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

High-temperature LM cathode ion thrusters Quarterly progress report, 5 Feb. - 4 May 1968

Poiseuille flow measurements for high temperature liquid metal cathode ion thruster

Gradient estimates from stereo measurements for a Martian vehicle

The Martian roving vehicle requires an autonomous obstacle detection and path selection system. A laser range finder will be used to determine the locations of a number of discrete points at distances of 3 to 30 meters from the vehicle. The system might measure angles, ranges or a combination of both types of measurements

The Decisive Moment \u3ci\u3eThe Science of Decision Making under Stress\u3c/i\u3e

I n January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 performed an emergency landing in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of birds and losing thrust in all engines. Decisions made by the pilot not to return to the airport of the flight\u27s origin or to attempt to land at surrounding airports, but instead to bring the aircraft down in the icy cold waters between New York City and New Jersey, saved all 155 people on board. A few years earlier, on September 11, 2001, another plane had flown down the Hudson River, this time intentionally crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Seventeen minutes later, hijackers flew a second plane into the upper floors of the South Tower. On that fateful morning, there were two other deliberate plane crashes, one into the Pentagon and the other into a field in Pennsylvania. People around the world watched intently as firefighters and other emergency responders made critical decisions in their efforts to rescue some 20,000 people thought to have been in the towers that day. Subsequently, in Afghanistan and Iraq, military commanders made life and death decisions on battlefields. Through the use of mass media, people around the world are often eyewitnesses in near real time to the decisive moment when leadership is on the line and critical decisions are made to adapt to the danger of extreme events. Those watching the decision makers have infinite time to second-guess after the fact, free of the stress and personal drama that surround these decisions

APPLICATION OF FUNCTIONAL DYNAMIC TESTS IN THE LATE POSTOPERATIVE PHASE AFTER ACL-SURGERY FOR THE EVALUATION OF KINEMATIC AND NEUROMUSCULAR PARAMETERS

Functional dynamic tests have been developed for the evaluation of neuromuscular deficits In the late postoperative phase (1 year) after knee ligament surgery. Eight patients after ACI.surgery and 10 controls performed two different tests: 1) One-legged drop jumps from a height of 17cm. 2).Descending a stair from a height of 40cm. For the drop jumps contact time, flight time, maximal knee joint angle, range of motion and knee angle speeds were recorded as kinematic parameters. For the stairs maximal knee joint angle, range of motion and knee angle speed for the excentric phase were determined. The kinematic data was used to subdivide the movement into single phases (preinnervation, reflex induced activity, excentric, concentric (for the drop jumps)) for comparison of the determined parameters. For the knee extensor muscles the percentual integrated electrical activity of the knee extensor muscles (V.,medialis, V.lateralis, Rectus femor~sw) as calculated in relation to the normed total activity. The data of the M.biceps femoris, M.tibialis anterior and the medial head of the M.gastrocnemius was also integrated in relation to the determined movement phases. In the drop jump movement the patients showed significantly longer contact times (+60ms,

The Decisive Moment \u3ci\u3eThe Science of Decision Making under Stress\u3c/i\u3e

I n January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 performed an emergency landing in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of birds and losing thrust in all engines. Decisions made by the pilot not to return to the airport of the flight\u27s origin or to attempt to land at surrounding airports, but instead to bring the aircraft down in the icy cold waters between New York City and New Jersey, saved all 155 people on board. A few years earlier, on September 11, 2001, another plane had flown down the Hudson River, this time intentionally crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Seventeen minutes later, hijackers flew a second plane into the upper floors of the South Tower. On that fateful morning, there were two other deliberate plane crashes, one into the Pentagon and the other into a field in Pennsylvania. People around the world watched intently as firefighters and other emergency responders made critical decisions in their efforts to rescue some 20,000 people thought to have been in the towers that day. Subsequently, in Afghanistan and Iraq, military commanders made life and death decisions on battlefields. Through the use of mass media, people around the world are often eyewitnesses in near real time to the decisive moment when leadership is on the line and critical decisions are made to adapt to the danger of extreme events. Those watching the decision makers have infinite time to second-guess after the fact, free of the stress and personal drama that surround these decisions

