Multi-agent path finding (MAPF) is an essential component of many large-scale, real-world robot deployments, from aerial swarms to warehouse automation. However, despite the community's continued ...efforts, most state-of-the-art MAPF planners still rely on centralized planning and scale poorly past a few hundred agents. Such planning approaches are maladapted to realworld deployments, where noise and uncertainty often require paths be recomputed online, which is impossible when planning times are in seconds to minutes. We present PRIMAL, a novel framework for MAPF that combines reinforcement and imitation learning to teach fully decentralized policies, where agents reactively plan paths online in a partially observable world while exhibiting implicit coordination. This framework extends our previous work on distributed learning of collaborative policies by introducing demonstrations of an expert MAPF planner during training, as well as careful reward shaping and environment sampling. Once learned, the resulting policy can be copied onto any number of agents and naturally scales to different team sizes and world dimensions. We present results on randomized worlds with up to 1024 agents and compare success rates against state-of-the-art MAPF planners. Finally, we experimentally validate the learned policies in a hybrid simulation of a factory mockup, involving both real world and simulated robots.
The infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) G11.11−0.12 and G28.34+0.06 are two of the best-studied IRDCs in our Galaxy. These two clouds host clumps at different stages of evolution, including a massive dense ...clump in both clouds that is dark even at 70 and 100 μm. Such seemingly quiescent massive dense clumps have been speculated to harbor cores that are precursors of high-mass stars and clusters. We observed these two “prestellar” regions at 1 mm with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) with the aim of characterizing the nature of such cores. We show that the clumps fragment into several low- to high-mass cores within the filamentary structure of the enveloping cloud. However, while the overall physical properties of the clump may indicate a starless phase, we find that both regions host multiple outflows. The most massive core though 70 μm dark in both clumps is clearly associated with compact outflows. Such low-luminosity, massive cores are potentially the earliest stage in the evolution of a massive protostar. We also identify several outflow features distributed in the large environment around the most massive core. We infer that these outflows are being powered by young, low-mass protostars whose core mass is below our detection limit. These findings suggest that low-mass protostars have already formed or are coevally formed at the earliest phase of high-mass star formation.
We present a global simulation of tropospheric iodine chemistry within the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. This includes organic and inorganic iodine sources, standard gas-phase iodine chemistry, ...and simplified higher iodine oxide (I2OX, X = 2, 3, 4) chemistry, photolysis, deposition, and parametrized heterogeneous reactions. In comparisons with recent iodine oxide (IO) observations, the simulation shows an average bias of ∼ +90 % with available surface observations in the marine boundary layer (outside of polar regions), and of ∼ +73 % within the free troposphere (350 hPa < p < 900 hPa) over the eastern Pacific. Iodine emissions (3.8 Tg yr−1) are overwhelmingly dominated by the inorganic ocean source, with 76 % of this emission from hypoiodous acid (HOI). HOI is also found to be the dominant iodine species in terms of global tropospheric IY burden (contributing up to 70 %). The iodine chemistry leads to a significant global tropospheric O3 burden decrease (9.0 %) compared to standard GEOS-Chem (v9-2). The iodine-driven OX loss rate1 (748 Tg OX yr−1) is due to photolysis of HOI (78 %), photolysis of OIO (21 %), and reaction between IO and BrO (1 %). Increases in global mean OH concentrations (1.8 %) by increased conversion of hydroperoxy radicals exceeds the decrease in OH primary production from the reduced O3 concentration. We perform sensitivity studies on a range of parameters and conclude that the simulation is sensitive to choices in parametrization of heterogeneous uptake, ocean surface iodide, and I2OX (X = 2, 3, 4) photolysis. The new iodine chemistry combines with previously implemented bromine chemistry to yield a total bromine- and iodine-driven tropospheric O3 burden decrease of 14.4 % compared to a simulation without iodine and bromine chemistry in the model, and a small increase in OH (1.8 %). This is a significant impact and so halogen chemistry needs to be considered in both climate and air quality models. 1 Here OX is defined as O3 + NO2 + 2NO3 + PAN + PMN+PPN + HNO4 + 3N2O5 + HNO3 + BrO + HOBr + BrNO2+2BrNO3 + MPN + IO + HOI + INO2 + 2INO3 + 2OIO+2I2O2 + 3I2O3 + 4I2O4, where PAN = peroxyacetyl nitrate, PPN = peroxypropionyl nitrate, MPN = methyl peroxy nitrate, and MPN = peroxymethacryloyl nitrate.
Objectives
The present analysis is a replication of previous findings presenting first evidence of an association between body mass index (BMI) and autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity as measured ...by heart rate variability (HRV), in healthy non-obese adults.
Design
A total of fifty-nine apparently healthy male (M) and female (F) individuals (M/F = 15/44) were included in the trial. HRV data for analysis was derived from 5 minutes of baseline recordings, while the subject was sitting on a comfortable chair. Subjects’ body measures (weight and height) were taken and BMI was obtained according to common calculation (kg/m
2
).
Results
BMI was inversely related to pNN50 and RMSSD components of HRV. Statistically significant differences between stratified groups (BMI<20, BMI 20–25, BMI >25) only occurred for analysis of pNN50 components. The pNN50 components and RMSSD are strongly associated with cardiac vagal influence, and thus represents parasympathetic activity.
