102 research outputs found
Mirroring to Build Trust in Digital Assistants
We describe experiments towards building a conversational digital assistant
that considers the preferred conversational style of the user. In particular,
these experiments are designed to measure whether users prefer and trust an
assistant whose conversational style matches their own. To this end we
conducted a user study where subjects interacted with a digital assistant that
responded in a way that either matched their conversational style, or did not.
Using self-reported personality attributes and subjects' feedback on the
interactions, we built models that can reliably predict a user's preferred
conversational style.Comment: Preprin
How to use coping strategies and become more resilient
It is well recognised that the transition period from medical student to qualified doctor is a particularly
demanding time. However, the life course of a doctor presents its own challenges of equal or greater
significance and the job of a doctor is becoming increasingly difficult (Figley, Huggard and Rees 2013).
Evidence for this relates to organisational, system, societal and clinical factors. Specifically: pressure of patient
through-put; patient expectations; lack of organisational and social support; increasing isolation - no time
to develop teams and communities of practice; and increasingly complex cases and patient co-morbidities.
As doctors progress in their career they become increasingly responsible for the coordination of care in
response to traumatic events and patient outcomes, while also managing outside pressures. Such factors
can lead to an increase in errors (Jackson and Moreton 2013). Errors may be linked to patient diagnosis and
treatment, performance of skills and errors in equipment use. Furthermore, the incidence of errors increases
along with the amount of sick leave, with the performance of a growing number of doctors attracting scrutiny
from the General Medical Council (GMC 2014). The topic of stress management and resilience has therefore
attracted a great deal of attention. This ‘How to’ is a guide to strategies that can be used to relieve immediate
physiological stress responses and when practised assist in the development of your resilience
Variational Saccading: Efficient Inference for Large Resolution Images
Image classification with deep neural networks is typically restricted to
images of small dimensionality such as 224 x 244 in Resnet models [24]. This
limitation excludes the 4000 x 3000 dimensional images that are taken by modern
smartphone cameras and smart devices. In this work, we aim to mitigate the
prohibitive inferential and memory costs of operating in such large dimensional
spaces. To sample from the high-resolution original input distribution, we
propose using a smaller proxy distribution to learn the co-ordinates that
correspond to regions of interest in the high-dimensional space. We introduce a
new principled variational lower bound that captures the relationship of the
proxy distribution's posterior and the original image's co-ordinate space in a
way that maximizes the conditional classification likelihood. We empirically
demonstrate on one synthetic benchmark and one real world large resolution DSLR
camera image dataset that our method produces comparable results with ~10x
faster inference and lower memory consumption than a model that utilizes the
entire original input distribution. Finally, we experiment with a more complex
setting using mini-maps from Starcraft II [56] to infer the number of
characters in a complex 3d-rendered scene. Even in such complicated scenes our
model provides strong localization: a feature missing from traditional
classification models.Comment: Published BMVC 2019 & NIPS 2018 Bayesian Deep Learning Worksho
The Wnt Receptor Ryk Reduces Neuronal and Cell Survival Capacity by Repressing FOXO Activity During the Early Phases of Mutant Huntingtin Pathogenicity
The Wnt receptor Ryk is an evolutionary-conserved protein important during neuronal differentiation through several mechanisms, including γ-secretase cleavage and nuclear translocation of its intracellular domain (Ryk-ICD). Although the Wnt pathway may be neuroprotective, the role of Ryk in neurodegenerative disease remains unknown. We found that Ryk is up-regulated in neurons expressing mutant huntingtin (HTT) in several models of Huntington's disease (HD). Further investigation in Caenorhabditis elegans and mouse striatal cell models of HD provided a model in which the early-stage increase of Ryk promotes neuronal dysfunction by repressing the neuroprotective activity of the longevity-promoting factor FOXO through a noncanonical mechanism that implicates the Ryk-ICD fragment and its binding to the FOXO co-factor β-catenin. The Ryk-ICD fragment suppressed neuroprotection by lin-18/Ryk loss-of-function in expanded-polyQ nematodes, repressed FOXO transcriptional activity, and abolished β-catenin protection of mutant htt striatal cells against cell death vulnerability. Additionally, Ryk-ICD was increased in the nucleus of mutant htt cells, and reducing γ-secretase PS1 levels compensated for the cytotoxicity of full-length Ryk in these cells. These findings reveal that the Ryk-ICD pathway may impair FOXO protective activity in mutant polyglutamine neurons, suggesting that neurons are unable to efficiently maintain function and resist disease from the earliest phases of the pathogenic process in HD. © 2014 Tourette et al
Kilonova Luminosity Function Constraints Based on Zwicky Transient Facility Searches for 13 Neutron Star Merger Triggers during O3
We present a systematic search for optical counterparts to 13 gravitational wave (GW) triggers involving at least one neutron star during LIGO/Virgo's third observing run (O3). We searched binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star black hole (NSBH) merger localizations with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and undertook follow-up with the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration. The GW triggers had a median localization area of 4480 deg², a median distance of 267 Mpc, and false-alarm rates ranging from 1.5 to 10⁻²⁵ yr⁻¹. The ZTF coverage in the g and r bands had a median enclosed probability of 39%, median depth of 20.8 mag, and median time lag between merger and the start of observations of 1.5 hr. The O3 follow-up by the GROWTH team comprised 340 UltraViolet/Optical/InfraRed (UVOIR) photometric points, 64 OIR spectra, and three radio images using 17 different telescopes. We find no promising kilonovae (radioactivity-powered counterparts), and we show how to convert the upper limits to constrain the underlying kilonova luminosity function. Initially, we assume that all GW triggers are bona fide astrophysical events regardless of false-alarm rate and that kilonovae accompanying BNS and NSBH mergers are drawn from a common population; later, we relax these assumptions. Assuming that all kilonovae are at least as luminous as the discovery magnitude of GW170817 (−16.1 mag), we calculate that our joint probability of detecting zero kilonovae is only 4.2%. If we assume that all kilonovae are brighter than −16.6 mag (the extrapolated peak magnitude of GW170817) and fade at a rate of 1 mag day⁻¹ (similar to GW170817), the joint probability of zero detections is 7%. If we separate the NSBH and BNS populations based on the online classifications, the joint probability of zero detections, assuming all kilonovae are brighter than −16.6 mag, is 9.7% for NSBH and 7.9% for BNS mergers. Moreover, no more than 10⁻⁴, or φ > 30° to be consistent with our limits. We look forward to searches in the fourth GW observing run; even 17 neutron star mergers with only 50% coverage to a depth of −16 mag would constrain the maximum fraction of bright kilonovae to <25%
Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment
For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin "burn propagation" into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While "scientific breakeven" (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion
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