Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimation

Policy gradient methods are an appealing approach in reinforcement learning because they directly optimize the cumulative reward and can straightforwardly be used with nonlinear function approximators such as neural networks. The two main challenges are the large number of samples typically required, and the difficulty of obtaining stable and steady improvement despite the nonstationarity of the incoming data. We address the first challenge by using value functions to substantially reduce the variance of policy gradient estimates at the cost of some bias, with an exponentially-weighted estimator of the advantage function that is analogous to TD(lambda). We address the second challenge by using trust region optimization procedure for both the policy and the value function, which are represented by neural networks. Our approach yields strong empirical results on highly challenging 3D locomotion tasks, learning running gaits for bipedal and quadrupedal simulated robots, and learning a policy for getting the biped to stand up from starting out lying on the ground. In contrast to a body of prior work that uses hand-crafted policy representations, our neural network policies map directly from raw kinematics to joint torques. Our algorithm is fully model-free, and the amount of simulated experience required for the learning tasks on 3D bipeds corresponds to 1-2 weeks of real time.
An experimental approach to the measurement of the effects of water depth and substrate on optical and near infra‐red reflectance: a field‐based assessment of the feasibility of mapping submerged instream habitat

This study represent an assessment of the feasibility of using optical and near infra‐red wavelengths to map water depth and substrate type which are two of the primary components of river physical habitat. The objective was met by measuring reflectance using field spectroscopy of exposed and then progressively submerged (0–1 m) artificial substrates during rising tides on a tidal reach of the River Forth; this approach provided absolute control for substrate type. The field data were used to simulate multi‐spectral response as measured using Airborne Thematic Mapper (bands 1 to 7; 420nm to 900nm) since airborne remote sensing provides the way forward for synoptic mapping of small streams (<20 m), such as those typically found in Scotland. In the presence of sunlit conditions significant differences in reflectance over a broad range of wavelengths was evident with strong correlations with water depth and substrate. Differences in reflectance were most marked under shallow conditions (<0.75 m) and then progressively diminished. Application of simple linear correlation, band ratios, the Lyzenga algorithm and multiple discriminant analysis all suggested the possibility of mapping shallow river channel water depths. The results also showed that substrate type and the analysis technique selected also affected the optimum spectral wavelength for detection of channel substrate type and water depth. Overall the work suggests mapping channel depth and substrate type is possible using remotely sensed data in optical and near infra‐red wavelengths, using high spatial and spectral resolution multi‐spectral imagery. However it may be restricted to depths of less than 1 m where there is high organic colour and/or a significant periphyton cover.
Immunity and simplicity for exact counting and other counting classes

Ko [26] and Bruschi [11] independently showed that, in some relativized world, PSPACE (in fact, ○+P) contains a set that is immune to the polynomial hierarchy (PH). In this paper, we study and settle the question of relativized separations with immunity for PH and the counting classes PP, C=P, and ○+P in all possible pairwise combinations. Our main result is that there is an oracle A relative to which C=P contains a set that is immune to BPP ○+P . In particular, this C=P A set is immune to PH A and to ○+P A . Strengthening results of Toran [48] and Green [18], we also show that, in suitable relativizations, NP contains a C=P-immune set, and ○+P contains a PP PH -immune set. This implies the existence of a C=P B -simple set for some oracle B, which extends results of Balcazar et al. [2, 4]. Our proof technique requires a circuit lower bound for exact counting that is derived from Razborov's [35] circuit lower bound for majority.
Dynamically-Driven Enhancement of the Catalytic Machinery of the SARS 3C-Like Protease by the S284-T285-I286/A Mutations on the Extra Domain

