Planning is the art to automatically find solutions to problems where a model of the world is described in terms of variables and actions. A solution to such a planning problem is a sequence of actions (called plan) transforming the initial situation to a state that satisfies a goal description. In classical planning, the world is described by Boolean variables and the field is well studied wit...

We show the architecture and design of a numeric function generator that realizes, at high speed, arithmetic functions, like log x, sin x, 1 x , etc.. This approach is general; different circuits are not needed for different functions. Further, composite functions, like log (sin ( 1 x )) can be realized as easily as individual functions. A tutorial description of the method is presented, follow...

In the past, the creators of numerical programs had to choose between simple expression of mathematical formulas and static type checking. While the Lisp family and its dynamically typed relatives support the straightforward expression via a rich numeric tower, existing statically typed languages force programmers to pollute textbook formulas with explicit coercions or unwieldy notation. In thi...

Learning programs that try to generalize from real-world examples may have to deal with many different kinds of data. Continuous numeric data may cause problems for algorithms that search for identical aspects of examples. This problem can be .. . surmounted by categori=ing the nume-ric data. However, this process has problems of its own. In this paper we look at the need for categorizing numer...

We consider a new class of planning problems involving a set of non-negative real variables, and a set of non-deterministic actions that increase or decrease the values of these variables by some arbitrary amount. The formulas specifying the initial state, goal state, or action preconditions can only assert whether certain variables are equal to zero or not. Assuming that the state of the varia...

Concepts from mathematics and physics often map well to object-oriented software since the original concepts are of an abstract nature. We describe our experiences with developing high-performance shock-wave physics simulation codes in C++ and discuss the software engineering issues which we have encountered. The primary enabling technology in C++ for allowed us to share software between our de...

We address the challenge of correctly estimating the position of wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes in the presence of malicious adversaries. We consider adversarial situations during the execution of node localization under three classes of colluding adversaries. We describe a decentralized algorithm that aims at determining the position of nodes in the presence of such colluders. Colluders a...

A laser-plasma-based source of relativistic electrons is described in detail, and analyzed in two dimensions using theoretical and numeric techniques. Two laser beams are focused in a plasma, one exciting a wake-field electron plasma wave while another locally alters some electron trajectories in such a way that they can be trapped and accelerated by the wave. Previous analyses dealt only with ...

Genetic programming is relatively poor at discovering useful numeric constants for the terminal nodes of its sexpression trees. In this paper we outline an adaptation to genetic programming, called numeric mutation. ~,Ve provide empirical evidence and analysis that demonstrate that numeric mutation makes a statistically significant increase in genetic programming’s performance for symbolic regr...

We propose a new chemical detection technique in which an analyte's vibrational frequencies are interrogated directly using an array of nanomechanical resonators. This "nanomechanical resonance spectroscopy" (NRS) could permit label-free chemical detection, combining the high sensitivity of nanomechanical approaches with the high selectivity of traditional spectroscopy. A computational proof of...