Applying Reinforcement Learning to Optimize Traffic Light Cycles

Manual optimization of traffic light cycles is a complex and time-consuming task, necessitating the development of automated solutions. In this paper, we propose the application of reinforcement learning to optimize traffic light cycles in real-time. We present a case study using the Simulation Urban Mobility simulator to train a Deep Q-Network algorithm. The experimental results showed 44.16% decrease in the average number of Emergency stops, showing the potential of our approach to reduce traffic congestion and improve traffic flow. Furthermore, we discuss avenues for future research and enhancements to the reinforcement learning model

Translating Hanja Historical Documents to Contemporary Korean and English

The Annals of Joseon Dynasty (AJD) contain the daily records of the Kings of Joseon, the 500-year kingdom preceding the modern nation of Korea. The Annals were originally written in an archaic Korean writing system, `Hanja', and were translated into Korean from 1968 to 1993. The resulting translation was however too literal and contained many archaic Korean words; thus, a new expert translation effort began in 2012. Since then, the records of only one king have been completed in a decade. In parallel, expert translators are working on English translation, also at a slow pace and produced only one king's records in English so far. Thus, we propose H2KE, a neural machine translation model, that translates historical documents in Hanja to more easily understandable Korean and to English. Built on top of multilingual neural machine translation, H2KE learns to translate a historical document written in Hanja, from both a full dataset of outdated Korean translation and a small dataset of more recently translated contemporary Korean and English. We compare our method against two baselines: a recent model that simultaneously learns to restore and translate Hanja historical document and a Transformer based model trained only on newly translated corpora. The experiments reveal that our method significantly outperforms the baselines in terms of BLEU scores for both contemporary Korean and English translations. We further conduct extensive human evaluation which shows that our translation is preferred over the original expert translations by both experts and non-expert Korean speakers.Comment: 2022 EMNLP Finding

Socioeconomic inequalities in obesity among Korean women aged 19-79 years: the 2016 Korean Study of Women’s Health-Related Issues

OBJECTIVES While the prevalence of obesity in Asian women has remained stagnant, studies of socioeconomic inequalities in obesity among Asian women are scarce. This study aimed to examine the recent prevalence of obesity in Korean women aged between 19 years and 79 years and to analyze socioeconomic inequalities in obesity. METHODS Data were derived from the 2016 Korean Study of Women’s Health-Related Issues. The chi-square test and logistic regression analysis were used to analyze the associations between socioeconomic factors and obesity using Asian standard body mass index (BMI) categories: low (<18.5 kg/m2 ), normal (18.5-22.9 kg/m2 ), overweight (23.0-24.9 kg/m2 ), and obese (≥25.0 kg/ m2 ). As inequality-specific indicators, the slope index of inequality (SII) and relative index of inequality (RII) were calculated, with adjustment for age and self-reported health status. RESULTS Korean women were classified into the following BMI categories: underweight (5.3%), normal weight (59.1%), overweight (21.2%), and obese (14.4%). The SII and RII revealed substantial inequalities in obesity in favor of more urbanized women (SII, 4.5; RII, 1.4) and against of women who were highly educated (SII, -16.7; RII, 0.3). Subgroup analysis revealed inequalities in obesity according to household income among younger women and according to urbanization among women aged 65-79 years. CONCLUSIONS Clear educational inequalities in obesity existed in Korean women. Reverse inequalities in urbanization were also apparent in older women. Developing strategies to address the multiple observed inequalities in obesity among Korean women may prove essential for effectively reducing the burden of this disease

JIB-04 has broad-spectrum antiviral activity and inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication and coronavirus pathogenesis

Pathogenic coronaviruses are a major threat to global public health. Here, using a recombinant reporter virus-based compound screening approach, we identified small-molecule inhibitors that potently block the replication of severe acute respiratory syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Among them, JIB-04 inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero E6 cells with a 50% effective concentration of 695 nM, with a specificity index of greater than 1,000. JIB-04 showe

A Cohort Study of Serum Bilirubin Levels and Incident Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Middle Aged Korean Workers

BACKGROUND: Serum bilirubin may have potent antioxidant and cytoprotective effects. Serum bilirubin levels are inversely associated with several cardiovascular and metabolic endpoints, but their association with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has not been investigated except for a single cross-sectional study in a pediatric population. We assessed the prospective association between serum bilirubin concentrations (total, direct, and indirect) and the risk for NAFLD. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We performed a cohort study in 5,900 Korean men, 30 to 59 years of age, with no evidence of liver disease and no major risk factors for liver disease at baseline. Study participants were followed in annual or biennial health examinations between 2002 and 2009. The presence of fatty liver was determined at each visit by ultrasonography. We observed 1,938 incident cases of NAFLD during 28,101.8 person-years of follow-up. Increasing levels of serum direct bilirubin were progressively associated with a decreasing incidence of NAFLD. In age-adjusted models, the hazard ratio for NAFLD comparing the highest to the lowest quartile of serum direct bilirubin levels was 0.61 (95% CI 0.54-0.68). The association persisted after adjusting for multiple metabolic parameters (hazard ratio comparing the highest to the lowest quartile 0.86, 95% CI 0.76-0.98; P trend = 0.039). Neither serum total nor indirect bilirubin levels were significantly associated with the incidence of NAFLD. CONCLUSIONS: In this large prospective study, higher serum direct bilirubin levels were significantly associated with a lower risk of developing NAFLD, even adjusting for a variety of metabolic parameters. Further research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying this association and to establish the role of serum direct bilirubin as a marker for NAFLD risk

Cholesterol 25-hydroxylase suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication by blocking membrane fusion

Cholesterol 25-hydroxylase (CH25H) is an interferon (IFN)-stimulated gene that shows broad antiviral activities against a wide range of enveloped viruses. Here, using an IFN-stimulated gene screen against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)-SARS-CoV and VSV-SARS-CoV-2 chimeric viruses, we identified CH25H and its enzymatic product 25-hydroxycholesterol (25HC) as potent inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 replication. Internalized 25HC accumulates in the late endosomes and potentially restricts SARS-CoV-2 spike protein catalyzed membrane fusion via blockade of cholesterol export. Our results highlight one of the possible antiviral mechanisms of 25HC and provide the molecular basis for its therapeutic development

A parametric bootstrap test for comparing differentially private histograms

We propose a test of consistency for two differentially private histograms using parametric bootstrap. The test can be applied when the original raw histograms are not available but only the differentially private histograms and the privacy level a are available. We also extend the test for the case where the privacy levels are different for different histograms. The resident population data of Korea and U.S in year 2020 are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed test procedure. The proposed test controls the type I error rate at the nominal level and has a high power, while a conventional test procedure fails. While the differential privacy framework formally controls the risk of privacy leakage, the utility of such framework is questionable. This work also suggests that the power of a carefully designed test may be a viable measure of utility.N