Accurate characterization of spatial patterns and temporal variations in dryland vegetation is great importance for improving our understanding terrestrial ecosystem functioning under changing climates. Here, we explored the spatiotemporal variability phenology using satellite-observed Solar-Induced chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) along North Australian Tropical T...

According to Global Climate Models (GCMs) the occurrence of extreme events of precipitation will be more frequent in the future. Therefore, important challenges arise regarding climate variability, which are mainly related to the understanding of ecosystem responses to changes in precipitation patterns. Previous studies have found that Above-ground Net Primary Productivity (ANPP) was positively...

The computation required for sensing and processing perceptual information can impose significant burdens on personal computer systems. We explore several policies for selective perception in SEER, a multimodal system for recognizing office activity that relies on a cascade of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) named Layered Hidden Markov Model (LHMMs). We use LHMMs to diagnose states of a user’s acti...

Cell invasion is a tightly controlled process occurring during development and tumor progression. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans serves as a genetic model to study cell invasion during normal development. In the third larval stage, the anchor cell in the somatic gonad first induces and then invades the adjacent epidermal vulval precursor cells. The homolog of the Evi-1 oncogene, egl-43, is...

Von Recklinghausen neurofibromatosis (NF1) is one of the most common inherited human disorders. The genetic locus that harbors the mutation(s) responsible for NF1 is near the centromere of chromosome 17, within band q11.2. Translocation breakpoints that have been found in this region in two patients with NF1 provide physical landmarks and suggest an approach to identifying the NF1 gene. As part...

We propose empirical dynamic programming algorithms for Markov decision processes (MDPs). In these algorithms, the exact expectation in the Bellman operator in classical value iteration is replaced by an empirical estimate to get ‘empirical value iteration’ (EVI). Policy evaluation and policy improvement in classical policy iteration are also replaced by simulation to get ‘empirical policy iter...