The authority of Christ

A sermon preached to the fourth graduating class of the Rice Institute, by Edwin Du Bose Mouzon, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Dallas, Texas

Offline Multi-task Transfer RL with Representational Penalization

We study the problem of representation transfer in offline Reinforcement Learning (RL), where a learner has access to episodic data from a number of source tasks collected a priori, and aims to learn a shared representation to be used in finding a good policy for a target task. Unlike in online RL where the agent interacts with the environment while learning a policy, in the offline setting there cannot be such interactions in either the source tasks or the target task; thus multi-task offline RL can suffer from incomplete coverage. We propose an algorithm to compute pointwise uncertainty measures for the learnt representation, and establish a data-dependent upper bound for the suboptimality of the learnt policy for the target task. Our algorithm leverages the collective exploration done by source tasks to mitigate poor coverage at some points by a few tasks, thus overcoming the limitation of needing uniformly good coverage for a meaningful transfer by existing offline algorithms. We complement our theoretical results with empirical evaluation on a rich-observation MDP which requires many samples for complete coverage. Our findings illustrate the benefits of penalizing and quantifying the uncertainty in the learnt representation

Pilot study: teaching writing strategies to students with learning disabilities

This study is predicated on the need for a strategy to better teach writing to high school students with learning disabilities. Most schools of education do a good job of showing new teachers how to teach writing to non-disabled students, but sometimes do not teach specific strategies for teaching writing to students with learning disabilities. This paper first examines several different strategies designed to teach writing to students with learning disabilities, then picks a strategy developed by researchers at the University of Kansas and examines how well this strategy works with learning disabled students in a real world public high school resource class. Specifically, this researcher attempts to replicate the original research findings

Failure as a Rhetorical Force in First-Year Composition

Recognized as a site of risk, innovation, and inspiration, failure is a growing area of multidisciplinary inquiry. My thesis draws attention specifically to the way composition studies approaches failure in order to ask: how can we implement failure pedagogies safely, and how do rhetorics of failure move toward social justice in the first-year composition classroom? Recent literature has paid careful attention to how failure operates inequitably (Sheehan & Johnson, Carr & Micciche, O’Gorman & Werry, Inoue) and demonstrates how, despite its potential to be a positive, edifying force, failure mostly benefits those already in a position of privilege. This inequity, I argue, must be accounted for when we discuss failure pedagogies, so that we can reframe failure in the classroom to the benefit of all students. In this thesis I synthesize past and present scholarship to lay out a groundwork for understanding rhetorics of failure—its affects, its origins, and the barriers encountered when attempting to implement failure into the classroom. I then explore examples of failure pedagogies in praxis, examining how they incorporate failure, using the core principles of failure rhetorics in a way that promotes social justice. Finally, I offer a praxis of my own design to further engage with this thread of scholarship

2-(2-Pyridylamino)pyridinium tetra­chlorido­zincate(II)

The structure of the title compound, (C10H10N3)2[ZnCl4], is composed of C10H9N3H+ (DPAH+) cations and [ZnCl4]2− anions. The two pyridyl rings of DPAH+ are approximately coplanar, with a dihedral angle of 7.2 (2)° between their corresponding least-squares planes. The proton is disordered in a one-to-one ratio over the two chemically equivalent pyridyl N atoms. An intra­molecular hydrogen bond is formed between the pyridinium H atom and the pyridyl N atom of the other pyridyl ring. The Zn atom lies on a twofold rotation axis. There are also some weak N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds. These inter­actions lead to the formation of an alternating zigzag chain in the solid state. The results clearly show that reducing agents normally used in hydro­thermal syntheses, such as metallic zinc employed here, are also active in terms of coordination chemistry

Efficient W state entanglement concentration using quantum-dot and optical microcavities

We present an entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) for less-entangled W state with quantum-dot and microcavity coupled system. The present protocol uses the quantum nondemolition measurement on the spin parity to construct the parity check gate. Different from other ECPs, this less-entangled W state with quantum-dot and microcavity coupled system can be concentrated with the help of some single photons. The whole protocol can be repeated to get a higher success probability. It may be useful in current quantum information processing.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Single-photon-assisted entanglement concentration of a multi-photon system in a partially entangled W state with weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity

We propose a nonlocal entanglement concentration protocol (ECP) for $N$-photon systems in a partially entangled W state, resorting to some ancillary single photons and the parity-check measurement based on cross-Kerr nonlinearity. One party in quantum communication first performs a parity-check measurement on her photon in an $N$-photon system and an ancillary photon, and then she picks up the even-parity instance for obtaining the standard W state. When she obtains an odd-parity instance, the system is in a less-entanglement state and it is the resource in the next round of entanglement concentration. By iterating the entanglement concentration process several times, the present ECP has the total success probability approaching to the limit in theory. The present ECP has the advantage of a high success probability. Moreover, the present ECP requires only the $N$-photon system itself and some ancillary single photons, not two copies of the systems, which decreases the difficulty of its implementation largely in experiment. It maybe have good applications in quantum communication in future.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Cell type-specific differences in β-glucan recognition and signalling in porcine innate immune cells

β-glucans exert receptor-mediated immunomodulating activities, including oxidative burst activity and cytokine secretion. The role of the β-glucan receptors dectin-1 and complement receptor 3 (CR3) in the response of immune cells towards β-glucans is still unresolved. Dectin-1 is considered as the main β-glucan receptor in mice, while recent studies in man show that CR3 is more important in β-glucan-mediated responses. This incited us to elucidate which receptor contributes to the response of innate immune cells towards particulate β-glucans in pigs as the latter might serve as a better model for man. Our results show an important role of CR3 in β-glucan recognition, as blocking this receptor strongly reduced the phagocytosis of β-glucans and the β-glucan-induced ROS production by porcine neutrophils. Conversely, dectin-1 does not seem to play a major role in β-glucan recognition in neutrophils. However, recognition of β-glucans appeared cell type-specific as both dectin-1 and CR3 are involved in the β-glucan-mediated responses in pig macrophages. Moreover, CR3 signalling through focal adhesion kinase (FAK) was indispensable for β-glucan-mediated ROS production and cytokine (TNFα, IL-1β, IL-8) production in neutrophils and macrophages, while the Syk-dependent pathway was only partly involved in these responses. We may conclude that as for man, CR3 plays a cardinal role in β-glucan signalling in porcine neutrophils, while macrophages use a more diverse receptor array to detect and respond towards β-glucans. Nonetheless, FAK acts as a master switch that regulates β-glucan-mediated responses in neutrophils as well as macrophages

Graphene based quantum dots

Laterally localized electronic states are identified on a single layer of graphene on ruthenium. The individual states are separated by 3 nm and comprise regions of about 90 carbon atoms. This constitutes a quantum dot array, evidenced by quantum well resonances that are modulated by the corrugation of the graphene layer. The quantum well resonances are strongest on the isolated "hill" regions where the graphene is decoupled from the surface. This peculiar nanostructure is expected to become important for single electron physics where it bridges zero-dimensional molecule-like and two-dimensional graphene on a highly regular lattice.Comment: 17pages, 4figures, 1tabl