Models for sequential decision making under uncertainty (such as Markov decision processes, or MDPs) have been studied in operations research for decades. The recent incorporation of ideas from many areas of AI, including planning, probabilistic modeling, machine learning, and knowledge representation, have made these models much more widely applicable. In this talk, Boutilier will survey recen...

What I have to say may be regarded as provocative or even insulting, but I think it needs to be said. In the history of medicine, a substantial number of lectures, seminars, and papers given at conferences and symposia-let's call them talks-are very difficult to follow, and a few are utterly incomprehensible. Very rarely is this because speakers have failed to master their subject. It is simply...

Bénédicte Haas, University of Paris-Dauphine, France Limits of Non-increasing Markov Chains and Applications to Random Trees and Coalescents Consider a non-increasing Markov chain with values in the set of non-negative integers, starting from a large integer !. We describe its scaling limit as ! → ∞, under the assumption that the large jump events are rare and happen at rates that behave like a...

SWISS-PROT is a curated added-value protein sequence database that strives to provide a high level of annotations (such as the description of the function of a protein, its domain structure, post-translational modifications, variants, etc.), a minimal level of redundancy, and a high level of integration with other databases [1]. It currently contains about 80,000 annotated sequence entries from...

JAMA: Evidence-basedmedicineoncewas criticized as “cookbook medicine.” Do you still encounter thatkindofcriticism,and if so, how do you counter it? DR GUYATT: One of my favorite talks to give is that evidence-based medicine is patient-centered medicine, so there are a number of things to point out. Perhaps most important is that evidence itself never tells you what to do, never. It’s always evi...

The professor of primary healthcare talks to Marika Davies about being the first woman throughout her academic career