Automatic Mapping of NES Games with Mappy

Game maps are useful for human players, general-game-playing agents, and data-driven procedural content generation. These maps are generally made by hand-assembling manually-created screenshots of game levels. Besides being tedious and error-prone, this approach requires additional effort for each new game and level to be mapped. The results can still be hard for humans or computational systems to make use of, privileging visual appearance over semantic information. We describe a software system, Mappy, that produces a good approximation of a linked map of rooms given a Nintendo Entertainment System game program and a sequence of button inputs exploring its world. In addition to visual maps, Mappy outputs grids of tiles (and how they change over time), positions of non-tile objects, clusters of similar rooms that might in fact be the same room, and a set of links between these rooms. We believe this is a necessary step towards developing larger corpora of high-quality semantically-annotated maps for PCG via machine learning and other applications.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Appearing at Procedural Content Generation Workshop 201

Statistically Designed Experiments in the Examination of Factors Influencing Regioselectivity in Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution Reactions

Statistically designed experiments were developed and executed in order to determine the effects of several variables on the regiochemistry of electrophilic aromatic substitution (EAS) reactions. One experiment employed the electrophilic aromatic bromination of phenol, and indicated that temperature and concentration had statistically insignificant effects on the product composition of the reaction , while the mole ratio of bromine to phenol and percent water content of the solvent had significant effects at the 95% confidence level (i.e. a=0.05). Another experiment investigated the Friedel-Craf ts acylation of three butylbenzene isomers, and showed that temperature and reaction time had insignificant influences on product composition, while solvent dielectric constant and substrate substitution pattern had a significant influence (a=0.05). Together these experiments suggest that chemometric methods may be useful in investigating even well understood reactions. The Friedel-Crafts acylation experiments also the initial stages in the development of a quantitative method for describing steric effects. Inaddition, a laboratory exercise was designed and incorporated into Longwood University\u27 s Organic Chemistry Laboratory II course. The implementation of the exercise was evaluated and suggested that students are receptive to new teaching styles

How does insect resistance to phosphine affect insect control costs of stored-grain?

Crop Production/Industries,

A Taxonomic Investigation of the Black Ratsnake, Elaphe o. obsoleta (Say) [Reptilia, Squamata, Colubridae], in West Virginia using Morphometric Analyses

A recent genetic study by Frank T. Burbrink (2000) determined that the common Black Ratsnake, Elaphe o. obsoleta, evolved from three separate evolutionary lineages and can no longer be classified under a single species name. The newly assigned species, which possess ranges that are separated into three regions of the eastern United States by geologic features such as rivers and mountains, are also said to possess distinct morphologic characteristics (Burbrink, 2001). This thesis study was initiated to mirror Burbrink’s previous morphometric study and augment a previous lack of specimen data from West Virginia. Black Ratsnake museum specimens, collected from ranges of all three new species, were compared to West Virginia specimens and to Cornsnakes (a statistical outgroup). All specimens were measured for predetermined morphometric characters, including scale counts, scale measurements, and derived characters. Character data were subjected to multivariate statistical tests, including Canonical Discriminant Analysis (CDA), Principal Component Analysis, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). A dorsal pattern survey was also performed on Black Ratsnakes (using digital photography) to analyze trends in pattern retention of adult snakes. CDA, PCA, and ANOVA showed little to no significant (P\u3e0.05) separation in Black Ratsnake specimens collected from different geographical areas. Individuals displayed much variation within and among groups. Cornsnake specimens were significantly different (P\u3c0.0001) than Black Ratsnake specimens in all tests. The dorsal pattern survey showed no statistical difference in dorsal blotch retention among Black Ratsnakes of different areas; however, comparisons of mean values showed that one group of specimens displayed a more uniform and darker pigmentation than the other groups of specimens. West Virginia specimens were intermediate between the two pattern extremes

Testing the Metal of Late-Type Kepler Planet Hosts with Iron-Clad Methods

It has been shown that F, G, and early K dwarf hosts of Neptune-sized planets are not preferentially metal-rich. However, it is less clear whether the same holds for late K and M dwarf planet hosts. We report metallicities of Kepler targets and candidate transiting planet hosts with effective temperatures below 4500 K. We use new metallicity calibrations to determine [Fe/H] from visible and near-infrared spectra. We find that the metallicity distribution of late K and M dwarfs monitored by Kepler is consistent with that of the solar neighborhood. Further, we show that hosts of Earth- to Neptune-sized planets have metallicities consistent with those lacking detected planets and rule out a previously claimed 0.2 dex offset between the two distributions at 6sigma confidence. We also demonstrate that the metallicities of late K and M dwarfs hosting multiple detected planets are consistent with those lacking detected planets. Our results indicate that multiple terrestrial and Neptune-sized planets can form around late K and M dwarfs with metallicities as low as 0.25 of the solar value. The presence of Neptune-sized planets orbiting such low-metallicity M dwarfs suggests that accreting planets collect most or all of the solids from the disk and that the potential cores of giant planets can readily form around M dwarfs. The paucity of giant planets around M dwarfs compared to solar-type stars must be due to relatively rapid disk evaporation or a slower rate of core accretion, rather than insufficient solids to form a core.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to Ap

Appendicitis Caused by Endometriosis Within the Bowel Wall

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common causes of acute abdominal pain seen in the emergency room. Common etiologies include obstructing appendicolith and lymphoid adenopathy. Appendiceal endometriosis is rare and typically involves the serosal layer. This case report describes an unusual case of appendicitis secondary to endometriosis in the musclularis mucosa of the appendix in the 36-year-old lady with no prior history of endometriosis. Keywords: appendiceal endometriosis; appendicitis; endometrioma; endometriosis

Indirect Signatures of Type I See-Saw Scenarios

We consider the low energy constraints that can be applied to type I see-saw extensions of the Standard Model in which the right-handed neutrinos are taken at the electroweak scale. In the reported scenarios, the flavour structure of the charged current and neutral current weak interactions of the Standard Model leptons with the heavy right-handed neutrinos is essentially determined by the neutrino oscillation parameters. In this case, correlations among different measurable phenomena in the lepton sector may provide compelling indirect evidence of low energy see-saw mechanism of neutrino mass generation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Contributions to the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2011), Munich, Germany, 5-9 September 201