Using attention methods to predict judicial outcomes

Legal Judgment Prediction is one of the most acclaimed fields for the combined area of NLP, AI, and Law. By legal prediction we mean an intelligent systems capable to predict specific judicial characteristics, such as judicial outcome, a judicial class, predict an specific case. In this research, we have used AI classifiers to predict judicial outcomes in the Brazilian legal system. For this purpose, we developed a text crawler to extract data from the official Brazilian electronic legal systems. These texts formed a dataset of second-degree murder and active corruption cases. We applied different classifiers, such as Support Vector Machines and Neural Networks, to predict judicial outcomes by analyzing textual features from the dataset. Our research showed that Regression Trees, Gated Recurring Units and Hierarchical Attention Networks presented higher metrics for different subsets. As a final goal, we explored the weights of one of the algorithms, the Hierarchical Attention Networks, to find a sample of the most important words used to absolve or convict defendants

Customer satisfaction in the Brazilian Fast Food Franchise Segment

In a market with great competition, store image associated with quality and brand  become an important competitive tool, meanly when it was associated to perceived customer satisfaction. The main objective of this study was to analyze the influence of image, brand and quality on customer satisfaction in the fast food segment. Data analysis was conducted through multivariate techniques to verify the significance of the relationship between variables analyzing two of the five biggest fast food channels in Brazil. The results showed that brand and quality were the most valued variables according to perceived customer satisfaction. In the model used, brand presented the greatest explanatory power. Based on the multiple coefficient of determination (adjusted R2), quality, image and brand as a group explained about 62.7% (Franchise 1) and 61.3% (Franchise 2) of the search for satisfaction, being that only quality and brand were statistically significant.

UTILIZAÇÃO DAS EXTENSÕES MULTIMÍDIA DOS PROCESSADORES INTEL® PARA REDUÇÃO DO NÚMERO DE CICLOS PARA A EXECUÇÃO DE PROGRAMAS

A utilização das extensões multimídias com registradores que realizam a mesma operação sobre vários dados ao mesmo tempo (SIMD) dos atuais processadores podem reduzir o tempo de execução de programas que lidam com operações aritméticas sobre grande quantidade de dados. O objetivo deste trabalho foi quantificar o número de ciclos utilizados para o cálculo da correlação cruzada em duas dimensões para várias séries geradas e de diferentes tamanhos, usando a linguagem de programação C e as extensões para cálculo multimídia em Assembly para a codificação das instruções, compilação e execução. A comparação entre os resultados, usando o mesmo algoritmo e conjunto de dados, demonstrou que o programa em Assembly usando a extensão SIMD utilizou 38,37% menos ciclos de processador que a mesma implementação escrita em C

Thesaurus as a complex network

A thesaurus is one, out of many, possible representations of term (or word) connectivity. The terms of a thesaurus are seen as the nodes and their relationship as the links of a directed graph. The directionality of the links retains all the thesaurus information and allows the measurement of several quantities. This has lead to a new term classification according to the characteristics of the nodes, for example, nodes with no links in, no links out, etc. Using an electronic available thesaurus we have obtained the incoming and outgoing link distributions. While the incoming link distribution follows a stretched exponential function, the lower bound for the outgoing link distribution has the same envelope of the scientific paper citation distribution proposed by Albuquerque and Tsallis. However, a better fit is obtained by simpler function which is the solution of Ricatti's differential equation. We conjecture that this differential equation is the continuous limit of a stochastic growth model of the thesaurus network. We also propose a new manner to arrange a thesaurus using the ``inversion method''.Comment: Contribution to the Proceedings of `Trends and Perspectives in Extensive and Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics', in honour of Constantino Tsallis' 60th birthday (submitted Physica A

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Comparação de tecnicas e metodos para visão computacional em ambientes industriais

Orientador: Clesio Luiz TozziDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia EletricaResumo: Este trabalho descreve as duas abordagens mais utilizadas para o reconhecimento de padrões que são: 1) o registro translacional de imagens ("matching") e. 2) o registro simbólico. Dentro desta última são descritas a abordagem decisão-teórica e a abordagem estrutural. Também são discutidas as diferentes etapas em que são envolvidas as abordagens para efetivação do reconhecimento. Como exemplo aplicativo são implementadas as abordagens decisão-teórica e estrutural à classes de figuras geométricas simples. É discutida a viabilidade e adequação das abordagens para o processamento paralelo e o uso em robóticaAbstract: The two major approaches to pattern recognition are described: 1) the signal based ( matching) and the simbolic recognition. ln the last one the decision-theoretic approach and the structural pattern recognition are described. There is a discussion concerning the auxiliar tasks required to achieve pattern recognition in those approaches. An application using geometric shapes is given using theoretic-decision and the structural approaches. There is also an insigth relating to these two methods to parallel processing an roboticsMestradoMestre em Engenharia Elétric

Theoretical Linguistic Structures for Dealing with Treebanks in the Syntactic Context

The linguistic process involves symbols and interpretation, which are fundamental elements both in human language and machine language (be it supervised or unsupervised learning). Axiomatic and logical elements form the basis of language and give clues as to why syntactic parsing distorts rules of language. In this paper we discuss the possibility that syntax and semantics are side by side in the parsing, and the semantics must be in accordance with the dynamic structure of the language, and not decontextualized into label categories, which make the language static. It is also shown that the axiomatic-logical structure is the most adequate to avoid ambiguity in syntactic parsing in any conventional language

Teledermatology in Medical Practice

<p></p><p>ABSTRACT Background Skin diseases are a common cause of service demand on the primary health care system and the majority of these services are not performed by dermatologists. In general, insufficient undergraduate training is reflected in clinical performance and, consequently, in the referenced services, resulting in increased cost. Teledermatology is the practice of dermatology using information technology and communication systems. It consists of information exchanges between a dermatologist and general practitioners (secondary teledermatology) – either simultaneously or sequentially and in different geographical locations. Secondary Teledermatology promises a more efficient, reasonable and faster treatment in dermatological care, despite insufficient evidence regarding the clinical course of the disease. Objective To review the scientific literature which presents evidence of secondary teledermatology in medical practice. Method Review of the literature from 1999 to 2014 on clinical trials, observational studies, reviews and systematic reviews identified in PubMed on secondary. teledermatology in medical practice. In addition to these studies, we have included more recent clinical trials in Brazil on the accuracy or agreement of diagnoses made through secondary teledermatology found in the Lilacs bibliographic database, during the same period as well as other relevant studies from other databases regarding medical education and demographics. Results The 11 most recent and/or relevant studies in relation to the sample and clinical standard of diagnosis were included. The result of this review was divided into four topics: teledermatology efficiency in primary health care; accuracy, compliance or reliability of the teledermatology diagnosis in primary health care in relation to face-to-face dermatology consultation; patient satisfaction and quality of life; and cost of teledermatology in primary health care. Most of these studies reported good efficiency and diagnostic accuracy with lower costs and better quality of life for patients, in particular for those living in rural areas. Conclusion Dermatology is inaccessible without management. We must identify situations in which secondary teledermatology works best, as in remote or underserved areas, allowing patients to have access to dermatologists. The efficiency and accuracy of the diagnoses made through secondary teledermatology is inferior to face-to-face dermatological consultation, but more efficient than the dermatological visits provided by general practitioners.</p><p></p