Sir Robert Hart Photo Collection on Flickr

The photographs in this album were selected with the assistance of the Sir Robert Hart Research Project, which is a collaboration between Special Collections & Archives in the Library, the School of Modern History & Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast, and the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. The research project is creating an annotated photobook from the Sir Robert Hart Photo Collection (originally donated in the 1970s) and the Irons Collection. The photographs here reflect those that will be included in the book.

Averaged Extended Tree Augmented Naive Classifier

This work presents a new general purpose classifier named Averaged Extended Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (AETAN), which is based on combining the advantageous characteristics of Extended Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (ETAN) and Averaged One-Dependence Estimator (AODE) classifiers. We describe the main properties of the approach and algorithms for learning it, along with an analysis of its computational time complexity. Empirical results with numerous data sets indicate that the new approach is superior to ETAN and AODE in terms of both zero-one classification accuracy and log loss. It also compares favourably against weighted AODE and hidden Naive Bayes. The learning phase of the new approach is slower than that of its competitors, while the time complexity for the testing phase is similar. Such characteristics suggest that the new classifier is ideal in scenarios where online learning is not required.

Learning Extended Tree Augmented Naive Structures

This work proposes an extended version of the well-known tree-augmented naive Bayes (TAN) classifier where the structure learning step is performed without requiring features to be connected to the class. Based on a modification of Edmonds' algorithm, our structure learning procedure explores a superset of the structures that are considered by TAN, yet achieves global optimality of the learning score function in a very efficient way (quadratic in the number of features, the same complexity as learning TANs). We enhance our procedure with a new score function that only takes into account arcs that are relevant to predict the class, as well as an optimization over the equivalent sample size during learning. These ideas may be useful for structure learning of Bayesian networks in general. A range of experiments shows that we obtain models with better prediction accuracy than naive Bayes and TAN, and comparable to the accuracy of the state-of-the-art classifier averaged one-dependence estimator (AODE). We release our implementation of ETAN so that it can be easily installed and run within Weka.

Learning Bounded Tree-Width Bayesian Networks via Sampling

Learning Bayesian networks with bounded tree-width has attracted much attention recently, because low tree-width allows exact inference to be performed efficiently. Some existing methods [12, 14] tackle the problem by using k-trees to learn the optimal Bayesian network with tree-width up to k. In this paper, we propose a sampling method to efficiently find representative k-trees by introducing an Informative score function to characterize the quality of a k-tree. The proposed algorithm can efficiently learn a Bayesian network with tree-width at most k. Experiment results indicate that our approach is comparable with exact methods, but is much more computationally efficient.

Learning Bayesian Networks with Bounded Tree-Width via Guided Search

Bounding the tree-width of a Bayesian network can reduce the chance of overfitting, and allows exact inference to be performed efficiently. Several existing algorithms tackle the problem of learning bounded tree-width Bayesian networks by learning from k-trees as super-structures, but they do not scale to large domains and/or large tree-width. We propose a guided search algorithm to find k-trees with maximum Informative scores, which is a measure of quality for the k-tree in yielding good Bayesian networks. The algorithm achieves close to optimal performance compared to exact solutions in small domains, and can discover better networks than existing approximate methods can in large domains. It also provides an optimal elimination order of variables that guarantees small complexity for later runs of exact inference. Comparisons with well-known approaches in terms of learning and inference accuracy illustrate its capabilities.

To Hell with Herbert Read

Freee write manifestos by taking a pencil (or a laptop) to an historical text, usually belonging to the entwined traditions of the avant-garde and political activism. Sometimes, as Tristan Tzara advised, we choose the text according to its length, while other times, such as in this instance, we selected the text according to the conditions of the invitation that triggered the writing of the manifesto. Our manifesto ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ was written originally as a contribution to a conference held in Manchester that took its title from Herbert Read’s book ‘To Hell with Culture’. ‘To Hell with Culture’ is a book that cuts itself off from the world whereas ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ relocates Read’s book in a world of cultural, social, economic and political actualities that are part of common experience. Read rejects culture because he thinks it is a useless, wasteful, elitist, puffed-up, decorative supplement to the functional, factual, palpable, purposeful world of things. He is a positivist kind of modernist who presents himself as the opposite, an enemy of the status quo. He is an anarchist of a particularly bourgeois hue: he wants us all to have decent pots and pans, not the inferior ones that are supplied by market forces cheaply. Rather than taking his aim precisely to target the dominant forces of his day - the industrial capitalists and their financiers - he rejects the world and all its inhabitants. He not only despises elitist culture but popular culture too.