GUARD DOGS AND GAS EXPLODERS AS COYOTE DEPREDATION CONTROL TOOLS IN NORTH DAKOTA

Guard dogs and gas exploders have been successfully used in North Dakota to protect sheep from coyote (Canis latrans) depredation since the mid-1970s. They have been used in addition to other lethal and nonlethal control tools. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gathered information from field testing and landowner interviews to measure their effectiveness. Guard dogs reduced the rate of depredation by 93 percent on the 36 ranches surveyed. Gas exploders deterred coyotes from depredating on 30 ranches an average of 31 days during the 1980 and 1981 grazing seasons. An increasing number of sheep producers are using these control methods to reduce losses and become less dependent on a publicly funded damage control program

Nanoporous biocarbons as a storage system for natural gas as fuel for vehicles

Abstract only availableNatural gas is a promising fuel source because it is safe, inexpensive, cleaner than gasoline, domestically produced, and already has an infrastructure for its distribution. Methane, the main component of natural gas, however, does not have a high energy density, and to store enough in today's natural gas storage tanks to power vehicles, the gas must be compressed to 3600 psi. To be strong enough to hold up at those high pressures, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) tanks must be bulky and cylindrical, and occupy the trunk space in today's CNG cars, which is considered prohibitive to the cars' market success. ALL-CRAFT's purpose is to develop nanoporous biocarbons which can store methane at relatively low pressures, allowing future tanks to be flat and sleek, ideally occupying the space below the car, making natural gas vehicles attractive consumer products. As a long-term goal, ALL-CRAFT is optimizing biocarbons for hydrogen storage for fuel cells. Nanoporous carbons are like sponges, soaking up molecules of adsorbent gas. The nanoporous biocarbons store up to five times more methane than an empty tank at the same pressure, despite the fact that the carbon obviously takes up space. It does this using van der Waals forces which act on the methane molecules at short distances. These forces cause the methane to form a supercritical fluid film on the surface of the carbon. The extremely high surface area of ALL-CRAFT's carbon samples—recently approaching 4000 square meters of surface per gram of carbon sample—means that our carbons can hold 180 times their volume in methane. Biocarbons can be made from myriad biomass sources. ALL-CRAFT hopes to perfect a process for making them from corn cob; using just the cob is advantageous because this does not displace corn as a food source like Ethanol does.Missouri Academy at Northwest Missouri State University, Alliance for Collaborative Research in Alternate Fuel Technolog

PANORAMA IMAGE SETS FOR TERRESTRIAL PHOTOGRAMMETRIC SURVEYS

High resolution 3D models produced from photographs acquired with consumer-grade cameras are becoming increasingly common in the fields of geosciences. However, the quality of an image-based 3D model depends on the planning of the photogrammetric surveys. This means that the geometric configuration of the multi-view camera network and the control data have to be designed in accordance with the required accuracy, resolution and completeness. From a practical application point of view, a proper planning (of both photos and control data) of the photogrammetric survey especially for terrestrial acquisition, is not always ensured due to limited accessibility of the target object and the presence of occlusions. To solve these problems, we propose a different image acquisition strategy and we test different geo-referencing scenarios to deal with the practical issues of a terrestrial photogrammetric survey. The proposed photogrammetric survey procedure is based on the acquisition of a sequence of images in panorama mode by rotating the camera on a standard tripod. The offset of the pivot point from the projection center prevents the stitching of these images into a panorama. We demonstrate how to still take advantage of this capturing mode. The geo-referencing investigation consists of testing the use of directly observed coordinates of the camera positions, different ground control point (GCP) configurations, and GCPs with different accuracies, i.e. artificial targets vs. natural features. Images of the test field in a low-slope hill were acquired from the ground using an SLR camera. To validate the photogrammetric results a terrestrial laser scanner survey is used as benchmark