120 research outputs found
Sample Efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dialogue Systems with Large Action Spaces
In spoken dialogue systems, we aim to deploy artificial intelligence to build automated dialogue agents that can converse with humans. A part of this effort is the policy optimisation task, which attempts to find a policy describing how to respond to humans, in the form of a function taking the current state of the dialogue and returning the response of the system. In this paper, we investigate deep reinforcement learning approaches to solve this problem. Particular attention is given to actor-critic methods, off-policy reinforcement learning with experience replay, and various methods aimed at reducing the bias and variance of estimators. When combined, these methods result in the previously proposed ACER algorithm that gave competitive results in gaming environments. These environments however are fully observable and have a relatively small action set so in this paper we examine the application of ACER to dialogue policy optimisation. We show that this method beats the current state-of-the-art in deep learning approaches for spoken dialogue systems. This not only leads to a more sample efficient algorithm that can train faster, but also allows us to apply the algorithm in more difficult environments than before. We thus experiment with learning in a very large action space, which has two orders of magnitude more actions than previously considered. We find that ACER trains significantly faster than the current state-of-the-art.Toshiba Research Europe Ltd, Cambridge Research Laboratory - RG85875
EPSRC Research Council - RG8079
Asymptotic scaling of the gluon propagtor on the lattice
We pursue the study of the high energy behaviour of the gluon propagator on
the lattice in the Landau gauge in the flavorless case (n_f=0). It was shown in
a precedin g paper that the gluon propagator did not reach three-loop
asymptotic scaling at an energy scale as high as 5 GeV.
Our present high statistics analysis includes also a simulation at
( fm), which allows to reach GeV.
Special care has been devoted to the finite lattice-spacing artifacts as well
as to the finite volume effects, the latter being acute at where
the volume is bounded by technical limits. Our main conclusion is a strong
evidence that the gluon propagator has reached three-loop asymptotic scaling,
at ranging from 5.6 GeV to 9.5 GeV. We buttress up this conclusion on
several demanding criteria of asymptoticity, including scheme independence. Our
fit in the 5.6 GeV to 9.5 GeV window yields MeV, in good agreement with our previous result,
MeV, obtained from the three gluon
vertex, but it is significantly above the Schr\"odinger functional method
estimate : MeV. The latter difference is not understood.
Confirming our previous paper, we show that a fourth loop is necessary to fit
the whole () GeV energy window.Comment: latex-file, 19 pgs., 6 fig
A tale of three world cities: health care policy implications
Conference Theme: Managing World Citiespublished_or_final_versio
Pair formation in two electron correlated chains
We study two correlated electrons in a nearest neighbour tight- binding
chain, with both on site and nearest neighbour interaction. Both the cases of
parallel and antiparallel spins are considered. In addition to the free
electron band for two electrons, there are correlated bands with positive or
negative energy, depending on wheather the interaction parameters are repulsive
or attractive. Electrons form bound states, with amplitudes that decay
exponentially with separation. Conditions for such states to be filled at low
temperatures are discussed.Comment: To appear in J. Phys: Condens. Matter 15 (2003
Revisiting soliton contributions to perturbative amplitudes
Open Access funded by SCOAP3. CP is
a Royal Society Research Fellow and partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy
under grants DOE-SC0010008, DOE-ARRA-SC0003883 and DOE-DE-SC0007897. ABR
is supported by the Mitchell Family Foundation. We would like to thank the Mitchell
Institute at Texas A&M and the NHETC at Rutgers University respectively for hospitality
during the course of this work. We would also like to acknowledge the Aspen Center for
Physics and NSF grant 1066293 for a stimulating research environment
Renormalization group improved action on anisotropic lattices
We study a block spin transformation in the SU(3) lattice gauge theory on
anisotropic lattices to obtain Iwasaki's renormalization group improved action
for anisotropic cases. For the class of actions with plaquette and
rectangular terms, we determine the improvement parameters as functions of the
anisotropy . We find that the program of improvement works well
also on anisotropic lattices. From a study of an indicator which estimates the
distance to the renormalized trajectory, we show that, for the range of the
anisotropy --4, the coupling parameters previously determined
for isotropic lattices improve the theory considerably.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure
Age-related changes in neural functional connectivity and its behavioral relevance
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Resting-state recordings are characterized by widely distributed networks of coherent brain activations. Disturbances of the default network - a set of regions that are deactivated by cognitive tasks and activated during passive states - have been detected in age-related disorders such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease but alterations in the course of healthy aging still need to be explored.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), the present study investigated how age-related functional resting-state brain connectivity links to cognitive performance in healthy aging in fifty-three participants ranging in age from 18 to 89 years. A beamforming technique was used to reconstruct the brain activity in source space and the interregional coupling was investigated using partial directed coherence (PDC). We found significant age-related alterations of functional resting-state connectivity. These are mainly characterized by reduced information input into the posterior cingulum/precuneus region together with an enhanced information flow to the medial temporal lobe. Furthermore, higher inflow in the medial temporal lobe subsystem was associated with weaker cognitive performance whereas stronger inflow in the posterior cluster was related to better cognitive performance.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This is the first study to show age-related alterations in subsystems of the resting state network that are furthermore associated with cognitive performance.</p
Histone H1 Subtypes Differentially Modulate Chromatin Condensation without Preventing ATP-Dependent Remodeling by SWI/SNF or NURF
Although ubiquitously present in chromatin, the function of the linker histone subtypes is partly unknown and contradictory studies on their properties have been published. To explore whether the various H1 subtypes have a differential role in the organization and dynamics of chromatin we have incorporated all of the somatic human H1 subtypes into minichromosomes and compared their influence on nucleosome spacing, chromatin compaction and ATP-dependent remodeling. H1 subtypes exhibit different affinities for chromatin and different abilities to promote chromatin condensation, as studied with the Atomic Force Microscope. According to this criterion, H1 subtypes can be classified as weak condensers (H1.1 and H1.2), intermediate condensers (H1.3) and strong condensers (H1.0, H1.4, H1.5 and H1x). The variable C-terminal domain is required for nucleosome spacing by H1.4 and is likely responsible for the chromatin condensation properties of the various subtypes, as shown using chimeras between H1.4 and H1.2. In contrast to previous reports with isolated nucleosomes or linear nucleosomal arrays, linker histones at a ratio of one per nucleosome do not preclude remodeling of minichromosomes by yeast SWI/SNF or Drosophila NURF. We hypothesize that the linker histone subtypes are differential organizers of chromatin, rather than general repressors
A systematic review of mental health outcome measures for young people aged 12 to 25 years
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