Considering heuristic search for satisficing and cost-optimal planning, we introduce the notion of global safeness of a heuristic, a property weaker than the standard safeness, which we claim is better for heuristic search. We describe one concrete approach for creating globally safe and optimality preserving heuristics by exploiting information in the history of the search via a new form of in...

We compare the welfare effects of different regulation schemes of electricity distribution utilities. The compared regulation schemes are fixed price regulation, cost of service regulation, menu of cost-contingent contracts and simple menus of contracts. In our calculations we utilize the information of firm specific potential to improve cost efficiency. The firm specific cost information of Fi...

New information and computing technologies offer cost efficient and effective learning opportunities for health care professionals. The Assisted Electronic Communication project is prototyping, administering and evaluating a digital discourse system for health care professionals within an acute Hospital. Health care staff participating in the study are able to access and contribute to threaded,...

This study examines the relation between life events and the adoption of wills among older adults using the 1996 and 2000 surveys of the Heath and Retirement Study. The results suggest that the adoption of wills and trusts is associated with four life events (i.e., becoming a widow, being diagnosed with cancer, retiring, and having a positive change in assets). Older adults experiencing these e...

Courseware abstraction is an approach to CAL whereby the lesson author creates a general parametetized CAL lesson that is then applied to many concrete examples. This approach has the following advantages over alternative approaches to lesson development: it is cost efficient; it facilitates lesson verification; it encourages the provision of as many examples as are desirable; it simplifies the...

Suppose that infinitesimal firms have identical variable costs but there is heterogeneity in their fixed costs. Regardless of the ordering of entry and exit, fixed costs will be minimized for a given industry size. Journal of Economic Literature Classifications: L11 & L13

Vitamin A enriched rice (Golden Rice) is a cost-efficient solution that can substantially reduce health costs. Despite Golden Rice being available since early 2000, this rice has not been introduced in any country. Governments must perceive additional costs that overcompensate the benefits of the technology to explain the delay in approval. We develop a real option model including irreversibili...

Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) solutions for network-oriented defense will improve operational capabilities, flexibility and cost efficiency. The realization can be evolutionary, starting with networking of existing systems.

A novel procedure to find cost-optimal sensor networks is proposed. Cost is minimized subject to qualibing constraints that are related to certain requirements of data reconciliation. One basic qualibing constraint is a desired level of precision of reconciled values for a selected set of variables. Since precision requirements lead to multiple solutions, other qualifying constraints are propos...

In this paper, we will describe the planner UPWARDS, competing in the sixth international planning competition. Our primary focus will be on the novel contributions of the planner: in particular, the application of symmetry breaking, mobile analysis and tunnel macros in sequential cost-optimal SAS+ planning. A brief outline of UPWARDS itself is then