A new idea to understand the macromolecular motion occurring along the thermal relaxations of polystyrene (PS) and PS-barium titanate composites is proposed. Detailed analysis of PS infrared bands provides a better knowledge of the factors affecting polymer dynamics. Average spectral positions and integrated absorbance of bands in the region of C-H out-of-plane vibrations showed a continuous decrease with temperature, whereas those in the region of aliphatic and aromatic C-H stretching vibrations showed the sharpest changes with temperature. Relaxation temperatures were determined from the changes observed in the band wavenumber or area with temperature. These results were attributed to changes in the distribution of the phenyl π-electron cloud, causing important dipole moment variations in the different vibration modes when the thermal transitions are taking place. Finally, although the presence of BaTiO3 particles does not seem to exert any specific effect on the PS dynamics in the glassy state, the Curie transition of these particles might induce a kind of confinement effect observable by FTIR.

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The video game industry is an emerging market which continues to expand. From its early beginning, developers have focused mainly on sound and graphical applications, paying less attention to developing game bots or other kinds of nonplayer characters (NPCs). However, recent advances in artificial intelligence offer the possibility of developing game bots which are dynamically adjustable to several difficulty levels as well as variable game environments. Previous works reveal a lack of swarm intelligence approaches to develop these kinds of agents. Considering the potential of particle swarm optimization due to its emerging properties and self-adaptation to dynamic environments, further investigation into this field must be undertaken. This research focuses on developing a generic framework based on swarm intelligence, and in particular on ant colony optimization, such as it allows general implementation of real-time bots that work over dynamic game environments. The framework has been adapted to allow the implementation of intelligent agents for the classical game Ms. Pac-Man. These were trialed at the Ms. Pac-Man competitions held during the 2011 International Congress on Evolutionary Computation.

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