Puzzle Solution Research Articles

Solving a Perplexing Scenic and Sage Creek Basin Drainage History Problem, Pennington County, South Dakota, USA

The escarpment-surrounded Sage Creek and Scenic Basins open in southeast directions toward the northeast and east oriented White River valley while their floors drain in a northwest direction to the northeast oriented Cheyenne River. Located in the South Dakota Badlands region the Sage Creek and Scenic Basins present an intriguing drainage history problem where key puzzle pieces also include the White and Cheyenne River valleys. The puzzle solution requires massive amounts of southeast oriented water to first erode as deep headcuts the east oriented White River valley segment and the two southeast-oriented Sage Creek and Scenic Basins prior to Cheyenne River valley headward erosion. The northeast oriented White River valley segment upstream from the east oriented White River valley segment (and from the Sage Creek and Scenic Basin location) next eroded headward across southeast oriented flow and was initiated by southeast oriented water flowing from the Scenic Basin that turned in a northeast direction to reach the east oriented White River downstream valley segment. Erosion of the Sage Creek and Scenic Basin headcuts abruptly ended when headward erosion of the northeast oriented Cheyenne River valley beheaded southeast oriented flow routes leading to the then actively eroding Sage Creek and Scenic Basin heacuts. Cheyenne River valley headward erosion in a southwest direction next captured massive southeast oriented flow then still moving to the newly eroded northeast oriented White River valley segment. Northwest oriented drainage developed on the Sage Creek and Scenic Basin floors when a flood surge or temporary dam caused water to fill the White River valley and to spill in a northwest direction across low points on the then abandoned Sage Creek and Scenic Basin headcut rims. This spillage eroded narrow northwest oriented valleys and drained water filling the two basins to the Cheyenne River valley while most of the ponded water drained in an east direction down the White River valley. The White River valley, Sage Creek and Scenic Basins, and the Cheyenne River valley were eroded by enormous quantities of southeast oriented water that also deeply eroded the entire South Dakota Badlands region.

Robust Aircraft Recognition using High Resolution Reconstructed Images

Background: Aircraft Recognition with high resolution space borne images is a challenging task.It is different from other natural object recognition. The ground image of aircraft is complex and disturbing. The target image has to be detected in a cluttered background. Methods: The proposed technique takes into account multiple features such as circular Frequency filter (CF-filter), fuselage symmetry and angle between fuselage axis and wing for candidate selection. Normalized Tree cut algorithm isused for Segmentation of image done and aircraft alignment done using Histogram Oriented Gradient (HOG). Automatic jigsaw puzzle solution is implemented for aircraft reconstruction of pieces. Findings: In the candidate selection stage because of cluttered background the aircraft is not identified. Here the multiple identification techniques such ascircular frequency filter (CF-filter), fuselage symmetry and angle between fuselage axis and wing are considered. Applications: The above said techniques were dealt earlier as independent features. Because of proposed multiple feature consideration accuracy in candidate identification is enhanced.

Using the Tower of Hanoi puzzle to infuse your mathematics classroom with computer science concepts

This article suggests that logic puzzles, such as the well-known Tower of Hanoi puzzle, can be used to introduce computer science concepts to mathematics students of all ages. Mathematics teachers introduce their students to computer science concepts that are enacted spontaneously and subconsciously throughout the solution to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. These concepts include, but are not limited to, conditionals, iteration, and recursion. Lessons, such as the one proposed in this article, are easily implementable in mathematics classrooms and extracurricular programmes as they are good candidates for ‘drop in’ lessons that do not need to fit into any particular place in the typical curriculum sequence. As an example for readers, the author describes how she used the puzzle in her own Number Sense and Logic course during the federally funded Upward Bound Math/Science summer programme for college-intending low-income high school students. The article explains each computer science term with real-life and mathematical examples, applies each term to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle solution, and describes how students connected the terms to their own solutions of the puzzle. It is timely and important to expose mathematics students to computer science concepts. Given the rate at which technology is currently advancing, and our increased dependence on technology in our daily lives, it has become more important than ever for children to be exposed to computer science. Yet, despite the importance of exposing today's children to computer science, many children are not given adequate opportunity to learn computer science in schools. In the United States, for example, most students finish high school without ever taking a computing course. Mathematics lessons, such as the one described in this article, can help to make computer science more accessible to students who may have otherwise had little opportunity to be introduced to these increasingly important concepts.

