Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Designing Rewards for Fast Learning

To convey desired behavior to a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent, a designer must choose a reward function for the environment, arguably the most important knob designers have in interacting with RL agents. Although many reward functions induce the same optimal behavior (Ng et al., 1999), in practice, some of them result in faster learning than others. In this paper, we look at how reward-design choices impact learning speed and seek to identify principles of good reward design that quickly induce target behavior. This reward-identification problem is framed as an optimization problem: Firstly, we advocate choosing state-based rewards that maximize the action gap, making optimal actions easy to distinguish from suboptimal ones. Secondly, we propose minimizing a measure of the horizon, something we call the"subjective discount", over which rewards need to be optimized to encourage agents to make optimal decisions with less lookahead. To solve this optimization problem, we propose a linear-programming based algorithm that efficiently finds a reward function that maximizes action gap and minimizes subjective discount. We test the rewards generated with the algorithm in tabular environments with Q-Learning, and empirically show they lead to faster learning. Although we only focus on Q-Learning because it is perhaps the simplest and most well understood RL algorithm, preliminary results with R-max (Brafman and Tennenholtz, 2000) suggest our results are much more general. Our experiments support three principles of reward design: 1) consistent with existing results, penalizing each step taken induces faster learning than rewarding the goal. 2) When rewarding subgoals along the target trajectory, rewards should gradually increase as the goal gets closer. 3) Dense reward that's nonzero on every state is only good if designed carefully.
Likelihood-Free Inference with Generative Neural Networks via Scoring Rule Minimization

Bayesian Likelihood-Free Inference methods yield posterior approximations for simulator models with intractable likelihood. Recently, many works trained neural networks to approximate either the intractable likelihood or the posterior directly. Most proposals use normalizing flows, namely neural networks parametrizing invertible maps used to transform samples from an underlying base measure; the probability density of the transformed samples is then accessible and the normalizing flow can be trained via maximum likelihood on simulated parameter-observation pairs. A recent work [Ramesh et al., 2022] approximated instead the posterior with generative networks, which drop the invertibility requirement and are thus a more flexible class of distributions scaling to high-dimensional and structured data. However, generative networks only allow sampling from the parametrized distribution; for this reason, Ramesh et al. [2022] follows the common solution of adversarial training, where the generative network plays a min-max game against a"critic"network. This procedure is unstable and can lead to a learned distribution underestimating the uncertainty - in extreme cases collapsing to a single point. Here, we propose to approximate the posterior with generative networks trained by Scoring Rule minimization, an overlooked adversarial-free method enabling smooth training and better uncertainty quantification. In simulation studies, the Scoring Rule approach yields better performances with shorter training time with respect to the adversarial framework.
D$^2$NeRF: Self-Supervised Decoupling of Dynamic and Static Objects from a Monocular Video

Given a monocular video, segmenting and decoupling dynamic objects while recovering the static environment is a widely studied problem in machine intelligence. Existing solutions usually approach this problem in the image domain, limiting their performance and understanding of the environment. We introduce Decoupled Dynamic Neural Radiance Field (D$^2$NeRF), a self-supervised approach that takes a monocular video and learns a 3D scene representation which decouples moving objects, including their shadows, from the static background. Our method represents the moving objects and the static background by two separate neural radiance fields with only one allowing for temporal changes. A naive implementation of this approach leads to the dynamic component taking over the static one as the representation of the former is inherently more general and prone to overfitting. To this end, we propose a novel loss to promote correct separation of phenomena. We further propose a shadow field network to detect and decouple dynamically moving shadows. We introduce a new dataset containing various dynamic objects and shadows and demonstrate that our method can achieve better performance than state-of-the-art approaches in decoupling dynamic and static 3D objects, occlusion and shadow removal, and image segmentation for moving objects.
Parental Aspirations for Their Children’s Upper Secondary Education from the Perspective of Pupils at the End of Elementary Education

