Most reinforcement learning methods for dialog policy learning train a centralized agent that selects a predefined joint action concatenating domain name, intent type, and slot name. The centralized dialog agent suffers from a great many user-agent i
nteraction requirements due to the large action space. Besides, designing the concatenated actions is laborious to engineers and maybe struggled with edge cases. To solve these problems, we model the dialog policy learning problem with a novel multi-agent framework, in which each part of the action is led by a different agent. The framework reduces labor costs for action templates and decreases the size of the action space for each agent. Furthermore, we relieve the non-stationary problem caused by the changing dynamics of the environment as evolving of agents' policies by introducing a joint optimization process that makes agents can exchange their policy information. Concurrently, an independent experience replay buffer mechanism is integrated to reduce the dependence between gradients of samples to improve training efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated in a multi-domain environment with both user simulator evaluation and human evaluation.
Technologies for enhancing well-being, healthcare vigilance and monitoring are on the rise. However, despite patient interest, such technologies suffer from low adoption. One hypothesis for this limited adoption is loss of human interaction that is c
entral to doctor-patient encounters. In this paper we seek to address this limitation via a conversational agent that adopts one aspect of in-person doctor-patient interactions: A human avatar to facilitate medical grounded question answering. This is akin to the in-person scenario where the doctor may point to the human body or the patient may point to their own body to express their conditions. Additionally, our agent has multiple interaction modes, that may give more options for the patient to use the agent, not just for medical question answering, but also to engage in conversations about general topics and current events. Both the avatar, and the multiple interaction modes could help improve adherence. We present a high level overview of the design of our agent, Marie Bot Wellbeing. We also report implementation details of our early prototype , and present preliminary results.
Conversational Agents (CAs) can be a proxy for disseminating information and providing support to the public, especially in times of crisis. CAs can scale to reach larger numbers of end-users than human operators, while they can offer information int
eractively and engagingly. In this work, we present Theano, a Greek-speaking virtual assistant for COVID-19. Theano presents users with COVID-19 statistics and facts and informs users about the best health practices as well as the latest COVID-19 related guidelines. Additionally, Theano provides support to end-users by helping them self-assess their symptoms and redirecting them to first-line health workers. The relevant, localized information that Theano provides, makes it a valuable tool for combating COVID-19 in Greece. Theano has already conversed with different users in more than 170 different conversations through a web interface as a chatbot and over the phone as a voice bot.
We deal with the navigation problem where the agent follows natural language instructions while observing the environment. Focusing on language understanding, we show the importance of spatial semantics in grounding navigation instructions into visua
l perceptions. We propose a neural agent that uses the elements of spatial configurations and investigate their influence on the navigation agent's reasoning ability. Moreover, we model the sequential execution order and align visual objects with spatial configurations in the instruction. Our neural agent improves strong baselines on the seen environments and shows competitive performance on the unseen environments. Additionally, the experimental results demonstrate that explicit modeling of spatial semantic elements in the instructions can improve the grounding and spatial reasoning of the model.
Alterations of the enamel after topical application of bleaching
agents, presenting as major consequences are: ions release,
increased superficial roughness, stronger bacterial attachment
and hardness alteration.The aims of the study were to evalu
ate
the effect of the bleaching agent (35%hydrogen peroxide) for
vital teeth by using light source on the release of ions from the
enamel surface. our sample consisted of 30 sound enamel
surface for control group,30 sound enamel surface
for(35%hydrogen peroxide), and then application of light
radiation to activate the bleaching agent. Ion Chromatography
were used to measure the ions release .
Porcelain Laminate Veneers have shown promising results recently
when used as an alternative to metal ceramic restorations for the
anterior teeth. Long-term success for any restoration depends on the
marginal fit, because marginal gaps increase pl
aque accumulation
and causing periodontitis. The aim of this study was to Asses
marginal fit changes according to were curing the bond agent before
or after cementation.
foamed concrete is a concrete made by cement slurry mixed with foaming agent, so
that foamed concrete is lighter than conventional concrete. The objectives of this study is
to produce this kind of concrete, and to study some of its physical and mec
hanical
properties. Mix design of concrete was made for four required densities (1000,
1300,1600,1900 kg/m3), cement content of 350 kg/ m3, and water to cement ratio equal to
0.5. Different tests were performed to determine some properties of product concrete such
as density, compressive strength and splitting tensile strength. The results demonstrated the
possibility of production foamed concrete with wide range of density and strength. The
oven dry density of foamed concrete was in the range of (870-1773 kg/m3) , compressive
strength was in the range of (2.95-16.2 Mpa ), and the splitting strength was in the range
of (0.32-1.76Mpa).
The Contract of Paper Collection forces many of Contractual obligations on parties, and bank's customer may suffer damages because of the bank's contractual liability in this issue. Hence, it is important to determine the parties' obligations and the
scope of bank liability, since the Syrian commercial law did not regulate the codes of this contract nor the scope of banks liability .So it's necessary to discuss the provisions of the agency contract and general principles of liability in the Syrian civil law, taking into consideration the rules of banking customs
This research dealt with an identification of some problems
that confronting with Extension Agent works in Tartous province.
This research depended on a questionnaire traditional indent in
which data were collected ,through the correspondence with
a
random sample of 224 quid ,and data were analyzed statistically by
using repetition and percentages whereas the majority of the
inspected were basically suffering from lack of financial
motivations, additional wages, adequate transportation, the large
number of rurals who are required to deal with ,the lack of
requirements of the guidance work ,the lack of flexibility to do the
necessary adjustments in the guidance program, and there is so no
freedom to make decisions a pant from the managers of work
.consequently ,the study recommended a set of recommendation
which improve the vitality of guidance work in Tartous , and raise
the status of agriculture agents in front of their guidance audience.
In this study a process of dying cotton fabrics 100% was carried out
by direct dye Solophynel GLE Yellow and after that it was treated by
cationic softening agent for improving the fastness to washing and
rubbing for the fabrics which were dyed by
direct dyes .we increased
the molecular weight after absorbing it on the cellulosic fiber and the
result is decreasing the solubility of the dye in water and increasing
the fastness to washing and rubbing . and after that we carried out the washing and friction tests and evaluated the results.
