Balancing Wargames through Predicting Unit Point Costs

In tactical wargames, such as Warhammer 40K, two or more players control asymmetrical armies that include multiple units of different types and strengths. In these type of games, unit are assigned point costs, which are used to ensure that all players will control armies of similar strength. Players are provided with a total budget of points they can spend to purchase units that will be part of their army lists. Calculating the point value of individual units is a tedious manual process, which often requires long play-testing sessions and iterations of adjustments. In this paper, we propose an automated way of predicting these point costs using a linear regression approach. We use a multi-unit, turn-based, non-balanced game that has three asymmetric armies. We use Monte Carlo Tree Search agents to simulate the players, using different heuristics to emulate playing strategies. We present six different variants of our unit-point prediction algorithm, and we show how our best variant is able to almost reduce the unbalanced nature of the game by half

PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games

In recent years, Game AI research has made important breakthroughs using Reinforcement Learning (RL). Despite this, RL for modern tabletop games has gained little to no attention, even when they offer a range of unique challenges compared to video games. To bridge this gap, we introduce PyTAG, a Python API for interacting with the Tabletop Games framework (TAG). TAG contains a growing set of more than 20 modern tabletop games, with a common API for AI agents. We present techniques for training RL agents in these games and introduce baseline results after training Proximal Policy Optimisation algorithms on a subset of games. Finally, we discuss the unique challenges complex modern tabletop games provide, now open to RL research through PyTAG

Genetic drivers of heterogeneity in type 2 diabetes pathophysiology.

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a heterogeneous disease that develops through diverse pathophysiological processes1,2 and molecular mechanisms that are often specific to cell type3,4. Here, to characterize the genetic contribution to these processes across ancestry groups, we aggregate genome-wide association study data from 2,535,601 individuals (39.7% not of European ancestry), including 428,452 cases of T2D. We identify 1,289 independent association signals at genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10-8) that map to 611 loci, of which 145 loci are, to our knowledge, previously unreported. We define eight non-overlapping clusters of T2D signals that are characterized by distinct profiles of cardiometabolic trait associations. These clusters are differentially enriched for cell-type-specific regions of open chromatin, including pancreatic islets, adipocytes, endothelial cells and enteroendocrine cells. We build cluster-specific partitioned polygenic scores5 in a further 279,552 individuals of diverse ancestry, including 30,288 cases of T2D, and test their association with T2D-related vascular outcomes. Cluster-specific partitioned polygenic scores are associated with coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease and end-stage diabetic nephropathy across ancestry groups, highlighting the importance of obesity-related processes in the development of vascular outcomes. Our findings show the value of integrating multi-ancestry genome-wide association study data with single-cell epigenomics to disentangle the aetiological heterogeneity that drives the development and progression of T2D. This might offer a route to optimize global access to genetically informed diabetes care

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta