Bayesian Logical Neural Networks for Human-Centered Applications in Medicine

Medicine is characterized by its inherent ambiguity, i.e., the difficulty to identify and obtain exact outcomes from available data. Regarding this problem, electronic Health Records (EHRs) aim to avoid imprecisions in the data recording, for instance by its recording in an automatic way or by the integration of data that is both readable by humans and machines. However, the inherent biology and physiological processes introduce a constant epistemic uncertainty, which has a deep implication in the way the condition of the patients is estimated. For instance, for some patients, it is not possible to speak about an exact diagnosis, but about the suspicion of a disease, which reveals that the medical practice is often ambiguous. In this work, we report a novel modeling methodology combining explainable models, defined on Logic Neural Networks (LONNs), and Bayesian Networks (BN) that deliver ambiguous outcomes, for instance, medical procedures (Therapy Keys (TK)), depending on the uncertainty of observed data. If epistemic uncertainty is generated from the underlying physiology, the model delivers exact or ambiguous results depending on the individual parameters of each patient. Thus, our model does not aim to assist the customer by providing exact results but is a user-centered solution that informs the customer when a given recommendation, in this case, a therapy, is uncertain and must be carefully evaluated by the customer, implying that the final customer must be a professional who will not fully rely on automatic recommendations. This novel methodology has been tested on a database for patients with heart insufficiency.

Iterative Update of a Random Forest Classifier for Diabetic Retinopathy

Random Forests are well-known Machine Learning classification mechanisms based on a collection of decision trees. In the last years, they have been applied to assess the risk of diabetic patients to develop Diabetic Retinopathy. The results have been good, despite the unbalance of data between classes and the inherent ambiguity of the problem (patients with similar data may belong to different classes). In this work we propose a new iterative method to update the set of trees in the Random Forest by considering trees generated from the data of the new patients that are visited in the medical centre. With this method, it has been possible to improve the results obtained with standard Random Forests.

Learning intents behind interactions with high-order graph for session-based intelligent recommendation

Session-based recommendation is an overwhelming task owing to the inherent ambiguity in anonymous behaviors. Graph convolutional neural networks are receiving wide attention for session-based recommendation research for the sake of their ability to capture the complex transitions of interactions between sessions. Recent research on session-based recommendations mainly focuses on sequential patterns by utilizing graph neural networks. However, it is undeniable that proposed methods are still difficult to capture higher-order interactions between contextual interactions in the same session and has room for improvement. To solve it, we propose a new method based on graph attention mechanism and target oriented items to effectively propagate information, HOGAN for brevity. Higher-order graph attention networks are used to select the importance of different neighborhoods in the graph that consists of a sequence of user actions for recommendation applications. The complementarity between high-order networks is adopted to aggregate and propagate useful signals from the long distant neighbors to solve the long-range dependency capturing problem. Experimental results consistently display that HOGAN has a significantly improvement to 71.53% on precision for the Yoochoose1_64 dataset and enhances the property of the session-based recommendation task.

Are magicians specialists at identifying deceptive motion? The role of expertise in being fooled by sleight of hand.

The use of magic effects to investigate the blind spots in the attention and perception and roadblocks in the cognition of the spectator has yielded thought-provoking results elucidating how these techniques operate. However, little is known about the interplay between experience practising magic and being deceived by magic effects. In this study, we performed two common sleight of hand effects and their real transfer counterparts to non-magicians, and to magicians with a diverse range of experience practising magic. Although, as a group, magicians identified the sleights of hand as deceptive actions significantly more than non-magicians; this ability was only evidenced in magicians with more than 5 years in the craft. However, unlike the rest of the participants, experienced magicians had difficulty correctly pinpointing the location of the coin in one of the real transfers presented. We hypothesise that this might be due to the inherent ambiguity of this transfer, in which, contrary to the other real transfer performed, no clear perceptive clue is given about the location of the coin. We suggest that extensive time practising magic might have primed experienced magicians to anticipate foul play when observing ambiguous movements, even when the actions observed are genuine.

From the Bronze Soldier to the “Bloody Marshal”: Monument Wars and Russia’s Aesthetic Vulnerability in Estonia and the Czech Republic

The article analyzes historical monuments as instruments of Russia’s attempts to impose its aesthetic hegemony in the post-Communist world. Drawing on case studies from the Czech Republic and Estonia, it argues that this hegemony is precarious and vulnerable due to inability to deal with the inherent ambiguity and complexity of historical events and figures. The Russian approach regards historical truth in absolute terms and is underpinned by a zero-sum game understanding of historical narratives. It does not tolerate a multiplicity of perspectives on history and has no appreciation for postmodernist deconstruction of historical symbols. This conflicts with a more diverse, reflexive and inclusive politics of memory as an intrinsic element of cityscapes of Prague and Tallinn where some of the controversial monuments connected with the Soviet occupation have been removed. Russia’s reaction to these changes reveals an inherently vulnerable nature of its aesthetic hegemony which is deeply dependent on recognition of the absolute nature of its historical truth that the monuments are supposed to embody.

Are magicians specialists at identifying deceptive motion? The role of expertise in being fooled by sleight of hand.

The use of magic effects to investigate the blind spots in the attention and perception and roadblocks in the cognition of the spectator has yielded thought-provoking results elucidating how these techniques operate. However, little is known about the interplay between experience practising magic and being deceived by magic effects. In this study, we performed two common sleight of hand effects and their real transfer counterparts to non-magicians, and to magicians with a diverse range of experience practising magic. Although, as a group, magicians identified the sleights of hand as deceptive actions significantly more than non-magicians; this ability was only evidenced in magicians with more than 5 years in the craft. However, unlike the rest of the participants, experienced magicians had difficulty correctly pinpointing the location of the coin in one of the real transfers presented. We hypothesise that this might be due to the inherent ambiguity of this transfer, in which, contrary to the other real transfer performed, no clear perceptive clue is given about the location of the coin. We suggest that extensive time practising magic might have primed experienced magicians to anticipate foul play when observing ambiguous movements, even when the actions observed are genuine.

Are magicians specialists at identifying deceptive motion? The role of expertise in being fooled by sleight of hand.

In this study we performed two common sleight of hand effects and their real transfer counterparts to non-magicians and to magicians with a diverse range of experience practicing magic. Although, as a group, magicians identified the sleights of hand as deceptive actions significantly more than non-magicians; this ability was only evidenced in magicians with more than 5 years in the craft. However, unlike the rest of participants, experienced magicians had difficulty in correctly pinpointing the location of the coin in one of the real transfers presented. We hypothesise that this might be due to the inherent ambiguity of this transfer, in which, contrary to the other real transfer performed, no clear perceptive clue is given in reference to the location of the coin. We suggest that extensive time practicing magic might have primed experienced magicians to anticipate foul play when observing ambiguous movements, even when the actions observed are genuine.

Rules, understanding and language games in mathematics

The article is devoted to the applicability of Wittgenstein’s following the rule in the context of his philosophy of mathematics to real mathematical practice. It is noted that in «Philosophical Investigations» and «Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics» Wittgenstein resorted to the analysis of rather elementary mathematical concepts, accompanied also by the inherent ambiguity and ambiguity of his presentation. In particular, against this background, his radical conventionalism, the substitution of logical necessity with the «form of life» of the community, as well as the inadequacy of the representation of arithmetic rules by a language game are criticized. It is shown that the reconstruction of the Wittgenstein concept of understanding based on the Fregian division of meaning and referent goes beyond the conceptual framework of Wittgenstein language games.

Environment and its Forms of Knowledge: The Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops in India

A fierce controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops has been raging in India for over two decades. Analyzing India’s regulatory regime for GM crops, this article focuses on the modes through which state bureaucracies know the environment. It argues that two epistemologies - scientific and legal-administrative – underpin environment protection. By unraveling the course of regulatory disputes, I demonstrate that bureaucracies are not just hierarchically divided but are also segmented by horizontal, functional specializations. There is thus an inherent ambiguity lodged between environment as a technical discourse and as statecraft. This ambiguity both fosters and constrains democratic participation in policy decisions and can even partially disrupt power relations in unanticipated ways.

Cloud Systems and Applications : A Review

Cloud computing has become a buzz word over the last decade. It has continued to attract businesses due to its on-demand service, applications and cost-effectiveness. There exist different Cloud Computing service providers today with inherent ambiguity of services and billing structure. To overhaul these ambiguities, in this paper, we discussed an overview of cloud computing, evaluated and diagrammatically stratified the Cloud Computing stack with their examples and their common elements. Further, the biggest Cloud Computing service providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure. We selected the service providers to analyse critically, compare and contrast their services, billing, performance and functionalities.