3,520 research outputs found

    On Transforming Reinforcement Learning by Transformer: The Development Trajectory

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    Transformer, originally devised for natural language processing, has also attested significant success in computer vision. Thanks to its super expressive power, researchers are investigating ways to deploy transformers to reinforcement learning (RL) and the transformer-based models have manifested their potential in representative RL benchmarks. In this paper, we collect and dissect recent advances on transforming RL by transformer (transformer-based RL or TRL), in order to explore its development trajectory and future trend. We group existing developments in two categories: architecture enhancement and trajectory optimization, and examine the main applications of TRL in robotic manipulation, text-based games, navigation and autonomous driving. For architecture enhancement, these methods consider how to apply the powerful transformer structure to RL problems under the traditional RL framework, which model agents and environments much more precisely than deep RL methods, but they are still limited by the inherent defects of traditional RL algorithms, such as bootstrapping and "deadly triad". For trajectory optimization, these methods treat RL problems as sequence modeling and train a joint state-action model over entire trajectories under the behavior cloning framework, which are able to extract policies from static datasets and fully use the long-sequence modeling capability of the transformer. Given these advancements, extensions and challenges in TRL are reviewed and proposals about future direction are discussed. We hope that this survey can provide a detailed introduction to TRL and motivate future research in this rapidly developing field.Comment: 26 page

    Sport team leadership coaching and captaincy in elite level rugby union football

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    A wide range of literature exists on coaching but it is concerned predominantly with the high school and college levels, is based upon athlete or coach perceptions, or is confined to observations of training or competition. As leaders of sports teams, coaches and captains have rarely been studied at the highest level of national or international sports competition. In the present study, the team leadership roles of the coach and captain in elite rugby union football in New Zealand were examined using participant observation and other qualitative research methods. Elite was defined as New Zealand rugby’s highest internal level of competition: (a) the national provincial championships and (b) international test matches of the national team, the All Blacks. The study explored the roles of the elite rugby coach and captain in vivo in a wide variety of team situations. It was felt that this could provide first-hand information on particular team leader behaviours, on what a coach and captain actually do, and how they are perceived by those around them. The main objective, however, was to use grounded theory techniques to create a model of elite rugby team leadership that might guide developmental programmes on such leadership. The research phases undertaken were those of participant observation with a Provincial Team for five matches, a survey of provincial teams’ coaches and captains on their leadership associated with actual matches, three years’ participant observation with the All Blacks (including observation in eight test match weeks), multiple perspectives on elite team leadership from past rugby test players in New Zealand and overseas, and interviews with national team leaders in sports other than rugby. Participant observation, interviews, questionnaires and document analysis generated data from the research settings. These data were considered in terms of symbolic interactionism and subjected to a grounded theory process. This led to a set of elite rugby team leadership categories and properties which, in turn, generated a comprehensive set of theoretical propositions. The propositions became the basis for a model of elite rugby team leadership. This model was then considered as the basis for a programme to develop elite rugby team leaders. Significant aspects of the research findings which have not featured in previous research literature included the coach’s vision, team culture, centrality of the game plan, match week build-up, the importance of the captain’s playing example, the coach's ability to utilise teaching precepts, the coach’s personal qualities, and the need to develop and evaluate team leaders. The model, and the developmental programme principles emanating from it, are seen as relevant for developing elite level leaders in team sports other than rugby

