Estimating the gradient of a given function (with or without noise) is often an important part of problems in reinforcement learning, optimization and manifold learning. In reinforcement learning, policy-gradient methods are used to obtain an unbiased estimator for the gradient. The policy parameters are then updated with increments proportional to the estimated gradient [27]. The objective is to learn a locally optimum policy. REINFORCE and PGPE methods (policy gradients with parameter-based exploration) are popular instances of this approach (See [35] for details and comparisons, [13] for a survey on policy gradient methods in the context of actor-critic algorithms).

We study the issue of PAC-Bayesian domain adaptation: We want to learn, from a source domain, a majority vote model dedicated to a target one. Our theoretical contribution brings a new perspective by deriving an upper-bound on the target risk where the distributions' divergence-- expressed as a ratio--controls the tradeoff between a source error measure and the target voters' disagreement. Our bound suggests that one has to focus on regions where the source data is informative. From this result, we derive a PAC-Bayesian generalization bound, and specialize it to linear classifiers. Then, we infer a learning algorithm and perform experiments on real data.

Unstructured data refers to information that does not have a predefined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Loosely speaking, unstructured data refers to text data that is generated by humans. In after-sales service businesses, there are two main sources of unstructured data: customer complaints, which generally describe symptoms, and technician comments, which outline diagnostics and treatment information. A legitimate customer complaint can eventually be tracked to a failure or a claim. However, there is a delay between the time of a customer complaint and the time of a failure or a claim. A proactive strategy aimed at analyzing customer complaints for symptoms can help service providers detect reliability problems in advance and initiate corrective actions such as recalls. This paper introduces essential text mining concepts in the context of reliability analysis and a method to detect emerging reliability issues. The application of the method is illustrated using a case study.

Last month, scientists unveiled a tiny robot that swims using rat heart cells. Now, researchers from Case Western Reserve University have revealed a "biohybrid" robot of their own, except this one runs on slug. The robot was constructed from a harvested sea slug mouth muscle and a two–inch 3–D printed skeleton. When given electric shocks, the bot springs to life and crawls. The tiny muscle belongs to the Aplysia californica, a durable California sea slug also known as a sea hare.

The Republican National Convention already seems to have solidified its position as the most dramatic political event in recent memory -- and yes, that's saying a lot. From accusations of plagiarism to a speaker lineup that reads more like a who's who of reality television than the American political system, there's a lot to cover at the 2016 RNC. And at both the Washington Post and Buzzfeed, some of that coverage is coming from bots. While the two publications may seem like rather dissimilar outlets with disparate readerships, both seem to have recognized the value in utilizing bot technology to cover the highly buzzed-about convention. The Washington Post's bot will work with Twitter and Double Robotics, to provide a live stream of the goings-on in Cleveland by way of Periscope. Moreover, readers (or rather, viewers) will be able to ask questions about the convention through a Periscope chat.

Many people spend their childhood peering up into the vast expanse of the sky, dreaming of growing up to become an astronaut. But these dreams could be dashed as the idea of people venturing into space will one day become a distant memory, according to a report published today. Robots will eventually have enough capabilities to replace humans and other animals on space missions, experts have said. Robots will eventually have enough capabilities to replace humans and other animals on space missions, experts have said. Russia is planning to send robots to the ISS to do jobs that are too dangerous for astronauts.

A clash between European Union bureaucracy and artificial intelligence is a plot worthy of a cyberpunk thriller. It will take place in real life in 2018, once some European data protection laws, passed earlier this year, go into effect. And, though we might instinctively be tempted to endorse progress over regulation, the EU is on the side of the angels in this battle. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation and a separate directive contain provisions to protect people against decisions made automatically by algorithms. "The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her," is how the regulation puts it.

LONDON: As you're choking down your latest serving of Trump Clinton Brexit Racism Terrorism Wealth Gap Climate Change Casserole, you could use some good news. Let's start with The Inevitable, the new best-seller by Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine some 20 years ago and one of our wisest technological prognosticators. "This is the moment that folks in the future will look back at and say, 'Oh to have been alive and well back then!'" Kelly writes. "There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside than now. In the mid-2010s, we're getting the first sneak peeks at a bouquet of technologies that can vastly improve the lives of most people on the planet and solve some of our hardest problems – even climate change.

In a village in western Africa, a tsetse fly bites a human, injecting a swarm of the deadly sleeping sickness-causing parasite Trypanosoma brucei into the bloodstream. Once inside its human host, the parasite spreads through the body, rapidly using its flexible flagellum to propel itself, eventually hiding the structure inside its body to evade the host's immune system once it is safely ensconced. Imagine a swarm of microscopic bots that mimics Trypanosoma brucei's behavior. In this case, though, instead of killing their hosts, the bots are designed to circulate through the bloodstream to perform highly-targeted drug deliveries and carry out invasive and delicate surgeries that may otherwise be too risky to perform. This is what a team of scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) are working toward.

The debate over which biscuit is best for dunking normally comes down to a matter of personal taste. But the more practical question of which can soak up the most tea without crumbling into the cup has been subjected to the more exacting scrutiny of science. Ten types of biscuit, ranging from Fortnum & Mason pistachio and clotted cream to children's favourite Fox's Party Rings, were dunked to see how long each lasted before losing'structural integrity' – science speak for how long before they crumbled. In a separate test, the amount of tea each could absorb in 15 seconds was measured. The winner was the McVitie's Rich Tea with nine points out of a maximum ten – holding together for an impressive ten minutes before starting to disintegrate, according to Wired.