Reward-Constrained Behavior Cloning

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated success in challenging decision-making/control tasks. However, RL methods, which solve tasks through maximizing the expected reward, may generate undesirable behaviors due to inferior local convergence or incompetent reward design. These undesirable behaviors of agents may not reduce the total reward but destroy the user experience of the application. For example, in the autonomous driving task, the policy actuated by speed reward behaves much more sudden brakes while human drivers generally don’t do that. To overcome this problem, we present a novel method named Reward-Constrained Behavior Cloning (RCBC) which synthesizes imitation learning and constrained reinforcement learning. RCBC leverages human demonstrations to induce desirable or human-like behaviors and employs lower-bound reward constraints for policy optimization to maximize the expected reward. Empirical results on popular benchmark environments show that RCBC learns significantly more human-desired policies with performance guarantees which meet the lower-bound reward constraints while performing better than or as well as baseline methods in terms of reward maximization.

Common Crime and Domestic Violence Victimization of Older Chinese in Urban China: The Prevalence and Its Impact on Mental Health and Constrained Behavior

This article examines the prevalence of victimization among older Chinese living in urban China and its psychological and behavioral impacts. A representative sample of 453 older adults aged 60 or above was recruited from Kunming, the People’s Republic of China, using multistage sampling method. Participants were individually interviewed on their demographic characteristics, experience of common crime and domestic violence victimization, fear of common crime and domestic violence, mental health, and constrained behavior. Results showed that 254 participants (56.1%) reported one or more types of common crime and 21 (4.6%) reported experiencing domestic violence in the past. Seventeen participants (3.8%) reportedly experienced both common crime and domestic violence victimization. There was no gender difference in the overall incidence of victimization but in some subtypes. Regression analyses indicated that past experience of common crime victimization was significantly associated with greater fear of common crime (β = .136, p = .004), poorer mental health (β = .136, p = .003), and more constrained behavior (β = .108, p = .025). Fear of common crime predicted increased constrained behavior (β = .240, p < .001) independent of gender, age, education, household finances, living arrangement, and physical health. Domestic violence victimization was not significant in predicting poor mental health and constrained behavior but was significant in predicting fear of domestic violence (β = .266, p < .001), which was related to poorer mental health (β = .102, p = .039). The study suggests the importance of taking older people’s risk and experience of victimization into consideration in gerontological research, practice, and policymaking.

Application of Information Technology and Printing Materials in Ideological and Political Learning

Traditional mode of ideological and political education emphasizes that young college learners pass existing moral and legal values to construct their constrained behavior. Rarely does it involve how to guide them to carry out moral and legal issues. However, with the advance of information technology, college learners have more freedom to express their dissatisfaction with real society and understanding of life and browse information they are interested more easily, which makes ideological and political education more challenging. This essay is to study the function and effects of information technology and printing materials in ideological and political education.

The Bulgarian ethnic model: post-1989 Bulgarian ethnic conflict resolution

Bulgarian majority and Turkish minority relations have remained peaceful in the post Communist era despite a significant potential for civil strife. These antagonisms were a product of Bulgaria's historical political development. The most recent episode of forced assimilation policies under the Communist regime was a critical grievance contributing to the democratic transition in 1989. Unlike in neighboring Yugoslavia, communal ethnic conflict did not escalate to violence with political liberalization and the emergence of democratic political competition. A critical factor in the political formula for maintaining interethnic peace in Bulgaria has been Turkey's comparatively constrained behavior as a “motherland state” with regard to the Turkish Diaspora in Bulgaria.

Micromechanical modeling of ferroelectric films

Ferroelectric films are growing in significance as non-volatile memory devices, sensors, and microactuators. The stress state of the film, induced by processing or constraints such as the substrate, strongly affects device behavior. Thus, it is important to be able to model the coupled and constrained behavior of film material. This work presents a preliminary study of the application of micromechanical modeling to ferroelectric films. A self-consistent micromechanics model developed for bulk ferroelectrics is adapted for thin film behavior by incorporating several features of the microstructure, mechanical clamping by the substrate, residual stresses, and the crystallographic orientation of the film.