Searching minimax game trees under memory space constraint

Games such as CHESS, GO and OTHELLO can be represented by minimax game trees. Among various search procedures to solve such game trees,- and SSS^* are perhaps most well known. Although it is proved that SSS^* explores only a subset of the nodes explored by-, - is commonly believed to be faster in real applications, since it requires very little memory space and hence its storage management cost is low. Contrary to this folklore, however, this paper reports, using the OTHELLO game as an example, that SSS^* is much faster than-. It is also demonstrated that SSS^* can be modified to make the required memory space controllable to some extent, while retaining the high efficiency of the original SSS^*.This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan, under a Scientific Grant-in-Aid.     

On a Refined Analysis of Some Problems in Interval Arithmetic Using Real Number Complexity Theory

We study some problems in interval arithmetic treated in Kreinovich et al. [13]. First, we consider the best linear approximation of a quadratic interval function. Whereas this problem (as decision problem) is known to be NP-hard in the Turing model, we analyze its complexity in the real number model and the analogous class NP . Our results substantiate that most likely it does not any longer capture the difficulty of NP in such a real number setting. More precisely, we give upper complexity bounds for the approximation problem for interval functions by locating it in (a real analogue of). This result allows several conclusions: the problem is not (any more) NP -hard under so called weak polynomial time reductions and likely not to be NP -hard under (full) polynomial time reductions; for fixed dimension the problem is polynomial time solvable; this extends the results in Koshelev et al. [12] and answers a question left open in [13].We also study several versions of interval linear systems and show similar results as for the approximation problem.Our methods combine structural complexity theory with issues from semi-infinite optimization theory.     

Separating complexity classes related to bounded alternating ω-branching programs

We develop a theory of communication within branching programs that provides exponential lower bounds on the size of branching programs that are bounded alternating. Our theory is based on the algebraic concept of -branching programs, : , a semiring homomorphism, that generalizes ordinary branching programs, -branching programs [M2] andMOD _p-branching programs [DKMW].Due to certain exponential lower and polynomial upper bounds on the size of bounded alternating -branching programs we are able to separate the corresponding complexity classesN _ba ,co-N _{ba ba} , andMOD _p - _ba ,p prime, from each other, and from that classes corresponding to oblivious linear length-bounded branching programs investigated in the past.     

Dynamic half-space range reporting and its applications

We consider the half-space range-reporting problem: Given a setS ofn points in ^d, preprocess it into a data structure, so that, given a query half-space , allk points ofS can be reported efficiently. We extend previously known static solutions to dynamic ones, supporting insertions and deletions of points ofS. For a given parameterm,n m n ^d/2 and an arbitrarily small positive constant , we achieveO(m ¹⁺) space and preprocessing time, O((n/m ^d/2 logn+k) query time, and O(m¹⁺n) amortized update time (d 3). We present, among others, the following applications: an O(n¹⁺)-time algorithm for computing convex layers in ³, and an output sensitive algorithm for computing a level in an arrangements of planes in ³, whose time complexity is O((b+n) n, whereb is the size of the level.Work by the first author has been supported by National Science Foundation Grant CCR-91-06514. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Agarwalet al. [2], which also contains the results of [20] on dynamic bichromatic closest pair and minimum spanning trees.     

A Typology of Translation Problems for Eurotra Translation Machines

This paper presents a detailed study of Eurotra Machine Translation engines, namely the mainstream Eurotra software known as the E-Framework, and two unofficial spin-offs – the C,A,T and Relaxed Compositionality translator notations – with regard to how these systems handle hard cases, and in particular their ability to handle combinations of such problems. In the C,A,T translator notation, some cases of complex transfer are wild, meaning roughly that they interact badly when presented with other complex cases in the same sentence. The effect of this is that each combination of a wild case and another complex case needs ad hoc treatment. The E-Framework is the same as the C,A,T notation in this respect. In general, the E-Framework is equivalent to the C,A,T notation for the task of transfer. The Relaxed Compositionality translator notation is able to handle each wild case (bar one exception) with a single rule even where it appears in the same sentence as other complex cases.     

The way stylized language means: Pattern matching in the child ballads

This paper suggests ways in which the pattern-matching capability of the computer can be used to further our understanding of stylized ballad language. The study is based upon a computer-aided analysis of the entire 595,000- word corpus of Francis James Child'sThe English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1892), a collection of 305 textual traditions, most of which are represented by a variety of texts. The paper focuses on the Mary Hamilton tradition as a means of discussing the function of phatic language in the ballad genre and the significance of textual variation.Cathy Lynn Preston is a Research Associate, Computer Research in the Humanities, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is interested in folklore, particularly oral narrative; popular literature of the 18th- and 19th-century, particularly broadside and chapbook; the works of John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Hardy; Middle English romance and lyric. Her major publications areA KWIC Concordance to Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, A Fragment, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984) (co-authored with Harold D. Kelling), andA KWIC Concordance to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989).     

