Learning Symbolic Models of Stochastic Domains

In this article, we work towards the goal of developing agents that can learn to act in complex worlds. We develop a probabilistic, relational planning rule representation that compactly models noisy, nondeterministic action effects, and show how such rules can be effectively learned. Through experiments in simple planning domains and a 3D simulated blocks world with realistic physics, we demonstrate that this learning algorithm allows agents to effectively model world dynamics

WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY IN BYRAMANGALA LAKE WATER AND SURROUNDING GROUND WATER

A study was carried out to find out the water quality of Byramangala lake of Ramanagara district. The water quality of Byramangala lake water and ground water from bore wells situated in the area within 600 meters surrounding the lake was analyzed. The quality analysis of various parameters such as BODs, COD, DO, E-Coli, and pH, Total Dissolved Solids, Total Suspended Solids and Total Hardness were tested. In addition, the presence of metals such as Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Lead (Pb), and Iron (Fe) in the lake water and ground water samples were tested. Results for the various tests conducted showed similar trends for both lake water and ground water. It was observed that certain parameters such as BOD5, and COD were beyond permissible limits as per the BIS standards for drinking water. A few remedial measures have been proposed that may help in mitigating the pollution in the selected project area Byramangala Lake

Efficient name disambiguation in digital libraries

In digital libraries, ambiguous author names occur due to the existence of multiple authors with the same name or different name variations for the same person. Most of the previous works to solve this issue also known as name disambiguation often employ hierarchal clustering approaches based on information inside the citation records, e.g. co-authors and publication titles. In this paper, we propose an approach that can effectively identify and retrieve information from web pages and use the information to disambiguate authors. Initially, we implement a web pages identification model by using a neural network classifier and traffic rank. Considering those records can not be found directly in personal pages, we then enhance the model to handle such case during the clustering process with performance improvement. We examine our approach on a subset of digital library records and the result is reasonable effective

Susceptibility of Hermansky-Pudlak Mice to Bleomycin-Induced Type II Cell Apoptosis and Fibrosis

Pulmonary inflammation, abnormalities in type II cell and macrophage morphology, and pulmonary fibrosis are features of Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS), a recessive disorder associated with intracellular trafficking defects. We have previously reported that “Pearl” (HPS2) and “Pale Ear” (HPS1) mouse models have pulmonary inflammatory dysregulation and constitutive alveolar macrophage (AM) activation (Young LR et al., J Immunol 2006;176:4361–4368). In the current study, we used these HPS models to investigate mechanisms of lung fibrosis. Unchallenged HPS1 and HPS2 mice have subtle airspace enlargement and foamy AMs, but little or no histologic evidence of lung fibrosis. Seven days after intratracheal bleomycin (0.025 units), HPS1 and HPS2 mice exhibited increased mortality and diffuse pulmonary fibrosis compared to strain-matched C57BL/6J wild-type (WT) mice. HPS mice had significantly increased collagen deposition, and reduced quasi-static and static compliance consistent with a restrictive defect. The early airway and parenchymal cellular inflammatory responses to bleomycin were similar in HPS2 and WT mice. Greater elevations in levels of TGF-β and IL-12p40 were produced in the lungs and AMs from bleomycin-challenged HPS mice than in WT mice. TUNEL staining revealed apoptosis of type II cells as early as 5 h after low-dose bleomycin challenge in HPS mice, suggesting that type II cell susceptibility to apoptosis may play a role in the fibrotic response. We conclude that the trafficking abnormalities in HPS promote alveolar apoptosis and pulmonary fibrosis in response to bleomycin challenge