A Novel Counterfactual Data Augmentation Method for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis

Aspect-based-sentiment-analysis (ABSA) is a fine-grained sentiment evaluation task, which analyzes the emotional polarity of the evaluation aspects. Generally, the emotional polarity of an aspect exists in the corresponding opinion expression, whose diversity has great impact on model's performance. To mitigate this problem, we propose a novel and simple counterfactual data augmentation method to generate opinion expressions with reversed sentiment polarity. In particular, the integrated gradients are calculated to locate and mask the opinion expression. Then, a prompt combined with the reverse expression polarity is added to the original text, and a Pre-trained language model (PLM), T5, is finally was employed to predict the masks. The experimental results shows the proposed counterfactual data augmentation method performs better than current augmentation methods on three ABSA datasets, i.e. Laptop, Restaurant, and MAMS.Comment: Camera-ready for ACML 202

Contribution to Deliverable 8.2 (WP 8): Strategies to improve labour market integration of young people: Comparing policy coordination in nine European countries. Country Report Switzerland

As a Non-EU member Switzerland is not obliged to implement the Youth Guarantee scheme. As such, the national resonance regarding this EU programme is very modest and there is little benefit in measuring the discourse on the Youth Guarantee in Switzerland. In search of a comparable policy event we decided to focus on a public referendum from the year 2003 that advocates the improvement of young people’s prospects in education and in the labour market, which would enable us to draw some equivalent conclusions on the discourse surrounding youth policy in Switzerland. Similar to the EU’s Youth Guarantee, the Swiss referendum Apprenticeship Initiative (“Lehrstelleninitiative”) – proposed a state-regulated guarantee on Vocational Education and Training (VET). First we will provide a summary and analysis of the national discourse on the Apprenticeship Initiative that was clearly rejected in 2003 in section two . The discourse involves the opponents arguing from an economically liberal point of view, showing reluctance to give more power to the central state and the proponents emphasising the decrease in the amount of apprenticeship positions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since no national department for youth exists in Switzerland, the authorities responsible for youth policy are located on a cantonal or local level. Hence, we propose to take a look at the cantonal implementation of some youth policies in section three. The Canton of Jura as one of the only two Swiss cantons, which have a youth guarantee in their cantonal constitution, will be analysed as a case study. Three Swiss Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP) measures for young people will be presented in section four. The focus will be on the horizontal and vertical coordination of these measures, how they are implemented in different cantons, and the evaluation of these programmes

Explaining consequences of employment insecurity: The dynamics of scarring in the United Kingdom, Poland and Norway

This deliverable presents three country studies on scarring effects of early employment insecurity in the United Kingdom, Poland and Norway. Traditional analysis of scarring effects has favoured the analysis of the impact of the experience of unemployment on the experience of subsequent unemployment (state dependence) and the monetary costs of previous unemployment in terms of lower subsequent wages (see e.g. Arulampalam, Booth and Taylor 2000; Arulampalam, Gregg and Gregory 2001). The three present country studies go beyond the traditional analysis of scarring effects in order to better understand the trade-offs experienced by young female and male workers when faced with an insecure labour market integration. With national longitudinal data, original methodological designs and research focus, each study contributes in an original way to the research literature. All three studies pay special attention to gender and education as potential moderating variables of scarring effects

Contribution to Deliverable 3.4 (D3.4) – Institutional Determinants of Early Job Insecurity in Nine European Countries : Country Report Switzerland

Compared to other European countries, Switzerland has demonstrated relative economic stability since the economic crisis in 2008/2009. The employment rate of 15 to 24-year-olds in Switzerland registered a fluctuation of maximum 5% during the period from 2008 to 2015. The lowest rate was observed in the 2nd quarter of 2012 (65.2%) and the highest rate in the 3rd quarter of 2010 (70.2%). In comparison, the fluctuation of the employment rate of the general population (15-64 years of age) is even smaller; 82.2% in the 2nd quarter of 2010 was the lowest rate and 84.6% the highest in the last quarter of 2015. Overall, the employment rate among the younger population is less stable than throughout the general population (Bundesamt für Statistik BFS, 2016). As for fixed-term contracts, the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics registered a shared of 19% of fixed-term contracts among the age group 15-24, which is considerably higher than the share in the general labour force population (8% in 2015) (see section 2). In Switzerland, the youth unemployment rate differs from canton to canton. The French- and Italian-speaking parts show a higher rate than the German-speaking part of Switzerland. According to Eurostat (4Q 2015), on average, 9.8% of the young people between 15-24 years of age were unemployed in 2015, which was about double as high as the unemployment rate of the entire work force population (15-65-year-olds: 4.8%). However, compared to other OECD countries the youth unemployment rate in Switzerland is still relatively low (see section 2). According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, the share of people in the age group 18-24 in education or training has not varied much from 2008 (63.5%) to 2014 (64.5%). The lowest participation rate was measured in 2009, when 57.6% were in education or training (Eurostat 2016). The educational level in Switzerland has shown some changes regarding the tertiary education. While in 2010 35.3% of the population declared that they had obtained a tertiary degree as their highest attained education level, it was 40.2% in 2014. Furthermore, there has been a slight increase of people, who have completed at least an upper-secondary education (85.8% in 2010 and 88.0% in 2014) (FSO 2016). The OECD data show that the proportion of students enrolling in the general and in the vocational programmes has hardly changed over the years. In 2008 it was 35:65, and in 2013 it was 34:66 (OECD 2015). The number of persons aged from 18 to 24, who have only completed the lower secondary education, and who are currently not in education or training, has slightly decreased over the years: While it was 7.6% in 2010, it dropped to 6.3% by 2014 (FSO 2016). The overall positive economic situation in Switzerland provides favourable conditions for a stable labour market. Compared to other countries Switzerland has a low youth as well as general unemployment rate

