bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Co-occurrence of Myocardial Sarcoidosis and Left Ventricular Non-compaction in a Patient with Advanced Heart Failure
Authors: Kumar Anupam A , Tran Lena E , Rali Aniket S , Perez Alexander , Hoffman Robert , Schlendorf Kelly
Published: June 2022

A 46-year-old man with systolic heart failure, end-stage renal disease on dialysis, ventricular tachycardia and pulmonary sarcoidosis presented with decompensated heart failure and cardiogenic shock of unknown aetiology. The hospital course was complicated by worsening shock requiring inotropic and mechanical circulatory support, as well as eventual dual heart and kidney transplantation. Cardiac imaging was used to assess the aetiology of the patient’s non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy, including a PET scan and cardiac MRI. Imaging demonstrated findings consistent with left ventricular non-compaction, but was inconclusive for cardiac sarcoidosis. After eventual heart transplantation, histopathology of the patient’s explanted heart showed evidence of both non-compaction and cardiac sarcoidosis. In this case report, the authors review the pathophysiology of both cardiac sarcoidosis and left ventricular non-compaction, and highlight a multimodality approach to the diagnosis of non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy.
Development of a chicken interferon-induced transmembrane protein 3 (IFITM3)-specific monoclonal antibody using phage display
Authors: Kim Yong-Chan , Jeong Min-Ju , Jeong Byung-Hoon
Published: June 2022

Interferon-induced transmembrane protein 3 (IFITM3) has potent antiviral activity against several viruses. Recent studies have reported that the chicken IFITM3 gene also plays a pivotal role in blocking viral replication, but these studies are considerably limited due to being conducted at the RNA level only. Thus, the development of a chicken IFITM3 protein-specific antibody is needed to validate the function of IFITM3 at the protein level. Epitope prediction was performed with the immune epitope database analysis resource (IEDB-AR) program. The epitope was validated by four in silico programs, Jped4, Clustal Omega, TMpred and SOSUI. Chicken IFITM3 protein-specific monoclonal antibodies were screened by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay through affinity between recombinant IFITM3 protein and phage-displayed candidate antibodies. Validation of the reactivity of the chicken IFITM3 protein-specific antibody to chicken tissues was carried out using western blotting. We developed a chicken IFITM3 protein-specific monoclonal antibody using phage display. The reactivity of the antibody with peripheral chicken tissues was confirmed using western blotting. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first development of a chicken IFITM3 protein-specific monoclonal antibody using phage display.
Is it unlawful to favour oneself?
Authors: Csurgai-Horváth Gergely
Published: June 2022

The leveraging of market power by digital ecosystems and self-preferencing have become fashionable topics nowadays at national, European, and international levels. However, they are not novel issues. This paper argues that we can find the underlying concepts in a number of practices previously identified as abusive, such as tying and bundling, margin squeeze, and refusal to deal. This paper points out that these abuses have certain similarities with self-preferencing. This supports the claim that self-preferencing is likely to be conceivable under EU competition law as a new abuse. The investigations launched by the Commission after the adoption of the Google Shopping decision – such as against Amazon and Apple, the Amazon case of the Italian Competition Authority, as well as the various expert reports, and the legislative proposals that have been put forward in this regard also point in this direction. However, many questions remain when it comes to the legal standards that are applicable to the assessment of whether self-preferencing is abusive in a given situation.
In Search of the “Real”: To the Question of Authenticity Interpretation in the Concept of Social Space by H. Lefebvre
Authors:   Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kalashnikova Kseniia
Published: June 2022

At the present time, contradictory processes are taking place in cities: on the one hand, the commodification of the unique features of the city, on the other, the erasure of differences and the loss of the city's "soul"; painstaking work on branding territories, and at the same time, their depressing similarities. The question remains relevant: what analytical concepts can be used to describe and explain the transformations taking place in cities? This article proposes the concept of authenticity as a research tool. This concept is becoming more and more popular in the social sciences, but it is mainly used in theoretical works and is practically not used in applied research. This is due to the lack of a unified approach to the sociological definition of authenticity, and, as a consequence, to the absence of stable indicators for measuring it in empirical research. This article provides an overview of approaches to the definition of authenticity, a method for their classification is proposed (authenticity as an objective characteristic, as a social construct and as a feeling). Authenticity as an objective characteristic is based on confirmed authorship or attribution to time, place, technology. Authenticity as a constructed category is based on the perception of images of a place, its symbols and statuses. Authenticity as a human feeling arises in the process of individual and collective activity in space and is characterized as a feeling of "rootedness", "reality" and the usefulness of experience. It is possible to catch these three manifestations and describe authenticity in its multidimensionality by applying the concept of social space by H. Lefebvre, the "spatial triad", which consists of representations of space, space of representations and spatial practices.
Social Inclusion Reflected in the Images of Modern Advertising
Authors:   Kazan State Power Engineering University, Vavilova Zhanna
Published: June 2022

