Personalized, Sequential, Attentive, Metric-Aware Product Search

2022 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Yaoxin Pan ◽  
Shangsong Liang ◽  
Jiaxin Ren ◽  
Zaiqiao Meng ◽  
Qiang Zhang

The task of personalized product search aims at retrieving a ranked list of products given a user’s input query and his/her purchase history. To address this task, we propose the PSAM model, a Personalized, Sequential, Attentive and Metric-aware (PSAM) model, that learns the semantic representations of three different categories of entities, i.e., users, queries, and products, based on user sequential purchase historical data and the corresponding sequential queries. Specifically, a query-based attentive LSTM (QA-LSTM) model and an attention mechanism are designed to infer users dynamic embeddings, which is able to capture their short-term and long-term preferences. To obtain more fine-grained embeddings of the three categories of entities, a metric-aware objective is deployed in our model to force the inferred embeddings subject to the triangle inequality, which is a more realistic distance measurement for product search. Experiments conducted on four benchmark datasets show that our PSAM model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art product search baselines in terms of effectiveness by up to 50.9% improvement under NDCG@20. Our visualization experiments further illustrate that the learned product embeddings are able to distinguish different types of products.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Faisal Anees ◽  
Shujahat Haider Hashmi ◽  
Muhammad Asad

Technical analysis is widely accepted tool in professional place which is frequently used for investment decisions. Technical analysis beliefs that there exist patterns and trends and by capturing trends and patterns one can bless with above average profits. We test two technical strategies: Moving averages and Trading Range to question, either these techniques can yield profitable returns with the help of historical data. Representative daily indices of Four countries namely Pakistan, India, Srilanka, Bangladesh ranging from 1997 to 2011 have been examined. In case of Moving Average Rule, both simple and exponential averages have been examined to test eleven different short term and long term rules with and without band condition. Our results delivered that buy signals generate consistent above average returns for the all sub periods and sell signals generate lower returns than the normal returns. Intriguing observation is that Exponential average generates higher returns than the Simple Average. The results of Trading Range Break strategy are parallel with Moving average Method. However, Trading Range Strategy found not to give higher average higher return when compared with Moving Averages Rules and degree of volatility in returns is higher when compared with moving Average rule. In attempt to conclude, there exist patterns and trends that yield above average and below average returns which justify the validity of technical analysis.


2020 ◽  
pp. 336-362
Author(s):  
Peter Ferdinand

This chapter focuses on democracies, democratization, and authoritarian regimes. It first considers the two main approaches to analysing the global rise of democracy over the last thirty years: first, long-term trends of modernization, and more specifically economic development, that create preconditions for democracy and opportunities for democratic entrepreneurs; and second, the sequences of more short-term events and actions of key actors at moments of national crisis that have precipitated a democratic transition — also known as ‘transitology’. The chapter proceeds by discussing the different types of democracy and the strategies used to measure democracy. It also reviews the more recent literature on authoritarian systems and why they persist. Finally, it examines the challenges that confront democracy in the face of authoritarian revival.


2019 ◽  
Vol 219 (3) ◽  
pp. 2148-2164
Author(s):  
A M Lombardi

SUMMARY The operational earthquake forecasting (OEF) is a procedure aimed at informing communities on how seismic hazard changes with time. This can help them live with seismicity and mitigate risk of destructive earthquakes. A successful short-term prediction scheme is not yet produced, but the search for it should not be abandoned. This requires more research on seismogenetic processes and, specifically, inclusion of any information about earthquakes in models, to improve forecast of future events, at any spatio-temporal-magnitude scale. The short- and long-term forecast perspectives of earthquake occurrence followed, up to now, separate paths, involving different data and peculiar models. But actually they are not so different and have common features, being parts of the same physical process. Research on earthquake predictability can help to search for a common path in different forecast perspectives. This study aims to improve the modelling of long-term features of seismicity inside the epidemic type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model, largely used for short-term forecast and OEF procedures. Specifically, a more comprehensive estimation of background seismicity rate inside the ETAS model is attempted, by merging different types of data (seismological instrumental, historical, geological), such that information on faults and on long-term seismicity integrates instrumental data, on which the ETAS models are generally set up. The main finding is that long-term historical seismicity and geological fault data improve the pseudo-prospective forecasts of independent seismicity. The study is divided in three parts. The first consists in models formulation and parameter estimation on recent seismicity of Italy. Specifically, two versions of ETAS model are compared: a ‘standard’, previously published, formulation, only based on instrumental seismicity, and a new version, integrating different types of data for background seismicity estimation. Secondly, a pseudo-prospective test is performed on independent seismicity, both to test the reliability of formulated models and to compare them, in order to identify the best version. Finally, a prospective forecast is made, to point out differences and similarities in predicting future seismicity between two models. This study must be considered in the context of its limitations; anyway, it proves, beyond argument, the usefulness of a more sophisticated estimation of background rate, inside short-term modelling of earthquakes.


Minerals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Enza Vitale ◽  
Dimitri Deneele ◽  
Giacomo Russo

The surface charge distribution of clay particles governs the interparticle forces and their arrangement in clay-water systems. The plasticity properties are the consequences of the interaction at the microscopic scale, even if they are traditionally linked to the mechanical properties of fine-grained soils. In the paper, the plasticity modifications induced by the addition of lime were experimentally investigated for two different clays (namely kaolinite and bentonite) in order to gain microstructural insights of the mechanisms affecting their plastic behavior as a function of the lime content and curing time. Zeta potential and dynamic light scattering measurements, as well as thermogravimetric analyses, highlighted the mechanisms responsible for the plastic changes at a small scale. The increase of the interparticle attraction forces due to the addition of lime increased the liquid and plastic limits of kaolinite in the short term, without significant changes in the long term due to the low reactivity of the clay in terms of pozzolanic reactions. The addition of lime to bentonite resulted in a decrease of interparticle repulsion double layer interactions. Rearrangement of the clay particles determined a reduction of the liquid limit and an increase of the plastic limit of the treated clays in the very short term. Precipitation of the bonding compounds due to pozzolanic reactions increased both the liquid and plastic limits over the time.


1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind A. Coleman

Very precise measurements of the movement of coarse-textured, unconsolidated materials may be meaningless. Therefore the study of individual processes operating on footpaths may require a different approach. However, for identification of changes of reasonable dimensions, methods such as those described above are inexpensive, quick, and require no technical expertise. It may be argued that, for path management, erosion that is too limited to be measured by these methods is too limited to be a problem. It can certainly be argued that the problem of spatial correlation implies a large number of measurements. What is lost in lack of precision may be more than compensated for by the gain in data from the larger area and wider variation in site-types that it is possible to monitor with such simple techniques.To monitor the effects of recreation in mountain areas, it is desirable to be able to measure any change in path-state and relate this to recreation factors at different seasons and under different sit; -conditions. Three methods of measurement have been considered in this paper, corresponding to three time-scales. Aerial photography has been used to demonstrate trends over the long term, and has proved adequate to differentiate between path sections with differing resistance to erosion.Short-term measurement has been carried out relative to known fixed positions. Two methods are suggested. One is less precise, but simple and widely applicable, and can be used for measurement intervals of six months to one year. The other is more detailed and can be used for measurement intervals of a few days, but is limited in its application by practical considerations.It is suggested that simple techniques used at a large number of different types of site may be more effective than detailed measurements at a few sites.


1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 199 ◽  
Author(s):  
DC McFarland

Ground parrots in Queensland were found in closed graminoid-heathlands and sedgelands between Maryborough and Coolum on the mainland, and along the west coast of Fraser I. Parrot distribution, when compared to historical data, shows a decline which is a result of habitat destruction or degradation in the northern and southern limits of the species range. The current population is estimated at 2900 birds, with the majority in the heathlands of Cooloola National Park, Wide Bay Military Reserve and the State Forest and the Great Sandy National Park on Fraser I. Ground parrot density varied between sites because of the interactive effects of vegetation type, heathland area, time since and frequency of fire, microhabitat diversity and proximity to recolonisers. Within sites, parrot numbers changed in the long term with time since fire (influence of temporal changes in vegetation structure and seed availability) peaking at 5-8 years after burning, and in the short term with the seasonal effects of dispersal and breeding. Although predators were present their impact on the main populations was considered minimal. All of these factors are, to some extent, influenced by human activities, e.g. clearing and burning of heathlands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-732
Author(s):  
Filip Otovic-Visnjic

