A novel computer vision based neutrosophic approach for leaf disease identification and classification

The natural products are inexpensive, non-toxic, and have fewer side effects. Thus, their demand especially herbs based medical products, health products, nutritional supplements, cosmetics etc. are increasing. The quality of leafs defines the degree of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficits, and substantial variations. Also, the diseases in leafs possess threats to the economic, and production status in the agricultural industry worldwide

Use of artificial intelligence in diagnosis of head and neck precancerous and cancerous lesions: A systematic review

This systematic review analyses and describes the application and diagnostic accuracy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods used for detection and grading of potentially malignant (pre-cancerous) and cancerous head and neck lesions using whole slide images (WSI) of human tissue slides. Electronic databases MEDLINE via OVID, Scopus and Web of Science were searched between October 2009 – April 2020. Tailored search-strings were developed using database-specific terms. Studies were selected using a strict inclusion criterion following PRISMA Guidelines. Risk of bias assessment was conducted using a tailored QUADAS-2 tool. Out of 315 records, 11 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. AI-based methods were employed for analysis of specific histological features for oral epithelial dysplasia (n = 1), oral submucous fibrosis (n = 5), oral squamous cell carcinoma (n = 4) and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (n = 1). A combination of heuristics, supervised and unsupervised learning methods were employed, including more than 10 different classification and segmentation techniques. Most studies used uni-centric datasets (range 40–270 images) comprising small sub-images within WSI with accuracy between 79 and 100%. This review provides early evidence to support the potential application of supervised machine learning methods as a diagnostic aid for some oral potentially malignant and malignant lesions; however, there is a paucity of evidence using AI for diagnosis of other head and neck pathologies. Overall, the quality of evidence is low, with most studies showing a high risk of bias which is likely to have overestimated accuracy rates. This review highlights the need for development of state-of-the-art deep learning techniques in future head and neck research

The Concept of Development in Ulawa in Solomon Islands and its Implications for National Development Policy and Planning

'Social development' and 'economic development' are complex concepts, concepts that may be interpreted very differently in different contexts and at different times. Not only may the processes involved be different in different contexts, so too may be the criteria by which success is judged. It is argued here that successive Solomon Islands governments have striven for social and economic development without taking full account of the real nature of Solomon Islands society. What is needed is national development policy, planning and implementation that arise out of, and take fully into account, the historical, geographic and cultural context of Solomon Islands. On the whole, the socio-economic structure of Solomon Islands society is currently underpinned by a tri-partite hierarchy in which, for the majority of Solomon Islanders, kastom (traditional beliefs and practices) and church (the beliefs and practices endorsed by the church) take precedence over the state as legitimate forms of authority. This inevitably poses problems for state-led development. If socio-economic development activities are to be successful in achieving a better quality of life for all Solomon Islanders, including those who live in rural areas, they must take full account of the role of kastom and church in the lives of the people. This must include an understanding of the differing concepts of development of people in different areas of the country such as those of Ulawa islanders that are discussed here. The thesis begins with an introduction to the research (Chapter 1) in which the theoretical framework is located broadly within the postmodern paradigm. In Chapter 2 the essentially qualitative and interpretive nature of the methodology is outlined and explained. Chapter 3 provides a critical review of international development literature in which it is argued that official definitions and descriptions of development are based on production and deficit models. The need to accommodate an indigenous and organic concept of development, one that takes account of the diversity of human experience, is stressed. Chapter 4 provides an outline of Solomon Islands society. Here, the historical narrative is complemented by three metaphors - 'island', wantok and betelnut - which serve to reinforce and explain the nature of Solomon Islands society and the ways in which that society has been shaped by historical processes. Chapter 5 is devoted to a discussion of modern development activity in Solomon Islands, the main focus being on the period immediately preceding and following independence. Chapter 6 explores, with particular reference to Ulawa Island, indigenous concepts of development and the impact of national development activities on rural-dwelling islanders. It also engages the issue of state reform, proposing a model based on a two tier system, with central government in its current form dealing directly with the people at constituency rather than provincial level. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the main conclusions reached. It is noted that the failure of both pre- and post-independence governments to take full account of the nature of Solomon Islands society has been a major factor in the lack of effective development in the islands