Today's rapid transformation of the social landscape, coupled with expansion of the media space and intensive digitalization in various areas of public life, focuses humanitarian research on overcoming the problem of alienation, rejection, and intolerant attitude towards the Other. Inclusion in a broad sense is a large-scale process that penetrates various spheres of life of modern society, to which advertising can also be attributed. At the same time, the topic of inclusive advertising, as well as the term itself, is a lacuna in Russian-language philosophical and interdisciplinary research. The purpose of the article is to outline the contours of inclusive transformations that are related to advertising mechanisms, and to put forward a typology of advertising based on the use of images of 'special' people. The analysis of examples of advertising communication attempts to identify trends of social transformations in this specific segment. Such an analysis might help to apply positive experience of inclusion in Russia, using prerequisites for inclusion both in reality and in the media, where advertising belongs. The article dwells upon the concept of visual normalization which acts at the superindividual level of reality construction, supported and shared by communities through visuality, including advertising. The paper allows for drawing certain conclusions regarding a possible inversion of values in consumer society in connection with proliferation of inclusive advertising; it is resumed that traditional utopianism, idealization of a person and a product inherent in advertising, as well as dystopism, focusing on negative phenomena that is typical of the genre of social advertising, give way to advertising without prejudice, based on the use of representative images that convey the diversity of modern society.
The Role of Hermeneutics in the Mechanism of Social Recognition
Authors:   Volgograd State University, Kopaneva Valeriya
Published: June 2022

The article attempts to consider hermeneutics in a special capacity – as a mechanism that allows for the exercise and receipt of social recognition. The presence of recognition as part of interpretation points to a certain order of interaction between these processes, namely, cyclical, according to the principle of the hermeneutic circle: recognition begets hermeneutics, and hermeneutics begets recognition. The impulse to hermeneutics arises in the interpreter because of the assumption that there are ideas in the text that are hidden from him and that need to be extracted with the help of special technologies. When the meaning of the text is discovered, it needs to be evaluated, which is projected onto the text itself and thus turns into recognition. The interpreter has such resources as the source text and the context as benchmarks of truth. The article considers the main stages at which the algorithm of hermeneutics cannot fully function without the mechanism of recognition. Hypothesis verification implies the recognition of the fact that in the text itself or in the context there are traces of true meaning, which can be checked, or reliable facts, which can be relied upon. In the stages of synthesizing and creating a hermeneutic product, the interpreter must share the value of recognition, for if such interpretation is made at all, it is in order to present it to another. Thus, the interpreter is interested in potential recognition.
The Experience of Approbation of the Methodology for Assessing the Effectiveness of Intercultural Communication in Education on the Example of International Student Mobility Programs
Authors:   Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Voevodina Ekaterina
Published: June 2022

The article analyzes the results of testing the methodology for assessing the effectiveness of intercultural communications in education using the example of international student mobility programs at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation in 2021. The methodology was developed within the framework of the research project "Intercultural communication in the global world: the experience of modeling and the use of new theoretical and methodological tools" taking into account the phenomenological approach and the ABC-concept of culture shock (Zhou Yu., Topping K., Todman J.). According to our theory, the species-forming signs of intercultural communication are the difference and deficiency of resources (linguistic, perceptual, instrumental and cognitive) shared by the communication participants. In this regard, the concept of intercultural competence in education is being clarified. This is an integral characteristic of a personality that provides resources for intercultural communication in the conditions of intersubjective interaction and mutual understanding in order to achieve the educational results set by the participants. The developed methodology is based on 8 criteria of effectiveness, and allows to carry out a quantitative assessment of communication on a 100-point scale and diagnose the barriers to adaptation of students. 68 graduates of international mobility programs took part in the approbation of the methodology. It was found that the least effective indicators of intercultural communication in education are associated with the production and reproduction of new forms of communication and the achievement of export influence. Difficulties in understanding the educational material by students, lack of confidence in communication with students and university teachers were also found. We have proposed practical recommendations for increasing the number of classes that would help to fill the deficiencies in the instrumental resources of communication and the export influence of education. In the activities of educational institutions, telecolaborations of students with the use of remote technologies can be applied. Telecolaboration is understood by us as a tool for joint reproduction and interpretation of resources for intercultural communication.
Kurgan 5 of the Necropolis “Ivanovskie I Kurgany” in the Southern Urals: Chronology of Complexes
Authors:   Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sirotin Sergey
Published: June 2022

