Experience and prediction: a metric of hardness for a novel litmus test

Author(s):  
Nicos Isaak ◽  
Loizos Michael

Abstract In the past decade, the Winograd schema challenge (WSC) has become a central aspect of the research community as a novel litmus test. Consequently, the WSC has spurred research interest because it can be seen as the means to understand human behavior. In this regard, the development of new techniques has made possible the usage of Winograd schemas in various fields, such as the design of novel forms of CAPTCHAs. Work from the literature that established a baseline for human adult performance on the WSC has shown that not all schemas are the same, meaning that they could potentially be categorized according to their perceived hardness for humans. In this regard, this hardness metric could be used in future challenges or in the WSC CAPTCHA service to differentiate between Winograd schemas. Recent work of ours has shown that this could be achieved via the design of an automated system that is able to output the hardness indexes of Winograd schemas, albeit with limitations regarding the number of schemas it could be applied on. This paper adds to previous research by presenting a new system that is based on machine learning, able to output the hardness of any Winograd schema faster and more accurately than any other previously used method. Our developed system, which works within two different approaches, namely the random forest and deep learning (LSTM-based), is ready to be used as an extension of any other system that aims to differentiate between Winograd schemas, according to their perceived hardness for humans. At the same time, along with our developed system we extend previous work by presenting the results of a large-scale experiment that shows how human performance varies across Winograd schemas.

Author(s):  
Jeasik Cho

This book provides the qualitative research community with some insight on how to evaluate the quality of qualitative research. This topic has gained little attention during the past few decades. We, qualitative researchers, read journal articles, serve on masters’ and doctoral committees, and also make decisions on whether conference proposals, manuscripts, or large-scale grant proposals should be accepted or rejected. It is assumed that various perspectives or criteria, depending on various paradigms, theories, or fields of discipline, have been used in assessing the quality of qualitative research. Nonetheless, until now, no textbook has been specifically devoted to exploring theories, practices, and reflections associated with the evaluation of qualitative research. This book constructs a typology of evaluating qualitative research, examines actual information from websites and qualitative journal editors, and reflects on some challenges that are currently encountered by the qualitative research community. Many different kinds of journals’ review guidelines and available assessment tools are collected and analyzed. Consequently, core criteria that stand out among these evaluation tools are presented. Readers are invited to join the author to confidently proclaim: “Fortunately, there are commonly agreed, bold standards for evaluating the goodness of qualitative research in the academic research community. These standards are a part of what is generally called ‘scientific research.’ ”


Genome ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Glen Levine ◽  
Suchot Sunday ◽  
Ruth E. Dörig ◽  
Beat Suter ◽  
Paul Lasko

Drosophila mutants have played an important role in elucidating the physiologic function of genes. Large-scale projects have succeeded in producing mutations in a large proportion of Drosophila genes. Many mutant fly lines have also been produced through the efforts of individual laboratories over the past century. In an effort to make some of these mutants more useful to the research community, we systematically mapped a large number of mutations affecting genes in the proximal half of chromosome arm 2L to more precisely defined regions, defined by deficiency intervals, and, when possible, by individual complementation groups. To further analyze regions 36 and 39–40, we produced 11 new deficiencies with gamma irradiation, and we constructed 6 new deficiencies in region 30–33, using the DrosDel system. trans-heterozygous combinations of deficiencies revealed 5 additional functions, essential for viability or fertility.


Author(s):  
Yew-Hock Ang

The Internet has gone from near-invisibility to near-ubiquity and penetrated into every aspect of society in the past decades (Department of Commerce, 1998). The application scenarios have also changed dramatically, and now demand a more sophisticated service model from the network. In the early 1990s, there was a large-scale experiment in sending digitized voice and video across the Internet through a packetswitched infrastructure (Braden, Clark, & Shenker, 1994). These highly-visible experiments have depended upon three enabling technologies: (1) Many modern workstations now come equipped with built-in multimedia hardware, (2) IP multicasting, which was not yet generally available in commercial routers, and (3) Highly-sophisticated digital audio and video applications have been developed. It became clear from these experiments that an important technical element of the Internet is still missing: multimedia, which dominate increasing proportion of today’s data traffic, are not well supported on the Internet.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Youning Gong ◽  
Zhitao Lin ◽  
Yue-Xing Chen ◽  
Qasim Khan ◽  
Cong Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractIn recent years, emerging two-dimensional (2D) platinum diselenide (PtSe2) has quickly attracted the attention of the research community due to its novel physical and chemical properties. For the past few years, increasing research achievements on 2D PtSe2 have been reported toward the fundamental science and various potential applications of PtSe2. In this review, the properties and structure characteristics of 2D PtSe2 are discussed at first. Then, the recent advances in synthesis of PtSe2 as well as their applications are reviewed. At last, potential perspectives in exploring the application of 2D PtSe2 are reviewed.


1962 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
M. Schwarzschild

It is perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the past decade in astronomy that the evolution of some major classes of astronomical objects has become accessible to detailed research. The theory of the evolution of individual stars has developed into a substantial body of quantitative investigations. The evolution of galaxies, particularly of our own, has clearly become a subject for serious research. Even the history of the solar system, this close-by intriguing puzzle, may soon make the transition from being a subject of speculation to being a subject of detailed study in view of the fast flow of new data obtained with new techniques, including space-craft.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lungwani Muungo

The purpose of this review is to evaluate progress inmolecular epidemiology over the past 24 years in canceretiology and prevention to draw lessons for futureresearch incorporating the new generation of biomarkers.Molecular epidemiology was introduced inthe study of cancer in the early 1980s, with theexpectation that it would help overcome some majorlimitations of epidemiology and facilitate cancerprevention. The expectation was that biomarkerswould improve exposure assessment, document earlychanges preceding disease, and identify subgroupsin the population with greater susceptibility to cancer,thereby increasing the ability of epidemiologic studiesto identify causes and elucidate mechanisms incarcinogenesis. The first generation of biomarkers hasindeed contributed to our understanding of riskandsusceptibility related largely to genotoxic carcinogens.Consequently, interventions and policy changes havebeen mounted to reduce riskfrom several importantenvironmental carcinogens. Several new and promisingbiomarkers are now becoming available for epidemiologicstudies, thanks to the development of highthroughputtechnologies and theoretical advances inbiology. These include toxicogenomics, alterations ingene methylation and gene expression, proteomics, andmetabonomics, which allow large-scale studies, includingdiscovery-oriented as well as hypothesis-testinginvestigations. However, most of these newer biomarkershave not been adequately validated, and theirrole in the causal paradigm is not clear. There is a needfor their systematic validation using principles andcriteria established over the past several decades inmolecular cancer epidemiology.


1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 701-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. L. Reidy ◽  
G. W. Samson

A low-cost wastewater disposal system was commissioned in 1959 to treat domestic and industrial wastewaters generated in the Latrobe River valley in the province of Gippsland, within the State of Victoria, Australia (Figure 1). The Latrobe Valley is the centre for large-scale generation of electricity and for the production of pulp and paper. In addition other industries have utilized the brown coal resource of the region e.g. gasification process and char production. Consequently, industrial wastewaters have been dominant in the disposal system for the past twenty-five years. The mixed industrial-domestic wastewaters were to be transported some eighty kilometres to be treated and disposed of by irrigation to land. Several important lessons have been learnt during twenty-five years of operating this system. Firstly the composition of the mixed waste stream has varied significantly with the passage of time and the development of the industrial base in the Valley, so that what was appropriate treatment in 1959 is not necessarily acceptable in 1985. Secondly the magnitude of adverse environmental impacts engendered by this low-cost disposal procedure was not imagined when the proposal was implemented. As a consequence, clean-up procedures which could remedy the adverse effects of twenty-five years of impact are likely to be costly. The question then may be asked - when the total costs including rehabilitation are considered, is there really a low-cost solution for environmentally safe disposal of complex wastewater streams?


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qihui Wu ◽  
Hanzhong Ke ◽  
Dongli Li ◽  
Qi Wang ◽  
Jiansong Fang ◽  
...  

Over the past decades, peptide as a therapeutic candidate has received increasing attention in drug discovery, especially for antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), anticancer peptides (ACPs) and antiinflammatory peptides (AIPs). It is considered that the peptides can regulate various complex diseases which are previously untouchable. In recent years, the critical problem of antimicrobial resistance drives the pharmaceutical industry to look for new therapeutic agents. Compared to organic small drugs, peptide- based therapy exhibits high specificity and minimal toxicity. Thus, peptides are widely recruited in the design and discovery of new potent drugs. Currently, large-scale screening of peptide activity with traditional approaches is costly, time-consuming and labor-intensive. Hence, in silico methods, mainly machine learning approaches, for their accuracy and effectiveness, have been introduced to predict the peptide activity. In this review, we document the recent progress in machine learning-based prediction of peptides which will be of great benefit to the discovery of potential active AMPs, ACPs and AIPs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Taszarek ◽  
John T. Allen ◽  
Mattia Marchio ◽  
Harold E. Brooks

AbstractGlobally, thunderstorms are responsible for a significant fraction of rainfall, and in the mid-latitudes often produce extreme weather, including large hail, tornadoes and damaging winds. Despite this importance, how the global frequency of thunderstorms and their accompanying hazards has changed over the past 4 decades remains unclear. Large-scale diagnostics applied to global climate models have suggested that the frequency of thunderstorms and their intensity is likely to increase in the future. Here, we show that according to ERA5 convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective precipitation (CP) have decreased over the tropics and subtropics with simultaneous increases in 0–6 km wind shear (BS06). Conversely, rawinsonde observations paint a different picture across the mid-latitudes with increasing CAPE and significant decreases to BS06. Differing trends and disagreement between ERA5 and rawinsondes observed over some regions suggest that results should be interpreted with caution, especially for CAPE and CP across tropics where uncertainty is the highest and reliable long-term rawinsonde observations are missing.


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