A novel computer Scrabble engine based on probability that performs at championship leve

The thesis starts by giving an introduction to the game of Scrabble, then mentions state-of-the-art computer Scrabble programs and presents some characteristics of our developed Scrabble engine Heuri. Some brief notions of Game Theory are given, along with history of some games in Artificial Intelligence; the fundamental algorithms for game playing, as well as state-of-the-art engines and the algorithms used by them, are presented. Basic elements of Scrabble, such as the Scrabble rules and the letter distribution, are given. Some history and state-of-the-art of Computer Scrabble are commented. For instance, the generation methods of valid moves based on the data structure DAWG (Directed Acyclic Word Graph) and also the variant GADDAG are recalled. These methods are used by the state-of-the-art Scrabble engines Quackle and Maven. Then, the contributions of this thesis are presented. A Spanish lexicon for playing Scrabble has been built that is used by Heuri engines. From this construction, a detailed study and classification of Spanish irregular verbs has been provided. A novel Scrabble move generator based on anagrams has been designed and implemented, which has been shown to be faster than the GADDAG-based generator used in Quackle engine. This method is similar to the way Scrabble players look for a move, searching for anagrams and a spot to play on the board. Next, we address the evaluation of moves when playing Scrabble; the quality of your game depends on deciding what move should be played given a certain board and a rack with tiles. This decision was made initially by Heuri trying several heuristics which ended up with the construction of several engines. We give the explanation of the heuristics used in these engines, all of them based on probabilities. All these initial heuristic evaluation functions (up to six) do not use forward looking, they are static evaluators. They have shown, after testing, an increasing playing performance, which allow Heuri to beat (top-level) expert human players in Spanish, without the need of using sampling and simulation techniques. These heuristics mainly consider the possibility of achieving a bingo on the actual board, whereas Quackle used pre-calculated values (superleaves) regardless of the latter. Then, in order to improve the quality of play of Heuri even more, some additional engines are presented in which look ahead is employed. The HeuriSamp engine, which evaluates a 2-ply search, permits to obtain a defense value. The HeuriSim engine uses a 3-ply adversarial search tree; it contemplates the best first moves (according to Heuri sixth engine heuristic) from Player 1, then some replies to these moves (Player 2 moves) and then some replies to these replies (Player 1 moves). Finally, to improve these engines, opponent modeling is used; this technique makes predictions on some of the opponents' tiles based on the last play made by the opponent. We present results obtained by playing thousands of Heuri vs Heuri games, collecting important information: general statistics of Scrabble game, like a 16 point handicap of the second player, and word statistics in Spanish, like a list of the most frequently played bingos (words that use all 7 tiles of a player's rack). In addition, we present results of matches played by Heuri against top-level humans in Spanish and results obtained by massive playing of different Heuri engines against the Quackle engine in Spanish, French and English. All these match results demonstrate the championship level performance of the Heuri engines in the three languages, especially of the last developed engine that includes simulation and opponent modeling techniques. From here, conclusions of the thesis are drawn and work for the future is envisaged.La tesi comença introduint el joc del Scrabble, esmentant els programes d’ordinador de l’estat de l’art que juguen Scrabble, i presentant algunes característiques del motor de joc de Scrabble que s’ha desenvolupat anomenat Heuri. Es donen breus nocions de la Teoria de Jocs, junt amb la història d’alguns jocs en Intel·ligència Artificial; es presenten els algorismes fonamentals per jugar, així com els motors de joc de l’estat de l’art en diferents jocs i els algorismes que usen. Es comenta també la història i estat de l’art del Computer Scrabble. Es recorden els mètodes de generació de moviments vàlids basats en l’estructura de dades DAWG (Directed Acyclic Word Graph) i en la variant GADDAG, que són usats pels motors de joc de Scrabble Quackle i Maven. A continuació es presenten les contribucions de la tesi. S’ha construït un diccionari per jugar Scrabble en espanyol, el qual és usat per les diferentes versions del motor de joc Heuri. S’ha fet un estudi detallat i una classificació dels verbs irregulars en espanyol. S’ha dissenyat i implementat un nou generador de moviments de Scrabble basat en anagrames, que ha demostrat ser més ràpid que el generador basat en GADDAG usat al motor Quackle. Aquest mètode és similar a la manera en la que els jugadors de Scrabble cerquen un moviment, buscant anagrames i un lloc del tauler on col·locar-los. Seguidament, es tracta l’evacuació dels moviments quan es juga Scrabble; la qualitat del joc depèn de decidir quin moviment cal jugar donat un cert tauler i un faristol amb fitxes. En Heuri, inicialment, aquesta decisió es va prendre provant diferents heurístiques que van dur a la construcció de diversos motors. Donem l’explicació de les heurístiques usades en aquests motors, totes elles basades en probabilitats. Totes aquestes funcions d’avaluació heurística inicials (fins a sis) no miren cap endavant, fan avaluacions estàtiques. Han mostrat, després de ser provades, un rendiment creixent de nivell de joc, el que ha permès Heuri derrotar a jugadors humans experts de màxim nivell en espanyol, sense necessitat d’usar tècniques de mostreig i de simulació. Aquestes heurístiques consideren principalment la possibilitat d’aconseguir un bingo en el tauler actual, mentre que Quackle usa uns valors pre-calculats (superleaves) que no tenen en compte l’anterior. Amb l’objectiu de millorar la qualitat de joc de Heuri encara més, es presenten uns motors de joc addicionals que sí miren cap endavant. El motor HeuriSamp, que realitza una cerca 2-ply, permet obtenir un valor de defensa. El motor HeuriSim usa un arbre de cerca 3-ply; contempla els millors primers moviments (d’acord al sisè motor heurístic d’Heuri) del Jugador 1, després algunes respostes a aquests moviments (moviments del Jugador 2) i llavors algunes rèpliques a aquestes respostes (moviments del Jugador 1). Finalment, per a millorar aquests motors, es proposa usar modelatge d’oponents; aquesta tècnica realitza prediccions d’algunes de les fitxes de l’oponent basant-se en l’últim moviment jugat per aquest. Es presenten resultats obtinguts de jugar milers de partides d’Heuri contra Heuri, que recullen important informació: estadístiques generals del joc del Scrabble, com un handicap de 16 punts del segon jugador, i estadístiques de paraules en espanyol, com una llista dels bingos (paraules que usen les 7 fitxes del faristol d’un jugador) que es juguen més freqüentment. A més, es presenten resultats de partides jugades per Heuri contra jugadors humans de màxim nivell en espanyol i resultats obtinguts d'un gran nombre d’enfrontaments entre els diferents motors de joc d’Heuri contra el motor Quackle en espanyol, francès i anglès. Tots aquests resultats de partides jugades demostren el rendiment de nivell de campió dels motors d’Heuri en les tres llengües, especialment el de l’últim motor desenvolupat que inclou tècniques de de simulació i modelatge d'oponents. A partir d'aquí s'extreuen les conclusions de la tesi i es preveu treballar de cara al futur.Postprint (published version