The paper studies burial complexes of the kurgan 5 of the burial ground “Ivanovskie I kurgany” (“The Ivanovskiy 1st Kurgans”) located in the Southern Urals. The burial ground is located in the Trans-Ural regions of Bashkiria and is a part of the early nomads’ famous monuments in the Southern Urals. The kurgan necropolises located in steppe and forest-steppe zones of the Trans-Urals differ from those described in certain features of the funeral rite and clothing complexes. Researchers have repeatedly paid attention to the specifics of the monuments range in this region. A combination of various funeral rite features, diversity of funerary structures both in burial ground as a whole and in individual kurgans is the particular characteristic of the kurgan mounds of the 5th–4th centuries BC in the Trans-Ural regions. The trait is considered a sign of a transitional period. The necropolis “Ivanovskie I kurgany” can be included in the scope of such transitional period monuments. In total, 11 kurgans were recorded in the burial ground. Some of them were built in the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC), but most were constructed by early nomads in the late Sauromatic and early Sarmatian stage. Kurgan 5, which can be attributed to the category of large ones, contained burial 4 at the heart of its structure. A wooden structure was erected over the central burial but it completely burned down when performing ritual actions in ancient times. Three more burials were identified on the kurgan periphery: a rich and varied inventory was found in the burials, moulded and pottery ceramic vessels, weapons elements (bronze arrowheads, iron dagger, iron spearhead), elements of horse equipment. Bronze mirrors, beads, and jewelry were found in women’s burials. The inventory has analogies both in the South Ural complexes and in the burials of the Middle Don. A certain part of the items dates back to a large period of 5th – 3rd centuries BC, however, a separate category of items that allow to specify the dating of the kurgan within the second half of the 4th – the turn of the 4th – 3rd centuries BC. In this regard, the burials from kurgan 5 can be interpreted as supporting complexes of the early nomads of the Southern Urals of the Early Prokhorov period. Association of the studied data with the nomads groups, carriers of cultural traditions of the Filippovska’s circle monuments, is an important aspect of the published materials.
Items of Clothing from the Early Nomadic Kurgans in the Southern Urals: Iconography and Burial Practice (Based on the Materials of Cemeteries Filippovka 1 and Filippovka 2)
Authors:   Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okorokov Konstantin
Published: June 2022

The article is devoted to publication and analyses of objects found during the excavation of the cemeteries Filippovka 1 and Filippovka 2 which are of value for reconstruction of clothing of the early nomads from the Filippovka Southern Urals. The objects under study are divided into two blocks – those carrying images of the nomads themselves for instance depictions of exclusively male riders with weapons or of various decorative elements made of precious metals, stripes, pendants and embroideries, according to the location of which in the burial relative to the backbone, one can get an idea of the costume as a whole. All burials where decorative patch elements were found in situ belong to females. The absolute majority of the sew-on decorations are made in the version of animal style art traditionally associated with Filippovka 1 cemetery, represented to a large extent by plates made from precious metals ornamenting wooden vessels. Obviously, this series of objects expresses the worldviews of the early nomads who left these funerary monuments on the territory of the Southern Urals, reflecting their religious and mythological ideas on the world around them and the vision of themselves. It is unlikely that these items were produced in a nomadic environment; they were rather produced in workshops the location of which has yet to be determined. In any case, they should be separated from Achaemenid style treasures which are referred to as “the antique” and were redesigned by nomads to suit their own needs.
HOMO DEMENS: PALHAÇARIA, COMPLEXIDADE E AFETIVIDADE NA POTENCIALIZAÇÃO DAS AÇÕES DOCENTES
Authors: Silva Alisson Jardel Pereira , Salvador Marco Antonio Santoro
Published: June 2022

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo apresentar a palhaçaria como uma potencial prática para o desenvolvimento da dimensão afetivo-relacional dos docentes. A partir da análise teórica sobre conceitos da complexidade e da afetividade, busca-se possibilidade de entrelaçar as perspectivas da palhaçaria ao fazer pedagógico. O ensino é uma atividade intrinsíncamente relacional, pois a cognição é intermediada por meio das relações socioafetivas no ambiente escolar. Entretanto, o caráter interacional do ensino é um aspecto delicado e difícil para um trabalho formativo. Assim, a palhaçaria pode ser um potencial recurso de aperfeiçoamento da dimensão interacional dos docentes, já que um dos papéis do palhaço é capturar sua audiência e engajá-la por completo em seu jogo. Com base nas considerações apresentadas, é possível considerar que a palhaçaria é uma prática que pode contribuir no aperfeiçoamento do aspecto interpessoal docente ao trazer à prática cotidiana dos professores e professoras os mesmos princípios que permitem a palhaços experienciar e se relacionar com o mundo a partir de um estado performático.
Diálogo sobre ciência da informação: contribuições de Adkinson, Borko, Buckland, Rayward e Saracevic
Authors: Ribeiro Nivaldo Calixto , Oliveira Dalgiza Andrade , Santos Sarah Rúbia de Oliveira
Published: June 2022