Previously we revealed that the extra domain of SARS 3CLpro mediated the catalysis via different mechanisms. While the R298A mutation completely abolished the dimerization, thus resulting in the inactive catalytic machinery, N214A inactivated the enzyme by altering its dynamics without significantly perturbing its structure. Here we studied another mutant with S284-T285-I286 replaced by Ala (STI/A) with a 3.6-fold activity increase and slightly enhanced dimerization. We determined its crystal structure, which still adopts the dimeric structure almost identical to that of the wild-type (WT), except for slightly tighter packing between two extra-domains. We then conducted 100-ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for both STI/A and WT, the longest reported so far for 3CLpro. In the simulations, two STI/A extra domains become further tightly packed, leading to a significant volume reduction of the nano-channel formed by residues from both catalytic and extra domains. The enhanced packing appears to slightly increase the dynamic stability of the N-finger and the first helix residues, which subsequently triggers the redistribution of dynamics over residues directly contacting them. This ultimately enhances the dynamical stability of the residues constituting the catalytic dyad and substrate-binding pockets. Further correlation analysis reveals that a global network of the correlated motions exists in the protease, whose components include all residues identified so far to be critical for the dimerization and catalysis. Most strikingly, the N214A mutation globally decouples this network while the STI/A mutation alters the correlation pattern. Together with previous results, the present study establishes that besides the classic structural allostery, the dynamic allostery also operates in the SARS 3CLpro, which is surprisingly able to relay the perturbations on the extra domain onto the catalytic machinery to manifest opposite catalytic effects. Our results thus imply a promising avenue to design specific inhibitors for 3CL proteases by disrupting their dynamic correlation network.
Capsid size determination in the P2-P4 bacteriophage system: suppression of sir mutations in P2's capsid gene N by supersid mutations in P4's external scaffold gene sid.

The sid gene of the P2-dependent phage P4 provides an external scaffold so P2 N gene encoded protomers assemble as T = 4 capsids rather than as P2's T = 7 capsids. Mutations (sir) in the middle of N interfere with Sid's function. We describe a new P4 mutant class, nms ("supersid") mutations, which direct also P2 sir to provide small capsids. Three different nms mutations were located near the sid end, commingled with sid(-) mutations. Suppression of sir by nms is not allele-specific. Our results favor this interpretation of capsid size control: (i) sir mutations reduce pN protomer flexibility and thereby interfere with the generation of T = 4 compatible hexons; (ii) the C-termini of Sid molecules link up when forming the scaffold; nms mutations strengthen these Sid-Sid contacts and thus allow the scaffold to force even sir-type protomers to form T = 4 compatible hexons. Some related findings concern suppression of N ts mutations by P4.
Impurity-assisted tunneling in graphene

The electric conductance of a strip of undoped graphene increases in the presence of a disorder potential, which is smooth on atomic scales. The phenomenon is attributed to impurity-assisted resonant tunneling of massless Dirac fermions. Employing the transfer matrix approach we demonstrate the resonant character of the conductivity enhancement in the presence of a single impurity. We also calculate the two-terminal conductivity for the model with one-dimensional fluctuations of disorder potential by a mapping onto a problem of Anderson localization.
The role of olive oil in lowering cancer risk: Is this real gold or simply pinchbeck?

For ancient Greeks, the olive tree was a symbol of success and peace, and the extracted oil was anointed on important members of the society. It was believed that prosperity and wealth depended on this ritual, and not only olive oil, but the olives themselves, constituted an indispensable food in ancient Greeks' diet. Today, our society is not as interested in these allegorical implications, but rather in pragmatic facts. Currently, olive oil is more widely used throughout the world than it ever has been, and it is increasingly being used as a substitute for other vegetable fats and for animal fats. As we move more and more towards globalisation and a more powerful influence of the mass media, and within the context of this practical perspective, citizens around the world may wonder how to get to the bottom line from different and sometimes conflicting messages received from different sources, including health professionals trying to promote healthy habits (including physicians trying to advise patients) and food companies or advertisers promoting their products and seeking to increase their profits. We believe that looking to independent researchers can help shed light on these mixed messages. Triggered by a most interesting article published in this issue of the journal,1 and given the high mortality and morbidity from cancer today and the consequent interest in attempts to …
Large Margin Object Tracking with Circulant Feature Maps

