Adaptive Laplace Mechanism: Differential Privacy Preservation in Deep Learning

In this paper, we focus on developing a novel mechanism to preserve differential privacy in deep neural networks, such that: (1) The privacy budget consumption is totally independent of the number of training steps; (2) It has the ability to adaptively inject noise into features based on the contribution of each to the output; and (3) It could be applied in a variety of different deep neural networks. To achieve this, we figure out a way to perturb affine transformations of neurons, and loss functions used in deep neural networks. In addition, our mechanism intentionally adds "more noise" into features which are "less relevant" to the model output, and vice-versa. Our theoretical analysis further derives the sensitivities and error bounds of our mechanism. Rigorous experiments conducted on MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets show that our mechanism is highly effective and outperforms existing solutions.Comment: IEEE ICDM 2017 - regular pape

Pair-Linking for Collective Entity Disambiguation: Two Could Be Better Than All

Collective entity disambiguation aims to jointly resolve multiple mentions by linking them to their associated entities in a knowledge base. Previous works are primarily based on the underlying assumption that entities within the same document are highly related. However, the extend to which these mentioned entities are actually connected in reality is rarely studied and therefore raises interesting research questions. For the first time, we show that the semantic relationships between the mentioned entities are in fact less dense than expected. This could be attributed to several reasons such as noise, data sparsity and knowledge base incompleteness. As a remedy, we introduce MINTREE, a new tree-based objective for the entity disambiguation problem. The key intuition behind MINTREE is the concept of coherence relaxation which utilizes the weight of a minimum spanning tree to measure the coherence between entities. Based on this new objective, we design a novel entity disambiguation algorithms which we call Pair-Linking. Instead of considering all the given mentions, Pair-Linking iteratively selects a pair with the highest confidence at each step for decision making. Via extensive experiments, we show that our approach is not only more accurate but also surprisingly faster than many state-of-the-art collective linking algorithms

USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN TEACHING SPEAKING TO GRADE 10 STUDENTS: TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES

Authentic materials are considered as a beneficial tool for teachers and students in teaching speaking English as a foreign language. Speaking is one of the most significant skills for EFL students to communicate with other peers. It is also important for tertiary students in the Vietnamese context. However, a few studies about the relationship between authentic materials and speaking ability were conducted in Vietnamese high school contexts. Therefore, the current study aimed to find out high school teachers’ perceptions and practices of using authentic materials in teaching English speaking to Grade 10 students in a Vietnamese context. Data collected in this study include questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Participants in this study were seventy-seven high school teachers in five provinces in the Mekong delta. Findings from this study reveal that teachers had positive perceptions of using authentic materials in teaching English speaking to Grade 10 students. Pedagogical implications for teachers and school administrators are also made.  Article visualizations

Thermoresistance of p-Type 4H–SiC Integrated MEMS Devices for High-Temperature Sensing

There is an increasing demand for the development and integration of multifunctional sensing modules into power electronic devices that can operate in high temperature environments. Here, the authors demonstrate the tunable thermoresistance of p‐type 4H–SiC for a wide temperature range from the room temperature to above 800 K with integrated flow sensing functionality into a single power electronic chip. The electrical resistance of p‐type 4H–SiC is found to exponentially decrease with increasing temperature to a threshold temperature of 536 K. The temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) shows a large and negative value from −2100 to −7600 ppm K−1, corresponding to a thermal index of 625 K. From the threshold temperature of 536–846 K, the electrical resistance shows excellent linearity with a positive TCR value of 900 ppm K−1. The authors successfully demonstrate the integration of p–4H–SiC flow sensing functionality with a high sensitivity of 1.035 μA(m s−1)−0.5 mW−1. These insights in the electrical transport of p–4H–SiC aid to improve the performance of p–4H–SiC integrated temperature and flow sensing systems, as well as the design consideration and integration of thermal sensors into 4H–SiC power electronic systems operating at high temperatures of up to 846 K

The Effect of Repeated Ad Exposure and Physical Avoidance on Consumers’ Mobile Ad Response

Opt-in mobile advertisement platform services are increasingly popular. In this paper, we explore how repeated ad exposure and physical avoidance influence consumers’ responses to mobile ads. Using a unique panel-level data of 1,193,131 million users from Cash Slide, a Korean mobile advertising platform, we find that 1) repeated ad exposure and physical avoidance has a negative impact on a consumer’s response to mobile ads; 2) information richness in a mobile ad has a negative impact on mobile users’ response to ads; 3) the negative effect of a user’s repeated exposures to a mobile ad and physical avoidance increases in magnitude when the advertisement involves a context of higher information richness. Our finding bridges the gap in the extant literatures by examining the impact of repeated ad exposure and avoidance on consumers’ mobile ad response. Moreover, we provide practical implications to advertisers on the mobile platform

EFFECTIVENESS OF POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON VOCABULARY RETENTION OF EFL FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Vocabulary learning plays an important role in language learning. To many language learners, lack of vocabulary is one of the biggest obstacles that prevent them from mastering the language. Moreover, there have been a lot of studies conducted to find out the way to help language learners acquire and retain learned vocabulary. Among them, PowerPoint is suggested by many researchers as one good way to help learners learn vocabulary retention through reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of PowerPoint on vocabulary retention in reading comprehension of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) first-year students at Long An University of Economics and Industry (DLA), Long An Province, Vietnam. Besides, this study investigates learners’ attitudes towards the use of PowerPoint in learning vocabulary. The participants were 60 non-English major students at DLA. Two instruments were (1) the tests on English vocabulary, (2) the questionnaire on the participants’ attitudes towards the use of PowerPoint in teaching and learning vocabulary, were investigated. The results demonstrated a significant difference in learners’ vocabulary retention: the participants in the experimental group remembered vocabulary longer than those in the control group. The study showed that the learners had positive attitudes towards the use of PPT (PowerPoint Presentation) in learning vocabulary retention.  Article visualizations

Disparities in Confidence Levels among Parents of Children Seeking Weight Management Treatment

Objectives: To evaluate racial and ethnic disparities in confidence levels among parents of children seeking weight management treatment. To evaluate disparities in confidence levels among parents of children seeking weight management treatment based on parent weight status. To evaluate the association between parent confidence levels and parent perceptions of their weight management provider

Tourism management in Vietnam: Hoian, a case study

Master'sMASTER OF ART