Automatic symbolic modelling of co-evolutionarily learned robot skills

Proceeding of: 6th International Work-Conference on Artificial and Natural Neural Networks, IWANN 2001 Granada, Spain, June 13–15, 2001Evolutionary based learning systems have proven to be very powerful techniques for solving a wide range of tasks, from prediction to optimization. However, in some cases the learned concepts are unreadable for humans. This prevents a deep semantic analysis of what has been really learned by those systems. We present in this paper an alternative to obtain symbolic models from subsymbolic learning. In the first stage, a subsymbolic learning system is applied to a given task. Then, a symbolic classifier is used for automatically generating the symbolic counterpart of the subsymbolic model. We have tested this approach to obtain a symbolic model of a neural network. The neural network defines a simple controller af an autonomous robot. a competitive coevolutive method has been applied in order to learn the right weights of the neural network. The results show that the obtained symbolic model is very accurate in the task of modelling the subsymbolic system, adding to this its readability characteristic

LIPSNN: A Light Intrusion-Proving Siamese Neural Network Model for Facial Verification

Facial verification has experienced a breakthrough in recent years, not only due to the improvement in accuracy of the verification systems but also because of their increased use. One of the main reasons for this has been the appearance and use of new models of Deep Learning to address this problem. This extension in the use of facial verification has had a high impact due to the importance of its applications, especially on security, but the extension of its use could be significantly higher if the problem of the required complex calculations needed by the Deep Learning models, that usually need to be executed on machines with specialised hardware, were solved. That would allow the use of facial verification to be extended, making it possible to run this software on computers with low computing resources, such as Smartphones or tablets. To solve this problem, this paper presents the proposal of a new neural model, called Light Intrusion-Proving Siamese Neural Network, LIPSNN. This new light model, which is based on Siamese Neural Networks, is fully presented from the description of its two block architecture, going through its development, including its training with the well- known dataset Labeled Faces in the Wild, LFW; to its benchmarking with other traditional and deep learning models for facial verification in order to compare its performance for its use in low computing resources systems for facial recognition. For this comparison the attribute parameters, storage, accuracy and precision have been used, and from the results obtained it can be concluded that the LIPSNN can be an alternative to the existing models to solve the facet problem of running facial verification in low computing resource devices

Phylogenetic diversity and temporal variation in the Spirochaeta populations from two Mediterranean microbial mats

Spirochetes represent one of the bacterial groups often observed in hydrogen- sulfide-rich layers from coastal microbial mats. However, relatively few spirochetes from these microbial mats have been described and characterized. We have used 16S rDNA phylogenetic analysis to investigate the spirochetal diversity of microbial mats from two different geographic locations in the western Mediterranean (Ebro Delta, Spain, and Camargue, France). Samples from each delta was monitored in the spring and winter over 1 to 2 year’s duration. In the sequence analysis of 332 clones derived from samples of both deltas, 42 novel phylotypes of not-yet-cultivated spirochetes belonging to the genus Spirochaeta were detected. None of the phylotypes were identified as known culturable species of Spirochaeta or previously identified phylotyepes cloned from other hypersaline microbial mat such as Guerrero Negro. Eight of the phylotypes were common to Ebro and Camargue mats, two of them, IF058 and LL066 are present both in spring and winter. Some phylotypes appeared to show seasonal variation, i.e. they were found only in the spring, but not in the winter. On the other hand, Ebro and Camargue phylotypes compared with phylotypes from Guerrero Negro grouped according to the vertical gradient of oxygen and sulfide in the mat. Some phylotypes, such as LH073, IE028, LH042 or LG013 are harbored in low H2S or H2S-O2 interface zone. In contrast, major phylotypes were detected presumably in deeper layers and they are likely to be strict anaerobes and high tolerance to H2S. The presence of spirochetes in different located microbial mats suggests that constitutes a very diverse and stable population involved in a well-integrated “symbiosis” (i.e., permanent physiological cooperation) with other guild-populations in the mats to maintain a coordinated functional and stable community

The Effect of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms from Genome Wide Association Studies in Multiple Sclerosis on Gene Expression

BACKGROUND: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex neurological disorder. Its aetiology involves both environmental and genetic factors. Recent genome-wide association studies have identified a number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with susceptibility to (MS). We investigated whether these genetic variations were associated with alteration in gene expression. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used a database of mRNA expression and genetic variation derived from immortalised peripheral lymphocytes to investigate polymorphisms associated with MS for correlation with gene expression. Several SNPs were found to be associated with changes in expression: in particular two with HLA-DQA1, HLA-DQA2, HLA-DQB1, HLA-DRB1, HLA-DRB4 and HLA-DRB5, one with ZFP57, one with CD58, two with IL7 and FAM164A, and one with FAM119B, TSFM and KUB3. We found minimal cross-over with a recent whole genome expression study in MS patients. DISCUSSION: We have shown that many susceptibility loci in MS are associated with changes in gene expression using an unbiased expression database. Several of these findings suggest novel gene candidates underlying the effects of MS-associated genetic variation

