The War Signals an Era of Economic Crises: An Interview with Shimshon Bichler (המלחמה מבשרת עידן של משברים כלכליים)

ד"ר שמשון ביכלר: על רקע החולשה של "הכלכלה החדשה", מנסה ממשל בוש לשקם מחדש את "קואליציית הנפט-נשק" הוותיקה והתוצאה תביא לעלייה מחודשת בתקציבי הביטחון והסלמה מחדש בקונפליקטים הצבאיים במקומות שונים בעול

GNNs for Knowledge Transfer in Robotic Assembly Sequence Planning

Automated Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) is a crucial task for robotic systems in manufacturing settings as it increases flexibility and efficiency. However, ASP is still largely performed manually, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. The ASP process consists of two main steps: determining possible assembly sequences and confirming the feasibility of these sequences with the capabilities and restrictions of the target robot system. While several methods have been developed to automate ASP in recent years, they have limitations such as a lack of flexibility with regard to the properties of the assembly, a long training process, and a dependence on both positive and negative examples for feasibility detection. To address these issues, we propose a graph-based approach that divides the ASP problem into two tasks: Sequence Prediction and Feasibility Prediction. For the Sequence Prediction task, we model assemblies as graphs of part surfaces and apply a Graph Neural Network (GNN) to efficiently extract meaningful information from the input. An expert demonstrator guides us through the sequence prediction process, step-by-step, predicting which parts can be placed in their position at each state of the assembly. Our method is flexible and able to transfer knowledge between different assembly tasks. For Feasibility Prediction, we frame the task as an Anomaly Detection (AD) problem and use our GNN as a feature extractor to create latent representations for each assembly graph. We train a Normalizing Flows (NF) model to model the distribution of feasible assemblies and detect infeasible assemblies as Out-of-Distribution (OoD). Although our method performs better than a baseline one-class classifier, it still lags behind a binary classifier trained on both feasible and infeasible assemblies. However, it is not trivial to obtain a sufficient amount of infeasible assemblies for training. To better understand the limitations of our approach, we conduct ablation studies. Our approach requires only a few seconds to derive a feasible assembly sequence and could be integrated into future ASP frameworks to dramatically reduce planning time while using fewer computational resources compared to previous methods. To our knowledge, we are the first to use NF for graph-level Anomaly Detection. Overall, our method has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ASP in manufacturing settings

Activating values intervention: an integrative pathway to well-being

IntroductionThe present study expands the existing knowledge base regarding positive psychology interventions (PPIs), by employing an integrative approach to explore the potential benefits of translating values into action.MethodsParticipants (n = 476) were randomly assigned to the Activating Values intervention, the affirmation-only, or the control (no treatment) group. The intervention involved participants choosing a life area they valued, affirming its importance, identifying a specific action related to that valued area, and then planning and carrying out that chosen action within the following week. Data was collected at baseline and three follow-up points: one, two, and three weeks after the intervention.ResultsResults suggest that the intervention contributes to the participants’ well-being, including increased self-insight, sense of coherence, and prioritizing meaning, and decreased symptoms of psychopathology. Exploratory content analyses provide a deeper understanding of the content and frequency of activities chosen and the enabling conditions.DiscussionThe discussion explores the findings within this intersection as well as ramifications for brief, scalable interventions to support and promote well-being

Life Coaching In Israel: An Overview of Israel's Burgeoning LifeCoaching Industry

The aim of the study is to shed light on the process by which life-coaching has become a thriving industry in Israel. By performing an Internet search followed by website analysis, document analysis and in-depth interviews with key people in the industry, we suggest that there is a distorted notion of life-coaching, both from a professional and an ethical perspective. It appears that the Israeli life-coaching industry is too immature and fragmented to have yet developed a standard. The main findings, as well as the industry’s future directions and avenues for future research, are presented and discussed

CheXplaining in Style: Counterfactual Explanations for Chest X-rays using StyleGAN

