Lifelong Neural Predictive Coding: Learning Cumulatively Online without Forgetting

In lifelong learning systems, especially those based on artificial neural networks, one of the biggest obstacles is the severe inability to retain old knowledge as new information is encountered. This phenomenon is known as catastrophic forgetting. In this article, we propose a new kind of connectionist architecture, the Sequential Neural Coding Network, that is robust to forgetting when learning from streams of data points and, unlike networks of today, does not learn via the immensely popular back-propagation of errors. Grounded in the neurocognitive theory of predictive processing, our model adapts its synapses in a biologically-plausible fashion, while another, complementary neural system rapidly learns to direct and control this cortex-like structure by mimicking the task-executive control functionality of the basal ganglia. In our experiments, we demonstrate that our self-organizing system experiences significantly less forgetting as compared to standard neural models and outperforms a wide swath of previously proposed methods even though it is trained across task datasets in a stream-like fashion. The promising performance of our complementary system on benchmarks, e.g., SplitMNIST, Split Fashion MNIST, and Split NotMNIST, offers evidence that by incorporating mechanisms prominent in real neuronal systems, such as competition, sparse activation patterns, and iterative input processing, a new possibility for tackling the grand challenge of lifelong machine learning opens up.Comment: Key updates including results on standard benchmarks, e.g., split mnist/fmnist/not-mnist. Task selection/basal ganglia model has been integrate

Children at Risk: Infant and Child Health in Central Asia

Using Demographic and Health Surveys, government statistics, and field observations I examine trends in infant and child health in Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Health indicators (anemia and marked low weight for age) for the population under the age of 3 are examined nationally, regionally and by ethnic groups. Findings indicate the risk of compromised child health varies by ethnicity, but the effect is dramatically lessened by the introduction of household and maternal controls such as parental education, residence, and mother’s health status. Findings highlight the social costs of transition, illustrate the importance of maternal health across the region, and assist in the identification of groups at highest risk for poor child health within individual countries.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39908/3/wp523.pd

Functional foods : a conceptual model for assessing their safety and effectiveness

This report shows that the product-diet dilemma can be solved by developing a predictive model. The model integrates food intake data, dynamic consumption patterns and the production chain model and combines them with a risk-benefit approach

Contingent valuation analysis of rural households’ willingness to pay for frankincense forest conservation

Frankincense from Boswellia papyrifera forest (BPF) is a traded non timber forest product (NTFP) used in pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic and chemical industries. However, the resource in northeastern Africa is under continuous degradation and requires conservation measures. Data from a discrete choice contingent valuation study are used to assess the factors influencing rural households’ willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to contribute labor (WTCL) for BPF conservation in Ethiopia. The standard probit, bivariate probit and interval data models were used for modeling respondents’ WTP and WTCL. We found household income as the most important factor affecting WTP whereas number of household labor is the most important factor affecting WTCL. Mean lower bound annual WTP of US$ 4.68 and WTCL of 7.03 days per household were estimated. This study indicated that despite Ethiopia is a low income country, people are willing to contribute for conservation of the resource.Willingness to pay, Boswellia papyrifera, Conservation, Contingent valuation, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Children at Risk: Infant and Child Health in Central Asia

Using Demographic and Health Surveys, government statistics, and field observations I examine trends in infant and child health in Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Health indicators (anemia and marked low weight for age) for the population under the age of 3 are examined nationally, regionally and by ethnic groups. Findings indicate the risk of compromised child health varies by ethnicity, but the effect is dramatically lessened by the introduction of household and maternal controls such as parental education, residence, and mother’s health status. Findings highlight the social costs of transition, illustrate the importance of maternal health across the region, and assist in the identification of groups at highest risk for poor child health within individual countries.Child Health, Central Asia, Transitionary Economies, Anemia, Stunting, Maternal Health

Social Inequality and Diversity of Families Working Report (April 2010)

In this state‐of‐art report we focus on some of the more relevant issues from the perspective of social inequality and families within and across European societies. We begin by addressing the three main topics included in this existential field by the Family Platform Project: migration, poverty, family violence. Additionally, we will look at two key issues which are important in contextualizing and discussing the above‐mentioned topics. First, we will summarize recent trends in social inequality in European societies. Secondly, we will review some of existing research on the relationship between social inequalities and families, by examining the impact of social inequality on family forms and dynamics as well as the transmission and reproduction of inequalities within families. Social inequality shapes family life, but families and their members must also be seen as actors in the system of inequality (transmitting inequalities to subsequent generations, reproducing them within the home and through their networks, and resisting the effects of inequality). Research review in this existential field was carried out separately on each of the abovementioned topics. Migration, poverty and family violence are large and autonomous fields of research which do not have common theoretical and methodological underpinnings or empirical data sets. For this report it was therefore important to grasp the major trends and findings within each research topic before moving on to broader conclusions on research into social inequalities and diversity of families in Europe.FAMILYPLATFORM (SSH‐2009‐3.2.2 Social platform on research for families and family policies): funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for 18 months (October 2009 – March 2011)

Subject Pool Effects in a Corruption Experiment: A Comparison of Indonesian Public Servants and Indonesian Students

We report results from a corruption experiment with Indonesian public servants and Indonesian students. Our results suggest that although both subject pools show a high level of concern with the extent of corruption in Indonesia, the Indonesian public servant subjects have a significantly lower tolerance of corruption than the Indonesian students. We find no evidence that this is due to a selection effect. The reasons given by the public servants for either engaging in or not engaging in corruption suggest that the differences in behavior across the subject pools are driven by their different real life experiences. For example, when abstaining from corruption public servants more often cite the need to reduce the social costs of corruption as a reason for their actions, and when engaging in corruption they cite low government salaries or a belief that corruption is a necessary evil in the current environment. In contrast, students give more simplistic moral reasons. We conclude by arguing that experiments such as the one considered in this paper can be used to measure forward-looking attitudinal change in society and that results obtained from different subject pools can complement each other in the determination of such attitudinal changes.Corruption, Experiments, Subject Pool Effects

The Political Economy of Institutions and Corruption in American States.

Theoretically, this paper draws on political agency theory to formulate hypotheses. Empirically, it shows that political institutions have a role in explaining the prevalence of political corruption in American states. In the states, a set of democracies where the rule of law is relatively well established and the confounding effects of differing electoral systems and regimes are absent, institutional variables relating to the openness of the political system inhibit corruption. That is, other things equal, the extent to which aspiring politicians can enter and gain financial backing, and to which voters can focus their votes on policies and thereby hold incumbent politicians accountable for policy outcomes and find substitutes for them if dissatisfied with those outcomes, reduce corruption as a general problem of agency. These institutional effects are estimated in the presence of controls for variables representing other approaches.