Flexibly Instructable Agents

This paper presents an approach to learning from situated, interactive tutorial instruction within an ongoing agent. Tutorial instruction is a flexible (and thus powerful) paradigm for teaching tasks because it allows an instructor to communicate whatever types of knowledge an agent might need in whatever situations might arise. To support this flexibility, however, the agent must be able to learn multiple kinds of knowledge from a broad range of instructional interactions. Our approach, called situated explanation, achieves such learning through a combination of analytic and inductive techniques. It combines a form of explanation-based learning that is situated for each instruction with a full suite of contextually guided responses to incomplete explanations. The approach is implemented in an agent called Instructo-Soar that learns hierarchies of new tasks and other domain knowledge from interactive natural language instructions. Instructo-Soar meets three key requirements of flexible instructability that distinguish it from previous systems: (1) it can take known or unknown commands at any instruction point; (2) it can handle instructions that apply to either its current situation or to a hypothetical situation specified in language (as in, for instance, conditional instructions); and (3) it can learn, from instructions, each class of knowledge it uses to perform tasks.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

OFF-FARM WORK PARTICIPATION, OFF-FARM LABOR SUPPLY AND ON-FARM LABOR DEMAND OF U.S. FARM OPERATORS

The paper presents econometric evidence on off-farm work participation, off-farm hours of work, and on-farm hours of work for U.S. farm operators using a national sample of farmers for the USDA's 1991 Farm Costs and Return Survey.Farm Management, Labor and Human Capital, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Body weight and labour market outcomes in post-Soviet Russia [monograph]

This paper estimates the impacts of weight, measured by body mass index (BMI), on employment, wages, and missed work due to illness for Russian adults by gender using recent panel data (1994-2005) from the nationally representative Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). We employ econometric techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity and potential biases due to endogeneity in BMI. The results show an inverted U-shaped effect of BMI on probability of employment for men and women. We did not find evidence of wage penalty for higher BMI. In fact, the wages for overweighed men are higher. However, having a BMI in the obese range increases the number of days missing work due to health problems for men. Overall, we find negative effects of obesity on employment only for women but not on wages. During the transition in Russia, the increasingly competitive pressure in the labour market combined with economic insecurity faced by the population has lead to a muted impact of an individual’s weight on labour market outcomes

Body weight and labour market outcomes in post-Soviet Russia

Purpose: The paper focuses on the impacts of overweight and obesity on the probability of employment, wages, and the incidence of sick-leave days by gender, in Russia, over the transition period, 1994-2005. Approach: We use panel data and appropriate instrumental variables techniques to estimate a set of three models. Findings: The results show a linear negative effect of BMI on probability of employment for women and positive effect for men. We did not find evidence of wage penalty for higher BMI, a result different from findings of several studies on developed market economies. There is also positive impact of BMI on the number of work days missed due to health problems for women. Value: Our results derived in transition context add evidence to the growing obesity and labour-market outcomes literature emphasising the relative importance of the labour supply side compared to the demand side. The policy implications of our study are gender specific

Determinants of obesity in transition economies: the case of Russia

This paper examines human obesity, measured as weight and body mass index (BMI), and its determinants in Russia. Obesity increased dramatically during transition from a planned to a market economy, by 38%. We determine the factors contributing to rising obesity using individual level data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for 1994 and 2004. We find a strong positive effect of diet/caloric intake and a strong negative effect of smoking on weight and BMI. Gender, education, and income are other major determinants of obesity. Our analysis provides information on dietary patterns and other determinants of obesity in Russia which is essential for formulation and implementation of effective policies designed to reduce the problem and improve the health of the population

PERSIANN-MSA: A precipitation estimation method from satellite-based multispectral analysis

