Exploiting Positional Information for Session-Based Recommendation

For present e-commerce platforms, it is important to accurately predict users’ preference for a timely next-item recommendation. To achieve this goal, session-based recommender systems are developed, which are based on a sequence of the most recent user-item interactions to avoid the influence raised from outdated historical records. Although a session can usually reflect a user’s current preference, a local shift of the user’s intention within the session may still exist. Specifically, the interactions that take place in the early positions within a session generally indicate the user’s initial intention, while later interactions are more likely to represent the latest intention. Such positional information has been rarely considered in existing methods, which restricts their ability to capture the significance of interactions at different positions. To thoroughly exploit the positional information within a session, a theoretical framework is developed in this paper to provide an in-depth analysis of the positional information. We formally define the properties of forward-awareness and backward-awareness to evaluate the ability of positional encoding schemes in capturing the initial and the latest intention. According to our analysis, existing positional encoding schemes are generally forward-aware only, which can hardly represent the dynamics of the intention in a session. To enhance the positional encoding scheme for the session-based recommendation, a dual positional encoding (DPE) is proposed to account for both forward-awareness and backward-awareness . Based on DPE, we propose a novel Positional Recommender (PosRec) model with a well-designed Position-aware Gated Graph Neural Network module to fully exploit the positional information for session-based recommendation tasks. Extensive experiments are conducted on two e-commerce benchmark datasets, Yoochoose and Diginetica and the experimental results show the superiority of the PosRec by comparing it with the state-of-the-art session-based recommender models.

Phenomenology of memory and images of native land in poetry of Farit Yakhin

The aim of this article is to show some deep senses of Farit Yakhin's poetry, represented, in particular, by the subject of his homeland. There are writers whose development continues along the "peripheral" line of motion of today's Tatar literature. "Peripheral", contrary to our thinking, does not mean "low quality", since often this "marginal status" is determined by the fact that the vector of literary development is defined by "new" or, on the contrary, "conservative" guidelines, and in its light, one that preserves the successive traditionality of writing, varying with a brilliant individual originality within strictly defined limits , is evaluated as something different and therefore "peripheral". But it must be said that the approach of current preference (we have the right to study it within the framework of the "sociology of reading activity") is somewhat wrong, because it does not give the opportunity to study a literary phenomenon to its full extent? Farit Yakhin is a great writer, and we cannot help but complain that, despite the quantitative size of his artistic production, it has not yet been properly publicized

Medical students’ attitude towards Psychiatry and Mental Disorders

Introduction: It is always difficult to attract medical students’ interest in Psychiatry as a career choice. Most of the students have negative views of Psychiatry even before entering medical school such as 1) stigma on patients and psychiatrists. 2) Unscientific specialty with less prestige. 3) Derogatory remarks by other specialty physicians. 4) Less financial return. This study was done to evaluate and analyze medical students’ attitude towards psychiatry at their different levels of medical career.Material and Method: Medical students from three different years were surveyed to assess their perception and attitude on psychiatry and related matters. First year students were surveyed when they joined within 2 weeks in medical college. Third year were given questionnaire at the first day of Psychiatry clerkship and 4th year students were also given on the first day of posting.Results: 280 students from 1st year (61 out of 100), 3rd year (79 out of 104) and 4th year (70 out of 76) studying MBBS were surveyed. Majority of students from different levels preferred medicine, surgery, pediatric when they first joined medical college and their current preference choice of specialization. Fifteen out of 61 first year students planned to join Psychiatry when they entered medical college which changed to 11 while they were enquired about current planning.Conclusion: Medical colleges need comprehensive course in Psychiatry that involves inpatient and outpatient to create interest in Psychiatry and we need strong advocacy to decrease stigma of “Psychiatry as a career choice” among medical students.J Psychiatrists’ Association of Nepal Vol .6(1), 2017, p.18-23

Anaesthesia for ophthalmic surgery

Anaesthesia for ophthalmic surgery has always been challenging because the patients range across all ages, but the elderly are especially vulnerable. They have an increased morbidity and are often taking multiple drugs that make even anaesthesia for minor surgery more risky. No wonder there has been a shift in the delivery of anaesthesia towards regional techniques although general anaesthesia remains the technique of choice for many intermediate and most complex ophthalmic operations. Understanding the physiology of the eye, the relevant anatomy, and the ophthalmic drugs patients may receive, all have major influences on the choice of anaesthesia. This varies worldwide but the current preference is firmly in favour of local anaesthesia. A practising ophthalmic anaesthetist should be skilled in a range of different techniques to deal with the needs of different operations, operators, and, most importantly, patients.

Security is no accident: considering safe(r) spaces in the transnational Migrant Solidarity camps of Calais1

This chapter examines the theory and organisational practices of ensuring ‘safety’ for those participating in transnational migrant solidarity collectives. It uses ethnographic materials gained from participatory activist scholarship in Calais and London migrant solidarity collectives and assesses the ability of these groups to respond to the differentiated vulnerabilities that individuals bring to the protest camp- particularly in terms of the experiences and responses to structural oppression such as racism, sexism and homophobia. The current preference for safer spaces policies as one way of mediating conflict in activist collectives will be examined in terms of who may be left behind when individual trauma or addiction can leave people unable or unwilling to act according to the rules that these policies prescribe, and seeks different modes of collaboration that may not always feel safe or comfortable for all involved.

A Critical Appraisal of Responses to Māori Offending

This article critically analyses the role that criminological theory and specific policy formulations of culture play in New Zealand's state response to Māori crime. We begin by charting policy responses to the "Māori problem" during the 1980s to the 2000s, with a particular focus on policies and interventions based on theorising that Māori offending is attributable to loss of cultural identity, through to the current preference for risk factor and criminogenic needs approaches. The second part of the article critiques strategies employed by administrative criminologists who, in partnership with the policy sector, attempt to elevate their own epistemological constructions of Indigenous reality in the policy development process over that of Indigenous knowledge and responses to social harm.

The Judicial System in the Digital Age: Revisiting the Relationship between Privacy and Accessibility in the Cyber Context

Despite technology’s reach into all parts of social life, its effects on the judiciary have been under-theorized. The “Digital Age”, and unfettered usage and access to digital information, will have untold effects on core values of judicial independence, impartiality and the delicate balance between privacy and the “open court” principle. Technology—as well as the dramatically increased availability of information of all kinds and quality—is distorting the judicial process and its outcomes. It is of primary importance, therefore, to identify the broad issues that emerge from the growing use of technology, and to provide a theoretical basis for adjudicating the ongoing tension between privacy and transparency in the judicial setting. Too often the judiciary pits privacy against the “open court” principle and accepts a culturally narrow view of what constitutes privacy and how it affects the judicial process. In particular, this article investigates the effects of online court documents to establish why, despite the current preference for openness and transparency, a contextualized understanding of privacy is desirable. Indeed, if we rethink privacy within the cyber context, it can be considered an ally of openness in the court system.

Valuing health properly

This comment on Paul Dolan's essay, ‘Developing methods that really do value the “Q” in the QALY,’ seconds his critique of current preference-based methods of valuing health states but disputes both his assumption that health states should be appraised by their bearing on well-being and his conclusion that the bearing of health states on well-being should be measured in terms of subjective experience. This comment defends instead the view that health states should be valued in terms of the range of activities that they permit.