Finite metacyclic groups as active sums of cyclic subgroups

The notion of active sum provides an analogue for groups of that of direct sum for abelian groups. One natural question then is which groups are the active sum of cyclic subgroups. Many groups have been found to give a positive answer to this question, while the case of finite metacyclic groups remained unknown. In this note we show that every finite metacyclic group can be recovered as the active sum of a discrete family of cyclic subgroups

Temporally-aware algorithms for the classification of anuran sounds

Several authors have shown that the sounds of anurans can be used as an indicator of climate change. Hence, the recording, storage and further processing of a huge number of anuran sounds, distributed over time and space, are required in order to obtain this indicator. Furthermore, it is desirable to have algorithms and tools for the automatic classification of the different classes of sounds. In this paper, six classification methods are proposed, all based on the data-mining domain, which strive to take advantage of the temporal character of the sounds. The definition and comparison of these classification methods is undertaken using several approaches. The main conclusions of this paper are that: (i) the sliding window method attained the best results in the experiments presented, and even outperformed the hidden Markov models usually employed in similar applications; (ii) noteworthy overall classification performance has been obtained, which is an especially striking result considering that the sounds analysed were affected by a highly noisy background; (iii) the instance selection for the determination of the sounds in the training dataset offers better results than cross-validation techniques; and (iv) the temporally-aware classifiers have revealed that they can obtain better performance than their nontemporally-aware counterparts.Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa (Junta de Andalucía, Spain): excellence eSAPIENS number TIC 570

Evaluación del programa de salud ocupacional de Cartagüeña de Aseo Total E.S.P.

Cartagüeña de Aseo Total E.S.P., empresa destinada al presente estudio, inició sus actividades en el año de 1996 con cubrimiento en toda la zona urbana del municipio de Cartago (Valle), ofreciendo un servicio integral de aseo conformado por el barrido, la recolección y el transporte de los residuos sólidos domiciliarios. Cabe resaltar que Cartagüeña de Aseo Total E.S.P consciente de su responsabilidad ambiental se encuentra certificada con la norma ISO 14001 permitiendo a la organización establecer, documentar, implantar, mantener y mejorar continuamente un sistema de gestión ambiental. La empresa comprometida con la formación y el desarrollo de sus colaboradores realiza la evaluación del Programa de Salud Ocupacional, con el objetivo de mantener y mejorar los niveles de eficiencia en las labores tanto operativas como administrativas de la Empresa y brindar a los trabajadores un medio laboral seguro.Cartagüeña de Aseo Total E.S.P, a company designed the present study, began operations in 1996 with coverage throughout the urban area of the municipality of Cartago (Valle), offering a full service grooming consisting of the sweep, the collection, transport and disposal of domestic solid waste. Significantly Cartagüeña de Aseo Total E.S.P aware of their environmental responsibility is certified with ISO 14001 enabling the organization to establish, document, implement, maintain and continually improve an environmental management system. The company committed to training and development of its employees makes the assessment of Occupational Health Program, in order to maintain and improve levels of efficiency in both operational and administrative tasks of the company and give employees working environment insurance