Parental upper secondary educational aspirations are the ambitions and goals that parents have for their children’s upper secondary education. In the Croatian context, they have not been researched so far, despite contributing significantly to pupils’ aspirations and school success and being a predictor of parental involvement in children’s education. This paper aims to research the nature and determinants of parental upper secondary educational aspirations from the perspective of pupils and describe the patterns of communication and interaction between parents and children related to aspirations and the transition from elementary to upper secondary school. Parental upper secondary educational aspirations were examined from the pupils’ perspective by a mixed-model study involving a survey of 1,031 8th-grade pupils from elementary schools in Zagreb and semi-structured interviews with 29 pupils at the end of the first semester of the 8th grade. The quantitative part of the research indicates that pupils’ expected school achievement and parental educational status were significant predictors of parental upper secondary educational aspirations, while the effect of pupils’ gender was not significant. The qualitative part of the research points to a congruence between pupils’ and parental aspirations and the substantial involvement of parents in the process of selection of upper secondary educational options. In families where parents have different educational statuses, the patterns of communication and interaction regarding aspirations and upper secondary school choice varied to some extent and were related to different valuation of grammar schools and vocational education in these families. the prestige and highest quality of a grammar school education. In the case of average educational achievement, the choice of upper secondary school is approached very strategically and studiously, making use of social capital and other resources available. These findings are consistent with concepts derived from Bourdieu’s considerations of normal biography and aspiration as an expression of the distinctive habitus in which a person is socialized. Through setting and communicating high, but actually narrow, aspirations, these parents communicate to
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT Business Repayment Capacity and Credit Rationing Among Registered Small and Medium Enterprises in Kiambu County, Kenya

: Several policies have been developed and implemented with intention to reducing credit rationing among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. Despites all this efforts, SMEs in Kenya hold at most 17.4 percent share of a mount of loans available in the credit market. Empirical evidence on business repayment capacity and credit rationing, documents variation in methodological aspects as well as conceptual outlook. These empirical and methodological gaps form a motivation for the current study. Hence, the study sought to establish the effect of business repayment capacity on credit rationing among registered Small and Medium’ Enterprises in Kiambu County, Kenya. The study adopted positivism philosophy and utilized explanatory study design. The target population was 41,115 registered, active SMEs in Kiambu-County, out of which, a sample size of 397 was purposely selected. Using logit analysis, the study found that business repayment capacity has a statistical significance effect on likelihood of SMEE being credit rationed as indicated by p-values of (p = 0.000). Additionally, the study found a statistically significant moderating effect of inflation on the relationship between business repayment capacity and credit rationing (p=0.0.017). In view of the findings, the study recommends that SMEs in Kiambu County should improve on the repayment capacity by managing their sales and expenses in a manner to improve on their net profits. Further, due to the fact that determination of repayment capacity of SMEs may be difficult in the presence of information asymmetry, the study recommends to the registrar of businesses that there should be enforcement of financial reporting by the SMEs. The existence of moderating effect of inflation is an indication that the government should maintain inflation rate as per Vision 2030 projections at one-digit figure.
The High Potential of Computer-Based Reading Assessment Le potentiel élevé de l'évaluation informatisée de la lecture

The aim of this study is to propose advantages provided by computerized tools when assessing reading ability. A new computer-based reading assessment evaluating both word reading and reading comprehension processes was administered to 687 children in primary (N=400) and secondary (N=287) schools. Accuracy (weighted scores) and speed of access (response times) automatically recorded by the software were analyzed based on developmental issues (ANOVAS), correlation matrices, structural equation modeling, and clinical interpretation. Results underlined the validity and reliability of the tool. The discussion addresses the limitations of the present computer-based assessment and presents perspectives for taking fuller advantage of computerized technologies.
Histopathological study of ovarian tumors in a tertiary care center

Introduction: Ovary is a complex structure and its neoplasms show a wide spectrum of histological types and clinical behavior. The present study was done with the aim of studying the histopathological pattern of ovarian tumors in women of various age groups. Ovarian tumors represent about 30% of all cancers of the female genital system. Ovarian tumor is the seventh leading cause of cancer death. Ovarian tumors are often difficult to detect until they are advanced in stage or size, as symptoms are vague and insidious. An accurate and early diagnosis of malignant lesions will go a long way in the optimal management of these cases. Aims and Objectives: To determine the frequency of different histological types of ovarian tumors in a tertiary care center. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective study included 150 cases of histopathologically proven ovarian tumors, reported in the Sree Mookambika Institute of medical sciences, over a one and half year period (January 2018 to June 2019). These were classiﬁed according to the WHO classiﬁcation of ovarian tumors. Clinical presentation of the patients was analyzed from archived case records. Results: Of 150 cases of ovarian tumors, 138 masses were unilateral (92%) and 12 were bilateral (8%). Benign neoplastic lesions were 58.7%, and malignant was 2%. In benign neoplastic, the most common neoplasm was serous cystadenoma followed by mucinous cystadenoma In malignant, the current study had 2 cases of mucinous cystadenoma with borderline malignancy and 1 case was serous papillary cystadenocarcinoma Conclusion: A more detailed prospective study include genetic profiling, to establish the reason for this low incidence of malignant lesions …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Embodiment Effects in Idiom Processing

