John D. Martin

Hayder A. Albaqer, Kadhum J. Al-Jibouri, John Martin et al.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light a concerning aspect of long-term neurological complications in post-recovery patients. This study delved into the investigation of such neurological sequelae in a cohort of 500 post-COVID-19 patients, encompassing individuals with varying illness severity. The primary aim was to predict outcomes using a machine learning approach based on diverse clinical data and neuroimaging parameters. The results revealed that 68% of the post-COVID-19 patients reported experiencing neurological symptoms, with fatigue, headache, and anosmia being the most common manifestations. Moreover, 22% of the patients exhibited more severe neurological complications, including encephalopathy and stroke. The application of machine learning models showed promising results in predicting long-term neurological outcomes. Notably, the Random Forest model achieved an accuracy of 85%, sensitivity of 80%, and specificity of 90% in identifying patients at risk of developing neurological sequelae. These findings underscore the importance of continuous monitoring and follow-up care for post-COVID-19 patients, particularly in relation to potential neurological complications. The integration of machine learning-based outcome prediction offers a valuable tool for early intervention and personalized treatment strategies, aiming to improve patient care and clinical decision-making. In conclusion, this study sheds light on the prevalence of long-term neurological complications in post-COVID-19 patients and demonstrates the potential of machine learning in predicting outcomes, thereby contributing to enhanced patient management and better health outcomes. Further research and larger studies are warranted to validate and refine these predictive models and to gain deeper insights into the underlying mechanisms of post-COVID-19 neurological sequelae.

Maitham G. Yousif, Hector J. Castro, John Martin et al.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching implications for global public health. As we continue to grapple with its consequences, it becomes increasingly clear that post-COVID-19 complications are a significant concern. Among these complications, renal impairment has garnered particular attention due to its potential long-term health impacts. This study, conducted with a cohort of 821 post-COVID-19 patients from diverse regions of Iraq across the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, endeavors to predict the risk of long-term renal impairment using advanced machine learning algorithms. Our findings have the potential to revolutionize post-COVID-19 patient care by enabling early identification and intervention for those at risk of renal impairment, ultimately improving clinical outcomes. This research encompasses comprehensive data collection and preprocessing, feature selection, and the development of predictive models using various machine learning algorithms. The study's objectives are to assess the incidence of long-term renal impairment in post-COVID-19 patients, identify associated risk factors, create predictive models, and evaluate their accuracy. We anticipate that our machine learning models, drawing from a rich dataset, will provide valuable insights into the risk of renal impairment, ultimately enhancing patient care and quality of life. In conclusion, the research presented herein offers a critical contribution to the field of post-COVID-19 care. By harnessing the power of machine learning, we aim to predict long-term renal impairment risk accurately. These predictions have the potential to inform healthcare professionals, enabling them to take proactive measures and provide targeted interventions for post-COVID-19 patients at risk of renal complications, thus minimizing the impact of this serious health concern.

Rafael Rafailov, Kyle Hatch, Victor Kolev et al.

We study the problem of offline pre-training and online fine-tuning for reinforcement learning from high-dimensional observations in the context of realistic robot tasks. Recent offline model-free approaches successfully use online fine-tuning to either improve the performance of the agent over the data collection policy or adapt to novel tasks. At the same time, model-based RL algorithms have achieved significant progress in sample efficiency and the complexity of the tasks they can solve, yet remain under-utilized in the fine-tuning setting. In this work, we argue that existing model-based offline RL methods are not suitable for offline-to-online fine-tuning in high-dimensional domains due to issues with distribution shifts, off-dynamics data, and non-stationary rewards. We propose an on-policy model-based method that can efficiently reuse prior data through model-based value expansion and policy regularization, while preventing model exploitation by controlling epistemic uncertainty. We find that our approach successfully solves tasks from the MetaWorld benchmark, as well as the Franka Kitchen robot manipulation environment completely from images. To the best of our knowledge, MOTO is the first method to solve this environment from pixels.

John McConnell, John D. Martin, Brendan Englot

We propose a novel approach to handling the ambiguity in elevation angle associated with the observations of a forward looking multi-beam imaging sonar, and the challenges it poses for performing an accurate 3D reconstruction. We utilize a pair of sonars with orthogonal axes of uncertainty to independently observe the same points in the environment from two different perspectives, and associate these observations. Using these concurrent observations, we can create a dense, fully defined point cloud at every time-step to aid in reconstructing the 3D geometry of underwater scenes. We will evaluate our method in the context of the current state of the art, for which strong assumptions on object geometry limit applicability to generalized 3D scenes. We will discuss results from laboratory tests that quantitatively benchmark our algorithm's reconstruction capabilities, and results from a real-world, tidal river basin which qualitatively demonstrate our ability to reconstruct a cluttered field of underwater objects.