Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reinforcement learning algorithms that assimilate and accommodate skills with multiple tasks

Children are capable of acquiring a large repertoire of motor skills and of efficiently adapting them to novel conditions. In a previous work we proposed a hierarchical modular reinforcement learning model (RANK) that can learn multiple motor skills in continuous action and state spaces. The model is based on a development of the mixture-of-expert model that has been suitably developed to work with reinforcement learning. In particular, the model uses a high-level gating network for assigning responsibilities for acting and for learning to a set of low-level expert networks. The model was also developed with the goal of exploiting the Piagetian mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation to support learning of multiple tasks. This paper proposes a new model (TERL - Transfer Expert Reinforcement Learning) that substantially improves RANK. The key difference with respect to the previous model is the decoupling of the mechanisms that generate the responsibility signals of experts for learning and for control. This made possible to satisfy different constraints for functioning and for learning. We test both the TERL and the RANK models with a two-DOFs dynamic arm engaged in solving multiple reaching tasks, and compare the two with a simple, flat reinforcement learning model. The results show that both models are capable of exploiting assimilation and accommodation processes in order to transfer knowledge between similar tasks, and at the same time to avoid catastrophic interference. Furthermore, the TERL model is shown to significantly outperform the RANK model thanks to its faster and more stable specialization of experts.
Trigeminocardiac Reflex in Neurosurgery - Current Knowledge and Prospects

Amr Abdulazim1, Martin N. Stienen1, Pooyan Sadr-Eshkevari2, Nora Prochnow1, Nora Sandu4, Benham Bohluli3 and Bernhard Schaller4 1Department of Neuroanatomy and Molecular Brain Research, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, 2Farzan Clinical Research Institute,Teheran, 3Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tehran Azad School of Dental Medicine, Tehran, 4Department of Neurosurgery, University of Paris, Paris, 1Germany 2,3Iran 4France
AN OBSERVATION ON THE FUNCTIONING OF THE GOLGI APPARATUS

The status of the Golgi apparatus as a distinct cellular organelle and its role in the formation of secretory products are now firmly established (Dalton, 1961). There have, however, been few definitive observations about the pattern of its functioning. In the outer root-cap cells of maize and other species, as well as in other plant cells, the Golgi apparatus forms membrane-bounded vesicles, the contents of which are secreted through the plasma membrane of the cell. Progressive changes in the staining reaction of the contents of these Golgi vesicles are observable not only after the vesicles leave the Golgi apparatus but within the apparatus itself (Figs. 1-3). Study of these changes provides certain suggestions regarding the fimctioning of this organelle. Formation of the secretion vesicles is apparently progressive across the "stack" of cisternae from one of its faces to the other. Cisternal elements are ultimately separated from the central structure in the production of secretion vesicles from the "mature" face. Continuing functioning of the apparatus presumably depends upon formation of new cisternae on the opposite face. Volume of the vesicles and density of their contents increase and internal structure becomes more apparent as the secretion vesicles "mature" (Figs. 1, 3). In the root-cap cells the separated secretion vesicles move through the cytoplasm and their . contents pass the plasma membrane. This pattern of functioning of the Golgi apparatus in production of relatively large secretion vesicles may relate to, or may be quite different from, the activity of the Golgi apparatus in the production of other types of vesicles and/or products (to be discussed in detail in a paper now in preparation). In this pattern of functioning the progress of change in the contents of the secretion vesicles is toward development of internal structure, revealed by certain fixations as fibrillar (Figs. 2, 3). The activity of the Golgi apparatus that involves the production of relatively large amounts of secretory products also must involve mechanisms for membrane production both for the increase in size of cisternae as they "mature" and for the formation of new cisternae on the "forming" face of the apparatus.
Modeling missing covariate data and temporal features of time-dependent covariates in tree-structured survival analysis

Tree-structured survival analysis (TSSA) is used to recursively detect covariate values that best divide the sample into subsequent subsets with respect to a time to event outcome. The result is a set of empirical classification groups, each of which identifies individuals with more homogeneous risk than the original sample. We propose methods for managing missing covariate data and also for incorporating temporal features of repeatedly measured covariates into TSSA. First, for missing covariate data, we propose an algorithm that uses a stochastic process to add draws to an existing single tree-structured imputation method. Secondly, to incorporate temporal features of repeatedly measured covariates, we propose two different methods: (1) use a two-stage random effects polynomial model to estimate temporal features of repeatedly measured covariates to be used as TSSA predictor variables, and (2) incorporate other types of functions of repeatedly measured covariates into existing time-dependent TSSA methodology. We conduct simulation studies to assess the accuracy and predictive abilities of our proposed methodology. Our methodology has particular public health importance because we create, interpret and assess TSSA algorithms that can be used in a clinical setting to predict response to treatment for late-life depression.
Extended Symmetric Sampling Strategy for Unscented Kalman Filter

