Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ICLR 2019 ⊕ xs z + L ∂ ∂ z + ∂ s L ∂ ∂ s L ∂ ∂ z + ∂ z +

Artificial neural networks are built on the basic operation of linear combination and non-linear activation function. Theoretically this structure can approximate any continuous function with three layer architecture. But in practice learning the parameters of such network can be hard. Also the choice of activation function can greatly impact the performance of the network. In this paper we are proposing to replace the basic linear combination operation with non-linear operations that do away with the need of additional non-linear activation function. To this end we are proposing the use of elementary morphological operations (dilation and erosion) as the basic operation in neurons. We show that these networks (Denoted as DenMo-Net) with morphological operations can approximate any smooth function requiring less number of parameters than what is necessary for normal neural networks. The results show that our network perform favorably when compared with similar structured network.
ICLR 2019 Expert Replay Buffer ActorEnvironment Discriminator Policy Replay Buffer Absorbing State Wrapper s a Critic

Algorithms for imitation learning based on adversarial optimization, such as generative adversarial imitation learning (GAIL) and adversarial inverse reinforcement learning (AIRL), can effectively mimic demonstrated behaviours by employing both reward and reinforcement learning (RL). However, applications of such algorithms are challenged by the inherent instability and poor sample efficiency of on-policy RL. In particular, the inadequate handling of absorbing states in canonical implementations of RL environments causes an implicit bias in reward functions used by these algorithms. While these biases might work well for some environments, they lead to sub-optimal behaviors in others. Moreover, despite the ability of these algorithms to learn from a few demonstrations, they require a prohibitively large number of the environment interactions for many real-world applications. To address these issues, we first propose to extend the environment MDP with absorbing states which leads to task-independent, and more importantly, unbiased rewards. Secondly, we introduce an off-policy learning algorithm, which we refer to as Discriminator-Actor-Critic. We demonstrate the effectiveness of proper handling of absorbing states, while empirically improving the sample efficiency by an average factor of 10. Our implementation is available online 1.
SURE-based Automatic Parameter Selection For ESPIRiT Calibration

Purpose: Parallel imaging methods in MRI have resulted in faster acquisition times and improved noise performance. ESPIRiT is one such technique that estimates coil sensitivity maps from the auto-calibration region using an eigenvalue-based method. This method requires choosing several parameters for the the map estimation. Even though ESPIRiT is fairly robust to these parameter choices, occasionally, poor selection can result in reduced performance. The purpose of this work is to automatically select parameters in ESPIRiT for more robust and consistent performance across a variety of exams. Theory and Methods: Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE) is a method of calculating an unbiased estimate of the mean squared error of an estimator under certain assumptions. We show that this can be used to estimate the performance of ESPIRiT. We derive and demonstrate the use of SURE to optimize ESPIRiT parameter selection. Results: Simulations show SURE to be an accurate estimator of the mean squared error. SURE is then used to optimize ESPIRiT parameters to yield maps that are optimal in a denoising/data-consistency sense. This improves g-factor performance without causing undesirable attenuation. In-vivo experiments verify the reliability of this method. Conclusion: Simulation experiments demonstrate that SURE is an accurate estimate of expected mean squared error. Using SURE to determine ESPIRiT parameters allows for automatic parameter this http URL-vivo results are consistent with simulation and theoretical results.
The liminality of branding

This article explores how the occupation of branding and the work it encompasses are discursively constituted and ‘made up’. It starts with the premise that branding is a cultural intermediary occupation about whose norms and practices we cannot assume certainty, stability or homogeneity. The study illustrates how branding is comprised of multiple social and occupational discourses, namely, ‘creativity’, ‘discovery’, ‘business’ and ‘morality’. Rather than stand alone, these discourses dynamically interweave and intersect. Consequently, branding emerges as an occupation with distinct liminal conditions, being simultaneously about art, science, business and social relational work. Instead of moving towards stability, our findings suggest that branding is an intermediary occupation that sustains rather than discontinues liminality and that enduring liminality lends itself to the non-distinctiveness of the occupation. For branders, occupying a liminal occupational position implies various challenges but similarly scopes for flexibility and autonomy.
Learning scenes from multiple views : Novel views

