Query: Variational Sequential Labelers for Semi-Supervised Learning

Relevant passages:
Neural Variational Inference and Learning in Belief Networks <=SEP=> •We introduce a simple, efficient, and general method for training directed latent variable models. – Can handle both discrete and continuous latent variables. – Easy to apply – requires no model-specific derivations. •Key idea: Train an auxiliary neural network to perform inference in the model of interest by optimizing the variational bound. – Was considered before for Helmholtz machines and rejected as infeasible due to high variance of inference net gradient estimates. •We make the approach practical using simple and general variance reduction techniques. •Promising document modelling results using sigmoid belief networks.

Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space <=SEP=> We propose two novel model architectures for computing continuous vector representations of words from very large data sets. The quality of these representations is measured in a word similarity task, and the results are compared to the previously best performing techniques based on different types of neural networks. We observe large improvements in accuracy at much lower computational cost, i.e. it takes less than a day to learn high quality word vectors from a 1.6 billion words data set. Furthermore, we show that these vectors provide state-of-the-art performance on our test set for measuring syntactic and semantic word similarities.

Natural Language Processing (almost) from Scratch <=SEP=> We propose a unified neural network architecture and learning algorithm that can be applied to various natural language processing tasks including: part-of-speech tagging, chunking, named entity recognition, and semantic role labeling. This versatility is achieved by trying to avoid task-specific engineering and therefore disregarding a lot of prior knowledge. Instead of exploiting man-made input features carefully optimized for each task, our system learns internal representations on the basis of vast amounts of mostly unlabeled training data. This work is then used as a basis for building a freely available tagging system with good performance and minimal computational requirements.

Part-of-Speech Tagging for Twitter: Annotation, Features, and Experiments <=SEP=> We address the problem of part-of-speech tagging for English data from the popular microblogging service Twitter. We develop a tagset, annotate data, develop features, and report tagging results nearing 90% accuracy. The data and tools have been made available to the research community with the goal of enabling richer text analysis of Twitter and related social media data sets.

The Helmholtz Machine <=SEP=> Discovering the structure inherent in a set of patterns is a fundamental aim of statistical inference or learning. One fruitful approach is to build a parameterized stochastic generative model, independent draws from which are likely to produce the patterns. For all but the simplest generative models, each pattern can be generated in exponentially many ways. It is thus intractable to adjust the parameters to maximize the probability of the observed patterns. We describe a way of finessing this combinatorial explosion by maximizing an easily computed lower bound on the probability of the observations. Our method can be viewed as a form of hierarchical self-supervised learning that may relate to the function of bottom-up and top-down cortical processing pathways.

A Flexible Technique for Accurate Omnidirectional Camera Calibration and Structure from Motion <=SEP=> In this paper, we present a flexible new technique for single viewpoint omnidirectional camera calibration. The proposed method only requires the camera to observe a planar pattern shown at a few different orientations. Either the camera or the planar pattern can be freely moved. No a priori knowledge of the motion is required, nor a specific model of the omnidirectional sensor. The only assumption is that the image projection function can be described by a Taylor series expansion whose coefficients are estimated by solving a two-step least-squares linear minimization problem. To test the proposed technique, we calibrated a panoramic camera having a field of view greater than 200 in the vertical direction, and we obtained very good results. To investigate the accuracy of the calibration, we also used the estimated omni-camera model in a structure from motion experiment. We obtained a 3D metric reconstruction of a scene from two highly distorted omnidirectional images by using image correspondences only. Compared with classical techniques, which rely on a specific parametric model of the omnidirectional camera, the proposed procedure is independent of the sensor, easy to use, and flexible.

The effective use of Benford’s Law to assist in detecting fraud in accounting data <=SEP=> Benford’s law has been promoted as providing the auditor with a tool that is simple and effective for the detection of fraud. The purpose of this paper is to assist auditors in the most effective use of digital analysis based on Benford’s law. The law is based on a peculiar observation that certain digits appear more frequently than others in data sets. For example, in certain data sets, it has been observed that more than 30% of numbers begin with the digit one. After discussing the background of the law and development of its use in auditing, we show where digital analysis based on Benford’s law can most effectively be used and where auditors should exercise caution. Specifically, we identify data sets which can be expected to follow Benford’s distribution, discuss the power of statistical tests, types of frauds that would be detected and not be detected by such analysis, the potential problems that arise when an account contains too few observations, as well as issues related to base rate of fraud. An actual example is provided demonstrating where Benford’s law proved successful in identifying fraud in a population of accounting data.