The Moderately Hard DoS-Resistant Authentication Protocol on Client Puzzles

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against server resources exhaustion are a major security threat to the Internet. A number of defense mechanisms have been proposed against such attacks. Recently, Aura et al. proposed a solution to resist DoS attacks against an authentication protocol. However, their puzzle solution cannot guarantee that all of their clients have fair computation time to solve a puzzle. The solution may even render some clients unable to obtain the puzzle solution within the lifetime, resulting in a lack of service from the server. In this paper, a simple solution as well as an applied authentication protocol was proposed.

Letters/Crossword

Letters/Crossword

A Novel WLAN Client Puzzle against DoS Attack Based on Pattern Matching

Despite the popularity of 802.11 based networks, they suffer several types of DoS attack, launched by an attacker whose aim is to make an access point (AP) unavailable to legitimate users. One of the most common DoS attacks on 802.11 based networks is to deplete the resources of the AP. A serious situation like this can occur when the AP receives a burst of connection requests. This paper addresses this common DoS attack and proposes a lightweight puzzle, based on pattern-matching. Using a pattern-matching technique, this model adequately resists resource-depletion attacks in terms of both puzzle generation and solution verification. Using a sensible series of contextual comparisons, the outcomes were modelled by a simulator, and the security definition and proofs are verified, among other results.

December 2015 crossword puzzle solution

December 2015 crossword puzzle solution

Solving the Puzzle of Bolted Joints

This article discusses the various ways of solving the puzzle of bolted joint assembly. In 2001, The PCC-1-2000 Guidelines for Pressure Boundary Bolted Flange Joint Assembly presented with knowledge and practices specific to the assembly of bolted flange joints. The puzzle solution that came from this box was the most definitive to date and allowed those dealing with bolted joints to assemble the variables by methods that had been used successfully for many years by many people. This document is helping people across industry not only to assemble bolted flange joints, but also to establish joint integrity programs, procedures, and best practices. PCC-1-2010 shifts the emphasis to gasket stress and gasket type and provides instruction and information pertinent to bolt torque values. The 2010 document contains, for instance, a whole section on bolt stress—the unit load that should be put on the bolts—and includes tables as well.

A New Technique for Solving Puzzles

This paper proposes a new technique for solving jigsaw puzzles. The novelty of the proposed technique is that it provides an automatic jigsaw puzzle solution without any initial restriction about the shape of pieces, the number of neighbor pieces, etc. The proposed technique uses both curve- and color-matching similarity features. A recurrent procedure is applied, which compares and merges puzzle pieces in pairs, until the original puzzle image is reformed. Geometrical and color features are extracted on the characteristic points (CPs) of the puzzle pieces. CPs, which can be considered as high curvature points, are detected by a rotationally invariant corner detection algorithm. The features which are associated with color are provided by applying a color reduction technique using the Kohonen self-organized feature map. Finally, a postprocessing stage checks and corrects the relative position between puzzle pieces to improve the quality of the resulting image. Experimental results prove the efficiency of the proposed technique, which can be further extended to deal with even more complex jigsaw puzzle problems.