Morphological Scale Spaces and Associative Morphological Memories: Results on Robustness and Practical Applications

Associative Morphological Memories are the analogous construct to Linear Associative Memories defined on the lattice algebra , +, , ). They have excellent recall properties for noiseless patterns. However they suffer from the sensitivity to specific noise models, that can be characterized as erosive and dilative noise. To improve their robustness to general noise we propose a construction method that is based on the extrema point preservation of the Erosion/Dilation Morphological Scale Spaces. Here we report on their application to the tasks of face localization in grayscale images and appearance based visual self-localization of a mobile robot.     

End-to-end communications management using TMN “X” interfaces

The ongoing integration of LANs and WANs to support global communications and businesses and the emergence of integrated broadband communication services has created an increased demand for cooperation between customers, network and service providers to achieve end-to-end service management. Such a cooperation between autonomous authorities, each defining their own administrative management domains, requires the application of an open standardized framework to facilitate and regulate interworking. Such a framework is given by the ITU-T recommendations on TMN, where the so-called X interface is of particular importance for inter-domain management. In this paper, we explain the role of the TMN X interface within an inter-domain TMN architecture supporting end-to-end communications management. We identify the important issues that need to be addressed for the definition and realization of TMN X interfaces and report about our practical experiences with the implementation of TMN X interfaces in the PREPARE project.     

More Church–Rosser Proofs

The proofs of the Church–Rosser theorems for , , and reduction in untyped -calculus are formalized in Isabelle/HOL, an implementation of Higher Order Logic in the generic theorem prover Isabelle. For -reduction, both the standard proof and Takahashi's are given and compared. All proofs are based on a general theory of commutating relations that supports an almost geometric style of reasoning about confluence diagrams.     

Sound and Complete Qualitative Simulation Needs “Quantitative” Filtering

The AI methodology of qualitative reasoning furnishes useful tools to scientists and engineers who need to deal with incomplete system knowledge during design, analysis, or diagnosis tasks. Qualitative simulators have a theoretical soundness guarantee; they cannot overlook any concrete equation implied by their input. On the other hand, the basic qualitative simulation algorithms have been shown to suffer from the incompleteness problem; they may allow non-solutions of the input equation to appear in their output. The question of whether a simulator with purely qualitative input which never predicts spurious behaviors can ever be achieved by adding new filters to the existing algorithm has remained unanswered. In this paper, we show that, if such a sound and complete simulator exists, it will have to be able to handle numerical distinctions with such a high precision that it must contain a component that would better be called a quantitative, rather than qualitative reasoner. This is due to the ability of the pure qualitative format to allow the exact representation of the members of a rich set of numbers.     

Multimedia teleorchestra with independent sources: Part 1 — temporal modeling of collaborative multimedia scenarios

Multimedia synchronization involving independent sources is a challenging issue imposed by the distributed multimedia applications. In our work, this issue is studied by investigating the teleorchestra application (remote multimedia presentation). In teleorchestration, among the data objects to be presented, relative and uncertain temporal requirements may be involved. Fuzzy presentation scenarios are thus generated. In this paper, we describe a temporal model that can handle these fuzzy scenarios that contain imprecise synchronization constraints, such as unknown object presentation durations and relative event occurring times. The model supports a distributed synchronization algorithm that can schedule the independent sources for the multimedia teleorchestration.     

Properties of Ridges and Cores for Two-Dimensional Images

Pizer and Eberly introduced the core as the analogue of the medial axis for greyscale images. For two-dimensional images, it is obtained as the ridge of a medial function defined on 2 + 1-dimensional scale space. The medial function is defined using Gaussian blurring and measures the extent to which a point is in the center of the object measured at a scale. Numerical calculations indicate the core has properties quite different from the medial axis. In this paper we give the generic properties of ridges and cores for two-dimensional images and explain the discrepancy between core and medial axis properties. We place cores in a larger relative critical set structure, which coherently relates disjoint pieces of core. We also give the generic transitions which occur for sequences of images varying with a parameter such as time. The genericity implies the stability of the full structure in any compact viewing area of scale space under sufficiently small L2 perturbations of the image intensity function. We indicate consequences for finding cores and also for adding markings to completely determine the structure of the medial function.     

Understanding Computer-based “Informated” Environments

The paper introduces the concept of Computer-based Informated Environments (CBIEs) to indicate an emergent form of work organisation facilitated by information technology. It first addresses the problem of inconsistent meanings of the informate concept in the literature, and it then focuses on those cases which, it is believed, show conditions of plausible informated environments. Finally, the paper looks at those factors that when found together contribute to building a CBIE. It makes reference to CBIEs as workplaces that comprise a non-technocentric perspective and questions whether CBIEs truly represent an anthropocentric route of information technology.     

