Publications

Optogenetic activation of parvalbumin and somatostatin interneurons selectively restores theta-nested gamma oscillations and oscillation-induced spike timing-dependent long-term potentiation impaired by amyloid β oligomers
Kyerl Park
Jaedong Lee
Hyun Jae Jang
Blake Richards
Michael M Kohl
Jeehyun Kwag
2020-01-15
BMC Biology (published)
doi.org
Conducting gender-based analysis of existing databases when self-reported gender data are unavailable: the GENDER Index in a working population
M. Gabrielle Pagé
Bilkis Vissandjée
Hermine Lore Nguena Nguefack
Joel Katz
Oumar Mallé Samb
Alain Gillian Lucie David Manon Catherine Anaïs Benoit Alexandre Amélie Pasquale Valérie Marie-Pascale Mike Anne-Marie Marc Josiane Mireille Stéphanie Pierre Annie Isabelle Danielle Denis Jaime André Geneviève Jean-François Roxanne Marc-Antoine Pier Sonia Vanasse
Alain Gillian Lucie David Manon Catherine Anaïs Benoit A Vanasse Bartlett Blais Buckeridge Choinière Hudon
Alain Vanasse
Gillian Bartlett
Lucie Blais
David Buckeridge
Manon Choinière
Catherine Hudon
Anaïs Lacasse
Benoit Lamarche
Alexandre Lebel
Amélie Quesnel-Vallée
Pasquale Roberge
Valérie Émond
Marie-Pascale Pomey … (see 19 more)
Mike Benigeri
Anne-Marie Cloutier
Marc Dorais
Josiane Courteau
Mireille Courteau
Stéphanie Plante
Pierre Cambon
Annie Giguère
Isabelle Leroux
Danielle St-Laurent
Denis Roy
Jaime Borja
André Néron
Geneviève Landry
Jean-François Ethier
Roxanne Dault
Marc-Antoine Côté-Marcil
Pier Tremblay
Sonia Quirion
Objectives Growing attention has been given to considering sex and gender in health research. However, this remains a challenge in the conte… (see more)xt of retrospective studies where self-reported gender measures are often unavailable. This study aimed to create and validate a composite gender index using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). Methods According to scientific literature and expert opinion, the GENDER Index was built using several variables available in the CCHS and deemed to be gender-related (e.g., occupation, receiving child support, number of working hours). Among workers aged 18–50 years who had no missing data for our variables of interest ( n  = 29,470 participants), propensity scores were derived from a logistic regression model that included gender-related variables as covariates and where biological sex served as the dependent variable. Construct validity of propensity scores (GENDER Index scores) were then examined. Results When looking at the distribution of the GENDER Index scores in males and females, they appeared related but partly independent. Differences in the proportion of females appeared between groups categorized according to the GENDER Index scores tertiles ( p   0.0001). Construct validity was also examined through associations between the GENDER Index scores and gender-related variables identifi
2020-01-13
Canadian journal of public health (published)
doi.org
Accelerating Smooth Games by Manipulating Spectral Shapes
Waiss Azizian
Damien Scieur
Ioannis Mitliagkas
Simon Lacoste-Julien
Gauthier Gidel
We use matrix iteration theory to characterize acceleration in smooth games. We define the spectral shape of a family of games as the set co… (see more)ntaining all eigenvalues of the Jacobians of standard gradient dynamics in the family. Shapes restricted to the real line represent well-understood classes of problems, like minimization. Shapes spanning the complex plane capture the added numerical challenges in solving smooth games. In this framework, we describe gradient-based methods, such as extragradient, as transformations on the spectral shape. Using this perspective, we propose an optimal algorithm for bilinear games. For smooth and strongly monotone operators, we identify a continuum between convex minimization, where acceleration is possible using Polyak's momentum, and the worst case where gradient descent is optimal. Finally, going beyond first-order methods, we propose an accelerated version of consensus optimization.
