个性化的纵向疾病评估对于快速诊断，适当管理和最佳调整多发性硬化症（MS）的治疗策略至关重要。这对于识别特殊主体特异性疾病特征也很重要。在这里，我们设计了一种新型的纵向模型，以使用可能包含缺失值的传感器数据以自动化方式绘制单个疾病轨迹。首先，我们使用在智能手机上管理的基于传感器的评估来收集与步态和平衡有关的数字测量以及上肢功能。接下来，我们通过插补对待缺失的数据。然后，我们通过使用广义估计方程来发现MS的潜在标记。随后，从多个培训数据集中学到的参数被结合起来形成一个简单的，统一的纵向预测模型，以预测MS在先前看不见的MS的人中随着时间的推移。为了减轻严重疾病得分的个体的潜在低估，最终模型结合了第一天的数据。结果表明，所提出的模型有望实现个性化的纵向MS评估。他们还表明，与步态和平衡以及上肢功能有关的功能（从基于传感器的评估中远程收集）可能是预测MS随时间推移的有用数字标记。

IoT sensors, especially video cameras, are ubiquitously deployed around the world to perform a variety of computer vision tasks in several verticals including retail, healthcare, safety and security, transportation, manufacturing, etc. To amortize their high deployment effort and cost, it is desirable to perform multiple video analytics tasks, which we refer to as Analytical Units (AUs), off the video feed coming out of every camera. In this paper, we first show that in a multi-AU setting, changing the camera setting has disproportionate impact on different AUs performance. In particular, the optimal setting for one AU may severely degrade the performance for another AU, and further the impact on different AUs varies as the environmental condition changes. We then present Elixir, a system to enhance the video stream quality for multiple analytics on a video stream. Elixir leverages Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning (MORL), where the RL agent caters to the objectives from different AUs and adjusts the camera setting to simultaneously enhance the performance of all AUs. To define the multiple objectives in MORL, we develop new AU-specific quality estimator values for each individual AU. We evaluate Elixir through real-world experiments on a testbed with three cameras deployed next to each other (overlooking a large enterprise parking lot) running Elixir and two baseline approaches, respectively. Elixir correctly detects 7.1% (22,068) and 5.0% (15,731) more cars, 94% (551) and 72% (478) more faces, and 670.4% (4975) and 158.6% (3507) more persons than the default-setting and time-sharing approaches, respectively. It also detects 115 license plates, far more than the time-sharing approach (7) and the default setting (0).

We consider the problem of data classification where the training set consists of just a few data points. We explore this phenomenon mathematically and reveal key relationships between the geometry of an AI model's feature space, the structure of the underlying data distributions, and the model's generalisation capabilities. The main thrust of our analysis is to reveal the influence on the model's generalisation capabilities of nonlinear feature transformations mapping the original data into high, and possibly infinite, dimensional spaces.

将视频视为一系列图像（框架），并重新使用Deep Neur网络模型，这是一种常见的做法，这些模型仅在视频上的图像上接受图像进行培训。在本文中，我们表明，这种信念的飞跃是，在图像上运作良好的深度学习模型也将在视频上效果很好。我们表明，即使摄像机正在查看没有以任何可察觉的方式变化的场景，并且我们控制了视频压缩和环境（照明）等外部因素，视频分析应用程序的准确性也会显着波动。发生这些波动是因为摄像机产生的连续帧可能在视觉上看起来相似，但是视频分析应用程序对这些帧的看法却大不相同。我们观察到这些波动的根本原因是摄像机自动进行的动态摄像头参数更改，以捕获和生成视觉上令人愉悦的视频。摄像机无意间充当无意的对手，因为如我们所示，连续帧中图像像素值的这些微小变化对从视频分析任务中重新使用图像训练的深度学习模型的见解的准确性产生了显着不利影响。为了从相机中解决这种无意的对抗效应，我们探讨了转移学习技术通过从图像分析任务中学习的知识转移来改善视频分析任务中的学习。特别是，我们表明，我们新训练的Yolov5模型在跨帧的对象检测中减少了波动，从而可以更好地跟踪对象（跟踪中的错误少40％）。我们的论文还提供了新的方向和技术，以减轻相机对用于视频分析应用程序的深度学习模型的对抗性影响。

视频分析系统批判性地依赖于摄像机，捕获高质量的视频帧，以实现高分辨率的精度。虽然现代视频摄像机经常暴露数十个可配置的参数设置，但是可以通过最终用户设置的，但今天监控摄像机的部署通常使用固定的一组参数设置，因为最终用户缺少能够重新配置这些参数的技能或理解。在本文中，我们首先表明，在典型的监视摄像机部署中，环境条件变化可能会显着影响人员检测，面部检测和面部识别等分析单元的准确性，以及如何通过动态调整相机设置来减轻这种不利影响。然后我们提出了Camtuner，这是一个可以轻松应用于现有视频分析管道（VAP）的框架，以实现复杂相机设置的自动和动态调整，以改变环境条件，并自主优化VAP中分析单元（AU）的准确性。 Camtuner基于Sarsa加固学习（RL），它包含两种新型组件：轻量级分析质量估算器和虚拟相机。 Camtuner在一个具有轴监控摄像头的系统中实现，几个VAP（具有各种AUS），在机场入口处加工了日常客户视频。我们的评估表明Camtuner可以快速适应更改环境。我们将Camtuner与使用静态相机设置的两种替代方法进行比较，或者每小时手动更改摄像机设置的草兵方法（基于人类对质量）。我们观察到，对于面部检测和人检测AU，与两种方法中最好的相比，Camtuner分别可以获得高达13.8％和9.2％的更高的准确性（两个AUS的8％的平均提高）。

