Evaluation of Automatic Text Summarization Using Synthetic Facts

Automatic text summarization has achieved remarkable success with the development of deep neural networks and the availability of standardized benchmark datasets. It can generate fluent, human-like summaries. However, the unreliability of the existing evaluation metrics hinders its practical usage and slows down its progress. To address this issue, we propose an automatic reference-less text summarization evaluation system with dynamically generated synthetic facts. We hypothesize that if a system guarantees a summary that has all the facts that are 100% known in the synthetic document, it can provide natural interpretability and high feasibility in measuring factual consistency and comprehensiveness. To our knowledge, our system is the first system that measures the overarching quality of the text summarization models with factual consistency, comprehensiveness, and compression rate. We validate our system by comparing its correlation with human judgment with existing N-gram overlap-based metrics such as ROUGE and BLEU and a BERT-based evaluation metric, BERTScore. Our system\u27s experimental evaluation of PEGASUS, BART, and T5 outperforms the current evaluation metrics in measuring factual consistency with a noticeable margin and demonstrates its statistical significance in measuring comprehensiveness and overall summary quality

Pareto Optimality of Centralized Procurement Based on Genetic Algorithm

In the process of purchasing materials, small enterprises are often unable to meet the minimum availability of suppliers in the process of purchasing due to the lack of economic strength and storage capacity of goods. Therefore, they will encounter difficulties in the process of purchasing.To solve this problem, the group-led centralized procurement strategy for small enterprises has become a new craze. In this paper, we transform the problem of centralized procurement lot into a multi-objective optimization problem by establishing a multi-objective optimization model with cost, quality and logistics as sub-objectives, and use genetic algorithms to solve the multi-objective optimization problem in order to achieve Pareto optimality among each purchaser and supplier. Finally, an example of procurement by the China Energy Investment Corporation is used to verify that the multi-objective optimization model for the collection of lots constructed in this paper can effectively promote the cooperation between purchasers and suppliers, and stimulate the competitive vitality of enterprises in the market

The effect of the implementation of comprehensive planning and management by objectives on the bureaucratization of a school organization

This study investigated the relationship of the implementation of comprehensive planning and management by objectives to the bureaucratization of a school organization. It was hypothesized that there would be an increase in bureaucratization within a school system as comprehensive planning and management by objectives were implemented. The data were collected by reviewing official school documents for the 1972-1977 school years. The documents included the minutes of the Board of Education meetings, organizational charts and job descriptions, memoranda, written policies and procedures, planning session information, agenda of principals' and central staff meetings, minutes of principals' and central staff meetings, handbooks, and evaluation documents

African American Masculinities in Ann Petry’s Oeuvre

This dissertation articulates how Ann Petry challenges the traditional notions about African American masculinities and redefines them with more positive and progressive attributes in her works. It probes the ways Petry’s black male characters face oppression, stereotypes, and systemic barriers, in relation to American hegemonic masculinity and (black) femininity. As black men, they are in the process of being permanently constructed due to the intersecting power of race, gender, class, and other categories on personal, social, and state levels in a context specific manner. I implement an intersectional reading method to analyze Petry’s constructions of African American masculinities, enhanced by a two-step strategy of identify-by-explaining categories and asking the other question about their constitutive and overlapping dynamics. This dissertation also addresses Petry’s underrepresented role in subverting the socially constructed and maintained stereotypes about African American masculinities and proposes two reasons for it. Firstly, there is an actual interplay between reinforcing and subverting stereotypes in Petry’s novels and short stories, which I regard as part of an evaluation of her oeuvre. On the one hand, she depicts stereotypical African American male characters in “Like a Winding Sheet” (1945), The Street (1946), and “In Darkness and Confusion” (1947) in order to revisit and refine the violent and sexually driven black masculine stereotypes. On the other, she represents black male characters as racially-conscious and diverse in “Solo on the Drums” (1947), The Narrows (1953), and “The New Mirror” (1965) to maintain her non-essentialist and progressive definitions of black masculinities. Secondly, reading Petry on the periphery of protest fiction – epitomized in the works of black male authors such as Richard Wright – overshadows her divergent aesthetics and impedes her contribution to the advancement of mid-century African American fiction. By depicting black male characters from the perspective of a female author, this dissertation showcases how Petry modifies the male-dominated modes of representation of black masculinities. The critique of Petry’s representations of African American masculinities, thus, expands outside the male vs. female dichotomy and repositions her beyond the confinements of protest novel aesthetics

Data Mining Techniques in Pharmacovigilance: Analysis of the Publicly Accessible FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS)