2020-01-02
ArXiv (preprint)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
Call for Papers: Novel Informatics Approaches to COVID-19 Research
Hua Xu
David Buckeridge
Fei Wang
2020-01-01
(published)
www.semanticscholar.org
Coping With Simulators That Don't Always Return
Andrew Warrington
Saeid Naderiparizi
Frank Wood
2020-01-01
AISTATS (published)
proceedings.mlr.press
arxiv.org
COVI White Paper-Version 1.1
Hannah Alsdurf
Yoshua Bengio
Tristan Deleu
Prateek Gupta
Daphne Ippolito
Richard Janda
Max Jarvie
Tyler J. Kolody
Sekoul Krastev
Tegan Maharaj
Robert Obryk
Dan Pilat
Valerie Pisano
Benjamin Prud'homme
Meng Qu
Nasim Rahaman
Irina Rish
Jean-franois Rousseau
abhinav sharma
Brooke Struck … (see 3 more)
Jian Tang
Martin Weiss
Yun William Yu
The SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic has resulted in significant strain on health care and public health institutions around the world. Contac… (see more)t tracing is an essential tool for public health officials and local communities to change the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Standard manual contact tracing of people infected with Covid-19, while the current gold standard, has significant challenges that limit the ability of public health authorities to minimize community infections. Personalized peer-to-peer contact tracing through the use of mobile applications has the potential to shift the paradigm of Covid-19 community spread. Although some countries have deployed centralized tracking systems through either GPS or Bluetooth, more privacy-protecting decentralized systems offer much of the same benefit without concentrating data in the hands of a state authority or in for-profit corporations. Additionally, machine learning methods can be used to circumvent some of the limitations of standard digital tracing by incorporating many clues (including medical conditions, self-reported symptoms, and numerous encounters with people at different risk levels, for different durations and distances) and their uncertainty into a more graded and precise estimation of infection and contagion risk. The estimated risk can be used to provide early risk awareness, personalized recommendations and relevant information to the user and connect them to health services. Finally, the non-identifying data about these risks can inform detailed epidemiological models trained jointly with the machine learning predictor, and these models can provide statistical evidence for the interaction and importance of different factors involved in the transmission of the disease. They can also be used to monitor, evaluate and optimize different health policy and confinement/deconfinement scenarios according to medical and economic productivity indicators. However, such a strategy based on mobile apps and machine learning should proactively mitigate potential ethical and privacy risks, which could have substantial impacts on society (not only impacts on health but also impacts such as stigmatization and abuse of personal data). Here, we present an overview of the rationale, design, ethical considerations and privacy strategy of ‘COVI,’ a Covid-19 public peer-to-peer contact tracing and risk awareness mobile application developed in Canada. Addendum 2020-07-14: The government of Canada has declined to endorse COVI and will be promoting a different app for decentralized contact tracing. In the interest of preventing fragmentation of the app landscape, COVI will therefore not be deployed to end users. We are currently still in the process of finalizing the project, and plan to release our code and models for academic consumption and to make them accessible to other States should they wish to deploy an app based on or inspired by said code and models. University of Ottawa, Mila, Université de Montréal, The Alan Turing Institute, University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, McGill University, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, The Decision Lab, HEC Montréal, Max Planck Institute, Libéo, University of Toronto. Corresponding author general: richard.janda@mcgill.ca Corresponding author for public health: abhinav.sharma@mcgill.ca Corresponding author for privacy: ywyu@math.toronto.edu Corresponding author for machine learning: yoshua.bengio@mila.quebec Corresponding author for user perspective: brooke@thedecisionlab.com Corresponding author for technical implementation: jean-francois.rousseau@libeo.com 1 ar X iv :2 00 5. 08 50 2v 2 [ cs .C R ] 2 7 Ju l 2 02 0
2020-01-01
(published)
www.semanticscholar.org
Cross-layer communication over fading channels with adaptive decision feedback
Borna Sayedana
Aditya Mahajan
E. Yeh
In this paper, cross-layer design of transmitting data packets over AWGN fading channel with adaptive decision feedback is considered. The t… (see more)ransmitter decides the number of packets to transmit and the threshold of the decision feedback based on the queue length and the channel state. The transmit power is chosen such that the probability of error is below a pre-specified threshold. We model the system as a Markov decision process and use ideas from lattice theory to establish qualitative properties of optimal transmission strategies. In particular, we show that: (i) if the channel state remains the same and the number of packets in the queue increase, then the optimal policy either transmits more packets or uses a smaller decision feedback threshold or both; and (ii) if the number of packets in the queue remain the same and the channel quality deteriorates, then the optimal policy either transmits fewer packets or uses a larger threshold for the decision feedback or both. We also show under rate constraints that if the channel gains for all channel states are above a threshold, then the “or” in the above characterization can be replaced by “and”. Finally, we present a numerical example showing that adaptive decision feedback significantly improves the power-delay trade-off as compared with the case of no feedback.
