Complete contingency planners

A framework is proposed for the investigation of planning systems that must deal with bounded uncertainty. A definition of this new class of contingency planners is given. A general, complete contingency planning algorithm is described. The algorithm is suitable to many incomplete information games as well as planning situations where the initial state is only partially known. A rich domain is identified for the application and evaluation of contingency planners. Preliminary results from applying our complete contingency planner to a portion of this domain are encouraging and match expert level performance

Dreaming of atmospheres

Here we introduce the RobERt (Robotic Exoplanet Recognition) algorithm for the classification of exoplanetary emission spectra. Spectral retrievals of exoplanetary atmospheres frequently requires the preselection of molecular/atomic opacities to be defined by the user. In the era of open-source, automated and self-sufficient retrieval algorithms, manual input should be avoided. User dependent input could, in worst case scenarios, lead to incomplete models and biases in the retrieval. The RobERt algorithm is based on deep belief neural (DBN) networks trained to accurately recognise molecular signatures for a wide range of planets, atmospheric thermal profiles and compositions. Reconstructions of the learned features, also referred to as `dreams' of the network, indicate good convergence and an accurate representation of molecular features in the DBN. Using these deep neural networks, we work towards retrieval algorithms that themselves understand the nature of the observed spectra, are able to learn from current and past data and make sensible qualitative preselections of atmospheric opacities to be used for the quantitative stage of the retrieval process.Comment: ApJ accepte

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Childhood Development Initiative's Mate-Tricks Pro-Social Behaviour After-School Programme

Mate-Tricks is an after-school programme designed to promote pro-social behaviour in Tallaght West (Dublin). Tallaght West has been designated as an area of particular social and economic disadvantage with high levels of unemployment. Mate-Tricks is a bespoke intervention that combines elements of two pro-social behaviour programmes: the Strengthening Families Program (SFP) and Coping Power Program (CPP). The programme is a one-year multi-session after-school programme comprising 59 children-only sessions, 6 parent-only sessions and 3 family sessions, with each session lasting 1½ hours.The intended outcomes of this programme are stated as follows in the Mate-Tricks manual: enhance children's pro-social development; reduce children's anti-social behaviour; develop children's confidence and self-esteem; improve children's problem-solving skills; improve child-peer interactions; develop reasoning and empathy skills; improve parenting skills; improve parent/child interaction. This evaluation reports on the pilot of this programme. Of the 21 outcomes investigated, 19 showed no significant differences between the children who attended Mate-Tricks and the control group. However, there were 2 statistically significant effects of the Mate-Tricks programme and 3 other effects that approached significance. The lack of effects and the few negative effects found in this study replicates findings in several recent studies of after-school behaviour programmes