Solving Parity Games in Scala

Parity games are two-player games, played on directed graphs, whose nodes are labeled with priorities. Along a play, the maximal priority occurring infinitely often determines the winner. In the last two decades, a variety of algorithms and successive optimizations have been proposed. The majority of them have been implemented in PGSolver, written in OCaml, which has been elected by the community as the de facto platform to solve efficiently parity games as well as evaluate their performance in several specific cases. PGSolver includes the Zielonka Recursive Algorithm that has been shown to perform better than the others in randomly generated games. However, even for arenas with a few thousand of nodes (especially over dense graphs), it requires minutes to solve the corresponding game. In this paper, we deeply revisit the implementation of the recursive algorithm introducing several improvements and making use of Scala Programming Language. These choices have been proved to be very successful, gaining up to two orders of magnitude in running time

Again-st Abandon. National Report Index

Lo studio e' stato realizzato da Stoa' e Studio Staff nell'ambito del progetto "AGAIN-ST ABANDON Contrastare il fenomeno degli abbandoni, ripensare i linguaggi della consulenza". Il progetto Again-st Abandon, finanziato dal Programma europeo "Leonardo da Vinci", si pone l'obiettivo di contrastare il fenomeno dei drop-out (DO) - quei giovani che interrompono il percorso scolastico e formativo rendendosi invisibili agli operatori del sociale - nell'ottica di un loro reinserimento nei contesti formali di istruzione, formazione ed impiego. Nel paper viene sviluppata un'analisi territoriale dell'area del Comune di Ercolano tesa ad indagare la domanda e l'offerta di servizi di orientamento e formazione, oltre alla visibilita' e all'accessibilita' degli stessi, attraverso l'utilizzo di dati statistici e indicatori di tipo qualitativo

induced pluripotent stem cells the long expected revolution in medical science and practice

Within the matter of a few years, development of the somatic reprogramming technology to generate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has contributed enormously to the stem cell research field. We learned that differentiated adult cells possess an unrestricted plasticity that allows them to be driven back to their embryonic or pluripotent state, but owing to the juvenile nature of this novel science chapter, there are many unanswered questions and dilemmas. It is indisputable, however, that iPS cells potentially could represent the jack-of-all-trades remedy in areas of medicine ranging from toxicology screening to regenerative medicine. In this review I will summarize the current strategies employed to reprogram somatic cells and the major promises and hurdles for the future of iPS cells

Measurements of Backscattering from a Dihedral Corner in a Reverberating Chamber

In this paper, the backscattering of a dihedral corner is evaluated by measurements accomplished within the reverberating chamber (RC) of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, formerly Istituto Universitario Navale (IUN). The obtained results are found in good agreement with those of a previous very accurate model, whose validity was assessed by anechoic chamber measurements

Improving parity games in practice

Parity games are infinite-round two-player games played on directed graphs whose nodes are labeled with priorities. The winner of a play is determined by the smallest priority (even or odd) that is encountered infinitely often along the play. In the last two decades, several algorithms for solving parity games have been proposed and implemented in PGSolver, a platform written in OCaml. PGSolver includes the Zielonka’s recursive algorithm (RE, for short) which is known to be the best performing one over random games. Notably, several attempts have been carried out with the aim of improving the performance of RE in PGSolver, but with small advances in practice. In this work, we deeply revisit the implementation of RE by dealing with the use of specific data structures and programming languages such as Scala, Java, C++, and Go. Our empirical evaluation shows that these choices are successful, gaining up to three orders of magnitude in running time over the classic version of the algorithm implemented in PGSolver

An Ontology-Based Data Integration System for Data and Multimedia Sources

Data integration is the problem of combining data residing at distributed heterogeneous sources, including multimedia sources, and providing the user with a unified view of these data. Ontology based Data Integration involves the use of ontology(s) to effectively combine data and information from multiple heterogeneous sources [16]. Ontologies, with respect to the integration of data sources, can be used for the identification and association of semantically correspond- ing information concepts, i.e. for the definition of semantic mappings among concepts of the information sources. MOMIS is a Data Integration System which performs in-formation extraction and integration from both structured and semi- structured data sources [6]. In [5] MOMIS was extended to manage “traditional” and “multimedia” data sources at the same time. STASIS is a comprehensive application suite which allows enterprises to simplify the mapping process between data schemas based on semantics [1]. Moreover, in STASIS, a general framework to perform Ontology-driven Semantic Mapping has been pro-posed [7]. This paper describes the early effort to combine the MOMIS and the STASIS frameworks in order to obtain an effective approach for Ontology-Based Data Integration for data and multimedia sources

On the Evaluation of the Shielding Effectiveness of an Electrically Large Enclosure

The shielding effectiveness (SE) has become a fundamental step in testing active or passive electric devices. The Reverberating Chamber (RC) is a well- established method for determining the SE since has the advantage to expose the material to a more realistic environment. In this paper the SEe of electrically large enclosures with a metallic mesh grid in a RC is evaluated. Enclosures made with metallic mesh are considered. In particular, it is shown that the SE of a material is unable to provide complete information for the SEe of an electrically large enclosure made with the same material. Moreover, this latter one is related to the loading conditions within the enclosure itself. Measurements accomplished at RC of the Università di Napoli Parthenope (formerly Istituto Universitario Navale, IUN) confirm the physical soundness of the proposed approach

Project and Development of a Reinforcement Learning Based Control Algorithm for Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Hybrid electric vehicles are, nowadays, considered as one of the most promising technologies for reducing on-road greenhouse gases and pollutant emissions. Such a goal can be accomplished by developing an intelligent energy management system which could lead the powertrain to exploit its maximum energetic performances under real-world driving conditions. According to the latest research in the field of control algorithms for hybrid electric vehicles, Reinforcement Learning has emerged between several Artificial Intelligence approaches as it has proved to retain the capability of producing near-optimal solutions to the control problem even in real-time conditions. Nevertheless, an accurate design of both agent and environment is needed for this class of algorithms. Within this paper, a detailed plan for the complete project and development of an energy management system based on Q-learning for hybrid powertrains is discussed. An integrated modular software framework for co-simulation has been developed and it is thoroughly described. Finally, results have been presented about a massive testing of the agent aimed at assessing for the change in its performance when different training parameters are considered