Dot-to-Dot: Explainable Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation

Robotic systems are ever more capable of automation and fulfilment of complex tasks, particularly with reliance on recent advances in intelligent systems, deep learning and artificial intelligence. However, as robots and humans come closer in their interactions, the matter of interpretability, or explainability of robot decision-making processes for the human grows in importance. A successful interaction and collaboration will only take place through mutual understanding of underlying representations of the environment and the task at hand. This is currently a challenge in deep learning systems. We present a hierarchical deep reinforcement learning system, consisting of a low-level agent handling the large actions/states space of a robotic system efficiently, by following the directives of a high-level agent which is learning the high-level dynamics of the environment and task. This high-level agent forms a representation of the world and task at hand that is interpretable for a human operator. The method, which we call Dot-to-Dot, is tested on a MuJoCo-based model of the Fetch Robotics Manipulator, as well as a Shadow Hand, to test its performance. Results show efficient learning of complex actions/states spaces by the low-level agent, and an interpretable representation of the task and decision-making process learned by the high-level agent

The Animal-AI Olympics

The past decade has seen great progress in artificial intelligence (AI). Machines can now categorize and generate images, make complex physical and social inferences, and reach, or exceed, human performance in many games. However, the long-term goal of recreating human-like general intelligence remains out of reach and some argue that a radical change in approach is needed

Defending the genome from the enemy within:mechanisms of retrotransposon suppression in the mouse germline

The viability of any species requires that the genome is kept stable as it is transmitted from generation to generation by the germ cells. One of the challenges to transgenerational genome stability is the potential mutagenic activity of transposable genetic elements, particularly retrotransposons. There are many different types of retrotransposon in mammalian genomes, and these target different points in germline development to amplify and integrate into new genomic locations. Germ cells, and their pluripotent developmental precursors, have evolved a variety of genome defence mechanisms that suppress retrotransposon activity and maintain genome stability across the generations. Here, we review recent advances in understanding how retrotransposon activity is suppressed in the mammalian germline, how genes involved in germline genome defence mechanisms are regulated, and the consequences of mutating these genome defence genes for the developing germline

Artificial Intelligence and the Common Sense of Animals

The problem of common sense remains a major obstacle to progress in artificial intelligence. Here, we argue that common sense in humans is founded on a set of basic capacities that are possessed by many other animals, capacities pertaining to the understanding of objects, space, and causality. The field of animal cognition has developed numerous experimental protocols for studying these capacities and, thanks to progress in deep reinforcement learning (RL), it is now possible to apply these methods directly to evaluate RL agents in 3D environments. Besides evaluation, the animal cognition literature offers a rich source of behavioural data, which can serve as inspiration for RL tasks and curricula

The Animal-AI Testbed and Competition

[EN] Modern machine learning systems are still lacking in the kind of general intelligence and common sense reasoning found, not only in humans, but across the animal kingdom. Many animals are capable of solving seemingly simple tasks such as inferring object location through object persistence and spatial elimination, and navigating efficiently in out-of-distribution novel environments. Such tasks are difficult for AI, but provide a natural stepping stone towards the goal of more complex human-like general intelligence. The extensive literature on animal cognition provides methodology and experimental paradigms for testing such abilities but, so far, these experiments have not been translated en masse into an AI-friendly setting. We present a new testbed, Animal-AI, first released as part of the Animal-AI Olympics competition at NeurIPS 2019, which is a comprehensive environment and testing paradigm for tasks inspired by animal cognition. In this paper we outline the environment, the testbed, the results of the competition, and discuss the open challenges for building and testing artificial agents capable of the kind of nonverbal common sense reasoning found in many non-human animals.This work was supported by the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, LeverhulmeTrust, under Grant RC-2015-067.Crosby, M.; Beyret, B.; Shanahan, M.; Hernández-Orallo, J.; Cheke, L.; Halina, M. (2020). The Animal-AI Testbed and Competition. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research. 123:164-176. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/176140S16417612

