Information Fusion and Hierarchical Knowledge Discovery by ARTMAP Neural Networks

Mapping novel terrain from sparse, complex data often requires the resolution of conflicting information from sensors working at different times, locations, and scales, and from experts with different goals and situations. Information fusion methods help resolve inconsistencies in order to distinguish correct from incorrect answers, as when evidence variously suggests that an object's class is car, truck, or airplane. The methods developed here consider a complementary problem, supposing that information from sensors and experts is reliable though inconsistent, as when evidence suggests that an objects class is car, vehicle, or man-made. Underlying relationships among objects are assumed to be unknown to the automated system of the human user. The ARTMAP information fusion system uses distributed code representations that exploit the neural network's capacity for one-to-many learning in order to produce self-organizing expert systems that discover hierarchial knowledge structures. The system infers multi-level relationships among groups of output classes, without any supervised labeling of these relationships. The procedure is illustrated with two image examples.

Self-Organizing Hierarchical Knowledge Discovery by an ARTMAP Image Fusion System

Classifying novel terrain or objects front sparse, complex data may require the resolution of conflicting information from sensors working at different times, locations, and scales, and from sources with different goals and situations. Information fusion methods can help resolve inconsistencies, as when evidence variously suggests that an object's class is car, truck, or airplane. The methods described here consider a complementary problem, supposing that information from sensors and experts is reliable though inconsistent, as when evidence suggests that an object's class is car, vehicle, and man-made. Underlying relationships among objects are assumed to be unknown to the automated system or the human user. The ARTMAP information fusion system used distributed code representations that exploit the neural network's capacity for one-to-many learning in order to produce self-organizing expert systems that discover hierarchical knowledge structures. The system infers multi-level relationships among groups of output classes, without any supervised labeling of these relationships.

Self-Organizing Information Fusion and Hierarchical Knowledge Discovery: A New Framework Using Artmap Neural Networks

Classifying novel terrain or objects from sparse, complex data may require the resolution of conflicting information from sensors woring at different times, locations, and scales, and from sources with different goals and situations. Information fusion methods can help resolve inconsistencies, as when eveidence variously suggests that and object's class is car, truck, or airplane. The methods described her address a complementary problem, supposing that information from sensors and experts is reliable though inconsistent, as when evidence suggests that an object's class is car, vehicle, and man-made. Underlying relationships among classes are assumed to be unknown to the autonomated system or the human user. The ARTMAP information fusion system uses distributed code representations that exploit the neural network's capacity for one-to-many learning in order to produce self-organizing expert systems that discover hierachical knowlege structures. The fusion system infers multi-level relationships among groups of output classes, without any supervised labeling of these relationships. The procedure is illustrated with two image examples, but is not limited to image domain.

Police accountability in Ireland: an analysis of the problems posed by the legal, constitutional and political dimensions and how they might be addressed

