Training Programme Impact in Improving the Working Memory of Students with Learning Disabilities in Reading Arabic

The study aimed to investigate the effect of a training program on improving working memory for students with learning difficulties in reading Arabic. The study sample consisted of (10) students with learning disabilities from Basic Education students from the fifth and sixth grades, and those between the ages (10-11) years as a pilot group and (10) students from the same stage and of the same age as a control group. The researcher used a working memory battery, Raven Test, and a training program he prepared to achieve the study goal. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences in the fields of working memory scale between the members of the experimental and control groups in the dimensional measurement, and in favor of the experimental group to which the training program was applied, by applying the measure of working memory in its three fields. The results also showed that there are statistically significant differences between the pre and post measurements of the areas of the working memory scale in favor of the post application, and for the benefit of the experimental group,This confirms the effectiveness of the training program used. Some recommendations were suggested

Expert Gate: Lifelong Learning with a Network of Experts

In this paper we introduce a model of lifelong learning, based on a Network of Experts. New tasks / experts are learned and added to the model sequentially, building on what was learned before. To ensure scalability of this process,data from previous tasks cannot be stored and hence is not available when learning a new task. A critical issue in such context, not addressed in the literature so far, relates to the decision which expert to deploy at test time. We introduce a set of gating autoencoders that learn a representation for the task at hand, and, at test time, automatically forward the test sample to the relevant expert. This also brings memory efficiency as only one expert network has to be loaded into memory at any given time. Further, the autoencoders inherently capture the relatedness of one task to another, based on which the most relevant prior model to be used for training a new expert, with finetuning or learning without-forgetting, can be selected. We evaluate our method on image classification and video prediction problems.Comment: CVPR 2017 pape

Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Orders among Terminally Ill Patients: An Argumentative Essay

Do Not Resuscitate orders among terminally ill patients starts to be one of the most common argumentative issues within health care institutions agreed this type of orders. In the last quarter of twentieth century Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) statement starts to emerge in different health care centers. Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) that attempt to restart patient’s heartbeats or natural breathing is the base line when dealing with any patient regardless any circumstances. Reviewing much of articles, research papers, guidelines and different policies regarding the DNR statement actually brought us into the stake. Ethical as well as legal Proponent and opponent opinions were confront for this debatable issue in order to argue the supportive and giving up points of views. DNR orders should be discussed and explained seriously with the patient (his or her surrogates) and their families to reach the suitable and preferable situation as well as allowing natural death process. In addition, the concept of futility regarding to health status possess high contribution when deciding the patients as DNR coded. However, integrating DNR orders within health care institutions eases in a way or in another the burden of activating CPR, while in advance; the end result is already known and unsatisfied based on clinical picture for the patient known as terminally ill. It is in simple words the proportionality (burden: benefit ratio). In the end, ethical and legal aspects plays major role in regarding DNR, and indeed affect the perception of DNR and discussing them clearly at some point will definitely alleviate possible consequences. Keywords: Do Not Resuscitate, terminally ill patients, DNR ethical, DNR legal, argumentative