The dynamic clusters method in nonhierarchical clustering

Given a finite setE R ⁿ, the problem is to find clusters (or subsets of similar points inE) and at the same time to find the most typical elements of this set. An original mathematical formulation is given to the problem. The proposed algorithm operates on groups of points, called samplings (samplings may be called multiple centers or cores); these samplings adapt and evolve into interesting clusters. Compared with other clustering algorithms, this algorithm requires less machine time and storage. We provide some propositions about nonprobabilistic convergence and a sufficient condition which ensures the decrease of the criterion. Some computational experiments are presented.     

Deep X-ray lithography using mask with integrated electrothermal actuator

We present a deep X-ray mask with integrated bent-beam electrothermal actuator for the fabrication of 3D microstructures with curved surface. The mask absorber is electroplated on the shuttle mass, which is supported by a pair of 20-m-thick single crystal silicon bent-beam electrothermal actuators and oscillated in a rectilinear direction due to the thermal expansion of the bent-beams. The width of each bent-beam is 10 m or 20 m and the length and bending angle are 1 mm and 0.1 rad, respectively, and the shuttle mass size is 1 mm × 1 mm. For 10-m-wide bent-beams, the shuttle mass displacement is around 15 m at 180 mW (3.6 V) dc input power. For 20-m-wide bent-beams, the shuttle mass displacement is around 19 m at 336 mW (4.2 V) dc input power. Sinusoidal cross-sectional PMMA microstructures with a pitch of 40 m and a height of 20 m are fabricated by 0.5 Hz, 20-m-amplitude sinusoidal shuttle mass oscillation.This research, under the contract project code MS-02-338-01, has been supported by the Intelligent Microsystem Center, which carries out one of the 21st centurys Frontier R & D Projects sponsored by the Korea Ministry of Science & Technology. Experiments at PLS were supported in part by MOST and POSCO.     

Reasoning about programs in continuation-passing style

Plotkin's _v -calculus for call-by-value programs is weaker than the -calculus for the same programs in continuation-passing style (CPS). To identify the call-by-value axioms that correspond to on CPS terms, we define a new CPS transformation and an inverse mapping, both of which are interesting in their own right. Using the new CPS transformation, we determine the precise language of CPS terms closed under -transformations, as well as the call-by-value axioms that correspond to the so-called administrative -reductions on CPS terms. Using the inverse mapping, we map the remaining and equalities on CPS terms to axioms on call-by-value terms. On the pure (constant free) set of -terms, the resulting set of axioms is equivalent to Moggi's computational -calculus. If the call-by-value language includes the control operatorsabort andcall-with-current-continuation, the axioms are equivalent to an extension of Felleisenet al.'s _v -C-calculus and to the equational subtheory of Talcott's logic IOCC.This article is a revised and extended version of the conference paper with the same title [42]. The technical report of the same title contains additional material.The authors were supported in part by NSF grant CCR 89-17022 and by Texas ATP grant 91-003604014.     

Mesh Selection for a Nearly Singular Boundary Value Problem

In this paper, we investigate the numerical solution of a model equation u _xx = exp(– ) (and several slightly more general problems) when 1 using the standard central difference scheme on nonuniform grids. In particular, we are interested in the error behaviour in two limiting cases: (i) the total mesh point number N is fixed when the regularization parameter 0, and (ii) is fixed when N. Using a formal analysis, we show that a generalized version of a special piecewise uniform mesh 12 and an adaptive grid based on the equidistribution principle share some common features. And the optimal meshes give rates of convergence bounded by |log()| as 0 and N is given, which are shown to be sharp by numerical tests.     

States and the free orthogonality monoid

Let (X, #) be an orthogonality space such that the lattice C(X, #) of closed subsets of (X, #) is orthomodular and let (, ) denote the free orthogonality monoid over (X, #). Let C₀(, ) be the subset of C(, ), consisting of all closures of bounded orthogonal sets. We show that C₀(, ) is a suborthomodular lattice of C(, ) and we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for C₀(, ) to carry a full set of dispersion free states.The work of the second author on this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Grant GP-9005.     

Context-free text grammars

A text is a triple=(, ₁, ₂) such that is a labeling function, and ₁ and ₂ are linear orders on the domain of ; hence may be seen as a word (, ₁) together with an additional linear order ₂ on the domain of . The order ₂ is used to give to the word (, ₁) itsindividual hierarchical representation (syntactic structure) which may be a tree but it may be also more general than a tree. In this paper we introducecontext-free grammars for texts and investigate their basic properties. Since each text has its own individual structure, the role of such a grammar should be that of a definition of a pattern common to all individual texts. This leads to the notion of ashapely context-free text grammar also investigated in this paper.