Reading comprehension of legal text can be a particularly challenging task due to the length and complexity of legal clauses and a shortage of expert-annotated datasets. To address this challenge, we introduce the Merger Agreement Understanding Dataset (MAUD), an expert-annotated reading comprehension dataset based on the American Bar Association's 2021 Public Target Deal Points Study, with over 39,000 examples and over 47,000 total annotations. Our fine-tuned Transformer baselines show promising results, with models performing well above random on most questions. However, on a large subset of questions, there is still room for significant improvement. As the only expert-annotated merger agreement dataset, MAUD is valuable as a benchmark for both the legal profession and the NLP community.

As various city agencies and mobility operators navigate toward innovative mobility solutions, there is a need for strategic flexibility in well-timed investment decisions in the design and timing of mobility service regions, i.e. cast as "real options" (RO). This problem becomes increasingly challenging with multiple interacting RO in such investments. We propose a scalable machine learning based RO framework for multi-period sequential service region design & timing problem for mobility-on-demand services, framed as a Markov decision process with non-stationary stochastic variables. A value function approximation policy from literature uses multi-option least squares Monte Carlo simulation to get a policy value for a set of interdependent investment decisions as deferral options (CR policy). The goal is to determine the optimal selection and timing of a set of zones to include in a service region. However, prior work required explicit enumeration of all possible sequences of investments. To address the combinatorial complexity of such enumeration, we propose a new variant "deep" RO policy using an efficient recurrent neural network (RNN) based ML method (CR-RNN policy) to sample sequences to forego the need for enumeration, making network design & timing policy tractable for large scale implementation. Experiments on multiple service region scenarios in New York City (NYC) shows the proposed policy substantially reduces the overall computational cost (time reduction for RO evaluation of > 90% of total investment sequences is achieved), with zero to near-zero gap compared to the benchmark. A case study of sequential service region design for expansion of MoD services in Brooklyn, NYC show that using the CR-RNN policy to determine optimal RO investment strategy yields a similar performance (0.5% within CR policy value) with significantly reduced computation time (about 5.4 times faster).

We demonstrate how efficient autonomous drone swarms can be in detecting and tracking occluded targets in densely forested areas, such as lost people during search and rescue missions. Exploration and optimization of local viewing conditions, such as occlusion density and target view obliqueness, provide much faster and much more reliable results than previous, blind sampling strategies that are based on pre-defined waypoints. An adapted real-time particle swarm optimization and a new objective function are presented that are able to deal with dynamic and highly random through-foliage conditions. Synthetic aperture sensing is our fundamental sampling principle, and drone swarms are employed to approximate the optical signals of extremely wide and adaptable airborne lenses.

Springs are efficient in storing and returning elastic potential energy but are unable to hold the energy they store in the absence of an external load. Lockable springs use clutches to hold elastic potential energy in the absence of an external load but have not yet been widely adopted in applications, partly because clutches introduce design complexity, reduce energy efficiency, and typically do not afford high-fidelity control over the energy stored by the spring. Here, we present the design of a novel lockable compression spring that uses a small capstan clutch to passively lock a mechanical spring. The capstan clutch can lock up to 1000 N force at any arbitrary deflection, unlock the spring in less than 10 ms with a control force less than 1 % of the maximal spring force, and provide an 80 % energy storage and return efficiency (comparable to a highly efficient electric motor operated at constant nominal speed). By retaining the form factor of a regular spring while providing high-fidelity locking capability even under large spring forces, the proposed design could facilitate the development of energy-efficient spring-based actuators and robots.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) mobility enables flexible and customized federated learning (FL) at the network edge. However, the underlying uncertainties in the aerial-terrestrial wireless channel may lead to a biased FL model. In particular, the distribution of the global model and the aggregation of the local updates within the FL learning rounds at the UAVs are governed by the reliability of the wireless channel. This creates an undesirable bias towards the training data of ground devices with better channel conditions, and vice versa. This paper characterizes the global bias problem of aerial FL in large-scale UAV networks. To this end, the paper proposes a channel-aware distribution and aggregation scheme to enforce equal contribution from all devices in the FL training as a means to resolve the global bias problem. We demonstrate the convergence of the proposed method by experimenting with the MNIST dataset and show its superiority compared to existing methods. The obtained results enable system parameter tuning to relieve the impact of the aerial channel deficiency on the FL convergence rate.