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All Publications (sorted by year)
S. Maleki, T. Rahwan, S. Ghosh, A. Malibari, D. Alghazzawi, A. Rogers, H. Beigy, N. Jennings (2020). "The Shapley Value for a Fair Division of Group Discounts for Coordinating Cooling Loads". PLOS ONE. Publisher: Public Library of Science.
M. Waniek, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2020). "Hiding in Multilayer Networks". In Proceedings of the 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in New York, USA. Acceptance rate 21%.
T. Wąs, M. Waniek, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak (2020). "The Manipulability of Centrality Measures - An Axiomatic Approach". In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Auckland, New Zealand. Acceptance rate 23%.
F. Ishowo-Oloko, J. Bonnefon, Z. Soroye, J. Crandall, I. Rahwan, T. Rahwan (2019). "Behavioural Evidence for a Transparency-Efficiency Tradeoff in Human-Machine Cooperation" Nature Machine Intelligence. Publisher: Nature Research, 1(11), 517-521. The paper made the cover of the November issue.
M. Waniek, K. Zhou, Y. Vorobeychik, E. Moro, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2019). "How to Hide One's Relationships from Link Prediction Algorithms". Scientific Reports. Publisher: Nature Research. Media coverage: El País Technología.
B. AlShebli, O.Skibski, M. Wooldridge, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2019). "A Measure of Added Value in Groups". ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. 13(4), 18. Publisher: ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).
O. Skibski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Yokoo (2019). "Attachment Centrality: Measure for Connectivity in Networks". Artificial Intelligence. 274. Pages 151--179. Publisher: Elsevier.
O. Skibski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge (2019). "Enumerating Connected Subgraphs and Computing the Myerson and Shapley Values in Graph-restricted Games". ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology. 10(2), 15. Publisher: ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). The appendix is available here.
G. Raman, J. Peng, T. Rahwan (2019). "Manipulating Residents' Behavior to Attack the Urban Power Distribution System". IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 15(10), 5575-5587. Publisher: IEEE.
T. Was, T. Rahwan, O. Skibski (2019). "Random Walk Decay Centrality". In Proceedings of the 33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Acceptance rate 16%.
K. Zhou, T. Michalak, M. Waniek, T. Rahwan, Y. Vorobeychik (2019). "Attacking Similarity-Based Link Prediction in Social Networks". In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Montreal, Canada. Acceptance rate 24%.
B. AlShebli, T. Rahwan, W. Woon (2018). "The Preeminence of Ethnic Diversity in Scientific Collaborations". Nature Communications. Publisher: Nature Research. Media coverage: Nature News, Physics World.
M. Waniek, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge, T. Rahwan (2018). "Hiding Individuals and Communities in a Social Network". Nature Human Behaviour. Publisher: Nature Research. Selected media coverage: Vice's Motherboard.
O. Skibski, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2018). "Axiomatic Characterization of Game-Theoretic Centrality". Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. 62. Pages: 33-68. Publisher: AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence).
L. Kotthoff, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, H. Hoos, K. Leyton-Brown (2018). "Quantifying Algorithmic Improvements over Time". In Proceedings of the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI (Special Track on the Evolution of the Contours of AI), in Stockholm, Sweden. Acceptance rate 23%.
M. Oudah, T. Rahwan, T. Crandall, J. Crandall (2018). "How AI Wins Friends and Influences People in Repeated Games with Cheap Talk". In Proceedings of the 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in New Orleans, USA. Acceptance rate 25%.
M. Aftab, C. Chen, C. Chau, T. Rahwan (2017). "Automatic HVAC control with real-time occupancy recognition and simulation-guided model predictive control in low-cost embedded system". Energy and Buildings. Volume: 154. Pages: 141--156. Publisher: Elsevier.
F. Jahedpari, T. Rahwan, S. Hashemi, T. Michalak, M. De Vos, J. Padget, W. L. Woon (2017). "Online Prediction via Artificial Continuous Prediction Markets". IEEE Intelligent Systems. 32(1). Pages 61--68. Publisher: IEEE.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, M. Wooldridge (2017). "Strategic Social Network Analysis". In Proceedings of the 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in San Francisco, USA. Senior Member track. According to the conference's website:
The Senior Member track is "open to researchers who have acquired an international recognition, and have established a significant publication record of [Artificial Intelligence]-related research", to present a "well-developed body of research, an important new research area, or a promising new topic".
O. Skibski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak (2017). "Axiomatic Characterization of Game-Theoretic Network Centralities". In Proceedings of the 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in San Francisco, USA. Acceptance rate 25%.
M. Waniek, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, M. Wooldridge (2017). "On the Construction of Covert Networks". In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Acceptance rate 26%.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, E. Elkind, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2016). "A Hybrid Exact Algorithm for Complete Set Partitioning". Artificial Intelligence. 230. Pages 14--40. Publisher: Elsevier.
P. Szczepanski, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2016). "Efficient Algorithms for Game-Theoretic Betweenness Centrality". Artificial Intelligence. 231. Pages 39--63. Publisher: Elsevier.
O. Skibski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Yokoo (2016). "Attachment Centrality: An Axiomatic Approach to Connectivity in Networks". In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Singapore. Acceptance rate 25%.
M. Tarkowski, P. Szczepanski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge (2016). "Closeness Centrality for Networks with Overlapping Community Structure". In Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Phoenix, USA. Acceptance rate 26%.
A. Frechette, L. Kotthoff, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, H. Hoos, K. Leyton-Brown (2016). "Using the Shapley Value to Analyze Algorithm Portfolios". In Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Phoenix, USA. Acceptance rate 26%.
P. Szczepanski, T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge (2016). "An Extension of the Owen-Value interaction index and Its Application to Inter-links Prediction". In Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in The Hague, Netherlands. Acceptance rate 27%.
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2015). "Coalition Structure Generation: A Survey". Artificial Intelligence. 229. Pages 139--174. Publisher: Elsevier.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, O. Skibski, M. Wooldridge (2015). "Defeating Terrorist Networks with Game Theory". IEEE Intelligent Systems. 30(1). Pages 53--61. Publisher: IEEE Computer Society.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, S. Moretti, R. Narayanam, O. Skibski, P. Szczepankski, M. Wooldridge (2015). "A New Approach to Measure Social Capital using Game-Theoretic Techniques". ACM SIGECOM Exchanges (the ACM Special Interest Group on E-commerce). 14(1). Publisher: ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery).
P. Szczepanski, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2015). "The Game-Theoretic Interaction Index on Social Networks with Applications to Link Prediction and Community Detection". In Proceedings of the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Acceptance rate 29%.
M. Waniek, A. Niescieruk, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2015). "Spiteful Bidding in the Dollar Auction". In Proceedings of the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Acceptance rate 29%.
T. Michalak, P. Szczepanski, T. Rahwan, A. Chrobak, S. Branzei, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2014). "Implementation and Computation of a Value for Generalized Characteristic Function Games". ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation. 2, 4. Pages 16:1--16:35. Publisher: ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery).
O. Skibski, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, M. Wooldridge (2014). "Algorithms for the Shapley and Myerson values in Graph-Restricted Games". Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Paris, France. 197-204. Acceptance rate 24%.
K. Pawlowski, K. Kurach, K. Svensson, S. Ramchurn, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2014). "Coalition Structure Generation with the Graphics Processing Unit". In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Paris, France. 293-300. Acceptance rate 24%.
T. Rahwan, T-D Nguyen, T. Michalak, M. Polukarov, M. Croitoru, N. R. Jennings (2013). "Coalitional Games via Network Flows". In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Beijing, China. Acceptance rate 28%.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, P. Szczepanski, O. Skibski, R. Narayanam, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2013). "Computational Analysis of Connectivity Games with Applications to the Investigation of Terrorist Networks". In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Beijing, China. Acceptance rate 28%.
L. Tran-Thanh, T-D Nguyen, T. Rahwan, A. Rogers, N. R. Jennings (2013). "An Efficient Vector-based Representation for Coalitional Games". In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Beijing, China. Acceptance rate 28%.
S. Brânzei, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, K. Larson, N. R. Jennings (2013). "Matchings with Externalities and Attitudes". In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Minnesota, USA. Acceptance rate 23%.
S. Ramchurn, M. Osborne, O. Parson, S. Maleki, T. Rahwan, TD. Huynh, S. Reece, M. Alam, J. Fischer, G. Hines, E. Costanza, L. Moreau, T. Rodden (2013). "AgentSwitch: Smart Energy Tariff Selection using Agent Technology". In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Minnesota, USA. Acceptance rate 23%.
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2012). "Anytime Coalition Structure Generation in Multi-Agent Systems with Positive or Negative Externalities". Artificial Intelligence. 186, Pages 95--122. Publisher: Elsevier.
Edith Elkind, T. Rahwan, and N. R. Jennings (2012). "Computational Coalition Formation". Chapter 8 in Multagent Systems (2nd Edition). Pages 329—380. Publisher: MIT press.
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, N. R. Jennings (2012). "A Hybrid Algorithm for Coalition Structure Generation". In Proceedings of the 26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Toronto, Canada. Acceptance rate 26%.
P. Szczepanski, T. Michalak, T. Rahwan (2012). "A New Approach to Betweenness Centrality based on the Shapley Value". In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Barcelona, Spain. Acceptance rate 20%.
G. Hines, T. Rahwan, N. R. Jennings (2012). "An Anytime Algorithm for Finding the e–Core in Nontransferable Utility Coalitional Games". In Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in Montpellier, France. Acceptance rate 28%.
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, N. R. Jennings (2011). "Minimum Search to Establish Worst-Case Guarantees in Coalition Structure Generation". In Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Barcelona, Spain. Acceptance rate 17%.
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, E. Elkind, P. Faliszewski, J. Sroka, M. Wooldridge, N. R. Jennings (2011). "Constrained Coalition Formation". In Proceedings of the 25th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in San Francisco, USA. Acceptance rate 25%.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, D. Marciniak, M. Szamotulski, N. R. Jennings (2010). "Computational Aspects of Extending the Shapley Value to Coalitional Games with Externalities". In Proceedings of the 19th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in Lisbon, Portugal. Acceptance rate 20%.
T. Michalak, J. Sroka, T. Rahwan, M. Wooldridge, P. McBurney, N. R. Jennings (2010). "A distributed algorithm for anytime coalition structure generation". In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Toronto, Canada, 1007-1014. Acceptance rate 24%.
T. Michalak, D. Marciniak, M. Szamotulski, T. Rahwan, M. Wooldridge, P. McBurney, N. R. Jennings (2010). "A logic-based representation for coalitional games with externalities". In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Toronto, Canada, 125-132. Acceptance rate 24%.
T. Rahwan, S. D. Ramchurn, A. Giovannucci, and N. R. Jennings (2009). "Anytime Algorithm for Optimal Coalition Structure Generation". Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. 34, Pages 521--567. Publisher: AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence).
T. Rahwan, T. Michalak, N. R. Jennings, M. Wooldridge, P. McBurney (2009). "Coalition Structure Generation in Multi-Agent Systems with Positive and Negative Externalities". In Proceedings of the 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Pasadena, USA. Pages 257--263. Acceptance rate 26%.
T. Michalak, T. Rahwan, J. Sroka, A. Dowell, M. Wooldridge, P. PcBurney, N. R. Jennings (2009). "On Representing Coalitional Games with Externalities". In Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic Commerce (ACM-EC) in Stanford, USA. Pages 11--20. Acceptance rate 25%.
T. Rahwan and N. R. Jennings (2008). "Coalition Structure Generation: Dynamic Programming Meets Anytime Optimization". In Proceedings of the 23rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Chicago, USA. Pages 156--161. Acceptance rate 24%.
T. Rahwan and N. R. Jennings (2008). "An Improved Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Coalition Structure Generation". In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Estoril, Portugal. Pages 1417--1420.
T. Rahwan (2007). "Algorithms for Coalition Formation in Multi-Agent Systems". PhD Thesis. Published by the British Informatics Society, ISBN: 978-1906124144. Winner of the British Computer Society's Distinguished Dissertation award, which annually recognizes the most outstanding PhD thesis in the UK in Computer Science.
T. Rahwan and N. R. Jennings (2007). "An Algorithm for Distributing Coalitional Value Calculations among Cooperating Agents". Artificial Intelligence. 171 (8-9). Pages 535--567. Publisher: Elsevier.
T. Rahwan, S. D. Ramchurn, A. Giovannucci, V. D. Dang, N. R. Jennings (2007). "Anytime Optimal Coalition Structure Generation". In Proceedings of the 22nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Vancouver, Canada. Pages 1184--1190. Acceptance rate 27%.
T. Rahwan, S. D. Ramchurn, V. D. Dang, N. R. Jennings (2007) "Near-Optimal Anytime Coalition Structure Generation". In Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Hyderabad, India. Pages 2365--2371. Acceptance rate 16%.
T. Rahwan and N. R. Jennings (2005). "Distributing Coalitional Value Calculations among Cooperating Agents". In Proceedings of the 20th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Pittsburgh, USA. Pages 152--157. Acceptance rate 18%.
T. Rahwan, T. Rahwan, I. Rahwan, R. Ashri (2004). "Agent-based Support for Mobile Users Using AgentSpeak(L)". In volume 3030 of Agent-Oriented Information Systems, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany. Pages 45--60.