O que na literatura sobre a Ciência da Informação aponta que discorrem sobre a inexistência nítida de um corpo teórico bem delineado ou construído. Diante dessa lócus, este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar um diálogo sobre Ciência da Informação, tomando por base as contribuições de Adkinson, Borko, Buckland, Rayward e Saracevic, refletindo sobre a área e suas reflexões futuras. A metodologia adotada é do tipo descritiva e bibliográfica de abordagem dedutiva. Uma revisão de literatura foi realizada para verificar o número de menções dos autores em 10 bases de dados, a fim de identificar a representatividade dos autores para uma área. Além disso, foi consultado o Índice H dos autores.Constatou-se que Buckland e Saracevic área de publicação de suas publicações de forma significativa, reconhecida pelo número de informações de suas publicações. Por fim, conclui-que os autores abordam de forma semelhante a Ciência da Informação, expondo que ainda há lócus para sua evolução. Além disso, pode ser uma estratégia a ser usada novamente como lentes de pesquisa da área para objetos de pesquisa relacionados a mais diversas disciplinas correlacionadas, no intuito de serem feitas perguntas de instigantes e interessantes a serem investigadas, fortalecendo-a como ciência.
EFFICACY OF METHOTREXATE MICROINFUSION IN SCALP LESIONS OF PATIENTS WITH FIBROSING FRONTAL ALOPECIA: A PROSPECTIVE CONTROLLED TRIAL
Authors: Souza Tatiane Elen de , Fabre Andrea Buosi , Medeiros Karina Bitencourt , Skare Thelma Larocca , Lourenço Cibele de Melo , Souza Andressa Caroline Martins de , Collaço Luiz Martins
Published: June 2022

Introdução: A alopecia frontal fibrosante (AFF) é uma cicatriz linfocítica, com queda de cabelo pela linha de implantação frontal do couro cabeludo e outras áreas do corpo. Drogas tópicas e sistêmicas, como casos o MTX, não controlam a atividade da doença na maioria dos casos, a necessidade de novas terapias. Objetivo: Avaliar a diligência da microinfusão de metotrexato em AFF. Métodos: Ensaio clínico prospectivo, controlador, realizado com 17 voluntários com 1 diagnóstico clínico e histológico de AFF. As aplicações de MTX por MMP® (método de microinfusão de pele) foram feitas a cada 30 dias, num total de 3 aplicações, na direita da área de alopecia; a outra metade serviu como controle.medidas frontais glalares e parciais, dermatoscópicas, índice de avaliação externa dos olhos, a percepção do plano dos sinais do paciente (LPPAI). Hemograma total e testes de função hepática também foram médios. Resultados: Houve uma redução significativa nas medidas fronto-glabela e frontal temporo-parietal no local tratado, enquanto no local nãou a AAF aumentou. A paciente refere melhora do prurido e descamação, mas não da queda de cabelo e eritema local. A das fotos dermatoscópicas e a análise do LPPAI não são relevantes. Cerca de 9 participantes e todos nós não resultaram em 5% dos resultados com nenhum resultado de nenhum dos exames.Conclusão: A aplicação de MTX por MMP® melhorou os sintomas associados à AFF e as medidas fronto-glabela e fronto-parietal.
Mecanismos de governança, instituições societárias e burocracia estatal: reflexões sobre instituições societárias e porosidade governamental
Authors: Ribeiro José Mendes
Published: June 2022

Este ensaio discute os mecanismos de governança participativa no setor público a partir de teorias sobre liberdades civis, democracias dialógicas, formações burocráticas estatais e reformas de governança pública. O objetivo é analisar a repercussão destes temas em agendas e alternativas de políticas de governança pública e participativa no Brasil com ênfase nos conflitos entre governantes, políticos, funcionários, grupos de interesses e coalizões civis em disputa nos processos decisórios. O artigo assinala o caráter híbrido da democracia brasileira, onde o universalismo weberiano e a orientação às instituições de Estado de Bem-estar que foram entrelaçados na matriz constitucional de 1988 operam em competição com duas outras lógicas - a herança estamental da burocracia pública, por um lado, e iniciativas de governanças horizontais e participativas, por outro. As contradições dinâmicas entre estes quatro eixos definirão a competição pelo aparelho de Estado no contexto atual.
RESPOSTAS TECIDUAIS E PADRÃO DE CICATRIZAÇÃO DE DEFEITOS PERIOSTAIS NA CALVÁRIA ENTRE DOIS TIPOS DE MEMBRANAS PRODUZIDAS POR MEIO DE BIOENGENHARIA: ESTUDO EM COELHOS
Authors: Ribas Filho Josemael de Oliveira , Giovanini Allan Fernando , Bufon Carlos Cesar Bof , Lourenço Elora Sampaio , Figueiredo Fernanda Piraja , Ribas Filho Jurandir Marcondes , Czeczko Nicolau Gregori
Published: June 2022