Equity valuation: Corticeira Amorim

Corporate valuation has been always a topic that influences various areas of finance. In fact when discussions about companies are made, one of the most critical issues must be how the firm is creating value and how to assess this value. Therefore, this project will illustrate the procedures for determining the target price of the company Corticeira Amorim. Where Corticeira Amorim is the world largest cork transforming company and its core business is based on extracting the cork from cork oak forests to make it uniquely possible to operate in various parts of life. The Discounted Cash Flow and the Multiples were the chosen valuation methods. To demonstrate the company’s valuation and to effectively realize if Corticeira Amorim is trading its shares at a discount or a premium regarding the market value. First, in this project, the DCF will be implemented for the whole firm taking into consideration the growth rate of the company’s sales in each part of the world. Thereafter, the enterprise value is calculated by subtracting the net debt from the present value of the FCFF. Eventually, we can obtain the target share price of Corticeira Amorim by computing the equity value divided by the number of shares outstanding. Afterwards, we will try to obtain the fair value of CA by using the valuation multiples to compare it with its peers. Indeed, the project will undertake a sensitivity analysis to manifest how the value of the firm will differ due to changes in the components of the valuation process.A avaliação de empresas é um tópico que influencia várias áreas das Finanças Empresariais. Na verdade, quando se analisam empresas um dos aspetos mais críticos é a forma como a empresa cria valor e como medi-lo. Assim, este projeto ilustra o procedimento para determinar o preço alvo das ações da Corticeira Amorim. A Corticeira Amorim é a maior empresa mundial transformadora de cortiça e o seu negócio principal baseia-se na extração da cortiça dos sobreiros para a sua utilização em várias aplicações do dia-a-dia. O Discounted Cash Flow e os multiplos foram os métodos escolhidos para avaliar a empresa Com vista a detetar se as ações da companhia estão a ser transacionadas ao seu justo valor. Primeiro, neste projeto o DCF foi implementado aos calores consolidados do Grupo considerabdo a taxa de crescimento das vendas em cada região geográfica. Depois calculou-se o valor do negócio a partir do valor atual dos FCFF futuros, ao qual se subtraiu a divida liquida, para se obter o calor dos capitais próprios. Finalmente, dividiu-se este último pelo número de ações para obter o valor de cada uma. Depois, tentou-se obter o justo valor da CA através da utilização dos múltiplos das suas congéneres. Por ultimo, realizou-se uma analise de sensibilidade para ver como a alteração de alguns pressupostos afeta o valor da ação da CA

L'effet du degré de réseau d'interconnexion multi-étages sur ses performances: le cas des réseaux Delta et réseaux Delta surdimensionnés

Lors de la construction d'un ordinateur paralléle, le réseau d'interconnexion ainsi que ses performances sont des facteurs cruciaux à étudier. Aujourd'hui, la technologie supporte la construction de crossbars de taille limitée (jusqu'à 128). Pour des machines avec un plus grands nombre de points de connexion, ces crossbars peuvent être utilisés comme éléments de commutation de réseaux d'interconnexion multi-étages. En fait, un réseau d'interconnexion est défini par sa topologie, son algorithme d'acheminement, sa stratégie de commutation et son mécanisme de contrôle de flux. Un des facteurs définis par la topologie est le degré. Le degré d'un réseau d'interconnexion multi-étages est la taille des commutateurs qui le composent. Dans ce papier, nous étudions l'effet de la taille du commutateur sur les performances de deux classes de réseaux d'interconnexion multi-étages: les fameux réseaux Delta et une sous-classe de cette famille qui s'appelle les réseaux Delta surdimensionnés. Cette étude initie une réflexion sur l'utilisation des réseaux d'interconnexion multi-étages dans les machines SMP actuelles

Incremental Object-Based Novelty Detection with Feedback Loop

Object-based Novelty Detection (ND) aims to identify unknown objects that do not belong to classes seen during training by an object detection model. The task is particularly crucial in real-world applications, as it allows to avoid potentially harmful behaviours, e.g. as in the case of object detection models adopted in a self-driving car or in an autonomous robot. Traditional approaches to ND focus on one time offline post processing of the pretrained object detection output, leaving no possibility to improve the model robustness after training and discarding the abundant amount of out-of-distribution data encountered during deployment. In this work, we propose a novel framework for object-based ND, assuming that human feedback can be requested on the predicted output and later incorporated to refine the ND model without negatively affecting the main object detection performance. This refinement operation is repeated whenever new feedback is available. To tackle this new formulation of the problem for object detection, we propose a lightweight ND module attached on top of a pre-trained object detection model, which is incrementally updated through a feedback loop. We also propose a new benchmark to evaluate methods on this new setting and test extensively our ND approach against baselines, showing increased robustness and a successful incorporation of the received feedback