The paper focuses on the communicological dimension of the terrorist act, starting from the position that the violence is used to convey various messages in a non-verbal way. Throughout the research into the propaganda of the deed, the technique on which communicational tactics of terrorists are mostly based, the author seeks to examine extensive ranges of communication strategies used by insurgent groups against dominant hegemony. By combining the elements of Jacques Ellul's theoretical conception of propaganda along with the cultural approach in the interpretation of mechanisms in which hegemony operates, the author refutes perspectives that deny rebellions? possibilities for efficient realization of their propaganda goals by using acts of violence. The author?s conclusion is based on three arguments. Firstly, for modern propaganda, provoking the behavior of the audience (ortopraxie) is a more important goal than influencing its attitudes (orthodoxy). Secondly, it is possible to notice elements in the pre-propaganda field, which evade hegemonic control, due to the contradiction between ideological narratives and the real structure, and which insurgent propaganda may utilize. Lastly - by means of terrorist acts, their performers address different types of audiences with different goals simultaneously. The author concludes that the efficiency of propaganda can be manifested in two manners: in the short term - when an act of violence represents a direct ?trigger? for the desired behavior of the audience; in the long term - by including the act and provoked behavior in the network of memories, which becomes an element of pre-propaganda that can be referred to in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (07) ◽  
pp. 11466-11473
Author(s):  
Yuxi Li ◽  
Weiyao Lin ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
John See ◽  
Rui Qian ◽  
...  

The task of spatial-temporal action detection has attracted increasing researchers. Existing dominant methods solve this problem by relying on short-term information and dense serial-wise detection on each individual frames or clips. Despite their effectiveness, these methods showed inadequate use of long-term information and are prone to inefficiency. In this paper, we propose for the first time, an efficient framework that generates action tube proposals from video streams with a single forward pass in a sparse-to-dense manner. There are two key characteristics in this framework: (1) Both long-term and short-term sampled information are explicitly utilized in our spatio-temporal network, (2) A new dynamic feature sampling module (DTS) is designed to effectively approximate the tube output while keeping the system tractable. We evaluate the efficacy of our model on the UCF101-24, JHMDB-21 and UCFSports benchmark datasets, achieving promising results that are competitive to state-of-the-art methods. The proposed sparse-to-dense strategy rendered our framework about 7.6 times more efficient than the nearest competitor.


Author(s):  
G. W. Maupin

Four test sections using asphalt rubber hot mix were placed in Virginia from 1990 to 1993. These installations were to familiarize contractors and Virginia Department of Transportation personnel with the construction process and compare the performance of different types of mixes containing ground tire rubber. The MacDonald and Rouse wet processes were used successfully. Dense graded surface mixes, a gap-graded surface mix, and a base mix were manufactured. A stress-absorbing membrane interlayer was also used on one project in an attempt to deter or eliminate various types of cracking. The asphalt rubber mixes have performed as well as the conventional mixes over the short term. More evaluation time is needed to determine if long-term performance of the asphalt rubber mixes is superior to conventional mixes. The asphalt rubber mixes cost 64 to 102 percent more than conventional mixes. This cost would probably decrease if substantial quantities were placed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 89-89
Author(s):  
Sabine Hauser ◽  
◽  
Rouven Porz ◽  
Maria Aluaș ◽  
◽  
...  

"In March 2020, many countries in commissions and medical societies moved very quickly to draft fair and transparent triage guidelines; this in order to plan ahead for possible resource bottlenecks in the treatment of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. There are a lot of consciously chosen (but also less reflected) ethical values in these guidelines. Our presentation compares the values of eight of such guidelines, but first shows how to read such values in the first place. Many health professionals are hardly aware of the explicit presentation of ethical-philosophical values. From a methodological point of view, this presentation is based on a hermeneutic-ethical approach. The guidelines are interpreted, an interpretation aid is developed, and the values of the guidelines are reconsidered in comparison. On a meta-level, we could identify different types of values, besides medical and ethical values, the guidelines were also filled with procedural, structural and legal-political values. On a content level, the unreflective handling of the value of autonomy, which often competes with the value of public health, is particularly evident. This competition is little reflected. Another point of divergence between the guidelines is the degree of precision or the difference between long-term and short-term medical prognosis. We believe that with our analysis we can contribute to making value discussions in health care more open and explicit. We would like to present these conclusions for discussion at this year’s EACME conference in Cluj. "


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