Introdução: Simultaneamente ao desenvolvimento de novos biomateriais, abundantes modalidades cirúrgicas têm sido propostas, com a finalidade de promover adequada regeneração de defeitos ósseos, sem proporcionar 2 fenestrações ou deiscências. Entre as técnicas regenerativas atualmente aceitas para este propósito, destaca-se a regeneração tecidual guiada (RTG). Objetivo: Avaliar o padrão de cicatrização e a resposta histológica do organismo frente à inserção de uma membrana a base de gelatina tipo A, e compará-la com membrana comercial. Métodos: Foram selecionadas 15 coelhas adultas. Na região parietal da calvária foram realizados retalhos para criação de uma bolsa supraperiostal e implantação de 2 tipos de membranas reabsorvíveis: membrana Marquette e membrana Bio-Gide®. Após o procedimento cirúrgico os animais foram alocados em 3 grupos randomicamente selecionados (n=5) para o período de eutanásia, que ocorreu em 2, 4 e 6 semanas pós-operatórias. Posteriormente, as áreas da calvária foram removidas e coradas por H&E e analisadas para averiguar formação de periósteo, infiltrado inflamatório na área de inserção de membrana, degradação/reabsorção da membrana, e fibrose perimembranar. Resultados: Ao redor da membrana Bio-Gide® ocorreu discreta infiltração inflamatória e a membrana sofreu reabsorção ao decorrer do período pósoperatório com reconstrução de periósteo prevalentemente de caráter fibroso. A membrana Marquette também não desencadeou importante reação inflamatória. Contudo, não foi verificada reabsorção significativa durante o período, também ocorreu significante formação de cápsula fibrosa cerceando toda área membranar. Conclusão: A membrana Marquette produz reação de isolamento tecidual, minimizando a formação periostal ao mesmo tempo que não proporciona sua degradação.
A Parallelizable Acceleration Framework for Packing Linear Programs
Authors: London Palma , Vardi Shai , Wierman Adam , Yi Hanling
Published: June 2022

This paper presents an acceleration framework for packing linear programming problems where the amount of data available is limited, i.e., where the number of constraints m is small compared to the variable dimension n. The framework can be used as a black box to speed up linear programming solvers dramatically, by two orders of magnitude in our experiments. We present worst-case guarantees on the quality of the solution and the speedup provided by the algorithm, showing that the framework provides an approximately optimal solution while running the original solver on a much smaller problem. The framework can be used to accelerate exact solvers, approximate solvers, and parallel/distributed solvers. Further, it can be used for both linear programs and integer linear programs.
Beyond Link Prediction: Predicting Hyperlinks in Adjacency Space
Authors: Zhang Muhan , Cui Zhicheng , Jiang Shali , Chen Yixin
Published: June 2022

This paper addresses the hyperlink prediction problem in hypernetworks. Different from the traditional link prediction problem where only pairwise relations are considered as links, our task here is to predict the linkage of multiple nodes, i.e., hyperlink. Each hyperlink is a set of an arbitrary number of nodes which together form a multiway relationship. Hyperlink prediction is challenging---since the cardinality of a hyperlink is variable, existing classifiers based on a fixed number of input features become infeasible. Heuristic methods, such as the common neighbors and Katz index, do not work for hyperlink prediction, since they are restricted to pairwise similarities. In this paper, we formally define the hyperlink prediction problem, and propose a new algorithm called Coordinated Matrix Minimization (CMM), which alternately performs nonnegative matrix factorization and least square matching in the vertex adjacency space of the hypernetwork, in order to infer a subset of candidate hyperlinks that are most suitable to fill the training hypernetwork. We evaluate CMM on two novel tasks: predicting recipes of Chinese food, and finding missing reactions of metabolic networks. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our method over many seemingly promising baselines.
Automatic Parameter Tying: A New Approach for Regularized Parameter Learning in Markov Networks
Authors: Chou Li , Sahoo Pracheta , Sarkhel Somdeb , Ruozzi Nicholas , Gogate Vibhav
Published: June 2022

Parameter tying is a regularization method in which parameters (weights) of a machine learning model are partitioned into groups by leveraging prior knowledge and all parameters in each group are constrained to take the same value. In this paper, we consider the problem of parameter learning in Markov networks and propose a novel approach called automatic parameter tying (APT) that uses automatic instead of a priori and soft instead of hard parameter tying as a regularization method to alleviate overfitting. The key idea behind APT is to set up the learning problem as the task of finding parameters and groupings of parameters such that the likelihood plus a regularization term is maximized. The regularization term penalizes models where parameter values deviate from their group mean parameter value. We propose and use a block coordinate ascent algorithm to solve the optimization task. We analyze the sample complexity of our new learning algorithm and show that it yields optimal parameters with high probability when the groups are well separated. Experimentally, we show that our method improves upon L2 regularization and suggest several pragmatic techniques for good practical performance.
Overlap-Robust Decision Boundary Learning for Within-Network Classification
Authors: Nandanwar Sharad , Murty M. N.
Published: June 2022

