Mitigating Architectural Mismatch During the Evolutionary Synthesis of Deep Neural Networks

Evolutionary deep intelligence has recently shown great promise for producing small, powerful deep neural network models via the organic synthesis of increasingly efficient architectures over successive generations. Existing evolutionary synthesis processes, however, have allowed the mating of parent networks independent of architectural alignment, resulting in a mismatch of network structures. We present a preliminary study into the effects of architectural alignment during evolutionary synthesis using a gene tagging system. Surprisingly, the network architectures synthesized using the gene tagging approach resulted in slower decreases in performance accuracy and storage size; however, the resultant networks were comparable in size and performance accuracy to the non-gene tagging networks. Furthermore, we speculate that there is a noticeable decrease in network variability for networks synthesized with gene tagging, indicating that enforcing a like-with-like mating policy potentially restricts the exploration of the search space of possible network architectures.Comment: 5 page

Assessing Architectural Similarity in Populations of Deep Neural Networks

Evolutionary deep intelligence has recently shown great promise for producing small, powerful deep neural network models via the synthesis of increasingly efficient architectures over successive generations. Despite recent research showing the efficacy of multi-parent evolutionary synthesis, little has been done to directly assess architectural similarity between networks during the synthesis process for improved parent network selection. In this work, we present a preliminary study into quantifying architectural similarity via the percentage overlap of architectural clusters. Results show that networks synthesized using architectural alignment (via gene tagging) maintain higher architectural similarities within each generation, potentially restricting the search space of highly efficient network architectures.Comment: 3 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.0796

Factors predicting physical activity among children with special needs.

IntroductionObesity is especially prevalent among children with special needs. Both lack of physical activity and unhealthful eating are major contributing factors. The objective of our study was to investigate barriers to physical activity among these children.MethodsWe surveyed parents of the 171 children attending Vista Del Mar School in Los Angeles, a nonprofit school serving a socioeconomically diverse group of children with special needs from kindergarten through 12th grade. Parents were asked about their child's and their own physical activity habits, barriers to their child's exercise, and demographics. The response rate was 67%. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine predictors of children being physically active at least 3 hours per week.ResultsParents reported that 45% of the children were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, 38% with autism, and 34% with learning disabilities; 47% of children and 56% of parents were physically active less than 3 hours per week. The top barriers to physical activity were reported as child's lack of interest (43%), lack of developmentally appropriate programs (33%), too many behavioral problems (32%), and parents' lack of time (29%). However, child's lack of interest was the only parent-reported barrier independently associated with children's physical activity. Meanwhile, children whose parents were physically active at least 3 hours per week were 4.2 times as likely to be physically active as children whose parents were less physically active (P = .01).ConclusionIn this group of students with special needs, children's physical activity was strongly associated with parental physical activity; parent-reported barriers may have had less direct effect. Further studies should examine the importance of parental physical activity among children with special needs

Crossing Patterns in Nonplanar Road Networks

We define the crossing graph of a given embedded graph (such as a road network) to be a graph with a vertex for each edge of the embedding, with two crossing graph vertices adjacent when the corresponding two edges of the embedding cross each other. In this paper, we study the sparsity properties of crossing graphs of real-world road networks. We show that, in large road networks (the Urban Road Network Dataset), the crossing graphs have connected components that are primarily trees, and that the remaining non-tree components are typically sparse (technically, that they have bounded degeneracy). We prove theoretically that when an embedded graph has a sparse crossing graph, it has other desirable properties that lead to fast algorithms for shortest paths and other algorithms important in geographic information systems. Notably, these graphs have polynomial expansion, meaning that they and all their subgraphs have small separators.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. To appear at the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems(ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017

A structured management approach to implementation of health promotion interventions in Head Start.

