Bridging Action Space Mismatch in Learning from Demonstrations

Learning from demonstrations (LfD) methods guide learning agents to a desired solution using demonstrations from a teacher. While some LfD methods can handle small mismatches in the action spaces of the teacher and student, here we address the case where the teacher demonstrates the task in an action space that can be substantially different from that of the student -- thereby inducing a large action space mismatch. We bridge this gap with a framework, Morphological Adaptation in Imitation Learning (MAIL), that allows training an agent from demonstrations by other agents with significantly different morphologies (from the student or each other). MAIL is able to learn from suboptimal demonstrations, so long as they provide some guidance towards a desired solution. We demonstrate MAIL on challenging household cloth manipulation tasks and introduce a new DRY CLOTH task -- cloth manipulation in 3D task with obstacles. In these tasks, we train a visual control policy for a robot with one end-effector using demonstrations from a simulated agent with two end-effectors. MAIL shows up to 27% improvement over LfD and non-LfD baselines. It is deployed to a real Franka Panda robot, and can handle multiple variations in cloth properties (color, thickness, size, material) and pose (rotation and translation). We further show generalizability to transfers from n-to-m end-effectors, in the context of a simple rearrangement task

A REVIEW ON RECENT ADVANCEMENT IN PULSATILE DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS

Delivery systems with a pulsatile-release method are particularly involved in designing medicines for which traditional managed drug-release systems with the continuous release are not suitable. This medication also has a high first-pass impact or special conditions for chrono-pharmacology. These medications also have a high first-pass or unique chronopharmacological effect. The pulsatile release profile is characterised by a duration of no release (lag time) followed by a fast and full release of the drug. Pulsatile drug delivery systems may be classified into site-specific systems in which the drug is released inside the gastrointestinal system (e. g. colon) or time-controlled devices wherein the drug is released after a well-defined time period. Site-regulated release is typically controlled by environmental factors, such as pH or enzymes found in the intestinal tract, whereas drug release from time-controlled processes is controlled mainly by the delivery system and, preferably, not by the environment. This review covers various single-and multiple-unit oral pulsatile drug-delivery systems with an emphasis on time-controlled drug-release systems

Desert locust and its management in Nepal: a review

Locusts are among the most dangerous agricultural pests. They are a group of short horned grasshoppers belonging to Acrididae family and are hemimetabolous insects. This group of grasshoppers have a unique character of changing habits and behaviors when they aggregate in a group and this habit is catalyzed by different environmental factors. In the adult stage, gregarious locusts migrate from one place to another in a swarm. Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forksal), is one of those locusts which cause damage to different types of crop which fly in the direction of wind up to a distance of 150 km. Because of polyphagous feeding habits and swarming in a plague (large group of adults), this pest is considered as the hazardous migratory pest. These pests entered Nepal for the first time in 1962 and then in 1996. In 2020 the pest entered the country from India on three different dates 27th June and continued till 29th (5 districts), 12th July (1 district), and 16th July (2 districts). The swarms migrated to 53 districts and caused the considerable loss in agricultural and field crop in 1118 hectare. These pests are monitored on the basis of environmental factors and many tools and practices such as eLocust3, SMELLS (Soil Moisture for Desert Locust Early Survey), P-locust and SUPARCO Disaster Watch Desert Locust Situation Alert are being used. Their control is critical to food security. Many tools and techniques are integrated for prevention and management of these pests to minimize damage in the existing crops where they migrate. These are physical methods, cultural methods, use of botanicals, green muscle, PAN (phenylacetonitrile) and chemicals. Effective preventive management strategy relies on an improved knowledge of the pest biology, more efficient monitoring and control techniques

A DRL-based service offloading approach using DAG for edge computational orchestration.

Edge infrastructure and Industry 4.0 required services are offered by edge-servers (ESs) with different computation capabilities to run social application's workload based on a leased-price method. The usage of Social Internet of Things (SIoT) applications increases day-to-day, which makes social platforms very popular and simultaneously requires an effective computation system to achieve high service reliability. In this regard, offloading high required computational social service requests (SRs) in a time slot based on directed acyclic graph (DAG) is an NP-complete problem. Most state-of-art methods concentrate on the energy preservation of networks but neglect the resource sharing cost and dynamic subservice execution time (SET) during the computation and resource sharing. This article proposes a two-step deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based service offloading (DSO) approach to diminish edge server costs through a DRL influenced resource and SET analysis (RSA) model. In the first level, the service and edge server cost is considered during service offloading. In the second level, the R-retaliation method evaluates resource factors to optimize resource sharing and SET fluctuations. The simulation results show that the proposed DSO approach achieves low execution costs by streamlining dynamic service completion and transmission time, server cost, and deadline violation rate attributes. Compared to the state-of-art approaches, our proposed method has achieved high resource usage with low energy consumption

Economic analysis and resource use efficiency of carrot production in Chitwan district, Nepal

