A luscious light chocolate banana cake for any occasion. Do you have overripe bananas in the fruit bowl? Pop them into a freezer bag and freeze. Then when you have time to whip up this easy and delicious cake, just thaw bananas a few hours ahead at room temperature then mash them.

Australia's World Cup qualifier against Thailand next week has been moved to another stadium in Bangkok because of flooding in the city, Football Federation Australia said.

OBJECTIVE

HbA_1c levels are increasingly measured in screening for diabetes; we investigated whether HbA_1c may simultaneously improve cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment, using QRISK3, American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA), and Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) scoring systems.

A reader submitted the following question: “I recently discovered that my husband is attracted to transsexuals (MTF - non op). This is the only type of porn that he looks at. He also role plays online with men for sexual play and chat. I discovered this after I started snooping because I had some red flags. He is very embarrassed and uncomfortable discussing it. He has apologized for the online chatting (as we had agreed this was out of bounds for our relationship). He says he likes them because they are feminine but his primary attraction is to women (with female parts). However, I just am not sure I believe him. I am terrified that when we are intimate (which I have to pretty much beg for), he can only do it when its dark and I am fearful he is fantasizing that I have a penis. This bothers me deeply on a number of different levels. Are there men who are only interested in transsexuals? Is it possible he is no longer turned on by my female genitalia?” There’s a lot to unpack in this question, but let’s start here: over the years, I’ve received several emails from women describing similar stories and concerns, so you’re not alone in feeling the way that you do.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign a bill into law that would ban suspensions and expulsions for children in prekindergarten through 3rd grade for minor offenses.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos railed against state constitutional prohibitions on public funds going to religious institutions in a speech to the Alfred E. Smith Foundation in New York City.

Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced a new effort to bring computer science classes to every public school in the state by the end of 2017.

Food security -- Australia.

Banks and banking.

Working class -- Press coverage -- United States.

Giessen : J. Ricker, 1856.

A group of high school students from Anchorage spent spring break at a remote Native Village as part of an unusual cultural exchange program in Alaska. See what they learned.

[London], [between 1820 and 1829?]

Liverpool (82, Duke Street) ; And in London (13 St. James's Place, Hampstead Road) : Published ... by the artist, April 10th. 1854.

Liverpool (82, Duke Street) ; And in London (13 St. James's Place, Hampstead Road) : Published ... by the artist, April 10th. 1854.

London (Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place) : Published as the Act directs ... by Wm. Woollett, engraver to His Majesty, 4 June, 1778.

London (No. 90, Cheapside, & 8, Pall Mall) : Published ... by Hurst, Robinson & Co., March 1st. 1824.

London (No. 90, Cheapside, & 8, Pall Mall) : Published ... by Hurst, Robinson & Co., March 1st. 1824.

[London], [1824]

After an investigation found Illinois schools put children in "isolated timeout" for illegal reasons, a group of the state's federal lawmakers have asked U.S. Secretary of Education to ban seclusion in schools nationwide.

Trier : WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2017.

Wanli Qiao.

Source: Electronic Journal of Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 302--344.

Abstract:
Bandwidth selection is crucial in the kernel estimation of density level sets. A risk based on the symmetric difference between the estimated and true level sets is usually used to measure their proximity. In this paper we provide an asymptotic $L^{p}$ approximation to this risk, where $p$ is characterized by the weight function in the risk. In particular the excess risk corresponds to an $L^{2}$ type of risk, and is adopted to derive an optimal bandwidth for nonparametric level set estimation of $d$-dimensional density functions ($dgeq 1$). A direct plug-in bandwidth selector is developed for kernel density level set estimation and its efficacy is verified in numerical studies.

Alessandro Casa, José E. Chacón, Giovanna Menardi.

Source: Electronic Journal of Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 835--856.

Abstract:
Density-based clustering relies on the idea of linking groups to some specific features of the probability distribution underlying the data. The reference to a true, yet unknown, population structure allows framing the clustering problem in a standard inferential setting, where the concept of ideal population clustering is defined as the partition induced by the true density function. The nonparametric formulation of this approach, known as modal clustering, draws a correspondence between the groups and the domains of attraction of the density modes. Operationally, a nonparametric density estimate is required and a proper selection of the amount of smoothing, governing the shape of the density and hence possibly the modal structure, is crucial to identify the final partition. In this work, we address the issue of density estimation for modal clustering from an asymptotic perspective. A natural and easy to interpret metric to measure the distance between density-based partitions is discussed, its asymptotic approximation explored, and employed to study the problem of bandwidth selection for nonparametric modal clustering.

We consider a setting where multiple players sequentially choose among a common set of actions (arms). Motivated by an application to cognitive radio networks, we assume that players incur a loss upon colliding, and that communication between players is not possible. Existing approaches assume that the system is stationary. Yet this assumption is often violated in practice, e.g., due to signal strength fluctuations. In this work, we design the first multi-player Bandit algorithm that provably works in arbitrarily changing environments, where the losses of the arms may even be chosen by an adversary. This resolves an open problem posed by Rosenski et al. (2016).

Hock Peng Chan.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 346--373.

Abstract:
Lai and Robbins ( Adv. in Appl. Math. 6 (1985) 4–22) and Lai ( Ann. Statist. 15 (1987) 1091–1114) provided efficient parametric solutions to the multi-armed bandit problem, showing that arm allocation via upper confidence bounds (UCB) achieves minimum regret. These bounds are constructed from the Kullback–Leibler information of the reward distributions, estimated from specified parametric families. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the multi-armed bandit problem due to new applications in machine learning algorithms and data analytics. Nonparametric arm allocation procedures like $epsilon $-greedy, Boltzmann exploration and BESA were studied, and modified versions of the UCB procedure were also analyzed under nonparametric settings. However, unlike UCB these nonparametric procedures are not efficient under general parametric settings. In this paper, we propose efficient nonparametric procedures.

The two major companies cited what they considered onerous divestiture requirements from the U.S. Department of Justice as the reason behind their joint decision.

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