Systematic Thinking Fostered by Illustrations in Scientific Text <=SEP=> In 2 experiments, students who lacked prior knowledge about car mechanics read a passage about vehicle braking systems that either contained labeled illustrations of the systems, illustrations without labels, labels without illustrations, or no labeled illustrations. Students who received passages that contained labeled illustrations of braking systems recalled more explanative than nonexplanative information as compared to control groups, and performed better on problem solving transfer but not on verbatim recognition as compared to control groups. Results support a model of meaningful learning in which illustrations can help readers to focus their attention on explanative information in text and to reorganize the information into useful mental models.

Pixel-Wise Attentional Gating for Scene Parsing <=SEP=> To achieve dynamic inference in pixel labeling tasks, we propose Pixel-wise Attentional Gating (PAG), which learns to selectively process a subset of spatial locations at each layer of a deep convolutional network. PAG is a generic, architecture-independent, problem-agnostic mechanism that can be readily "plugged in" to an existing model with fine-tuning. We utilize PAG in two ways: 1) learning spatially varying pooling fields that improve model performance without the extra computation cost associated with multi-scale pooling, and 2) learning a dynamic computation policy for each pixel to decrease total computation (FLOPs) while maintaining accuracy. We extensively evaluate PAG on a variety of per-pixel labeling tasks, including semantic segmentation, boundary detection, monocular depth and surface normal estimation. We demonstrate that PAG allows competitive or state-of-the-art performance on these tasks. Our experiments show that PAG learns dynamic spatial allocation of computation over the input image which provides better performance trade-offs compared to related approaches (e.g., truncating deep models or dynamically skipping whole layers). Generally, we observe PAG can reduce computation by 10% without noticeable loss in accuracy and performance degrades gracefully when imposing stronger computational constraints.

Current Mode Control Integrated Circuit with High Accuracy Current Sensing Circuit for Buck Converter <=SEP=> A current mode control integrated circuit with accuracy current sensing circuit ( CSC ) for buck converter is presented in this the proposed accurate integrated current sensed inductor with the internal ramp be used for DC-DC converter feedback proposed CSC doesn't need an op amp to implement, and has been fabricated with a standard 0.35 mum CMOS process. Simulation result show that the switching converter can be operated up to 1 MHZ. The supply is suitable for signal cell lithium-ion battery supply power efficiency is over 85% for supply voltage from 2.5 V to 5 V and output current is 200 mA. The performance of the proposed circuit is the good compared to the other circuits.

Cold-Start Recommendation with Provable Guarantees: A Decoupled Approach <=SEP=> Although the matrix completion paradigm provides an appealing solution to the collaborative filtering problem in recommendation systems, some major issues, such as data sparsity and cold-start problems, still remain open. In particular, when the rating data for a subset of users or items is entirely missing, commonly known as the  cold-start problem, the standard matrix completion methods are inapplicable due the non-uniform sampling of available ratings. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in dealing with cold-start users or items that are principally based on the idea of exploiting other sources of information to compensate for this lack of rating data. In this paper, we propose a novel and general algorithmic framework based on matrix completion that simultaneously exploits the similarity information among users and items to alleviate the cold-start problem. In contrast to existing methods, our proposed recommender algorithm, dubbed DecRec, decouples the following two aspects of the cold-start problem to effectively exploit the side information: (i) the completion of a rating sub-matrix, which is generated by excluding cold-start users/items from the original rating matrix; and (ii) the transduction of knowledge from existing ratings to cold-start items/users using side information. This crucial difference prevents the error propagation of completion and transduction, and also significantly boosts the performance when appropriate side information is incorporated. The recovery error of the proposed algorithm is analyzed theoretically and, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first algorithm that addresses the cold-start problem with provable guarantees on performance. Additionally, we also address the problem where both cold-start user and item challenges are present simultaneously. We conduct thorough experiments on real datasets that complement our theoretical results. These experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in handling the cold-start users/items problem and mitigating data sparsity issue.