2020-01-01
WiOpt (published)
dblp.uni-trier.de
Differentiable Causal Discovery from Interventional Data
Philippe Brouillard
Sébastien Lachapelle
Alexandre Lacoste
Simon Lacoste-Julien
Alexandre Drouin
Discovering causal relationships in data is a challenging task that involves solving a combinatorial problem for which the solution is not a… (see more)lways identifiable. A new line of work reformulates the combinatorial problem as a continuous constrained optimization one, enabling the use of different powerful optimization techniques. However, methods based on this idea do not yet make use of interventional data, which can significantly alleviate identifiability issues. In this work, we propose a neural network-based method for this task that can leverage interventional data. We illustrate the flexibility of the continuous-constrained framework by taking advantage of expressive neural architectures such as normalizing flows. We show that our approach compares favorably to the state of the art in a variety of settings, including perfect and imperfect interventions for which the targeted nodes may even be unknown.
arxiv.org
A Distributional Analysis of Sampling-Based Reinforcement Learning Algorithms
Philip Amortila
Doina Precup
Prakash Panangaden
Marc Gendron-Bellemare
2020-01-01
AISTATS (published)
proceedings.mlr.press
arxiv.org
Divergent protein-coding genes and brain size in primates
Malesys Bourgeron Dumas
Guillaume Dumas
Simon Malesys
Thomas Bourgeron
17 The human brain differs from that of other primates, but the genetic basis of these differences 18 remains unclear. We investigated the e… (see more)volutionary pressures acting on almost all human 19 protein-coding genes ( N =11,667; 1:1 orthologs in primates) on the basis of their divergence 20 from those of early hominins, such as Neanderthals, and non-human primates. We confirm 21 that genes encoding brain-related proteins are among the most strongly conserved protein- 22 coding genes in the human genome. Combining our evolutionary pressure metrics for the 23 protein-coding genome with recent datasets, we found that this conservation applied to genes 24 functionally associated with the synapse and expressed in brain structures such as the 25 prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum. Conversely, several of the protein-coding genes that 26 diverge most in hominins relative to other primates are associated with brain-associated 27 diseases, such as micro/macrocephaly, dyslexia, and autism. We also showed that cerebellum 28 granule neurons express a set of divergent protein-coding genes that may have contributed to 29 the emergence of fine motor skills and social cognition in humans. This resource is available 30 from http://neanderthal.pasteur.fr and can be used to estimate evolutionary constraints acting 31 on a set of genes and to explore their relative contributions to human traits. 32
2020-01-01
(published)
www.semanticscholar.org
Electric Vehicles Equilibrium Model that Considers Queue Delay and Mixed Traffic
Nurit Oliker
Miguel F. Anjos
Margarida Carvalho
Emma Frejinger
Bernard Gendron
This study develops an equilibrium model for electric vehicles (EVs) that considers both queue delays in charging stations and flow dependen… (see more)t travel times. This is a user equilibrium model that accounts for travel, charging and queuing time in the path choice modelling of EVs and the complementary traffic. Waiting and service times in charging stations are represented by an m/m/k queuing system. The model considers multiple vehicle and driver classes, expressing different battery capacity, initial charge state and range anxiety level. Feasible paths are found for multiple classes given their limited travel range. A numerical application exemplifies the limitations of EVs assignment and their impact on flow distribution.
2020-01-01
(published)
www.semanticscholar.org
Expressiveness and Learning of Hidden Quantum Markov Models
Sandesh M. Adhikary
Siddarth Srinivasan
Geoff Gordon
Byron Boots
Extending classical probabilistic reasoning using the quantum mechanical view of probability has been of recent interest, particularly in th… (see more)e development of hidden quantum Markov models (HQMMs) to model stochastic processes. However, there has been little progress in characterizing the expressiveness of such models and learning them from data. We tackle these problems by showing that HQMMs are a special subclass of the general class of observable operator models (OOMs) that do not suffer from the \emph{negative probability problem} by design. We also provide a feasible retraction-based learning algorithm for HQMMs using constrained gradient descent on the Stiefel manifold of model parameters. We demonstrate that this approach is faster and scales to larger models than previous learning algorithms.
2020-01-01
AISTATS (published)
proceedings.mlr.press
arxiv.org