Using cases utility for heuristic planning improvement

Proceedings of: 7th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR07), Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, 13 - 16 August 2007Current efficient planners employ an informed search guided by a heuristic function that is quite expensive to compute. Thus, ordering nodes in the search tree becomes a key issue, in order to select efficiently nodes to evaluate from the successors of the current search node. In a previous work, we successfully applied a CBR approach to order nodes for evaluation, thus reducing the number of calls to the heuristic function. However, once cases were learned, they were not modified according to their utility on solving planning problems. We present in this work a scheme for learning case quality based on its utility during a validation phase. The qualities obtained determine the way in which these cases are preferred in the retrieval and replay processes. Then, the paper shows some experimental results for several benchmarks taken from the International Planning Competition (IPC). These results show the planning performance improvement when case utilities are used.Publicad

Determinación del ensamblaje genético de aislados axénicos colombianos de Giardia intestinalis

Objetivo. La giardiasis es un problema de salud pública que afecta especialmente a los niños que habitan en países en vías de desarrollo y que pertenecen a comunidades donde el saneamiento es deficiente. Giardia intestinalis es el parásito que causa esta enfermedad y presenta una gran variabilidad genética que se traduce en 8 diferentes grupos o ensamblajes genéticos nombrados de la letra A a la H. En humanos, todas las infecciones con Giardia son causadas por parásitos con ensamblaje A o B, los cuales tienen potencial zoonótico y han sido aislados de otros mamíferos. El objetivo de este estudio fue genotipificar muestras de Giardia aisladas de pacientes de tres regiones geográficas de Colombia. Materiales y métodos. Se examinaron 22 aislados de G. intestinalis, los primeros descritos cultivados axénicamente de origen colombiano, por medio del análisis del polimorfismo de longitud de fragmentos de restricción (RFLP), del gen glutamato deshidrogenasa (gdh). Resultados y conclusión. El patrón del RFLP mostró que todos los aislados pertenecían al ensamblaje A, específicamente al AI, resultado que fue confirmado por secuenciación. Con este estudio se pretende contribuir al conocimiento de los genotipos circulantes de Giardia intestinalis en Colombia

Using the relaxed plan heuristic to select goals in oversubscription planning problems

Oversubscription planning (OSP) appears in many real problems where nding a plan achieving all goals is infeasi- ble. The objective is to nd a feasible plan reaching a goal sub- set while maximizing some measure of utility. In this paper, we present a new technique to select goals \a priori" for problems in which a cost bound prevents all the goals from being achieved. It uses estimations of distances between goals, which are com- puted using relaxed plans. Using these distances, a search in the space of subsets of goals is performed, yielding a new set of goals to plan for. A revised planning problem can be created and solved, taking into account only the selected goals. We present experiments in six di erent domains with good results.This work has been partially supported by MICIIN TIN2008-06701-C03-03 and CCG10-UC3M/TIC-5597 projects.Publicad

A case-based approach to heuristic planning

Most of the great success of heuristic search as an approach to AI Planning is due to the right design of domain-independent heuristics. Although many heuristic planners perform reasonably well, the computational cost of computing the heuristic function in every search node is very high, causing the planner to scale poorly when increasing the size of the planning tasks. For tackling this problem, planners can incorporate additional domain-dependent heuristics in order to improve their performance. Learning-based planners try to automatically acquire these domain-dependent heuristics using previous solved problems. In this work, we present a case-based reasoning approach that learns abstracted state transitions that serve as domain control knowledge for improving the planning process. The recommendations from the retrieved cases are used as guidance for pruning or ordering nodes in different heuristic search algorithms applied to planning tasks. We show that the CBR guidance is appropriate for a considerable number of planning benchmarks.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish MEC projects PELEA: TIN2008-6701-C03-03 and PlanInteraction: TIN2011-27652-C03-02.Publicad

Gestión escolar y ética profesional de los docentes de la Escuela de Educación Básica Quinto Guayas, Ecuador, 2019

