Benchmarking the Semi-Supervised Naïve Bayes Classifier

Semi-supervised learning involves constructing predictive models with both labelled and unlabelled training data. The need for semi-supervised learning is driven by the fact that unlabelled data are often easy and cheap to obtain, whereas labelling data requires costly and time consuming human intervention and expertise. Semi-supervised methods commonly use self training, which involves using the labelled data to predict the unlabelled data, then iteratively reconstructing classifiers using the predicted labels. Our aim is to determine whether self training classifiers actually improves performance. Expectation maximization is a commonly used self training scheme. We investigate whether an expectation maximization scheme improves a naïve Bayes classifier through experimentation with 30 discrete and 20 continuous real world benchmark UCI datasets. Rather surprisingly we find that in practice the self training actually makes the classifier worse. The cause for this detrimental affect on performance could either be with the self training scheme itself, or how self training works in conjunction with the classifier. Our hypothesis is that it is the latter cause, and the violation of the naïve Bayes model assumption of independence of attributes means predictive errors propagate through the self training scheme. To test whether this is the case, we generate simulated data with the same attribute distribution as the UCI data, but where the attributes are independent. Experiments with this data demonstrate that semi-supervised learning does improve performance, leading to significantly more accurate classifiers. These results demonstrate that semi-supervised learning cannot be applied blindly without considering the nature of the classifier, because the assumptions implicit in the classifier may result in a degradation in performance

Camp in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (2023-2024)

In this research inquiry, Cawley examines the film, Rocky Horror Picture Show, as an example of a “perfect camp film.” He arrives at this conclusion based on his interpretation of the film itself as the main source and by synthesizing other sources on film theory, film analysis, and theories of camp, such as Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/rhetdragonsresearchinquiry/1011/thumbnail.jp

Innovation in the Irish digital media industry between 1999 and 2002: an emergent new 'content' industry

During the period of this study, digital media comprised an increasingly pervasive but still emergent medium in society. Most formal academic, industrial and governmental research into the emergence of digital media industries and innovations focused on technological and software artefacts, to the neglect o f content. Such studies subscribed to a distinctly determinist conception o f emergence and innovation, regarding them as essentially linear, closed processes, with digital media emerging under an autonomous momentum and causing dramatic changes to society and people's lives. The studies were, in the main, conducted at macro and meso-Ievel, based largely on statistical analysis, and they measured the value of scientific and technical knowledge to innovation. This thesis argues that such approaches are unsuited to the study o f the content industry, which remains a distinct domain within the overall digital media sector. Content innovation is marked by important qualitative differences compared to technological innovation, e.g. it is dependent on competencies less tangible than scientific and technical knowledge. A conceptual framework sensitive to such differences is required to form a deeper understanding o f the emergence o f the digital content industry and the development dynamics o f the innovation processes shaping its development. In response to conceptions o f closed, linear emergence o f both industries and innovations, this thesis argues that emergence and innovation have been multidimensional, multi-directional processes, influenced by many factors (social, economic, organisational, technical) at many levels. The conceptual framework for this study draws on theories and concepts from a number o f disciplinary fields. It draws on those traditionally applied to the study of technological innovation within mature industries, and adapted them to the study o f content innovation within an early emerging industry. The study seeks to draw on and integrate insights drawn from: a) recent systems o f innovation literature, b) science/technology and society studies field (e.g., debates over social shaping and technological determinist theories), as well as c) those drawn from the more familiar communication and media studies field. The empirical aspects o f the research have aimed to monitor, describe and analyse rapidly changing developments in this emergent industry since the late 1990s. The study addresses the key trends in the emerging industry at macro, meso and microlevels. Part o f the study involves an industrial-level analysis in an attempt to better map and understand the unfolding strategies and trends with particular attention to the Irish context. This research project also comprised detailed case studies o f the dynamics o f innovation within a number of individual digital media companies

Whose Development? Framing of Ireland\u27s Aid Communities by Institutional Sources and the Media During and After the Celtic Tiger

IN SEPTEMBER 2006 THE GOVERNMENT’S newly published White Paper on Irish Aid was presented to the media and the public as a statement of Ireland’s new position in, and increased responsibilities to, the international community. The economic success of the Celtic Tiger era had endowed the State not only with the means but also with the obligation to strengthen its aid commitments to developing nations

Might significant events have the potential to trigger assessment of the needs (palliative and supportive) of COPD patients and carers?