This paper concerns the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) for the nonlinear dynamic systems. The sampling principle of UKF is firstly addressed, which is based on moment matching method. Then we designed an extended symmetric sampling strategy, given an n-dimensional state, which defines 4n+1 symmetric points that lie on axes to fully represent the mean and covariance of the state. The performance of the two UKFs, namely, the UKF and the extended symmetric UKF (EUKF), is compared by using the mean of the root of mean square error. The simulation results showed that EUKF outperforms the UKF in the presence of strong noise and the scalar k is a key factor involved in both UKFs.
Biased random-key genetic algorithm for nonlinearly-constrained global optimization

Global optimization seeks a minimum or maximum of a multimodal function over a discrete or continuous domain. In this paper, we propose a biased random key genetic algorithm for finding approximate solutions for bound-constrained continuous global optimization problems subject to nonlinear constraints. Experimental results illustrate its effectiveness on some functions from CEC2006 benchmark (Liang et al. [2006]).
Are the small human-like fossils found on Flores human endemic cretins?

Fossils from Liang Bua (LB) on Flores, Indonesia, including a nearly complete skeleton (LB1) dated to 18 kyr BP, were assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis. We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic (ME) cretins, part of an inland population of (mostly unaffected) Homo sapiens. ME cretins are born without a functioning thyroid; their congenital hypothyroidism leads to severe dwarfism and reduced brain size, but less severe mental retardation and motor disability than neurological endemic cretins. We show that the fossils display many signs of congenital hypothyroidism, including enlarged pituitary fossa, and that distinctive primitive features of LB1 such as the double rooted lower premolar and the primitive wrist morphology are consistent with the hypothesis. We find that the null hypothesis (that LB1 is not a cretin) is rejected by the pituitary fossa size of LB1, and by multivariate analyses of cranial measures. We show that critical environmental factors were potentially present on Flores, how remains of cretins but not of unaffected individuals could be preserved in caves, and that extant oral traditions may provide a record of cretinism.
Variations on probabilistic suffix trees: statistical modeling and prediction of protein families

MOTIVATION We present a method for modeling protein families by means of probabilistic suffix trees (PSTs). The method is based on identifying significant patterns in a set of related protein sequences. The patterns can be of arbitrary length, and the input sequences do not need to be aligned, nor is delineation of domain boundaries required. The method is automatic, and can be applied, without assuming any preliminary biological information, with surprising success. Basic biological considerations such as amino acid background probabilities, and amino acids substitution probabilities can be incorporated to improve performance. RESULTS The PST can serve as a predictive tool for protein sequence classification, and for detecting conserved patterns (possibly functionally or structurally important) within protein sequences. The method was tested on the Pfam database of protein families with more than satisfactory performance. Exhaustive evaluations show that the PST model detects much more related sequences than pairwise methods such as Gapped-BLAST, and is almost as sensitive as a hidden Markov model that is trained from a multiple alignment of the input sequences, while being much faster.
Reliability of Lexical and Prosodic Cues in Two Real-life Spoken Dialog Corpora

The present research focuses on analyzing and detecting emotions in speech as revealed by task-dependent spoken dialogs corpora. Previously, we have conducted several experiments on a real-life corpus in order to develop a reliable annotation method and to detect lexical and prosodic cues correlated to the main emotion class. In this paper we evaluate both the robustness of the annotation scheme and of the lexical and prosodic cues by testing them on a new corpus. This work is carried out in the context of the Amities project in which spoken dialog systems for call center services are being developed.
Local Short and Middle Term Electricity Load Forecasting With Semi-Parametric Additive Models

Electricity load forecasting faces rising challenges due to the advent of innovating technologies such as smart grids, electric cars and renewable energy production. For distribution network managers, a good knowledge of the future electricity consumption stands as a central point for the reliability of the network and investment strategies. In this paper, we suggest a semi-parametric approach based on generalized additive models theory to model electrical load over more than 2200 substations of the French distribution network, and this at both short and middle term horizons. These generalized additive models estimate the relationship between load and the explanatory variables: temperatures, calendar variables, etc. This methodology has been applied with good results on the French grid. In addition, we highlight the fact that the estimated functions describing the relations between demand and the driving variables are easily interpretable, and that a good temperature prediction is important.
Teaching the Normative Theory of Causal Reasoning