Visible and infrared data obtained from instruments onboard geostationary satellites have been extensively used for monitoring clouds and their evolution. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) that will be launched onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) series in the near future will offer a larger range of spectral bands; hence, it will provide observations of cloud and rain systems at even finer spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions than are possible with the current GOES. In this paper, a new method called Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed information using Artificial Neural Networks-Multispectral Analysis (PERSIANN-MSA) is proposed to evaluate the effect of using multispectral imagery on precipitation estimation. The proposed approach uses a self-organizing feature map (SOFM) to classify multidimensional input information, extracted from each grid box and corresponding textural features of multispectral bands. In addition, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce the dimensionality to a few independent input features while preserving most of the variations of all input information. The above method is applied to estimate rainfall using multiple channels of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. In comparison to the use of a single thermal infrared channel, the analysis shows that using multispectral data has the potential to improve rain detection and estimation skills with an average of more than 50% gain in equitable threat score for rain/no-rain detection, and more than 20% gain in correlation coefficient associated with rain-rate estimation. © 2009 American Meteorological Society

User's manual: Computer-aided design programs for inductor-energy-storage dc-to-dc electronic power converters

Detailed instructions on the use of two computer-aided-design programs for designing the energy storage inductor for single winding and two winding dc to dc converters are provided. Step by step procedures are given to illustrate the formatting of user input data. The procedures are illustrated by eight sample design problems which include the user input and the computer program output

The dynamics of food, alcohol and cigarette consumption in Russia during transition

This paper presents evidence on the impact of individual as well as regional characteristics on the dynamics of fat, protein, alcohol and cigarette consumption, and on the diversity of the diet in Russia between 1994 and 2005. All those aspects of nutritional behavior are important inputs to the production of health. A dynamic panel data model is used to estimate demand functions for fat, protein, alcohol, cigarettes and diversity of the diet. The results suggest the existence of strong habits in drinking and smoking, and the absence of habits in fat and protein consumption. We also found evidence of habit formation for food diversity. Comparing nutritional behavior of younger and older consumers, we find significant differences in the demand for fat and cigarettes. Older consumers seem to be more persistent in their drinking and smoking behavior. Similarly, men show higher habit persistence for alcohol and cigarette consumption. The results also suggest that among individual determinants, especially education, income and employment have statistically significant impacts on consumption behavior. Regarding the macroeconomic variables, economic growth is negatively related to protein consumption, while regional unemployment rate is negatively affecting the demand for protein and food diversity. Finally, Russian consumers react to the price changes of alcohol, cigarettes, fat and protein as suggested by theory. Consumer demand for food diversity responds negatively to price changes of alcohol and cigarettes, but positively to the price of fat

Sleep Characteristics in Patients with Whiplash-Associated Disorders: A Descriptive Study

Study Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore sleep habits and characteristics of patients with whiplash-associated disorders (WAD) presenting at an outpatient, chiropractic clinic using the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) Sleep Scale. Methods: Fifty-one patients from an outpatient chiropractic and physical therapy clinic specializing in spinal rehabilitation participated in this cross-sectional, descriptive study. Data were collected using a descriptive survey, the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), the Neck Disability Index (NDI), and the self-administered 12-item MOS Sleep Scale. Data analysis included descriptive statistics to describe pain, disability, and sleep characteristics of the study sample, and computation of confidence intervals to determine differences in means of sleep characteristics between the non-WAD population (as determined by previous studies) and the study sample of WAD patients. Results: Results indicate that when compared to normative values of the non-WAD population, the sample of WAD patients in this study presents with significantly greater measures of neck disability (NDI), neck pain (VAS), sleep disturbance, snoring, shortness of breath and headache, sleep somnolence and sleep problems index I and II. This sample also presents with significantly lower measures of optimal sleep when compared to the general population. Conclusion: Consistent with previous research, findings from this study indicate that WAD patients have increased neck disability and pain, and poorer sleep outcomes, indicating the need for clinicians to assess sleep characteristics and incorporate interventions aimed at alleviating these symptoms when planning rehabilitation. Findings provide evidence for the need to further explore sleep disturbances among WAD patients to establish a stronger understanding of the course and prognosis of this condition