DREAM Architecture: a Developmental Approach to Open-Ended Learning in Robotics

Robots are still limited to controlled conditions, that the robot designer knows with enough details to endow the robot with the appropriate models or behaviors. Learning algorithms add some flexibility with the ability to discover the appropriate behavior given either some demonstrations or a reward to guide its exploration with a reinforcement learning algorithm. Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on the definition of state and action spaces that define reachable behaviors. Their adaptation capability critically depends on the representations of these spaces: small and discrete spaces result in fast learning while large and continuous spaces are challenging and either require a long training period or prevent the robot from converging to an appropriate behavior. Beside the operational cycle of policy execution and the learning cycle, which works at a slower time scale to acquire new policies, we introduce the redescription cycle, a third cycle working at an even slower time scale to generate or adapt the required representations to the robot, its environment and the task. We introduce the challenges raised by this cycle and we present DREAM (Deferred Restructuring of Experience in Autonomous Machines), a developmental cognitive architecture to bootstrap this redescription process stage by stage, build new state representations with appropriate motivations, and transfer the acquired knowledge across domains or tasks or even across robots. We describe results obtained so far with this approach and end up with a discussion of the questions it raises in Neuroscience

Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Drug Resistance in Dhaka Central Jail, the Largest Prison in Bangladesh

There are limited data on TB among prison inmates in Bangladesh. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), its drug resistance and risk factors in Dhaka Central Jail, the largest prison in Bangladesh.Cross sectional survey with, active screening of a total number of 11,001 inmates over a period of 2 years. Sputum samples from TB suspects were taken for acid- fast bacilli (AFB) microscopy, culture and drug susceptibility testing. (5.37, 4.02–7.16).The study results revealed a very high prevalence of TB in the prison population in Dhaka Central Jail. Entry examinations and active symptom screening among inmates are important to control TB transmission inside the prison. Identifying undiagnosed smear-negative TB cases remains a challenge to combat this deadly disease in this difficult setting

Armed conflicts have an impact on the spread of tuberculosis: the case of the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia

<p>Abstract</p> <p/> <p>A pessimistic view of the impact of armed conflicts on the control of infectious diseases has generated great interest in the role of conflicts on the global TB epidemic. Nowhere in the world is such interest more palpable than in the Horn of Africa Region, comprising Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Sudan. An expanding literature has demonstrated that armed conflicts stall disease control programs through distraction of health system, interruption of patients' ability to seek health care, and the diversion of economic resources to military ends rather than health needs. Nonetheless, until very recently, no research has been done to address the impact of armed conflict on TB epidemics in the Somali Regional State (SRS) of Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study is based on the cross-sectional data collected in 2007, utilizing structured questionnaires filled-out by a sample of 226 TB patients in the SRS of Ethiopia. Data was obtained on the delay patients experienced in receiving a diagnosis of TB, on the biomedical knowledge of TB that patients had, and the level of self-treatment by patients. The outcome variables in this study are the delay in the diagnosis of TB experienced by patients, and extent of self-treatment utilized by patients. Our main explanatory variable was place of residence, which was dichotomized as being in 'conflict zones' and in 'non-conflict zones'. Demographic data was collected for statistical control. Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests were used on calculations of group differences. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the association between outcome and predictor variables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two hundred and twenty six TB patients were interviewed. The median delay in the diagnosis of TB was 120 days and 60 days for patients from conflict zones and from non-conflict zones, respectively. Moreover, 74% of the patients residing in conflict zones undertook self-treatment prior to their diagnosis. The corresponding proportion from non-conflict zones was 45%. Fully adjusted logistic regression analysis shows that patients from conflict zones had significantly greater odds of delay (OR = 3.06; 95% CI: 1.47-6.36) and higher self treatment utilization (OR = 3.34; 95% CI: 1.56-7.12) compared to those from non-conflict zones.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Patients from conflict zones have a longer delay in receiving a diagnosis of TB and have higher levels of self treatment utilization. This suggests that access to TB care should be improved by the expansion of user friendly directly observed therapy short-course (DOTS) in the conflict zones of the region.</p

