Custom Rates Paid by South Dakota Farmers in 1962

Custom rates paid by South Dakota farmers in 1962 discusses the high initial cost of farm machinery, coupled with low annual use causing farmers to turn to custom work for some of their operations and the costs involved

Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for Web-Scale Recommender Systems

Recent advancements in deep neural networks for graph-structured data have led to state-of-the-art performance on recommender system benchmarks. However, making these methods practical and scalable to web-scale recommendation tasks with billions of items and hundreds of millions of users remains a challenge. Here we describe a large-scale deep recommendation engine that we developed and deployed at Pinterest. We develop a data-efficient Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) algorithm PinSage, which combines efficient random walks and graph convolutions to generate embeddings of nodes (i.e., items) that incorporate both graph structure as well as node feature information. Compared to prior GCN approaches, we develop a novel method based on highly efficient random walks to structure the convolutions and design a novel training strategy that relies on harder-and-harder training examples to improve robustness and convergence of the model. We also develop an efficient MapReduce model inference algorithm to generate embeddings using a trained model. We deploy PinSage at Pinterest and train it on 7.5 billion examples on a graph with 3 billion nodes representing pins and boards, and 18 billion edges. According to offline metrics, user studies and A/B tests, PinSage generates higher-quality recommendations than comparable deep learning and graph-based alternatives. To our knowledge, this is the largest application of deep graph embeddings to date and paves the way for a new generation of web-scale recommender systems based on graph convolutional architectures.Comment: KDD 201

Site and Stand Characterists

Outbreak of western budworm occur over a wide geographic range, and populations are successful from warm, dry interior Douglas-fir types to cool, moist subalpine fire/spruce types. This wide distribution across environmental gradients and forest types could simple suggest that the budworm has broad adaptability. Outbreak frequency and infestation intensity vary considerably, however, which suggests budworm populations may be responding to an ecological similarity that exists among these seemingly diverse habitats. The common feature appears to be physiological stress in host trees

Globalization Issues in Information Systems Education: Toward a Collaborative Multischool Systems Analysis Experience

The problems and complexity associated with globalization directly impact the Information Systems curriculum, especially with respect to the formation and management of teams of systems analysts. Though it is not feasible, nor desirable, to provide instruction to IS students in how to relate to all cultures when confronted with team membership whose occupants possess differing skills, cultures, and beliefs, a suitable experience can be given to students in the Systems Analysis class. Extending beyond the usual set of well-defined, unambiguous in-class problems is the external real-world problem in which complexity and ambiguity reign in problems stretching beyond traditional borders and into the global marketplace. To provide the Systems Analysis and Design class with a simulated experience of working in the global environment we have utilized actual problems from the commercial, governmental, manufacturing, and nonprofit industries. To experience these situations and provide for the development of some expertise in dealing with these problems, students are placed into teams and given the responsibility for problem solving to the satisfaction of the industry principals. Two types of student teams are identified: homogeneous or single school teams, and heterogeneous (dyad or triad) school teams. Homogeneous teams share common instruction, a common body of knowledge, and inter-team commitment and accountability, while heterogeneous teams find incompatibilities in their basic level of shared and unshared knowledge, CASE tools, methodological approaches to problem solving, commitment to solving the problem, and team accountability. Homogeneous team experiences are useful in establishing team work habits and allowing students the opportunity of dealing with known personalities, and heterogeneous teams extend that experience to include opportunities involving unknown individual personalities, intra-team commitment and accountability, and the pressure of deriving an acceptable solution regardless of obstacles. We suggest this experience can be used to satisfy portions of sections 2.4, 2.10, and 3.7 in the IS\u2795 Model Curriculum

A radiation-hard dual-channel 12-bit 40 MS/s ADC prototype for the ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter readout electronics upgrade at the CERN LHC

The readout electronics upgrade for the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeters at the CERN Large Hadron Collider requires a radiation-hard ADC. The design of a radiation-hard dual-channel 12-bit 40 MS/s pipeline ADC for this use is presented. The design consists of two pipeline A/D channels each with four Multiplying Digital-to-Analog Converters followed by 8-bit Successive-Approximation-Register analog-to-digital converters. The custom design, fabricated in a commercial 130 nm CMOS process, shows a performance of 67.9 dB SNDR at 10 MHz for a single channel at 40 MS/s, with a latency of 87.5 ns (to first bit read out), while its total power consumption is 50 mW/channel. The chip uses two power supply voltages: 1.2 and 2.5 V. The sensitivity to single event effects during irradiation is measured and determined to meet the system requirements

An example of a virtual reality learning environment

Using photographic, computer graphical and experimental data, a pilot model of a tornadic supercell thunderstorm was created in a virtual environment at Iowa State University. One goal of the project was to give students the virtual experience of being in the field, experiencing the dramatic features of typical tornadic supercells, and stimulating them to explore and ask questions in this learning environment. Initial feedback from the prototype version was favorable

The use of radiolaria in the stratigraphy of deep-sea sediments

Thesis (M.Sc) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Earth Sciences, 195