Finding Answers from the Word of God: Domain Adaptation for Neural Networks in Biblical Question Answering

Question answering (QA) has significantly benefitted from deep learning techniques in recent years. However, domain-specific QA remains a challenge due to the significant amount of data required to train a neural network. This paper studies the answer sentence selection task in the Bible domain and answer questions by selecting relevant verses from the Bible. For this purpose, we create a new dataset BibleQA based on bible trivia questions and propose three neural network models for our task. We pre-train our models on a large-scale QA dataset, SQuAD, and investigate the effect of transferring weights on model accuracy. Furthermore, we also measure the model accuracies with different answer context lengths and different Bible translations. We affirm that transfer learning has a noticeable improvement in the model accuracy. We achieve relatively good results with shorter context lengths, whereas longer context lengths decreased model accuracy. We also find that using a more modern Bible translation in the dataset has a positive effect on the task.Comment: The paper has been accepted at IJCNN 201

Children's Health: Evaluating the Impact of Digital Technology. Final Report for Sunderland City Council.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Children’s Health project sponsored by the City of Sunderland Digital Challenge project examined the impact of providing health-focused digital technologies to children aged 11-15 years, in terms of their usage and requirements of such technologies, and their subsequent behavioural changes. The empirical study ran with three groups of six children over a period of seven weeks for each group. A console-based exercise game and an exercise-focused social website were used in the study and the focus was on opportunistic (unstructured/unplanned) exercise. The emergent findings are: • Data collected about physical activity must be more extensive than simple step counts. • Data collection technologies for activities must be ubiquitous but invisible. • Social interaction via technology is expected; positive messages reinforcing attainments of goals are valued; negative feedback is seen as demotivating. • participants were very open to sharing information (privacy was not a concern). • Authority figures have a significant impact on restricting adolescents’ use of technologies. This document reports the how the study was conducted, analyses the findings and draws conclusions from these regarding how to use digital technologies to improve and/or maintain the physical activity levels of children throughout their adolescence and on into adulthood. The appendices provide the detailed (anonymised) data collected during the study and the background literature review

Features of Born-Global Processing Plants under the Global Economy

A Born-Global Processing Plant (BGPP) is the formation of a new manufacturing plant specifically for the world-wide outsourcing industry and is a unique product of the global economy. The concept of a Born-Global entity has been mainly associated with high-tech industries and high-tech products. In this paper we extend the term BGPP to cover the concept of Born-Global to mature/low-tech and labor intensive processing plants that produce many of the traditional manufactured products. Such processing plants form the backbone of Southern China’s economic development. The conventional view regards a BGPP as playing a minor role in a traditional multinational enterprise (MNE), and for this reason the role of BGPP’s in traditional MNE’s has not received any significant attention from researchers. In this paper we examine the BGPP and its related global supply chain from the viewpoint of the global economy, using case examples from mature/low-tech and labor intensive processing plants in Pearl River Delta (PRD) of Southern China

Identification of a 17-Nucleotide Splicing Enhancer in HPV-16 L1 that Counteracts the Effect of Multiple hnRNP A1-binding Splicing Silencers

Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) infections can in rare cases persist and cause lesions that may progress to cervical cancer. Cells in the lesions are not permissive for virus production, nor are cervical cancer cells. The intracellular environment is such that it prevents production of the highly immunogenic, viral structural proteins L1 and L2. One may speculate that inhibition of L1 and L2 expression is a prerequisite for persistence and cancer progression.We have therefore investigated how expression of HPV-16 L1 is regulated.We found that the only splice site in the HPV-16 late region, which is used to produce L1 mRNAs, is under control of a splicing enhancer located in the 17 nucleotides immediately downstream of the splice site. However, the function of this enhancer in cervical cancer cells is largely overshadowed by multiple splicing silencers in the late region which bind to hnRNP A1. High levels of hnRNP A1 therefore inhibit HPV-16 L1 expression. Immunohistological analysis of cervical epithelia revealed that hnRNPA1 is expressed primarily in the lower layers of the epithelium. hnRNPA1 is undetectable in terminally differentiated cells that can express HPV-16 late genes, which supports the conclusion that high levels of hnRNP A1 inhibit HPV-16 L1 expression

