8,541 research outputs found
Answer Set Planning Under Action Costs
Recently, planning based on answer set programming has been proposed as an
approach towards realizing declarative planning systems. In this paper, we
present the language Kc, which extends the declarative planning language K by
action costs. Kc provides the notion of admissible and optimal plans, which are
plans whose overall action costs are within a given limit resp. minimum over
all plans (i.e., cheapest plans). As we demonstrate, this novel language allows
for expressing some nontrivial planning tasks in a declarative way.
Furthermore, it can be utilized for representing planning problems under other
optimality criteria, such as computing ``shortest'' plans (with the least
number of steps), and refinement combinations of cheapest and fastest plans. We
study complexity aspects of the language Kc and provide a transformation to
logic programs, such that planning problems are solved via answer set
programming. Furthermore, we report experimental results on selected problems.
Our experience is encouraging that answer set planning may be a valuable
approach to expressive planning systems in which intricate planning problems
can be naturally specified and solved
Exchange-Repairs: Managing Inconsistency in Data Exchange
In a data exchange setting with target constraints, it is often the case that
a given source instance has no solutions. In such cases, the semantics of
target queries trivialize. The aim of this paper is to introduce and explore a
new framework that gives meaningful semantics in such cases by using the notion
of exchange-repairs. Informally, an exchange-repair of a source instance is
another source instance that differs minimally from the first, but has a
solution. Exchange-repairs give rise to a natural notion of exchange-repair
certain answers (XR-certain answers) for target queries. We show that for
schema mappings specified by source-to-target GAV dependencies and target
equality-generating dependencies (egds), the XR-certain answers of a target
conjunctive query can be rewritten as the consistent answers (in the sense of
standard database repairs) of a union of conjunctive queries over the source
schema with respect to a set of egds over the source schema, making it possible
to use a consistent query-answering system to compute XR-certain answers in
data exchange. We then examine the general case of schema mappings specified by
source-to-target GLAV constraints, a weakly acyclic set of target tgds and a
set of target egds. The main result asserts that, for such settings, the
XR-certain answers of conjunctive queries can be rewritten as the certain
answers of a union of conjunctive queries with respect to the stable models of
a disjunctive logic program over a suitable expansion of the source schema.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figures, submitted to the Journal on Data Semantic
Complexity transitions in global algorithms for sparse linear systems over finite fields
We study the computational complexity of a very basic problem, namely that of
finding solutions to a very large set of random linear equations in a finite
Galois Field modulo q. Using tools from statistical mechanics we are able to
identify phase transitions in the structure of the solution space and to
connect them to changes in performance of a global algorithm, namely Gaussian
elimination. Crossing phase boundaries produces a dramatic increase in memory
and CPU requirements necessary to the algorithms. In turn, this causes the
saturation of the upper bounds for the running time. We illustrate the results
on the specific problem of integer factorization, which is of central interest
for deciphering messages encrypted with the RSA cryptosystem.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure
Critical Line in Random Threshold Networks with Inhomogeneous Thresholds
We calculate analytically the critical connectivity of Random Threshold
Networks (RTN) for homogeneous and inhomogeneous thresholds, and confirm the
results by numerical simulations. We find a super-linear increase of with
the (average) absolute threshold , which approaches for large , and show that this asymptotic scaling is
universal for RTN with Poissonian distributed connectivity and threshold
distributions with a variance that grows slower than . Interestingly, we
find that inhomogeneous distribution of thresholds leads to increased
propagation of perturbations for sparsely connected networks, while for densely
connected networks damage is reduced; the cross-over point yields a novel,
characteristic connectivity , that has no counterpart in Boolean networks.
Last, local correlations between node thresholds and in-degree are introduced.
Here, numerical simulations show that even weak (anti-)correlations can lead to
a transition from ordered to chaotic dynamics, and vice versa. It is shown that
the naive mean-field assumption typical for the annealed approximation leads to
false predictions in this case, since correlations between thresholds and
out-degree that emerge as a side-effect strongly modify damage propagation
behavior.Comment: 18 figures, 17 pages revte
Two-color ionization of hydrogen by short intense pulses
Photoelectron energy spectra resulting by the interaction of hydrogen with
two short pulses having carrier frequencies, respectively, in the range of the
infrared and XUV regions have been calculated. The effects of the pulse
duration and timing of the X-ray pulse on the photoelectron energy spectra are
discussed. Analysis of the spectra obtained for very long pulses show that
certain features may be explained in terms of quantum interferences in the time
domain. It is found that, depending on the duration of the X-ray pulse, ripples
in the energy spectra separated by the infrared photon energy may appear.
Moreover, the temporal shape of the low frequency radiation field may be
inferred by the breadth of the photoelectron energy spectra.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure
Pulsation in the atmosphere of the roAp star HD 24712. I. Spectroscopic observations and radial velocity measurements
We have investigated the structure of the pulsating atmosphere of one of the
best studied rapidly oscillating Ap stars, HD 24712. For this purpose we
analyzed spectra collected during 2001-2004. An extensive data set was obtained
in 2004 simultaneously with the photometry of the Canadian MOST mini-satellite.
This allows us to connect directly atmospheric dynamics observed as radial
velocity variations with light variations seen in photometry. We directly
derived for the first time and for different chemical elements, respectively
ions, phase shifts between photometric and radial velocity pulsation maxima
indicating, as we suggest, different line formation depths in the atmosphere.
This allowed us to estimate for the first time the propagation velocity of a
pulsation wave in the outer stellar atmosphere of a roAp star to be slightly
lower than the sound speed. We confirm large pulsation amplitudes (150-400 m/s)
for REE lines and the Halpha core, while spectral lines of the other elements
(Mg, Si, Ca, and Fe-peak elements) have nearly constant velocities. We did not
find different pulsation amplitudes and phases for the lines of rare-earth
elements before and after the Balmer jump, which supports the hypothesis of REE
concentration in the upper atmosphere above the hydrogen line-forming layers.
We also discuss radial velocity amplitudes and phases measured for individual
spectral lines as tools for a 3D tomography of the atmosphere of HD 24712.Comment: accepted by A&
Mean-Field and Anomalous Behavior on a Small-World Network
We use scaling results to identify the crossover to mean-field behavior of
equilibrium statistical mechanics models on a variant of the small world
network. The results are generalizable to a wide-range of equilibrium systems.
Anomalous scaling is found in the width of the mean-field region, as well as in
the mean-field amplitudes. Finally, we consider non-equilibrium processes.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figures; reference adde
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