14,624 research outputs found
A mixed effects model for longitudinal relational and network data, with applications to international trade and conflict
The focus of this paper is an approach to the modeling of longitudinal social
network or relational data. Such data arise from measurements on pairs of
objects or actors made at regular temporal intervals, resulting in a social
network for each point in time. In this article we represent the network and
temporal dependencies with a random effects model, resulting in a stochastic
process defined by a set of stationary covariance matrices. Our approach builds
upon the social relations models of Warner, Kenny and Stoto [Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979) 1742--1757] and Gill and Swartz
[Canad. J. Statist. 29 (2001) 321--331] and allows for an intra- and
inter-temporal representation of network structures. We apply the methodology
to two longitudinal data sets: international trade (continuous response) and
militarized interstate disputes (binary response).Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS403 the Annals of
Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Noetherianity for infinite-dimensional toric varieties
We consider a large class of monomial maps respecting an action of the
infinite symmetric group, and prove that the toric ideals arising as their
kernels are finitely generated up to symmetry. Our class includes many
important examples where Noetherianity was recently proved or conjectured. In
particular, our results imply Hillar-Sullivant's Independent Set Theorem and
settle several finiteness conjectures due to Aschenbrenner, Martin del Campo,
Hillar, and Sullivant.
We introduce a matching monoid and show that its monoid ring is Noetherian up
to symmetry. Our approach is then to factorize a more general equivariant
monomial map into two parts going through this monoid. The kernels of both
parts are finitely generated up to symmetry: recent work by
Yamaguchi-Ogawa-Takemura on the (generalized) Birkhoff model provides an
explicit degree bound for the kernel of the first part, while for the second
part the finiteness follows from the Noetherianity of the matching monoid ring.Comment: 20 page
Programming Not Only by Example
In recent years, there has been tremendous progress in automated synthesis
techniques that are able to automatically generate code based on some intent
expressed by the programmer. A major challenge for the adoption of synthesis
remains in having the programmer communicate their intent. When the expressed
intent is coarse-grained (for example, restriction on the expected type of an
expression), the synthesizer often produces a long list of results for the
programmer to choose from, shifting the heavy-lifting to the user. An
alternative approach, successfully used in end-user synthesis is programming by
example (PBE), where the user leverages examples to interactively and
iteratively refine the intent. However, using only examples is not expressive
enough for programmers, who can observe the generated program and refine the
intent by directly relating to parts of the generated program.
We present a novel approach to interacting with a synthesizer using a
granular interaction model. Our approach employs a rich interaction model where
(i) the synthesizer decorates a candidate program with debug information that
assists in understanding the program and identifying good or bad parts, and
(ii) the user is allowed to provide feedback not only on the expected output of
a program, but also on the underlying program itself. That is, when the user
identifies a program as (partially) correct or incorrect, they can also
explicitly indicate the good or bad parts, to allow the synthesizer to accept
or discard parts of the program instead of discarding the program as a whole.
We show the value of our approach in a controlled user study. Our study shows
that participants have strong preference to using granular feedback instead of
examples, and are able to provide granular feedback much faster
A tractable DDN-POMDP Approach to Affective Dialogue Modeling for General Probabilistic Frame-based Dialogue Systems
We propose a new approach to developing a tractable affective dialogue model for general probabilistic frame-based dialogue systems. The dialogue model, based on the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) and the Dynamic Decision Network (DDN) techniques, is composed of two main parts, the slot level dialogue manager and the global dialogue manager. Our implemented dialogue manager prototype can handle hundreds of slots; each slot might have many values. A first evaluation of the slot level dialogue manager (1-slot case) showed that with a 95% confidence level the DDN-POMDP dialogue strategy outperforms three simple handcrafted dialogue strategies when the user's action error is induced by stress
A POMDP approach to Affective Dialogue Modeling
We propose a novel approach to developing a dialogue model that is able to take into account some aspects of the user's affective state and to act appropriately. Our dialogue model uses a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process approach with observations composed of the observed user's affective state and action. A simple example of route navigation is explained to clarify our approach. The preliminary results showed that: (1) the expected return of the optimal dialogue strategy depends on the correlation between the user's affective state & the user's action and (2) the POMDP dialogue strategy outperforms five other dialogue strategies (the random, three handcrafted and greedy action selection strategies)
Excess portal venous long-chain fatty acids induce syndrome X via HPA axis and sympathetic activation
We tested the hypothesis that excessive portal venous supply of long-chain fatty acids to the liver contributes to the development of insulin resistance via activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) and sympathetic system. Rats received an intraportal infusion of the long-chain fatty acid oleate (150 nmol/min, 24 h), the medium-chain fatty acid caprylate, or the solvent. Corticosterone (Cort) and norepinephrine (NE) were measured as indexes for HPA axis and sympathetic activity, respectively. Insulin sensitivity was assessed by means of an intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT). Oleate infusion induced increases in plasma Cort (Δ = 13.5 ± 3.6 µg/dl; P < 0.05) and NE (Δ = 235 ± 76 ng/l; P < 0.05), whereas caprylate and solvent had no effect. The area under the insulin response curve to the IVGTT was larger in the oleate-treated group than in the caprylate and solvent groups (area = 220 ± 35 vs. 112 ± 13 and 106 ± 8, respectively, P < 0.05). The area under the glucose response curves was comparable [area = 121 ± 13 (oleate) vs. 135 ± 20 (caprylate) and 96 ± 11 (solvent)]. The results are consistent with the concept that increased portal free fatty acid is involved in the induction of visceral obesity-related insulin resistance via activation of the HPA axis and sympathetic system.
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