There is now substantial agreement about the representational component of a normative theory of causal reasoning: Causal Bayes Nets. There is less agreement about a normative theory of causal discovery from data, either computationally or cognitively, and almost no work investigating how teaching the Causal Bayes Nets representational apparatus might help individuals faced with a causal learning task. Psychologists working to describe how naive participants represent and learn causal structure from data have focused primarily on learning from single trials under a variety of conditions. In contrast, one component of the normative theory focuses on learning from a sample drawn from a population under some experimental or observational study regime. Through a virtual Causality Lab that embodies the normative theory of causal reasoning and which allows us to record student behavior, we have begun to systematically explore how best to teach the normative theory. In this paper we explain the overall project and report on pilot studies which suggest that students can quickly be taught to (appear to) be quite rational. Acknowledgements We thank Adrian Tang and Greg Price for invaluable programming help with the Causality Lab, Clark Glymour for forcing us to get to the point, and Dave Sobel and Steve Sloman for several helpful discussions. * This research was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Institute for Education Science, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Office of Naval Research (grant to the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition: Human Systems Technology to Address Critical Navy Need of the Present and Future 2004). 1 Dept. of Philosophy and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. 2 Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. 3 Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon, and Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, University of West Florida. 2
A Survey on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring Methodies and Techniques for Energy Disaggregation Problem

The rapid urbanization of developing countries coupled with explosion in construction of high rising buildings and the high power usage in them calls for conservation and efficient energy program. Such a program require monitoring of end-use appliances energy consumption in real-time. The worldwide recent adoption of smart-meter in smart-grid, has led to the rise of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM); which enables estimation of appliance-specific power consumption from building's aggregate power consumption reading. NILM provides households with cost-effective real-time monitoring of end-use appliances to help them understand their consumption pattern and become part and parcel of energy conservation strategy. This paper presents an up to date overview of NILM system and its associated methods and techniques for energy disaggregation problem. This is followed by the review of the state-of-the art NILM algorithms. Furthermore, we review several performance metrics used by NILM researcher to evaluate NILM algorithms and discuss existing benchmarking framework for direct comparison of the state of the art NILM algorithms. Finally, the paper discuss potential NILM use-cases, presents an overview of the public available dataset and highlight challenges and future research directions.
Extrahelical (CAG)/(CTG) triplet repeat elements support proliferating cell nuclear antigen loading and MutLα endonuclease activation

MutLα endonuclease can be activated on covalently continuous DNA that contains a MutSα- or MutSβ-recognizable lesion and a helix perturbation that supports proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) loading by replication factor C, providing a potential mechanism for triggering mismatch repair on nonreplicating DNA. Because mouse models for somatic expansion of disease-associated (CAG)n/(CTG)n triplet repeat sequences have implicated both MutSβ and MutLα and have suggested that expansions can occur in the absence of replication, we have asked whether an extrahelical (CAG)n or (CTG)n element is sufficient to trigger MutLα activation. (CAG)n and (CTG)n extrusions in relaxed closed circular DNA do in fact support MutSβ-, replication factor C-, and PCNA-dependent activation of MutLα endonuclease, which can incise either DNA strand. Extrahelical elements of two or three repeat units are the preferred substrates for MutLα activation, and extrusions of this size also serve as moderately effective sites for loading the PCNA clamp. Relaxed heteroduplex DNA containing a two or three-repeat unit extrusion also triggers MutSβ- and MutLα-endonuclease-dependent mismatch repair in nuclear extracts of human cells. This reaction occurs without obvious strand bias at about 10% the rate of that observed with otherwise identical nicked heteroduplex DNA. These findings provide a mechanism for initiation of triplet repeat processing in nonreplicating DNA that is consistent with several features of the model of Gomes-Pereira et al. [Gomes-Pereira M, Fortune MT, Ingram L, McAbney JP, Monckton DG (2004) Hum Mol Genet 13(16):1815–1825]. They may also have implications for triplet repeat processing at a replication fork.
Cosmic Rays from Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Galaxy

