“How Will It Help Me?”

Help me make it through the night.

How Long Will It Take?

We present a method for approximating the expected number of steps required by a heuristic search algorithm to reach a goal from any initial state in a problem space. The method is based on a mapping from the original state space to an abstract space in which states are characterized only by a syntactic “distance” from the nearest goal. Modeling the search algorithm as a Markov process in the a...

How many will it take?

Dear editors, " He who kills himself is running after an image that he built of himself. One never kills himself only to exist.. "-André Malraux French writer (1901-1976) Last January, Quebec's National Public Health Institute published a portrait of the suicide status in the province. The media coverage highlighted the main conclusion that the overall annual suicide rates were decreasing and t...

How Often Will It Rain?

Daily precipitation data from climate change simulations using the latest generation of coupled climate system models are analyzed for potential future changes in precipitation characteristics. For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) B1 (a low projection), A1B (a medium projection), and A2 (a high projection) during the twenty-first ...

Ending AIDS in South Africa: How long will it take? How much will it cost?

South Africa has more people infected with HIV but, by providing access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART), has kept more people alive than any other country. The effectiveness, availability and affordability of potent anti-retroviral therapy (ART) make it possible to contemplate ending the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. We consider what would have happened without ART, the impact of the current roll-out ...