Improving games AI performance using grouped hierarchical level of detail

Computer games are increasingly making use of large environments; however, these are often only sparsely populated with autonomous agents. This is, in part, due to the computational cost of implementing behaviour functions for large numbers of agents. In this paper we present an optimisation based on level of detail which reduces the overhead of modelling group behaviours, and facilitates the population of an expansive game world. We consider an environment which is inhabited by many distinct groups of agents. Each group itself comprises individual agents, which are organised using a hierarchical tree structure. Expanding and collapsing nodes within each tree allows the efficient dynamic abstraction of individuals, depending on their proximity to the player. Each branching level represents a different level of detail, and the system is designed to trade off computational performance against behavioural fidelity in a way which is both efficient and seamless to the player. We have developed an implementation of this technique, and used it to evaluate the associated performance benefits. Our experiments indicate a significant potential reduction in processing time, with the update for the entire AI system taking less than 1% of the time required for the same number of agents without optimisation

A study of project planning on Libyan construction projects

Construction projects are regularly faced by scheduling problems causing the projects to finish beyond their predetermined due date; this is a global phenomenon. The main purpose of this study is to consider the problems associated with project planning generally, with specific reference to construction projects in Libya. This study is unique in two respects. First, despite the recent high volume of infrastructure work in the country, there have been few investigations into construction delays in Libya. Secondly, earlier studies have considered the causes or the effects of project delays, whereas the present aim is to evaluate the potential of applying a planning and scheduling technique that is entirely novel in the Libyan context. The paper reports the results of Phase I of this research

Reinventing the New Orleans Public Education System

If we were creating a public education system from scratch, would we organize it as most of our public systems are now organized? Would our classrooms look just as they did before the advent of personal computers and the internet? Would we give teachers lifetime jobs after their second or third years? Would we let schools survive if, year after year, half their students dropped out? Would we send children to school for only eight and a half months a year and six hours a day? Would we assign them to schools by neighborhood, reinforcing racial and economic segregation? Few people would answer yes to such questions. But in real life we don’t usually get to start over; instead, we have to change existing systems. One city did get a chance to start over, however. In 2005, after the third deadliest hurricane in US history, state leaders wiped the slate clean in New Orleans. After Katrina, Louisiana handed all but seventeen of the city’s public schools to the state’s Recovery School District (RSD), created two years earlier to turn around failing schools. Over the next nine years, the RSD gradually turned them all into charter schools—a new form of public school that has emerged over the past quarter century. Charters are public schools operated by independent, mostly nonprofit organizations, free of most state and district rules but held accountable for performance by written charters, which function like performance contracts. Most, but not all, are schools of choice. In 2019, New Orleans’ last traditional schools converted to charter status, and 100 percent of its public school students now attend charters

Young Gay Men and Social Control in Modern Britain, 1967 - 2001

This thesis is an exploration of young gay identity and it argues for a varied experience over time and across place, which was also affected by methods of social control during the era of partial decriminalisation, between 1967 and 2001. These differing experiences have not previously been explored when looking specifically at gay men under the age of 21. It is therefore a much-needed addition to the dearth of historical scholarship on young gay men. The thesis has two focal points. Firstly, it explores the differing experiences of a hidden minority group, looking to uncover their different identities as gay teenagers. The scope is between 1967 and 2001 because it represents the legislative boundaries in place during changes to the age of consent for homosexual relationships. Secondly, it incorporates major mechanisms of social control within the analysis to determine that youth homosexual identity is affected by imposed social restrictions, including the age of consent, Section 28, the AIDS Crisis, and parental control. It argues against previous scholars who have determined that there is an absence of the young gay voice in the available evidence during this period. Using a varied source base, including public and private written documents, oral histories and personal written testimonies it explores young gay identity across three decades

Gaussian process regression for forecasting battery state of health

Accurately predicting the future capacity and remaining useful life of batteries is necessary to ensure reliable system operation and to minimise maintenance costs. The complex nature of battery degradation has meant that mechanistic modelling of capacity fade has thus far remained intractable; however, with the advent of cloud-connected devices, data from cells in various applications is becoming increasingly available, and the feasibility of data-driven methods for battery prognostics is increasing. Here we propose Gaussian process (GP) regression for forecasting battery state of health, and highlight various advantages of GPs over other data-driven and mechanistic approaches. GPs are a type of Bayesian non-parametric method, and hence can model complex systems whilst handling uncertainty in a principled manner. Prior information can be exploited by GPs in a variety of ways: explicit mean functions can be used if the functional form of the underlying degradation model is available, and multiple-output GPs can effectively exploit correlations between data from different cells. We demonstrate the predictive capability of GPs for short-term and long-term (remaining useful life) forecasting on a selection of capacity vs. cycle datasets from lithium-ion cells.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, published in the Journal of Power Sources, 201

Deterring Transfer Pricing Abuse: Changing Incentives As a Practical Alternative to a Global Tax Regime

The Article presents information on the abuse of transfer pricing by multinational enterprises and the changes brought in the jurisdiction of the Tax Court of the U.S. for solving this abuse. The focus of the changes is to deter the enterprises from aggressive tax-avoidance behaviour and reduction of tax burden. Information on allocation of income in the lower tax countries for preventing tax evasion is also presented

Raiders of the Lost Architecture: Kernels for Bayesian Optimization in Conditional Parameter Spaces

In practical Bayesian optimization, we must often search over structures with differing numbers of parameters. For instance, we may wish to search over neural network architectures with an unknown number of layers. To relate performance data gathered for different architectures, we define a new kernel for conditional parameter spaces that explicitly includes information about which parameters are relevant in a given structure. We show that this kernel improves model quality and Bayesian optimization results over several simpler baseline kernels.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Appeared in the NIPS 2013 workshop on Bayesian optimizatio