90 People are able to recognize previously learned places from perspectives that they have not experienced. For example, after having approached a favorite picnic spot in a park several times from the north and from the east, a person will likely recognize this spot as he or she approaches it from the northeast. The psychological processes that enable this sort of place recognition are currently not completely understood, although two classes of models have been proposed. By one account (which we will call a normalization approach), people store a relatively large number of specific examples of their experiences. Recognition from a novel perspective can then occur by matching the current view to a particular stored view (see, e.g., Diwadkar & McNamara, 1997; Tarr & Pinker, 1989). Empirically, normalization processes are indicated when recognition performance declines monotonically with the distance between a given novel view and its nearest learned view. Another class of models that represents a view combination (or view interpolation) approach holds that people do not rely on single instances of their prior experience; rather, novel views of a scene activate multiple stored views (e.g., Bülthoff & Edelman, 1992; Edelman, 1999; Hintzman, 1986; Ullman, 1998). By this approach, recognition is based on the summed activation (modeled proportionately to similarity) of the novel view to the stored views. As a result, some novel views can be recognized at least as well as familiar views. Friedman and Waller (2008) provided initial evidence for view combination in scene recognition by exposing participants to views of a playground scene that had been taken from two ground-level perspectives (e.g., 48o apart). Subsequent recognition of these trained views during a test phase was not statistically different from that of novel views of the playground taken from an interpolated viewpoint—one that was between the two trained perspectives. However, novel extrapolated views—those that were outside of the training range—were subsequently recognized less efficiently than were the trained views. Because interpolated views were recognized more efficiently than extrapolated views, yet both were equidistant from the training views, Friedman and Waller concluded that their findings were not consistent with a normalization account of scene recognition. Instead, they concluded that the recognition of coherent real-world scenes was aided by view combination mechanisms that integrated information from the separate trained views. In the present article, we provide strong additional evidence for view combination mechanisms in human spatial memory by showing that under appropriate circumstances, novel views of a scene can be recognized even more efficiently than can views that have been previously seen and Learning scenes from multiple views: Novel views can be recognized more efficiently than learned views
Happy Birthday, You’re Fired! Effects of an Age-Dependent Minimum Wage on Youth Employment Flows in the Netherlands

The Dutch minimum wage for workers aged 15 to 23 is defined as a stepwise increasing function of a worker’s calendar age. Using Dutch administrative records, the author shows that the birthday discontinuities of age-dependent minimum wage rates affect both labor market entry (job accessions) and labor market exit (job separations) of minimum wage workers. The job separations spike in the three months that precede workers’ birthdays, suggesting that firms are dismissing workers whose costs are about to go up. The frequency of job accessions increases immediately after the birthdays and the increase is sustained throughout the following months. The resulting effect on employment levels is dynamic, with the employment rate being subject to an initial drop that is gradually compensated for by the higher rates of post-birthday labor market entry.
Measuring Intangible Assets: Assessing the Impact of Knowledge Management in the S&T Fight Against Terrorism

Abstract : At present, there are no standards for assessing the value of intangible assets or intellectual capital. Historically, a number of frameworks have evolved, each with a different focus and a different assessment methodology. In order to assess that knowledge management initiatives contributed to the fight against terrorism in Canada, a results-based framework was selected, customized and applied to CRTI (a networked science and technology program to counter terrorism threats). This chapter describes the step by step process of how the results-based framework was applied to measure the value contributed by knowledge-based assets. A combination of qualitative, quantitative and anecdotal assessment techniques was used and a map was employed to visualize the evaluation results. The strengths and weaknesses of this particular approach are discussed and specific examples from CRTI are presented to illustrate how other organizations can use this method to assess the value-added to innovation and research and development using a results-based framework.
A Novel Distributed Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization

Quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) is an improved version of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and has shown superior performance on many optimization problems. But for now, it may not always satisfy the situations. Nowadays, problems become larger and more complex, and most serial optimization algorithms cannot deal with the problem or need plenty of computing cost. Fortunately, as an effective model in dealing with problems with big data which need huge computation, MapReduce has been widely used in many areas. In this paper, we implement QPSO on MapReduce model and propose MapReduce quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (MRQPSO) which achieves parallel and distributed QPSO. Comparisons are made between MRQPSO and QPSO on some test problems and nonlinear equation systems. The results show that MRQPSO could complete computing task with less time. Meanwhile, from the view of optimization performance, MRQPSO outperforms QPSO in many cases.
Just-inTime Gridification of Compiled Java Applications

Grids allow users to build applications with enormous deman ds for computational resources. Intuitively, this involves more development effort and expertise on Grid programming. The so-called gridification toolsaddress these problems by deriving the Grid-enabled version of an applica tion from its binary code. Unfortunately, most of such tools produce coarse-gra ined Grid applications that prevent developers from employing common tuning mecha nisms such as parallelism and distribution, and are inflexible, since the y were not thought to reuse existing Grid middleware services. We propose a new gr idification tool for binary Java applications that solves these issues calle d BYG (BYtecode Gridifier). Results suggest that BYG can be employed to easil y gridify and efficiently execute a broad range of computing intensive app lications.
Overweight and Lifestyle in Ten-Year-Old Children

