Symbolic PDBs and Merge-and-Shrink (M&S) are two approaches to derive admissible heuristics for optimal planning. We present a combination of these techniques, Symbolic Merge-and-Shrink (SM&S), which uses M&S abstractions as a relaxation criterion for a symbolic backward search. Empirical evaluation shows that SM&S has the strengths of both techniques deriving heuristics at least as good as the...

We introduce a video distribution architecture where the prefix of the video is delivered on demand by a prefix server while the body of the video is broken in equal length segments and each segment is periodically transmitted by a central server. The combination of open-loop distribution for the video body and closed-loop multicast transmission for the video prefix makes the overall system hig...

A wide array of alternatives has been proposed as the common metrics with which to compare the climate impacts of different emission types. Different physical and economic metrics and their parameterizations give diverse weights between e.g. CH4 and CO2, and fixing the metric from one perspective makes it sub-optimal from another. As the aims of global climate policy involve some degree of ambi...

Crossover designs are well-known to have major advantages when comparing the effects of various non-curative treatments. We compare efficiencies of several crossover designs along with the Balaam’s design with that of a parallel group design pertaining to longitudinal studies where event time can only be measured in discrete time intervals. With equally sized sequences, the parallel group desig...

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Computer Science at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Computer Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Repository Citation Bhagavathi, D.; Gurla, H.; Olariu, S.; Schwing, J. L.; and Zhang, J., "Timeand Co...

The partnership between banks and non-banks is one of the oldest and most common lateral business partnerships. While banks are looking for new markets and for cost efficient ways to implement new business models, SMEs presumably have considerable efficiency potentials within their financial processes. Some of these potentials could be realized by embedding functionality provided by banks withi...

One of the most widely known solar thermal applications is solar water heating. In terms of installation expenditures and energy cost over the total life of the system, solar water heating technology has proven to be cost efficient for several domestic and industrial applications. Technological practicability of these systems has long been recognized and is presently employed in commercial sect...

Iu recent years, a nurnber ofparallel algorithms have appeared for the generation ofcombinator-ial objects such as combinations, permutations, subsets, equivalence relations, etc. However, ltlauy of these algorithms are not cost-optimal, are designed for a powerful model of coutputirtion, or require a large rnemory per processor. To date, no parallel derangement generltion ulgorithrn possessing...

I study the effect of integration and information technology (IT) investment on the value derived from 118 mergers in the U.S. banking industry. I quantify integration scale on a per-merger basis and examine its effect on long-term changes to acquiring firms’ performance. I also examine the effect of ex ante integration risk on stock market reactions to merger announcements. While, in theory, m...

The rules of a number of electricity markets encourage renewable energy production and demand response through fixed support schemes and socialize the costs of integrating this production trough grid tariffs. These mechanisms are not economically efficient because they do not rely on market-based prices and do not consider the actual costs of achieving reliable system operation. This paper pres...