We explore how risk-taking in the card game contract bridge, and in a financial gamble, correlate with variation in the dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) among serious tournament bridge players. In bridge risk-taking, we find significant interactions between genetic predisposition and skill. Among men with the 7-repeat allele of DRD4, namely 7R+ men, those with more bridge skill take more good r...

This paper describes the results of applying a modified version of hierarchical task-network (HTN) planning to the problem of declarer play in contract bridge. We represent information about bridge in a task network that is extended to represent multi-agency and uncertainty. Our game-playing procedure uses this task network to generate game trees in which the set of alternative choices is deter...

Past research has shown that as skewed bridges change temperature, additional lateral movement or forces will occur along with the elongation of bridge. Even though past documented this behavior, movements semi-integral bridge superstructure associated temperature effects on skewness have not been well predicted. In study, seasonal a 24-year-old caused by abutment investigated conducting series...

When depth of flow past a river bridge exceeds opening under the bridge, the flow under the bridge becomes pressurized. The water is directed downward and under the bridge deck, causing increase in velocity and shear stress on the bed thereby increasing bed scour. This is termed as Pressure Flow Scour. The present study investigates the phenomenon of pressure flow scour resulting from a submerg...

One of the “grand challenges for machine learning” is the problem of learning from textbooks. This paper addresses the problem of learning from texts including omissions and inconsistencies that are clarified by illustrative examples. To avoid problems in natural language understanding, we consider a simplification of this problem in which the text has been manually translated into a logical th...

• This project attempts to learn the optimal classification for two important subproblems of Bridge’s bidding phase • Given a 13-card hand, which of 36 possible opening bids should the player use? • Given two 13-card hands, in which of 36 possible final contracts should the team end? • An opening bid and a final contract can each be one of Pass or [1-7][NT|S|H|D|C] • Bidding in Bridge is a nuan...

Alpha-beta pruning is the algorithm of choice for searching game trees with position values taken from a totally ordered set, such as the set of real numbers. We generalize to game trees with position values taken from a partially ordered set, and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for alpha-beta pruning to be valid. Specifically, we show that shallow pruning is possible if and only if t...