Structured output support vector machine (SVM) based tracking algorithms have shown favorable performance recently. Nonetheless, the time-consuming candidate sampling and complex optimization limit their real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a novel large margin object tracking method which absorbs the strong discriminative ability from structured output SVM and speeds up by the correlation filter algorithm significantly. Secondly, a multimodal target detection technique is proposed to improve the target localization precision and prevent model drift introduced by similar objects or background noise. Thirdly, we exploit the feedback from high-confidence tracking results to avoid the model corruption problem. We implement two versions of the proposed tracker with the representations from both conventional hand-crafted and deep convolution neural networks (CNNs) based features to validate the strong compatibility of the algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed tracker performs superiorly against several state-of-the-art algorithms on the challenging benchmark sequences while runs at speed in excess of 80 frames per second.
Non-photolithographic pattern transfer for fabricating pen-shaped microneedle structures

We developed a new fabrication process for pen-shaped microneedle structures by using non-photolithographic pattern transfer. The process is a combination of anisotropic wet etching and a dicing technology that uses a saw. The process has an advantage, in which the needle diameter is easily changed by altering the groove profile formed in the dicing-saw process. We fabricated pen-shaped needle structures in a dense array for medical applications. The needle height was larger than 200 µm, and the pitch distance was about 200 µm in the experiments. The width of the needle ranged from 10 to 30 µm. The radius at the needle tip was less than 100 nm.
Bayesian Nonparametric Adaptive Control Using Gaussian Processes

Most current model reference adaptive control (MRAC) methods rely on parametric adaptive elements, in which the number of parameters of the adaptive element are fixed a priori, often through expert judgment. An example of such an adaptive element is radial basis function networks (RBFNs), with RBF centers preallocated based on the expected operating domain. If the system operates outside of the expected operating domain, this adaptive element can become noneffective in capturing and canceling the uncertainty, thus rendering the adaptive controller only semiglobal in nature. This paper investigates a Gaussian process-based Bayesian MRAC architecture (GP-MRAC), which leverages the power and flexibility of GP Bayesian nonparametric models of uncertainty. The GP-MRAC does not require the centers to be preallocated, can inherently handle measurement noise, and enables MRAC to handle a broader set of uncertainties, including those that are defined as distributions over functions. We use stochastic stability arguments to show that GP-MRAC guarantees good closed-loop performance with no prior domain knowledge of the uncertainty. Online implementable GP inference methods are compared in numerical simulations against RBFN-MRAC with preallocated centers and are shown to provide better tracking and improved long-term learning.
pQueue-MAC: An Energy Efficient Hybrid MAC Protocol for Event-Driven Sensor Networks

Although a lot of MAC protocols have been proposed to deal with burst traffic in wireless sensor networks, most of them do not optimize the energy efficiency of low and nonperiodic traffic, which actually wastes a lot of energy. To solve the problem, we propose a novel MAC protocol, called pQueue-MAC, to achieve high energy efficiency when no event is detected and still guarantee immediate yet energy efficient data transmission when events are detected. pQueue-MAC uses preamble sampling to check potential communications in low traffic condition. Specifically, through short channel listening, nodes can decide whether there is data destined for them, based on which nodes choose to sleep for energy conservation or keep active for data exchange. Moreover, adaptive channel listening scheme is adopted for dynamic traffic load. When load increases, based on the load information collected from son nodes by piggybacking, cluster heads adaptively allocate TDMA slots and embed the new schedule information into the beacon frame broadcasted to son nodes. We have implemented pQueue-MAC on STM32W108 chips that offer IEEE 802.1. 5.4 standard communication and conducted extensive experiments to evaluate its performance. Experimental results show that pQueue-MAC outperforms other typical MAC protocols in hybrid traffic load situation, since it achieves higher energy efficiency and lower transmission latency.
Longitudinal Analysis of the Intestinal Microbiota in Persistently Stunted Young Children in South India