Pacific Youth

Pacific populations are becoming younger and this ‘youth bulge’ is often perceived as a dangerous precursor to civil unrest. Yet young people are also a valuable resource holding exciting potential for the future of island nations. Addressing these conflicting views of youth, this volume presents ethnographic case studies of young people from across the Pacific and the diaspora. Moving beyond the typical focus on ‘youth problems’ in reports by Pacific governments and development agencies, the authors examine the highly diverse lives and perspectives of young people in urban and rural locations. They celebrate the contributions of youth to their communities while examining the challenges they face. The case studies explore the impacts of profound local and global changes and cover a wide sweep of youth experiences across themes of education, employment and economic inequalities, political and civil engagement, and migration and the diaspora. Contributors to this volume bring many decades of experience of research with Pacific people as well as fresh perspectives from early career and graduate researchers. Most are anthropologists and their chapters contribute to the interdisciplinary fields of youth studies and Pacific studies, offering thought-provoking insights into the possibilities for Pacific youth as they face uncertain futures

The woodcarvers of Kitawa and their canoes: A linguistic and aesthetic analysis of visual art in Melanesia.

The present thesis is concerned with problems of aesthetic and symbolic interpretation presented by the analysis of the graphic signs carved on the prows of the ceremonial canoes of Kitawa, one of the so-called kula ring islands (Milne Bay, Melanesia). These canoes are specially made for periodic ritual voyages to other islands in search of valuable objects.;The analysis is based on two periods of field-work in Kitawa (undertaken in 1973-74 and 1976) in the course of which the author learnt the principal language of the island and recorded his discussions with the local carvers about their art. The most important of these sound recordings have been transcribed, analysed and translated, and the texts are submitted as an appendix to the thesis.;In his analysis of the prows the author has adapted the Danish linguist L. Hjelmslev's theory on the structure of a sign to make it appropriate for aesthetic and symbolic interpretation. He is also indebted to the work of J. Mukarovsk.;of the Linguistic Circle of Prague. In particular he has adoptedHjelmslev's articulation of a sign into a content plane and an expression plane. The latter is considered to be the privileged one, at which a non-verbal sign (e.g. a graphic sign carved on a prow) expresses its aesthetic values. Granted that, it is possible to comprehend the aesthetic meanings of a graphic sign, either taken by itself, or in relation to the whole surface of the prow. These meanings are self- contained, i.e. they are independent of elements which are extra-contextual to the prow.;The latter (e.g. myths, tales, semantic values, etc.) have been considered only when the author has interpreted a graphic sign symbolically. To do this he has worked on the content plane of a word which designates a graphic sign. That is, a meaning, or set of meanings, expressed by such a word has been interpreted as a metaphor for something else and this metaphorical value has been linked with that graphic sign. That the distinction between the aesthetic and the symbolic interpretation of a graphic sign which has been made by the author - on the basis of both Hjelmslev's theory and Mukatovsk's methodology - receives independent support from the Kitawa wood carvers themselves, is shown in the 'Aesthetic Conversations' given in the Appendix (Volume II), even if this is sometimes stated metaphorically

Improving Question Answering Model Robustness with Synthetic Adversarial Data Generation

Despite recent progress, state-of-the-art question answering models remain vulnerable to a variety of adversarial attacks. While dynamic adversarial data collection, in which a human annotator tries to write examples that fool a model-in-the-loop, can improve model robustness, this process is expensive which limits the scale of the collected data. In this work, we are the first to use synthetic adversarial data generation to make question answering models more robust to human adversaries. We develop a data generation pipeline that selects source passages, identifies candidate answers, generates questions, then finally filters or re-labels them to improve quality. Using this approach, we amplify a smaller human-written adversarial dataset to a much larger set of synthetic question-answer pairs. By incorporating our synthetic data, we improve the state-of-the-art on the AdversarialQA dataset by 3.7F1 and improve model generalisation on nine of the twelve MRQA datasets. We further conduct a novel human-in-the-loop evaluation to show that our models are considerably more robust to new human-written adversarial examples: crowdworkers can fool our model only 8.8% of the time on average, compared to 17.6% for a model trained without synthetic data

A Grammar of Yélî Dnye

This is a comprehensive description of a language spoken offshore from Papua New Guinea, remarkable for its phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity. As the sole surviving member of its language family, it provides unique evidence for the kind of languages spoken in this part of the world before the Austronesian expansion. The grammar provides detailed information on phoneme inventory, morphology, syntax and select semantic fields