Nonparametric Bayesian Mixed-effect Model: a Sparse Gaussian Process Approach

Multi-task learning models using Gaussian processes (GP) have been developed and successfully applied in various applications. The main difficulty with this approach is the computational cost of inference using the union of examples from all tasks. Therefore sparse solutions, that avoid using the entire data directly and instead use a set of informative "representatives" are desirable. The paper investigates this problem for the grouped mixed-effect GP model where each individual response is given by a fixed-effect, taken from one of a set of unknown groups, plus a random individual effect function that captures variations among individuals. Such models have been widely used in previous work but no sparse solutions have been developed. The paper presents the first sparse solution for such problems, showing how the sparse approximation can be obtained by maximizing a variational lower bound on the marginal likelihood, generalizing ideas from single-task Gaussian processes to handle the mixed-effect model as well as grouping. Experiments using artificial and real data validate the approach showing that it can recover the performance of inference with the full sample, that it outperforms baseline methods, and that it outperforms state of the art sparse solutions for other multi-task GP formulations.Comment: Preliminary version appeared in ECML201

RDF/S)XML Linguistic Annotation of Semantic Web Pages

Although with the Semantic Web initiative much research on web pages semantic annotation has already done by AI researchers, linguistic text annotation, including the semantic one, was originally developed in Corpus Linguistics and its results have been somehow neglected by AI. ..

Estructuras de clasificación en español. Terminología y adquisición de conocimiento explícito para la web semántica.

El estudio de las estructuras de clasificación que aquí presentamos responde al interés que la terminología tiene en las aplicaciones informáticas relacionadas con la Web semántica. ..

Topological defects and misfit strain in magnetic stripe domains of lateral multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Stripe domains are studied in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy films nanostructured with a periodic thickness modulation that induces the lateral modulation of both stripe periods and inplane magnetization. The resulting system is the 2D equivalent of a strained superlattice with properties controlled by interfacial misfit strain within the magnetic stripe structure and shape anisotropy. This allows us to observe, experimentally for the first time, the continuous structural transformation of a grain boundary in this 2D magnetic crystal in the whole angular range. The magnetization reversal process can be tailored through the effect of misfit strain due to the coupling between disclinations in the magnetic stripe pattern and domain walls in the in-plane magnetization configuration

Sulfur analysis of Bolu-Mengen lignite before and after microbiological treatment using reductive pyrolysis and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Atmospheric pressure-temperature programmed reduction coupled with on-line mass spectrometry (AP-TPR/MS) is used for the first time on microbiologically treated coal samples as a technique to monitor the degree of desulfurization of the various sulfur functionalities. The experimental procedure enables the identification of both organic and inorganic sulfur species present in the coal matrix. A better insight in the degradation of the coal matrix and the accompanying processes during the AP-TPR experiment is obtained by a quantitative differentiation of the sulfur. The determination of the sulfur balance for the reductive pyrolysis gives an overview of the side reactions and their relative contribution in the total process. The volatile sulfur species are unambiguously identified using AP-TPR off-line coupled with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). In this way, fundamental mechanisms and reactions that occur during the reductive pyrolysis could be quantified, explaining the differences in AP-TPR recoveries. Therefore, this study gives a clearer view on the possibilities and limitations of AP-TPR as a technique to monitor sulfur functionalities in coal

Biodiversity accounting and reporting: A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

Towards the improvement of environmental sustainability and the conservation of biodiversity, organisations are increasingly aware of the importance of reporting their impacts on biodiversity and the conservation plans undertaken. Biodiversity accounting and reporting are relevant for developing organisational practices oriented towards environmental sustainability, promoting cleaner management policies with less impact on the environment. Biodiversity accounting research has attracted scholars in business management and accounting, and as a result, the literature in the field has grown in recent years. This study analyses the intellectual structure of the biodiversity accounting and management discipline through a systematic literature review, along with bibliometric techniques based on a co-word analysis of the main keywords included in 63 publications. The results reveal five thematic clusters: one motor cluster (sustainability), two transversal clusters (biodiversity reporting, corporate biodiversity management) and two isolated clusters (environmental protection, emancipatory accounting). In addition, the content of the selected papers is analysed and promising research paths are found, such as the need for more robust quantitative analyses or the development of new forms of emancipatory accounting. The study discusses the main insights from the analysis, proposes future research directions and provides practical implications for biodiversity protection and environmental sustainability. © The Author

Contenido, forma y función en textos del dominio del cine: la reseña y la crítica cinematográficas

El objetivo de esta comunicación es presentar el resultado del análisis de las características de una serie de textos procedentes de diversas fuentes, pero pertenecientes a un dominio de especialidad y con una finalidad común: presentar una película al público. El estudio de la relación entre texto y contenido informativo, y, más en concreto, entre las características textuales y la función textual y la ideología revela que la finalidad o función con la que se transmite la información sobre las obras cinematográficas determina sus características textuales: la forma del documento y el tratamiento del contenido informativo. A su vez, estos dos aspectos se ven afectados por el medio y la ideología

From linguistic patterns to ontology structures

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the research on linguistic patterns focusing on the subclassOf relation for the semi-automatic construction of ontologies. Taking as a starting point those ontological structures corresponding to consensual modelling solutions, which are known as Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs), we identified the linguistic patterns that convey the relation captured in ODPs as Lexico-Syntactic Patterns (LSPs) and included them in an LSP-ODP pattern repository. LSPs will permit novice users the conversion of the domain field they want to model into an ontological structure. In the present contribution, the language of classification in Spanish is studied in order to collect the most common ways of verbally expressing the subclassOf relation. Then, the topology of the most common classification patterns is analysed to discover the type of ontological knowledge provided, i.e. which concept relation, and the two essential features in ontology knowledge: exhaustiveness and disjointness