In recent research, there have been mixed results as to whether idioms with meanings related to motor action are subject to embodiment effects during semantic processing, and no behavioural study to date has illustrated any kind of differential processing for action-based idioms over non-action-based idioms. In this paper, the processing of idioms is investigated from the perspective of embodied semantics. Native English speakers with no history of dyslexia completed a semantic decision task and a semantic congruency task with stimuli containing action idioms, non-action idioms, and literal expressions. All stimulus groups were meticulously controlled and matched for a number of linguistic and psycholinguistic properties. Results indicate the influence of embodiment in idiom processing, with the semantic congruency task in particular presenting a significant positive correlation between mean response times and action-based processing facilitation.
Differences Between Women and Men Are Present in the Rate of Diagnosed Diseases After a Diagnostic Intervention is Conducted in Primary Care

Background: Recently it was shown that the relative lack of diagnostic interventions conducted in women mediated the negative association between female sex and diagnosed disease. However, it remains unknown whether women and men receive disease diagnoses in an equal frequency after diagnostic interventions have been performed in general practice. Methods: We used generalized linear mixed-effect models to assess the association between diagnostic interventions and disease diagnoses when patients presented with common somatic symptoms and studied whether the association differed between female and male patients. Results: In 34,268 episodes of care (61.4% female) physical examinations and specialist referrals were associated with more disease diagnoses (OR = 2.32; 95% CI = 2.17–2.49 and OR = 1.38; 95% CI = 1.27–1.49, respectively), whereas laboratory diagnostics were associated with fewer disease diagnoses (OR = 0.50; 95% CI = 0.47–0.54). Signiﬁcant interaction terms showed that women presenting with back pain, tiredness, arm and/or leg symptoms and tingling extremities were provided with fewer disease diagnoses after diagnostic interventions were performed than men. We found no signiﬁcant interaction term that indicated that men were provided with fewer disease diagnoses after a diagnostic intervention than women. Conclusion: Especially when patients present with the mentioned symptoms, general practitioners should be aware that diagnostic interventions yield fewer disease diagnoses in female patients than in men. Yet, performing fewer diagnostic interventions in women with these symptoms will further exacerbate sex differences in disease diagnoses. ( Am Board Fam Med 2022;35:73–84.)
Investigation of Deep Features in Lung Nodule Classification

Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases that affect people worldwide, regardless of their socioeconomic situation. Head and neck cancer, brain cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer, and pancreatic cancer are some of the different types of cancer. Lung cancer has the highest occurrence and fatality rate among all cancer diseases worldwide. It has become more prevalent in developing countries due to increased air pollution. As a result of this terrible sight, lung cancer screening and early diagnosis are now more important than ever. Taking Computed Tomography (CT) images of the entire chest region and analyzing them for any abnormalities is the most common method for detecting lung cancer at its initial stage. In the clinical diagnosis of many diseases, transfer learning and deep learning are becoming increasingly important. Lung nodules, categorized as malignant or benign, are radiographic indications of lung cancer. The application of transfer learning and deep learning in the Computed Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system to aid doctors in classifying lung nodules is proposed in this paper. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) such as VGG16, VGG19, and ResNet50 are used as feature extractors in this study. In the classification of lung nodules, the performance of these deep features is explored.
Trajectory controllability of Hilfer fractional neutral stochastic differential equation with deviated argument and mixed fractional Brownian motion

This manuscript is concerned with the trajectory controllability of Hilfer fractional neutral stochastic differential equation having deviated arguments and mixed fractional Brownian motion with the Hurst parameter . The proposed Hilfer fractional system's solvability in Hilbert space is acquired by employing fractional calculus, stochastic analysis, semigroup theory, and Krasnoselskii's fixed point theorem. Furthermore, under some suitable assumptions, the considered system's trajectory controllability is established using generalized Gronwall's inequality. Finally, an example is delivered to illustrate the obtained theoretical results.
Ringing Suppression in a Controller Area Network With Flexible Data Rate Using Frequency-Selective Impedance Matching and Temporal Impedance Switching