Sometimes two words sound very similar but they mean different things, for example, affect and effect.
Generally, affect is used as a verb ('action' word) and effect is used as a noun ('thing' word). Here are some examples to help you understand how to use these words.
When affect is used as a verb, it means 'to influence'.
Here is an example: Today's rain affected thousands of people living close to the river.
When effect is used as a noun, it means 'the result'.
Here is an example: When the rain poured down for three days, the effect was that the river overflowed its banks.
Sometimes, you can use effect as a verb. This use is quite formal, and you won't see it in use very often these days. When effect is used as a verb, it means 'to achieve or accomplish'.
Here is an example: I want to effect an improvement in my written English by checking my spelling.


The display is based on the observation that glow-in-the-dark emergency signs glow very brightly (to the point of being visible in daylight) when exposed to intense light, for example from a mobile phone's camera flash LED. Casual measurements suggested that the glow also has a half-life of around 30 seconds, that is, it becomes half as bright every 30 seconds. This means that it stays lit long enough for messages to be easily read but quickly enough that new messages can be clearly written over-the-top of the old ones after only a short delay.
Following this serendipitous discovery, a quick check of ebay confirmed that in fact large rolls of glow-in-the-dark material can be bought without too much expense. Additionally, LEDs can (incredibly) be bought for around one penny each including postage.
Shortly after the 60cm wide, 1 meter long glow-in-the-dark plastic sheet and 200 ultra-violet LEDs (which legions of other hackers' research suggested would do the best job) arrived, I hit a snag. I had hoped that I could simply use a pair of 8x8 LED matrix driver chips (such as the MAX7219) to drive the 120 LEDs needed to span the width of the plastic and yet when I held a few lit LEDs against the plastic it hardly glowed at all!
These LED driver chips are typically used to drive 64 LEDs "simultaneously" for large LED signs such as those found in train-stations. Unfortunately, in order to do this, they cheat by only lighting 8 of the 64 attached LEDs at any one moment, saving lots of wiring (and money). It gets away with this trick by lighting each group of 8 LEDs in sequence fast enough that the human eye can't tell that the LEDs are actually flickering and switched off seven-8ths of the time. As a result, the LEDs are actually barely putting out any light and thus weren't able to light up the plastic. Driving a single LED in the usual way (with a resistor for current limiting) luckily confirmed this theory when the plastic immediately glowed brightly.
Alternative traditional way of driving large numbers of outputs is to use shift registers. These devices can be daisy-chained together to allow the control of an unlimited number of outputs such as LEDs. Unfortunately, the cheap and widely available 7491 shift register can only sink a pitiful amount of current before blowing up meaning that using them to drive the relatively power-hungary UV LEDs was not an option. As a result I settled on Texas Instruments' TLC5916 shift register which also features a built in constant current LED driver.
The built-in constant current feature of the chosen shift registers meant that not only did I save myself 120 power-wasting resistors but I could also run the LEDs straight off the 12V supply driving the project without wasting further power and expense on a high-current voltage regulator.
One quick-hack Arduino sketch and a messy breadboard later and the first pixels finally began to glow eerily from my roll of plastic!
The display is principally constructed from dowel rods and various custom 3D printed1 joints and mountings, a construction technique I'm very suprised isn't more widespread. Dowel rod is very cheap (pennies per meter) and easy to find both online and on the highstreet. It is also very easy to work with requring only a simple saw. Before considering this tehcnique I was considering using aluminimum extrusion such as MakerSlide, but alas, in practice, it seems phenomenally expensive to source in the UK, especially in sufficient quantites for the target drum size of around 60cm. Since everything in the project was going to be very lightweight and not under any real physical stress the plastic and dowel choice seemed like the sensible option.
The use of 3D printed parts also made positioning things like the off-centre axle of the cheap stepper motor perfectly centrally very easy. Additionally it allowed me to add friction-fit mountings for some inexpensive rotary ball-bearings from ebay to keep things smooth.
The display itself was bought on a roll and needed to be formed into a large cylinder. Since I didn't have an existing large cylindrical object at hand I opted to simply build a series of cardboard disks around which the display could be hot-glued.
Since the plastic sheet is fairly stiff and light, the whole cylinder is supported by the 3D printed radial shelves. This proved a rather elegant way of supporting the display since it directly supports the display itself while also not requiring any permanent attachment making for easy disassembly and adjustment.
To test out the mechanical side of the build, the breadboard prototype reappeared to shine a very small message on the display. Though the cheap stepper and its built in gearing results in occasionally very slightly jerky movement, the output is not noticeably affected. This is a relief as it avoided a lot of trouble in potentially designing an alternative custom drive system.
The 120 LEDs spread along the display are split into three boards containing 40 LEDs each. The boards were built on strip-board and feature a printed paper face which serves both to improve appearances and also guide assembly. Again, this is another simple technique I'm surprised isn't more widely used.
Since each board is just a chain of shift registers, I designed the connectors such that the boards can be daisy-chained directly and power and data signals simply flow through as many boards as are put together2.
With the LED strip complete it needed mounting onto the frame. A set of 3D printed brackets were produced to hold the LED strip at the appropriate distance from the display. The bottom bracket features a shelf to support the strip as well as a gap for a ribbon cable to connect to the strip.
A 12 V to 5 V DC-DC converter (not shown in the pictures) harvested from a in-car mobile phone charger. This was needed since the shift registers and stepper both required 5 V and draw enough current to make a standard 5 V regulator extremely hot.
I made a small perf-board junction board (complete with a paper-top) and a set of 3D printed mounts for each of the various boards. Some rainbow ribbon cables and cable-ties later and everything was nicely mounted under the display.
Hopefully coming in the near future will be a web interface and button pannel to allow passers-by to experiment with the automata on the device.