    Examples of works to practice staccato technique in clarinet instrument

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    Klarnetin staccato tekniğini güçlendirme aşamaları eser çalışmalarıyla uygulanmıştır. Staccato geçişlerini hızlandıracak ritim ve nüans çalışmalarına yer verilmiştir. Çalışmanın en önemli amacı sadece staccato çalışması değil parmak-dilin eş zamanlı uyumunun hassasiyeti üzerinde de durulmasıdır. Staccato çalışmalarını daha verimli hale getirmek için eser çalışmasının içinde etüt çalışmasına da yer verilmiştir. Çalışmaların üzerinde titizlikle durulması staccato çalışmasının ilham verici etkisi ile müzikal kimliğe yeni bir boyut kazandırmıştır. Sekiz özgün eser çalışmasının her aşaması anlatılmıştır. Her aşamanın bir sonraki performans ve tekniği güçlendirmesi esas alınmıştır. Bu çalışmada staccato tekniğinin hangi alanlarda kullanıldığı, nasıl sonuçlar elde edildiği bilgisine yer verilmiştir. Notaların parmak ve dil uyumu ile nasıl şekilleneceği ve nasıl bir çalışma disiplini içinde gerçekleşeceği planlanmıştır. Kamış-nota-diyafram-parmak-dil-nüans ve disiplin kavramlarının staccato tekniğinde ayrılmaz bir bütün olduğu saptanmıştır. Araştırmada literatür taraması yapılarak staccato ile ilgili çalışmalar taranmıştır. Tarama sonucunda klarnet tekniğin de kullanılan staccato eser çalışmasının az olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Metot taramasında da etüt çalışmasının daha çok olduğu saptanmıştır. Böylelikle klarnetin staccato tekniğini hızlandırma ve güçlendirme çalışmaları sunulmuştur. Staccato etüt çalışmaları yapılırken, araya eser çalışmasının girmesi beyni rahatlattığı ve istekliliği daha arttırdığı gözlemlenmiştir. Staccato çalışmasını yaparken doğru bir kamış seçimi üzerinde de durulmuştur. Staccato tekniğini doğru çalışmak için doğru bir kamışın dil hızını arttırdığı saptanmıştır. Doğru bir kamış seçimi kamıştan rahat ses çıkmasına bağlıdır. Kamış, dil atma gücünü vermiyorsa daha doğru bir kamış seçiminin yapılması gerekliliği vurgulanmıştır. Staccato çalışmalarında baştan sona bir eseri yorumlamak zor olabilir. Bu açıdan çalışma, verilen müzikal nüanslara uymanın, dil atış performansını rahatlattığını ortaya koymuştur. Gelecek nesillere edinilen bilgi ve birikimlerin aktarılması ve geliştirici olması teşvik edilmiştir. Çıkacak eserlerin nasıl çözüleceği, staccato tekniğinin nasıl üstesinden gelinebileceği anlatılmıştır. Staccato tekniğinin daha kısa sürede çözüme kavuşturulması amaç edinilmiştir. Parmakların yerlerini öğrettiğimiz kadar belleğimize de çalışmaların kaydedilmesi önemlidir. Gösterilen azmin ve sabrın sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan yapıt başarıyı daha da yukarı seviyelere çıkaracaktır

    BEGONE THOUGHT: TEMPTATION TO DESPAIR IN LATE-MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

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    Though despair and scrupulosity are often thought of as Early Modern or Protestant phenomena, they manifest as significant concerns especially in late medieval hagiography and pastoralia. This dissertation traces the threads of intrusive thoughts and scrupulosity as spiritual challenges through medieval religious literature, with a focus on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as a type of “temptation to despair.” I examine a range of medieval texts and their manuscript contexts from the twelfth through the fifteenth century including The Profits of Tribulation, The Chastising of God’s Children, William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptation, The Life of Christina of Markyate, Marie d’Oignies’s vita, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations, Catherine of Siena’s vitae and The Orcherd of Syon, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, among others, with the lenses of the history of emotions and medieval gender to better understand the valences of medieval temptation to despair. I argue that temptation to despair was conceptually rooted in the tradition of tribulation as spiritually profitable; that temptation to despair could be conceived of as a nun’s scrupulosity or worry over past sins on a lay person’s deathbed; and that these modes of despair became more deeply intermingled by the late Middle Ages. Moreover, I demonstrate that temptation to despair—especially intrusive thoughts—held particular weight in female spirituality, given medieval anxiety over women’s enclosure

