Parameter optimization of kernel-based one-class classifier on imbalance learning

Compared with conventional two-class learning schemes, one-class classification simply uses a single class in the classifier training phase. Applying one-class classification to learn from unbalanced data set is regarded as the recognition based learning and has shown to have the potential of achieving better performance. Similar to twoclass learning, parameter selection is a significant issue, especially when the classifier is sensitive to the parameters. For one-class learning scheme with the kernel function, such as one-class Support Vector Machine and Support Vector Data Description, besides the parameters involved in the kernel, there is another one-class specific parameter: the rejection rate v. In this paper, we proposed a general framework to involve the majority class in solving the parameter selection problem. In this framework, we first use the minority target class for training in the one-class classification stage; then we use both minority and majority class for estimating the generalization performance of the constructed classifier. This generalization performance is set as the optimization criteria. We employed the Grid search and Experiment Design search to attain various parameter settings. Experiments on UCI and Reuters text data show that the parameter optimized one-class classifiers outperform all the standard one-class learning schemes we examined.

Parameter estimation of one-class SVM on imbalance text classification

Compared with conventional two-class learning schemes, one-class classification simply uses a single class for training purposes. Applying one-class classification to the minorities in an imbalanced data has been shown to achieve better performance than the two-class one. In this paper, in order to make the best use of all the available information during the learning procedure, we propose a general framework which first uses the minority class for training in the one-class classification stage; and then uses both minority and majority class for estimating the generalization performance of the constructed classifier. Based upon this generalization performance measurement, parameter search algorithm selects the best parameter settings for this classifier. Experiments on UCI and Reuters text data show that one-class SVM embedded in this framework achieves much better performance than the standard one-class SVM alone and other learning schemes, such as one-class Naive Bayes, one-class nearest neighbour and neural network.

Ian's story : the complex interaction of ethnicity, class and masculinities

In this paper, a narrative is used to convey the complex connectedness that exists between class, ethnicity and masculinity. The story is of Ian, a successful academic who describes himself as Eurasian, and traces his development through parts of his childhood and into his professional career, using what Gough (1994) describes as a 'realistic fiction'. Relevant literature on masculinities and ethnicity is considered. There is some evidence to suggest that Ian has developed a fluid version of masculinity as a result of his Asian-Australian upbringing, and that he expresses different masculinities according to the social settings in which he finds himself. The paper concludes, just as Ian's story does, that masculinity interacts with class and ethnicity. This accords with Connell's (1995) caution that it is dangerous to think that there is a colored masculinity or a working class masculinity, and that the milieux of class and race need to be considered as well.

Ethnicity, social class, practice and pedagogy: a study of teacher identity

This paper draws on findings from three separate research projects to illustrate how teachers' and student-teachers' ethnic and social class identities shape their representations of professional self, their interactions with their students and the pedagogies they privilege in their classes. The paper raises a number of important implications for teacher education seeking to prepare teachers for culturally diverse contexts such as Australian classrooms. It concludes that a major challenge for teacher educators is to find ways of enabling their students to interrogate often taken-for-granted assumptions about their own ethnic and classed positionings.

Herbert Spencer in the suburbs? Class, politics, ideology and the Australian petty-bourgeoisie in the Howard years

A dominant trope of media commentary after the 2004 federal election was the rise of blue-collar self-employment and small business and its negative impact on Labor electoral support. In this paper I examine the evidence on the growth of self-employment and small business in Australia since the 1980s and the political consequences of this growth. I consider why the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated by many observers, and the emergence of a right-wing anti-capitalism in the critique of the dependence of wage-labour. Although the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated it is a real phenomenon. I extract the rational kernel from the largely ill-informed commentary on this issue and place contemporary debates about self-employment in a historical and global context. I consider why the self-employed and small business were once seen as natural allies of the working-class in a populist coalition but why they are now identified by commentators as hostile to class politics.

Sports training, science and class among British amateur athletes in the mid to late nineteenth century

Organised amateur sports emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper, an exercise in historical sociology, analyses how a new system of sports training was devised by the amateurs to meet their particular needs. The data comes from contemporary British training manuals and the analysis is informed by the theories of Bourdieu and Foucault. That amateurs came from the higher social classes was highly
significant: it meant that they could not adopt existing training practices because these were associated with plebeian professional athletes. For amateurs to have followed the preparation of the professionals would have placed their bodies under the control of a social inferior and promoted a somatic shape more in keeping with the lower than with
the higher social orders. Mirroring the social distance between them, amateurs came to stridently reject professional training practices. Instead, they devised new training techniques which were justified through recourse to contemporary bio-medical knowledge. It is argued that amateur training originated for social reasons, with the proponents’ class positions and social capital facilitating the evocation of scientific knowledge as a legitimating ideology.

Gardner; re BWW: Victorian Supreme Court makes landmark Australian ruling on tube feeding

• The Victorian Supreme Court has decided that artificial nutrition and hydration provided through a percutaneous gastrostomy tube to a woman in a persistent vegetative state may be withdrawn.
• The judge ruled, in line with a substantial body of international medical, ethical and legal opinion, that any form of artificial nutrition and hydration is a medical procedure, not part of palliative care, and that it is a procedure to sustain life, not to manage the dying process.
• Thus, the law does not impose a rigid obligation to administer artificial nutrition or hydration to people who are dying, without due regard to their clinical condition. The definition of key terms such as “medical treatment”, “palliative care”, and “reasonable provision of food and water” in this case will serve as guidance for end-of-life decisions in other states and territories.
• The case also reiterates the right of patients, and, when incompetent, their validly appointed agents or guardians, to refuse medical treatment.
• Where an incompetent patient has not executed a binding advance directive and no agent or guardian has been appointed, physicians, in consultation with the family, may decide to withdraw medical treatment, including artificial nutrition or hydration, on the basis that continuation of treatment is inappropriate and not in the patient’s best interests. However, Victoria and other jurisdictions would benefit from clarification of this area of the law

State and input simultaneous estimation for a class of nonlinear systems

This paper addresses the problem of estimating simultaneously the state and input of a class of nonlinear systems. Here, the systems nonlinear part comprises a Lipschitz nonlinear function with respect to the state and input, and a state-dependent unknown function including additive disturbance as well as uncertain/nonlinear/time-varying terms. Upon satisfying some conditions, the observer design problem can be solved via a Riccati inequality or a LMI-based technique with asymptotic estimation guaranteed. A numerical example is included for illustration.

Evolution of class I cytokine receptors

Background
The Class I cytokine receptors have a wide range of actions, including a major role in the development and function of immune and blood cells. However, the evolution of the genes encoding them remains poorly understood. To address this we have used bioinformatics to analyze the Class I receptor repertoire in sea squirt (Ciona intestinalis) and zebrafish (Danio rerio).
Results
Only two Class I receptors were identified in sea squirt, one with homology to the archetypal GP130 receptor, and the other with high conservation with the divergent orphan receptor CLF-3. In contrast, 36 Class I cytokine receptors were present in zebrafish, including representative members for each of the five structural groups found in mammals. This allowed the identification of 27 core receptors belonging to the last common ancestor of teleosts and mammals.
Conclusion
This study suggests that the majority of diversification of this receptor family occurred after the divergence of urochordates and vertebrates approximately 794 million years ago (MYA), but before the divergence of ray-finned from lobe-finned fishes around 476 MYA. Since then, only relatively limited lineage-specific diversification within the different Class I receptor structural groups has occurred.