LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Maneuvering in Highway Scenarios

In this work, we present a Reinforcement Learning (RL) based approach for autonomous driving in highway scenarios, including interaction with other vehicles. The method used is Fitted Q-iteration [1] with Extremely Randomized Trees [2] as a function approximator. We demonstrate that Reinforcement Learning based concepts can be successfully applied and can be used to teach a RL agent to drive autonomously in an intelligent way, by following traffic rules and ensuring safety. By combining RL with the already established control concepts, we managed to build an agent that achieved promising results in the realistic simulated environment.
The effect of single doses of pramlintide on gastric emptying of two meals in men with IDDM

In a previous study we have shown that an intravenous infusion of pramlintide (an analogue of human amylin) delayed gastric emptying, but the dose of pramlintide was supraphysiological in relation to the amylin response to food in non-diabetic subjects. The purpose of this study was to examine the dose response relationship of subcutaneous injections of pramlintide on gastric emptying and to determine whether administration of the drug before one meal has an impact on the subsequent meal. Eleven men with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus were studied in a double-blind, randomised, four-way crossover design. None had autonomic neuropathy. Euglycaemia was maintained overnight before the study day. At −30 min the patients self-injected their usual morning insulin and at −15 min they injected the study drug (either placebo or 30, 60 or 90 μg pramlintide) subcutaneously. At 0 min they ate a standard meal consisting of a pancake, labelled with 99mTc, and a milkshake containing 3-ortho-methylglucose (3-OMG). Gastric emptying images were obtained for the next 8 h. At 240 min the subjects ate a similar meal, but on this occasion the pancake was labelled with 111In. All three doses of pramlintide delayed emptying of the solid component of the first meal (p < 0.004) with no significant difference between the drug doses. There were no differences between placebo and pramlintide after the second meal. All three doses of pramlintide resulted in a prolongation in the time to peak plasma 3-OMG level (p < 0.0001) after the first meal but there was no difference after the second meal. [Diabetologia (1998) 41: 577–583]
Effects of marijuana use on impulsivity and hostility in daily life.

BACKGROUND
Marijuana use is increasingly prevalent among young adults. While research has found adverse effects associated with marijuana use within experimentally controlled laboratory settings, it is unclear how recreational marijuana use affects day-to-day experiences in users. The present study sought to examine the effects of marijuana use on within-person changes in impulsivity and interpersonal hostility in daily life using smartphone administered assessments.


METHODS
Forty-three participants with no substance dependence reported on their alcohol consumption, tobacco use, recreational marijuana use, impulsivity, and interpersonal hostility over the course of 14 days. Responses were analyzed using multilevel modeling.


RESULTS
Marijuana use was associated with increased impulsivity on the same day and the following day relative to days when marijuana was not used, independent of alcohol use. Marijuana was also associated with increased hostile behaviors and perceptions of hostility in others on the same day when compared to days when marijuana was not used. These effects were independent of frequency of marijuana use or alcohol use. There were no significant effects of alcohol consumption on impulsivity or interpersonal hostility.


CONCLUSIONS
Marijuana use is associated with changes in impulse control and hostility in daily life. This may be one route by which deleterious effects of marijuana are observed for mental health and psychosocial functioning. Given the increasing prevalence of recreational marijuana use and the potential legalization in some states, further research on the potential consequences of marijuana use in young adults' day-to-day life is warranted.
Consistent, Covariant and Multiplicative Anomalies

It is shown that the multiplicative anomaly in the vector-axial-vector model, which apparently has nothing to do with the breaking of classical current symmetries, nevertheless is strictly related to the well known consistent and covariant anomalies.
The logic of religious persuasion

Steering between a psychological treatment of religious persuasion on the one hand and the arguments of natural theology on the other, this original book outlines a new direction in the philosophy of religion. By showing that a religion's nobility, its promise of purpose, and its ability to settle us into selfhood enliven its teachings, this essay expands the notion of reasonable believing, forcing it to include some forgotten aspects of good judgment.
Revised diagnostic criteria for neuromyelitis optica.

BACKGROUND
The authors previously proposed diagnostic criteria for neuromyelitis optica (NMO) that facilitate its distinction from prototypic multiple sclerosis (MS). However, some patients with otherwise typical NMO have additional symptoms not attributable to optic nerve or spinal cord inflammation or have MS-like brain MRI lesions. Furthermore, some patients are misclassified as NMO by the authors' earlier proposed criteria despite having a subsequent course indistinguishable from prototypic MS. A serum autoantibody marker, NMO-IgG, is highly specific for NMO. The authors propose revised NMO diagnostic criteria that incorporate NMO-IgG status.


METHODS
Using final clinical diagnosis (NMO or MS) as the reference standard, the authors calculated sensitivity and specificity for each criterion and various combinations using a sample of 96 patients with NMO and 33 with MS. The authors used likelihood ratios and logistic regression analysis to develop the most practical and informative diagnostic model.


RESULTS
Fourteen patients with NMO (14.6%) had extra-optic-spinal CNS symptoms. NMO-IgG seropositivity was 76% sensitive and 94% specific for NMO. The best diagnostic combination was 99% sensitive and 90% specific for NMO and consisted of at least two of three elements: longitudinally extensive cord lesion, onset brain MRI nondiagnostic for MS, or NMO-IgG seropositivity.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors propose revised diagnostic criteria for definite neuromyelitis optica (NMO) that require optic neuritis, myelitis, and at least two of three supportive criteria: MRI evidence of a contiguous spinal cord lesion 3 or more segments in length, onset brain MRI nondiagnostic for multiple sclerosis, or NMO-IgG seropositivity. CNS involvement beyond the optic nerves and spinal cord is compatible with NMO.
Socioeconomic Disadvantage Moderates the Association between Peripheral Biomarkers and Childhood Psychopathology

BACKGROUND
Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) has been consistently associated with early life mental health problems. SED has been shown to impact multiple biological systems, including the regulation of neurotrophic proteins, immune-inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, which, conversely, have been reported to be relevant to physiological and pathological neurodevelopment This study investigated the relationship between SED, different domains of psychopathology, serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL6), thiobarbituric acid-reactive substance (TBARS) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). We hypothesized that a composite of socioeconomic risk would be associated with psychopathology and altered levels of peripheral biomarkers. In addition, we hypothesized that SED would moderate the associations between mental health problems, IL6, TBARS and BDNF.


METHODS AND FINDINGS
Using a cross-sectional design, we measured the serum levels of IL6, TBARS and BDNF in 495 children aged 6 to 12. We also investigated socio-demographic characteristics and mental health problems using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) DSM-oriented scales. SED was evaluated using a cumulative risk model. Generalized linear models were used to assess associations between SED, biomarkers levels and psychopathology. SED was significantly associated with serum levels of IL6 (RR = 1.026, 95% CI 1.004; 1.049, p = 0.020) and TBARS (RR = 1.077, 95% CI 1.028; 1.127, p = 0.002). The association between SED and BDNF was not statistically significant (RR = 1.031, 95% CI 0.997; 1.066, p = 0.077). SED was also significantly associated with all CBCL DSM-oriented scales (all p < 0.05), whereas serum biomarkers (i.e. IL6, TBARS, BDNF) were associated with specific subscales. Moreover, the associations between serum biomarkers and domains of psychopathology were moderated by SED, with stronger correlations between mental health problems, IL6, TBARS, and BDNF being observed in children with high SED.