Automatic query-based keyword and keyphrase extraction <=SEP=> Extracting keywords and keyphrases mainly for identifying content of a document, has an importance role in text processing tasks such as text summarization, information retrieval, and query expansion. In this research, we introduce a new keyword/keyphrase extraction approach in which both single and multi-document keyword/keyphrase extraction techniques are considered. The proposed approach is specifically practical when a user is interested in additional data such as keywords/keyphrases related to a topic or query. In the proposed approach, first a set of documents are retrieved based on user's query, then a single document keyword extraction method is applied to extract candidate keyword/keyphrases from each retrieved document. Finally, a new re-scoring scheme is introduced to extract final keywords/keyphrases. We have evaluated the proposed method based on the relationship between the final keyword/keyphrases with the initial user query, and based user's satisfaction. Our experimental results show how much the extracted keywords/keyphrases are relevant and wellmatched with user's need.

Category-aware Next Point-of-Interest Recommendation via Listwise Bayesian Personalized Ranking <=SEP=> Next Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation has become an important task for location-based social networks (LBSNs). However, previous efforts suffer from the high computational complexity, besides the transition pattern between POIs has not been well studied. In this paper, we proposed a twofold approach for next POI recommendation. First, the preferred next category is predicted by using a third-rank tensor optimized by a Listwise Bayesian Personalized Ranking (LBPR) approach. Specifically we introduce two functions, namely PlackettLuce model and cross entropy, to generate the likelihood of a ranking list for posterior computation. Then POI candidates filtered by the predicated category are ranked based on the spatial influence and category ranking influence. The experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate the significant improvements of our methods over several state-ofthe-art methods.

Crowdsourcing based spatial mining of urban emergency events using social media <=SEP=> With the advances of information communication technologies, it is critical to improve the efficiency and accuracy of emergency management systems through modern data processing techniques. The past decade has witnessed the tremendous technical advances in Sensor Networks, Internet/Web of Things, Cloud Computing, Mobile/Embedded Computing, Spatial/Temporal Data Processing, and Big Data, and these technologies have provided new opportunities and solutions to emergency management. GIS models and simulation capabilities are used to exercise response and recovery plans during non-disaster times. They help the decision-makers understand near real-time possibilities during an event. In this paper, a crowdsourcing based model for mining spatial information of urban emergency events is introduced. Firstly, basic definitions of the proposed method are given. Secondly, positive samples are selected to mine the spatial information of urban emergency events. Thirdly, location and GIS information are extracted from positive samples. At last, the real spatial information is determined based on address and GIS information. At last, a case study on an urban emergency event is given.

Attitudes towards following meat, vegetarian and vegan diets: an examination of the role of ambivalence <=SEP=> Vegetarianism within the U.K. is growing in popularity, with the current estimate of 7% of the population eating a vegetarian diet. This study examined differences between the attitudes and beliefs of four dietary groups (meat eaters, meat avoiders, vegetarians and vegans) and the extent to which attitudes influenced intentions to follow each diet. In addition, the role of attitudinal ambivalence as a moderator variable was examined. Completed questionnaires were obtained from 111 respondents (25 meat eaters, 26 meat avoiders, 34 vegetarians, 26 vegans). In general, predictions were supported, in that respondents displayed most positive attitudes and beliefs towards their own diets, and most negative attitudes and beliefs towards the diet most different form their own. Regression analyses showed that, as predicted by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control were significant predictors of intention to follow each diet (apart from the vegetarian diet, where subjective norm was non-significant). In each case, attitudinal ambivalence was found to moderate the attitude-intention relationship, such that attitudes were found to be stronger predictors at lower levels of ambivalence. The results not only highlight the extent to which such alternative diets are an interesting focus for psychological research, but also lend further support to the argument that ambivalence in an important influence on attitude strength.

