Interactive Restless Multi-armed Bandit Game and Swarm Intelligence Effect

We obtain the conditions for the emergence of the swarm intelligence effect in an interactive game of restless multi-armed bandit (rMAB). A player competes with multiple agents. Each bandit has a payoff that changes with a probability $p_{c}$ per round. The agents and player choose one of three options: (1) Exploit (a good bandit), (2) Innovate (asocial learning for a good bandit among $n_{I}$ randomly chosen bandits), and (3) Observe (social learning for a good bandit). Each agent has two parameters $(c,p_{obs})$ to specify the decision: (i) $c$, the threshold value for Exploit, and (ii) $p_{obs}$, the probability for Observe in learning. The parameters $(c,p_{obs})$ are uniformly distributed. We determine the optimal strategies for the player using complete knowledge about the rMAB. We show whether or not social or asocial learning is more optimal in the $(p_{c},n_{I})$ space and define the swarm intelligence effect. We conduct a laboratory experiment (67 subjects) and observe the swarm intelligence effect only if $(p_{c},n_{I})$ are chosen so that social learning is far more optimal than asocial learning.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Dynamic Compliance of Pile Group Considering Nonlinear Behavior Around Piles

Static and dynamic loading test of a foundation are carried out to obtain the behavior of a pile and a pile group. A conventional analysis based on the elastic wave theory are modified to obtain the complex rigidity of a pile group and are compared with the test results. It is shown that the analysis based on the conventional elastic wave theory are not enough to predict the dynamic behavior of piles since they do not take into account both the effect of slip and/or separation between the pile surface and the surrounding ground and the nonlinear behavior of the ground near the pile. An element to be put between the pile and surrounding ground is proposed so as to improve the analysis. The characteristics of the new element is represented as a compliance function which can be obtained from a static loading test of single pile

Copper-catalyzed direct borylation of alkyl, alkenyl and aryl halides with B(dan)

Substitutional borylation of C(sp3 or sp2)–halogen bonds with an unsymmetrical diboron [(pin)B–B(dan)] was found to proceed smoothly under copper catalysis. A variety of masked alkyl-, alkenyl- and arylboron compounds [R–B(dan)] were straightforwardly accessible with high functional group compatibility in high yield.This work was financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16H01031 in Precisely Designed Catalysts with Customized Scaffolding

Usefulness of Instructor Annotations on Flipped Learning Preparation Video System

Flipped learning is a method that flips in/out class activities to make lectures learner-centered. In flipped learning, comments from learners on preparation material are useful information for instructors to consider before deciding in-class topics. Thus, we arrive at the notion that receiving comments from instructors will be effective for learners watching the video. By including annotations from instructors, we propose to improve the quality of content for learners and thus enhance learners' motivation and study satisfaction. To achieve this, we introduced "Steering Mark," a tool that enables learners to easily grasp the overall structure of a video, to the video learning system. We examined the effectiveness and influence of Steering Mark through an experiment with 34 undergraduate learners. As a result, Steering Mark was found to be useful in improving the quality of video content for learners.Comment: The 2019 International Conference on Advanced Informatics: Concepts, Theory and Application

Full thickness macular hole case after intravitreal aflibercept treatment

BACKGROUND: The pathogenesis of macular hole formation is widely accepted as a tractional force at the vitreo-retinal interface in fovea. We report a case of macular hole after intravitreous aflibercept injection for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) associated with contraction of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) at the edge of a fibrovascular pigment epithelial detachment (PED). CASE PRESENTATION: A 94-year old man with neovascular AMD affecting his left eye accompanied by a fibrovascular PED was examined for severe vision loss. Although RPE tear in his left eye was identified before the first aflibercept intravitreous injection performed in order to treat neovascular AMD, he received three aflibercept injections as induction treatment. After induction treatment, a full thickness macular hole was identified associated with the contracted rolled RPE edge beneath the retina. CONCLUSION: Macular hole is commonly formed associated with tangential vitreous traction. Current report suggests that rapid contraction of the RPE underneath the retina can be one of the causes of a macular hole, and one of the side effects of anti-VEGF therapy for neovascular AMD

Switching Head-Tail Funnel UNITER for Dual Referring Expression Comprehension with Fetch-and-Carry Tasks

This paper describes a domestic service robot (DSR) that fetches everyday objects and carries them to specified destinations according to free-form natural language instructions. Given an instruction such as "Move the bottle on the left side of the plate to the empty chair," the DSR is expected to identify the bottle and the chair from multiple candidates in the environment and carry the target object to the destination. Most of the existing multimodal language understanding methods are impractical in terms of computational complexity because they require inferences for all combinations of target object candidates and destination candidates. We propose Switching Head-Tail Funnel UNITER, which solves the task by predicting the target object and the destination individually using a single model. Our method is validated on a newly-built dataset consisting of object manipulation instructions and semi photo-realistic images captured in a standard Embodied AI simulator. The results show that our method outperforms the baseline method in terms of language comprehension accuracy. Furthermore, we conduct physical experiments in which a DSR delivers standardized everyday objects in a standardized domestic environment as requested by instructions with referring expressions. The experimental results show that the object grasping and placing actions are achieved with success rates of more than 90%.Comment: Accepted for presentation at IROS202

Synthesis of polymethacrylate‐bearing benzocyclobutene structure and extension to networked polymer based on thermal isomerization

1‐Benzocyclobutenyl methacrylate‐bearing methacrylate (BCBMA) backbone has been synthesized, and radical polymerization of the monomer was performed by utilizing 2, 2′‐azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as initiator to result poly‐BCBMA. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement of the derived poly‐BCBMA revealed the lowering of thermal isomerization temperature from that of nonsubstituted benzocyclobutene. The thermal decomposition temperature of BCBMA before and after thermal treatment was confirmed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The results of the TGA observation did not show significant difference in both 5% and 10% weight loss temperature (Td5 and Td10). This result suggests that the thermal conversion of the poly‐BCBMA to the networked polymer take place without thermal decomposition of the main chain based on the methacrylate framework

A Novel High-Speed Electromagnetic Oscillatory Actuator With a Dual Mover for Optical Scanner Applications

In this paper, we propose a high-speed moving magnet-type oscillatory actuator in which a dual-mover structure is designed to reduce magnetic damping force. Both movers have independent resonant frequency, and the actuator is driven at the larger resonant frequency. The smaller mover serves as the optical scanning element and maintains large oscillation amplitude. The larger mover, with moving magnets, serves as the magnetic driving element and maintains relatively smaller amplitude because of the magnetic damping.ArticleIEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS. 50(11):8203504 (2014)journal articl

PICO-LON Project for WIMPs search

Highly segmented inorganic crystal has been shown to have good performance for dark matter search. The energy resolution of ultra thin and large area NaI(Tl) scintillator has been developed. The estimated sensitivity for spin-dependent excitation of 127I was discussed. The recent status of low background measurement at Oto Cosmo Observatory is reportedComment: 3 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of TAUP200