Crystallographic control of the fabrication of an extremely sophisticated shell surface microornament in the glass scallop Catillopecten

The external surface microornament of the glass scallops Catillopecten natalyae and malyutinae is made by calcitic spiny projections consisting of a stem that later divides into three equally spaced and inclined branches (here called aerials). C. natalyae contains larger and smaller aerials, whereas C. malyutinae only secreted aerials of the second type. A remarkable feature is that aerials within each type are fairly similar in size and shape and highly co-oriented, thus constituting a most sophisticated microornament. We demonstrate that aerials are single crystals whose morphology is strongly controlled by the crystallography, with the stem being parallel to the c-axis of calcite, and the branches extending along the edges of the {104} calcite rhombohedron. They grow epitaxially onto the foliated prisms of the outer shell layer. The co-orientation of the prisms explains that of the aerials. We have developed a model in which every aerial grows within a periostracal pouch. When this pouch reaches the growth margin, the mantle initiates the production of the aerial. Nevertheless, later growth of the aerial is remote, i.e. far from the contact with the mantle. We show how such an extremely sophisticated microornament has a morphology and co-orientation which are determined by crystal growth.Instituto de Salud Carlos III Spanish Government CGL2017-85118-P PID2020-116660GB-I00Unidad Cientifica de Excelencia of the University of Granada UCE-PP2016-05Junta de Andalucia RNM363Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning, Republic of Korea 13.1902.21.001 075-15-2020-79

Heuri: a Scrabble© playing engine using a probability-based heuristic

The game of Scrabble has been successfully tackled by two engines: Quackle and Maven. They attain the state-of-the-art in Computer Scrabble. These engines use simulation techniques and precalculated values to achieve superhuman play. This paper presents a Scrabble-playing engine, Heuri, which achieves world championship standards when playing in Spanish, and a very high level when playing in English and French, without using brute-force approaches.One advantage of Heuri is that its calculations, as opposed to many in Quackle, are not precomputed and instead performed for every turn. Spanish match results of different versions of Heuri against humans and two versions of Quackle are presented in this paper. Results against Quackle, in English and French, are also given. The main goal of this paper is to enrich Computer Scrabble with the description of a Scrabble playing program, Heuri, which is differently designed from earlier ones such as Maven and Quackle. An additional goal is to give Scrabble players an excellent strategy for obtaining championship level in Spanish.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Spectral kurtosis based methodology for the identification of stationary load signatures in electrical signals from a sustainable building

Producción CientíficaThe increasing use of nonlinear loads in the power grid introduces some unwanted effects, such as harmonic and interharmonic contamination. Since the existence of spectral contamination causes waveform distortion that may be harmful to the loads that are connected to the grid, it is important to identify the frequency components that are related to specific loads in order to determine how relevant their contribution is to the waveform distortion levels. Due to the diversity of frequency components that are merged in an electrical signal, it is a challenging task to discriminate the relevant frequencies from those that are not. Therefore, it is necessary to develop techniques that allow performing this selection in an efficient way. This paper proposes the use of spectral kurtosis for the identification of stationary frequency components in electrical signals along the day in a sustainable building. Then, the behavior of the identified frequencies is analyzed to determine which of the loads connected to the grid are introducing them. Experimentation is performed in a sustainable building where, besides the loads associated with the normal operation of the building, there are several power electronics equipment that is used for the electric generation process from renewable sources. Results prove that using the proposed methodology it is possible to detect the behavior of specific loads, such as office equipment and air conditioning.Universidad de Valladolid y Consejo Mexicano de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) - (grant 743842)Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Fondo para el Desarrollo del Conocimiento (FONDEC-UAQ 2020) - (project FIN202011

De la seducción involuntaria, ensayos sobre lo femenino

Ensayo sobre fotografía

Estandarización de procesos en el Colegio Americano Menno La Mesa.

En el entorno actual, la calidad educativa cobra cada vez más relevancia; las instituciones educativas se han visto en la necesidad de incorporar nuevas herramientas para potencializar sus procesos y así mejorar la experiencia educativa que brindan a sus estudiantes, no solo para fidelizarlos, también para contribuir con el mejoramiento de la sociedad y la prosperidad del país. El COLEGIO AMERICANO MENNO la Mesa inicio un proceso de transición administrativa; su director y coordinador quien ha estado al frente de la institución por más de 20 años, ingreso en el proceso de jubilación lo cual planteo varios riesgos latentes, ya que los procesos no se encontraban estandarizados ni documentados. En el 2014 el COLEGIO AMERICANO MENNO la Mesa tomo la importante decisión de estandarizar sus procesos bajo la Norma Técnica Colombiana ISO 9001:2008 buscando eliminar los riesgos en el proceso de transición y generar un esquema de aseguramiento de calidad para el fortalecimiento y mejoramiento de sus procesos