Deep learning models used in medical image analysis are prone to raising reliability concerns due to their black-box nature. To shed light on these black-box models, previous works predominantly focus on identifying the contribution of input features to the diagnosis, i.e., feature attribution. In this work, we explore counterfactual explanations to identify what patterns the models rely on for diagnosis. Specifically, we investigate the effect of changing features within chest X-rays on the classifier's output to understand its decision mechanism. We leverage a StyleGAN-based approach (StyleEx) to create counterfactual explanations for chest X-rays by manipulating specific latent directions in their latent space. In addition, we propose EigenFind to significantly reduce the computation time of generated explanations. We clinically evaluate the relevancy of our counterfactual explanations with the help of radiologists. Our code is publicly available.Comment: Accepted to the ICML 2022 Interpretable Machine Learning in Healthcare (IMLH) Workshop ----- Project website: http://github.com/CAMP-eXplain-AI/Style-CheXplai

Challenges in optics for Extremely Large Telescope instrumentation

We describe and summarize the optical challenges for future instrumentation for Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs). Knowing the complex instrumental requirements is crucial for the successful design of 30-60m aperture telescopes. After all, the success of ELTs will heavily rely on its instrumentation and this, in turn, will depend on the ability to produce large and ultra-precise optical components like light-weight mirrors, aspheric lenses, segmented filters, and large gratings. New materials and manufacturing processes are currently under study, both at research institutes and in industry. In the present paper, we report on its progress with particular emphasize on volume-phase-holographic gratings, photochromic materials, sintered silicon-carbide mirrors, ion-beam figuring, ultra-precision surfaces, and free-form optics. All are promising technologies opening new degrees of freedom to optical designers. New optronic-mechanical systems will enable efficient use of the very large focal planes. We also provide exploratory descriptions of "old" and "new" optical technologies together with suggestions to instrument designers to overcome some of the challenges placed by ELT instrumentation.Comment: (Proc. OPTICON Key Technology Network Workshop, Rome 20-21 October 2005

The Pathogenic Role of Actinomyces spp. and Related Organisms in Genitourinary Infections: Discoveries in the New, Modern Diagnostic Era

Actinomycosis is a chronic, suppurative, granulomatous infectious disease, caused by different species of Actinomyces bacteria. To date, 26 validly published Actinomyces species have been described as part of a normal human microbiota or from human clinical specimens. Due to the rapid spread of new, modern diagnostic procedures, 13 of 26 of these species have been described in this century and the Actinomycetaceae family has undergone several taxonomic revisions, including the introduction of many novel species termed Actinomyces-like organisms (ALOs). There is scarce data available on the role of these novel bacterial species in various infectious processes in human medicine. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of Actinomyces and closely related organisms involved in human diseases—with a special focus on newly described species—in particular their role in genitourinary tract infections in females and males

MOONS: a Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph for the VLT

MOONS is a new conceptual design for a Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), selected by ESO for a Phase A study. The baseline design consists of 1000 fibers deployable over a field of view of 500 square arcmin, the largest patrol field offered by the Nasmyth focus at the VLT. The total wavelength coverage is 0.8um-1.8um and two resolution modes: medium resolution and high resolution. In the medium resolution mode (R=4,000-6,000) the entire wavelength range 0.8um-1.8um is observed simultaneously, while the high resolution mode covers simultaneously three selected spectral regions: one around the CaII triplet (at R=8,000) to measure radial velocities, and two regions at R=20,000 one in the J-band and one in the H-band, for detailed measurements of chemical abundances. The grasp of the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) combined with the large multiplex and wavelength coverage of MOONS - extending into the near-IR - will provide the observational power necessary to study galaxy formation and evolution over the entire history of the Universe, from our Milky Way, through the redshift desert and up to the epoch of re-ionization at z>8-9. At the same time, the high spectral resolution mode will allow astronomers to study chemical abundances of stars in our Galaxy, in particular in the highly obscured regions of the Bulge, and provide the necessary follow-up of the Gaia mission. Such characteristics and versatility make MOONS the long-awaited workhorse near-IR MOS for the VLT, which will perfectly complement optical spectroscopy performed by FLAMES and VIMOS.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation + Telescopes conference, Amsterdam, 201