A 29–30GHz 64-element Active Phased array for 5G Application <=SEP=> A 64-element 29–30GHz active phased array for 5G millimeter wave applications is presented in this paper. The proposed phased array composites of 64-element antennas, 64-chan-nel T/R modules, 4 frequency conversion links, beam controlling circuitry, power management circuits and cooling fans, and are integrated in a in a very compact size(135mmX 77mmX56mm). Hybrid integration of GaAs and Si circuits are employed to achieve better RF performance. The architecture of the proposed phased array and the detail design of the T/R modules and antennas are analyzed. By the OTA (over the air) measurement, the proposed phased array achieves a bandwidth of 1 GHz at the center frequency of 29.5GHz, and the azimuth beam-width is 12 deg with the scanning range of ±45deg. With the excitation of 800MHz 64QAM signals, the transmitter beam achieves a EVM of 5.5%, ACLR of −30.5dBc with the PA working at −10dB back off, and the measured saturated EIRP is 63 dBm.

mCloud: A Context-Aware Offloading Framework for Heterogeneous Mobile Cloud <=SEP=> Mobile cloud computing (MCC) has become a significant paradigm for bringing the benefits of cloud computing to mobile devices’ proximity. Service availability along with performance enhancement and energy efficiency are primary targets in MCC. This paper proposes a code offloading framework, called mCloud, which consists of mobile devices, nearby cloudlets and public cloud services, to improve the performance and availability of the MCC services. The effect of the mobile device context (e.g., network conditions) on offloading decisions is studied by proposing a context-aware offloading decision algorithm aiming to provide code offloading decisions at runtime on selecting wireless medium and appropriate cloud resources for offloading. We also investigate failure detection and recovery policies for our mCloud system. We explain in details the design and implementation of the mCloud prototype framework. We conduct real experiments on the implemented system to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. Results indicate the system and embedded decision algorithm are able to provide decisions on selecting wireless medium and cloud resources based on different context of the mobile devices, and achieve significant reduction on makespan and energy, with the improved service availability when compared with existing offloading schemes.

A Review of Scar Scales and Scar Measuring Devices <=SEP=> OBJECTIVE
Pathologic scarring affects millions of people worldwide. Quantitative and qualitative measurement modalities are needed to effectively evaluate and monitor treatments.


METHODS
This article reviews the literature on available tools and existent assessment scales used to subjectively and objectively characterize scar.


RESULTS
We describe the attributes and deficiencies of each tool and scale and highlight areas where further development is critical.


CONCLUSION
An optimal, universal scar scoring system is needed in order to better characterize, understand and treat pathologic scarring.

WNtags: A Web-Based Tool For Image Labeling And Retrieval With Lexical Ontologies <=SEP=> Ever growing number of image documents available on the Internet continuously motivates research in better annotation models and more efficient retrieval methods. Formal knowledge representation of objects and events in pictures, their interaction as well as context complexity becomes no longer an option for a quality image repository, but a necessity. We present an ontologybased online image annotation tool WNtags and demonstrate its usefulness in several typical multimedia retrieval tasks using International Affective Picture System emotionally annotated image database. WNtags is built around WordNet lexical ontology but considers Suggested Upper Merged Ontology as the preferred labeling formalism. WNtags uses sets of weighted WordNet synsets as high-level image semantic descriptors and query matching is performed with word stemming and node distance metrics. We also elaborate our near future plans to expand image content description with induced affect as in stimuli for research of human emotion and attention.

Paired Learners for Concept Drift <=SEP=> To cope with concept drift, we paired a stable online learner with a reactive one. A stable learner predicts based on all of its experience, whereas are active learner predicts based on its experience over a short, recent window of time. The method of paired learning uses differences in accuracy between the two learners over this window to determine when to replace the current stable learner, since the stable learner performs worse than does there active learner when the target concept changes. While the method uses the reactive learner as an indicator of drift, it uses the stable learner to predict, since the stable learner performs better than does the reactive learner when acquiring target concept. Experimental results support these assertions. We evaluated the method by making direct comparisons to dynamic weighted majority, accuracy weighted ensemble, and streaming ensemble algorithm (SEA) using two synthetic problems, the Stagger concepts and the SEA concepts, and three real-world data sets: meeting scheduling, electricity prediction, and malware detection. Results suggest that, on these problems, paired learners outperformed or performed comparably to methods more costly in time and space.

