Either or neither, but not both : locating the effects of masked primes

Execution of a response that has been primed by a backward-masked stimulus is inhibited (negative compatibility effect; NCE). Three experiments investigated the locus of this inhibition. Masked primes (left- or right-pointing arrows) were followed either by an arrow or a circle target. Arrow targets always required a left- or right-hand response, but the experiments differed in the response required to circles: press neither, either or both response keys (i.e. nogo, free choice and bimanual, respectively). Arrow targets showed the usual NCEs. Circle targets showed NCEs in the form of a response bias away from the primed response in the nogo and free-choice tasks; primes and targets differed on these trials, ruling out a perceptual explanation of the NCE. The bimanual task showed no such bias, suggesting that the NCE is located at a level of abstract response codes rather than specific muscle commands

ViZDoom Competitions: Playing Doom from Pixels

This paper presents the first two editions of Visual Doom AI Competition, held in 2016 and 2017. The challenge was to create bots that compete in a multi-player deathmatch in a first-person shooter (FPS) game, Doom. The bots had to make their decisions based solely on visual information, i.e., a raw screen buffer. To play well, the bots needed to understand their surroundings, navigate, explore, and handle the opponents at the same time. These aspects, together with the competitive multi-agent aspect of the game, make the competition a unique platform for evaluating the state of the art reinforcement learning algorithms. The paper discusses the rules, solutions, results, and statistics that give insight into the agents' behaviors. Best-performing agents are described in more detail. The results of the competition lead to the conclusion that, although reinforcement learning can produce capable Doom bots, they still are not yet able to successfully compete against humans in this game. The paper also revisits the ViZDoom environment, which is a flexible, easy to use, and efficient 3D platform for research for vision-based reinforcement learning, based on a well-recognized first-person perspective game Doom

Znaczenie wyroku Trybunału Sprawiedliwości UE z 20 marca 2018 r. w sprawie C-187/16 dla oceny zgodności rządowego projektu ustawy o dokumentach publicznych (druk 2153) z prawem UE

Significance of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in case C-187/16 for assessment of the governmental Bill on Public documents (Sejm’s Pa- per no. 2153) in the aspect of conformity to the EU law (WAPM-735/18): The opinion presents the subject of the dispute and the judgment in the case C‑187/16, the com‑ parison of legal and factual situation related to that case with measures proposed in the governmental Bill as well as assessment on the significance of this judgment for further work on this Bill. The state of law being assessed in the case C‑187/16 is comparable to measures included in the governmental Bill. The main difference is that Österreichische Staatsdruckerei is a private company, whereas the company mentioned in Article 17 of the bill shall be a company wholly owned by the State Treasury. Therefore, in the author’s opinion it is possible to encompass production of given documents by the exemption provided in Article 12 para. 1 of the Directive 2014/24, but under additional conditions. If the Company is not considered an entity covered by this exemption, invoking the need to protect essential security interests of the state would require supplementing the grounds of the Bill by taking into account the position of the Court of Justice in the judgment C‑187/16

Repetitive construction processes scheduling using mixed-integer linear programming

Many construction projects contain several identical or similar units, such as floors in multistory buildings, houses in housing developments, sections of pipelines or highways. Repetitive processes arise from the subdivision of a generalized construction process into specific activities associated with particular units. In many cases it is possible to perform individual processes (repeated in each units) in alternative ways (modes). Regardless of the construction project procurement system, duration and cost are the key factors determining project’s economic efficiency and fulfillment of the owner’s needs and requirements. Minimizing project duration and cost are the most important criteria for schedule optimization. Processes that repeat from unit to unit are realized by specialized crews. Uninterrupted resource utilization becomes an extremely important issue for scheduling repetitive processes to minimize employment costs. In this paper, the problem of selecting appropriate modes and minimizing the total project cost and with a constraint on project duration is presented with respect to the continuity of the crews’ work. The paper uses the mixed integer linear programming to model this problem and uses a case study to illustrate it

Selection of subcontractors using ordinal ranking methods based on Condorcet approach

A choice of a subcontractor may have critical impact on realization of the project, it has influence on the cost, duration, and quality. Selection of the best sucontractor can be defined as multiple criteria decision making problem (MCDM) of choosing a proper offer from set of alternatives evaluated by using set of criteria. Decision maker should determine the criteria as objective and measurable. Significance of decision making problem is presented by large amount of theories and methods developed for solving MCDM problems and number of criteria considered in these problems. A Condorcet method (formulated over two centuries ago) is commonly accepted for democratic (majority of criteria determines the winner) and fair election – a Condorcet winner is the alternative which is preferred in all pair-wise comparisons. According to social choice theory where a Condorcet winner cannot be obtained from a set of alternatives, the best solution is close to being a Condorcet winner. The paper presents four selection methods of the best alternative that is as close as possible to being a Condorcet winner and contains examples of a subcontractor selection using only ordinal scales of evaluation of alternatives.A choice of a subcontractor may have critical impact on realization of the project, it has influence on the cost, duration, and quality. Selection of the best sucontractor can be defined as multiple criteria decision making problem (MCDM) of choosing a proper offer from set of alternatives evaluated by using set of criteria. Decision maker should determine the criteria as objective and measurable. Significance of decision making problem is presented by large amount of theories and methods developed for solving MCDM problems and number of criteria considered in these problems. A Condorcet method (formulated over two centuries ago) is commonly accepted for democratic (majority of criteria determines the winner) and fair election – a Condorcet winner is the alternative which is preferred in all pair-wise comparisons. According to social choice theory where a Condorcet winner cannot be obtained from a set of alternatives, the best solution is close to being a Condorcet winner. The paper presents four selection methods of the best alternative that is as close as possible to being a Condorcet winner and contains examples of a subcontractor selection using only ordinal scales of evaluation of alternatives