Improving the health and health literacy of low-income families is a national public health priority in the United States. The federal Head Start program provides a national infrastructure for implementation of health promotion interventions for young children and their families. The Health Care Institute (HCI) at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a structured approach to health promotion training for Head Start grantees using business management principles. This article describes the HCI approach and provides examples of implemented programs and selected outcomes, including knowledge and behavior changes among Head Start staff and families. This prevention-focused training platform has reached 60,000 Head Start families in the United States since its inception in 2001. HCI has demonstrated consistent outcomes in diverse settings and cultures, suggesting both scalability and sustainability

Heat capacity jump at T_c and pressure derivatives of superconducting transition temperature in the Ba(1-x)NaxFe2As2 (0.1 <= x <= 0.9) series

We present the evolution of the initial (up to ~ 10 kbar) hydrostatic, pressure dependencies of T_c and of the ambient pressure jump in the heat capacity associated with the superconducting transition as a function of Na - doping in the Ba(1-x)NaxFe2As2 family of iron-based superconductors. For Na concentrations 0.15 <= x <= 0.9, the jump in specific heat at T_c, Delta C_p, follows the Delta C_p ~ T^3 scaling found for most BaFe2As2 - based superconductors. Pressure dependencies are non-monotonic for x = 0.2 and x = 0.24. For other Na concentrations T_c decreases under pressure in almost linear fashion. The anomalous behavior of the x = 0.2 and x = 0.24 samples under pressure are possibly due to the crossing of the phase boundaries of the narrow antiferromagnetic tetragonal phase, unique for the Ba(1-x)NaxFe2As2 series, with the application of pressure

Expression of the gene for main intrinsic polypeptide (MIP): separate spatial distributions of MIP and beta-crystallin gene transcripts in rat lens development

The main intrinsic polypeptide (MIP) is the major protein present in the lens fiber cell membrane and is the product of a gene which, as far as is known, is expressed only in the lens. We have used in situ hybridization and immunofluorescence microscopy to characterize the expression of this gene during the course of development in the rat. At progressive stages of lens morphogenesis, we find that synthesis of the protein is closely tied to the accumulation of MIP mRNA in cells that are committed to terminal differentiation, first in the elongating presumptive primary lens fibers and later in the secondary fibers as they differentiate from the anterior epithelial cells. The transcripts accumulate in the basal cytoplasm of the primary fibers and in the cytoplasm which surrounds the cell nucleus in the secondary fibers. We have compared this pattern of expression with that of a gene for a cytoplasmic protein, beta-crystallin beta-A1/A3. In sharp contrast to the localized concentrations seen for the MIP mRNA, beta-A1/A3 transcripts are relatively uniformly distributed throughout the cytoplasm. Neither MIP nor crystallin gene appears to be transcriptionally active in the undifferentiated epithelial cell, but transcripts from the beta-A1/A3 gene appear earlier in fiber cell differentiation than do those from the gene for MIP

Citizenship and the accommodation of cultural minorities

The concept of citizenship can be said to be historically linked to rights associated with membership in a political community. These include civil, political and social rights. However, in the context of cultural diversity, these rights are arguably insufficient for cultural minorities, who by virtue of their membership in a minority group are disadvantaged. Therefore, the challenge is how to remedy this disadvantage and secure equal citizenship for cultural minorities. This thesis considers the work of three contemporary theorists who have provided innovative responses to this challenge: Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh and Brian Barry. Kymlicka and Parekh are both multicultural theorists whose general aim is to protect the integrity of minority groups via the notion of group-differentiated rights. However, Kymlicka’s framework focuses on the promotion of individual autonomy, which is problematic in lieu of the fact that culturally diverse societies will contain groups that do not attach primacy to liberal principles. Parekh’s framework fares better because it focuses on the value of cultural diversity and recognises that in the context of genuine diversity, establishing fair terms of justice for different communities involves intercultural dialogue. However, Parekh’s framework is let down by an implicit association with liberal values and a vague conception of how intercultural dialogue should proceed during hard cases of disagreement. An alternative to the multiculturalist approach is the work of Brian Barry who dismisses the notion of group-differentiated rights altogether as he believes the universal conception of citizenship will suffice in accommodating minority groups. However, Barry’s framework misses the mark because he fails to understand the significance of culture to its adherents and moreover, his position is arguably closer to the multiculturalist position than he concedes. To secure equal citizenship for disadvantaged cultural minorities, this thesis argues that a contextual approach to intercultural dialogue constitutes the most plausible response to hard cases of disagreements between majority and minority communities, and, furthermore, it argues that a contextual approach to intercultural dialogue can give rise to a common set of values and commitments that can underline an overarching British identity