Double degree destinations: nursing or midwifery

Background: Double degrees in nursing and midwifery have evolved in Australia as a proposed solution to possible impending shortages of qualified midwives in the healthcare workforce. The double degree is seen as a more acceptable option in non-metropolitan areas in particular. Concern has been expressed however, about dilution of midwifery philosophy and graduates’ opportunities in respect of future clinical practice. Aim: This study aimed to provide a better understanding of motivations and intentions of students who undertake the Bachelor of Nursing Science/Bachelor of Midwifery double degree. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was employed at four universities that offered double degrees in nursing and midwifery in three states of Australia. Students enrolled in first and fourth year of a double degree and graduates of a double degree were invited to complete an online survey comprised of Likert scales and items requiring free text responses. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS and thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. Findings: Participants indicated a clear preference for midwifery as a career with this preference increasing for each cohort at each stage of study. Discussion: Primary reasons for selecting a double degree were perceived increased opportunity for employment and use of nursing skills to enhance midwifery practice in a population with growing co-morbidities. A strong identification with midwifery philosophy and identity was also demonstrated. Conclusion: An understanding of motivations and career intentions of students undertaking double degree studies can inform future program development and workforce planning

Dual degree destinations: Nursing or Midwifery?

Midwifery bodies have expressed concern that the competing ideologies of nursing science, which is closer to a medical model of care, and of midwifery can be confusing for students and counterproductive to their education as effective midwives. Proponents of dual nursing and midwifery degrees, however, argue that there is a need in rural and regional areas of Australia for graduate nurses and midwives who understand both of these ideologies and ways of working and are able to apply them both, in context, to practice in rural and regional areas. Until midwifery led model of care options become more readily accessible in rural areas, this dual nursing/midwifery qualification serves these areas well. Anecdotally, students enrolled in this dual degree appear to be focussed on careers as midwives. This study is uses a cross-sectional survey design to survey students enrolled in years one and four of two different four year dual nursing and midwifery degrees to ascertain preferences for practice area at these two stages of the course and graduates of the program at 12-36 months post-graduation to ascertain place/field of employment at this time frame. Cross sectional survey design allows data to be collected from different cohorts at varying times on the student and graduate trajectory at the same time. HREC approval is in place. Data will be downloaded and subjected to simple descriptive analyses using SPSS. Responses from each cohort will be compared to ascertain differences between proposed career trajectories of each of the student cohorts against actual positions of the graduate cohort. This study aims to provide a better understanding of students' motivations and intentions in studying a Bachelor of Nursing Science/Bachelor of Midwifery dual degree. This information is useful when considering implications for the nursing and midwifery workforces, particularly in relation to the issue of maldistribution

The Impact of Urbanization on Farmland Productivity: Implications for China’s Requisition–Compensation Balance of Farmland Policy

The rapid growth of China’s economy since the reform in 1978 should be largely attributed to urbanization. Nonetheless, in terms of farmland productivity, urbanization may lead to perverse incentives and thus threaten food security. On the one hand, the requisition−compensation balance of farmland (RCBF) policy could reduce farmland productivity because of a “superior occupation and inferior compensation”; on the other hand, urbanization promotes the transfer of the younger labor force and thus reduces the productivity of the agricultural labor force. To investigate the undesirable effects, based on some stylized facts, this study selects 29,415 county-level samples in a Chinese county from 2000−2014 to construct an empirical model. With a new stochastic frontier analysis method that eliminates the classical econometric issues of endogeneity and heterogeneity, the empirical results show that there is a U-shaped relationship between the farmland use efficiency (productivity) and urbanization rate, indicating that only when the urbanization rate is relatively low would urbanization decrease the farmland use efficiency; in contrast, when the urbanization rate is relatively high, technical progress would obviously be accompanied by urbanization, and thus, the undesirable effects are fully offset. Furthermore, the U-shaped relationship is robust after considering the endogeneity of the urbanization rate and total-factor farmland use efficiency. With these findings, recommendations to implement sustainable management and conservation policies regarding farmland resources are made