The Ecology of Environmental Health

The Ecology of Environmental Health

Automated generation and visualization of picture-logic puzzles

A picture-logic puzzle is a game that takes the form of an NxM grid, with numbers situated on the left of its rows and on the top of its columns, which give the clues for solving the puzzle. These puzzles have gained popularity in the last years all over the world, and there are companies involved in the commercialization of products related to them, mainly magazines, on-line puzzles via the web and games for mobile phones. The main problem with selling picture-logic puzzles is the need to generate a large number of picture-logic puzzles per month, or even per week, so automating the generation process of such puzzles is an important task. In this paper we propose algorithms for the automated generation of picture-logic puzzles (both black and white and color puzzles), starting from any digital RGB color image. We also present a visualization interface which provides several useful tools for finishing the puzzle generation process, like the possibility of changing colors and displaying the process of puzzle solution. We show the performance of the algorithms for generating picture-logic puzzles with several examples.

Spatial breakdown in spatial construction: Evidence from eye fixations in children with Williams syndrome

We investigated the role of executive and spatial representational processes in impaired performance of block construction tasks by children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic defect that results in severely impaired spatial cognition. In Experiment 1, we examined performance in two kinds of block construction tasks, Simple Puzzles, in which block faces contained a single color, and Complex, in which some block faces contained an arrangement of two colors. WS and control children were comparable in their ability to solve simple puzzles, and showed similar eye-fixation patterns, suggesting that basic executive processes were intact. However, WS children were severely impaired in their ability to solve complex puzzles. In these puzzles, WS children fixated the complex puzzle models and checked their partial solutions less often than normal children, but they were comparable in their ability to detect errors in their copies and almost exclusively made repairs to copies that were, in fact, incorrect. We conjecture that the abnormal fixation patterns were a consequence of impoverished spatial representations, rather than a cause of it. This conjecture was tested in Experiment 2, where we examined children’s capacity to match and place individual blocks without engaging the complex executive processes required to carry out a complete puzzle solution. We found serious deficiency among WS children in both aspects of spatial representation. Moreover, estimates of the errors in representing the identity and location of model blocks derived from Experiment 2 provided a good account of the observed errors in the block construction task of Experiment 1.

Demonstrating and Necessity

My title is meant to suggest a continuation of the sort of philosophical investigation into the nature of language and modality undertaken in Rudolf Carnap's Meaning and Necessity (University of Chicago, 1947, 1956) and Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity (Harvard University Press, 1972, 1980). My topic belongs in a class with meaning and naming. It is demonstratives-that is, expressions like 'that darn cat' or the 'he' used deictically (in contrast to its use either as a bound variable or as a pronoun of laziness). A few philosophers deserve particular credit for advancing our understanding of demonstratives and other indexical (that is, context-dependent) words. Though Naming and Necessity is concerned with proper names, not demonstratives, it opened wide a window that had remained mostly shut in Meaning and Necessity but that, thanks largely to Kripke, shall forevermore remain unbarred. Understanding of demonstrative semantics grew by a quantum leap in David Kaplan's remarkable work, especially in his masterpiece Demonstratives together with its companion Afterthoughts.l In contrast to the direct-reference propensities of these two contemporary figures, Gottlob Frege, with his uncompromisingly thoroughgoing intensionalism, shed important light on the workings of demonstratives in Der Gedanke-more specifically, in a few brief but insightful remarks from a single paragraph concerning tense and temporal indexicality. Frege and Kaplan are especially concerned with Frege's Puzzle. As it applies to demonstratives, the puzzle may be posed thus: How can 'This is that', if true, differ at all in content from an utterance of 'That is that' while pointing with two hands straight ahead to the same thing? Kaplan lifts much of his theory of demonstratives from Frege's remarks, yet disagrees with Frege concerning the puzzle's solution. This results in a fundamental tension in Kaplan's observations concerning demonstratives.

