An Operator--like Description of Love Affairs

We adopt the so--called \emph{occupation number representation}, originally used in quantum mechanics and recently considered in the description of stock markets, in the analysis of the dynamics of love relations. We start with a simple model, involving two actors (Alice and Bob): in the linear case we obtain periodic dynamics, whereas in the nonlinear regime either periodic or quasiperiodic solutions are found. Then we extend the model to a love triangle involving Alice, Bob and a third actress, Carla. Interesting features appear, and in particular we find analytical conditions for the linear model of love triangle to have periodic or quasiperiodic solutions. Numerical solutions are exhibited in the nonlinear case.Comment: In press in SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematic

A Praxical Solution of the Symbol Grounding Problem

Peer reviewe

Joint Power Splitting and Secure Beamforming Design in the Wireless-powered Untrusted Relay Networks

In this work, we maximize the secrecy rate of the wireless-powered untrusted relay network by jointly designing power splitting (PS) ratio and relay beamforming with the proposed global optimal algorithm (GOA) and local optimal algorithm (LOA). Different from the literature, artificial noise (AN) sent by the destination not only degrades the channel condition of the eavesdropper to improve the secrecy rate, but also becomes a new source of energy powering the untrusted relay based on PS. Hence, it is of high economic benefits and efficiency to take advantage of AN compared with the literature. Simulation results show that LOA can achieve satisfactory secrecy rate performance compared with that of GOA, but with less computation time.Comment: Submitted to GlobeCom201

The minimum energy expenditure shortest path method

This article discusses the addition of an energy parameter to the shortest path execution process; namely, the energy expenditure by a character during execution of the path. Given a simple environment in which a character has the ability to perform actions related to locomotion, such as walking and stair stepping, current techniques execute the shortest path based on the length of the extracted root trajectory. However, actual humans acting in constrained environments do not plan only according to shortest path criterion, they conceptually measure the path that minimizes the amount of energy expenditure. On this basis, it seems that virtual characters should also execute their paths according to the minimization of actual energy expenditure as well. In this article, a simple method that uses a formula for computing vanadium dioxide ($VO_2$) levels, which is a proxy for the energy expenditure by humans during various activities, is presented. The presented solution could be beneficial in any situation requiring a sophisticated perspective of the path-execution process. Moreover, it can be implemented in almost every path-planning method that has the ability to measure stepping actions or other actions of a virtual character

My private cloud--granting federated access to cloud resources

We describe the research undertaken in the six month JISC/EPSRC funded My Private Cloud project, in which we built a demonstration cloud file storage service that allows users to login to it, by using their existing credentials from a configured trusted identity provider. Once authenticated, users are shown a set of accounts that they are the owners of, based on their identity attributes. Once users open one of their accounts, they can upload and download files to it. Not only that, but they can then grant access to their file resources to anyone else in the federated system, regardless of whether their chosen delegate has used the cloud service before or not. The system uses standard identity management protocols, attribute based access controls, and a delegation service. A set of APIs have been defined for the authentication, authorisation and delegation processes, and the software has been released as open source to the community. A public demonstration of the system is available online

Monte Carlo Tree Search with Heuristic Evaluations using Implicit Minimax Backups

Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has improved the performance of game engines in domains such as Go, Hex, and general game playing. MCTS has been shown to outperform classic alpha-beta search in games where good heuristic evaluations are difficult to obtain. In recent years, combining ideas from traditional minimax search in MCTS has been shown to be advantageous in some domains, such as Lines of Action, Amazons, and Breakthrough. In this paper, we propose a new way to use heuristic evaluations to guide the MCTS search by storing the two sources of information, estimated win rates and heuristic evaluations, separately. Rather than using the heuristic evaluations to replace the playouts, our technique backs them up implicitly during the MCTS simulations. These minimax values are then used to guide future simulations. We show that using implicit minimax backups leads to stronger play performance in Kalah, Breakthrough, and Lines of Action.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 9 tables, expanded version of paper presented at IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) 2014 conferenc

A comparison of experimental and numerical behaviour characteristics of a ship entering a lock using benchmark test data

This paper discusses several papers that were presented at the 3rd International Conference on Ship Manoeuvring in Shallow and Confined Water, which had a non-exclusive focus on Ship Behaviour in Locks. For this conference, experimental model test data obtained at Flanders Hydraulics Research had been made public and researchers were encouraged to compare numerical with experimental results [1]. Data of benchmark tests carried out both with self-propelled and captive models were used by researchers for comparison with various numerical tools. The objective of this paper is to give a selected overview of how accurately numerical tools are presently able to predict the hydrodynamic forces that occur on ships approaching locks. Based on this, the paper concludes that experiments and numerical tools complement each other