Differences of Heart Rate Variability Between Happiness and Sadness Emotion States: A Pilot Study

This pilot study investigated the differences of heart rate variability (HRV) indices between two opposite emotion states: happiness and sadness, to reveal the differences of autonomic nervous system activity under different emotional states. Forty-eight healthy volunteers were enrolled for this study. Electrocardiography (ECG) signals were recorded under both emotion states with a random measurement order (first happiness emotion measurement then sadness or reverse). RR interval (RRI) time series were extracted from ECGs and multiple HRV indices, including time-domain (MEAN, SDNN, RMSSD and PNN50), frequency-domain (LFn, HFn and LF/HF) and nonlinear indices (SampEn and FuzzyMEn) were calculated. In addition, the effects of heart rate (HR) and mean artery pressure (MAP) on the aforementioned HRV indices were analyzed for both emotion states. The results showed that experimental order had no significant effect on all HRV indices from both happiness and sadness emotions (all P > 0.05). The key result was that among all nine HRV indices, six indices were identified having significant differences between happiness and sadness emotion states: MEAN (P = 0.028), SDNN (P = 0.002), three frequency-domain indices (all P < 0.0001) and FuzzyMEn (P = 0.047), whereas RMSSD, PNN50 and SampEn had no significant differences between the two emotion states. All indices, except for SampEn, had significant positive correlations (all P < 0.01) for the two emotion states. Four time-domain indices decreased with the increase of HR (all P < 0.01), while frequency-domain and nonlinear indices demonstrated no HR-related changes for each emotional state. In addition, all indices (time-domain, frequency-domain and nonlinear) showed no MAP-related changes. It concluded that HRV indices showed significant differences between happiness and sadness emotion states and the findings could help to better understand the inherent differences of cardiovascular time series between different emotion states in clinical practice

Arbeitslosigkeit mindert Jobchancen

Angesichts des raschen strukturellen Wandels im Arbeitsmarkt ist ein geradliniger Berufsverlauf nach der Lehre nicht mehr die Norm. Es ist anzunehmen, dass durch Arbeitslosigkeit oder Berufswechsel bedingte Brüche im Berufsverlauf in Zukunft häufiger werden. In diesem Kontext stellt sich die Frage, wie Arbeitgeber bei der Besetzung von offenen Stellen solche Brüche in den Lebensläufen junger Stellensuchender bewerten. Eine Studie, welche die Frage nach einer möglichen Beeinträchtigung der Bewerbungschancen junger Stellensuchender nach einer Phase der Arbeitslosigkeit ins Zentrum stellt, zeigt: Arbeitslosigkeit beeinträchtigt in der Schweiz die Bewerbungschancen von Stellensuchenden. Eine abgeschlossene Berufsausbildung schützt dabei nicht vor den problematischen Folgen

How unemployment scarring affects skilled young workers: evidence from a factorial survey of Swiss recruiters

We ask how employers contribute to unemployment scarring in the recruitment process in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By drawing on recruitment theories, we aim to better understand how recruiters assess different patterns of unemployment in a job candidate’s CV and how this affects the chances of young applicants being considered for a vacancy. We argue that in contexts with tight school-work linkage and highly standardised Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems, the detrimental effect of early unemployment depends on how well the applicant’s profile matches the requirements of the advertised position. To test this assumption, we surveyed Swiss recruiters who were seeking to fill positions during the time of data collection. We employed a factorial survey experiment that tested how the (un)employment trajectories in hypothetical young job applicants’ CVs affected their chances of being considered for a real vacancy. Our results show that unemployment decreases the perceived suitability of an applicant for a specific job, which implies there is a scarring effect of unemployment that increases with the duration of being unemployed. But we also found that these effects are moderated by how well the applicant’s profile matches the job’s requirements. Overall, the worse the match between applicant’s profile and the job profile, the smaller are the scarring effects of unemployment. In sum, our findings contribute to the literature by revealing considerable heterogeneity in the scarring effects of unemployment. Our findings further suggest that the scarring effects of unemployment need to be studied with regard to country-specific institutional settings, the applicants’ previous education and employment experiences, and the job characteristics

Le chômage, ennemi de l’employabilité

Avec un marché de l’emploi en pleine mutation structurelle, un parcours rectiligne après l’apprentissage ne constitue plus la norme. Tout porte à croire que le nombre d’interruptions de carrière – forcées ou volontaires – ne cessera d’augmenter. Dans ces circonstances, la question est de savoir comment les employeurs désireux de repourvoir un poste perçoivent ces parenthèses dans le curriculum des jeunes à la recherche d’un emploi. Une étude récente menée en Suisse parvient à la conclusion qu’une période de chômage porte atteinte à l’employabilité, et que ce phénomène n’épargne pas les détenteurs d’un certificat fédéral de capacité

Elemental topological ferroelectrics and polar metals of few-layer materials

Ferroelectricity can exist in elemental phases as a result of charge transfers between atoms occupying inequivalent Wyckoff positions. We investigate the emergence of ferroelectricity in two-dimensional elemental materials with buckled honeycomb lattices. Various multi-bilayer structures hosting ferroelectricity are designed by stacking-engineering. Ferroelectric materials candidates formed by group IV and V elements are predicted theoretically. Ultrathin Bi films show layer-stacking-dependent physical properties of ferroelectricity, topology, and metallicity. The two-bilayer Bi film with a polar stacking sequence is found to be an elemental topological ferroelectric material. Three and four bilayers Bi films with polar structures are ferroelectric-like elemental polar metals with topological nontrivial edge states. For Ge and Sn, trivial elemental polar metals are predicted. Our work reveals the possibility of design two-dimensional elemental topological ferroelectrics and polar metals by stacking-engineering.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure