Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning Embodied Agents with Scalably-Supervised Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) agents learn to perform a task through trial-and-error interactions with an initially unknown environment. Despite the recent progress in deep RL, it remains a challenge to train intelligent agents that can efficiently explore a large state space and quickly solve a wide variety of tasks. One of the biggest obstacles is the high cost of human supervision for RL: it is difficult to design reward functions that provide enough learning signal yet still induce the correct behavior at convergence. To reduce the amount of human supervision required, there has been recent progress on self-supervised RL approaches, where the agent learns on its own by interacting with the environment without an extrinsic reward function. However, without any prior knowledge about the task, these methods can be sample-inefficient and suffer from poor exploration. Towards solving these challenges, this thesis focuses on how we can balance self-supervised RL with scalable forms of human supervision to efficiently train an agent for solving various high-dimensional robotic tasks. Being mindful about the cost of human labor required, we consider alternative modalities of supervision that can be more scalable and easier to provide from the human user. We show that such supervision can drastically improve the agent’s learning efficiency, enabling the agent to do directed exploration and learning within a large search space of states.
A Tale of Two Networks: Common Ownership and Product Market Rivalry

We study the welfare implications of the rise of common ownership and product market concentration in the United States from 1994 to 2018. We develop a general equilibrium model in which granular firms compete in a network game of oligopoly. Firms are connected through two large networks: the first reflects ownership overlap, the second product similarity. In our model, common ownership of competing firms induces unilateral incentives to soften product market competition. A key insight of our model is that the product market effects of common ownership depend crucially on the extent to which these two networks overlap. We estimate our model for the universe of public corporations in the U.S. using a combination of firm financials, investor holdings and text-based product similarity data. We perform counterfactual calculations that allow us to evaluate how the efficiency and the distributional impact of common ownership have evolved over this period. Based on our model, the welfare cost of common ownership, measured as deadweight loss-to-total surplus ratio, has increased nearly tenfold (from 0.3% to over 4%) between 1994 and 2018. The rise of common ownership has also resulted in a significant reallocation of surplus from consumers to producers. JEL Codes: D43, D61, E23, L13, L41, G34
FACTORS AFFECTING CAPITAL EXPENDITURES AND COMMUNITY WELFARE IN KALIMANTAN

From centralized to decentralized systems provides new hope for most provinces in Indonesia. With government decentralization, it means that management authority will be distributed from the center to the regions. This study aims to examine and prove whether Locally-Generated Revenue (Pendapatan Asli Daerah–PAD), Special Allocation Fund (Dana Alokasi Khusus-DAK), General Allocation Fund (Dana Alokasi Umum-DAU), Profit-Sharing Fund (Distribusi Bagi Hasil–DBH) affect capital expenditure and community welfare in Kalimantan. The population in this study are districts and cities in Kalimantan, consisting of 47 districts and 9 cities. The method used to determine the sample is purposive sampling, which selects samples with certain criteria. From a population of 56, this study examines a sample of 49 observations (42 districts and 7 cities). The results show that PAD, DAK, DAU, and DBH positively impact capital expenditure in Kalimantan. However, capital expenditure has no effect on community welfare in Kalimantan.
The Disciplining Effect of Status: Evaluator Status Awards and Observed Gender Bias in Evaluations

We theorize that status awards will have a disciplining effect on evaluators, changing how they evaluate. Specifically, status awards will lead evaluators to place less weight on unreliable indicators of candidate quality, such as gender. We test this theory using data from restaurant evaluations on Yelp, focusing on the relationship between an evaluator’s restaurant rating and their reporting of being served by a man or a woman in their review text. We use Yelp’s evaluator status award (“Elite”) to analyze whether observed gender bias in the star ratings given to restaurants decreases after an evaluator receives this status award. We find that evaluators rate restaurants more similarly after receiving the award, regardless of whether they report being served by a man or a woman. Status awards in our context close the gender gap in restaurant ratings by 56.5% (a 0.07 stars improvement out of an initial rating gap of −0.13 stars). This reduction in gender bias is mostly due to a decrease in the number of extremely low (1 star) ratings in reviews that reference female servers. Research on status and evaluations has mostly focused on how evaluators react to increases in candidate status. We demonstrate the importance of evaluator status as a mechanism for decreasing observed gender differences in evaluations. This paper was accepted by Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, organizations.
Preterm birth and its associated factors in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Preterm birth is a public health concern globally. In low- and middle-income countries, like Ethiopia, preterm birth is under reported and underestimated. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis assessed the pooled prevalence and associated risk factors for preterm birth in Ethiopia. Methods In this review the databases used were PubMed, Google scholar, EMBASE, HINARI and African journal online. Publication bias was checked using a funnel plot and Eggers test. Results A total of 30 studies were included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. The overall pooled prevalence of preterm birth in Ethiopia was 11.4% (95% CI; 9.04, 13.76). On pooled analysis, preterm birth was associated with pregnancy-induced hypertension being HIV-positive, premature rupture of membrane, rural residence, the mother having a history of abortion, multiple pregnancies, and anemia during pregnancy. Conclusion The national prevalence of preterm birth in Ethiopia was low. Early identifying those pregnant women who are at risk of the above determinants and proving quality healthcare and counsel them how to prevent preterm births, which decrease the rate of preterm birth and its consequences. So, both governmental and non-governmental health sectors work on the minimization of these risk factors.
LOWLAND OF MOROGORO IN TANZANIA

Snap beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) are among the important vegetable crops grown in Tanzania, but the yield is low (2 to 8 t ha-1) as snap beans mostly are grown in highland of that country. The aim of the study was to evaluate the growth and yield of snap bean varieties in lowland areas of Morogoro, in Tanzania. The trial was conducted in 3 different seasons at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) from 13th July 2010 to 25th June 2011. Four snap bean varieties (Serengeti, Teresa, HS 215 and HS 217) were tested in a randomized complete block design replicated three times. Measurements were recorded including plant height, branches number, harvesting duration and pods weight per plant. Collected data were subjected to ANOVA, mean separation was done based on Student-Newman-Keuls using statistical software COSTAT6.4 (p≤5%). The results showed that seasons differed significantly (p≤ 0.001) and first season gave the tallest plant (49.65 cm), highest pods weight per plant (193.33g), longer harvesting duration (23.40 days) but branches number were equal in all seasons. Snap bean varieties also varied in their performance, with the tallest height, longest period of harvest and highest pods weight per plant observed in Teresa variety; while the contrast was observed in HS 217 in almost all seasons. From these results, growing snap bean especially Teresa variety in season one gave high yield and best pods quality compared to other seasons. Therefore, it is advised to the farmers of Morogoro to maximize their income and yield from snap bean varieties by growing them in season starting from July up to September.
AccelWattch: A Power Modeling Framework for Modern GPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are rapidly dominating the accelerator space, as illustrated by their wide-spread adoption in the data analytics and machine learning markets. At the same time, performance per watt has emerged as a crucial evaluation metric together with peak performance. As such, GPU architects require robust tools that will enable them to model both the performance and the power consumption of modern GPUs. However, while GPU performance modeling has progressed in great strides, power modeling has lagged behind. To mitigate this problem we propose AccelWattch, a configurable GPU power model that resolves two long-standing needs: the lack of a detailed and accurate cycle-level power model for modern GPU architectures, and the inability to capture their constant and static power with existing tools. AccelWattch can be driven by emulation and trace-driven environments, hardware counters, or a mix of the two, models both PTX and SASS ISAs, accounts for power gating and control-flow divergence, and supports DVFS. We integrate AccelWattch with GPGPU-Sim and Accel-Sim to facilitate its widespread use. We validate AccelWattch on a NVIDIA Volta GPU, and show that it achieves strong correlation against hardware power measurements. Finally, we demonstrate that AccelWattch can enable reliable design space exploration: by directly applying AccelWattch tuned for Volta on GPU configurations resembling NVIDIA Pascal and Turing GPUs, we obtain accurate power models for these architectures.
Mg thermometry : caveats and constraints 1 2

37 The coral Li/Mg temperature proxy is revisited through an in-depth trace element analysis of 38 scleractinians collected live from tropical to polar environments. The dataset consists of Li/Ca, 39 Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca and Li/Mg ratios from 64 coral specimens belonging to 8 different taxa, including both 40 reef-building zooxanthellate and cold-water non-zooxanthellate species, from a wide range water 41 temperature (-1 to 29.5°C), salinity (34.71 to 38.61), and depth (3 to 670 m). 42 Our results showed that the reliability of the Li/Mg temperature proxy is strongly limited by the 43 organic matter associated with the coral skeleton, which is most evident within the green bands 44 observed in tropical corals. Organic-rich bands can double the Mg content otherwise present in the 45 skeleton, which may ultimately lead to a temperature overestimation exceeding 15°C. We found that 46 this bias can be overcome by the treatment of coral skeletons with a specific oxidizing cleaning 47 protocol. We also detected the presence of calcite deposits within the aragonite skeleton of some 48 Antarctic living coral specimens, which strongly affects the robustness of the Li/Mg proxy given its 49 temperature sensitivity of ~1.5°C/1% calcite. Therefore, to obtain reliable reconstructions a 50 correction needs to be applied when organic matter and/or calcite contamination is present, which 51 requires the scrupulous assessment of the integrity of the aragonite prior to geochemical analyses. 52
Challenges to Public Health Reporting Experienced by Non-Federal Acute Care Hospitals, 2019