Stunting or reduced linear growth is very prevalent in low-income countries. Recent studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between alterations in the gut microbiome and moderate or severe acute malnutrition in children in these countries. However, there have been no primary longitudinal studies comparing the intestinal microbiota of persistently stunted children to that of non-stunted children in the same community. In this pilot study, we characterized gut microbial community composition and diversity of the fecal microbiota of 10 children with low birth weight and persistent stunting (cases) and 10 children with normal birth weight and no stunting (controls) from a birth cohort every 3 months up to 2 years of age in a slum community in south India. There was an increase in diversity indices (P <0.0001) with increasing age in all children. However, there were no differences in diversity indices or in the rates of their increase with increasing age between cases and controls. The percent relative abundance of the Bacteroidetes phylum was higher in stunted compared to control children at 12 months of age (P = 0.043). There was an increase in the relative abundance of this phylum with increasing age in all children (P = 0.0380) with no difference in the rate of increase between cases and controls. There was a decrease in the relative abundance of Proteobacteria (P = 0.0004) and Actinobacteria (P = 0.0489) with increasing age in cases. The microbiota of control children was enriched in probiotic species Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus mucosae, whereas that of stunted children was enriched in inflammogenic taxa including those in the Desulfovibrio genus and Campylobacterales order. Larger, longitudinal studies on the compositional and functional maturation of the microbiome in children are needed.
Generalized Gaussian quadrature rules over regions with parabolic edges

This paper presents a generalized Gaussian quadrature method for numerical integration over regions with parabolic edges. Any region represented by R 1={(x, y)| a≤x≤b, f(x)≤y≤g(x)} or R 2={(x, y)| a≤y≤b, f(y)≤x≤g(y)}, where f(x), g(x), f(y) and g(y) are quadratic functions, is a region bounded by two parabolic arcs or a triangular or a rectangular region with two parabolic edges. Using transformation of variables, a general formula for integration over the above-mentioned regions is provided. A numerical method is also illustrated to show how to apply this formula for other regions with more number of linear and parabolic sides. The method can be used to integrate a wide class of functions including smooth functions and functions with end-point singularities, over any two-dimensional region, bounded by linear and parabolic edges. Finally, the computational efficiency of the derived formulae is demonstrated through several numerical examples.
Detection of Cancerous and Non-cancerous Skin by using GLCM Matrix and Neural Network Classifier

Day by day the use of image processing is increasing. Now a days image processing is the part and parcel of medical science. By image processing many types of cancer are easily detected. Skin cancer is one of them. In this paper the proposed method detects two types of skin one is cancerous skin and another is affected but not cancerous skin. Skin cancers are most common cancer in human. Skin cancers are curable cancer after early detection. The system can distinguish cancerous skin and non-cancerous skin based on some values of features. Some value extracted from Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). GLCM features include Contrast, Correlation, Energy, Entropy and Homogeneity. Besides those MajorAxisLength, MinorAxisLength, Solidity, Equivdiameter, Perimeter, Mean, Standard Deviation, ConvexArea, Area, Euclidean Distance, Manhattan Distance, Minkowski Distance and Hamming Distance. There are several steps for evaluating the process. The first step is preprocessing, in this step the noise is removed by using filter. The filtered image is segmented into gray level and black and white (BW) image. All the features are calculated on black and white (BW) image. The neural network is used to classify the images. It is an easy system rather than the doctor biopsy procedure. The system consumes less time and gets better result than ordinary systems.
Paraphrasing with Search Engine Query Logs

