Combination Strategies for Semantic Role Labeling

This paper introduces and analyzes a battery of inference models for the problem of semantic role labeling: one based on constraint satisfaction, and several strategies that model the inference as a meta-learning problem using discriminative classifiers. These classifiers are developed with a rich set of novel features that encode proposition and sentence-level information. To our knowledge, this is the first work that: (a) performs a thorough analysis of learning-based inference models for semantic role labeling, and (b) compares several inference strategies in this context. We evaluate the proposed inference strategies in the framework of the CoNLL-2005 shared task using only automatically-generated syntactic information. The extensive experimental evaluation and analysis indicates that all the proposed inference strategies are successful -they all outperform the current best results reported in the CoNLL-2005 evaluation exercise- but each of the proposed approaches has its advantages and disadvantages. Several important traits of a state-of-the-art SRL combination strategy emerge from this analysis: (i) individual models should be combined at the granularity of candidate arguments rather than at the granularity of complete solutions; (ii) the best combination strategy uses an inference model based in learning; and (iii) the learning-based inference benefits from max-margin classifiers and global feedback

Financing Long-Term Care for Elderly People

Last year’s report of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care (1) and the expected Government response have prompted fresh interest in the debate on how to fund long-term care. To inform this debate the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) has conducted a study, funded by the Department of Health, of long-term care demand and finance. This has involved the construction of a computer model to make projections of likely demand and expenditures to 2031. This article describes the model of long-term care demand and expenditure developed by the PSSRU. It then presents some of the results obtained and sensitivity analysis around them

SISAL: bringing added value to Speleothem research

Isotopic records from speleothems are an important source of information about past climates and, given the increase in the number of isotope-enabled climate models, are likely to become an important tool for climate model evaluation. SISAL (Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis) have created a global database of isotopic records from speleothems in order to facilitate regional analyses and data-model comparison. The papers in this Special Issue showcase the use of the database for regional analyses. In this paper, we discuss some of the important issues underpinning the use of speleothems and how the existence of this database assists palaeoclimate research. We also highlight some of the lessons learned in the creation of the SISAL database and outline potential research going forward

Dissipative failure of adiabatic quantum transport as a dynamical phase transition

Entanglement is the central resource in adiabatic quantum transport. Dephasing affects the availability of that resource by biasing trajectories, driving transitions between success and failure. This depletion of entanglement is important for the practical implementation of quantum technologies. We present an alternative perspective on the failure of adiabatic computation by understanding the failure of adiabatic transport as a dynamical phase transition. These ideas are demonstrated in a toy model of adiabatic quantum transport in a two-spin system

Sobre el Jurásico del Mencal y su relación con otras series sub-béticas de la transversal de Granada

Se describen nuevos términos pertenecientes a la serie jurásica del Mencal (Morrón de la Meseta), junto con otros de un corte próximo a Iznalloz (Granada). Ambas series se correlacionan entre si y con otras series que constituyen un umbral en la cuenca sedimentaria subbética

Sobre el Jurásico del Mencal y su relación con otras series sub-béticas de la transversal de Granada

Se describen nuevos términos pertenecientes a la serie jurásica del Mencal (Morrón de la Meseta), junto con otros de un corte próximo a Iznalloz (Granada). Ambas series se correlacionan entre si y con otras series que constituyen un umbral en la cuenca sedimentaria subbética

Using WWW to improve software development and maintenance: application of the LIGHT system to ALEPH programs

Programmers who develop, use, maintain, modify software and faced with the problem of scanning and understanding large amounts of documents, ranging from source code to requirements, analysis and design diagrams, user and reference manuals etc. This task is non trivial and time consuming LIGHT, LIfe cycle Global HyperText is an attempt to solve the problem using WWW technology. The basic idea is to make all the software documents, including code, available and cross-connected on the WWW. The first application of this concept to go in production is JULIA?LIGHT, a system to convert and publish on WWW the software documentation of the JULIA reconstruction program of the ALEPH experiment at CERN European Organisation for Particle Physics, Geneva