text:
Prabhnoor Singh
If there's one thing the Sequel Trilogy has proven, it's that it's not easy to tell a Star Wars story – let alone one that has anything new to say. Luckily, The Mandalorian – the first live-action Star Wars series, and the flagship show of the new Disney+ streaming service – has the swagger and ambition to venture off the beaten path and into the uncharted regions of the Star Wars galaxy, delivering a freshman season that – while uneven – still manages to be one of the most surprising and satisfying Star Wars projects in decades.
Charting the adventures of a stoic bounty hunter operating in the Outer Rim after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, The Mandalorian draws heavily from the classic Western and samurai movie similarities that inspired George Lucas when he created the original films (allowing the show to evoke the best of A New Hope's desolate desert and the atmosphere of unknown danger lurking around every corner), while also incorporating many of Lucas' other influences – the high-spirited, planet-hopping energy of Flash Gordon and other sci-fi serials, and the mythic patterns popularized by Joseph Campbell. That probably explains why the series feels very similar to Star Wars right from the jump – it's a world that seems weathered and lived-in, thanks to creator Jon Favreau's canny decision to utilize practical effects wherever possible, pairing them with subtle CGI that helps the show avoid the sterile qualities of the prequels.
Star Wars has always been a mixture of various genres and influences, but the franchise (at least since Disney acquired it) tends to come unstuck when it leans too heavily on the story beats of what's come before without offering anything fresh, and that's true of "The Mandalorian" too. The episodes in the middle of the season where the show leans too hard into Akira Kurosawa or Sergio Leone homages are arguably the weakest, while the episodes that helped the season and advance the overarching plot have a clear-eyed focus and tangible momentum as "Mando" deals with one challenging, ever-evolving mission that pulls him in far deeper than he bargained for. Aside from needing the introduction of Gina Carano's Cara Dune (a welcome addition who offers a bone-shaking authenticity to her fight sequences) in episode 4, you could easily watch episodes 1-3 and 7-8 as a self-contained and perfectly engaging Star Wars movie without missing anything important.
You almost get the sense that "The Mandalorian" was designed to be binge-watched in one sitting rather than released weekly, and in truth, that model would probably have served the season well – it would've made the narrative detours of episodes 4-6 more appetizing, allowing viewers to breeze through those weaker, more derivative installments without having to think about them too hard. If anything, the season could've benefited from having 10 or 13 episodes rather than 8, especially if "The Mandalorian" was able to strike a better balance between standalone episodes and those that furthered the mythology. (Still, story shortcomings aside, it was admittedly refreshing to digest The Mandalorian weekly since it encouraged the kind of nationwide watercooler conversation and breathless theorizing that some worried would die with Game of Thrones.)
These episodes aren't without their saving graces – in addition to Carano's debut, episode 4 also offers a satisfying new twist on a classic Star Wars weapon that brings back its past appearances; episode 5 features a thrilling dogfight (and plenty of Original Trilogy easter eggs); and episode 6 allows the show to dabble in two less familiar genres – heist and horror – to great effect, undermined only by the clunky performances of its guest stars.
In fact, many of the season's shortcomings can be attributed to its guest cast (and some heavy-handed dialogue, which is, arguably, a Star Wars staple in itself). Recurring players like Carano, Carl Weathers, Nick Nolte, Taika Waititi, and the pitch-perfect Werner Herzog and Giancarlo Esposito all add depth and texture to their roles, even in comparatively brief appearances – but day players like Amy Sedaris, Bill Burr, Natalia Tena, Horatio Sanz, and Jake Cannavale are all cartoonishly broad and often distracting, especially when acting against the understated reserve of Pedro Pascal in the so-called role. (The show's best cameos, like Jason Sudeikis, Adam Pally, and Richard Ayoade, follow the movies' strategy and rely on voiceover rather than on-screen appearances, which prevents the celebrities from pulling focus from the plot.)
Pascal's central performance is a particular feat, given that he's robbed of basically all of an actor's most expressive tools. The Game of Thrones and Narcos alum manages to bring humanity and surprising heart to the lone gunslinger – and while there are some clumsy choices made when it comes to fleshing out his backstory, his trajectory over the first season is a believable progression that opens up intriguing possibilities for Season 2.
The show also adds some welcome new voices into the Star Wars universe through the artful and confident lens of indie directors Deborah Chow (who stylishly helms two of the season's most successful installments, episodes 3 and 7) and Rick Famuyiwa (episodes 2 and 6), while Taika Waititi adds unsurprising energy and flair both in front of the camera as scene-stealing droid assassin IG-11 and behind it as the director of the season finale. Thankfully, Disney+ has already wisely tapped Chow to helm the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone series, but all three deserve a shot at a big-screen Star Wars installment sooner rather than later.
Arguably The Mandalorian's biggest accomplishment is its narrative sleight of hand. Fans have plenty of preconceived notions about bounty hunters thanks to decades of stories in both the Star Wars canon and EU/Legends, and due to the secrecy that surrounded the season (some of it necessary, some of it just typical marketing smoke and mirrors) we entered into this show with no real idea what it was about or the shape it would take – a rarity in today's pop culture landscape that paid dividends as the season unfolded, constantly keeping us guessing about where it might end up.
Naturally, the secrecy surrounding the creature the internet has dubbed "Baby Yoda" was an early ace in the hole, and without venturing into spoiler territory, it's safe to say that it's hard to imagine the series would've had the cultural impact that it did without the inclusion of "The Child" – whose species has been a closely guarded secret since George Lucas first introduced us to the scene-stealing Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. (As a mostly practical effect, brought to life primarily through puppetry just as Yoda was, The Child is an absolute marvel that truly feels like a living, breathing, utterly transfixing creature, and I would die for him.) The Mandalorian's first season doesn't provide too many easy answers, but the finale does offer a much clearer sense of what Favreau and fellow executive producer Dave Filoni have in mind for Season 2, leaving us with a sense that now the scene is set and all the pieces are in place, the show is ready to make the jump to lightspeed.
Verdict: Every show needs time to find its footing in its first season, and The Mandalorian's roughest edges – its wild shifts in tone, derivative standalone episodes, and clunky dialogue – are arguably increased by the shortened episode order and weekly release schedule, and will hopefully be ironed out now that executive producers Favreau and Filoni have a season under their belts. But when the show is firing on all cylinders – as in its opening and closing run of episodes – it channels all the fun, escapism, and yes, earnest heart (or, if you prefer, occasional cheesiness) of the Original Trilogy. There's a soft, gooey center hidden under all that Beskar armor, and it makes The Mandalorian one of the most irresistible Star Wars stories we've seen in years.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Singers Justin Bieber and girlfriend Selena Gomez had a night out courtside at the Lakers vs Spurs game last night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Gomez, a Texas native, was likely cheering on the San Antonio team (who won 112 to 91) when the couple were caught off guard by the Kiss Cam! A coy Gomez hid her face after seeing themselves on the jumbotron screen. An eyewitness said the crowd was going nuts!


This programme provides you with a critical understanding of corporate finance and entrepreneurship finance, as well as innovation research and the processes and practices of new venture finance. A particular focus will be on understanding the different roles and financial functions in venture capitalist and private equity firms, in entrepreneurship, consultancy and mergers and acquisitions.
IELTS: 6.5 overall. 6.5 in Writing. No subscore lower than 6.0.
Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. Writing 61. No other subscore lower than 54.


Abstract-. Commercial banks and IT security professionals around the world have concentrated on fighting traditional ATM crimes like ATM card Skimming. However, new ATM crimes like Jackpotting and Shimming attacks have emerged. These logical attacks have continued to grow in the recent years. In this case study we used a risk management framework to determine traditional and emerging ATM crimes, and made recommendations on measures ATM owners can put in place to mitigate both the traditional threats and the emerging threats. ATM software whitelisting was recommended to help fight logical and new crimes like Jackpotting which can't be mitigated using traditional ATM security measures like Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
Abstract- Lens vignetting distortion occurs on image was corrected by using pre-flight calibration data, while calculation of direct georeferencing was done by using satellite metadata of satellite position and attitude. Meanwhile, band co-registration correction was conducted based entirely on the image being processed using image matching approach. Based on several results and analysis which have been done, lens vignetting effects on image can be suppressed significantly from about 40 percent down to 10 percent, band coregistration error can be reduced to below 2-3 pixels in average, and the calculated direct georeferencing has 3000 meter accuracy. The results show that the developed image preprocessing algorithm has moderately good performance to process LAPAN-A3/IPB multispectral images.
Abstract — This paper demonstrates the basic configuration of the hardware units which can lead towards detecting the obstacles in the way and notifying the user about it so that necessary action can be taken forward to avoid the obstacle. The output is in the form of speech. The hardware used for implementing vision is by using the Raspberry pi 3 and a single Web-camera unit with ultrasonic sensor. The entire set up is mounted on a hat. In order to achieve this we make use of Open CV which is being implemented in raspbian OS. The aim is to enable low cost solution to the visually impaired and also enable them to move freely.
Abstract — Cloud computing and internet of things are two main technology and both have important role in our life, .They are used in different field along with different architectures. According to Modern technology requirement they are merging together known as CloudIoT paradigm. These are real-time processing of a new technology provides an intelligent preparation, efficient storage, and good communication. Large growth in data of cloud due to IoT, addressing big data is one of the main challenging and time demanding task in terms of successful data processing and analysis .Due to IoT cloud facing big data problem this review paper we mention some of the issue. In this review paper also mentions some basic concept of cloud computing, type, history of IoT, Big data, advantage, and disadvantage.
Keywords: —SSD, MobileNet, Caffe Model, Ultrasonic Sensor, Raspberry pi, Raspbian.


Washington D.C. [USA] Sep 27(ANI): Researchers have predicted who is likely to feel sick from virtual reality technology.
In a recent study, researchers at the University of Waterloo found they could predict whether an individual will experience cybersickness (motion sickness caused by virtual reality) by how much they sway in response to a moving visual field.
The researchers think that this knowledge would help them to develop counteractions to cybersickness.
Cybersickness involves nausea and discomfort that can last for hours after participating in virtual reality (VR) applications, which have become prevalent in gaming, skills training, and clinical rehabilitation.
Lead author of the paper, Seamas Weech said, "Despite decreased costs and significant benefits offered by VR, a large number of users are unable to use the technology for more than a brief period because it can make them feel sick."
He added, "Our results show that this is partly due to differences in how individuals use vision to control their balance. By refining our predictive model, we will be able to rapidly assess an individual's tolerance for virtual reality and tailor their experience accordingly."
In conducting their work, the researchers collected several sensorimotor measures, such as balance control and self-motion sensitivity, from 30 healthy participants aged 18 to 30.
Senior author Michael Barnett-Cowan said, "Knowing who might suffer from cybersickness, and why, allows us to develop targeted interventions to help reduce, or even prevent, the onset of symptoms."


text:
Startups village
ActinSpace
De l'Espace dans mon futur
Massimo COMPARINI
Telespazio Director Line of Business Geo Information - e-GEOS Chief Executive Officer
Chairman – EarthLab Luxembourg
Chairman – Space Innovation in Italy – Italian Space Technology Platform
Master Degree in Electrical Engineering, Remote Sensing and Radar Systems, University of Rome "La Sapienza" (RM – Italy).
Degree in Strategy from Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, CA (USA).
He began his career in the space industry in 1983 at Selenia Spazio (later Alenia Spazio), holding positions of increasing responsibility, up to that of Chief Technology Officer. In the joint venture Thales Alenia Space, he took up the role of Deputy Chief Technical Officer. In 2013 he was appointed Chief Technical Officer and excom member at Telespazio. In 2015 he is appointed Chairman of EarthLab Luxembourg a Joint Venture between Telespazio group and local players (Post Luxembourg, InTech, HiTec) for Earth Observation services and applications in support to risk and insurance market.
In 2016, he has been appointed Director of Line of Business Information as CEO of e-GEOS, ASI/Telespazio Joint Venture, having the mission to commercialize world-wide COSMO-SkyMed radar Constellation data, applications and services and to provide multimission Geospatial integrated solutions, based on innovative satellite data and advanced information technology processing chain.
Author of more than 90 papers and published works in the field of space and microwave technologies, innovation and technology management. He seats in many steering committees and board of scientific associations and international conferences. He has been appointed for a number of Academic positions having the chair of space electronics (University of Perugia), electronics for telecom system (Alma Mater studiorum University of Bologna) and in the economic field the Chair of ICT and Economy of new technologies (LUISS, Roma). In 2016 has been honoured with the Star for labour merit from the President of Italian Republic.
Photos: © CNES/ A. Ollier - L. Frezoul
E. Grimaud - Ville de Toulouse
Centre de Congrès Pierre Baudis Powered by Fudge 2.0 by Showthemes


text:
Dorfkirche Woltersdorf ist der Name folgender Kirchen:

 Dorfkirche Woltersdorf (Bensdorf) in Woltersdorf, Gemeinde Bensdorf, Brandenburg
 Dorfkirche Woltersdorf (Biederitz) in Woltersdorf, Gemeinde Biederitz, Sachsen-Anhalt
 Dorfkirche Woltersdorf (Zahna-Elster) in Woltersdorf, Gemeinde Zahna-Elster, Sachsen-Anhalt
 Dorfkirche Woltersdorf (Nuthe-Urstromtal) in Woltersdorf, Gemeinde Nuthe-Urstromtal, Brandenburg

Siehe auch:
 Dorfkirche Waltersdorf
 Dorfkirche Groß Woltersdorf
 Dorfkirche Klein Woltersdorf

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


San Choy Bau has a multitude of variations; at a glance there are at least seven different versions of the name alone. This version is my take on this classic starter which I feel embodies the typical balance of Traditional Chinese Cuisine, combined with a nice textural clean crunch from the fresh lettuce. Although a great for a starter, for a more substantial meal can be served with steamed rice or rice noodles.
1 bunch coriander, leaves picked, roots finely chopped.
Trim the lettuce to create cups and soak the lettuce cups in cold water in the fridge to ensure the leaves are crisp.
Heat wok or pan over a high heat. Add the oil, onion, ginger, corriander roots, and garlic and cook for 20 seconds, then add the carrot and the shitake mushrooms, cook for another 20 seconds.
Add the pork mince and fry until it breaks up, approx. 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the sugar, soy, oyster sauce, sesame oil and rice wine. stir and then add the corn flour mixture and cook, mixing consistently until the sauce thickens.
Lastly add the half the spring onions, half the chilli and some of the coriander leaves and mix well, then remove from the heat.
Divide the pork mince mixture between the lettuce cups and garnish with the remaining spring onion, chilli and coriander to taste.


