Memory degradation induced by attention in recurrent neural architectures

This paper studies the memory mechanisms in recurrent neural architectures when attention models are included. Pure-attention models like Transformers are more and more popular as they tend to outperform models with recurrent connections in many different tasks. Our conjecture is that attention prevents the recurrent connections from transferring information properly between consecutive next steps. This conjecture is empirically tested using five different models, namely, a model without attention, a standard Loung attention model, a standard Bahdanau attention model, and our proposal to add attention to the inputs in order to fill the gap between recurrent and parallel architectures (for both Luong and Bahdanau attention models). Eight different problems are considered to assess the five models: a sequence-reverse copy problem, a sequence-reverse copy problem with repetitions, a filter sequence problem, a sequence-reverse copy problem with bigrams and four translation problems (English to Spanish, English to French, English to German and English to Italian). The achieved results reinforce our conjecture on the interaction between attention and recurrence

Plan estratégico para la empresa Transportes El Sol de Piura año 2018-Piura

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal formular un plan estratégico para la empresa Transportes el Sol de Piura S.A.C siguiendo la metodología propuesta por David (2017), con la finalidad de dar direccionamiento a su gestión a los próximos cuatro años. Metodología que consta de las siguientes etapas; desarrollo de la declaración de la visión y misión; etapa de insumos, establecimiento de objetivos, etapa de adecuación y etapa de decisión. En este sentido, se empezó por el desarrollo de la declaración de la visión y misión, donde se identificó la situación futura deseada por la empresa, además de esclarecer quienes son sus clientes, que servicio brinda, cuál es su mercado, cuál es su filosofía, entre otros elementos, que sirven como guía al comportamiento para la empresa. Seguido de esto se empezó con la etapa de insumos que consistió en el análisis de tendencias externas como el alza en los precios del petróleo, el aumento del parque automotor, crecimiento poblacional, normas legales que establecen el nuevo anillo vial o el Reglamento Nacional de Vehículos entre otros, así como también el análisis de fuerzas competitivas como las tarifas en medios de transporte, participación de mercado, razones de uso de las modalidades de transporte, y finalmente el análisis de situaciones internas de la empresa como son el, nivel de formalización de empleados, clima organizacional y desempeño, ratios financieros, sistemas de control, medios de ingreso y almacenamiento de información, entre otros. Al término de los análisis, se hizo uso de las matrices de evaluación de factores externos e internos, así como la matriz del perfil competitivo, donde se identificaron los principales factores clave de éxito. Los resultados de estas matrices revelaron que las estrategias empleadas por la empresa tienen un bajo desempeño en la evasión de amenazas y aprovechamiento de oportunidades, pero también una posición competitiva fuerte frente a su competencia y una posición interna media. En la etapa de adecuación se usó la información obtenida de las matrices en la etapa de insumos, para el desarrollo de las matrices FODA, matriz de la posición estratégica, matriz de la estrategia interna externa, cuya finalidad fue el desarrollo de estrategias adecuadas para la situación de la empresa, dichas estrategias formuladas fueron de tipo competitivo, conservador y de mantener. Los objetivos formulados fueron, seis en total, estos son: el logro de la prórroga de la concesión de la ruta U-04, la modernización de la flota con vehículos eléctricos, aumento progresivo del número de unidades con mayor capacidad, implementar nuevas tecnologías de recojo de pasajes y control de frecuencia de unidades, formalizar y capacitar al personal en su totalidad, lograr la satisfacción de los usuarios. Para la etapa de decisión se hizo uso de la matriz cuantitativa de planeación estratégica, que toma las estrategias formuladas en la etapa de adecuación, para crear una lista jerarquizada según calificación de atractivo para la empresa, entre las primeras estrategias se encuentra, la creación de un área de planificación, el desarrollo de proyectos de modernización de flota que impulsen el uso de vehículos eléctricos, renovación de unidades con más de 8 años de antigüedad a la vez que se mejora historial crediticio.Tesi

Functional Brain Networks: beyond the small-world paradigm

This contribution reviews the current state of art comprising the application of Complex Networks Theory to the analysis of functional brain networks. We briefly overview the main advances in this field during the last decade and we explain how graph analysis has increased our knowledge about how the brain behaves when performing a specific task or how it fails when a certain pathology arises. We also show the limitations of this kind of analysis, which have been a source of confusion and misunderstanding when interpreting the results obtained. Finally, we discuss about a possible direction to follow in the next years

Mathematical Modeling for Neuropathic Pain: Bayesian Linear Regression and Self-Organizing Maps Applied to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