Intersection-priority based optimal RSU allocation for VANET <=SEP=> Roadside Unit (RSU) is an essential unit in a vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) for collecting and analyzing traffic data given from smart vehicles. Furthermore, RSUs can take part in controlling traffic flow for vehicle's secure driving by broadcasting locally analyzed data, forwarding some important messages, and communicating with other RSUs, and soon. In order to maximize the availability of RSUs in the VANET, RSUs need to be fully distributed over an entire area. Thus, RSUs can make the best use of all traffic data gathered from every intersection. In this paper, we provide intersection-priority based RSU placement methods to find the optimal number and positions of RSUs for the full distribution providing with a maximal connectivity between RSUs while minimizing RSU setup costs. We propose three optimal algorithms: greedy, dynamic and hybrid algorithms. Finally, we provide simulated analyses of our algorithms using real urban roadmaps of JungGu/Jongrogu, YongsanGu, and GangnamGu in Seoul, each of which has a characteristic road style different than each other. We analyze how our algorithms work in such different types of roadways with real traffic data, and find the optimal number and positions of RSUs in these areas.

Repeated labeling using multiple noisy labelers <=SEP=> This paper addresses the repeated acquisition of labels for data items when the labeling is imperfect. We examine the improvement (or lack thereof) in data quality via repeated labeling, and focus especially on the improvement of training labels for supervised induction of predictive models. With the outsourcing of small tasks becoming easier, for example via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, it often is possible to obtain less-than-expert labeling at low cost. With low-cost labeling, preparing the unlabeled part of the data can become considerably more expensive than labeling. We present repeated-labeling strategies of increasing complexity, and show several main results. (i) Repeated-labeling can improve label quality and model quality, but not always. (ii) When labels are noisy, repeated labeling can be preferable to single labeling even in the traditional setting where labels are not particularly cheap. (iii) As soon as the cost of processing the unlabeled data is not free, even the simple strategy of labeling everything multiple times can give considerable advantage. (iv) Repeatedly labeling a carefully chosen set of points is generally preferable, and we present a set of robust techniques that combine different notions of uncertainty to select data points for which quality should be improved. The bottom line: the results show clearly that when labeling is not perfect, selective acquisition of multiple labels is a strategy that data miners should have in their repertoire; for certain label-quality/cost regimes, the benefit is substantial.

Improving literacy in developing countries using speech recognition-supported games on mobile devices <=SEP=> Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. For low-income children in developing countries, this task can be significantly more challenging because of lack of access to high-quality schooling, but can potentially improve economic prospects at the same time. A synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing recalling and vocalizing words for expressing an intended meaning could improve word reading skills - including reading in a second language - more than silent recognition of what the given words mean. Unfortunately, many language learning software do not support this instructional approach, owing to the technical challenges of incorporating speech recognition support to check that the learner is vocalizing the correct word. In this paper, we present results from a usability test and two subsequent experiments that explore the use of two speech recognition-enabled mobile games to help rural children in India read words with understanding. Through a working speech recognition prototype, we discuss two major contributions of this work: first, we give empirical evidence that shows the extent to which productive training (i.e. vocalizing words) is superior to receptive vocabulary training, and discuss the use of scaffolding hints to ""unpack"" factors in the learner's linguistic knowledge that may impact reading. Second, we discuss what our results suggest for future research in HCI.

Making middleboxes someone else's problem: network processing as a cloud service <=SEP=> Modern enterprises almost ubiquitously deploy middlebox processing services to improve security and performance in their networks. Despite this, we find that today's middlebox infrastructure is expensive, complex to manage, and creates new failure modes for the networks that use them. Given the promise of cloud computing to decrease costs, ease management, and provide elasticity and fault-tolerance, we argue that middlebox processing can benefit from outsourcing the cloud. Arriving at a feasible implementation, however, is challenging due to the need to achieve functional equivalence with traditional middlebox deployments without sacrificing performance or increasing network complexity.
 In this paper, we motivate, design, and implement APLOMB, a practical service for outsourcing enterprise middlebox processing to the cloud.
 Our discussion of APLOMB is data-driven, guided by a survey of 57 enterprise networks, the first large-scale academic study of middlebox deployment. We show that APLOMB solves real problems faced by network administrators, can outsource over 90% of middlebox hardware in a typical large enterprise network, and, in a case study of a real enterprise, imposes an average latency penalty of 1.1ms and median bandwidth inflation of 3.8%.