We study the problem of within network classification, where given a partially labeled network, we infer the labels of the remaining nodes based on the link structure. Conventional loss functions penalize a node based on a function of its predicted label and target label. Such loss functions under-perform while learning on a network having overlapping classes. In relational setting, even though the ground truth is not known for the unlabeled nodes, some evidence is present in the form of labeling acquired by the nodes in their neighborhood. We propose a structural loss function for learning in networks based on the hypothesis that loss is induced when a node fails to acquire a label that is consistent with the labels of the majority of the nodes in its neighborhood. We further combine this with a novel semantic regularizer, which we call homophily regularizer, to capture the smooth transition of discriminatory power and behavior of semantically similar nodes. The proposed structural loss along with the regularizer permits relaxation labeling. Through extensive comparative study on different real-world datasets, we found that our method improves over the state-of-the-art approaches.
No Modes Left Behind: Capturing the Data Distribution Effectively Using GANs
Authors: Sharma Shashank , Namboodiri Vinay
Published: June 2022

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) while being very versatile in realistic image synthesis, still are sensitive to the input distribution. Given a set of data that has an imbalance in the distribution, the networks are susceptible to missing modes and not capturing the data distribution. While various methods have been tried to improve training of GANs, these have not addressed the challenges of covering the full data distribution. Specifically, a generator is not penalized for missing a mode. We show that these are therefore still susceptible to not capturing the full data distribution. In this paper, we propose a simple approach that combines an encoder based objective with novel loss functions for generator and discriminator that improves the solution in terms of capturing missing modes. We validate that the proposed method results in substantial improvements through its detailed analysis on toy and real datasets. The quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the solution for the problem of missing modes and improves training of GANs.
Action Branching Architectures for Deep Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Tavakoli Arash , Pardo Fabio , Kormushev Petar
Published: June 2022

Discrete-action algorithms have been central to numerous recent successes of deep reinforcement learning. However, applying these algorithms to high-dimensional action tasks requires tackling the combinatorial increase of the number of possible actions with the number of action dimensions. This problem is further exacerbated for continuous-action tasks that require fine control of actions via discretization. In this paper, we propose a novel neural architecture featuring a shared decision module followed by several network branches, one for each action dimension. This approach achieves a linear increase of the number of network outputs with the number of degrees of freedom by allowing a level of independence for each individual action dimension. To illustrate the approach, we present a novel agent, called Branching Dueling Q-Network (BDQ), as a branching variant of the Dueling Double Deep Q-Network (Dueling DDQN). We evaluate the performance of our agent on a set of challenging continuous control tasks. The empirical results show that the proposed agent scales gracefully to environments with increasing action dimensionality and indicate the significance of the shared decision module in coordination of the distributed action branches. Furthermore, we show that the proposed agent performs competitively against a state-of-the-art continuous control algorithm, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG).
Long-Term Image Boundary Prediction
Authors: Bhattacharyya Apratim , Malinowski Mateusz , Schiele Bernt , Fritz Mario
Published: June 2022

Boundary estimation in images and videos has been a very active topic of research, and organizing visual information into boundaries and segments is believed to be a corner stone of visual perception. While prior work has focused on estimating boundaries for observed frames, our work aims at predicting boundaries of future unobserved frames. This requires our model to learn about the fate of boundaries and corresponding motion patterns---including a notion of "intuitive physics." We experiment on natural video sequences along with synthetic sequences with deterministic physics-based and agent-based motions. While not being our primary goal, we also show that fusion of RGB and boundary prediction leads to improved RGB predictions.
On the Optimal Bit Complexity of Circulant Binary Embedding
Authors: Kim Saehoon , Kim Jungtaek , Choi Seungjin
Published: June 2022

Binary embedding refers to methods for embedding points in Rd into vertices of a Hamming cube of dimension k, such that the normalized Hamming distance well preserves the pre-defined similarity between vectors in the original space. A common approach to binary embedding is to use random projection with unstructured projection, followed by one-bit quantization to produce binary codes, which has been proven that k = O(ε-2 log n) is required to approximate the angle up to epsilon-distortion, where n is the number of data. Of particular interest in this paper is circulant binary embedding (CBE) with angle preservation, where a random circulant matrix is used for projection. It yields comparable performance while achieving the nearly linear time and space complexities, compared to embedding methods relying on unstructured projection. To support promising empirical results, several non-asymptotic analysis have been introduced to establish conditions on the number of bits to meet epsilon-distortion embedding, where one of state-of-the-art achieves the optimal sample complexity k = O(ε-3 log n) while the distortion rate ε-3 is far from the optimality, compared to k = O(ε-2 log n). In this paper, to support promising empirical results of CBE, we extend the previous theoretical framework to address the optimal condition on the number of bits, achieving that CBE with k = O(ε-2 log n) approximates the angle up to ε-distortion under mild assumptions. We also provide numerical experiments to support our theoretical results.
Algorithms for Generalized Topic Modeling
Authors: Blum Avrim , Haghtalab Nika
Published: June 2022