To Hell with Herbert Read

Freee write manifestos by taking a pencil (or a laptop) to an historical text, usually belonging to the entwined traditions of the avant-garde and political activism. Sometimes, as Tristan Tzara advised, we choose the text according to its length, while other times, such as in this instance, we selected the text according to the conditions of the invitation that triggered the writing of the manifesto. Our manifesto ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ was written originally as a contribution to a conference held in Manchester that took its title from Herbert Read’s book ‘To Hell with Culture’. ‘To Hell with Culture’ is a book that cuts itself off from the world whereas ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ relocates Read’s book in a world of cultural, social, economic and political actualities that are part of common experience. Read rejects culture because he thinks it is a useless, wasteful, elitist, puffed-up, decorative supplement to the functional, factual, palpable, purposeful world of things. He is a positivist kind of modernist who presents himself as the opposite, an enemy of the status quo. He is an anarchist of a particularly bourgeois hue: he wants us all to have decent pots and pans, not the inferior ones that are supplied by market forces cheaply. Rather than taking his aim precisely to target the dominant forces of his day - the industrial capitalists and their financiers - he rejects the world and all its inhabitants. He not only despises elitist culture but popular culture too.

Evaluation of the in vitro biological activities of extracts from carob tree and mediterranean oaks

Dissertação mest., Engenharia Biológica, Universidade do Algarve, 2009

Chemical and microbial changes during the natural fermentation of strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo L.) fruits

Aguardente de medronho is the name given in Portugal to a spirit made from the fermented fruit of Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree), a plant grown in the Mediterranean region. In order to gain a better understanding of the fermentation process, as it is performed in the farms, a natural fermentation with wild microbiota was carried out during 36 days, and some physicochemical and microbiological parameters were studied. The microbial parameters analyzed were total viable, lactic and acetic acids bacteria, and yeast counts. The physicochemical parameters monitored were sugars, minerals, ethanol, organic acids and pH. Yeasts were the main responsible for the fermentation of the fruits, as the lactic and acetic acids bacteria are absent. As the fermentation progressed, the sugars increased during the first 2 days and gradually decreased along the fermentation period. Maintaining the good quality of the product could contribute to the preservation and valorization of traditional resources that are of great importance to prevent their disappearance.

Entomofauna associated with the olive tree in southern Portugal

Since 2004 several studies have been carried out in order to identify the main insect species that usually inhabiting the olive ecosystem. The field trials have taken place in two olive groves, one situated in Olhão and the other one in Loulé, both in Algarve and also under Integrated Pest Management (IPM). The sampling techniques used differ according to their purpose (sticky traps, pheromone traps, pitfall traps and samples of aerial parts of the trees such as inflorescences, leaves, fruits and branches). Results showed that the main insect pests of olive tree in southern Portugal were the olive fruit fly Bactrocera oleae Gmelin (Diptera: Tephritidae) and the olive moth Prays oleae Bernard (Lepidoptera: Hyponeumetidae). Other insect pests were also found in our olive groves namely the olive psyllid Euphyllura olivina Costa (Homoptera: Psyllidae), the olive dark beetle Phloeotribus scarabaeoides Bernard (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), the mediterranean black scale Saissetia oleae (Olivier) (Homoptera: Coccidae) and the olive thrip Liothripes oleae Costa (Thysanoptera: Phlaeothripidae). Concerning the auxiliary insects that were found in our olives groves they belong to the following orders and families: Diptera (Syrphidae), Coleoptera (Carabidae, Coccinelidae and Staphylinidae), Hemiptera (Anthocoridae and Miridae), Neuroptera (Chrysopidae) and Hymenoptera (Braconidae, Encyrtidae, Eulophidae, Formicidae and Trichogrammatidae).

Yeast diversity in the Mediterranean strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo L.) fruits' fermentations

In the Mediterranean region the fruits of the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo L.) may be fermented and distilled to produce a traditional beverage very much appreciated in Southern Europe. The aim of the present work was to study the diversity of the yeast population and the killer activity of the isolates identified as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, obtained during solid state industrial fermentations of the arbutus berries. The identification of the isolates was performed by the 5.8S rRNA-ITS region restriction analysis and by sequencing the D1/D2 region of the large subunit of the rRNA gene. At the start of the fermentations, various non-Saccharomyces species were detected including Aureobasidium pullulans, Dothichiza pithyophila, Dioszegia zsoltii, Hanseniaspora uvarum and yeasts belonging to the genera Metschnikowia, Cryptococcus and Rhodotorula. However, as the biological processes progressed the number of different species decreased with S. cerevisiae and Pichia membranaefaciens becoming dominant at advanced stages of the must fermentation that is characterized by high concentrations of ethanol. Forty three isolates identified as S. cerevisiae were tested for killer activity against two sensitive reference strains and Zygosaccharomyces bailii. Their killer sensitivity in relation to five killer referenced toxins (K2, K5, K8, K9 and K10) was also studied. Out of the isolates analyzed, 95.3% were sensitive and 4.7% were tolerant against the killer toxins tested. Only three isolates revealed killer activity against one sensitive strain and two of them against the spoiler yeast Z. bailii. The microbiota obtained revealed an interesting potential to be used as starter cultures to overcome unpredictable uncontrolled fermentations of the arbutus fruits as well as in other applications of biotechnological interest. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.