    The empty space in abstract photography: a psychoanalytical perspective

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    The aim of the research that this thesis is based on is to explore the theoretical problems raised by the concept of photographic abstraction. These consist in the tension between the two aspects of the photographic sign, the indexical and iconic, and are examined in the context of the particular exploration of the empty space in abstract photography which I have pursued through my practice. The investigation draws mainly upon the psychoanalytic theory of transitional phenomena as proposed by Winnicott, as well as other art theories (Deleuze & Guattari, Ehrenzweig, Fer, Fuller, Greenberg, Joselit, Kuspit, Leider, Worringer) of abstraction. It explores the relationship of the abstract photographic image to notions of exteriority and interiority as these relate to the transition from the unconscious to conscious reality. The development of this research suggests the psychoanalytical concept of potential space as a contribution to an aesthetic model of abstraction. This concept is employed as a methodological tool in the development of the practical work and creates a framework for its interpretation. The concept of potential space is based on Winnicott's ideas around "playing with the real" in an intermediate area of experience between the internal and external reality, where creativity originates as a zone of fictive play that facilitates the subject's journey from "what is subjectively conceived of' to "what is objectively perceived. " The outcome of this investigation constitutes the production of a series of photographs describing an empty abstract space, one that is invested with a psychic dimension that produces the effect of ambiguity between its representational and abstract readings. It provides a redefinition of abstraction in a space of tension between the iconic and indexical aspects of the sign and opens up the space of abstraction in photography as one in which the relationship between inner and outer reality can be performed and can become a space of action and intervention

    Covid-19: Perspectives Across Africa

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    This book emanated from the Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa's (SASA) Seventh Annual International (digital) Conference: Joint SASA and Ugandan Ministry of Health October 15, 2020 – January 14, 2021, Kampala, Uganda. The chapters in this book were solicited from presenters and also from other authors familiar with the impact of Covid-19 in Africa. There are 21 chapters, all together offering a range of perspectives from a variety of angles.SASA (Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa

    Natural Language Processing: Emerging Neural Approaches and Applications

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    This Special Issue highlights the most recent research being carried out in the NLP field to discuss relative open issues, with a particular focus on both emerging approaches for language learning, understanding, production, and grounding interactively or autonomously from data in cognitive and neural systems, as well as on their potential or real applications in different domains

    The Time Helix: Nonlinear Narrative Structures and the Paradox of Delayed Simultaneity

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    My study of contemporary (post-2000) Anglophone novels combines themes of time and temporality with narratological analysis. I argue that nonlinear narrative structures (which originate in science fiction novels) challenge the supposed impossibility of simultaneity in the novel, undermine the literary construct of realism, and model new, more optimistic ways of imagining the future(s) beyond our present. I build upon Mathias Nilges’ argument that in the wake of the crisis of the “long now”—a societal belief that the future has been exhausted and we are trapped in an unchanging present—the contemporary time novel critiques historical forms of time and models new ones. In my analysis, I bring together theories of simultaneity and delay from phenomenology, theories of dialectical montage from film studies, and theories of implicit and explicit causality from narratology to demonstrate how nonlinear narrative structures create a paradox of delayed simultaneity despite the linearity of the written form. I also use an intersectional, feminist lens in my critique to show how nonlinear narrative structures can grant greater agency to narrators and force readers into the role of detective. My study primarily focuses on the following novels: Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time (2015), Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011), Ariel Lawhon’s I Was Anastasia (2018), Kate Morton’s The Clockmaker’s Daughter (2018), Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2015), and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019). I argue that contemporary novels, especially time novels, are not an opposition to the postmodern project but an expansion of it with a questioning of forms of time and temporality that parallels the questioning of myths, universal truths, and historiography by British postmodern writers as well as the postmodern belief that a multiplicity of ways exist by which to structure a narrative or tell a story

    AXMEDIS 2008

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    The AXMEDIS International Conference series aims to explore all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, protection and rights management, to address the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, impacts and exploitation. The AXMEDIS events offer venues for exchanging concepts, requirements, prototypes, research ideas, and findings which could contribute to academic research and also benefit business and industrial communities. In the Internet as well as in the digital era, cross-media production and distribution represent key developments and innovations that are fostered by emergent technologies to ensure better value for money while optimising productivity and market coverage

    Landscape Architecture Framed from an Environmental and Ecological Perspective

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    Landscape architecture involves designing, planning, and managing natural and built environments. Its goal is to balance natural spaces with the human element. As such, new methods and analysis techniques are necessary for creating healthy and user-friendly spaces in both urban developments and natural environments. This book discusses these approaches to planning and designing natural spaces with a focus on sustainability
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