Collective reflection strategy for moderating conformity tendency and promoting reflective judgment performance

Reflective judgement is crucial for medical-related practitioners in dealing with controversial issues. However, the conformity phenomenon is likely to occur and interfere with reflective judgement learning during interactive activities. Effective strategies are required to moderate the conformity behaviour tendency (CBT) and improve reflective judgement performance (RJP). This study demonstrates two significant results: (a) Compared with the guided self-reflection learning strategy, the online collective reflection (OCR) learning strategy effectively weakened the learners' general CBT while dealing with professional controversial issues; and (b) a significantly negative correlation between the RJP achieved and the change of CBT in online environment was detected in the OCR group. The implications and potential applications in higher education were discussed. Further studies are needed to confirm the long-term effects and the extending application to other professional studies.     

On the thermal conductivity of bimodal SiC/A356 composites fabricated via powder metallurgy route

The present study investigates the thermal conductivity of bimodal SiC particulate distribution in aluminum matrix composites fabricated via powder metallurgy route. The effects of the SiC_p reinforcement size distribution and processing parameters such as sintering time and temperature on the thermal conductivity have been examined. The Box–Behnken experimental array was employed to identify the effects of selected variables on the thermal conductivity of the composite. A reasonable augmentation in the thermal conductivity was observed with an increase in sintering time and %volume fraction of fine SiC particulates. It has been demonstrated that the matrix doped with fine SiC particulates (37?µm) occupied interstitial positions and formed continuous SiC–matrix network resulting in minimizing the micropores that contributed for good thermal conductivity, that is, 235?W/mK. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) were conducted to evaluate the microstructure architecture and interfacial phase formation.     

基于卷积神经网络的葡萄叶片氮含量识别方法

为实现对葡萄叶片氮素含量快速、便捷的识别，在卷积神经网络VGG-16网络结构基础上，将数据增广后的图像按不同梯度划分进行模型训练，通过十折交叉验证法探究最佳的训练集与验证集分配比例，并构建4个不同深度的网络模型进行训练对比，采用全局平均池化代替全连接层约简网络参数量。训练结果表明，氮含量梯度设为0.70%、0.35%和0.175%时，室内简单背景识别准确率分别为85.9%、76.2%和71.1%；晴天室外复杂背景下识别准确率分别为44.6%、35.0%和30.4%。研究结果表明利用VGG-16建立的网络学习模型对葡萄叶片氮含量识别提供了一种新的便捷方法，对农业信息化和智能化技术应用具有一定促进作用。     

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy algorithm applied to predict and control multi-phase flow rates through wellhead chokes

A Takagi-Sugeno adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (TSFIS) model is developed and applied to a dataset of wellhead flow-test data for the Resalat oil field located offshore southern Iran, the objective is to assist in the prediction and control of multi-phase flow rates of oil and gas through the wellhead chokes. For this purpose, 182 test data points (Appendix 1) related to the Resalat field are evaluated. In order to predict production flow rate (Q_L) expressed as stock-tank barrels per day (STB/D), this dataset includes four selected input variables: upstream pressure (Pwh); wellhead choke sizes (D64); gas to liquid ratio (GLR); and, base solids and water including some water-soluble oil emulsion (BS&W). The test data points evaluated include a wide range of oil flow rate conditions and values for the four input variables recorded. The TSFIS algorithm applied involves five data processing steps: a) pre-processing, b) fuzzification, c) rules base and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference engine, d) defuzzification, and e) post-processing of the fuzzy model. The developed TSFIS model for the Resalat oil field database predicted oil flow rate to a high degree of accuracy (root mean square error = 247 STB/D, correlation coefficient = 0.9987), which improves substantially on the commonly used empirical algorithms used for such predictions. TSFIS can potentially be applied in wellhead choke fuzzy controllers to stabilize flow in specific wells based on real-time input data records.     