Overweight in childhood and adolescence is a major public health problem due to its medical and psychosocial consequences. The aim of this study was to investigate overweight and life style factors in children aged 10. The sample consisted of 138 children 10 years of age from three public primary schools in southern Sweden from whom data on height, weight, Body Mass Index (BMI) and life style were obtained during 2003–2004. Differences in life style factors between the overweight and the non-overweight children were investigated using the chi-square test and Fisher exact test. The association between life style factors and overweight was studied using multivariate logistic regression analysis. Omitting lunch at school and feeling tired at school were found to be associated with overweight. Headache and the experience of being bullied were significantly more common among the overweight children. Overweight was found in 24% of the children, a fourth of whom (6%) were obese. This is important problems that school nurses need to confront. A new and interesting finding obtained was that omitting lunch at school was associated with overweight. Additional longitudinal studies of the impact of life style factors on paediatric overweight are needed to assess school-based preventive programmes.
Protective effects of Nymphaea lotus Linn . ( Nymphaeaceae ) on N ( ω )-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester-induced tissular oxidative damages and erectile dysfunction in hypertensive male rat

Introduction: Hypertension represents one of the major risk factors for the development of erectile dysfunction (ED). Protective effects of Nymphaea lotus Linn. on ED and tissular oxidative stress in the N (ω)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) hypertensive male rats were investigated in this study. Materials and Methods: Fifty adult male Wistar rats were randomly classified into five groups; control, L-NAME (10 mg/kg), L-NAME + losartan (10 mg/kg), L-NAME + N. lotus at the dose of 75 mg/kg and 200 mg/kg. L-NAME was administered during 8 weeks, but others treatment started from the 4th week and was administered continuously with L-NAME (10 mg/kg) during 4 additional weeks. Results: L-NAME administration caused marked hit of sexual behavior, specifically failure of penile insertion or difficulty to ejaculate during the test interval. Further L-NAME causes a significant decrease in antioxidant products as reduced gluthatione (GSH) and nitric oxide (NO) in aorta and penile tissues, as compared to control group. N. lotus cotreatment for 4 weeks increased markedly the erectile index and the ejaculation rates contrarily to losartan in comparison to negative control receiving only L-NAME. N. lotus, but not the positive drug losartan, induced a significant increase in the antioxidant enzymes activities and GSH and NO levels, as well as, a significant decrease in malondialdehyde levels compared to L-NAME group. These results suggest N. lotus may provide significant protection against L-NAME-induced tissular oxidative damages by upregulation of antioxidant systems and promotion of the vasodilator factors in chronic NO-deficient rats. These alleviating effects of N. lotus denote a prosexual, antioxidant, and vasodilatatory properties that were more appreciated after histological examination where remodeling of aorta was visibly reduced. Conclusion: N. lotus may be considered as a potentially useful strategy to limit ED and toxicity associated with hypertension.
Antibiotic resistance pattern of mdr pathogens

–Multiple drug resistant enterobacterial pathogens were isolated from common sources of human consumption. The isolates were subjected for antibiotic susceptibility testing against 10 antibiotics and found to be resistant towards six antibiotics. All the isolated MDR pathogens were found to be sensitive towards amikacin. Sensitivity for cefuroxime, oxacillin, and metronidazol differed for different species. The pattern of MDR bacteria was perturbing as simultaneous resistance to chloramphenicol and gentamycin, formed the common MDR pattern. The pattern was almost the same for the diverse species (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Citrobacter diversus, Shigella flexneri, Salmonella typhi, Proteus vulgaris, Citrobacter freundii, Proteus myxofaciens, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) isolated from different food samples and strongly suggests prevalence of similar R plasmids. This suggests that antibiotic resistance is encoded on a high molecular weight plasmid, and can easily spread in the community through food stuff generally consumed by the common man. Keywords––MDR, antibiotics, enterobacterial pathogens.
Orographically induced cirrus clouds in the lee of the southern Appalachian Mountains

