Evolving GANs: When Contradictions Turn into Compliance

Limited availability of labeled-data makes any supervised learning problem challenging. Alternative learning settings like semi-supervised and universum learning alleviate the dependency on labeled data, but still require a large amount of unlabeled data, which may be unavailable or expensive to acquire. GAN-based synthetic data generation methods have recently shown promise by generating synthetic samples to improve task at hand. However, these samples cannot be used for other purposes. In this paper, we propose a GAN game which provides improved discriminator accuracy under limited data settings, while generating realistic synthetic data. This provides the added advantage that now the generated data can be used for other similar tasks. We provide the theoretical guarantees and empirical results in support of our approach.Comment: Generative Adversarial Networks, Universum Learning, Semi-Supervised Learnin

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

FPGA Based Low Cost JTOL & BER Platform for Receiver Characterization of A High Speed Serial Link PHY

In the field of VLSI there has always been three main factors of concern i.e. Cost, Area, Speed. In High Speed applications with the increase in data rates there is always an issue surrounding the Signal Integrity of the signal being transmitted and received across the receiver side. At high frequencies there are possibilities of the data being transferred is not a pure signal but a jittered one with some Error Rate. In the industries Receiver Characterization is based on loopback methodology which involves the utilization of some High end Instruments which is costly and also Time to market is more for it. Today, FPGAs have had an increased use of dedicated communication interface links. Bit error rate (BER) estimation plays a critical role in evaluating performance of any digital design system.BER testing is a very time consuming process when it comes to software simulations and instrumentation. Hardware platform for BER evaluation is costly. To meet these challenges, this thesis presents an approach for BER estimation in FPGAs, wherein Jitter is injected into the data stream internally in FPGA through its Delay Chain mechanism.USB 2.0 PHY is the device under test at the receiver side. We present through case studies, Simulations, Hardware implementation in FPGA showcases that this BER estimation methodology possesses benefits with regards to Speed, Cost and Time to Market