A Mutually-Dependent Hadamard Kernel for Modelling Latent Variable Couplings

We introduce a novel kernel that models input-dependent couplings across multiple latent processes. The pairwise joint kernel measures covariance along inputs and across different latent signals in a mutually-dependent fashion. A latent correlation Gaussian process (LCGP) model combines these non-stationary latent components into multiple outputs by an input-dependent mixing matrix. Probit classification and support for multiple observation sets are derived by Variational Bayesian inference. Results on several datasets indicate that the LCGP model can recover the correlations between latent signals while simultaneously achieving state-of-the-art performance. We highlight the latent covariances with an EEG classification dataset where latent brain processes and their couplings simultaneously emerge from the model.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures; accepted to ACML 201

Hammaslääketieteen opiskelijoiden kokemuksia luuppien käytöstä : Kyselytutkimus luuppien käyttökokemuksista hammaslääkäriopiskelijoille

Hammashoitoalalla työskennellään pienten ja todella yksityiskohtaisten kohteiden parissa, jolloin näköjärjestelmä joutuu suuren kuormituksen alaiseksi. Ergonomia on tärkeä tekijä jokaisessa työssä, mutta ergonomisen työasennon saavuttaminen tarkkuutta vaativassa työssä on haasta-vaa, koska näkeminen on ihmiselle niin tärkeää, että hän jopa uhraa ergonomiansa nähdäkseen paremmin. Tähän ongelmaan ratkaisuna hammashoitoalalla käytetään luuppeja, joiden tarkoitus on suurentaa kohdealueen kuvaa ja mahdollistaa ergonominen työasento. Oulun yliopiston hammaslääketieteen opiskelijoiden käytössä on MeridentOptergon valmistamat luupit, jotka heille sovitti optikko Mikko Järvinen. Tämän opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli kerätä käyttäjäkokemuksia ja saada kuvaavia esimerkkejä siitä, miten opiskelijat kokevat luuppien vai-kutuksen. Tietoperustamme rakentui lähinäkemiseen sekä ergonomiaan liittyvistä asioista ja siitä, miten nämä ilmenevät hammaslääkärin työssä. Tietoperustassa käsitellään lähinäkemiseen soveltuvia silmälaseja, luuppien teknologiaa sekä näkemisen ergonomiaa tarkkuutta vaativassa lähityössä. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena tutkimuksena, jonka aineisto saatiin sähköpostitse lähetetyllä kyselyllä. Kyselyn vastaukset kerättiin syyskuun 2017 aikana ja vastauksia saatiin kaikkiaan neljältätoista opiskelijalta, jotka olivat saaneet luupit käyttöönsä edeltävänä keväänä. Saatu ai-neisto käsiteltiin jakamalla vastaukset eri teemoihin ja sen jälkeen jokaiseen teeman alla olleet vastukset jaettiin vielä vastaustyypeittäin. Kyselyn tulokset olivat pääosin odotetun mukaisia ja ne tukivat aikaisempia teorioita ja tutkimuk-sia. Oulun yliopiston hammaslääketieteen opiskelijat kokivat luuppien parantavan merkittävästi heidän ergonomiaansa sekä työn laatua, vaikka yksittäisillä vastaajilla joitain ongelmia esiintyikin. Uskomme, että lähes kaikki yksittäisten vastaajien ongelmista ovat ratkaistavissa uusintakäyn-nillä optikolla. Suosittelemmekin, että luuppien käyttöönottoon liitettäisiin kysely, johon kaikki uudet luuppien käyttäjät vastaisivat tottumisjakson jälkeen. Kyselyn perusteella optikko voisi kutsua jälkitarkastukseen ne, joilla ongelmia ilmenee. Toinen kyselyn perusteella ilmi tullut mer-kittävä asia oli lisävalon käyttö. Lisävalo on luuppien lisävaruste, jota kaikilla opiskelijoilla ei ollut käytössään. Lisävalon valinneet opiskelijat pitivät sitä todella tärkeänä ja hyvänä apuvälineenä - osa jopa yhtä tärkeänä kuin luuppien suurentavaa vaikutusta. Pitäisikin harkita vaihtoehtoa, että lisävalo ei olisikaan jatkossa pelkkä lisävaruste vaan olennainen osa luuppeja.Dental care is working with really small details and because of that, practitioners' visual system is under heavy stress. Ergonomics is important in any profession but reaching an ergonomic working posture is challenging especially if the work requires working with visually small details in close proximity. Seeing as good as one can is so important that practitioners unconsciously sacrifice their ergonomics to see better. The solution to this problem in dentistry is using magnify-ing loupes which work by magnifying the image, thus making it possible to work in more ergo-nomic posture. Dentistry students in The University of Oulu use loupes manufactured by MeridentOptergo. Mikko Järvinen, an optician, is responsible for fitting these loupes. The goal of this bachelor’s thesis was to gather user experiences and examples on how the students see the impact of loupes in their profession. Our theory was based on vision in close distances, ergonomics and how these subjects manifest in dentistry. It includes information about technology of lenses and loupes and about visual ergo-nomics in close distance work. The survey was executed as a qualitative research and distributed via email. The results were collected in autumn 2017 including 14 responses. Collected data was then divided into themes and further into certain types. The results were mainly expected, and they were in accordance to prior studies. The students found that the loupes significantly improved their ergonomics as well as their work quality, alt-hough some individual students had problems with their loupes. We firmly believe that almost all the problems that came up could be solved by organizing a second appointment with the optician. Our recommendation is that after getting accustomed to the loupes the students should fill in a questionnaire about the performance of their loupes. Based on that questionnaire the optician could call those how have problems for a second appointment. Another notable factor was related to the use of the light source attached to the loupes. Every student who had chosen this optional extra light, considered it to be a valuable addition to their loupes. It should be taken into concideration whether the extra light sourse should not be just an optional addition but a solid part of the loupes

