title: FARF: A Fair and Adaptive Random Forests Classifier

authors: Zhang, Wenbin

subjects: computer science

abstract: As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in more applications, the need to consider and mitigate biases from the learned models has followed. Most works in developing fair learning algorithms focus on the offline setting. However, in many real-world applications data comes in an online fashion and needs to be processed on the fly. Moreover, in practical application, there is a trade-off between accuracy and fairness that needs to be accounted for, but current methods often have multiple hyper-parameters with non-trivial interaction to achieve fairness. In this paper, we propose a flexible ensemble algorithm for fair decision-making in the more challenging context of evolving online settings. This algorithm, called FARF (Fair and Adaptive Random Forests), is based on using online component classifiers and updating them according to the current distribution, that also accounts for fairness and a single hyper-parameters that alters fairness-accuracy balance. Experiments on real-world discriminated data streams demonstrate the utility of FARF.

text: FARF: A Fair and Adaptive Random Forests Classifier As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in more applications, the need to consider and mitigate biases from the learned models has followed. Most works in developing fair learning algorithms focus on the offline setting. However, in many real-world applications data comes in an online fashion and needs to be processed on the fly. Moreover, in practical application, there is a trade-off between accuracy and fairness that needs to be accounted for, but current methods often have multiple hyper-parameters with non-trivial interaction to achieve fairness. In this paper, we propose a flexible ensemble algorithm for fair decision-making in the more challenging context of evolving online settings. This algorithm, called FARF (Fair and Adaptive Random Forests), is based on using online component classifiers and updating them according to the current distribution, that also accounts for fairness and a single hyper-parameters that alters fairness-accuracy balance. Experiments on real-world discriminated data streams demonstrate the utility of FARF.

year: 2021

title: The economic impact of climate change on wheat and maize yields in the North China Plain.

authors: Song, Chunxiao

subjects: climate change

abstract: Climate change has significantly affected agricultural production. As one of China's most important agricultural production regions, the North China Plain (NCP) is subject to climate change. This paper examines the influence of climate change on the wheat and maize yields at household and village levels, using the multilevel model based on a large panel survey dataset in the NCP. The results show that: (i) Extreme weather events (drought and flood) would significantly reduce the wheat and maize yields. So, the governments should establish and improve the emergency service system of disaster warning and encourage farmers to mitigate the adverse effects of disasters. (ii) Over the past three decades, the NCP has experienced climate change that affects its grain production. Therefore, it is imperative to build the farmers' adaptive capacity to climate change. (iii) Spatial variations in crop yield are significantly influenced by the household characteristics and the heterogeneity of village economic conditions. Therefore, in addition to promoting household production, it is necessary to strengthen and promote China's development of the rural collective economy, especially the construction of rural irrigation and drainage infrastructures.

text: The economic impact of climate change on wheat and maize yields in the North China Plain. Climate change has significantly affected agricultural production. As one of China's most important agricultural production regions, the North China Plain (NCP) is subject to climate change. This paper examines the influence of climate change on the wheat and maize yields at household and village levels, using the multilevel model based on a large panel survey dataset in the NCP. The results show that: (i) Extreme weather events (drought and flood) would significantly reduce the wheat and maize yields. So, the governments should establish and improve the emergency service system of disaster warning and encourage farmers to mitigate the adverse effects of disasters. (ii) Over the past three decades, the NCP has experienced climate change that affects its grain production. Therefore, it is imperative to build the farmers' adaptive capacity to climate change. (iii) Spatial variations in crop yield are significantly influenced by the household characteristics and the heterogeneity of village economic conditions. Therefore, in addition to promoting household production, it is necessary to strengthen and promote China's development of the rural collective economy, especially the construction of rural irrigation and drainage infrastructures.

year: 2022-05-07

title: Mana Wahine Geographies: Spiritual, Spatial and Embodied Understandings of Papatūānuku

authors: Simmonds, Naomi Beth

subjects: Mana wahine

abstract: This thesis is a theoretical and empirical exploration of Māori women's knowledges and understandings of Papatūānuku in contemporary Aotearoa. The primary focus of this research is on the complexities, connections, and contradictions of Māori women's embodied relationships with the spaces of Papatūānuku - spaces that are simultaneously material, discursive, symbolic, and spiritual. In doing so, I displace the boundaries between coloniser/colonised, self/other, rational/irrational and scientific/spiritual. I demonstrate that Māori women's colonised realities produce multiple, complex and hybrid understandings of Papatūānuku. 