Improving Intrusion Detection System based on Snort rules for network probe attack detection <=SEP=> Data and network system security is the most important roles. An organization should find the methods to protect their data and network system to reduce the risk from attacks. Snort Intrusion Detection System (Snort-IDS) is a security tool of network security. It has been widely used for protecting the network of the organizations. The Snort-IDS utilize the rules to matching data packets traffic. If some packet matches the rules, Snort-IDS will generate the alert messages. However, Snort-IDS contain many rules and it also generates a lot of false alerts. In this paper, we present the procedure to improve the Snort-IDS rules for the network probe attack detection. In order to test the performance evaluation, we utilized the data set from the MIT-DAPRA 1999, which includes the normal and abnormal traffics. Firstly, we analyzed and explored the existing the Snort-IDS rules to improve the proposed Snort-IDS rules. Secondly, we applied the WireShark software to analyze data packets form of attack in data set. Finally, the Snort-IDS was improved, and it can detect the network probe attack. This paper, we had classified the attacks into several groups based on the nature of network probe attack. In addition, we also compared the efficacy of detection attacks between Snort-IDS rules to be updated with the Detection Scoring Truth. As the experimental results, the proposed Snort-IDS efficiently detected the network probe attacks compared to the Detection Scoring Truth. It can achieve higher accuracy. However, there were some detecting alert that occur over the attack in Detection Scoring Truth, because some attack occur in several time but the Detection Scoring Truth indentify as one time.

Risk management applied to software development projects in incubated technology-based companies : literature review , classification , and analysis Gestão <=SEP=> 

Algebraic Distance on Graphs <=SEP=> Measuring the connection strength between a pair of vertices in a graph is one of the most important concerns in many graph applications. Simple measures such as edge weights may not be sufficient for capturing the effects associated with short paths of lengths greater than one. In this paper, we consider an iterative process that smooths an associated value for nearby vertices, and we present a measure of the local connection strength (called the algebraic distance, see [25]) based on this process. The proposed measure is attractive in that the process is simple, linear, and easily parallelized. An analysis of the convergence property of the process reveals that the local neighborhoods play an important role in determining the connectivity between vertices. We demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed measure through several combinatorial optimization problems on graphs and hypergraphs.

Comparing Speech Recognition Systems (Microsoft API, Google API And CMU Sphinx) <=SEP=> The idea of this paper is to design a tool that will be used to test and compare commercial speech recognition systems, such as Microsoft Speech API and Google Speech API, with open-source speech recognition systems such as Sphinx-4. The best way to compare automatic speech recognition systems in different environments is by using some audio recordings that were selected from different sources and calculating the word error rate (WER). Although the WER of the three aforementioned systems were acceptable, it was observed that the Google API is superior.

Pellet: An OWL DL Reasoner <=SEP=> Reasoning capability is of crucial importance to many applications developed for the Semantic Web. Description Logics provide sound and complete reasoning algorithms that can effectively handle the DL fragment of the Web Ontology Language (OWL). However, existing DL reasoners were implemented long before OWL came into existence and lack some features that are essential for Semantic Web applications, such as reasoning with individuals, querying capabilities, nominal support, elimination of the unique name assumption and so forth. With these objectives in mind we have implemented an OWL DL reasoner and deployed it in various kinds of applications.

Unsupervised Lesion Detection in Brain CT using Bayesian Convolutional Autoencoders <=SEP=> Normally, lesions are detected using supervised learning techniques that require labelled training data. We explore the use of Bayesian autoencoders to learn the variability of healthy tissue and detect lesions as unlikely events under the normative model. As a proof-of-concept, we test our method on registered 2D midaxial slices from CT imaging data. Our results indicate that our method achieves best performance in detecting lesions caused by bleeding compared to baselines.