Pharmacovigilance is a clinically oriented discipline, which may guide appropriate drug use through a balanced assessment of drug safety. Although much has been done in recent years, efforts are needed to expand the border of pharmacovigilance. We have provided insight into the FDA_Adverse Events Reporting Systems (FDA_AERS), a worldwide publicly available pharmacovigilance archive, to exemplify how to address major methodological issues. We believe that fostering discussion among researchers will increase transparency and facilitate definition of the most reliable approaches. By virtue of its large population coverage and free availability, the FDA_AERS has the potential to pave the way to a new way of looking to signal detection in PhV. Our key messages are: (1) before applying statistical tools (i.e., Data Mining Approaches - DMAs) to pharmacovigilance database for signal detection, all aspects related to data quality should be considered (e.g., drug mapping, missing data and duplicates); (2) at present, the choice of a given DMA mostly relies on local habits, expertise and attitude and there is room for improvement in this area; (3) DMA performance may be highly situation dependent; (4) over-reliance on these methods may have deleterious consequences, especially with the so-called "designated medical events", for which a case-by-case analysis is mandatory and complements disproportionality; and (5) the most appropriate selection of pharmacovigilance tools needs to be tailored to each situation, being mindful of the numerous biases and confounders that may influence performance and incremental utility of DMAs

A phenomenological study of the lived experiences of patients with complex abdominal wall hernia (CAWH)

This is the first study in the field of Complex Abdominal Wall Hernia (CAWH) that asks patients what matters to them in terms of their Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and how their hernia affects this using qualitative methodology.15 patients with CAWH were purposively sampled from CAWH specialist clinic; 8 men and 7 women, age range of 36-85 years (median = 65 years). They participated in semi-structured interviews February 2020 – June 2020 until thematic saturation. All verbatim interview transcripts were coded and analysed using NVivo12 software and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).Five superordinate themes were identified each with several subordinate themes (in italics):1. Body image – ‘changes to perceptions of self’ and ‘fears concerning perceptions of others’2. Mental health – ‘emotional responses’, ‘disruptions to previously solid aspects of identity’ and ‘developing coping strategies’3. Symptoms – ‘managing pain’, ‘freedom of movement’ and ‘restriction and adaptation’4. Interpersonal relationships – ‘difficulties socially connecting’ and ‘changes in sexual relations’5. Employment – ‘financial pressure’, ‘return to work issues’ and ‘costs to family’The themes presented are interrelated and should shape our understanding of the patients with CAWH. Some themes identified are not incorporated in existing CAWH HRQoL instruments suggesting that we are currently not capturing all data relevant to HRQoL in this specific patient group. Further research is needed in order to generate a standardised CAWH HRQoL instrument which incorporates bio-psycho-emotional-social processes important to patients as identified by patients

Examining Rating Source Differences in Narrative Performance Feedback

The purpose of the present study was to examine the narrative feedback quality and content of comments from supervisors, peers, and subordinates in a multisource performance feedback context. Research on performance management interventions tends to focus on issues such as rater training, scale development, scale formats, and reducing test and rater bias. However, other components in performance management interventions have received little attention, including narrative feedback. Narrative feedback takes the form of written comments describing the ratee’s performance on different dimensions. The narrative feedback quality variables included favorability, specificity, goal content, and feedback length. Predictor variables of narrative feedback quality including rater familiarity, rater acquaintanceship time, and ratee position tenure were also investigated. The narrative feedback content variables included the amount of relative content, absolute content, task content and trait content. The data were collected using a commercial multi-source feedback instrument which included numeric ratings and narrative feedback from the perspectives of the ratees’ supervisors, peers and subordinates. A sample of 200 ratees with manager or director in their title were selected. Each of the 8,967 comments were coded by four trained research assistants. The results indicated that supervisors provided the highest quality narrative feedback, peers and subordinates were comparable. Rater familiarity tended to be positively related to narrative feedback quality, and, interestingly, acquaintanceship time tended to be negatively related to narrative feedback quality, suggesting that acquaintanceship time should not be used as a proxy for familiarity. Ratee position tenure was negatively related to narrative feedback quality, however the relationship was smallest for peers suggesting the use of peer raters for longer-tenured ratees. The rating source comparisons of the narrative feedback content variables suggested that all sources used about the same amount of each content type, and that the relationships between the content variables and narrative feedback quality were comparable across rating sources. The overall results for relative, absolute, and trait feedback content suggested that they were related to positive description and included little actionable content. Task content had the largest positive relationships with narrative feedback quality, indicating that future rater training should focus on the provision of task content