Properly Quantized History Dependent Parrondo Games, Markov Processes, and Multiplexing Circuits

In the context of quantum information theory, "quantization" of various mathematical and computational constructions is said to occur upon the replacement, at various points in the construction, of the classical randomization notion of probability distribution with higher order randomization notions from quantum mechanics such as quantum superposition with measurement. For this to be done "properly", a faithful copy of the original construction is required to exist within the new "quantum" one, just as is required when a function is extended to a larger domain. Here procedures for extending history dependent Parrondo games, Markov processes and multiplexing circuits to their "quantum" versions are analyzed from a game theoretic viewpoint, and from this viewpoint, proper quantizations developed

Maroon Theory and Me-thou-poeisis

Taking ‘maroon’ as a complexly embodied psychoanalytic hermeneutic aesthetic in Caribbean literatures in English I tell a story of my own production as a curriculum scholar with others through poetry and photographs. In many ways aspects of my experience of doctoral education in curriculum studies in Canada can be described as a marooning. This perhaps is not a unique experience. However, in my case, very early on in the process – less than two months in – I physically abandoned my doctoral seminar and though my body returned to the classroom in the coming weeks I do not think my spirit ever has. That moment has become an identity marker, somatically sutured and indexed to a mythopoetic re-construction of a-Being-not-at-home-with-oneself

Towards a Complicated Conversation Among Disability Studies, Complexity Thinking and Education

The presence of disability, an embodied form of extreme vulnerability that is socially enacted, introduces into complex systems such as education or society, a perturbation, embodied agents that are biologically and socially constructed as being 'unfit', 'mal-adapted' or who do not adapt easily to the specific ecologies in which they must operate and thus gestures toward a current limit(ation) (and new beginning) of the complexivist framework for theorizing the pragmatic question of "How we should act?" What is required of us in our interaction with dis/abled agents who are circumscribed by not being fully "capable of adapting... to the sorts of new and diverse circumstances that an active agent is likely to encounter in a dynamic world" (Davis & Sumara, 2006, p.14)?  In this paper I present a "complicated conversation" among complexity thinking, curriculum theorizing, and disability studies in education and argue that dis-embodiments prompt a certain type of ethical mindfulnes

Neural Network Memory Architectures for Autonomous Robot Navigation

This paper highlights the significance of including memory structures in neural networks when the latter are used to learn perception-action loops for autonomous robot navigation. Traditional navigation approaches rely on global maps of the environment to overcome cul-de-sacs and plan feasible motions. Yet, maintaining an accurate global map may be challenging in real-world settings. A possible way to mitigate this limitation is to use learning techniques that forgo hand-engineered map representations and infer appropriate control responses directly from sensed information. An important but unexplored aspect of such approaches is the effect of memory on their performance. This work is a first thorough study of memory structures for deep-neural-network-based robot navigation, and offers novel tools to train such networks from supervision and quantify their ability to generalize to unseen scenarios. We analyze the separation and generalization abilities of feedforward, long short-term memory, and differentiable neural computer networks. We introduce a new method to evaluate the generalization ability by estimating the VC-dimension of networks with a final linear readout layer. We validate that the VC estimates are good predictors of actual test performance. The reported method can be applied to deep learning problems beyond robotics

Occupational Therapy for Perinatal Women: An Online Educational Course

A freely accessible website and online educational course was developed to inform occupational therapy practitioners and maternal healthcare professionals about the role that occupational therapy has on the perinatal healthcare team. Perinatal Occupational Therapy. https://www.perinataloccupationaltherapy.com/https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonessummer2023/1018/thumbnail.jp

Modeling and application profiles in the Art and Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension

Since April 2016, the Art Libraries Society of North America's Cataloging Advisory Committee (CAC) and the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) have collaborated with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Linked Data for Production project on the Art and Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension (ARM). BIBFRAME leaves some areas underdefined that need to be expanded by specialized communities. More specifically, ARM facilitates the descriptive needs of the art and rare materials communities in areas such as exhibitions, materials, measurements, physical condition and much more. Between April 2016 and February 2018, work focused on modeling. In February 2018, our focus shifted to development of SHACL application profiles for Art resources and a Rare Monographs, which we are using to define forms and display for the cataloging environment in VitroLib, an RDF-based, ontology agnostic cataloging tool being developed as part of the Linked Data for Libraries - Labs project that was discussed at DCMI 2017. Since these application profiles are being implemented in VitroLib, catalogers will be able to test the ARM modeling in a real-world environment, providing feedback to the project for potential future development. This presentation will provide an overview of select ARM modeling components, detail the process of creating and defining SHACL application profiles for ARM, and discuss challenges and opportunities for implementing these profiles in VitroLib. Further, we will discuss our strategy for low-threshold hosting of the ontology and administrative questions regarding long-term maintenance of this BIBFRAME extension

Toxicity testing of Atlantic salmon aquaculture chemotherapeutants on spot prawns and benthic invertebrates

Demand for protein sources is high in North America and growing throughout the world. Global declines in fisheries has encouraged coastal regions to embrace aquaculture as a means of reconciling the growing pressures on wild fish stocks with this demand. Intensive salmon farming practices result in periodic infestations with naturally-occurring parasitic copepods referred to as “sea lice”. To prevent productivity losses, a variety of chemical and physical treatments have been implemented through regulatory systems or emergency applications. One objective of this study is to determine if these chemo-therapeutic treatments pose a risk to other non-target marine organisms including crustaceans such as the Spot prawn (Pandalus platyceros). These organisms can be both culturally and economically important to local First Nations and all residents of the Salish Sea region, as well as crucial components of marine ecosystems. The sub-chronic toxicity of the sea lice pesticides Slice® (active ingredient: emamectin benzoate) was assessed for lethal and sub-lethal effects on Pacific prawns, amphipods, and polychaetes which are all found in areas where aquaculture pens exist. Slice and ivermectin whole sediment exposures were conducted. Test concentrations were representative of environmentally-relevant levels. The toxicity of these treatments was assessed using the endpoints of: mortality, growth, and behavioural response. Preliminary results indicate a concentration-response relationship for various selected endpoints

Dissecting schizophrenia phenotypic variation:the contribution of genetic variation, environmental exposures, and gene–environment interactions

Schizophrenia is among the leading causes of disability worldwide. Prior studies have conclusively demonstrated that the etiology of schizophrenia contains a strong genetic component. However, the understanding of environmental contributions and gene–environment interactions have remained less well understood. Here, we estimated the genetic and environmental contributions to schizophrenia risk using a unique combination of data sources and mathematical models. We used the administrative health records of 481,657 U.S. individuals organized into 128,989 families. In addition, we employed rich geographically specific measures of air, water, and land quality across the United States. Using models of progressively increasing complexity, we examined both linear and non-linear contributions of genetic variation and environmental exposures to schizophrenia risk. Our results demonstrate that heritability estimates differ significantly when gene–environment interactions are included in the models, dropping from 79% for the simplest model, to 46% in the best-fit model which included the full set of linear and non-linear parameters. Taken together, these findings suggest that environmental factors are an important source of explanatory variance underlying schizophrenia risk. Future studies are warranted to further explore linear and non-linear environmental contributions to schizophrenia risk and investigate the causality of these associations