Formalizing Feint Actions, and Example Studies in Two-Player Games

Feint actions refer to a set of deceptive actions, which enable players to obtain temporal advantages from their opponents. Such actions are regarded as widely-used tactic in most non-deterministic Two-player Games (e.g. boxing and fencing). However, existing literature does not provide comprehensive and concrete formalization on Feint actions, and their implications on Two-Player Games. We argue that a full exploration on Feint actions is of great importance towards more realistic Two-player Games. In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive and concrete formalization of Feint actions. The key idea of our work is to (1) allow automatic generation of Feint actions, via our proposed Palindrome-directed Generation of Feint actions; and (2) provide concrete principles to properly combine Feint and attack actions. Based on our formalization of Feint actions, we also explore the implications on the game strategy model, and provide optimizations to better incorporate Feint actions. Our experimental results shows that accounting for Feint actions in Non-Deterministic Games (1) brings overall benefits to the game design; and (2) has great benefits on on either game animations or strategy designs, which also introduces a great extent of randomness into randomness-demanded Game models

Feint in Multi-Player Games

This paper introduces the first formalization, implementation and quantitative evaluation of Feint in Multi-Player Games. Our work first formalizes Feint from the perspective of Multi-Player Games, in terms of the temporal, spatial, and their collective impacts. The formalization is built upon Non-transitive Active Markov Game Model, where Feint can have a considerable amount of impacts. Then, our work considers practical implementation details of Feint in Multi-Player Games, under the state-of-the-art progress of multi-agent modeling to date (namely Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning). Finally, our work quantitatively examines the effectiveness of our design, and the results show that our design of Feint can (1) greatly improve the reward gains from the game; (2) significantly improve the diversity of Multi-Player Games; and (3) only incur negligible overheads in terms of time consumption. We conclude that our design of Feint is effective and practical, to make Multi-Player Games more interesting

Different patterns of NF-κB and Notch1 signaling contribute to tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lymph node involvement and tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis appear as the earliest features of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), although the molecular regulatory mechanisms involved have remained unclear. Our aim was to investigate the contribution of NF-κB and Notch1 signaling to lymph node involvement and tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis in ESCC.</p> <p>Material and methods</p> <p>NF-κB and Notch1 expression in 60 tissue samples of ESCC were assessed by immunohistochemical staining. The correlations of NF-κB and Notch1 with lymph node involvement, lymphatic vessel density (LVD), podoplanin, and vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) were further evaluated to determine the association of NF-κB and Notch1 expression with tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Chi-square tests revealed that NF-κB and Notch1 expression in ESCC tissues were significant associated with lymph node metastasis, LVD, podoplanin, and VEGF-C expression. Strong expression of NF-κB, but weak expression of Notch1, was observed in tumor tissues with lymph nodes involvement (<it>P </it>< 0.05 for both). The mean histoscores of LVD, podoplanin, and VEGF-C staining were higher in high-NF-κB-expressing tissue than in low-expressing tissue (<it>P </it>< 0.05 for each). In contrast, the mean histoscores of LVD and VEGF-C staining were lower in high-Notch1-expressing tissue than in low-expressing tissue (<it>P </it>< 0.05 for both). A multiple factors analysis of LVD and VEGF-C further demonstrated that LVD and VEGF-C status were significantly correlated with NF-κB and Notch1 expression in tumors. NF-κB and Notch1 expression were also significantly inversely correlated (<it>P </it>< 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that different patterns of NF-κB and Notch1 signaling contribute to lymph nodes metastasis and tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis of ESCC, and reveal that up-regulation of NF-κB is associated with down-regulation of Notch1 in tumor tissue.</p

Impact of using peer role-playing on the clinical skills performance of pediatric trainees

Abstract Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of peer role-playing on the clinical skills performance of pediatric trainees. Methods Seventy-eight clinical medicine trainees were randomly divided into a role-playing group and a traditional teaching group, with 39 students in each group. The role-playing group alternated between the roles of clinicians and patients, while the traditional teaching group received the bedside teaching mode of verbal instruction. After two weeks traineeship, mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise(Mini-CEX) was used to evaluate the trainees’ competence in physician-patient communication and clinical practice. A questionnaire was given to the role-playing group to assess their satisfaction with the method. Results The Mini-CEX scores showed that the role-playing group had superior clinical skills (p < 0.05), including communication, history taking, professionalism, organization, clinical skills, and physical examination, compared to the traditional teaching group. Furthermore, trainee satisfaction was high with the role-playing method,and the satisfaction were more than 95%. Conclusion The role-playing method effectively improved the clinical skills of pediatric trainees, developed clinical communication skills, and enhanced the application of medical knowledge in a simulated medical environment