115 research outputs found
Structure and Complexity in Planning with Unary Operators
Unary operator domains -- i.e., domains in which operators have a single
effect -- arise naturally in many control problems. In its most general form,
the problem of STRIPS planning in unary operator domains is known to be as hard
as the general STRIPS planning problem -- both are PSPACE-complete. However,
unary operator domains induce a natural structure, called the domain's causal
graph. This graph relates between the preconditions and effect of each domain
operator. Causal graphs were exploited by Williams and Nayak in order to
analyze plan generation for one of the controllers in NASA's Deep-Space One
spacecraft. There, they utilized the fact that when this graph is acyclic, a
serialization ordering over any subgoal can be obtained quickly. In this paper
we conduct a comprehensive study of the relationship between the structure of a
domain's causal graph and the complexity of planning in this domain. On the
positive side, we show that a non-trivial polynomial time plan generation
algorithm exists for domains whose causal graph induces a polytree with a
constant bound on its node indegree. On the negative side, we show that even
plan existence is hard when the graph is a directed-path singly connected DAG.
More generally, we show that the number of paths in the causal graph is closely
related to the complexity of planning in the associated domain. Finally we
relate our results to the question of complexity of planning with serializable
subgoals
Learning to Coordinate Efficiently: A Model-based Approach
In common-interest stochastic games all players receive an identical payoff.
Players participating in such games must learn to coordinate with each other in
order to receive the highest-possible value. A number of reinforcement learning
algorithms have been proposed for this problem, and some have been shown to
converge to good solutions in the limit. In this paper we show that using very
simple model-based algorithms, much better (i.e., polynomial) convergence rates
can be attained. Moreover, our model-based algorithms are guaranteed to
converge to the optimal value, unlike many of the existing algorithms
On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems
Motivated by the control theoretic distinction between controllable and
uncontrollable events, we distinguish between two types of agents within a
multi-agent system: controllable agents, which are directly controlled by the
system's designer, and uncontrollable agents, which are not under the
designer's direct control. We refer to such systems as partially controlled
multi-agent systems, and we investigate how one might influence the behavior of
the uncontrolled agents through appropriate design of the controlled agents. In
particular, we wish to understand which problems are naturally described in
these terms, what methods can be applied to influence the uncontrollable
agents, the effectiveness of such methods, and whether similar methods work
across different domains. Using a game-theoretic framework, this paper studies
the design of partially controlled multi-agent systems in two contexts: in one
context, the uncontrollable agents are expected utility maximizers, while in
the other they are reinforcement learners. We suggest different techniques for
controlling agents' behavior in each domain, assess their success, and examine
their relationship.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
Partial-Order Planning with Concurrent Interacting Actions
In order to generate plans for agents with multiple actuators, agent teams,
or distributed controllers, we must be able to represent and plan using
concurrent actions with interacting effects. This has historically been
considered a challenging task requiring a temporal planner with the ability to
reason explicitly about time. We show that with simple modifications, the
STRIPS action representation language can be used to represent interacting
actions. Moreover, algorithms for partial-order planning require only small
modifications in order to be applied in such multiagent domains. We demonstrate
this fact by developing a sound and complete partial-order planner for planning
with concurrent interacting actions, POMP, that extends existing partial-order
planners in a straightforward way. These results open the way to the use of
partial-order planners for the centralized control of cooperative multiagent
systems
CP-nets: A Tool for Representing and Reasoning withConditional Ceteris Paribus Preference Statements
Information about user preferences plays a key role in automated decision
making. In many domains it is desirable to assess such preferences in a
qualitative rather than quantitative way. In this paper, we propose a
qualitative graphical representation of preferences that reflects conditional
dependence and independence of preference statements under a ceteris paribus
(all else being equal) interpretation. Such a representation is often compact
and arguably quite natural in many circumstances. We provide a formal semantics
for this model, and describe how the structure of the network can be exploited
in several inference tasks, such as determining whether one outcome dominates
(is preferred to) another, ordering a set outcomes according to the preference
relation, and constructing the best outcome subject to available evidence
On Graphical Modeling of Preference and Importance
In recent years, CP-nets have emerged as a useful tool for supporting
preference elicitation, reasoning, and representation. CP-nets capture and
support reasoning with qualitative conditional preference statements,
statements that are relatively natural for users to express. In this paper, we
extend the CP-nets formalism to handle another class of very natural
qualitative statements one often uses in expressing preferences in daily life -
statements of relative importance of attributes. The resulting formalism,
TCP-nets, maintains the spirit of CP-nets, in that it remains focused on using
only simple and natural preference statements, uses the ceteris paribus
semantics, and utilizes a graphical representation of this information to
reason about its consistency and to perform, possibly constrained, optimization
using it. The extra expressiveness it provides allows us to better model
tradeoffs users would like to make, more faithfully representing their
preferences
Attentive Neural Architecture Incorporating Song Features For Music Recommendation
Recommender Systems are an integral part of music sharing platforms. Often
the aim of these systems is to increase the time, the user spends on the
platform and hence having a high commercial value. The systems which aim at
increasing the average time a user spends on the platform often need to
recommend songs which the user might want to listen to next at each point in
time. This is different from recommendation systems which try to predict the
item which might be of interest to the user at some point in the user lifetime
but not necessarily in the very near future. Prediction of the next song the
user might like requires some kind of modeling of the user interests at the
given point of time. Attentive neural networks have been exploiting the
sequence in which the items were selected by the user to model the implicit
short-term interests of the user for the task of next item prediction, however
we feel that the features of the songs occurring in the sequence could also
convey some important information about the short-term user interest which only
the items cannot. In this direction, we propose a novel attentive neural
architecture which in addition to the sequence of items selected by the user,
uses the features of these items to better learn the user short-term
preferences and recommend the next song to the user.Comment: Accepted as a paper at the 12th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems
(RecSys 18
Extracellular Matrix Aggregates from Differentiating Embryoid Bodies as a Scaffold to Support ESC Proliferation and Differentiation
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have emerged as potential cell sources for tissue engineering and regeneration owing to its virtually unlimited replicative capacity and the potential to differentiate into a variety of cell types. Current differentiation strategies primarily involve various growth factor/inducer/repressor concoctions with less emphasis on the substrate. Developing biomaterials to promote stem cell proliferation and differentiation could aid in the realization of this goal. Extracellular matrix (ECM) components are important physiological regulators, and can provide cues to direct ESC expansion and differentiation. ECM undergoes constant remodeling with surrounding cells to accommodate specific developmental event. In this study, using ESC derived aggregates called embryoid bodies (EB) as a model, we characterized the biological nature of ECM in EB after exposure to different treatments: spontaneously differentiated and retinoic acid treated (denoted as SPT and RA, respectively). Next, we extracted this treatment-specific ECM by detergent decellularization methods (Triton X-100, DOC and SDS are compared). The resulting EB ECM scaffolds were seeded with undifferentiated ESCs using a novel cell seeding strategy, and the behavior of ESCs was studied. Our results showed that the optimized protocol efficiently removes cells while retaining crucial ECM and biochemical components. Decellularized ECM from SPT EB gave rise to a more favorable microenvironment for promoting ESC attachment, proliferation, and early differentiation, compared to native EB and decellularized ECM from RA EB. These findings suggest that various treatment conditions allow the formulation of unique ESC-ECM derived scaffolds to enhance ESC bioactivities, including proliferation and differentiation for tissue regeneration applications. © 2013 Goh et al
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