Recently there has been significant activity in developing algorithms with provable guarantees for topic modeling. In this work we consider a broad generalization of the traditional topic modeling framework, where we no longer assume that words are drawn i.i.d. and instead view a topic as a complex distribution over sequences of paragraphs. Since one could not hope to even represent such a distribution in general (even if paragraphs are given using some natural feature representation), we aim instead to directly learn a predictor that given a new document, accurately predicts its topic mixture, without learning the distributions explicitly. We present several natural conditions under which one can do this from unlabeled data only, and give efficient algorithms to do so, also discussing issues such as noise tolerance and sample complexity. More generally, our model can be viewed as a generalization of the multi-view or co-training setting in machine learning.
When Waiting Is Not an Option: Learning Options With a Deliberation Cost
Authors: Harb Jean , Bacon Pierre-Luc , Klissarov Martin , Precup Doina
Published: June 2022

Recent work has shown that temporally extended actions (options) can be learned fully end-to-end as opposed to being specified in advance. While the problem of how to learn options is increasingly well understood, the question of what good options should be has remained elusive. We formulate our answer to what good options should be in the bounded rationality framework (Simon, 1957) through the notion of deliberation cost. We then derive practical gradient-based learning algorithms to implement this objective. Our results in the Arcade Learning Environment (ALE) show increased performance and interpretability.
Examining CNN Representations With Respect to Dataset Bias
Authors: Zhang Quanshi , Wang Wenguan , Zhu Song-Chun
Published: June 2022

Given a pre-trained CNN without any testing samples, this paper proposes a simple yet effective method to diagnose feature representations of the CNN. We aim to discover representation flaws caused by potential dataset bias. More specifically, when the CNN is trained to estimate image attributes, we mine latent relationships between representations of different attributes inside the CNN. Then, we compare the mined attribute relationships with ground-truth attribute relationships to discover the CNN's blind spots and failure modes due to dataset bias. In fact, representation flaws caused by dataset bias cannot be examined by conventional evaluation strategies based on testing images, because testing images may also have a similar bias. Experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of our method.
Deep Modeling of Social Relations for Recommendation
Authors: Fan Wenqi , Li Qing , Cheng Min
Published: June 2022

Social-based recommender systems have been recently proposed by incorporating social relations of users to alleviate sparsity issue of user-to-item rating data and to improve recommendation performance. Many of these social-based recommender systems linearly combine the multiplication of social features between users. However, these methods lack the ability to capture complex and intrinsic non-linear features from social relations. In this paper, we present a deep neural network based model to learn non-linear features of each user from social relations, and to integrate into probabilistic matrix factorization for rating prediction problem. Experiments demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method over state-of-the-art social-based recommender systems.
Semantic Understanding for Contextual In-Video Advertising
Authors: Madhok Rishi , Mujumdar Shashank , Gupta Nitin , Mehta Sameep
Published: June 2022

With the increasing consumer base of online video content, it is important for advertisers to understand the video context when targeting video ads to consumers. To improve the consumer experience and quality of ads, key factors need to be considered such as (i) ad relevance to video content (ii) where and how video ads are placed, and (iii) non-intrusive user experience. We propose a framework to semantically understand the video content for better ad recommendation that ensure these criteria.
Impacto da agressividade fiscal na rentabilidade das empresas de capital aberto listadas na B3
Authors: Xavier Milena Becker , Theiss Viviane , Ferreira Marília Paranaíba
Published: June 2022

A prática da agressividade fiscal visa amenizar o alto custo com impostos ocasionado pela complexidade da legislação tributária, mira diminuir gastos tributários e maximizar o desempenho das organizações. O presente estudo analisa o impacto da agressividade fiscal na rentabilidade das empresas de capital aberto listadas na B3 no período de 2016 a 2020, posto que no contexto brasileiro, as evidências sobre a relação entre essa prática e a rentabilidade das empresas ainda são limitadas. A amostra final do estudo foi composta por 204 empresas brasileiras e as proxies utilizadas para a mensuração da agressividade fiscal foram o Book Tax Difference total (BTD) e Effective Tax Rate (ETR). Em relação às variáveis de rentabilidade, observou-se o retorno de investimentos, retorno para acionistas e atividades operacionais. A análise foi feita por meio de estatísticas descritivas, regressões múltiplas (com efeitos aleatórios) e quantílicas, sendo que os resultados encontrados não apresentaram consenso entre as proxies. Enquanto a BTD aponta que quanto maior a agressividade fiscal maior a rentabilidade, a ETR demonstra relação inversa. Em virtude de as proxies de agressividade fiscal não demonstrarem consenso nos resultados, não foi possível afirmar que maiores níveis de agressividade fiscal aumentam a rentabilidade das companhias abertas listadas na B3. Nesse sentido, as evidências empíricas permitem reflexões sobre o uso da agressividade fiscal no Brasil e a tomada de decisão dos gestores.
BOTTOM SEDIMENTS NEAR THE KUIBYSHEV RESERVOIR DAM (ACCORDING TO THE DATA OF THE 2020 EXPEDITION RESEARCH)
Authors:   Samara Federal Research Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Rakhuba Aleksandr V. , Turutina Tatyana V. ,   State Hydrological Institute, Shmakova Marina V. ,   Institute of Limnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Published: June 2022