CONCLUSIONS
In children, SED is highly associated with mental health problems. Our findings suggest that this association may be moderated via effects on multiple interacting neurobiological systems.
Response of Base-Isolated USC Hospital Building in Northridge Earthquake

The base-isolated University of Southern California (USC) hospital building experienced strong motion during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program data of the response are available for performance evaluation. The objective of this study is to evaluate the seismic performance of the base-isolated USC hospital building during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. A nonlinear analytical model of the USC hospital building is developed and verified using system identification. The response computed, using the presented analytical modeling techniques, is verified using recorded data. Structural behavior during the Northridge earthquake is evaluated in detail. The base-isolated USC hospital building performed well and reduced the response when compared to a fixed-base structure. The free-field acceleration was 0.49g and peak foundation/ground acceleration was 0.37g. The peak roof acceleration was reduced to 0.21g, nearly 50% of the peak ground acceleration. The peak drift was <30% of the code specification. The bearings yielded and dissipated energy (20%). The superstructure was elastic due to the effectiveness of base isolation. The building is expected to perform well in future earthquakes similar to those used in the original design.
Stochastic Gradient Descent Performs Variational Inference, Converges to Limit Cycles for Deep Networks

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is widely believed to perform implicit regularization when used to train deep neural networks, but the precise manner in which this occurs has thus far been elusive. We prove that SGD minimizes an average potential over the posterior distribution of weights along with an entropic regularization term. This potential is however not the original loss function in general. So SGD does perform variational inference, but for a different loss than the one used to compute the gradients. Even more surprisingly, SGD does not even converge in the classical sense: we show that the most likely trajectories of SGD for deep networks do not behave like Brownian motion around critical points. Instead, they resemble closed loops with deterministic components. We prove that such “out-of-equilibrium” behavior is a consequence of highly nonisotropic gradient noise in SGD; the covariance matrix of mini-batch gradients for deep networks has a rank as small as 1% of its dimension. We provide extensive empirical validation of these claims. This article summarizes the findings in [1]. See the longer version for background, detailed results and proofs.
Gonochorism and planula brooding in the Mediterranean endemic orange coral Astroides calycularis (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae). Morphological aspects of gametogenesis and ontogenesis

Information on reproduction in temperate scleractinian corals is notably scant. Astroides calycularis is an azooxanthellate coral that inhabits the South-Western Mediterranean Sea, in shaded habitats from 0 to 50 m depth. Recently, it has been observed along the coast of the Adriatic Sea. This study is the first in-depth investigation of A. calycularis reproductive biology. Observations from the nineteenth century described A. calycularis as hermaphroditic; in contrast, we demonstrated gonochorism (male and female colonies) and brooding (planula releasing) as the reproductive mode, consistent with other members of the family Dendrophylliidae. Undifferentiated germ cells arose in the gastrodermis and subsequently migrated to the mesoglea, where they completed gametogenesis. During spermatogenesis, spermary diameter increased from 20 to 940 mm. During oogenesis, a conspicuous presence of lipid vesicles of exogenous origin (phagocytes) was observed in the ooplasma. As oogenesis progressed, the synthesis of yolk gradually reduced the nucleus to cytoplasm ratio. In the final stages of oogenesis, the nucleus migrated to the extreme periphery of the oocyte adhering to the oolemma, and became indented. Nuclear migration and shape change may facilitate fertilization and determine the future embryonic axis. During oogenesis, the oocyte diameter increased from 25 to 1590 mm. Embryogenesis took place in the coelenteron. Formation of a blastocoel was not observed, and development proceeded via stereoblastulae with superficial cleavage. Gastrulation took place by delamination. Embryo diameter ranged from 550 to 1140 mm. Released larvae (length 1700 to 2000 mm) were observed in the field during summer, along the benthos.
A multi-DAG model for real-time parallel applications with conditional execution

Owing to the current trends for higher performance and the ever growing availability of multiprocessors in the embedded computing (EC) domain, there is nowadays a strong push towards the parallelization of modern embedded applications. Several real-time task models have recently been proposed to capture different forms of parallelism. However, they do not deal explicitly with control flow information as they assume that all the threads of a parallel task must execute every time the task is activated. In contrast, in this paper, we present a multi-DAG model where each task is characterized by a set of execution flows, each of which represents a different execution path throughout the task code and is modeled as a DAG of sub-tasks. We propose a two-step solution that computes a single synchronous DAG of servers for a task modeled by a multi-DAG and show that these servers are able to supply every execution flow of that task with the required cpu-budget so that the task can execute entirely, irrespective of the execution flow taken at run-time, while satisfying its precedence constraints. As a result, each task can be modeled by its single DAG of servers, which facilitates in leveraging the existing single-DAG schedulability analyses techniques for analyzing the schedulability of parallel tasks with multiple execution flows.
An Introduction to Lattice Chiral Fermions