Amidst a global pandemic, the need for efficient exchange of electronic health information between hospitals and public health agencies has never been more critical. To ensure public health agencies have timely and complete data to improve their disease surveillance capabilities, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has established policies that require hospitals to meet specific public health objectives as a condition for participation in the Promoting Interoperability (PI) program (1). These objectives include submission, and in some cases receipt of data, for the purposes of immunization registries, syndromic surveillance reporting, case reporting, and public health registry reporting. To understand the challenges hospitals faced with public health reporting in the year prior to the pandemic, this data brief uses nationally representative survey data from the 2019 American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology (IT) supplement to describe the number and types of challenges hospitals experienced when electronically reporting to public health agencies and how these challenges varied by state and hospital characteristics. While new challenges may have emerged or become exacerbated during the pandemic, this analysis identifies potential ongoing barriers to health information exchange among hospitals and public health agencies and provides insights into hospitals’ readiness to support key public health activities prior to the pandemic.
Latent Representations of Terrain in Aerial Image Classification

Investigation of informative representations of complex data is a rapidly developing field of research in machine learning. In this work we present a process of production and analysis of informative low-dimensional latent representations of real-world image data with neural network models of unsupervised generative learning. A model of convolutional autoencoder based on VGG-16 architecture was used to produce low-dimensional latent representations of aerial image data and the characteristics of distributions of several higher-level classes of terrain types were studied. The analysis of distributions demonstrated a landscape of compact concept clusters for most studied types of terrain with good separation between concept regions. The results of this work can be used in developing methods of effective learning with minimal labeled data based on the emergent concept-sensitive structure in the latent representations.
Parenteral, non-live rotavirus vaccine: recent history and future perspective

Since the widespread introduction of oral and live attenuated rotavirus vaccines around the world in 2009, the impacts of disease burden and the effects of disease reduction in developing countries have been proven. However, in low and middle-income countries, the vaccine efficacy is somewhat lower than in developed countries due to differences in nutritional conditions, microbial environments of individuals, and other factors. In addition, as oral, live vaccines have been found to be associated with rare but serious side effects, the development of a next-generation vaccine with safety, improved effectiveness, and ease of storage is currently underway. New vaccine strain developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States are undergoing preclinical testing of efficacy, antigen dose, and administration route in the form of a heat-treated inactive vaccine, and a recombinant protein-based trivalent subunit vaccine developed by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health is undergoing clinical trial in phase III. Several research groups are also developing non-replicating protein-based rotavirus vaccines using virus-like particles and nanoparticles. This review provides a brief overview of the development status and technology of parenteral, non-live rotavirus vaccines worldwide.
The The Role of Tongue Twister to Improve the Students’ Speaking Skill

Recently the ability to English speaking is very necessary since English has become a foreign language in Indonesia. A correct speech is become crucial to avoid misunderstanding conveying the information to the listener. Therefore, teaching English speaking is very necessary to the teacher in improving the students’ speaking skills. The main reason why learning to speak English is very difficult for the students is because students often use the Indonesian language (mother tongue) as the main language and are not accustomed to speaking in English in their daily life. One of the alternatives technique that can be used by the teacher is using tongue twister. The aims of this study is to explore about what are the problems that faced by the students while learning English speaking in Tongue Twister assisted. The classroom action research is a method that conducted in this research. There are two Cycles in this research and both of cycles showed of 77.14% of students has obtained a score of 75 and 77.13%. This result shows that the students have met the success criteria of the research and the students actively participate in the teaching and learning processes during English-speaking class.
Fish disease study of Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer) in a floating marine cage: Endoparasite and blood profile

Abstract. Hidayati D, Nurindra AR, Abdulgani N, Setiawan E, Maulidina N, Syahroni N, Mulyadi Y. 2021. Fish disease study of Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer) in a floating marine cage: Endoparasite and blood profile. Biodiversitas 22: 4505-4511. The Indonesian government has multiple targets and priority programs to increase aquaculture productivity in 2021. Hence, the development of mariculture commodities such as Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer) in one of the potential coastal areas, Sendang Biru, is strategic. However, sustainable productivity needs good management, including the health monitoring of fish. This study aimed to determine the condition of seabass under mariculture in a floating cage in Sendang Biru, Malang, Indonesia. Thirty seabass (Lates calcarifer) from 0 to 60 days after stocking age (ASE) were taken from a Sendang Biru floating cage. Blood and intestine samples were taken five times from day 0 to day 60 ASE. Blood samples were carried out through the caudal vein and observed using a hemocytometer. Endoparasite analysis was performed by fish intestine examination from the anterior intestine to the posterior rectum. Pseudoterranova and Diphyllobothrium were found with 10% and 3.33% prevalence, respectively. The intensity of Pseudoterranova was one individual/fish, and that of Diphyllobothrium was 2.33 individuals/fish. The highest mean of total erythrocyte count (TEC) found in 0 day ASE was at the level of 0.82±0.55×106 cells/mm3, and the lowest was found in 60 days ASE (0.51±0.24×106 cells/mm3). The highest mean of total leucocyte count (TLC) was 9.20±3.69x104 cells/mm3, at day 0, and leukocyte levels tended to decrease until day 60 ASE (7.74±3.43×104 cells/mm3). Overall, despite the TEC and TLC tending to decrease from 0 to 60 days ASE, in statistically indicated no significant differences in TLC at different ASEs (p > 0.05). The hematological profile indicated the health statuses of the cultured Asian seabass in the current study were in a condition of anemic and infected.
Students in times of pandemic: Employment, living conditions, and health. Case studies from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus

The article draws attention to the importance of gainful employment of students. The pandemic has largely limited such opportunities. Study objective: Determination of the scope in which students recognise limitation, its consequences for their plans regarding continuation of university education, life priorities and health self-assessment. The online survey involved the participation of a total of 380 students from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. Results: Demonstrated loss of employment, worsening of material situation, declared changes in plans of continuation of university education. Moreover, the respondents assessed their state of health as worse due to the occurrence or intensification of psychosomatic symptoms
Running Head: Homelessness and Compliance with the Law

Arabella Kyprianides, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, UK Ben Bradford, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, UK Jonathan Jackson, Department of Methodology, LSE, UK; University of Sydney Law School, Australia Clifford Stott, School of Psychology, Keele University, UK Krisztián Pósch, Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, UK
Changes in diversity and composition of rhizosphere bacterial community during natural restoration stages in antimony mine

Background Open pit antimony (Sb) mining causes serious soil pollution, and phytoremediation is a low-cost approach to remediate heavy metal contaminated soil. Rhizosphere bacteria play an important role in ecological restoration in mining areas. There is a knowledge gap on how to find suitable rhizosphere microorganisms to improve the phytoremediation effect. Understanding the differences of rhizosphere bacterial diversity in different restoration stages is helpful to find suitable bacteria for ecological restoration. Methods A method of the substitution of “space” for “time” was used to study the effect of natural restoration on rhizosphere bacterial community. According to the dominant vegetation types (herb, shrub, and tree) in the natural restoration area of Sb mining, the early restoration (ER), middle restoration (MR), and later restoration (LR) from the largest Sb mine (Xikuangshan mine) in the world were selected to evaluate the differences in the composition and diversity of rhizosphere bacteria during three natural restoration stages. Each restoration stage had five samples. To determine the relationship between restoration stages and bacterial diversity in the rhizosphere, high throughput sequencing of PCR amplified were used. Results Alpha diversity, as assessed by Chao indices, appeared lowest in ER but this trend was not seen with other diversity metrics, including the Simpson and Shannon. Beta diversity analysis suggested there were differences in rhizobacterial community structure associate with restoration stage. At the phylum level, natural restoration led to a significant increase in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria in the MR, and a significant decrease in the relative abundance of Patescibacteria in the LR. Additionally, Calditrichaeota, Deferribacteres and Epsilonbacteraeota were only found in ER. At the genus level, the relative abundance of RB41 and Haliangium were highest in LR plots, while that of Bacillus and Gaiella were highest in ER plots. Additionally, the Azorhizobium genus was only detected in the ER phase. Overall, our findings suggested that several rhizosphere microbial communities had significant differences among three natural restoration stages (ER, MR, and LR) and the rhizosphere bacterial communities mainly appeared in the early restoration stage can be preferred for remediation of pollution soil in Xikuangshan.
Integration of a Visible-Telecom Photon Pair Source with Silicon Photonics for Quantum Communication

Reliable transfer of quantum information between nodes of quantum processors and memories is crucial for the realization of many groundbreaking technologies. These include distributed sensing, distributed computation, entanglement swapping, quantum metrology, quantum key distribution etc. which would vastly expand the potential of today’s quantum computers and form the framework for a secure quantum internet. However, most quantum nodes are accessed using visible photons which are incompatible with the telecom-band optical fiber network. In this thesis, we propose a method to bridge this spectral mismatch between the quantum nodes and the communication channel using a highly non-degenerate (810nm+1550nm) photon pair source using a Periodically Poled Potassium Titanyl Phosphate (PPKTP) crystal. Previous challenges with such frequency conversion systems like spectral filtering losses, out-coupling losses and feasibility of scalable fabrication are addressed by demonstrating the successful integration of the PPKTP crystal with a Silicon Photonics Integrated Circuit (Si-PIC). Higher pair detection rates than previous studies and efficient coupling between the crystal and the PIC chip are shown. Filter-free operation of the telecom band is demonstrated by using the Silicon waveguides on the PIC for pump photon absorption for the very first time.