Visual language and handwriting movement: functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 tesla during generation of ideographic characters

A functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment at 3 tesla was performed to investigate the collaborative mechanism between visuospatial processing and motor execution in performing visual language generation tasks. Japanese Kanji, ideographic characters, were utilized to design tasks. The bilateral border portions between the inferior parietal lobule and the occipital lobe were involved during a Kanji puzzle task, which required subjects to combine several parts into a Kanji. The higher motor areas, such as the premotor areas and the pre-supplementary motor areas, were also activated bilaterally during the puzzle task. The parieto-occipital activation may be related to analysis of configuration or segmentation/integration of Kanji figures. Activation in the higher motor areas may be induced by cognitive components related to motor function to perform the visuospatial language task, such as intense reference for displayed characters and finding a proper character for puzzle solution. A collaborative mechanism in these areas may explain the effectiveness of tactile reading in letter recognition by patients with pure alexia or kinesthetic facilitation by Kanji users when recalling difficult Kanji.

A Response to the Contributors

In my “response to the contributors” I emphasize that I was moved to write my book in response to the question “Why are so many well-trained colleagues, young and old, having so much difficulty developing satisfying analytic practices?” To answer that question I proposed to explore my experience successfully developing and maintaining an analytic practice. In attempting to answer the question I inadvertently stumbled upon a revolutionary (with a “small r”) answer to the problem. I discovered, in my attitudes and in my way of working in a consultation and the early phase of an analytic collaboration, a new “concrete puzzle solution” to the problem of how to help a prospective, often reluctant collaborator give analysis a “try.” My book emphasizes my view that courses on “analyzability” and differential diagnosis are based on psychiatric rather than psychoanalytic diagnostic schema and may interfere with candidates' ability to learn how to create analytic patients. Since I was a candidate, courses on analyzability have always seemed to me to resemble an exclusive club, deciding whom to exclude and whom to admit, rather than a procedure based on sound clinical experience. Analytic experience has demonstrated that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis. To make matters worse, it is probable that an analyst whose mind is focused on the task of evaluating a prospective analysand contributes to creating an environment in which certain patients are experienced as sicker than they might otherwise be. In spite of the fact that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis, many experienced “senior” analysts believe an analyst can and should be evaluative and selective. In their discussions of the subject, they focus primarily on characteristics of the patient rather than the match. In my book I emphasize that in a consultation there are advantages in focusing on the patient's responses to the idea of engaging in a trial of analysis. The issue of the match and the particular time in their lives are significant from my perspective. The analyst's gender, age, personality, and related state of mind may be as important in effecting the outcome of a trial as any feature of the patient's mind. My book shifts the emphasis of the focus of inquiry in a consultation from the patient to the analytic couple. It offers a different way of teaching candidates to work with prospective collaborators.

Towards an Aesthetics of Navigation

Towards an Aesthetics of Navigation

A longitudinal study of nondeclarative memory for priming and a puzzle solution

A longitudinal study of nondeclarative memory for priming and a puzzle solution

A longitudinal study of nondeclarative memory for priming and a puzzle solution

A longitudinal study of nondeclarative memory for priming and a puzzle solution

The ripple effect

A brief overview of research to date on word games in general, and crossword puzzle solution algorithms in particular, is presented. An algorithm which is easy to implement and is highly suited for PC work-stations is presented. An implementation of this algorithm is demonstrated to produce dramatic reductions of the size of the search trees traversed by specific crossword puzzle implementations.

The pausing principle: Increasing the efficiency of memory for ongoing events

The effectiveness of pausing for learning from lectures was investigated. One hundred and eight subjects listened to a 21-min lecture with the addition of one of the following pausing intervals: a 6-min prelecture pause, three 2-min pauses interspersed at 7-min intervals, or a 6-min postlecture pause. Crossed orthogonally with pause location was the kind of activity conducted during the pause: irrelevant puzzle solution, individual review, or group discussion. Free-recall and cued-recall tests were administered immediately after the lecture and 2 weeks later. Interspersed pauses coupled with group discussion was the most efficient procedure. The postlecture pause with individual review or group discussion was the next most efficient procedure. Puzzle solution during interspersed and prelecture pauses interfered with retention. There was some evidence for the necessity of a consolidation period for long-term retention.