The goal of imitation learning is to mimic expert behavior without access to an explicit reward signal. Expert demonstrations provided by humans, however, often show significant variability due to latent factors that are typically not explicitly modeled. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that can infer the latent structure of expert demonstrations in an unsupervised way. Our method, bui...

Health Inequality over the Life-Cycle We investigate the evolution of health inequality over the life-course. Health is modeled as a latent variable that is determined by three factors: endowments, and permanent and transitory shocks. We employ Simulated Minimum Distance and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the model. We estimate that permanent shocks account for under 10% of the ...

In the Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) analysis, the statistical procedures have been performed after aggregation of observations from the various libraries for the same class. Most studies have not accounted for the within-class variability. The identification of the differentially expressed genes based on the class separation has not been easy because of heteroscedasticity of librar...

Recent works question the benefit of Promotional Pricing (Hi-Lo) formats. In this essay, we characterize a setting in which cost-disadvantaged firms would rationally and profitably opt for the Hi-Lo format. Essentially, cost-disadvantaged retail firms, such as mall outlets and smaller chains lacking the economies of scale of their rivals, charge higher prices than their cost-competitive rivals....

The few known γ-ray binary systems are all associated with variable radio and Xray emission. The TeV source HESS J0632+057, apparently associated with the Be star MWC148, is plausibly a new member of this class. Following the identification of a variable X-ray counterpart to the TeV source we conducted GMRT and VLA observations in June-September 2008 to search for the radio counterpart of this ...

Heterogeneity and latent variables are now widely recognized as major sources of bias and variability in high-throughput experiments. The most well-known source of latent variation in genomic experiments are batch effects-when samples are processed on different days, in different groups or by different people. However, there are also a large number of other variables that may have a major impac...

Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of land surface phenology is important to understanding changes in landscape ecological processes of semi-arid savannas in Southern Africa. The aim of the study was to determine the influence of variation in tree cover percentage on land surface phenological response in the semi-arid savanna of Southern Africa. Various land surface phenological metrics...

Vegetation dynamics are an important topic in the field of global environment change, which is of great significance to monitor temporal–spatial variability of desertification at regional or global scales. Following the reported desertification reversion in the late 1990s in the Horqin Sandy Land, an issue was concerned for desertification control by decreased water availability. To detect the ...

The residential earthquake insurance of 2002 created additional protected residential earthquake insurance plan, under which residential earthquake insurance is available to individuals from insurance industry in Taiwan. Earthquake damages that occurrence in Taiwan remain largely uninsured losses despite the efforts of governmental and private insurance programs. Spatial Econometrics has been r...

Gene expression study is well known to focus on finding association between expression levels of particular genes and some interesting variables, for example, a disease state. In such studies, besides the primary variable of interest, some other covariates are usually measured and included in the model of association tests. However, it is not possible to measure all the variables related to gen...