us a sense for how human's civilization progress in history.

References}
1.Michael H.Hart, ``A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons In History".
2.Will Durant, ``The Renaissance".
3.Yang Shaoyun, ``Chinese Calendar Reform of 462 AD".

This article describes the natural science from modern physics on cosmology, life sciences,
math theory and to the law of natural evolution. In modern physical science,
the author introduces the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In
addition, the author also introduces four kinds of forces: the gravity, the force
associated with electricity and magnetism, the strong force which holds all
the elementary particles and the weak force which makes some unstable nuclei
and particles decay. On these four forces, the author introduces the efforts by
researchers who hope to make these four di erent kinds of forces identical. In
addition, the author also introduces two important theories in modern phys-
ical science: Chaos theory and Superstring theory. Besides physical science,
the author also introduces the achievements in life sciences, from modern
genetic engineering, the state of siege, and the human genome project. Last,
the author also introduces the interesting phenomena in number theory, like
bonacci series, topology theory, like Mobius strip, and Godel's incomplete
theorem.
In this article, the author introduces the main achievements in modern
natural science, and gives readers a big picture of the development of modern
natural science. Before the birth of color science, people commonly thought
that white light represented light in its pure forms and that color

Summary on "The Origins of Modern Color Science"

This article describes the development of modern color science from its birth in the
seventeenth century to current achievements. At the early days, people com-
monly thought that white light is of pure form and colors were modi cations
of white light. After the Newton's Experimentum crucis, people became to
realize that the white color is consisted of colored lights. Besides the intro-
duction of color theories, the author also introduces the relationship between
color and evolution. Donders explicitly suggested that human trichromacy
evolved from an earlier dichromatic state and had appeared rst in females.
From the history of science, the author states that confusion arose when
information from one domain was used to constrain models in a di erent
domain.

Comparison

The above two articles are all about the development of nat-
ural science. The di erent is the rst is about the big picture for all branches
in natural science, but the latter is a speci c branch in natural science. From
the development of science, we can see science achieves its development by a
self-denial and self-negative process.

References

1.Judy Jones & William Wilson, \An Incomplete Education -
Science".
2. J.D.Mollon, \The Origins of Modern Color Science".

The reason of writing
"the outline of history" is that Wells was very dissatis ed with the quality
of history textbooks at the end of World War I. All of these include: from
Christianity eduction to popular education; Europe begins to think for itself;
the dawn of communism; paper liberates the human mind; protestantism of
the peoples; the reawakening of science; the new growth of europe towns;
the literary and artistic renaissance; american come into history; and the
intellectual undertow. All of these are the rst comprehensive history of the
world, from the formation of the earth to Wellss day, a vibrant synthesis of
history.

Summary on "history of physics from Wikipedia"

This article describes the history of physics, where human beings try to understand the
roles of nature. It describes the development of physics from early cultures,
physics in the middle ages, early modern physics, to modern physics. West-
ern physics began with eminent Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, which leads
to the tendency of acceptance of the ideas of eminent philosophers. Scienti c
Revolution during Medieval Europe leaded to a resumption of the process
of scienti c change halted around the middle of the 14th century. From 15
century to 20 century, physics has been developed a lot. A number of new
efforts to understand the physical world arose in the last half of the twentieth
century, which generated widespread interest.

Comparison

The history of physics is a component of the outline of his-
tory. The outline of history descripts the history of science from a macro-
scopic view. However, the history of physics descripts the development of
a concrete discipline. The development of both science, from a macroscopic
view and physics, from a microscopic view is a kind of spiral type instead of
straight forward.

References

1.H. G. Wells, \The outline of history by Wells", Garden City
books.
2. \History of physics",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History of physics

The paper "what is science" by Asimov does not give a concrete de nition for science, but treating
science in the context of history. Although no one can really feel what is
science, the initiation into the magni cent world of science brings great es-
thetic satisfaction, inspiration to youth, ful llment of the desire to know, and
a deeper appreciation of the wonderful potentialities and achievements of the
human mind.

The author introduced "what is science" from the concept of curiosity,
the desire to know. The desire to know, that is philosophia, seems to lead
into successive realms of greater etherealization and more ecient occupa-
tion of the mind. The author descripted it from the Greek myths, which is
seemed to be the prettiest and the most sophisticated in our literary and cul-
tural heritage. After solved the problems of mathematics and astronomy, the
Greeks turned to more subtle and challenging elds of knowledge, and seeked
the virtual of nature. But currently, the publication by scientists becomes
so unreadable for anyone but their fellow specialists. Much work should be
accomplished toward bridging the gap of communication between scientists
and the public.

Summary on "what is religion by Richard Sneed"

This article describes the real polarity between religion and science, and why they need to keep talking to one another. The author suggests that religion is an ancient and respectable explanation for the world and our place in it, which is not the only one explanation. The religion does not have all the answers because it is by no means clear that it has asked all the questions. The dispute between religion and science is very much like a sibling rivalry, and that the two are very similar in many ways. It is worth that It is a mistake for religion to score science; it is equally a mistake for science to score religion.

Comparison

Science has had a complex relationship with religion; reli-
gious doctrines and motivations have sometimes in
uenced scienti c devel-
opment, while scienti c knowledge has had e ects on religious beliefs. Just
as the suggestion of Richard Sneed, science and religion should listen and
learn from each other.

References

1.Isaac Asimov, \Asimov's Guide to Science", Basic books,
Inc. Publishers.
2.Richard Sneed, \What is religion",
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel sci/sneed.html