Real-Time Recommendation of Streamed Data

This tutorial addressed two trending topics in the field of recommender systems research, namely A/B testing and real-time recommendations of streamed data. Focusing on the news domain, participants learned how to benchmark the performance of stream-based recommendation algorithms in a live recommender system and in a simulated environment

A Lattice Boltzmann Method for the Advection-Diffusion Equation with Neumann Boundary Conditions

In this paper, we study a lattice Boltzmann method for the advection-diffusion equation with Neumann boundary conditions on general boundaries. A novel mass conservative scheme is introduced for implementing such boundary con- ditions, and is analyzed both theoretically and numerically. Second order convergence is predicted by the theoretical analysis, and numerical investigations show that the convergence is at or close to the predicted rate. The nu- merical investigations include time-dependent problems and a steady-state diffusion problem for computation of effective diffusion coefficients

Benchmarking News Recommendations in a Living Lab

Most user-centric studies of information access systems in literature suffer from unrealistic settings or limited numbers of users who participate in the study. In order to address this issue, the idea of a living lab has been promoted. Living labs allow us to evaluate research hypotheses using a large number of users who satisfy their information need in a real context. In this paper, we introduce a living lab on news recommendation in real time. The living lab has first been organized as News Recommendation Challenge at ACM RecSys’13 and then as campaign-style evaluation lab NEWSREEL at CLEF’14. Within this lab, researchers were asked to provide news article recommendations to millions of users in real time. Different from user studies which have been performed in a laboratory, these users are following their own agenda. Consequently, laboratory bias on their behavior can be neglected. We outline the living lab scenario and the experimental setup of the two benchmarking events. We argue that the living lab can serve as reference point for the implementation of living labs for the evaluation of information access systems

Overview of CLEF NEWSREEL 2014: News Recommendations Evaluation Labs

This paper summarises objectives, organisation, and results of the first news recommendation evaluation lab (NEWSREEL 2014). NEWSREEL targeted the evaluation of news recommendation algorithms in the form of a campaignstyle evaluation lab. Participants had the chance to apply two types of evaluation schemes. On the one hand, participants could apply their algorithms onto a data set. We refer to this setting as off-line evaluation. On the other hand, participants could deploy their algorithms on a server to interactively receive recommendation requests. We refer to this setting as on-line evaluation. This setting ought to reveal the actual performance of recommendation methods. The competition strived to illustrate differences between evaluation with historical data and actual users. The on-line evaluation does reflect all requirements which active recommender systems face in practise. These requirements include real-time responses and large-scale data volumes. We present the competition’s results and discuss commonalities regarding participants’ approaches

The plista dataset

Releasing datasets has fostered research in fields such as information retrieval and recommender systems. Datasets are typically tailored for specific scenarios. In this work, we present the plista dataset. The dataset contains a collection of news articles published on 13 news portals. Additionally, the dataset comprises user interactions with those articles. We inctroduce the dataset’s main characteristics. Further, we illustrate possible applications of the dataset

Fehlinterpretationen der Weltgesellschaftstheorie: Eine Antwort auf Markus Holzingers Kritik der Weltgesellschaftsforschung

Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag antwortet auf Markus Holzingers kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der soziologischen Weltgesellschaftsforschung und unserem Beitrag "Wie ist Globalisierung möglich?" (KZfSS 63/2011) in diesem Heft der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Wir plädieren wie schon in unserem Aufsatz dafür, das heuristische Potenzial soziologischer Weltgesellschaftstheorie weiter zu schärfen und für die Entwicklung einer historischen Soziologie der Globalisierung zu nutzen, anstatt Frontenbildungen in der soziologischen Theorie nun auch auf die Globalisierungsforschung zu übertragen. Dazu fassen wir zunächst (Abschn.2) die Kernaussagen unseres Textes noch einmal zusammen und zeigen, an welchen Stellen wir uns von Holzinger fehlinterpretiert sehen. Vor diesem Hintergrund diskutieren wir (Abschn.3) ein zentrales Forschungsinteresse der soziologischen Weltgesellschaftsforschung - das Verhältnis zwischen globalen Strukturen (Erwartungen, Institutionen) einerseits und lokalen Aneignungen und Abkopplungen andererseits - am Beispiel der Entkopplungsthese der World Polity-Forschung

Randomized Controlled Trial of Individualized Arousal-Biofeedback for children and adolescents with Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBD)

Background: Disruptive behavior disorders (including conduct disorder (CD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)) are common childhood and adolescent psychiatric conditions often linked to altered arousal. The recommended first-line treatment is multi-modal therapy and includes psychosocial and behavioral interventions. Their modest effect sizes along with clinically and biologically heterogeneous phenotypes, emphasize the need for innovative personalized treatment targeting impaired functions such as arousal dysregulation. Methods: A total of 37 children aged 8-14 years diagnosed with ODD/CD were randomized to 20 sessions of individualized arousal biofeedback using skin conductance levels (SCL-BF) or active treatment as usual (TAU) including psychoeducation and cognitive-behavioral elements. The primary outcome was the change in parents´ ratings of aggressive behavior measured by the Modified Overt Aggression Scale. Secondary outcome measures were subscales from the Child Behavior Checklist, the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional traits and the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. Results: The SCL-BF treatment was neither superior nor inferior to the active TAU. Both groups showed reduced aggression after treatment with small effects for the primary outcome and large effects for some secondary outcomes. Importantly, successful learning of SCL self-regulation was related to reduced aggression at post-assessment. Conclusions: Individualized SCL-BF was not inferior to active TAU for any treatment outcome with improvements in aggression. Further, participants were on average able to self-regulate their SCL, and those who best learned self-regulation showed the highest clinical improvement, pointing to specificity of SCL-BF regulation for improving aggression. Further studies with larger samples and improved methods, for example by developing BF for mobile use in ecologically more valid settings are warranted

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis