Recently, several researchers have demonstrated domains where partially-ordered planners outperform totally-ordered planners. In (Barrett & Weld 1994), Barrett and Weld build a series of arti cial domains exploring the concepts of trivial and laborious serializability, in which a partially-ordered planner, snlp, consistently outperforms two totally-ordered planners. In this paper, we demonstrat...

By implementing agents and environments using a domain-independent, extensible simulation substrate, described in this paper, agents will have clean interfaces to their environments. These makes it easier for agents to be plugged into other environments that have been similarly defined. If agents can interact with multiple environments, their behaviors and the associated experimental results wi...

When the Aswan Dam was planned, there was recorded as well as tacit knowledge about its unwanted side effects, such as the spread of schistosomiasis and diminished soil fertility. The fact that Egyptian’ experts now regard its benefits to greatly outweigh the costs and disutilities does not excuse lack of better planning. The knowledge may not have been retrieved and brought to bear at the righ...