Uncertainty-Aware Natural Language Inference with Stochastic Weight Averaging

This paper introduces Bayesian uncertainty modeling using Stochastic Weight Averaging-Gaussian (SWAG) in Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks. We apply the approach to standard tasks in natural language inference (NLI) and demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in terms of prediction accuracy and correlation with human annotation disagreements. We argue that the uncertainty representations in SWAG better reflect subjective interpretation and the natural variation that is also present in human language understanding. The results reveal the importance of uncertainty modeling, an often neglected aspect of neural language modeling, in NLU tasks.Comment: NoDaLiDa 2023 camera read

Modeling the Costs of Postpartum Dysgalactia Syndrome and Locomotory Disorders on Sow Productivity and Replacement

Peer reviewe

Herd-Level and Individual Differences in Fecal Lactobacilli Dynamics of Growing Pigs

We studied the fecal lactobacilli count and species diversity of growing pigs along with immune parameters associated with intestinal lactobacilli. Thirty pigs categorized as small (S, n = 12) or large (L, n = 18) at birth were followed from birth to slaughter in two commercial herds, H1 and H2. Herds differed in terms of their general management. We determined sow colostrum quality, colostrum intake, piglet serum immunoglobulins, and pig growth. We took individual fecal samples from pigs in the weaning and finishing units. We studied lactobacilli count and identified their diversity with 16S PCR. Total lactobacilli count increased in H1 and decreased in H2 between samplings. Lactobacilli species diversity was higher in H1 in both fecal sampling points, whereas diversity decreased over time in both herds. We identified altogether seven lactobacilli species with a maximum of five (one to five) species in one herd. However, a relatively large proportion of lactobacilli remained unidentified with the used sequencing technique. Small pigs had higher lactobacilli counts in both herds but the difference was significant only in H2 (p = 0.01). Colostrum quality was numerically better in H1 than in H2, where colostrum intake tended to be associated with total lactobacilli count (p = 0.05)

Herd-Level and Individual Differences in Fecal Lactobacilli Dynamics of Growing Pigs

We studied the fecal lactobacilli count and species diversity of growing pigs along with immune parameters associated with intestinal lactobacilli. Thirty pigs categorized as small (S, n = 12) or large (L, n = 18) at birth were followed from birth to slaughter in two commercial herds, H1 and H2. Herds differed in terms of their general management. We determined sow colostrum quality, colostrum intake, piglet serum immunoglobulins, and pig growth. We took individual fecal samples from pigs in the weaning and finishing units. We studied lactobacilli count and identified their diversity with 16S PCR. Total lactobacilli count increased in H1 and decreased in H2 between samplings. Lactobacilli species diversity was higher in H1 in both fecal sampling points, whereas diversity decreased over time in both herds. We identified altogether seven lactobacilli species with a maximum of five (one to five) species in one herd. However, a relatively large proportion of lactobacilli remained unidentified with the used sequencing technique. Small pigs had higher lactobacilli counts in both herds but the difference was significant only in H2 (p = 0.01). Colostrum quality was numerically better in H1 than in H2, where colostrum intake tended to be associated with total lactobacilli count (p = 0.05)

Self-evaluated competences of multidisciplinary students before and after professional specialisation education in digital social and health care services

The integration of separate service systems, digitalisation, demographic changes, and staff shortages has increased the need for systematic and flexible skills development in social and health care services. In today’s working life, learning and development take place in ecosystems. This study aimed to evaluate and identify differences between students’ self-assessed competences and their beliefs about the importance of competence areas before and after professional specialisation education (PSE). The research questions were: 1) Was there any difference in students’ self-evaluated level of multidisciplinary competences before and after professional specialisation education? 2) Based on students’ self-evaluations, was there any difference between the multidisciplinary competences they considered important before and after professional specialisation education? Analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and paired t-tests were used to examine the differences in the subjects’ spontaneous responses about whether they had experienced a change in their competences after undertaking specialisation education. In the initial survey (N = 274), the student respondent group was 180, and the total number of student pairs was 65. The initial and final measurements of the 65 students who responded to the follow-up survey were therefore comparable. Four-point Likert scales were used in the questionnaires. The modified questionnaire was designed so that students answered each of the competences at two levels from their own perspectives. First, they described how important the acquisition of the skills described in this sentence would be for their own professional competence. Then, they assessed their current level of competence in relation to the sentence in question. There were no statistical differences (p>0.05) between measurements taken before and after education in most of the qualification statements describing importance. There were statistical differences (p<0.05) between the initial (before education) and post-training measurements (after education) for all statements describing self-assessment competences. According to this study, even micro-credentials promoted learning. In learning, ecosystem and perceived importance support the level of digital maturity of organisations