Online Clustering of Bandits

We introduce a novel algorithmic approach to content recommendation based on adaptive clustering of exploration-exploitation ("bandit") strategies. We provide a sharp regret analysis of this algorithm in a standard stochastic noise setting, demonstrate its scalability properties, and prove its effectiveness on a number of artificial and real-world datasets. Our experiments show a significant increase in prediction performance over state-of-the-art methods for bandit problems.Comment: In E. Xing and T. Jebara (Eds.), Proceedings of 31st International Conference on Machine Learning, Journal of Machine Learning Research Workshop and Conference Proceedings, Vol.32 (JMLR W&CP-32), Beijing, China, Jun. 21-26, 2014 (ICML 2014), Submitted by Shuai Li (https://sites.google.com/site/shuailidotsli

Self Determination and Quality of Life: A Comparison of the Measurement Scales For Students With Intellectual Disabilities

Self-determination is a key concept to promote greater self-awareness in the subjects with disability, to build appropriate educational or professional projects and to evaluate the already active programs. Using PRISMA checklist, I selected articles from different databases (CINAHL, Medline, Psych INFO, Cochrane Library, ERIC, Scholar. The 9 evaluation measures identified are analyzed with respect to: choice of the points of view to be collected, domains, items and data collection methods. The results show that while some scales focus on autonomy, empowerment, self-realisation and self-regulation and others focus on knowledge, skills and abilities, attitudes and beliefs. Two instruments added also: opportunities and support. With respect to the choice of the points of view to be collected: in some cases the student's opinion is collected but in other cases their point of view is integrated or replaced with that of teachers and parents. Only one tool is designed for all children and starts from the belief that self-determination is important for all people, including those with a disability. A third element of the analysis is the possibility of answering the questions posed by the various evaluation tools. A typical form is Likert scale while in other cases open questions are used. The analysis highlights two critical issues. The variety of definitions of self-determination is inevitably reflected in the choice of domains and items and therefore self-determination is only partially investigated. Secondly the opinion and people with disabilities are sometimes completed or replaced by that of third persons as parents and teachers. Starting from the analysis of existing instruments. the article closes with a reflection on the possibility of constructing a scale that considers all the aspects of self-determination offered in the literature (at the individual and environmental level) and collects the opinion of all the subjects involved in self-determination projects. This synthesis represents a first step in the construction of a possible universal scale starting from the analysis of the literature. A comparison would then be necessary with the students with intellectual disabilities, the family members and the other actors involved to understand which domains are really meaningful to them and to build indicators that correspond to the elements that are important to them. In this way we would have a tool capable of combining the point of view of literature with that of the people directly involved

Being a parent of a child with a disability in Italy: from diagnosis to starting school

The birth of a child with a disability is a critical event for the whole family. Through in-depth interviews and two focus groups, I collected the testimonies of a group of parents who talked about their experience from being given the diagnosis to their children starting school. The data were analysed using a phenomenological approach in order to report the participants' points of view. The results show the importance of three key elements that can affect the experience: how the diagnosis is communicated; a comparison with what society defines as normal; family involvement in the creation of a program that helps the child with a disability to start school. Collaboration between teachers and families can help families to take an active role and to design interventions that will enable both the child and the parents to have positive experiences regarding school

Segmental Spatiotemporal CNNs for Fine-grained Action Segmentation

Joint segmentation and classification of fine-grained actions is important for applications of human-robot interaction, video surveillance, and human skill evaluation. However, despite substantial recent progress in large-scale action classification, the performance of state-of-the-art fine-grained action recognition approaches remains low. We propose a model for action segmentation which combines low-level spatiotemporal features with a high-level segmental classifier. Our spatiotemporal CNN is comprised of a spatial component that uses convolutional filters to capture information about objects and their relationships, and a temporal component that uses large 1D convolutional filters to capture information about how object relationships change across time. These features are used in tandem with a semi-Markov model that models transitions from one action to another. We introduce an efficient constrained segmental inference algorithm for this model that is orders of magnitude faster than the current approach. We highlight the effectiveness of our Segmental Spatiotemporal CNN on cooking and surgical action datasets for which we observe substantially improved performance relative to recent baseline methods.Comment: Updated from the ECCV 2016 version. We fixed an important mathematical error and made the section on segmental inference cleare

Valutare la qualità della vita nei soggetti con demenza: una rassegna delle principali scale di misurazione

Evaluating the quality of life of people with dementia is important both fortheir life and for the impact on the services dedicated to them. This reviewidentifies and analyzes the main measurement scales described in the literature.The selected articles are 138 (including 124 researches and 14 reviewsof the literature, for each scale are analyzed: theoretical background, domainsand items, participants, type of dementia and evaluation methods.This review emphasizes the need to further deepen the methods of involvementof people with dementia and the use of the information collected topromote a better quality of life of the people and to improve the servicesfor them.Valutare la qualità della vita dei soggetti con demenza è importante sia perla loro vita che per l’impatto sui servizi a loro dedicati. Questa rassegnaidentifica le principali scale di misurazione presenti nella letteratura. Gli articoliselezionati sono 138 (di cui 124 ricerche e 14 rassegne della letteratura);per ogni scala sono analizzati: sfondo teorico di riferimento, domini eitems, soggetti a cui viene sottoposta, tipologia di demenza e modalità divalutazione. Dall’analisi emerge la necessità di approfondire ulteriormentele modalità di coinvolgimento dei soggetti con demenza e l’utilizzo delle informazioniraccolte per favorire una migliore qualità di vita e migliorare iservizi a loro destinati