This write-up starts by introducing lattice chirality to people possessing a fairly modern mathematical background, but little prior knowledge about modern physics. I then proceed to present two new and speculative ideas.
Antimicrobial Sensitivity, Biochemical Characteristics and Biotyping of Staphylococcus saprophyticus: An Impact of Biofield Energy Treatment

Staphylococcus saprophyticus (S. saprophyticus) is a Gram-positive, coagulase-negative facultative bacterium belongs to Micrococcaceae family. It is a unique uropathogen associated with uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs), especially cystitis in young women. Young women are very susceptible to colonize this organism in the urinary tracts and it is spread through sexual intercourse. S. saprophyticus is the second most common pathogen after Escherichia coli causing 10-20% of all UTIs in sexually active young women [13]. It contains the urease enzymes that hydrolyze the urea to produce ammonia. The urease activity is the main factor for UTIs infection. Apart from urease activity it has numerous transporter systems to adjust against change in pH, osmolarity, and concentration of urea in human urine [2]. After severe infections, it causes various complications such as native valve endocarditis [4], pyelonephritis, septicemia, [5], and nephrolithiasis [6]. About 150 million people are diagnosed with UTIs each year worldwide [7]. Several virulence factors includes due to the adherence to urothelial cells by release of lipoteichoic acid is a surface-associated adhesion amphiphile [8], a hemagglutinin that binds to fibronectin and hemagglutinates sheep erythrocytes [9], a hemolysin; and production of extracellular slime are responsible for resistance properties of S. saprophyticus [1]. Based on literature, S. saprophyticus strains are susceptible to vancomycin, rifampin, gentamicin and amoxicillin-clavulanic, while resistance to other antimicrobials such as erythromycin, clindamycin, fluoroquinolones, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, oxacillin, and Abstract
Regional mobility and unemployment transitions in the UK and Spain ∗

If the distribution of industrial employment is uneven across regions, changes in patterns of production will require the reallocation of labour across regions as well as industries. In this paper we consider this aspect of the adjustment process. Specifically, we compare the geographical mobility of the workforce in the UK and Spain, and examine the extent to which differences in mobility explain differences in the probability of exiting unemployment between the two countries.
Address Space Layout Permutation (ASLP): Towards Fine-Grained Randomization of Commodity Software

Address space randomization is an emerging and promising method for stopping a broad range of memory corruption attacks. By randomly shifting critical memory regions at process initialization time, address space randomization converts an otherwise successful malicious attack into a benign process crash. However, existing approaches either introduce insufficient randomness, or require source code modification. While insufficient randomness allows successful brute-force attacks, as shown in recent studies, the required source code modification prevents this effective method from being used for commodity software, which is the major source of exploited vulnerabilities on the Internet. We propose address space layout permutation (ASLP) that introduces high degree of randomness (or high entropy) with minimal performance overhead. Essential to ASLP is a novel binary rewriting tool that can place the static code and data segments of a compiled executable to a randomly specified location and performs fine grained permutation of procedure bodies in the code segment as well as static data objects in the data segment. We have also modified the Linux operating system kernel to permute stack, heap, and memory mapped regions. Together, ASLP completely permutes memory regions in an application. Our security and performance evaluation shows minimal performance overhead with orders of magnitude improvement in randomness (e.g., up to 29 bits of randomness on a 32-bit architecture)
Long term treatment with metformin in patients with type 2 diabetes and risk of vitamin B-12 deficiency: randomised placebo controlled trial

OBJECTIVES
To study the effects of metformin on the incidence of vitamin B-12 deficiency (<150 pmol/l), low concentrations of vitamin B-12 (150-220 pmol/l), and folate and homocysteine concentrations in patients with type 2 diabetes receiving treatment with insulin.


