The case of Heinrich Wilhelm Poll (1877-1939): A German-Jewish geneticist, eugenicist, twin researcher, and victim of the Nazis

This paper uses a reconstruction of the life and career of Heinrich Poll as a window into developments and professional relationships in the biological sciences in Germany in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Poll's intellectual work involved an early transition from morphometric physical anthropology to comparative evolutionary studies, and also found expression in twin research - a field in which he was an acknowledged early pioneer. His advocacy of eugenics led to participation in state-sponsored committees convened to advise on social policy, one of which debated sterilisation and made recommendations that led eventually to the establishment of the notorious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. However, his status as a prominent geneticist and, in particular, as a eugenicist had an ironic and ultimately tragic dimension. Heinrich Poll was of Jewish birth, and this resulted in his career being destroyed by an application of the population policies he had helped put in place

Timing in trace conditioning of the nictitating membrane response of the rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) : scalar, nonscalar, and adaptive features

Using interstimulus intervals (ISIs) of 125, 250, and 500 msec in trace conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane response, the offset times and durations of conditioned responses (CRs) were collected along with onset and peak latencies. All measures were proportional to the ISI, but only onset and peak latencies conformed to the criterion for scalar timing. Regarding the CR’s possible protective overlap of the unconditioned stimulus (US), CR duration increased with ISI, while the peak’s alignment with the US declined. Implications for models of timing and CR adaptiveness are discussed

Empirical evaluation of proxies for the acquisition costs of protected areas suggests care is needed to deliver the promise of cost-effective conservation

Given limited budgets, conservation organizations need to efficiently allocate their resources for biodiversity protection. While many organizations combine socioeconomic and biological data to identify areas with the highest biological return per dollar invested, it is less clear how uncertainty in socioeconomic data affects this planning process. In Chapter 1, we show how uncertainty due to proxy choice and spatial averaging affect conservation planning by comparing average agricultural land values, a common proxy for the acquisition costs of protected areas, to a case study recent protected area investments in the Eastern US. We find this proxy explains little variation and significantly overestimates the parcel-level acquisition costs of protected areas. Furthermore, our results demonstrate errors due to proxy choice result in conservation plans that substantially overestimate the costs of protected areas for both a local and a complementarity richness objective. In Chapter 2, we investigate spatial averaging further by systematically manipulating the spatial grain of our biological and socioeconomic data in concert, and then demonstrating how the conclusion of a classic debate in conservation planning depends on the spatial grain of the data being used. Specifically, we find the relative performance of cost and benefit targeting is sensitive to spatial grain, and that combining data over different spatial grains inflates the apparent effectiveness of a cost targeting strategy. We recommend that future studies account for uncertainty in their socioeconomic data by first matching the spatial grain of their data sources with their planning units, and then by collecting socioeconomic data that more reliably reflect the costs of acquiring protected areas

Ventroposterior medial pallidotomy in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease

Journal ArticleIN A PRELIMINARY study, the effects of ventroposterior medial pallidotomy were evaluated in five patients with advanced Parkinson's disease in whom medical therapy had failed. The mean age was 67.0 ? 5.6 years, and t h e mean Hoelin and Yahr stage when "off" was 3.9 ? 1.3. Three patients received unilateral pallidotomies; two of these received another pallidotomy after 8 weeks. Two other patients received staged bilateral pallidotomies. No significant differences in overall function could be seen before and after the first surgical procedure. All three .patients with peak-dose dyskinesias or dystonia had marked contralateral reduction in these symptoms. Ventroposterior medial pallidotomy can ameliorate peak-dose dyskinesias in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease. Overall functional improvement is not remarkable

Online Meta-learning by Parallel Algorithm Competition

The efficiency of reinforcement learning algorithms depends critically on a few meta-parameters that modulates the learning updates and the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. The adaptation of the meta-parameters is an open question in reinforcement learning, which arguably has become more of an issue recently with the success of deep reinforcement learning in high-dimensional state spaces. The long learning times in domains such as Atari 2600 video games makes it not feasible to perform comprehensive searches of appropriate meta-parameter values. We propose the Online Meta-learning by Parallel Algorithm Competition (OMPAC) method. In the OMPAC method, several instances of a reinforcement learning algorithm are run in parallel with small differences in the initial values of the meta-parameters. After a fixed number of episodes, the instances are selected based on their performance in the task at hand. Before continuing the learning, Gaussian noise is added to the meta-parameters with a predefined probability. We validate the OMPAC method by improving the state-of-the-art results in stochastic SZ-Tetris and in standard Tetris with a smaller, 10$\times$10, board, by 31% and 84%, respectively, and by improving the results for deep Sarsa($\lambda$) agents in three Atari 2600 games by 62% or more. The experiments also show the ability of the OMPAC method to adapt the meta-parameters according to the learning progress in different tasks.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1702.0311

Statistical analysis of the influence of microstructure on damage in fibrous ceramic matrix composites

The effect of microstructure on cracking was analyzed in a CMC using statistical methods. It was determined that the amounts of coating surrounding fibers and their dispersion within the matrix influenced where cracks evolved in transverse plies. Linear models predicted that maximum principal strains in transverse fiber coatings increased as (i) the fiber coating area increased and (ii) the length of matrix ligament between fibers decreased. Logistic models indicated that the likelihood of transverse fibers residing on a matrix crack increased as the (i) ratio of coating to filament decreased, (ii) distance between fibers decreased, or (iii) coating area increased.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136695/1/ijac12646.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136695/2/ijac12646_am.pd