Virtual humans are computer-generated characters designed to look and behave like real people. Studies have shown that virtual humans can mimic many of the social effects that one finds in human-human interactions such as creating rapport, and people respond to virtual humans in ways that are similar to how they respond to real people. We believe that virtual humans represent a new metaphor for interacting with computers, one in which working with a computer becomes much like interacting with a person and this can bring social elements to the interaction that are not easily supported with conventional interfaces. The second SimCoach, uses an empathetic virtual human to provide veterans and their families with information about PTSD and depression.

The AAAI-13 Workshop Program, a part of the 27th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, was held Sunday and Monday, July 14–15, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue Hotel in Bellevue, Washington, USA.

In cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the twenty-first International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR), the premier international meeting on research and applications in Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), was held in July 2013 in Saratoga Springs, NY. ICCBR is the annual meeting of the CBR community and the leading conference on this topic. This year ICCBR featured the Industry Day, the fifth annual Doctoral Consortium and three workshops.

Report on the 2013 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference (ACII 2013) Abstract The 2013 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference (ACII 2013)- was held in Geneva, Switzerland, September 2-5, 2013. The 2013 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference (ACII 2013)- was held in Geneva, Switzerland, September 2-5, 2013.

Part Two of the special issue of AI Magazine presents articles on some of the most interesting projects at the intersection of AI and Education. Included are articles on integrated systems such as virtual humans, an intellgent textbook a game-based learning environment as well as technology focused components such as student models and data mining. The issue concludes with an article summarizing the contemporary and emerging challenges at the intersection of AI and education.

Intelligent game-based learning environments integrate commercial game technologies with AI methods from intelligent tutoring systems and intelligent narrative technologies. This article introduces the CRYSTAL ISLAND intelligent game-based learning environment, which has been under development in the authors' laboratory for the past seven years. After presenting CRYSTAL ISLAND, the principal technical problems of intelligent game-based learning environments are discussed: narrative-centered tutorial planning, student affect recognition, student knowledge modeling, and student goal recognition. Solutions to these problems are illustrated with research conducted with the CRYSTAL ISLAND learning environment.

The emergence of massive open online courses has initiated a broad national-wide discussion on higher education practices, models, and pedagogy. Artificial intelligence and machine learning courses were at the forefront of this trend and are also being used to serve personalized, managed content in the back-end systems. Massive open online courses are just one example of the sorts of pedagogical innovations being developed to better teach AI. This column will discuss and share innovative educational approaches that teach or leverage AI and its many subfields, including robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and others at all levels of education (K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels).

The Eighth International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space (IWPSS 2013) was held on March 25–26 2013 at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. This was the eighth in a regular series that started in 1997.

The two invited talks illustrated used NASA's Deep Space Habitat both the diverse applications of planning (DSH), an analog spacecraft habitat, for and scheduling technologies for the simulation, and a number of scenarios space, as well as the degree to which covering a range of activities these technologies have been successfully were applied. Scheduling for Space (IWPSS) focuses infused into space systems. In addition to the two full days of he Workshop on Planning and on the technical challenges Chien from JPL presented a talk titled technical talks, there were demonstrations and opportunities facing the AI planning "Using Space, Air, Marine, and Ground of six planning and scheduling and scheduling community when Assets for Disaster Response and Environmental systems in various stages of deployment. He described Copies of papers and slides are space-based applications, from mission how space, air, Inin-situ, and marine available at robotics.estec.esa.int/IWoperations to autonomy in space exploration assets have been integrated into sensor PSS. There have been webs to enable detection, tracking, The next IWPSS workshop will be eight workshops in the series. At this and response to a wide range of terrestrial held in 2015 at a location to be determined.

Springs, NY. ICCBR is the annual meeting of the CBR community and the ICCBR also featured a workshop program consisting of three workshops. The main conference track featured 16 research paper presentations, nine posters, and two invited speakers. The papers and posters reflected the state of the art of case-based reasoning, dealing both with open problems at the core of CBR (especially in similarity assessment, case adaptation, and case-based maintenance), as well as trending applications of CBR (especially recommender systems and computer games) and the intersections of CBR with other areas such as multiagent systems. The first invited speaker, Igor Jurisica from the Ontario Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto, spoke about how to scale up case-based reasoning for "big data" applications. The Case-Based Reasoning in Health Sciences workshop, organized by Isabelle Bichindaritz, Cindy Marling, and Stefania Montani, and the EXPPORT workshop (Experience Reuse: Provenance, Process-Orientation and Traces), organized by David Leake, Béatrice Fuchs, Juan A. Recio Garcia, and Stefania Montani, were held jointly and dealt with how to deal with data represented CDPHP, was the local chair; William E. University, and Jonathan Rubin, from Registration information is available at www.aaai.org/Symposia/ the Palo Alto Research Center, were the Spring/ sss14.php.