It is my first time to see three journal articles on the same issue debate on the same issue in Information Systems Journal.
November 2008 Archives
A couple of paragraphs from call for papers of Journal of Simulation:
Agent-based models (ABMs), also sometimes called agent distillations or cellular automata models, have found tremendous success in an especially wide spectrum of applications. Such models have also been used in financial modeling, personnel modeling, in military applications such as examining the impacts of tactical airpower or logistical supply, in social science modeling and even in a variety of manufacturing applications. Multiagent systems (MAS) are a special kind of ABM in which a group of systems or entities interact with each other and their environment. An agent in a MAS can represent a human, group of humans, a machine or a software system with the capability to perceive their environment, react to changes in the environment and affect the environment with their own actions.
In an ABM, entities are constructed to have specified goals or actions. Agents can control their own destiny which means they may change their internal state depending on their knowledge of the artificial environment in which they reside and function. This cognitive capability of the agents is necessary so agents can achieve the specified goal or criterion within the context of the application. The agents are usually modeled in an object-oriented manner but suitably extended to include representation of their knowledge and roles within an environment. Thus, an agent can have knowledge of itself, knowledge received from other agents through communication and sensory channels, knowledge based on perceptions of its environment, and even memory of previous states the agent found itself. Among the challenges to ABM are designing these agents to encapsulate this information in such a way that the knowledge is controlled and exploited by the software agent, ensuring the ABM realistically captures the actual system of interest, and analyzing the emergent behavior that often arises in the use of these models.
College students participate in a variety of associations to enrich their lives, to construct their social network and to get some experience of leadership. As a Ph.D. student, especially a Ph.D. in
My hobbies are pretty broad, so I joined several clubs here: Photography and traveling club, dance club and tennis club. Photography is sort of a social contagion. Some people who I am familiar with are really good at photography (e.g. Professor Dongwon Lee). People just cannot help marveling at those so-much fantastic pictures and then wish to do the same thing by themselves some day. I am among of them, so I start off learning photography. However, professional cameras are expensive, not to say high-quality lenses. Dance is an elegant exercise, or should I say, art. It makes me perfectly relax and step out of any upset and annoyance. Dance is also an ambassador of getting people known with each other in some social activities. Tennis is an excellent outdoor exercise: not too intensive as soccer and not too dangerous as football. It emphasizes a balance of body strength and skills. I always believe a good body is the key to survive the Ph.D. (also known as Permanent Head Damage)
As I can manage the time better and better, I hope I am able to get out of the box and to participate some non-Chinese based associations or clubs. After all, I cannot know well about American culture and style without getting along with Americans.
