Sequential Decision Making with Untrustworthy Service Providers

In this paper, we deal with the sequential decision making problem of agents operating in computational economies, where there is uncertainty regarding the trustworthiness of service providers populating the environment. Specifically, we propose a generic Bayesian trust model, and formulate the optimal Bayesian solution to the exploration-exploitation problem facing the agents when repeatedly interacting with others in such environments. We then present a computationally tractable Bayesian reinforcement learning algorithm to approximate that solution by taking into account the expected value of perfect information of an agent's actions. Our algorithm is shown to dramatically outperform all previous finalists of the international Agent Reputation and Trust (ART) competition, including the winner from both years the competition has been run

TRAP CROP RADISH: A SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE FOR NEMATICIDE IN SUGAR BEETS

Chemical treatment of nematodes in sugar beets can be very costly ($190 per acre), and hazardous, representing significant environmental risks to air, water and human health. Substituting trap crop radish for chemicals, represents a win-win case of sustainable pest control, yielding environmental benefits, higher profit and reduced risk.Crop Production/Industries,

OMV Servicing Missions from Space Station

\u27!he Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV) will provide a means of bringing large observatories to the Space station for servicing and redeployment to their operating altitudes. However, there are many constraints which must be met in mission planning. \u27!he missions must be designed so that propellant consumption is within the usable allowance, but contingency operations can still be accomplished. \u27!he vehicle was designed specifically to accommodate such missions, with emphasis upon servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. \u27!he OMV has been designed for operations from the Shuttle Orbiter and the Space Station. It will readily accommodate basing at the Space Station and executing observatory retrieval and redeployment missions. Mission profiles have been designed which allow retrieval with contengency hold before descent, and which allow contengency return of the observatory if it fails to reactivate properly. This capability will be a major addition to the Space Transportation System and will increase the utility of the Space Station

What kind of Brexit do voters want? Lessons from the Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit

The Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit was a major exercise in deliberative public engagement conducted in autumn 2017. It brought together fifty randomly selected members of the public for two carefully structured weekends of listening, learning, reflecting and discussing. Assembly Members considered what post-Brexit arrangements the UK should pursue, focusing on trade and migration. On trade, most Members wanted the UK to pursue a bespoke arrangement with the EU and rejected the option of leaving the EU with no deal. On migration, most wanted the UK to maintain free movement of labour while using already available policy levers to reduce immigration numbers. These findings provide unique insight into informed public opinion on vital, pressing policy questions. The Assembly also illustrates the valuable role that such deliberative exercises could play in UK democracy. We suggest they could be particular helpful for unlocking progress on issues, such as the future of social care, that are often felt to be ‘too difficult’ to handle

Watersheds dynamics following wildfires: Nonlinear feedbacks and implications on hydrologic responses

In recent years, wildfires in the western United States have occurred with increasing frequency and scale. Climate change scenarios in California predict prolonged periods of droughts with even greater potential for conditions amenable to wildfires. The Sierra Nevada Mountains provide 70% of water resources in California, yet how wildfires will impact watershed-scale hydrology is highly uncertain. In this work, we assess the impacts of wildfires perturbations on watershed hydrodynamics using a physically based integrated hydrologic model in a high-performance-computing framework. A representative Californian watershed, the Cosumnes River, is used to demonstrate how postwildfire conditions impact the water and energy balance. Results from the high-resolution model show counterintuitive feedbacks that occur following a wildfire and allow us to identify the regions most sensitive to wildfires conditions, as well as the hydrologic processes that are most affected. For example, whereas evapotranspiration generally decreases in the postfire simulations, some regions experience an increase due to changes in surface water run-off patterns in and near burn scars. Postfire conditions also yield greater winter snowpack and subsequently greater summer run-off as well as groundwater storage in the postfire simulations. Comparisons between dry and wet water years show that climate is the main factor controlling the timing at which some hydrologic processes occur (such as snow accumulation) whereas postwildfire changes to other metrics (such as streamflow) show seasonally dependent impacts primarily due to the timing of snowmelt, illustrative of the integrative nature of hydrologic processes across the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley interface

On Resilient Behaviors in Computational Systems and Environments

The present article introduces a reference framework for discussing resilience of computational systems. Rather than a property that may or may not be exhibited by a system, resilience is interpreted here as the emerging result of a dynamic process. Said process represents the dynamic interplay between the behaviors exercised by a system and those of the environment it is set to operate in. As a result of this interpretation, coherent definitions of several aspects of resilience can be derived and proposed, including elasticity, change tolerance, and antifragility. Definitions are also provided for measures of the risk of unresilience as well as for the optimal match of a given resilient design with respect to the current environmental conditions. Finally, a resilience strategy based on our model is exemplified through a simple scenario.Comment: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40860-015-0002-6 The paper considerably extends the results of two conference papers that are available at http://ow.ly/KWfkj and http://ow.ly/KWfgO. Text and formalism in those papers has been used or adapted in the herewith submitted pape

Multiple-Scattering Series For Color Transparency

Color transparency CT depends on the formation of a wavepacket of small spatial extent. It is useful to interpret experimental searches for CT with a multiple scattering scattering series based on wavepacket-nucleon scattering instead of the standard one using nucleon-nucleon scattering. We develop several new techniques which are valid for differing ranges of energy. These techniques are applied to verify some early approximations; study new forms of the wave-packet-nucleon interaction; examine effects of treating wave packets of non-zero size; and predict the production of $N^*$'s in electron scattering experiments.Comment: 26 pages, U.Wa. preprint 40427-23-N9

Sum Rule Description of Color Transparency

The assumption that a small point-like configuration does not interact with nucleons leads to a new set of sum rules that are interpreted as models of the baryon-nucleon interaction. These models are rendered semi-realistic by requiring consistency with data for cross section fluctuations in proton-proton diffractive collisions.Comment: 22 pages + 3 postscript figures attache