This thesis has three main strands. The first is theoretical. I offer mana wahine (Māori feminist discourses) as another perspective for geography that engages with the complex intersections of colonisation, race and gender. A mana wahine geography framework is a useful lens through which to explore the complexities of Māori women's relationships to space and place. This framework contributes to, and draws together, feminist geographies and Māori and indigenous academic scholarship.

Autobiographical material is woven with joint and individual semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with nine Māori women in the Waikato region. The second strand, woven into this thesis, is a critical examination of the colonisation of Māori women's spiritual and embodied relationships to Papatūānuku. The invisibility of Māori women's knowledges in dominant conceptualisations of mythology, tikanga and wairua discourses is not a harmless omission rather it contains a political imperative that maintains the hegemony of colonialism and patriarchy. I argue that to understand further Māori women's relationships to space and place an examination of wairua discourses is necessary.

The third strand reconfigures embodied and spatial conceptualisations of Papatūānuku. Māori women's maternal bodies are intimately tied to Papatūānuku in a way that challenges the oppositional distinctions between mind/body and biology/social inscription. Māori women's maternal bodies (and the representation of them in te reo Māori) are constructed by, and in turn, construct Papatūānuku. Furthermore, women's spatial relationship to tūrangawaewae, home space and wider environmental concerns demonstrates the co-constitution of subjectivities, bodies and space/place. 

My hope is that this thesis will add to geographical literature by addressing previously ignored knowledges and that it will contribute to indigenous scholarship by providing a spatial perspective.

text: Mana Wahine Geographies: Spiritual, Spatial and Embodied Understandings of Papatūānuku This thesis is a theoretical and empirical exploration of Māori women's knowledges and understandings of Papatūānuku in contemporary Aotearoa. The primary focus of this research is on the complexities, connections, and contradictions of Māori women's embodied relationships with the spaces of Papatūānuku - spaces that are simultaneously material, discursive, symbolic, and spiritual. In doing so, I displace the boundaries between coloniser/colonised, self/other, rational/irrational and scientific/spiritual. I demonstrate that Māori women's colonised realities produce multiple, complex and hybrid understandings of Papatūānuku. 

This thesis has three main strands. The first is theoretical. I offer mana wahine (Māori feminist discourses) as another perspective for geography that engages with the complex intersections of colonisation, race and gender. A mana wahine geography framework is a useful lens through which to explore the complexities of Māori women's relationships to space and place. This framework contributes to, and draws together, feminist geographies and Māori and indigenous academic scholarship.

Autobiographical material is woven with joint and individual semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with nine Māori women in the Waikato region. The second strand, woven into this thesis, is a critical examination of the colonisation of Māori women's spiritual and embodied relationships to Papatūānuku. The invisibility of Māori women's knowledges in dominant conceptualisations of mythology, tikanga and wairua discourses is not a harmless omission rather it contains a political imperative that maintains the hegemony of colonialism and patriarchy. I argue that to understand further Māori women's relationships to space and place an examination of wairua discourses is necessary.

The third strand reconfigures embodied and spatial conceptualisations of Papatūānuku. Māori women's maternal bodies are intimately tied to Papatūānuku in a way that challenges the oppositional distinctions between mind/body and biology/social inscription. Māori women's maternal bodies (and the representation of them in te reo Māori) are constructed by, and in turn, construct Papatūānuku. Furthermore, women's spatial relationship to tūrangawaewae, home space and wider environmental concerns demonstrates the co-constitution of subjectivities, bodies and space/place. 

My hope is that this thesis will add to geographical literature by addressing previously ignored knowledges and that it will contribute to indigenous scholarship by providing a spatial perspective.

year: 2009