Met vlas naar een biobased economie: omgeving Enschede

Al zoekende naar hernieuwbare grondstoffen om producten te ontwikkelen wordt duidelijk dat vlas heel wat potenties biedt. Een aantal partijen in en rondom Enschede is daar alvast van overtuigd en klaar voor de volgende stap: een biobased vlascluster ontwikkelen in omgeving Enschede. Het Ministerie van Economische Zaken is enthousiast over deze ambitie en wil met dit onderzoek de partijen een steun in de rug geven om de volgende stap te maken. Concreet is het onderzoek gericht op de volgende vragen: - Is het mogelijk om een schaalsprong te maken in vlasteelt in omgeving Enschede ten behoeve van de biobased productontwikkeling in de regio? - En zo ja, welke instrumenten kunnen daartoe ingezet worden? Over deze vragen bundelt deze notitie een grote hoeveelheid van beschikbare informatie om de partijen te helpen om tot focus te komen. Ook worden aanbevelingen gemaakt over de route die bewandeld kan worden om de biobased vlascluster te realiseren, zoals welke acties en projecten gerealiseerd moeten worden, alsook welke financieringsinstrumenten beschikbaar zijn om deze acties te realiseren. Ook geven we suggesties over een organisatiestructuur die deze vlascluster kan realiseren

Making New "New AI" Friends : Designing a Social Robot for Diabetic Children from an Embodied AI Perspective

Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Robin is a cognitively and motivationally autonomous affective robot toddler with "robot diabetes" that we have developed to support perceived self-efficacy and emotional wellbeing in children with diabetes by providing them with positive mastery experiences of diabetes management in a playful but realistic and natural interaction context. Underlying the design of Robin is an "Embodied" (formerly also known as "New") Artificial Intelligence approach to robotics. In this paper we discuss the rationale behind the design of Robin to meet the needs of our intended end users (both children and medical staff), and how "New AI" provides a suitable approach to developing a friendly companion that fulfills the therapeutic and affective requirements of our end users beyond other approaches commonly used in assistive robotics and child-robot interaction. Finally, we discuss how our approach permitted our robot to interact with and provide suitable experiences of diabetes management to children with very different social interaction styles.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Adaptive model-driven user interface development systems

Adaptive user interfaces (UIs) were introduced to address some of the usability problems that plague many software applications. Model-driven engineering formed the basis for most of the systems targeting the development of such UIs. An overview of these systems is presented and a set of criteria is established to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the state-of-the-art, which is categorized under architectures, techniques, and tools. A summary of the evaluation is presented in tables that visually illustrate the fulfillment of each criterion by each system. The evaluation identified several gaps in the existing art and highlighted the areas of promising improvement

Modeling the Impact of Tuberculosis Control Strategies in Highly Endemic Overcrowded Prisons

International audienceBACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) in prisons is a major health problem in countries of high and intermediate TB endemicity such as Brazil. For operational reasons, TB control strategies in prisons cannot be compared through population based intervention studies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A mathematical model is proposed to simulate the TB dynamics in prison and evaluate the potential impact on active TB prevalence of several intervention strategies. The TB dynamics with the ongoing program was simulated over a 10 year period in a Rio de Janeiro prison (TB prevalence 4.6 %). Then, a simulation of the DOTS strategy reaching the objective of 70 % of bacteriologically-positive cases detected and 85 % of detected cases cured was performed; this strategy reduced only to 2.8% the average predicted TB prevalence after 5 years. Adding TB detection at entry point to DOTS strategy had no major effect on the predicted active TB prevalence. But, adding further a yearly X-ray mass screening of inmates reduced the predicted active TB prevalence below 1%. Furthermore, according to this model, after applying this strategy during 2 years (three annual screenings), the TB burden would be reduced and the active TB prevalence could be kept at a low level by associating X-ray screening at entry point and DOTS. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We have shown that X-ray mass screenings should be considered to control TB in highly endemic prison. Prisons with different levels of TB prevalence could be examined thanks to this model which provides a rational tool for public health deciders