Towards Personalities for Animated Agents With Reactive and Planning Behaviors

We describe a framework for creating animated simulations of virtual human agents. The framework allows us to capture flexible patterns of activity, reactivity to a changing environment, and certain aspects of an agent personality model. Each leads to variation in how an animated simulation will be realized. As different parts of an activity make different demands oil an agent\u27s resources and decision-making, our framework allows special-purpose reasoners and planners to be associated with only those phases of an activity where they are needed. Personality is reflected in locomotion choices which are guided by an agent model that interacts with the other components of the framework

Terrain Navigation Skills and Reasoning

We describe a real-time model of terrain traversal by simulated human agents. Agent navigation includes a variety of simulated sensors, terrain reasoning with behavioral constraints, and detailed simulation of a variety of locomotion techniques. Our Kinematic Locomotion Generation Module (KLOG) generates various terrain navigation skills as well as both rhythmic and non-rhythmic variations of these skills. The terrain navigation skills include curved path walking, lateral or backward stepping, running, and the transitions between walking and running for motion continuity. Locomotion attributes such as pelvis rotation and translation and torso flexion and twist are used to modify the KLOG skills so that realistic looking rhythmic locomotion or non-rhythmic variations, such as ducking under a low hanging branch of a tree, can be achieved. The path through the terrain is incrementally computed by a behavioral reasoning system configuring a behavioral feedback network. A number of sensors acquire information on object range, passageways, obstacles, terrain type, exposure to hostile agents and so on. The behavioral reasoner weighs this information along with collision avoidance, cost, danger minimization, locomotion types and other behaviors available to the agent and incrementally attempts to reach a goal location. Since the system is reactive, it can respond to moving obstacles, changing terrain, or unexpected events due to hostile agents or the effects of limited perception

Discrimination of benign from malignant breast lesions in dense breasts with model-based analysis of regions-of-interest using directional diffusion-weighted images.

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing interest in non-contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for detecting and evaluating breast lesions. We present a methodology utilizing lesion core and periphery region of interest (ROI) features derived from directional diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) data to evaluate performance in discriminating benign from malignant lesions in dense breasts. METHODS: We accrued 55 dense-breast cases with 69 lesions (31 benign; 38 cancer) at a single institution in a prospective study; cases with ROIs exceeding 7.50 cm RESULTS: The region-growing algorithm for 3D lesion model generation improved inter-observer variability over hand drawn ROIs (DSC: 0.66 vs 0.56 (p \u3c 0.001) with substantial agreement (DSC \u3e 0.8) in 46% vs 13% of cases, respectively (p \u3c 0.001)). The overall classifier improved discrimination over mean ADC, (ROC- area under the curve (AUC): 0.85 vs 0.75 and 0.83 vs 0.74 respectively for the two readers). CONCLUSIONS: A classifier generated from directional DWI information using lesion core and lesion periphery information separately can improve lesion discrimination in dense breasts over mean ADC and should be considered for inclusion in computer-aided diagnosis algorithms. Our model-based ROIs could facilitate standardization of breast MRI computer-aided diagnostics (CADx)

Planning and Parallel Transition Networks: Animation\u27s New Frontiers

Animating realistic human agents involves more than just creating movements that look real . A principal characteristic of humans is their ability to plan and make decisions based on intentions and the local environmental context. Animated agents must therefore react to and deliberate about their environment and other agents. Our agent animation uses various low-level behaviors, sense-control-action loops, high-level planning, and parallel task networks. Several systems we developed will illustrate how these components contribute to the realism and efficacy of human agent animation

Dense mapping of MYH9 localizes the strongest kidney disease associations to the region of introns 13 to 15

Admixture mapping recently identified MYH9 as a susceptibility gene for idiopathic focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), HIV-associated nephropathy (HIVAN) and end-stage kidney disease attributed to hypertension (H-ESKD) in African Americans (AA). MYH9 encodes the heavy chain of non-muscle myosin IIA, a cellular motor involved in motility. A haplotype and its tagging SNPs spanning introns 12–23 were most strongly associated with kidney disease (OR 2–7; P < 10−8, recessive). To narrow the region of association and identify potential causal variation, we performed a dense-mapping study using 79 MYH9 SNPs in AA populations with FSGS, HIVAN and H-ESKD (typed for a subset of 46 SNPs), for a total of 2496 cases and controls. The strongest associations were for correlated SNPs rs5750250, rs2413396 and rs5750248 in introns 13, 14 and 15, a region of 5.6 kb. Rs5750250 showed OR 5.0, 8.0 and 2.8; P = 2 × 10−17, 2 × 10−10 and 3 × 10−22, respectively, for FSGS, HIVAN and H-ESKD; OR 5.7; P = 9 × 10−27 for combined FSGS and HIVAN, recessive. An independent association was observed for rs11912763 in intron 33. Neither the highly associated SNPs nor the results of resequencing MYH9 in 40 HIVAN or FSGS cases and controls revealed non-synonymous changes that could account for the disease associations. Rs2413396 and one of the highly associated SNPs in intron 23, rs4821480, are predicted splicing motif modifiers. Rs5750250 combined with rs11912763 had receiver operator characteristic (ROC) C statistics of 0.80, 0.73 and 0.65 for HIVAN, FSGS and H-ESKD, respectively, allowing prediction of genetic risk by typing two SNPs

Minimum Wage Channels of Adjustment

Industrial Relations, forthcoming Abstract: The effects of minimum wage increases in 2007-2009 are analyzed using a sample of restaurants from Georgia/Alabama. Store-level payroll records provide precise measures of compliance costs. Examined are multiple adjustment channels. Exploiting variation in compliance costs across restaurants, we find employment and hours responses to be variable and in most cases statistically insignificant. Channels of adjustment to wage increases and to changes in non-labor costs include prices, profits, wage compression, turnover, and performance standards

A nomenclature for restriction enzymes, DNA methyltransferases, homing endonucleases and their genes

A nomenclature is described for restriction endonucleases, DNA methyltransferases, homing endonucleases and related genes and gene products. It provides explicit categories for the many different Type II enzymes now identified and provides a system for naming the putative genes found by sequence analysis of microbial genome

Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding “Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data”: Myanmar amber

Non peer reviewe

Integrative genomic analysis by interoperation of bioinformatics tools in GenomeSpace

Integrative analysis of multiple data types to address complex biomedical questions requires the use of multiple software tools in concert and remains an enormous challenge for most of the biomedical research community. Here we introduce GenomeSpace (http://www.genomespace.org), a cloud-based, cooperative community resource. Seeded as a collaboration of six of the most popular genomics analysis tools, GenomeSpace now supports the streamlined interaction of 20 bioinformatics tools and data resources. To facilitate the ability of non-programming users’ to leverage GenomeSpace in integrative analysis, it offers a growing set of ‘recipes’, short workflows involving a few tools and steps to guide investigators through high utility analysis tasks