The concept of police accountability is not susceptible to a universal or concise definition. In the context of this thesis it is treated as embracing two fundamental components. First, it entails an arrangement whereby an individual, a minority and the whole community have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the formulation of the principles and policies governing police operations. Second, it presupposes that those who have suffered as victims of unacceptable police behaviour should have an effective remedy. These ingredients, however, cannot operate in a vacuum. They must find an accommodation with the equally vital requirement that the burden of accountability should not be so demanding that the delivery of an effective police service is fatally impaired. While much of the current debate on police accountability in Britain and the USA revolves around the issue of where the balance should be struck in this accommodation, Ireland lacks the very foundation for such a debate as it suffers from a serious deficit in research and writing on police generally. This thesis aims to fill that gap by laying the foundations for an informed debate on police accountability and related aspects of police in Ireland. Broadly speaking the thesis contains three major interrelated components. The first is concerned with the concept of police in Ireland and the legal, constitutional and political context in which it operates. This reveals that although the Garda Siochana is established as a national force the legal prescriptions concerning its role and governance are very vague. Although a similar legislative format in Britain, and elsewhere, have been interpreted as conferring operational autonomy on the police it has not stopped successive Irish governments from exercising close control over the police. The second component analyses the structure and operation of the traditional police accountability mechanisms in Ireland; namely the law and the democratic process. It concludes that some basic aspects of the peculiar legal, constitutional and political structures of policing seriously undermine their capacity to deliver effective police accountability. In the case of the law, for example, the status of, and the broad discretion vested in, each individual member of the force ensure that the traditional legal actions cannot always provide redress where individuals or collective groups feel victimised. In the case of the democratic process the integration of the police into the excessively centralised system of executive government, coupled with the refusal of the Minister for Justice to accept responsibility for operational matters, project a barrier between the police and their accountability to the public. The third component details proposals on how the current structures of police accountability in Ireland can be strengthened without interfering with the fundamentals of the law, the democratic process or the legal and constitutional status of the police. The key elements in these proposals are the establishment of an independent administrative procedure for handling citizen complaints against the police and the establishment of a network of local police-community liaison councils throughout the country coupled with a centralised parliamentary committee on the police. While these proposals are analysed from the perspective of maximising the degree of police accountability to the public they also take into account the need to ensure that the police capacity to deliver an effective police service is not unduly impaired as a result.

Exploring alternatives for milk quality improvement and more efficient dairy production in a smallholder farming context – case study: Mantaro Valley (Peru)

Consumer demand is revolutionizing the way products are being produced, distributed and marketed. In relation to the dairy sector in developing countries, aspects of milk quality are receiving more attention from both society and the government. However, milk quality management needs to be better addressed in dairy production systems to guarantee the access of stakeholders, mainly small-holders, into dairy markets. The present study is focused on an analysis of the interaction of the upstream part of the dairy supply chain (farmers and dairies) in the Mantaro Valley (Peruvian central Andes), in order to understand possible constraints both stakeholders face implementing milk quality controls and practices; and evaluate “ex-ante” how different strategies suggested to improve milk quality could affect farmers and processors’ profits. The analysis is based on three complementary field studies conducted between 2012 and 2013. Our work has shown that the presence of a dual supply chain combining both formal and informal markets has a direct impact on dairy production at the technical and organizational levels, affecting small formal dairy processors’ possibilities to implement contracts, including agreements on milk quality standards. The analysis of milk quality management from farms to dairy plants highlighted the poor hygiene in the study area, even when average values of milk composition were usually high. Some husbandry practices evaluated at farm level demonstrated cost effectiveness and a big impact on hygienic quality; however, regular application of these practices was limited, since small-scale farmers do not receive a bonus for producing hygienic milk. On the basis of these two results, we co-designed with formal small-scale dairy processors a simulation tool to show prospective scenarios, in which they could select their best product portfolio but also design milk payment systems to reward farmers’ with high milk quality performances. This type of approach allowed dairy processors to realize the importance of including milk quality management in their collection and manufacturing processes, especially in a context of high competition for milk supply. We concluded that the improvement of milk quality in a smallholder farming context requires a more coordinated effort among stakeholders. Successful implementation of strategies will depend on the willingness of small-scale dairy processors to reward farmers producing high milk quality; but also on the support from the State to provide incentives to the stakeholders in the formal sector.

Locating the transnational: representations and aesthetics of the city in contemporary European cinemas

This thesis focuses on two Western European cinematic cities, and two unique periods of their respective nations’ histories, in a bid to “locate” the transnational within a contemporary European milieu. I argue that my geo-cinematic case studies are emblematic of broader questions of the problematics of national identity in contemporary Europe in the face of cross-national flows yet, as a result of their representations as cities both “anchored” and “in flux”, they reject a European postnational identity. Through its engagement with cinematic Rome as the “Eternal City” of Europe and cinematic Dublin as the “newly Europeanised” city, my thesis traces how representations and aesthetics of the urban spaces of these two cities correspond with the tensions at the heart of the respective eras in question. Via the figures that inhabit it, navigate it and search for it, the city is utilised to highlight fixity and mobility, centrality and dislocation, in explicit and implicit ways, amid the rapidly changing landscape of its national terrain. It is through my analyses of the filmed places and sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural spaces of these capital cities under the rubric of the transnational that this research demonstrates the “pluralities” of the construct in its cinematic manifestations. It is also my aim to evaluate the concept of cinematic transnationalism when identifying and accounting for representations of a specific national, historical timeframe, when the momentousness of the changes that occur is not bound by the national, but rather is reflective of the influence of both domestic and external forces. To this end, my thesis draws attention to instances in which the nation is shown to persist and resist dilution, arguing that it is only against the backdrop and continuity of the nation (in its evershifting guises) that the transnational can be conceived in representative and aesthetic terms.

