POMDP planning faces two major computational challenges: large state spaces and long planning horizons. The recently introduced Monte Carlo Value Iteration (MCVI) can tackle POMDPs with very large discrete state spaces or continuous state spaces, but its performance degrades when faced with long planning horizons. This paper presents Macro-MCVI, which extends MCVI by exploiting macro-actions fo...

Polyvinylidene fluoride/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVDF/PVP) hollow fiber membranes were fabricated by dry-jet wet-spinning process. The correlated effects of the air gap length and PVP concentration ((1) the air gap length effect at the low and high PVP concentration in the dope solutions, as well as (2) the effect of the PVP concentration at the same air gap length) on the cross-section structure ...

Orthodox macro theories reflect a choice-theoretic orientation wherein aggregate variables act directly on one another. Hence, macro phenomena are reduced to the same order of simplicity as micro phenomena. In contrast, this paper explores how macro theory might be pursued when it is recognized that macro phenomena are of a higher order of complexity than micro phenomena. Rather than reducing m...

This document describes Macro-FF, an adaptive planning system developed on top of FF version 2.3. The original FF is a fully automatic planner that uses a heuristic search approach. In addition, Macro-FF can automatically learn and use macro-actions with the goal of reducing the number of expanded nodes in the search. Macro-FF also includes implementation enhancements for reducing space and CPU...

Many of the findings regarding economic voting derive from the micro-level analyses of survey data, in which respondents’ survey evaluations of the economy are shown to predict the vote. This paper investigates the causal nature of this relationship and argues that cross-sectional consistency between economic evaluations and vote choice is mainly if not entirely due to vote choice influencing t...

The present study determined and compared contents of macro- (Nitrogen-N, Phosphorus-P, Potassium-K, Calcium-Ca, Magnesium-Mg) and micro- (Zinc-Zn, Iron-Fe, Manganese-Mn, Cupper-Cu) nutrients in four seagrass species big-leaved (BL) Halophila ovalis (R. Br.) Hook. f., small-leaved (SL) H. ovalis (R. Br.) Ascherson, H. spinulosa (R. Br.) Aschers. in Neumayer and Halodule uninervis (Forssk.) Asch...