Frans Faase - Slashdot User

Submission + - Computer learns language by playing games (mit.edu) 1

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Frans Faase

on Wednesday July 13, 2011 @05:41AM

Frans Faase writes: "By basing its strategies on the text of a manual, a computer infers the meanings of words without human supervision. The paper Learning toWin by Reading Manuals in a Monte-Carlo Framework explains how a computer program succeeds in playing Civilization II using the official game manual as a strategy guide. This manual uses a large vocabulary of 3638 words, and is composed of 2083 sentences, each on average 16.9 words long. By this the program improves it succes rate from 45% to 78% in playing the game. No prior knowledge of the language is used."

Submission + - Pioneer Anomaly Solved By 1970s Computer Graphics (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by

Frans Faase

on Thursday March 31, 2011 @05:45AM

Frans Faase writes: "A new computer model of the way heat is emitted by various parts of the Pioneer spacecraft, and reflected off others, finally solves one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics. Previous calculations have only estimated the effect of reflections. A computer modeling technique called Phong shading was used to work out exactly how the the emitted heat is reflected and in which direction it ends up travelling. Taking into account the reflections on the antenna seem to make the anomaly disappear."

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