La investigación denominada “Gestión escolar y ética profesional de los docentes de la Escuela de Educación Básica Quinto Guayas, Ecuador, 2019” tuvo como objetivo establecer la relación entre la gestión escolar y la ética profesional de los docentes de la escuela de educación básica Quinto Guayas, Ecuador, 2019. Asumió la Teoría de la Administración educacional de Rogger Kaufman, quien considera la planificación, organización, dirección y control como elementos de la buena administración. También considera la teoría de la Personalidad de Kurt Lewin, quien manifiesta la relación entre la personalidad y el proceder visible. La Investigación planteó la hipótesis donde afirmaba que la gestión escolar se relaciona significativamente con la ética profesional de los docentes de la escuela de educación básica Quinto Guayas, Ecuador, 2019. La población fue de 30 docentes, siendo un muestreo censal. Se trata de una investigación cuantitativa, transversal. El diseño es no experimental de nivel correlacional. La técnica fue la encuesta y como instrumentos utilizó dos cuestionarios, uno de 18 ítems con escala ordinal y su confiabilidad fue de 0,920, otro de 22 ítems con una confiabilidad de 0,955, la validez de contenido se evidenció a través del juicio de expertos. Los datos se procesaron con el software SPSS 22. Los resultados descriptivos de la tabla 2 muestran que el 53,3% de los docentes evalúan con nivel alto la gestión escolar, al mismo tiempo que la ética profesional es adecuada. El estudio concluye que existe relación significativa entre la gestión escolar y la ética profesional de los docentes de la escuela de educación básica Quinto Guayas, Ecuador, 2019, dado los valores r de Pearson 0,645 y significancia 0,000 como se muestra en la tabla 7

Con manos de ángel: figuras del cuidado en la obra de Miguel de Unamuno

Specialized literature on Unamuno has paid little attention to the dimension of care latent in this philosopher’s plays. This paper provides a contribution in that regard. It departs from contemporary ethical approaches related to care, and it analyzes several texts by Unamuno in the light of this theoretical framework. The result is a novel reading of his work that identifies the presence of aspects linked to the ethical nature of being-for-another, it shows the exercise of care exercised through language and touch is shown, and it emphasizes the ethical scope of the omnipresent maternal attitude in Unamuno’s writings.La literatura especializada sobre Unamuno ha prestado poca atención a la dimensión del cuidado latente en la obra de este filósofo. El presente estudio ofrece una aportación en ese sentido, para ello parte de los planteamientos éticos contemporáneos relacionados con el cuidado y analiza varios textos de Unamuno a la luz de ese marco teórico. El resultado es una lectura novedosa de su obra donde se identifica la presencia de aspectos vinculados a la eticidad del ser-para-otro, se plasma el ejercicio del cuidado ejercido a través del lenguaje y del tacto, y se profundiza en el alcance ético de la actitud maternal omnipresente en los relatos del bilbaíno

Electrical monitoring of infection biomarkers in chronic wounds using nanochannels

