A neural network mechanism is proposed to modify the gait of a biped robot that walks on sloping surfaces using sensory inputs. The robot climbs a sloping surface from a level surface with no priori knowledge of the inclination of the surface. By training the neural network while the robot is walking, the robot adjusts its gait and finally forms a gait that is as stable as when it walks on the ...

Using observations of basal topography, ice thickness and modern accumulation rates, we use theory and a dynamic flowline model to examine the sensitivity of Antarctica’s Foundation Ice Stream to changes in sea level, accumulation and buttressing at the grounding line. Our sensitivity studies demonstrate that the steep, upward-sloping basal topography inland from the grounding line serves to st...

*Support for this paper was provided by Cooperative Agreement 43-3AEM-3-80137 between USDA and the University of Illinois. It does not represent the official views of either institution. This draft has benefitted from discussions with Ken Chomitz, Peter Feather, Charles Hallahan, Ralph Heimlich, Laurian Unnevehr, and participants in seminars at IFPRI, the World Bank, Resources for the Future, U...

This paper reviews the need for a new land administration vision that takes a more integrated approach rather than the historic fragmented approach and examines change management of land administration and cadastral systems in the context of global drivers of change. This results in the development of a framework for re-engineering land administration systems. After discussing a land administra...

The practicalities of a modern land administration system require some means of boundary adjustment (or repair). Of the possible mechanisms it is concluded that an alternative to adverse possession, statutory encroachment, is preferable to part parcel adverse possession.

Abstract We show that housing markets provide information about the appropriate discount rates for valuing investments in climate change abatement. Real estate is exposed to both consumption and risk its term structure of downward sloping, reaching 2.6% payoffs beyond 100 years. use a tractable asset pricing model incorporates features climate-hedging thus upward sloping but bounded above by ri...