Background Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The prognostic uncertainty within the trajectory of severe COPD makes identification of a transition point to palliative care difficult. When to assess the needs of an individual with severe COPD, as well as the needs of their carer, is widely debated. Various triggers have been suggested, both palliative and supportive, such as post-acute, hospitalised exacerbations, low FEV1, long term oxygen therapy (LTOT) and low body mass index (BMI), but there is currently no agreed consensus. Coupled with this, is national and international literature highlighting the lack of formal palliative care pathways or models of care that are able to meet the challenge of palliation of symptoms, alongside optimised medical management. Methods The narrative accounts of individuals with severe COPD and their carers in a previous piece of primary, empirical research, were explored for events that could act as potential triggers for a holistic assessment of needs. Having identified events within the severe COPD disease trajectory, the potential for these events to act as triggers was explored through a consensus methodological approach, with health and social care professionals and then explored with patients and carers. Results The eight identified events from the secondary qualitative data analysis were discussed within a nominal group technique approach to attempt to gain consensus. Identifying triggers and events had some resonance with professionals, but patients and carers struggled with this approach. Patients and carers did however, welcome a holistic assessment of needs and how this could be integrated into current services. 7 Conclusions The relatively unexplored area of trigger identification in aiding a holistic assessment of needs within severe COPD has been debated in this study with professionals, patients and carers alike. However, the acceptability and feasibility of this approach has had varied responses from the perspectives of the different stakeholders involved in this process, in particular those of patients and carers. In response, any approach to aid a holistic assessment of needs in severe COPD in the future, will require careful exploration with these stakeholders about the initial concept of the research, with the aim of linking their understanding of what will enhance the patient experience to the design of the research process. Keywords: COPD, holistic assessment of needs, palliative, supportiv

Credit positive or negative? Credit rating agencies’ framing of Brexit’s implications for the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the EU, and the Northern Ireland peace process

Among Brexit’s implications was its potential to destabilise the Northern Ireland peace process, cast doubt on the future status of the Irish border, and weaken the constitutional integrity of both the UK and the EU. A less publicly visible aspect of Brexit, however, was the weight such implications carried in how international credit rating agencies evaluated the creditworthiness of the EU, the UK, and the other state most affected by the Leave vote, the Republic of Ireland (ROI). A frames analysis of the agencies’ discourse during the withdrawal period, from 2016 to 2020, suggested that their privileging of market perspectives had the effect of shaping but also of limiting their engagement with Brexit’s socio-cultural, identity and political implications for the border and the peace process. In particular, the agencies drew weak discursive links between Brexit as an instance of EU disintegration and its implications for the peace process and for the ROI’s shifting geopolitical relations as a continuing member state. This was further reflected in the agencies’ tendency to underplay socio-cultural, identity and political implications in their discourse on potential future processes of UK and EU disintegration

Digital transitions: The evolving corporate frameworks of legacy newspaper publishers

This study examines the corporate annual reports of three leading UK legacy newspaper publishers (Guardian Media Group, Daily Mail and General Trust, and Trinity Mirror) across fifteen financial years from 2002. It tracks how the publishers reshaped their corporate frameworks and business and product portfolios in responding to market, consumer and technological shifts in the digital era. In particular, the study addresses the implications of digital and market upheavals for the corporations’ traditional roles as custodians of and operational contexts to journalism’s values paradigm. It evaluates the extent to which the corporations sought to protect news’s commodity value and journalism’s public interest norms within their digital transition strategies, which became increasing sites of managerial focus and resource allocations from the mid-2000s

‘I’d be proud to spend the sacred foreign aid budget on our poor pensioners’: Representations of macro aid resourcing in the Irish, UK and US print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2011

The news-media has been identified as an influence on donor nations’ overseas aid allocations, acting as a site where decisions are justified to ‘domestic constituencies’ and through which resistance is mobilised. Mediated pressures on aid allocations amplified between 2008 and 2011 in three donor countries experiencing domestic economic difficulties: Ireland, the UK and the US. This study suggests that each country’s print-media positioned the macro resourcing of aid primarily as an inward concern, neglected recipient country needs, and made weak connections to international policy frameworks to benchmark, contextualise and rationalise aid allocations. The research suggests that the explanatory limitations of the countries’ news-models in communicating the processes and rationales underpinning macro aid resourcing may be a factor in sustaining a knowledge and legitimacy deficit among domestic publics for international aid agreements

Needles in Haystacks: Law, Capability, Ethics and Proportionality in Big-Data Intelligence Gathering

Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about the nature and scale of data-gathering in the two intelligence agencies, the NSA in the US and its UK sister agency, GCHQ, added a new dimension to a debate already underway about the transformation of intelligence-gathering in a Big Data age. There is no doubt that Snowden’s revelations provided the bow-wave of a fundamentally critical and anti-state stance on the intelligence questions in hand. Such a critical stance is reflected in much of the academic literature about Big Data. In this chapter, such concerns are critically appraised