text:
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March 9, 2015 · 14:08
Another Year on the Margins of the Church
Me and my Little Buddy, Minnie Scule
I have been living on the margins of American Christianity for a bit over seven years now. The watershed moment was when I returned from Iraq in February 2008 my faith shattered and my soul wounded suffering from severe PTSD. I was not in good shape then and two years later after faith returned, albeit in a different form I realized that I no longer fit in the mainstream of conservative American Christianity.
The process of return took me to the margins of the faith that I knew and grew up in. For a while I felt like a victim, but over the course of the years I have discovered a tremendous freedom in living on the margins of the church. Jamake Highwater wrote something that really struck me as true:
"What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their "alienation" as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim."
When I began to express some of those changes, which mainly had to do in the manner of how I viewed others I got in trouble. At the time I was part of a pretty conservative Episcopal-Catholic denomination with very strong Evangelical and Charismatic leanings. I wrote that I thought that homosexuals could be Christians and not automatically damned to hell. I wrote that not all Moslems were bad. I expressed a great deal of empathy for non-believers, particularly Atheists and Agnostics having recently come out of a period where for all intents I was an Agnostic praying that God really did exist and care. I also asserted that I saw no reason why women could not or should not be ordained to the Priesthood and the Episcopacy and I expressed other views that while not connected with anything to do in the Christian faith was not politically correct in conservative circles.
During that time period I found that I was getting slammed and "unfriended" on Facebook by people I had previously considered friends whenever I had the nerve to disagree with them, or innocently post something that they disagreed with on my Facebook page. I think that was the hardest part for me, I was shocked that people who I had thought were friends, who knew what I was going through were so devoted to their ideology that they condemned me and threw me away. I found that I agreed with Mahatma Gandhi who observed: "I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Of course I say that with a fair amount of humility because most of the time I am not a very good Christian, if that means actually trying to emulate Jesus.
Of course that is not uncommon in the annals of Christianity. Ulrich Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich was so upset when his students and closest associates became Anabaptist that he had them drowned in the Rhine River. In fact any time Church leaders have had significant powers over people through the levers of the State they have quite often used that power to crush anyone that did not believe like them or questioned their authority.
In a sense for two millennia various groups of Christians have been creating God in their own image and inflicting their beliefs on others. Christians punishing other Christians for having views that they do not agree is so common. Last week a Chaplain of a Nazarene college was fired for questioning Christian support for war in the wake of the movie American Sniper. Sadly most of the time that Christians are condemned by other Christians it is not even for any of major doctrinal beliefs found in the Creeds, the great Ecumenical Councils of the Church, or even of the various Confessions or Statements of Faith of any denomination. Instead they usually have to with unpopular stands on political or social issues. Anne Lamott has a pithy little thought that I love which I think describes this type of Christian persecution: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
In September of 2010 I was asked to leave that church, even though my actual theological orthodoxy, as to what I believed about God and Christ was unchanged. Thankfully another church, the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church, a denomination of the Old Catholic tradition took me in. It is a tiny denomination, much like the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, but very affirming and I fit well in it.
As far as my old church, it was going through a difficult time and the Bishop who threw me out was a big part of the problem. He was removed a few months later when it was revealed that he was plotting to take all of the military chaplains out of the denomination to another without consulting the other bishops. One friend who is still in that church speculated that I was asked to leave by the bishop because he thought I might reveal his plans, even though he had not told me directly about them.
What was odd about that church was that in 2004 I was censured by the then second ranking archbishop in that church, forbidden from publishing and even having or having any personal contact with his clergy where I was living because I was "too Catholic." The irony was that this bishop was a big cause of the trouble that the church went through including the massive splits that occurred in 2005-2010. He left that church, became the editor of a conservative Catholic website and now is a Priest in the Anglican Ordinate and effectively a Roman Catholic Priest. I love irony.
Thankfully I still have a number friends in my old church, and thankfully there are good people there doing their best to live the Gospel. I can't say that I would fit in there anymore, but I have no residual animosity to the current leadership of that denomination and pray that they continue to recover from the tumult and division that marked their struggle from 2005-2011. I admit that it was a painful time and for a while I was quite bitter about how I had been treated, but it has been easier to live by forgiving. C. S. Lewis noted: "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." Since I have been forgiven for so much how can I not at least try to live in a forgiving manner?
I have written a lot about my frustrations with American Christianity in particular the conservative Christian subculture. Looking at what I wrote I can see that I definitely exist on the margins of that world. But that is not a bad thing, there is a certain amount of freedom as well as intellectual honesty and integrity that I have now that I could not have being for all intents closeted in my former denomination.
Living on the margins allows me to echo Galileo who wrote: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." It allows me to be at the intersection of faith and unbelief and allows me entry into both worlds, both of which I believe to be sacred and both need to be heard, as well as protected.
Thus when I champion religious liberty, it is not the liberty to use religion to bludgeon others or to use the police power of the State to enforce their religious views on others. Unfortunately that is what I see going on in this country as conservative American Christians especially Evangelicals, Charismatics and conservative Roman Catholics wage a Kulturkampf against modernism and secularism. It as if many of the leaders of that movement desire to set up a Christian theocracy. Gary North, a longtime adviser to Ron Paul and many in the Tea Party movement wrote:
"We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."
Personally, and with no invective intended I have to imagine that if a Moslem leader in this country said something similar that the Religious Right would be screaming bloody murder and that Bill O'Reilly and Fox News would be leading the charge.
Thus we see a reprise of the Scopes Monkey Trial in efforts to diminish the teaching of real science in schools and replace it with various religious theories of origins such as Young Earth Creationism. It doesn't seem to matter what the issue is: equality for women, minorities, gays, teaching science, caring for the poor, the sick and the weak, acknowledging the value of other cultural traditions and religions it seems that many politically charged conservative Christians have no tolerance for anyone outside their often quite narrow belief system. North wrote:
"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."
I'm sorry but again this sounds not too dissimilar to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, without the sheep and the comfortable clothes, or the Moslem Brotherhood types, Hezbollah or the Iranian Imams. The religion of North might be different from the Taliban but the goals are eerily similar, and only a fool would not see that. But then we Christians are quite good at ignoring the hate being preached by those that claim to be defending us from those "evil" Moslems.
This is no empty threat, throughout the country Christian Conservatives and their political front men are ramming through laws that have but one intent, the establishment of a Christian theocracy and the persecution of those who do not agree. Allegedly all of these laws are designed to "protect religious liberty" but in fact are nothing more than a legislative attempt to disenfranchise non-believers or others that the majority does not approve. Unfortunately the people pushing these laws do not understand that once the become law they can be used against them if another group comes into power. They set precedent and under such precedent even Sharia Law could be enacted in Moslem dominated areas of the country, such as Dearborn Michigan, or polygamy in separatist Mormon communities in Utah and Idaho.
I am sorry but that is antithetical to the thoughts of our founders and the real defenders of religious liberty in the early days of our republic. John Leland, head of the Virginia Baptists and a key player in the drafting of the First Amendment and religious liberty protections in Virginia wrote:
"The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever…Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians."
Leland understood what he was talking about, because in Virginia Baptists and others were being persecuted by Anglicans who before the Revolution had been the State Church of Virginia and wanted to be again in the new republic. James Madison wrote of the danger: "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"
I will defend the right of religious conservative to believe what they want, including the right to teach it in their churches, church schools and homes and to express those views in the public square as part of real dialogue. I may not agree with them, but if I want my views to be protected I should grant others what I would want. What I cannot support is the attempt of some politically active Christian conservatives to force those views on others through the power of the State, the public schools or any other place where the citizens of our very diverse and pluralistic society have to co-exist.
Likewise, I have become much more outspoken in defending those who are the targets of real Christian hate, in particular the LGBT community, unbelievers, especially atheists and agnostics and Moslems. That may seem odd, but really, if we as Christians do not show God's love to them, just how do we expect that they will embrace what we believe?
I love the movie Inherit the Wind. I especially love the scene where Spencer Tracy playing the fictionalized version of Clarence Darrow gives a logical yet passionate defense of religious, civil and intellectual liberty.
"Can't you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!"
Since I don't want to go back to the 16th Century I will be content to live in the freedom that I have on the margins of contemporary American Christianity. Personally I would rather be there than in the 16th century.
Back in 2010 when I was getting kicked out of my old church and suffering the rejection of friends it wasn't something that I enjoyed. However, I am grateful to be where I am now and to have the freedom that I enjoy. I certainly didn't plan it this way, but I am definitely okay with the way things have turned out. Living on the margins of American Christianity beats the hell out of living within the hateful, greedy and oppressive structures that permeate our American Christian landscape.
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Are there alternative methods which doesn't make of use padding as a way to handle sequences of various lengths?
– You could truncate sequences.
– You could concatenate sequences.
– You could write your own inefficient implementation of RNNs.
If you know the target length, you can try interpolation or warping, right? But they are more costly than just adding zeros.
I am interested how does the padding affect the performance of models? Specifically when the dataset contains both long texts and very short texts. Lets assume, median length is 30 sentences, max length is 120 and minimum length is 10. how pre and post sequence padding affects the performance?
Padding and Masking is the best, little to no impact. I would recommend testing though.
Thank you so much for writing these tutorials. They are remarkably effective in explaining concepts that other websites often gloss over. I have a question about padding outputs in sequence-to-sequence classification problems. Let's say X has the shape (100, 50, 10), and y has the shape (100, 50, 3). X consists of 100 time series, 50 time steps per time series, and 10 features per time step. The y has three possible one-hot encoded classes per tilmestep. The samples of X have variable length so the shorter samples are pre-padded with 0 For the y labels corresponding to the pre-padded X time steps, should they be [0, 0, 0]? Or should a new fourth label, [0, 0, 0, 1], be created for the pre-padded time steps thus changing the shape of y to (100, 100, 4).
Why do you need to pad the output if each series is classified as one of 3 labels?
Can padding work for variable length feature vectors for concatenating them together?
Padding can be used to make all independent variable length inputs the same length.
Featureset 3: A, F, J, K, L and it is labelled L. The sequence length varies as well as the labels.
How about i go with Sequence classification with this?
Should i Train each featuresets with training/test data of different combinations of elements of that sequence?
If A, B, C are the elements and A is the labelled target, A being the root element of all 3.I will create training data with different combinations of A, B, C and train LSTM to classify it as A no matter in which order the elements in sequence occur.
Similarly i repeat above for all featuresets..training LSTM individually., as in future, same set of elements can come in varying sequences.and i want my neural net to predict the root element correctly.
Can we train incrementally like this or is there other way to handle this scenario,,(Which I'm sure there is :))!..Please forgive if my question seems naive.
Treat each sequence as a new sample to learn from, pad all to the same length.
thank you very much for your many useful posts. There is one question I can't find an answer to, and I'm not sure I handle it correctly in my code. Maybe you can help me out?
The input to my network is of form (num_samples, num_timesteps, num_features), where num_timesteps varies. In order to be able to feed all samples to the network, I prepad with zeros. So, say the maximum number of timesteps is 3, the features are a and b, and the current sample has only 2 timesteps. Then I would prepad [[a1,b1],[a2,b2]] to [[0.,0.],[a1,b1],[a2,b2]]. In this way, all my samples would be of shape (3,2).
Since keras expects the output to be of the same length as the input, I feel like I also need to pad the output, say from [[y1],[y2]] to [0.,[y1],[y2]]. Is this correct? If it is, does keras ignore the prepadded zero in the output as well? I worry that the network does not ignore it, and thus tries to learn something different than intended.
A next step would be to try models that allow model outputs that differ in length from model inputs like the encoder-decoder architecture. I have a number of really nice posts on the topic.
I have a doubt. What impact does the type of padding have on the model performance for any task, example sentence classification?
You can use a Masking input layer which will ignore padded values. This means that padded inputs have no impact on learning.
Hi, could you give me the code how to add Masking layer to ignore padded values in Keras? Thank you.
Is it possible that each batch will have different max_len of sequence and that can be feed to rnn?
I believe the number of samples can differ between batches, but the batch size will be the same.
Hi Jason, I am a beginner in machine learning and I try to make sense of all of this. Is it true that padding basically makes the dataset more sparse? So, I should keep that in mind while doing the preprocessing?
Yes, but we can ignore the padding by using a Masking layer.
Im new to LSTM or DL in general, and Im trying to write a simple POS Tagging code in python using the LSTM. I saw different LSTM Resources including your posts, and what seems missing for me is how can I prepare a statement (such as "John is driving his red car.", or shorter "he is driving a car") to be an input to the LSTM. Does padding solve such specially things for POS tagging.
Sorry, I don't have any examples of POS tagging.
Can you give an example of how to use masking after padding with zeros? Some layers have masking built in (e.g. in the embedding layer you can set mask_zero = True), but I've run into issues where some layers (e.g. Conv1D) don't allow for masking. How can we ensure that masking occurs throughout the network?
Yes, I have a number of examples on the blog but with LSTM layers, not CNN. As you say, CNN do not support it.
If you have CNNs on the front-end try learning the padded data directly.
Hi Jason, you should have a prof not a phd title with this knowledge.what to do if truncating and padding does not give good results in the model ? usually I trained with a smaller sequence length data and need a much more longer dataset for prediction.
Perhaps explore other framings of the problem, get creative.
Hi Jason, thanks for your amazing tutorials. A question. Let's say i train the network with fixed input size, i.e, (num_samples, num_timesteps, num_features). May i use a masking input layer only in the recognition phase because of the variable size of the second dimension, e.g., num_timesteps – x ?
The input dimensions are generally fixed. It is the values within those dimensions that you can mask.
However, I'm wondering if/how one can later compute a confusion matrix?
When shorter sequences are filled up with zeros?
Aren't these erroneously treated as right prediction?
Or what if one normal element (e.g. label) of the sequence is really a zero?
When padding output sequences, the zero values can be ignored by the evaluation procedure.
Hi Jason, great blog by the way!
I am currently planning a LSTM with time-series data. My specific problem is that I have days without activities, which mean that it is ignored with conventional padding techniques. I was wondering how I could handle this efficiently?
What's the problem with ignoring days with no activity?
If I train and predict with the train and test having same number of time steps, it works perfect.
If I want to predict with lesser number of timesteps, the model throws an error.
So in this case I assume I need to do Pre Sequence Truncation.
Kindly confirm if this is the right way and acceptable.
I'm not sure I understand what you are varying and what the outcomes where.
Perhaps you can provide more explanation?
If I am interested in to training a sequence to sequence architecture, where both input and output sequences are of variable length, should I apply padding and masking in both encoder and decoder layers? If I decided not to use masking, should I apply pre-sequence padding to the encoder and post-sequence padding to the decoder?
Yes, use post-sequence padding, input masking.
Thank you for the detailed explanations of LSTM. I would like to know if we can train an LSTM model without a sequence length.
It is possible, but hard to do in Keras.
Can you please suggest me where to start…. or is there some other library better suited than keras?
I am training multiple time-series of unequal length for walk-forward prediction. My time-series also have variable starting points.
Sample: I am treating every time-series as a sample.
Timesteps: I am using the maximum length as the window to capture all the information for that single time-series.
My data already has 0s which have a specific significance. So, that the zero-padding does not interfere with my data, I am using masking instead of zero-padding.
Do you foresee any problems with my model?
Sounds good to me Rick!
With regard to the problem I mentioned above, I am a bit worried about whether the sequenced nature of the LSTM is being taken into account if I am treating each time-series as a sample.
I am training multiple time-series for walk-forward prediction.
On the other hand, if I arrange my data for 1 timeseries in the below form, step 1 predicts 2, Step 1-2 predict 3, step 1-2-3 predict 4…..and then step 1-75 predict 76. This takes into account the sequential nature of the timeseries but now, I cannot apply it to multiple timeseries at the same time. I need the timeseries to be able to predict together at the same time and also generalize acorss each other (if there is some general trends across the time series, they must be captured by the model). So, what should I do, is there any way to do this using a simple LSTM? Is there any other sequence model architecture that works well here?
Generally LSTMs are poor at time series forecasting, so I would encourage you to try an MLP and CNN, as well as linear methods such as ETS and SARIMA as a baseline.
Ensure you're using a masking layer when padding all sequences to the same length.
Perhaps vary the configuration of the model to see if that is an issue.
Perhaps you can use the walk-forward validation approach and predict all series together (e.g. multivariate prediction).
I have a problem and I am wondering if it is the right way to pad 0 as you mentioned.
I have a dataset of over 5000 video range from 17 frames to 71 frames of 32×48 grayscale. Image if i pad 0 to all the data to have the fixed size of 71*32*48, then the LSTM or CNN has to calculate through a bunch of 0, which costs too much computing and does actually nothing since it's just padded frame. Is there any way I could process those data without padding? Or Is there any sense of padding I'm missing?
You can use a Masking layer to ignore padded values for those models that support Masking.
Thank you very much for your consistently high clarity. A question: Suppose, the underlying sequence is not numerical, but consists of natural-language words and punctuation symbols. How should the punctuation symbols/marks be accounted for–while calculating the length?
I actually have a doubt, it may sound silly. Why is the padding required? While googling I found out that it might be helpful for batch operations. If so what are some possible batch operations we perform and what if I do not pad the input before feeding it to the neural network?
You can use a dynamic RNN where padding is not required.
It can be more efficient to put all data into fixed sized vectors when training/evaluating.
Thank you once again for the amazing blog.
I have a question and I'm hoping you can clarify it for me.
Here is how my dataframe looks.
So, length of sample A, B, and C are P, Q, and R respectively. where P < Q < R. Basically all of my samples has a different length.
So, say I choose bach_size of six samples, then each of the subsequent batch_size will have a different length.
Does padding need to be applied to the whole of the dateframe to make P = Q = … = R?
All dimensions are padded to have fixed lengths, but the lengths of each dimension can vary.
I have a question! Lets define a rnn with 50 time steps. Now, When we pad a sequence of length 1 to max length then what would be the input to the rnn?
is it just one word or entire sequence padded with zeros?
Yes, and you can use a Masking layer to ignore the zeros.
Great post, Jason. I always follow your tutorials. I have 30 data point and each data point has variable lengths of sequence with feature 7. I want to predict the next action based on the previous actions. In this scenario won't the padded 0 sequence impact the prediction accuracy?
No, you can use a Masking layer to ignore the padded values.