Escoliosis experimental por lesión vascular metamérica a nivel lumbar

Se ha realizado un estudio experimental en 25 híbridos de conejo californiano con conejo blanco gigante neozelandés de 37 ± 3 días, lesionando la vascularización metamé- rica que irriga las vértebras lumbares con el propósito de alterar indirectamente el desarrollo de los cartílagos neurocentrales (CNC). La lesión vascular se produjo por la destrucción unilateral a dos o tres niveles de los vasos metaméricos de las vértebras L3 a L5. Las columnas vertebrales fueron disecadas, realizándose estudios radiológicos, macroscópicos e histológicos. Se obtuvieron curvas escolióticas (13 ±4°) de convexidad hacia el lado contrario al intervenido, con rotación de los cuerpos vertebrales (12 ± 5o ) hacia la concavidad de la curva, y rectificación de la cifosis lumbar fisiológica de los conejos (5 ±7°). El ascpecto macroscópico de las curvas era similar al que se observa en la escoliosis idiopática humana. Estos hallazgos apoyan la idea de que una alteración del desarrollo del CNC por déficit vascular, de forma unilateral, es capaz de inducir la aparición de una escoliosis.We have damaged the vascular supply to the right neurocentral cartilage (NCC) to 25 growing rabbits, in order to induce scoliosis. The employed technique was the section of the right metameric artery and vein at two or three levels in the lumbar region (L3 to L5). The spine was studied histologically macroscopically and radiologically. We got slight curves (13 ±4°) with the convexity towards the opposite side to the operated zone, and with rotation (12 ±5°) and lordosis (5 ± 7°). These lesions are similar to human idiopathic scoliosis and may be explained because of the NCC's physiological properties. Those findings support the idea that any mechanic, metabolic or endocrine alteration that cause damage to the NCC or to its vascularization, unilaterally, will induced a scoliosis development

Compact Multilayer Filter in Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide With Transmission Zeros

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] The empty substrate integrated waveguide (ESIW) technology is recently receiving special attention, since it preserves the many advantages of SIW circuits but provides an enhanced behavior due to avoidance of dielectric filling. Many circuits have been designed in the ESIW technology, including several filters with different performances. The next challenge is to achieve the maximum possible compactness degree for these circuits. In this paper, we present the design of a multilayer empty substrate integrated filter with the same performance as if it were manufactured in a single layer but significantly increasing its compactness and mechanical resistance.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spanish Government, under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-3-R and Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Belenguer Martínez, Á.; Fernández-Berlanga, MD.; Ballesteros, JA.; De Dios, JJ.; Esteban González, H.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2018). Compact Multilayer Filter in Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide With Transmission Zeros. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 66(6):2993-3000. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2018.2823306S2993300066

Exploring and linking biomedical resources through multidimensional semantic spaces

Background The semantic integration of biomedical resources is still a challenging issue which is required for effective information processing and data analysis. The availability of comprehensive knowledge resources such as biomedical ontologies and integrated thesauri greatly facilitates this integration effort by means of semantic annotation, which allows disparate data formats and contents to be expressed under a common semantic space. In this paper, we propose a multidimensional representation for such a semantic space, where dimensions regard the different perspectives in biomedical research (e.g., population, disease, anatomy and protein/genes). Results This paper presents a novel method for building multidimensional semantic spaces from semantically annotated biomedical data collections. This method consists of two main processes: knowledge and data normalization. The former one arranges the concepts provided by a reference knowledge resource (e.g., biomedical ontologies and thesauri) into a set of hierarchical dimensions for analysis purposes. The latter one reduces the annotation set associated to each collection item into a set of points of the multidimensional space. Additionally, we have developed a visual tool, called 3D-Browser, which implements OLAP-like operators over the generated multidimensional space. The method and the tool have been tested and evaluated in the context of the Health-e-Child (HeC) project. Automatic semantic annotation was applied to tag three collections of abstracts taken from PubMed, one for each target disease of the project, the Uniprot database, and the HeC patient record database. We adopted the UMLS Meta-thesaurus 2010AA as the reference knowledge resource. Conclusions Current knowledge resources and semantic-aware technology make possible the integration of biomedical resources. Such an integration is performed through semantic annotation of the intended biomedical data resources. This paper shows how these annotations can be exploited for integration, exploration, and analysis tasks. Results over a real scenario demonstrate the viability and usefulness of the approach, as well as the quality of the generated multidimensional semantic spaces

Origin, accumulation and fate of dissolved organic matter in an extreme hypersaline shallow lake

Hypersaline endorheic aquatic systems (H-SEAS) are lakes/shallow playas in arid and semiarid regions that undergo extreme oscillations in salinity and severe drought episodes. Although their geochemical uniqueness and microbiome have been deeply studied, very little is known about the availability and quality of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the water column. A H-SEAS from the Monegros Desert (Zaragoza, NE Spain) was studied during a hydrological wetting-drying-rewetting cycle. DOM analysis included: (i) a dissolved organic carbon (DOC) mass balance; (ii) spectroscopy (absorbance and fluorescence) and (iii) a molecular characterization with Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS). The studied system stored a large amount of DOC and under the highest salinity conditions, salt-saturated waters (i.e., brines with salinity > 30%) accumulated a disproportionate quantity of DOC, indicating a significant in-situ net DOM production. Simultaneously, during the hydrological transition from wet to dry, the DOM pool showed strong alterations of it molecular composition. Spectroscopic methods indicated that aromatic and degraded DOM was rapidly replaced by fresher, relatively small, microbial-derived moieties with a large C/N ratio. FT-ICR-MS highlighted the accumulation of small, saturated and oxidized molecules (molecular O/C > 0.5), with a remarkable increase in the relative contribution of highly oxygenated (molecular O/C > 0.9) compounds and a decrease of aliphatic and carboxyl-rich alicyclic moleculesThese results indicated that H-SEAS are extremely active in accumulating and processing DOM, with the notable release of organic solutes probably originated from decaying microplankton under large osmotic stress at extremely high salinitie