Conclusions
The present data supports previous findings, that sympatho-vagal balance is related to BMI in non-obese, healthy individuals, providing evidence for a prominent role of the vagus nerve in the modulation of the energy expenditure of the human organism. Furthermore, this relation can be observed in short term recordings of HRV of 5 minutes in length.
Mutex propagation is a form of efficient constraint propagation popularly used in AI planning to tightly approximate the reachable states from a given state. We utilize this idea in the context of ...Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF). When adapted to MAPF, mutex propagation provides stronger constraints for conflict resolution in CBS, a popular optimal search-based MAPF algorithm, as well as in MDD-SAT, an optimal satisfiability-based MAPF algorithm. Mutex propagation provides CBS with the ability to break symmetries in MAPF and provides MDD-SAT with the ability to make stronger inferences than unit propagation. While existing work identifies a limited form of symmetries and requires the manual design of symmetry-breaking constraints, mutex propagation is more general and allows for the automated design of symmetry-breaking constraints. Our experimental results show that CBS with mutex propagation is capable of outperforming CBSH-RCT, a state-of-the-art variant of CBS, with respect to the success rate. We also show that MDD-SAT with mutex propagation often performs better than MDD-SAT with respect to the success rate.
Background
Reactivity of the autonomic nervous system to experimental pain stimuli has been extensively studied using measures of heart rate and blood pressure. Heart rate variability (HRV) attempts ...to tease out the relative contributions of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity in the autonomic control of the heart and may therefore be more appropriate to investigate autonomic response to short‐term nociceptive stimulation in detail. The current evidence on HRV and experimentally induced pain has not yet been synthesized within a systematic review.
Method
English articles indexed in PubMed, EMBASE, Psyndex, PsycINFO, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library were reviewed for eligibility under pre‐specified inclusion criteria. Studies were included when they reported empirical work on autonomic response (specifically, HRV) to experimentally induced pain in healthy adults. The method of pain induction, the methodological features of HRV analysis (time domain and frequency domain measures), as well as pain and HRV‐related findings were derived from the studies.
Results
The search revealed a total of 20 publications eligible for inclusion. Key results demonstrate an increase in sympathetic‐baroreflex activity and a decrease in vagal‐parasympathetic activity as reflected by changes in frequency domain measures of HRV.
Conclusion
HRV has several advantages compared to other measures of autonomic reactivity in studies investigating physiological response to nociceptive stimulation. Future studies should focus on comparisons between different methods of pain induction, interindividual variability in pain sensitivity by baseline autonomic activity, and the implications of both on the use of HRV within routine clinical evaluations.
Graphene is known as an atomically thin, transparent, highly electrically and thermally conductive, light-weight, and the strongest 2D material. We investigate disruptive application of graphene as a ...target of laser-driven ion acceleration. We develop large-area suspended graphene (LSG) and by transferring graphene layer by layer we control the thickness with precision down to a single atomic layer. Direct irradiations of the LSG targets generate MeV protons and carbons from sub-relativistic to relativistic laser intensities from low contrast to high contrast conditions without plasma mirror, evidently showing the durability of graphene.
Injection of iodine to the stratosphere Saiz-Lopez, A.; Baidar, S.; Cuevas, C. A. ...
Geophysical research letters,
28 August 2015, Letnik:
42, Številka:
16
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We report a new estimation of the injection of iodine into the stratosphere based on novel daytime (solar zenith angle < 45°) aircraft observations in the tropical tropopause layer and a global ...atmospheric model with the most recent knowledge about iodine photochemistry. The results indicate that significant levels of total reactive iodine (0.25–0.7 parts per trillion by volume), between 2 and 5 times larger than the accepted upper limits, can be injected into the stratosphere via tropical convective outflow. At these iodine levels, modeled iodine catalytic cycles account for up to 30% of the contemporary ozone loss in the tropical lower stratosphere and can exert a stratospheric ozone depletion potential equivalent to, or even larger than, that of very short‐lived bromocarbons. Therefore, we suggest that iodine sources and chemistry need to be considered in assessments of the historical and future evolution of the stratospheric ozone layer.
Key Points
Injection of iodine to the stratosphere can be 2 to 5 times larger than accepted upper limits
Iodine catalytic cycles could account for up to 30% of ozone loss in the tropical lower stratosphere
Iodine‐mediated depletion of stratospheric ozone can be comparable to that of VSL bromocarbons
The authors present an overview of a hierarchical framework for coordinating task- and motion-level operations in multirobot systems. Their framework is based on the idea of using simple temporal ...networks to simultaneously reason about precedence/causal constraints required for task-level coordination and simple temporal constraints required to take some kinematic constraints of robots into account. In the plan-generation phase, the framework provides a computationally scalable method for generating plans that achieve high-level tasks for groups of robots and take some of their kinematic constraints into account. In the plan-execution phase, the framework provides a method for absorbing an imperfect plan execution to avoid time-consuming re-planning in many cases. The authors use the multirobot path-planning problem as a case study to present the key ideas behind their framework for the long-term autonomy of multirobot systems.
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