R2D2: A scalable deep learning toolkit for medical imaging segmentation

Deep learning has gained a significant popularity in recent years thanks to its tremendous success across a wide range of relevant fields of applications, including medical image analysis domain in particular. Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) based medical applications have been providing powerful solutions and revolutionizing medicine, efficiently training of CNNs models is a tedious and challenging task. It is a computationally intensive process taking long time and rare system resources, which represents a significant hindrance to scientific research progress. In order to address this challenge, we propose in this article, R2D2, a scalable intuitive deep learning toolkit for medical imaging semantic segmentation. To the best of our knowledge, the present work is the first that aims to tackle this issue by offering a novel distributed versions of two well-known and widely used CNN segmentation architectures [ie, fully convolutional network (FCN) and U-Net]. We introduce the design and the core building blocks of R2D2. We further present and analyze its experimental evaluation results on two different concrete medical imaging segmentation use cases. R2D2 achieves up to 17.5× and 10.4× speedup than single-node based training of U-Net and FCN, respectively, with a negligible, though still unexpected segmentation accuracy loss. R2D2 offers not only an empirical evidence and investigates in-depth the latest published works but also it facilitates and significantly reduces the effort required by researchers to quickly prototype and easily discover cutting-edge CNN configurations and architectures.     

Learning bipartite Bayesian networks under monotonicity restrictions

ABSTRACT

Learning parameters of a probabilistic model is a necessary step in machine learning tasks. We present a method to improve learning from small datasets by using monotonicity conditions. Monotonicity simplifies the learning and it is often required by users. We present an algorithm for Bayesian Networks parameter learning. The algorithm and monotonicity conditions are described, and it is shown that with the monotonicity conditions we can better fit underlying data. Our algorithm is tested on artificial and empiric datasets. We use different methods satisfying monotonicity conditions: the proposed gradient descent, isotonic regression EM, and non-linear optimization. We also provide results of unrestricted EM and gradient descent methods. Learned models are compared with respect to their ability to fit data in terms of log-likelihood and their fit of parameters of the generating model. Our proposed method outperforms other methods for small sets, and provides better or comparable results for larger sets.     

神经网络全局势函数在多相催化中的应用

当今的多相催化研究需要新的技术和方法从原子尺度上表征活性中心结构和反应中间体。本文作者课题组近期开发了理论模拟新技术来探索催化剂活性位点结构，即基于神经网络势函数的大规模原子模拟（LASP）软件中实现的全局神经网络势函数计算方法。本文介绍了该方法可以显著降低催化体系的计算代价，而维持与密度泛函理论同一级别的计算精度，从而解决多相催化中的许多复杂问题。本文对神经网络势函数方法的实现细节和目前已实现的应用场景进行了详细介绍。神经网络势函数可以用来预测材料晶体结构，理解高压氢化条件下TiO₂表面的结构演化和确定三元氧化物ZnCrO晶相中合成气制甲醇活性位点。最后文章分析了神经网络势函数的局限性和今后可能的三个研究方向，即材料性质预测、多元素体系神经网络势函数构造和化学反应拟合。     

Inverse reinforcement learning-based time-dependent A* planner for human-aware robot navigation with local vision

In an environment where robots coexist with humans, mobile robots should be human-aware and comply with humans' behavioural norms so as to not disturb humans' personal space and activities. In this work, we propose an inverse reinforcement learning-based time-dependent A* planner for human-aware robot navigation with local vision. In this method, the planning process of time-dependent A* is regarded as a Markov decision process and the cost function of the time-dependent A* is learned using the inverse reinforcement learning via capturing humans' demonstration trajectories. With this method, a robot can plan a path that complies with humans' behaviour patterns and the robot's kinematics. When constructing feature vectors of the cost function, considering the local vision characteristics, we propose a visual coverage feature for enabling robots to learn from how humans move in a limited visual field. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been validated by experiments in real-world scenarios: using this approach robots can effectively mimic human motion patterns when avoiding pedestrians; furthermore, in a limited visual field, robots can learn to choose a path that enables them to have the larger visual coverage which shows a better navigation performance.     

命名实体识别技术综述

命名实体识别是自然语言处理中的热点研究方向之一,目的是识别文本中的命名实体并将其归纳到相应的实体类型中。首先阐述了命名实体识别任务的定义、目标和意义,分析提出了命名实体识别的主要难点在于领域命名实体识别局限性、命名实体表述多样性和歧义性、命名实体的复杂性和开放性;然后介绍了命名实体识别研究的发展进程,从最初的规则和字典方法到传统的统计学习方法再到现在的深度学习方法,不断地将新技术应用到命名实体识别研究中以提高性能;接着系统梳理了当下命名实体识别任务中的若干热门研究点,分别是匮乏资源下的命名实体识别、细粒度命名实体识别、嵌套命名实体识别以及命名实体链接;最后针对评判命名实体识别模型的好坏,总结了常用的若干数据集和实验测评指标,并给出了未来的研究建议。