The composition of bottom sediments and the patterns of their spatial distribution are determined by external (type of underlying surface of the catchment area, anthropogenic development, intensity of soil erosion) and internal (water regime, intensity of water exchange, morphometry of the basin) factors. As a result of the expedition studies of the IEVB RAS in the autumn period from September 14 to October 3, 2020, samples of bottom sediments were collected at 21 stations near of Kuibyshev reservoir dam in a 10-centimeter layer. Based on the results of the granulometric analysis and assessment of the organic matter content in the bottom sediment samples, integral granulometric curves were constructed and the spatial distribution of different characteristics of the bottom sediments was analyzed such as the percentage of organic matter in the samples, the interquartile range and the median value of the bottom sediment size at the studied sampling points. The analysis showed that the largest differences in the percentage of particles in the samples of the studied stations (over 60%) are accounted for by particles with a size of about 0,1 mm. Sampling stations located closer to the right bank are characterized by a smaller size of the bottom sediment soil than stations near the left bank. This is due to the fine-grained erosion products of the catchment area is characterized by a relatively uniform granulometric composition of bottom sediments, also mainly by dusty-sand fractions. More uniform in size soil is observed along the right bank – fine products of erosion of sandstones and dolomites of the right bank. The larger interquartile range characterizes the samples taken along the longitudinal profile of the reservoir dam reach and near the left bank in the shallow water zone. In this area of the water area, which is genetically composed of sands and mineral silts, due to the favorable temperature regime and the peculiarities of the circulation of water masses, intensive organic sedimentation processes occur. On average, for the dam reach the content of organic matter in the bottom sediments is 1,1%, which is in good agreement with the data of other researchers.
REGIONAL PECULIARITIES OF COVID-19 IMPACT ON TOURIST AND RECREATIONAL SPACE OF RUSSIA
Authors:   Vyatka State University, Konyshev Evgeny V.
Published: June 2022

The article presents the results of a study into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourist and recreational space of Russia. Restrictions imposed in order to reduce the incidence of the disease have affected all areas of human activity around the world. The aim of the study was to identify regional peculiarities of COVID-19 impact on the components of Russia’s tourist and recreational space. The tourist-recreational space is studied in the process of its territorialization, which allowed us to perceive it in the form of territorial tourist-recreational systems. Considering that many of the processes caused by COVID-19 occur within the boundaries of specific regions, the subject of the study were regional tourist-recreational systems. A component-by-component assessment of COVID-19 impact was applied at the level of potential consumers (tourists), the tourist and recreational complex, and the level of the regional organization and management system. To assess changes in the structure and geography of tourist demand, we applied search query analysis. The impact of COVID-19 on enterprises of the tourist and recreational complex of Russian regions was assessed with the use of statistical analysis methods as applied to the indicators characterizing tourist flow, operation of collective accommodation facilities and tourist firms and provision of tourist services for the population. Using content analysis of news web-portals and having studied the websites of executive authorities, we have analyzed the organization and management component of the regional tourist and recreational system. The results obtained indicate changes in the structure and geography of tourist demand and in the criteria for selecting a destination. We have identified the regions where the tourist and recreational complex was practically unaffected by the adopted restrictions and the most affected regions. As a result of the study, a model of COVID-19 impact on the components of the tourist and recreational system has been developed. The study can be used by executive authorities to make alterations to the documents concerning territorial planning and management and to improve the effectiveness of the support measures implemented in the post-pandemic period.
REGIONAL AND SEASONAL FEATURES OF INBOUND TOURISM IN ICELAND
Authors:   Pskov State University, Ivanov Ivan A.
Published: June 2022

Iceland is one of the three leading countries in Europe in terms of the share of tourism in the country's economy, while not having a warm climate and specializing in ecological tourism. The most significant growth in tourism occurred in the 2010s, the inbound tourist flow increased more than 4 times, which caused the problem of overtourism. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has suspended the further development of international tourism. The changes in the geography of tourism within the country over the period from 2007 to 2019 are also of research interest. The aim of our study was to identify the geographical features of the inbound tourist flow distribution in Iceland. As a result of cartographic and statistical analysis, the regions of the country most visited by foreign tourists were identified (including tourists from the five leading countries: the USA, Great Britain, Germany, China and France), the tourist load was calculated, seasonal and geographical differences in the distribution of inbound tourist flow across the country were determined using the coefficients of seasonality and tourist flow centralization. We have found that the increase in the volume of the tourist flow reduced the seasonality, however, it practically did not affect the regional distribution proportions, mainly due to the different transport accessibility (Сapital and Southern regions are the most popular among tourists). The article presents a methodology for calculating the tourist attraction index which can be used to assess the attractiveness of a territory for tourists from different countries, to perform cross-country comparisons, as well as to assess the importance of the country's tourist market in the world and predict the recovery of tourism after the removal of sanitary restrictions.