An inherent impedance mismatch in a controller area network with flexible data rate (CAN-FD) network gives rise to signal distortion called ringing. Ringing is one of the main causes of communication errors and performance degradation. In this paper, a ringing suppression system is proposed, which alleviates the impedance mismatch at two mismatch locations: the unterminated CAN nodes and the divergence points of bus lines. At the unterminated CAN nodes, a temporal impedance switching circuit, including a matching resistor and a limiting diode, is added. The circuit is controlled to only engage right after a dominant-to-recessive transition when ringing likely occurs. At the divergence points, a frequency-selective impedance matching circuit is inserted. The circuit consists of a resistor, a capacitor, and an inductor connected in parallel, which is also designed to activate only during state transitions with the dependency of their impedance on frequency. Thus, the side effects on CAN-FD operations can be prevented. The performance of the ringing suppression system is verified by experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system reduces ringing to a level lower than the input threshold for recessive bit detection in diverse bus configurations and supports more reliable CAN-FD communication.
Cervical Cancer Prevention in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background and Objectives: Cervical cancer (CC) is the fourth most common cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality among women worldwide. CC prevention is based on screening and HPV vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused difficulties in implementing CC-preventative measures. The aim of this study was to collect data on the implementation of CC prophylaxis in Poland provided by public and private health care with a particular focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and attempt to estimate the level of CC-screening implementation by 2026 under public and private health care. Materials and Methods: Data on the implementation of privately funded (2016–2021) and publicly funded (2014–2021) CC-preventative measures in Poland were examined. The Prophet algorithm, which positions itself as an automatic forecasting procedure and represents a local Bayesian structural time-series model, was used to predict data. The correlation test statistic was based on Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient and follows a t distribution. An asymptotic confidence interval was given based on Fisher’s Z transform. Results: In 2021, a significantly higher population screening coverage was observed in private health care (71.91%) than in the public system (12.6%). Our estimation assumes that the adverse downward trend of population coverage (pap smear CC screening) in the public system will continue to 5.02% and in the private health system to 67.92% in 2026. Correlation analysis showed that with the increase in the sum of HPV tests and LBC, the percentage of Pap smear coverage in the private healthcare sector decreases r = −0.62, p = 0.260 df = 3, CI = [−0.97, 0.57]. The amount of HPV vaccinations provided in private health care is steadily increasing. Immunization coverage of the population of girls aged 9–18 years under private health care at the end of the observation period was 4.3% (2021). Conclusions: It is necessary to reorganize the public CC-screening system in Poland based on a uniform reporting system for tests performed in both public and private health care using the model of action proposed by us. We recommend the introduction of a national free HPV vaccination program funded by the government and implemented in public and private health care facilities.
ACUTE EFFECTS OF TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS ON SPRINT ACCELERATION TECHNIQUE AND PERFORMANCE

This study investigated the acute effect of verbal technical instructions intended to alter attentional focus during a 10 m sprint. Team sports athletes (n = 15) completed maximal effort sprints under a control condition and two experimental conditions: internal and external focus. Lower-body kinematic and external kinetic data were collected near the 5 m mark. Total sprint time was longer in both experimental conditions than the control condition (p < 0.05). Both experimental conditions altered ankle and knee angles at touchdown and led to more vertically oriented ground reaction forces (all p < 0.05). Whilst these instructions were detrimental to performance, the results support the importance of technical ability for sprint acceleration. Future studies should seek to identify instructions, potentially used within training programmes, which could be beneficial to performance.
Job Satisfaction – An International Comparison of Public and Private Sector Employees

ABSTRACT Benefits of job satisfaction include increased productivity, performance, creativity, innovation, motivation, and involvement. The current study examines a global sample from 37 countries to examine the effects of work-life balance, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and work relations on job satisfaction for public and private sector employees, using data from the International Social Survey Program. Descriptive results show a significant difference between these workers in the study’s main variables, with several areas higher for public workers. Additionally, regression analyses identify significant differences, mostly favoring public workers. A key contribution of the study is the finding that a one-size-fits-all model of job satisfaction does not work equally across the globe (context matters). However, the findings do lead to specific, actionable items for managers. Future research should examine more detailed country-specific variations and the corresponding causes and explore private/public sector determinants on a global basis.