Sometimes parents need extra help too.
If so, you may want to seek out a professional who can help you.
When looking for a counselor or therapist to help with traumatic stress symptoms, remember to ask questions such as: Do you have experience working with people after trauma? What is your approach to working with this type of problem? What is your success rate?


SPD Foundation The Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation is a clearinghouse for all information relating to SPD.
Sensory Planet Sensory Planet is a social network for parents, teachers and people living with SPD.
Autism Resource Center of Central Massachusetts An information and referral service for children and families affected by disorders within the Autism Spectrum; Autism, PDD NOS and Asperger's. The Center services the eastern portion of DDS Central-West Region. This encompasses North Central, Worcester, and South Valley areas.
Autism Alliance of Metrowest Provides families in the MetroWest area with information, education and support. We plan and implement programs and events that will aid these families while increasing public awareness regarding autism.
Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism Supporting families by helping them find the resources they need and by funding advocacy programs as well as educational, therapeutic and recreational opportunities.
Federation for Children with Special Needs Resource site for Massachusetts families and schools.
Wrightslaw Information for parents on special education law and advocacy.


text:
"But for drivers who cherish the American ideal of a spontaneous cross-country road trip, charging these vehicles will be a challenge. Options to replenish EV batteries on trips are few and far between for millions of Americans."
— NATHAN BOMEY, USA Today
We Need More Electric Car Charging Stations →
February 05, 2018 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobility, Energy, Auto
These are the sorts of things that private citizens can't pull of alone. The government they elect has to be used to incentivise private business to build these chargers. Otherwise we'll never escape from petrol-based personal commuting.
February 05, 2018 /Dwayne De Freitas
Auto, EV, Supercharger, Municipalities, Smartcities
Mobility, Energy, Auto
GM suggests Congress fund EV charging, Toyota asks for hydrogen fueling support →
January 31, 2018 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobility, Energy, Auto
John Voelcker over at Green Car Reports put together an interesting story about how auto companies are approaching the US federal government in preparation of infrastucture legislation.
First, the good news. GM is trying to use the environment to get more funding for EV chagrin stations. It's essential to the zero-emissions future. Here's the meat:
"GM had sold almost one quarter of the 200,000 plug-in electric vehicles delivered in the U.S. last year.
In her remarks, Gross focused on "two areas where your committee could help sustain continued growth: the first is consumer adoption and the second is aiding with charging infrastructure build-out.""
— Britta Gross, GM Director of Advanced Vehicle Commercialization Policy,
Now the bad news.
While CES 2018 saw Toyota make a move toward taking its fleet's powertrain over to battery electric; a turn of events I celebrated earlier this month, it seem that Toyota still hasn't given up on the awful Mirai concept, and wants money spent on Hydrogen fueling stations - an idea I've considered utterly foolish for years now. The problem is that they're not the only ones. Voelcker says that Toyota was joined by Honda in the request for hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
I've noted it time and again and I'll note it here now: Hydrogen, while likely the most abundant substance in the universe, is difficult to obtain on Earth. One needs to burn natural gas to get it. That's not eco friendly.
Auto, EV, Advanced Drive, Toyota, Honda, GM, General Motors
Apple and the Autonomous Car
August 04, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobility, Auto
I was catching up on a news backlog and came across this interesting piece on the Project Titan, the code word for the autonomous electric vehicle that Apple seems to be making. Max at Appcessories brings us up to speed with history and findings from his recent research.
One thing struck out to me in particular:
"Apple seems to have hit a bump when BMW politely excused itself from the future partnership. The German automaker, Daimler, also refused to join up with Apple for its project."
Apple, Inc. is a different company than it was in 2005, but it's worth remembering that Steve Job's Apple Computer, Inc teamed up with Motorola to create the first mobile device, a phone called the ROKR, that could connect to iTunes. At the time Motorola was at the top of hte mobile space, with a series of devices that had great performance and style, like the conversation piece, I owned, the Moto V70, the standard, practical flip, the Moto V60, and the gold standard of mobile device design at the time, the Moto RAZR.
Motorola was exactly where BMW and Diamler are now-- at the top of their industry. They worked with Apple to get the ROKR device out, but Apple was either distracted by the imminent release of their iPod Nano, which was smaller than the phone and could hold far more song's than the Motorola's arificially capped 100 song limit.
The disruption was complete two years later when Apple unveiled the iPhone, a device with more speed, more storage, a dazzling interface, and a music app. Motorola would never regain its spot as the top mobile phone maker again.
No- Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs but the lesson here is that BMW and Daimler, both of whom are working on both autonomy and advanced drive vehicles, would do well to innovate on their own-- grabbing talent where they can, lest a relationship with Apple lead to a vehicle that completely devours their core audience.
August 04, 2016 /Dwayne De Freitas
Autonomous, Auto, EV, SteveJobs, Apple
Mobility, Auto
An Economic Hybrid Drivetrain →
July 14, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobility
Billy Steele, writing for Engadget on Honda's new hybrid motor, which they built in collaboration with Daido Steel:
The new motor doesn't use heavy rare earth metals like dysprosium and terbium, instead relying on magnets from Daido Steel that cost 10 percent less and weigh 8 percent lighter than the previous components.
Hybrids are going to be an ever-important step toward auto's step to electrification, since large batteries still cost a lot and developing nations have more access to petroleum based fuels than they do steady electricity supplies. reducing dependence on Rare Earth metals goes a long way into bringing the cost of these devices down.
Steele also mentions that without the need for these metals, Honda doesn't have to negotiate with China, which holds most of the rare earth metal reserves. A positive political externality for Japan, perhaps, but an even more positive externality for the price of these metals, which should become more accessible as the price diminishes.
July 14, 2016 /Dwayne De Freitas
Auto, EV, Eco
The Americas are doing Incredible Things with Cars →
July 01, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Auto, Mobility
While Germany has long been the place for auto innovation, it's clear that over the last decade, there's been a resurgence in US auto engineering. Unfortuneately, the Big 3 aren't leading the charge, but being dragged by Tesla, Google and even Apple these days.
Germany's big 3 are being dragged as well, but today it's interesting to see how it's not just the US that's making waves. As Alina Selyukh reports for NPR, a 24 year old Columbian man just used 3D printing techniques to create a cheap, autonomous minibus-- the sort of thing that could be made incredibly quickly, cheaply, and, in its capacity as a part of public transportation, take cars off of the road, rather than chasing a consumer play that inevitably leads to more traffic.
It's impressive. Click or tap on this blog post's title for the link that'll get you the images of this adorable minibus, it's inventor and the full story.
Auto, EV, Autonomous
Auto, Mobility
Tesla Autopilot Implicated in Death of Model S Driver →
July 01, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Auto
Autopilot, the series of technologies used in conjunction that allow a Tesla Model S drive semi-autonomously, was in use when one 2015 Model S crashed, killing the driver.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration ("NHTSA") is looking into the crash and thus, looking into Autopilot.
Tesla remarked on the situation on their blog:
We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.
It's heartbreaking to think that someone thought their car was taking care of the driving and then, presumably all of a sudden, they end up in a crash that takes their life. Autopilot thought it may be called, Tesla expects people keep their eyes open and their hands on the wheel when using the feature. Still, there's no way to tell right now exactly what happened.
Regardless of fault, we can expect some for some draft regulations around autonomous vehicles to come out of this inquiry.
Tesla, EV, Robots, Autonomous
German Automakers Aggressively Moving Forward with EV plans →
June 14, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobility
Jason Graul of Business Finance News is reports that Germany's Big Three automakers (BMW, Daimler, and VolksWagen) are beginning to ramp up their EV product goals. It's a strange concession from an industry that, less than a decade ago, thought EVs were impossible. The reason for this renewed interest in electronic vehicles?
US Automaker Tesla Motors
"Even though for Tesla, Germany has remained a low-volume market, for the German automakers, US has proved to be the key auto market. Recently, Tesla garnered overwhelming response for its latest mass-market Model 3, which indicates how much electric vehicles are being preferred by the people if they were offered at lower prices. The US electric car maker also revealed a new goal of producing half a million cars per year in 2018 — two years ahead of its actual planned date of 2020. This is reflective of the fact that the company is aggressively moving ahead with its EV plans and hence, other automakers need to ramp up their operations if they are to compete with Tesla."
June 14, 2016 /Dwayne De Freitas
Auto, EV
The Tesla Model X - A Lifestyle Take
June 07, 2016 by Dwayne De Freitas in Mobile
Whereupon Bloomberg's Hannah Elliott takes a road trip in a $150,000.00 Model X through super-charger rich California and produces a video assessment of the vehicle with a duration of less than three and a half minutes.
Elliott's video review is posted below from YouTube. The conclusions are that the car feels virtuous but it's cost isn't the money, but the time-sucking lifestyle of an electric auto's charging requirements and the lack of "mechanical" nature of the drive.
I genuinely appreciate the lifestyle discussion from Elliott due to her funky personal fashion taste and the casual but caring but also matter-of-fact tone she uses, but when you put it all together it doesn't ring with sincerity. She scratches the surface of lifestyle, states that doors open unexpectedly without any real visual evidence, and forgets that a single-gear dual motor drive train is about as direct as once gets when it comes to the mechanics of a car-- especially when one compares that to the Triptronics and paddle shiftiness of modern, conventionally powered sport luxury vehicles.
When it comes to complaints about range, the crossover segment, perhaps more than any other auto segment, is designed for the daily errands and the weekend warrior-- both well within the battery range of the top-end model Elliott evaluated-- and that's in Colorado, where mountain climbs are steeper (I-70) than CA and Superchargers are bit more rare.
Then there's the ample time that the (very short) evaluation spends on waiting for the Model X to charge up at the super charging station. The editing makes the charging seem disproportionately long compared to the balance of her five day trip along the CA coast. Time that could be spent discussing the intimate details of any connection she has with the vehicle are spend bouncing a ball in a corner or talking on the phone...which she does on the handset while sitting in the car rather than showing us how well the bluetooth hands-free works.
I'm disappointed. Elliott could have done a lot more in the time she had.
Auto, Tesla, Mobile, Electric Vehicles, EV


