This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2012, held in Santa Cruz, CA, USA, in September 2012. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 31 short papers and 18 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on IVAs on learning environments; emotion and personality; evaluation and empirical studies; multimodal perception and expression; narrative and interactive applications; social interaction; authoring and tools; conceptual frameworks.

Transition to veganism smoothly with this interactive step-by-step guided journal to help you kickstart your vegan diet with delicious recipes, detailed nutritional information, and prompts to record your progress. Starting to experiment with the world of vegan food? Looking for help keeping your healthy, plant-based eating on track? Ready to take the next step from vegan-ish to full-time vegan? This guided journal is here to help! Going vegan doesn't need to be a scary, drastic change! With the right guide you don't need to cut out your favorite foods or restock your home with a new pantry-you can jump head first into a fully vegan lifestyle. In 12 short weeks you can transition to whatever level of veganism is right for you and make it a transformation that will last. Going Vegan: Your Daily Planner includes easy vegan recipes, detailed nutritional information, and interactive journaling pages that let you track your water, food, and progress every day while creating delicious meals that keep you happy and healthy...all while staying animal-friendly. Get inspired by this motivational daily planner and take the next steps towards making your own vegan diet a success.

Simple Acts to Save Our Planet shows you how to be more active in saving our planet every day by performing some "Simple Acts of Kindness"-for the Earth. Treat the environment with kindness with these easy, manageable activities that range from simple home updates, to gardening basics, to supporting the local community. You'll learn simple techniques to help protect the planet every day, like starting a compost pile to reduce food waste, utilizing travel mugs and reusable containers, and choosing eco-friendly products. By working to implement these simple strategies into your everyday life, you can take an active stand to protect the environment now- and make a real difference for the future.

"A thought-provoking collection of essays. Don is the idealist's idealist " -- Thom Hartmann, best selling author, radio personality and host of The Big Picture A WORLD WITHOUT WAR is a compilation of essays written since 2000 by activist producer and playwright Don Thompson (Tibet in Song, Democracy: A Work in Progress, L.A. Book of the Dead). Written for popular webzines such as The Potomac Journal (ed. Michael Neff) and SolPix, the essays chronicle important political and cultural issues and trends post 9/11 -- all with Thompson's unique and independent perspective that often puts a completely new spin on familiar topics. Displaying a combination of wit, compassion and insight, the author leads you through a series of ideas drawn from philosophy, history, the arts, new media, business and technology -- all weaved into a cultural critique whose basic premise is that we need to shape a different world, a better world, A WORLD WITHOUT WAR. D.R. (Don) Thompson is a producer/filmmaker, playwright and essayist. Thompson's film projects have won multiple awards at festivals such as Sundance, Movies that Matter, Cinema for Peace, New York Indie, and many others. His plays have been staged coast-to-coast and lauded by The New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and others. Your Life Is A Movie (Del Sol Press, 2006), an anthology of film and media essays that Thompson co-edited with Filmmaker Magazine's Nicholas Rombes, features well-known writers such as Todd Gitlin, Eric Alterman, Ray Carney and Patricia Ducey. Thompson continues to develop and produce humanitarian-themed documentary and feature films through his production company nextPix.