A study was conducted from February to May 2020 to analyze the cost-benefit economics analysis and resource use efficiency of carrot production in Chitwan, Nepal. Altogether 70 households producing carrot were selected randomly and surveyed through the pre-tested semi-structured interview-based schedule. Data was entered and coded using SPSS 25 and analyzed using STATA 12.1. The study revealed that the total variable cost per hectare for carrot production was US $1803.1 and a benefit-cost ratio of 1.81 was estimated. Cobb-Douglas production function models the relationship between production output and production inputs . Production function analysis including seven explanatory variables, showed a significant positive effect of seed cost, tractor cost and human labor cost (P<0.01), fertilizer and manure cost (P<0.05) on gross return but herbicide cost, packaging cost, vitamin and micronutrients cost were found insignificant. The return to scale was found to be 1.42. According to estimated allocative efficiency indices, it is suggested to increase the seed, fertilizer and manure, tractor labor and  human labor costs by approximately 45%, 74%, 67%, and 79% respectively and reduce the herbicide and packaging costs approximately by 116% and 246% respectively. The adoption of modern technologies with adjustments to resource use should be suggested to maximize the productivity and profit from carrot production

A comparative study of clinical, biochemical and hematological profiles in smear positive malaria patients: at a tertiary care center located in rural part of Gujarat, India

Background: Aims and objectives of current study were to study the clinical, biochemical and hematological profiles in smear positive malaria patients and its correlation to immediate outcome of patient. To analyze the biochemical and hematological imbalances and its correlation with clinical presentation and type of malarial parasites. To elucidate the correlation of hematological and biochemical changes in children infected with malaria and their impact on immediate outcome of patients.Methods:All patients admitted with a diagnosis of malaria in department of Pediatrics at Dhiraj Hospital, Piparia, Vadodara, during the study period of January 2013 to June 2014. Sample size was 106 cases. Inclusion criteria for the study was all children under 18 years of age with smear positive malaria cases diagnosed. The study was done after obtaining a detailed history, complete general physical examination and systemic examination. The patients were subjected to relevant investigations. The data regarding patient particulars, diagnosis and investigations is collected in a specially designed case recording form and transferred to a master chart subjected to statistical methods like mean, standard deviation, proportion, percentage calculation and wherever necessary chi square test for proportion are used.Results: Total 106 patients were enrolled in study. Complications of PF (N=31): Jaundice 16%, severe anemia 23%, thrombocytopenia 29%, leukopenia in 23%, hyponatremia in 29.1%, cerebral malaria in 16% and hyperkalemia in 17%. Complications of PV (N=65): Jaundice 20%, severe anemia 20%, thrombocytopenia 18%, leukopenia in 11%, hyponatremia in 44.6%, hyperkalemia in 9%, cerebral malaria in 12.3%  and hypoglycemia in 3.77%.Conclusions:The incidence of malaria is higher in males than females. Thrombocytopenia is very common in malaria, but spontaneous bleeding is not so common finding in malaria. Mixed infections behave like falciparum malaria. P. vivax malaria though traditionally considered to be a benign entity can also have a severe and complicated course, which is usually associated with P. falciparum malaria.

Fault tolerant superconducting busbar with reduced self-field effect on critical current design for all electric aircraft

High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) are promising solution for high current applications such as in all-electric aircraft. According to Paschen's law of voltage breakdown, low voltage is recommended for electric aircraft and high current is required to provide sufficient thrust. A superconducting high current low voltage DC busbar for electric aircraft power distribution system design is proposed and tested in liquid nitrogen at range of 77 K temperature. The emphasis gives to create a design that allows modularity, ride through transients or fault events and reduced effect of self-field on critical current (IC). Design is developed through finite element modelling (FEM) using COMSOL software to study effect of gap between HTS tapes on critical current. A prototype is developed, and experimented with 1 kA at 77K, which measured V-I characteristics and tested against fault current

Epidemiology and Clinicopathological Profile of Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Review from Tertiary Care Referral Centre

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for 3% of all adult cancers and 85% of all kidney tumours. Incidence of RCC is lower in Asian region, particularly in India, probably due to lack of reporting. Most of the data about RCC are from Western countries; and data from India are scarce, especially regarding para-neoplastic syndromes. We sought to determine the epidemiology, clinicopathological profile and management of RCCin a tertiary care centre in Western India. This was a retrospective study that involved data analysis of records of RCC patients who presented to our institution from April 2016 to February 2020. Laboratory investigations, including tests for paraneoplastic syndrome (PNS), and relevant radiologic investigations were performed and treatment was offered according to the stage, patient factors and available modalities. A total 142 RCC patients were included in the study. The median age of presentation was 58 years. Most of the patients (67%) were symptomatic, and 33% of the patients were asymptomatic, and the RCC was diagnosed incidentally. A large number of patients (56.3%) had PNS. The most common histopathologic type of RCC was clear cell carcinoma (68.8%), followed by papillary (20%) and chromophobe (8%) carcinoma. 40% of carcinomas with sarcomatoid differentiation were seen in patients under 50 years of age. Two cases of multicystic RCC were both seen in patients less than 50 years of age. 65.5% of the patients presented at Stage 1 and 2. Most surgeries (71.2%) were done in a minimally invasive manner. A significant number of patients were asymptomatic, in which RCC was detected incidentally. The age of presentation was earlier, yet the patients had a higher tumour stage. More than half of the patients had PNSs. Despite growing trend towards Western data, the significantly higher number of patients with PNSs and early age of presentation suggest inherent differences in tumour biology, possibly related to differences in genetic and environmental factors