Chronic wounds represent an important healthcare challenge in developed countries, being wound infection a serious complication with significant impact on patients’ life conditions. However, there is a lack of methods allowing an early diagnosis of infection and a right decision making for a correct treatment. In this context, we propose a novel methodology for the electrical monitoring of infection biomarkers in chronic wound exudates, using nanoporous alumina membranes. Lysozyme, an enzyme produced by the human immune system indicating wound infection, is selected as a model compound to prove the concept. Peptidoglycan, a component of the bacterial layer and the native substrate of lysozyme, is immobilized on the inner walls of the nanochannels, blocking them both sterically and electrostatically. The steric blocking is dependent on the pore size (20 - 100 nm) and the peptidoglycan concentration, whereas the electrostatic blocking depends on the pH. The proposed analytical method is based on the electrical monitoring of the steric/electrostatic nanochannels unblocking upon the specific degradation of peptidoglycan by lysozyme, allowing to detect the infection biomarker at 280 ng/mL levels, which are below those expected in wounds. The low protein adsorption rate and thus outstanding filtering properties of the nanoporous alumina membranes allowed us to discriminate wound exudates from patients with both sterile and infected ulcers without any sample pre-treatment usually indispensable in most diagnostic devices for analysis of physiological fluids. Although size and charge effects in nanochannels have been previously approached for biosensing purposes, as far as we know, the use of nanoporous membranes for monitoring enzymatic cleavage processes, leading to analytical systems for the specific detection of the enzymes has not been deeply explored so far. Compared with previously reported methods, our methodology presents the advantages of no need of neither bioreceptors (antibodies or aptamers) nor competitive assays, low matrix effects and quantitative and rapid analysis at the point-of-care, being also of potential application for the determination of other protease biomarkers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Anhedonia as a potential risk factor of alzheimer’s disease in a community-dwelling elderly sample: Results from the zarademp project

(1) Introduction: Dementia is a major public health problem, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most frequent subtype. Clarifying the potential risk factors is necessary in order to improve dementia-prevention strategies and quality of life. Here, our purpose was to investigate the role of the absence of hedonic tone; anhedonia, understood as the reduction on previous enjoyable daily activities, which occasionally is underdetected and underdiagnosed; and the risk of developing AD in a cognitively unimpaired and non-depressed population sample. (2) Method: We used data from the Zaragoza Dementia and Depression (ZARADEMP) project, a longitudinal epidemiological study on dementia and depression. After excluding subjects with dementia, a sample of 2830 dwellers aged =65 years was followed for 4.5 years. The geriatric mental state examination was used to identify cases of anhedonia. AD was diagnosed by a panel of research psychiatrists according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) criteria. A multivariate survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression model were performed, and the analysis was controlled by an analysis for the presence of clinically significant depression. (3) Results: We found a significant association between anhedonia cases and AD risk in the univariate analysis (hazard ratio (HR): 2.37; 95% CI: 1.04–5.40). This association persisted more strongly in the fully adjusted model. (4) Conclusions: Identifying cognitively intact individuals with anhedonia is a priority to implement preventive strategies that could delay the progression of cognitive and functional impairment in subjects at risk of AD

Proyecto de evaluaci?n de viabilidad econ?mica de plan de negocio de clases a medida en los distritos de Lima Metropolitana

La presente tesis tiene como objetivo, evaluar la rentabilidad de un negocio de intermediaci?n entre demandantes y ofertantes de clases de reforzamiento para alumnos de nivel secundaria. El plan de negocio consiste en poner a disposici?n una Plataforma web y app donde los padres de familia y alumnos de educaci?n secundaria puedan buscar y encontrar alternativas de profesores que dicte clases de las diferentes materias y temas que se requieran, en el mismo se podr? ver la disponibilidad de horarios y calificaciones anteriores para los profesores y finalmente se podr? realizar la selecci?n del profesor, horario y pactar la clase a trav?s de la aplicaci?n, teniendo como opci?n de pago la tarjeta bancaria, deposito a cuenta o efectivo

Efficiently Reasoning with Interval Constraints in Forward Search Planning

In this paper we present techniques for reasoning natively with quantitative/qualitative interval constraints in statebased PDDL planners. While these are considered important in modeling and solving problems in timeline based planners; reasoning with these in PDDL planners has seen relatively little attention, yet is a crucial step towards making PDDL planners applicable in real-world scenarios, such as space missions. Our main contribution is to extend the planner OPTIC to reason natively with Allen interval constraints. We show that our approach outperforms both MTP, the only PDDL planner capable of handling similar constraints and a compilation to PDDL 2.1, by an order of magnitude. We go on to present initial results indicating that our approach is competitive with a timeline based planner on a Mars rover domain, showing the potential of PDDL planners in this setting