This paper proposes a method that extracts paraphrases from search engine query logs. The method first extracts paraphrase query-title pairs based on an assumption that a search query and its corresponding clicked document titles may mean the same thing. It then extracts paraphrase query-query and title-title pairs from the query-title paraphrases with a pivot approach. Paraphrases extracted in each step are validated with a binary classifier. We evaluate the method using a query log from Baidu, a Chinese search engine. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective, which extracts more than 3.5 million pairs of paraphrases with a precision of over 70%. The results also show that the extracted paraphrases can be used to generate high-quality paraphrase patterns.
Delay of Surgery

&NA; Faced with the stress of suffering an inguinal hernia, some patients delay surgery longer than others do. Two personality measures (and one demographic variable, race) were used to predict both a) delay of surgery and b) reasons given for electing surgery now. Several controversies in coping style and internal‐external control theory were explored, and applications were suggested for public health problems.
Learning confounds algometric assessment of mechanical thresholds in normal dogs.

OBJECTIVE To perform algometric readings in normal dogs in a design that would assess possible confounding factors. STUDY DESIGN Prospective study. ANIMALS Skeletally mature spayed female, intact male and castrated male retriever or retriever mix dogs without orthopedic or neurologic disease (n = 19). METHODS Twelve common surgical sites were selected for algometric pressure testing. Threshold response was defined as a conscious recognition of the stimulus, and recorded in Newtons. Sites were tested in the same order, and the testing sequence repeated 3 times on each side of the dog. Dogs were tested in the morning and evening of the same day and was repeated 10-14 days later, allowing 4 separate data collections for each dog. RESULTS Data were analyzed using ANOVA or ANCOVA. When all the data were included in the analysis, dog (P < .0001), order (P < .0001), site (P < .0001), site order (P = .0217), time (P < .0001), day (P < .0001) and repetition (P < .0001) all significantly affected the algometer readings. When only the first reading for each site was included in the analysis, dog (P < .0001), site (P < .0001) and sex (P < .0001) all significantly affected algometer readings. CONCLUSION These results suggest that learning occurred over repeated collection time points, with dogs anticipating the stimulus and reacting at lower thresholds.
Cutaneous ciliated cyst

17歳の女性の右下腿伸側に生じたcutaneous ciliated cystを報告した。 病理組織像で真皮内から皮下組織にかけて単胞性の嚢腫がみられた。 嚢腫壁は主に一層の円柱上皮から構成され, この細胞が内腔に向かって線毛を有しており卵管上皮に類似していた。 文献的集計結果では本症例は27例目の報告である。
CZH proteins: a new family of Rho-GEFs

The Rho family of small GTPases are important regulators of multiple cellular activities and, most notably, reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton. Dbl-homology (DH)-domain-containing proteins are the classical guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) responsible for activation of Rho GTPases. However, members of a newly discovered family can also act as Rho-GEFs. These CZH proteins include: CDM (Ced-5, Dock180 and Myoblast city) proteins, which activate Rac; and zizimin proteins, which activate Cdc42. The family contains 11 mammalian proteins and has members in many other eukaryotes. The GEF activity is carried out by a novel, DH-unrelated domain named the DOCKER, CZH2 or DHR2 domain. CZH proteins have been implicated in cell migration, phagocytosis of apoptotic cells, T-cell activation and neurite outgrowth, and probably arose relatively early in eukaryotic evolution.
Reinforcement Learning with a Corrupted Reward Channel

No real-world reward function is perfect. Sensory errors and software bugs may result in RL agents observing higher (or lower) rewards than they should. For example, a reinforcement learning agent may prefer states where a sensory error gives it the maximum reward, but where the true reward is actually small. We formalise this problem as a generalised Markov Decision Problem called Corrupt Reward MDP. Traditional RL methods fare poorly in CRMDPs, even under strong simplifying assumptions and when trying to compensate for the possibly corrupt rewards. Two ways around the problem are investigated. First, by giving the agent richer data, such as in inverse reinforcement learning and semi-supervised reinforcement learning, reward corruption stemming from systematic sensory errors may sometimes be completely managed. Second, by using randomisation to blunt the agent's optimisation, reward corruption can be partially managed under some assumptions.