The rate of terrestrial irradiation events by Galactic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is estimated using recent standard-energy results. We assume that GRBs accelerate high-energy cosmic rays, and we present results of three-dimensional simulations of cosmic rays moving in the Galactic magnetic field and diffusing through pitch-angle scattering. An on-axis GRB extinction event begins with a powerful prompt γ-ray and neutron pulse, followed by a longer lived phase from cosmic-ray protons and neutron-decay protons that diffuse toward Earth. Our results force a reinterpretation of reported ~1018 eV cosmic-ray anisotropies and offer a rigorous test of the model in which high-energy cosmic rays originate from GRBs, and this model will soon be tested using the Auger Observatory.
A Proposed Scheme for Calibration of International Reference Preparations of Thromboplastin for the Prothrombin Time

Thromboplastins used in the prothrombin time (PT) test for the laboratory control of oral anticoagulant treatment must be calibrated against International Reference Preparations (IRP) to determine the International Sensitivity Index (ISI) necessary to convert PT results into International Normalized Ratio (INR) (1). In general, the calibration of a given thromboplastin is more precise if performed against an IRP of similar composition and from the same species. This supports the recommendation made by the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization that like-vs.-like calibration should be performed to assign ISI values to working thromboplastins (1). To this end, a system of coexisting lRPs has been established in which each IRP is related to the first primary IRP, coded 67/40. This system also allows the calibration of a greater number of working thromboplastins in spite of the limited availability of each IRP and permits periodic monitoring of the relative stability of different IRPs (2). The first IRP, coded 67/40, was a human brain extract to which adsorbed bovine plasma (combined reagent) was added to optimize the content of the non-vitamin K dependent coagulation factors (i. e., factor V and fibrinogen) (3). In 1984,67/40 was replaced by
Trauma Affect Regulation : Guide for Education and Therapy ( TARGET )

Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET) is a strengths-based approach to education and therapy for survivors of physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional trauma. TARGET teaches a set of seven skills (summarized by the acronym FREEDOM--Focus, Recognize triggers, Emotion self-check, Evaluate thoughts, Define goals, Options, and Make a contribution) that can be used by trauma survivors to regulate extreme emotion states, manage intrusive trauma memories, promote self-efficacy, and achieve lasting recovery from trauma. TARGET can be adapted to assist men and women from various age groups, cultures, and ethnicities who have had a variety of traumatic experiences. This program can be offered in 10-12 individual or group counseling or psychoeducational sessions conducted by trained implementers (e.g., clinicians, case managers, rehabilitation specialists, teachers).
Epistemic modality markers in research articles: a cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary study

Research on the use of hedging strategies in research articles has received increasing attention during the last few decades, but few have compared the use of hedges across languages and disciplines. This article explores the use of epistemic modality markers – an important and frequently used type of hedges – in research articles written in three different languages (English, French and Norwegian) and belonging to two different disciplines (linguistics and medicine). Gender differences are also examined. The material is compiled within the electronic corpus of the KIAP project (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose). Statistical analyses of the data (Kruskar-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests) show that Norwegian- and English-speaking researchers use significantly more of these hedges than their French-speaking colleagues. Disciplinary affiliation and gender seem to have little influence on the proportion of epistemic modality markers in a text, but there are interesting differences between disciplines as regards the type of markers used. These findings may have implications for the teaching of academic writing as well as for cross-cultural understanding between academics. Ces dernieres decennies, la recherche sur l’emploi d’attenuateurs dans des articles de recherche a recu un interet croissant. Cependant, il existe peu d’etudes comparant l’emploi d’attenuateurs a travers les langues et les disciplines. La presente etude examinera un type frequent d’attenuateurs, a savoir les modalisateurs epistemiques, et leur emploi dans des articles de recherche rediges en trois langues (l’anglais, le francais et le norvegien) et appartenant a deux disciplines (la linguistique et la medecine). Les differences de sexe seront examinees aussi. Les materiaux sont tires du corpus electronique du projet KIAP (Identite culturelle dans le discours scientifique). Les analyses statistiques (les tests de Kruskar-Wallis et de Mann-Whitney) revelent que les auteurs anglais et norvegiens utilisent plus de modalisateurs epistemiques que leurs collegues francais. L’appartenance disciplinaire et le sexe de l’auteur ne semblent pas influencer substantiellement la frequence de ces marqueurs, mais on observe certaines differences interessantes entre les disciplines quant aux types de marqueurs utilises. Les resultats obtenus peuvent avoir des implications pour l’enseignement de la redaction de textes scientifiques aussi bien que pour la comprehension interculturelle entre chercheurs de cultures diverses.