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Home » NTT Communications Enhances Enterprise Cloud To Accelerate Digital Transformation
NTT Communications Enhances Enterprise Cloud To Accelerate Digital Transformation
Innovative hybrid cloud blends traditional and cloud-native ICT with free connectivity and new, all-in-one management portal.
KEYWORDS cloud management
NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) has announced that it has unveiled dramatic enhancements to its innovative cloud solution, Enterprise Cloud. The enhanced Enterprise Cloud is immediately available in Japan, and will be rolled out in the UK, Singapore, US, Australia, Hong Kong and Germany this year.
NTT Com is launching its enhanced Enterprise Cloud to help enterprises meet the complex requirements of digital transformation — the application of digital technology across multiple aspects of their businesses to unleash creativity, grow faster and maintain market leadership. Their challenge is twofold. On one hand, enterprises are seeking to migrate traditional ICT to the cloud for more effective ICT operations and cost optimization; on the other, driven by mobile, social, big-data, IoT and other digital technologies, they are deploying cloud-native applications and shifting toward a DevOps culture that supports rapid innovation. To meet these challenges, NTT Com's enhanced Enterprise Cloud provides a comprehensive platform for both traditional and cloud- native ICT, as well as network connectivity, colocation service and third-party cloud.
"As enterprise businesses move towards digitalization, globalization and cloud, NTT Com will continue to help customers innovate business processes and create new business models with Enterprise Cloud, which has been enhanced to meet requirements of both secure and reliable ICT and flexible and agile ICT," said Motoo Tanaka, senior vice president of cloud services at NTT Com.
New and Enhanced Capabilities:
(1) Hosted Private Cloud for Traditional ICT
Enterprise Cloud's hosted private cloud now consists of dedicated bare-metal servers with the automation, pay-as-you-go flexibility and options of a multi-hypervisor environment, including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. It also provides a highly flexible internal network, which facilitates the re-use of on-premises network architecture in the cloud. Enterprise customers can realize cloud-enabled traditional ICT by seamlessly migrating to the hosted private cloud any on-premises systems that require a dedicated environment for reasons of performance, security or licensing. Such migrations contribute to the optimization of traditional ICT environments and form a foundation for further cloud-based digital transformation.
(2) Enterprise-class Multi-tenant Cloud for Cloud-Native ICT
The Enterprise Cloud now features a secure and highly reliable, enterprise-class multi-tenant cloud based on the OpenStack architecture, which therefore gives customers an industry-standard open API to control the Enterprise Cloud in an automated manner. In addition, by incorporating Cloud Foundry, an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software, the Enterprise Cloud provides PaaS for agile application development and operational efficiency. This gives customers enterprise-class service quality as well as effective management of agile and Dev-Ops oriented application development. The open architecture meanwhile relieves concerns about vendor lock-in and accelerates customers' digital business strategies.
(3) Seamless Hybrid Cloud Environment
The enhanced Enterprise Cloud's multi-tenant cloud and hosted private cloud are connected at Layer 2 with SDN, which gives customers the power to flexibly and seamlessly configure the network components (virtual server, bare-metal server, firewall, load balancer) running on a complex on-premises environment in the same network segment. As a result, customers can reduce approximately 30% of the workload required for the network and server re-configuration that usually comes with cloud migration.
(4) Free and Seamless Connection between Cloud Platforms
The enhanced Enterprise Cloud platform is connected with a 10Gbps best-effort closed network, which is free of charge. In addition, connectivity between Enterprise Cloud platforms and data centers is provided at competitive prices globally, utilizing NTT Com's infrastructure as a telecom carrier. These network capabilities enable enterprises to optimize their ICT systems, for instance by sharing CAD data with regional suppliers or collecting sensor data, as the data transfer and system collaboration on cloud platforms and data centers are easy to use, and either free of charge or low cost. Cloud capabilities like these support digital transformation on a global scale, dramatically improving the performance and reach of enterprises' global business.
(5) Cloud Management Platform (CMP) for Full Visibility and IT Governance
NTT Com is launching CMP for the efficient management and unified control of both Enterprise Cloud and third-party providers' clouds, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. CMP also enables customer management and operation of hybrid clouds and meets the IT governance, cost control, security management and automated ICT operational requirements needed to successfully execute a cloud-first digital transformation strategy companywide.
Future Roadmap
NTT Com will continue to enhance its capabilities such as SDx-enabled unification of cloud, world-class data centers and global network assets. The OpenStack-based micro service architecture of Enterprise Cloud enables NTT Com to incorporate the latest technology advancements coming from both open source communities and its technology partners. Some of the new functions NTT Com plans to launch for enterprises include SAP HANA, virtual private PaaS and enhanced cloud management capabilities, to further support the digital transformation journeys of its enterprise customers.
This article was originally posted "NTT Communications Enhances Enterprise Cloud To Accelerate Digital Transformation" from Cloud Strategy Magazine.
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