The development of orographically induced cirrus clouds in the lee of the southern Appalachian Mountain chain can result in areas of unanticipated cloudiness downstream of the higher terrain across the Carolinas and Virginia. Both the degree of cloudiness and its impact on surface temperatures can reduce forecast accuracy. The general environmental conditions favorable for orographic cirrus development are known and have been qualitatively documented but to this point have not been extensively quantified. This study attempts to quantify the conditions necessary for orographic cirrus development across the southern Appalachian Mountains. Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite imagery and atmospheric soundings are evaluated in order to better understand the most important environmental conditions needed for an orographic cirrus event to occur as well as which scenarios may produce null events. Case studies will be presented illustrating classic orographic cirrus events and their impacts on local forecast variables. Finally, best practices for operational forecasting of orographic cirrus are proposed, and the role of highresolution models in the detection of orographic cirrus events is discussed.
Assessment of a common nonlinear eddy-viscosity turbulence model in capturing laminarization in mixed convection flows

ABSTRACT Laminarization is an important topic in heat transfer and turbulence modeling. Recent studies have demonstrated that several well-known turbulence models failed to provide accurate prediction when applied to mixed convection flows with significant re-laminarization effects. One of those models, a well-validated cubic nonlinear eddy-viscosity model, was observed to miss this feature entirely. This paper studies the reasons behind this failure by providing a detailed comparison with the baseline Launder–Sharma model. The difference is attributed to the method of near-wall damping. A range of tests have been conducted and two noteworthy findings are reported for the case of flow re-laminarization.
Two Circulation Regimes of the Mediterranean Outflow Revealed by Lagrangian Measurements

The Eurofloat experiment was a joint initiative to examine the large-scale spreading of Mediterranean Water (MW) and Labrador Sea Water in the northeast North Atlantic. RAFOS float data from the southern (MW) portion of the Eurofloat experiment have been examined in conjunction with historical float data in order to calculate quasi-Eulerian means in an effort to separate and quantify the constituents of the spreading of the MW tongue east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. While recent studies focussed chiefly on the role of meddies in the shaping of the MW tongue, this analysis also examines the tongue's second constituent, that is, the “background” (non-meddy advective and diffusive) flow. The results suggest the existence of two regimes approximately to the north and south of the 36°N parallel (i.e., the latitude of the Gulf of Cadiz), which are distinguished by different types of dominant spreading mechanisms for MW. To the south of the Gulf of Cadiz, the background flow shows an incoherent and weak mean, whereas the mean velocity of the salt enhanced meddies is strong and to the southwest. In contrast, to the north of 36°N the mean velocity of the meddies seems to be less pronounced and the background flow is shown to be a major component in the northwestward spreading of the MW tongue. The two regimes are separated by the Azores Current, which previously has been hypothesized to act as a dynamic barrier to the southward advective spreading of the background regime, which the meddies are able to penetrate because of their high kinetic energy. Overall, the meddies are calculated to contribute to approximately half of the total salinity anomaly flux.
Comparison between a near-field and a far-field indexing approach for characterization of a polycrystalline sample volume containing more than 1500 grains

A comparison of the performance of X-ray diffraction tomography, a near-field diffraction technique, and a far-field diffraction technique for indexing X-ray diffraction data of polycrystalline materials has been carried out by acquiring two sets of diffraction data from the same polycrystalline sample volume. Both approaches used in this study are variants of the three-dimensional X-ray diffraction (3DXRD) methodology, but they rely on different data-collection and analysis strategies. Previous attempts to assess the quality of 3DXRD indexing results from polycrystalline materials have been restricted to comparisons with two-dimensional electron backscatter diffraction cross sections containing a limited number of grains. In the current work, the relative performance of two frequently used polycrystalline-material indexing algorithms is assessed, comparing the indexing results obtained from a threedimensional sample volume containing more than 1500 grains. The currently achievable accuracy of three-dimensional grain maps produced with these algorithms has been assessed using a statistical analysis of the measurement of the size, position and orientation of the grains in the sample. The material used for this comparison was a polycrystalline commercially pure titanium grade 2 sample, which has a hexagonal close-packed crystal structure. The comparison of the two techniques shows good agreement for the measurements of the grain position, size and orientation. Cross-validation between the indexing results shows that about 99% of the sample volume has been indexed correctly by either of these indexing approaches. The remaining discrepancies have been analysed and the strengths and limitations of both approaches are discussed.
Drug prescribing data used in the assessment of general practitioners’ treatment of asthma and urinary tract infection – Experience from the European Drug Education Project

ABSTRACT Describing drug treatment given by general practitioners, and quantifying changes in their prescribing behaviour due to educational intervention, were important parts of the method developed and applied by the European Drug Education Project. Based on the physicians’ prescription data, individual patients were defined as having either asthma or urinary tract infections. Prescribing indicators were established for assessing the quality (acceptable or unacceptable) of the drug treatment. The diagnose definitions and prescribing indicators are discussed in more detail in relation to feeding back individual prescribing data to educational groups of physicians to improve the quality of their drug therapy.