A better understanding of the connection between risk factors associated with pain andfunction may assist therapists in optimizing therapeutic programs. This study applied mathematicalmodeling to analyze the relationship of psychological, psychophysical, and motor variables with pain,function, and symptom severity using Bayesian linear regressions (BLR) and self-organizing maps(SOMs) in carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The novelty of this work was a transfer of the symmetrymathematical background to a neuropathic pain condition, whose symptoms can be either unilateralor bilateral. Duration of symptoms, pain intensity, function, symptom severity, depressive levels,pinch tip grip force, and pressure pain thresholds (PPTs) over the ulnar, radial, and median nervetrunks, the cervical spine, the carpal tunnel, and the tibialis anterior were collected in 208 womensuffering from CTS. The first BLR model revealed that symptom severity, PPTs over the radialnerve, and function had significant correlations with pain intensity. The second BLR showed thatsymptom severity, depressive levels, pain intensity, and years with pain were associated with function.The third model demonstrated that pain intensity and function were associated with symptom severity.The SOMs visualized these correlations among variables, i.e., clinical, psychophysical, and physical,and identified a subgroup of women with CTS exhibiting worse clinical features, higher pressuresensitivity, and lower pinch tip grip force. Therefore, the application of mathematical modelingidentified some interactions among the intensity of pain, function, and symptom severity in womenwith CTS

Patient Profiling Based on Spectral Clustering for an Enhanced Classification of Patients with Tension-Type Headache

Profiling groups of patients in clusters can provide meaningful insights into the features of the population, thus helping to identify people at risk of chronification and the development of specific therapeutic strategies. Our aim was to determine if spectral clustering is able to distinguish subgroups (clusters) of tension-type headache (TTH) patients, identify the profile of each group, and argue about potential di erent therapeutic interventions. A total of 208 patients (n = 208) with TTH participated. Headache intensity, frequency, and duration were collected with a 4-week diary. Anxiety and depressive levels, headache-related burden, sleep quality, health-related quality of life, pressure pain thresholds (PPTs), dynamic pressure thresholds (DPT) and evoked-pain, and the number of trigger points (TrPs) were evaluated. Spectral clustering was used to identify clusters of patients without any previous assumption. A total of three clusters of patients based on a main difference on headache frequency were identified: one cluster including patients with chronic TTH (cluster 2) and two clusters including patients with episodic TTH (clusters 0-1). Patients in cluster 2 showed worse scores in all outcomes than those in clusters 0-1. A subgroup of patients with episodic TTH exhibited pressure pain hypersensitivity (cluster 0) similarly to those with chronic TTH (cluster 2). Spectral clustering was able to confirm subgrouping of patients with TTH by headache frequency and to identify a group of patients with episodic TTH with higher sensitization, which may need particular attention and specific therapeutic programs for avoiding potential chronification

Crane collision modelling using a neural network approach

The objective of the present work is to find a Collision Detection algorithm to be used in the Virtual Reality crane simulator (UVSim®), developed by the Robotics Institute of the University of Valencia for the Port of Valencia. The method is applicable to box-shaped objects and is based on the relationship between the colliding object positions and their impact points. The tool chosen to solve the problem is a neural network, the multilayer perceptron, which adapts to the characteristics of the problem, namely, non-linearity, a large amount of data, and no a priori knowledge. The results achieved by the neural network are very satisfactory for the case of box-shaped objects. Furthermore, the computational burden is independent from the object positions and how the surfaces are modelled; hence, it is suitable for the real-time requirements of the application and outperforms the computational burden of other classical methods. The model proposed is currently being used and validated in the UVSim Gantry Crane simulator

Toward Pricing Financial Derivatives with an IBM Quantum Computer

Pricing interest-rate financial derivatives is a major problem in finance, in which it is crucial to accurately reproduce the time evolution of interest rates. Several stochastic dynamics have been proposed in the literature to model either the instantaneous interest rate or the instantaneous forward rate. A successful approach to model the latter is the celebrated Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework, in which its dynamics is entirely specified by volatility factors. In its multifactor version, this model considers several noisy components to capture at best the dynamics of several time-maturing forward rates. However, as no general analytical solution is available, there is a trade-off between the number of noisy factors considered and the computational time to perform a numerical simulation. Here, we employ the quantum principal component analysis to reduce the number of noisy factors required to accurately simulate the time evolution of several time-maturing forward rates. The principal components are experimentally estimated with the five-qubit IBMQX2 quantum computer for 2 x 2 and 3 x 3 cross-correlation matrices, which are based on historical data for two and three time-maturing forward rates. This paper is a step towards the design of a general quantum algorithm to fully simulate on quantum computers the HeathJarrow-Morton model for pricing interest-rate financial derivatives. It shows indeed that practical applications of quantum computers in finance will be achievable in the near futureThe authors acknowledge the use of IBM QISKIT for this work. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of IBM. We also acknowledge funding from projects QMiCS (Grant No. 820505) and OpenSuperQ (Grant No. 820363) of the EU Flagship on Quantum Technologies; the FETOPEN project QuroMorphic, Spanish Government, Grant No. PGC2018-095113-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE); Basque Government, Grant No. IT986-16; Spanish Ramon y Cajal Grant No. RYC-2017-22482; Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission (Grants No. 18010500400 and No. 18ZR1415500); and the Shanghai Program for Eastern Scholar. This work is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) quantum algorithm teams program, under field work Proposal No. ERKJ333. We also acknowledge support from NSFC (Grant No. 12075145), STCSM (Grants No. 2019SHZDZX01ZX04, No. 18010500400, and No. 18ZR1415500), and from Spanish Government PID2019-104002GB-C21, PID2019104002GBC22 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE

Supplementing the Diet of Dairy Goats with Dried Orange Pulp throughout Lactation: I. Effect on Milk Performance, Nutrient Utilisation, Blood Parameters and Production Economics

Dried orange pulp (DOP) can be incorporated into ruminant diets, but no reports have considered this strategy during the entire lactation period in goats. Two experiments were performed using lactating Payoya goats. In experiment 1, to study the effect, over 180 days, of DOP on milk yield and composition, blood metabolites and economic values, 44 primiparous goats were allocated into three groups: control diet (concentrate plus lucerne) and DOP40 and DOP80 diets, in which DOP replaced 40% and 80%, respectively, of the cereals. Nutrient digestibility and rumen fermentation were also studied (experiment 2). The DOP diets did not affect milk yield and composition. DOP triggered lower intake and digestibility of ether extract and crude protein. Ruminal fermentation was unaffected by DOP, except for a decrease in butyrate for DOP80. The energy balance was unaltered by diet while the balance and retention of nitrogen decreased. Regarding plasma biochemistry, DOP supplementation caused changes that could indicate an improvement in hepatic function and reduced muscular damage and oxidative muscular stress. Moreover, DOP80 provided a profit increase of EUR 3.27/goat. In conclusion, the partial replacement of cereals by DOP is a profitable and healthy nutritional strategy in dairy goats and is suitable for the entire lactation period without compromising productivity.The authors are grateful to Excma. Diputaci ón Provincial de Huelva (Spain) for their financial support, Cítricos del Andévalo, S.A. (García Carrión) for supplying pellets of dehydrated orange pulp and OVIPOR, Soc. Coop. for their contribution to the preparation of diets. The authors wish to thank the farm staff of Huelva University for their technical support and the Servicio General de Investigaci ón Agraria (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain) for technical assistance with laboratory analysi

Spectral Clustering Reveals Different Profiles of Central Sensitization in Women with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Identification of subgroups of patients with chronic pain provides meaningful insights into the characteristics of a specific population, helping to identify individuals at risk of chronification and to determine appropriate therapeutic strategies. This paper proposes the use of spectral clustering (SC) to distinguish subgroups (clusters) of individuals with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), making use of the obtained patient profiling to argue about potential management implications. SC is a powerful algorithm that builds a similarity graph among the data points (the patients), and tries to find the subsets of points that are strongly connected among themselves, but weakly connected to others. It was chosen due to its advantages with respect to other simpler clustering techniques, such as k-means, and the fact that it has been successfully applied to similar problems. Clinical (age, duration of symptoms, pain intensity, function, and symptom severity), psycho-physical (pressure pain thresholds¿PPTs¿over the three main nerve trunks of the upper extremity, cervical spine, carpal tunnel, and tibialis anterior), psychological (depressive levels), and motor (pinch tip grip force) variables were collected in 208 women with clinical/electromyographic diagnosis of CTS, whose symptoms usually started unilaterally but eventually evolved into bilateral symmetry. SC was used to identify clusters of patients without any previous assumptions, yielding three clusters. Patients in cluster 1 exhibited worse clinical features, higher widespread pressure pain hyperalgesia, higher depressive levels, and lower pinch tip grip force than the other two. Patients in cluster 2 showed higher generalized thermal pain hyperalgesia than the other two. Cluster 0 showed less hypersensitivity to pressure and thermal pain, less severe clinical features, and more normal motor output (tip grip force). The presence of subgroups of individuals with different altered nociceptive processing (one group being more sensitive to pressure pain and another group more sensitive to thermal pain) could lead to different therapeutic programs

Efectividad de 5-fluoruracilo y vinorelbina en pacientes multitratadas por cáncer de mama metastásico

Objetivo. Evaluar la actividad y toxicidad de fluoruracilo en infusión continua y vinorelbina en segunda o tercera línea de tratamiento del cáncer de mama metastásico (CMM). Método y pacientes. En este estudio fase II se incluyeron 24 pacientes que habían recibido doxorrubicina y/o paclitaxel. Se administró 5-fluoruracilo a 1g/m2/día en infusión continua por 3 días y vinorelbina a 30 mg/m2 D1 cada 21 días por 6 ciclos. Resultados. Las respuestas globales observadas fueron del 37,5% (12,5% respuestas completas). El período libre de enfermedad se calculó una media de 6,33 ± 8,12 meses (IC 95% de 3,43 meses). Se observó toxicidad en el 12,5% de las pacientes y no se registró toxicidad grave ni muertes relacionadas a tratamiento. Conclusión. El 5-fluoruracilo/vinorelbina a las dosis administradas es un esquema efectivo en pacientes con CMM multitratadas, con un bajo perfil de toxicidad y costo