It Takes Two to Tango: Entrepreneurship and Creativity in Troubled Times – Vietnam 2012

Strikingly, most literature suggests that market competition will push firms to take creativity/innovation seriously as matter of death or survival. Using the data, we examined creativity methods (Napier and Nilsson, 2008; Napier, 2010) in conjunction with three influential cultural values – namely risk tolerance, relationship, and dependence on resources – to assess how they influence decisions of entrepreneurs.The primary objective of this study focuses on perceived values of entrepreneurship and creativity in business conducted within a turbulent environment. Our initial hypothesis is that a typical entrepreneurial process carries with it “creativity-enabling elements.” In a normal situation, when businesses focus more on optimizing their resources for commercial gains, perceptions about values of entrepreneurial creativity are usually vague. However, in difficult times and harsh competition, the difference between survival and failure may be creativity. This paper also examines many previous findings on both entrepreneurship and creativity and suggests a highly possible “organic growth” of creativity in an entrepreneurial environment and reinforcing value of entrepreneurship when creativity power is present. In other words, we see each idea reinforcing the other. We use data from a survey of sample Vietnamese firms during the chaotic economic year 2012 to learn about the ‘entrepreneurshipcreativity nexus.’ A data set of 137 responses qualified for a statistical examination was obtained from an online survey, which started on February 16 and ended May 24, 2012, sent to local entrepreneurs and corporate managers using social networks. The authors employed categorical data analysis (Agresti, 2002; Azen & Walker, 2011). Statistical analyses confirm that for business operation, the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit could hardly be separate; and, this is not only correct with entrepreneurial firm, but also well established companies. The single most important factor before business startup and during early implementation in Vietnam is what we call “connection/relationship.” However, businesspeople are increasingly aware of the need of creativity/innovation. In fact, we suggest that creativity and entrepreneurial spirit cannot be separated in entrepreneurial firms as well as established companies.

Popular culture, relational history, and the question of power in Palestine and Israel

The marginalization of popular culture in radical scholarship on Palestine and Israel is symptomatic of the conceptual limits that still define much Middle East studies scholarship: namely, the prevailing logic of the nation-state on the one hand and the analytic tools of classical Marxist historiography and political economy on the other. This essay offers a polemic about the form that alternative scholarly projects might take through recourse to questions of popular culture. The authors argue that close allention to the ways that popular culture "articulates" with broader political, social, and economic processes can expand scholarly understandings of the terrain of power in Palestine and Israel, and hence the possible arenas and modalities of struggle. © 2004 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved.

Computational Journalism: from Answering Question to Questioning Answers and Raising Good Questions

Our media is saturated with claims of ``facts'' made from data. Database research has in the past focused on how to answer queries, but has not devoted much attention to discerning more subtle qualities of the resulting claims, e.g., is a claim ``cherry-picking''? This paper proposes a Query Response Surface (QRS) based framework that models claims based on structured data as parameterized queries. A key insight is that we can learn a lot about a claim by perturbing its parameters and seeing how its conclusion changes. This framework lets us formulate and tackle practical fact-checking tasks --- reverse-engineering vague claims, and countering questionable claims --- as computational problems. Within the QRS based framework, we take one step further, and propose a problem along with efficient algorithms for finding high-quality claims of a given form from data, i.e. raising good questions, in the first place. This is achieved to using a limited number of high-valued claims to represent high-valued regions of the QRS. Besides the general purpose high-quality claim finding problem, lead-finding can be tailored towards specific claim quality measures, also defined within the QRS framework. An example of uniqueness-based lead-finding is presented for ``one-of-the-few'' claims, landing in interpretable high-quality claims, and an adjustable mechanism for ranking objects, e.g. NBA players, based on what claims can be made for them. Finally, we study the use of visualization as a powerful way of conveying results of a large number of claims. An efficient two stage sampling algorithm is proposed for generating input of 2d scatter plot with heatmap, evalutaing a limited amount of data, while preserving the two essential visual features, namely outliers and clusters. For all the problems, we present real-world examples and experiments that demonstrate the power of our model, efficiency of our algorithms, and usefulness of their results.

Project Manager

Le projet de construction au XXIe siècle :nouveaux acteurs, nouvelles responsabilités. L’apparition de nouveaux intervenants dans les projets de contruction bouleverse le schéma classique Maître d’ouvrage – Architecte – Entrepreneur. Parmi ceux-ci, le Project Manager occupe une place de premier rang, dès lors qu’il interviendra bien souvent dès l’entame du projet et jusqu’à complétion de celui-ci. L’ouvrage offre une première analyse complète de sa situation juridique, en mêlant littérature juridique (belge, française et américaine) et pratique de terrain. Envisagé ici à travers le prisme de sa relation contractuelle avec le Maître d’ouvrage, le Project manager reçoit une définition légale d’où sont déduits les éléments essentiels de se son contrat. Son statut, ses missions ainsi que ses responsabilités sont identiés précisément et articulés harmonieusement avec ceux d’autre professionnels (arhitectes et entrepreneurs). Spécialement sur la question des reponsabilités, l’ouvrage démontre que certains cas de responsabilité traditionnellement imputés à l’un de ces autres acteurs pourront être imputés au Project Manager, allant dans le sens d’un régime unifié de responsabilité pour l’ensemble de ces acteurs. L’ouvrage s’enrichit encore d’un modèle contractuel de base et d’une bibliographie.Incontestablement, l’ouvrage vient combler un vide doctrinal et constituera un guide essentiel, tant pour les Maîtres d’ouvrage que pour les Project Manager.

The (in)visible scar. Representation of the body in blogs by women with breast cancer

In this paper we analyze the representation of the body in blogs by women with breast cancer. Taking into account both texts and images, we study the representation of the body on the basis of the body problems proposed by Frank (1995): control, body-relatedness, other-relatedness and desire. In the blogs studied we find a desiring and dyadic body, which is understood as part of a network of affection and care. The diagnosis of cancer can generate both dissociation, when the body is experienced as a threat, and association, a wish to be connected to it. In relation to control, a clear will of predictability is observed but traces of assumption of contingency also appear.

Risk assessment of E-Commerce projects using evidential reasoning

The purpose of this study is to develop a decision making system to evaluate the risks in E-Commerce (EC) projects. Competitive software businesses have the critical task of assessing the risk in the software system development life cycle. This can be conducted on the basis of conventional probabilities, but limited appropriate information is available and so a complete set of probabilities is not available. In such problems, where the analysis is highly subjective and related to vague, incomplete, uncertain or inexact information, the Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory of evidence offers a potential advantage. We use a direct way of reasoning in a single step (i.e., extended DS theory) to develop a decision making system to evaluate the risk in EC projects. This consists of five stages 1) establishing knowledge base and setting rule strengths, 2) collecting evidence and data, 3) determining evidence and rule strength to a mass distribution for each rule; i.e., the first half of a single step reasoning process, 4) combining prior mass and different rules; i.e., the second half of the single step reasoning process, 5) finally, evaluating the belief interval for the best support decision of EC project. We test the system by using potential risk factors associated with EC development and the results indicate that the system is promising way of assisting an EC project manager in identifying potential risk factors and the corresponding project risks.