DESIGN
Multicentre randomised placebo controlled trial.


SETTING
Outpatient clinics of three non-academic hospitals in the Netherlands.


PARTICIPANTS
390 patients with type 2 diabetes receiving treatment with insulin.


INTERVENTION
850 mg metformin or placebo three times a day for 4.3 years.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Percentage change in vitamin B-12, folate, and homocysteine concentrations from baseline at 4, 17, 30, 43, and 52 months.


RESULTS
Compared with placebo, metformin treatment was associated with a mean decrease in vitamin B-12 concentration of -19% (95% confidence interval -24% to -14%; P<0.001) and in folate concentration of -5% (95% CI -10% to -0.4%; P=0.033), and an increase in homocysteine concentration of 5% (95% CI -1% to 11%; P=0.091). After adjustment for body mass index and smoking, no significant effect of metformin on folate concentrations was found. The absolute risk of vitamin B-12 deficiency (<150 pmol/l) at study end was 7.2 percentage points higher in the metformin group than in the placebo group (95% CI 2.3 to 12.1; P=0.004), with a number needed to harm of 13.8 per 4.3 years (95% CI 43.5 to 8.3). The absolute risk of low vitamin B-12 concentration (150-220 pmol/l) at study end was 11.2 percentage points higher in the metformin group (95% CI 4.6 to 17.9; P=0.001), with a number needed to harm of 8.9 per 4.3 years (95% CI 21.7 to 5.6). Patients with vitamin B-12 deficiency at study end had a mean homocysteine level of 23.7 micromol/l (95% CI 18.8 to 30.0 micromol/l), compared with a mean homocysteine level of 18.1 micromol/l (95% CI 16.7 to 19.6 micromol/l; P=0.003) for patients with a low vitamin B-12 concentration and 14.9 micromol/l (95% CI 14.3 to 15.5 micromol/l; P<0.001 compared with vitamin B-12 deficiency; P=0.005 compared with low vitamin B-12) for patients with a normal vitamin B-12 concentration (>220 pmol/l).


CONCLUSIONS
Long term treatment with metformin increases the risk of vitamin B-12 deficiency, which results in raised homocysteine concentrations. Vitamin B-12 deficiency is preventable; therefore, our findings suggest that regular measurement of vitamin B-12 concentrations during long term metformin treatment should be strongly considered. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00375388.
RF power amplifiers for wireless communications

A wide variety of semiconductor devices are used in wireless power amplifiers. The RF performance and other attributes of cellphone RF power amplifiers using Si and GaAs based technologies are reviewed and compared.
Rethinking children, violence and safeguarding

Introduction to the New Childhoods Series / Part I: Debates, Dilemmas and Challenges / 1. Living In A Violent World? / Part II: An Interdisciplinary Overview of Recent Research and Scholarship / 2. Why Are Some Children Violent? / 3. What Causes Child Maltreatment? / Part III: Implications for Children's Lives / 4. Consequences / 5. Villains and Victims / 6. Behaving Badly / 7. Protection, Safeguarding and Prevention / References / Index
Grad-CAM: Why did you say that?

We propose a technique for making Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based models more transparent by visualizing input regions that are ‘important’ for predictions – producing visual explanations. Our approach, called Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM), uses class-specific gradient information to localize important regions. These localizations are combined with existing pixel-space visualizations to create a novel high-resolution and class-discriminative visualization called Guided Grad-CAM. These methods help better understand CNN-based models, including image captioning and visual question answering (VQA) models. We evaluate our visual explanations by measuring their ability to discriminate between classes, to inspire trust in humans, and their correlation with occlusion maps. Grad-CAM provides a new way to understand CNN-based models. We have released code, an online demo hosted on CloudCV [1], and the full paper [8].1