The analyzed of Mehmed Emȋn Sabrȋ

Eski Türk edebiyatında birçok çeviri yapılmasına rağmen tahlil alanında yapılan çalışmalar kısıtlı kalmıştır. Bu tahlil çalışmalarına ek olacak bir eser de Mehmet Emin Sabrȋ Divanı’nın tahlilidir. Tahliller aracılığı ile divanlarda anlatılmak istenenler daha anlaşılır bir duruma gelmektedir. Bu tez çalışması ile Mehmet Emin Sabrȋ’nin divan edebiyatına katkısı, yeri ve önemi incelenmiştir. Divanda bulunan şiirlere konu olan unsurların nasıl işlendiği tespit edilmiş olup dört ana başlık altında örneklerle açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. İncelenen bu tezde amaç Divan Edebiyatına konu olan unsurların nasıl işlendiğini belirtmek ve tahlil çalışmalarına katkıda bulunmaktır.Although many translations were done in the old Turkish literature, the studies in the field of analysis remained limited. One of the works that will be added to this analysis is the analysis of Mehmet Emin Sabrȋ Divanı. What is meant in the divans through the assays is becoming clearer. In this thesis, Mehmet Emin Sabrȋ Divan’s contribution, place and importance to divan literature were examined. It has been determined how the elements that are subject to the poems in the Divan are processed and explained with the examples under four main headings. In this thesis, the aim of this thesis is to explain how the subjects of Divan Literature are processed and to contribute to the analysis studies

Püriten köleciliğinin din ile meşrulaştırılması; on yedinci- erken on sekizinci yüzyıl New England`ında dinin köleciliği, Siyahi ve Kızılderili yaşamlarını nasıl şekillendirdiği

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-69).This study examines the role of religion in the participation of Puritan societies in Trans-Atlantic slavery, specifically focusing on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The study will investigate the theological justifications used by religious leaders like John Winthrop to support slavery, and the role of religion in shaping the treatment of enslaved people in Puritan communities and then the treatment of the freed Natives and Blacks. The research will be based on the examination of colonial archives, court cases, and letters, as well as key historical texts such as John Winthrop's "A Modell of Christian Charity" and recent works on the period’ slavery like Wendy Warren's New England Bound. The study will also explore the relationship between religion, wealth, and slavery in Puritan societies, and how religious beliefs about wealth and salvation influenced the participation in the slave trade. Then continue on with how the lucrative business of slavery gave power and a sense of freedom to colonies and lead to a charter where the Crown took the authority back. The research will investigate the role of religion in enabling and shaping the practice of slavery in Puritan societies and provide a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between religion and slavery in colonial America by linking religious history with Trans-Atlantic slavery.by Ece Beyre

Function of the Mouse PIWI Proteins and Biogenesis of Their piRNAs in the Male Germline

<p>PIWI proteins belong to an evolutionary conserved protein family as the sister sub-family of ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins. While AGO proteins are functionally well-characterized and shown to mediate small-RNA guided gene regulation, the function of PIWI proteins remain elusive. Here we pursued functional characterization of PIWI proteins by studying MILI and MIWI, two PIWI proteins in the mouse.</p><p>We first show that both MIWI and MILI co-immunoprecipitate with a novel class of non-coding small RNAs from the post-natal mouse testis extract, which are named Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs). Our cloning efforts identified thousands of different piRNA sequences, mostly derived from intergenic regions. Interestingly, both MILI and MIWI piRNAs correspond to the same regions on the genome and differ primarily in length. We propose piRNAs in the adult testis are produced by the processing of long, single stranded RNA precursors, based on the observation that piRNAs originate in clusters from a number of sites on the genome in a head-to-tail homology. In support, we bioinformatically predicted putative promoters, and yeast one hybrid analysis on two such regions found out that they interact with Krueppel C2H2 type zinc finger transcription factors. We did not observe the features of the "ping-pong" mechanism in their biogenesis: Both MILI and MIWI piRNAs are biased for 5` Uracil without an Adenine bias on the 10th nucleotide position, and do not significantly consist of sequences complementary to each other along their first 10nt. Moreover, MILI piRNAs are not down-regulated in Miwi-/- testis. These results indicate that the post-natal testicular piRNAs are produced independent of the ping-pong mechanism. </p><p>Although piRNAs are highly complex, PAGE and in situ analyses showed that piRNAs are germ cell-specific with predominant expression in spermatocytes and round spermatids, suggestive of a meiotic function. Correspondingly, we found that Miwi-/-; Mili-/- mice undergo only male infertility with terminal spermatogenic arrest during meiosis. piRNAs show a nucleo-cytoplasmic distribution, with enrichment in the chromatoid and dense bodies, two male germ cell-specific structures. The dense body has been implicated in synapsis and in the heterochromatinization of the sex chromosomes during male meiosis, a process known as meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). Our histological analysis on Miwi-/-; Mili-/- testes showed that, while the overall synapsis is not affected, the sex chromosomes retain the euchromatin marker acetyl-H4K16 and lacks the heterochromatin marker H3K9-dimethyl. These observations indicate that murine PIWI proteins are necessary for MSCI. Moreover, we identified piRNA production from the X chromosome before MSCI, and propose PIWI proteins utilize piRNAs to target and silence unpaired chromosomal regions during meiosis.</p>Dissertatio