Effective shared representations with Multitask Learning for Community Question Answering.

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Some annotations about Occupational Health and Safety in Portugal

Artículos especialesEn el transcurso de los últimos dos siglos, los aspectos de la Salud y la Seguridad del Trabajo tienen sido, sistemáticamente, influenciados por innumerables factores económicos, políticos y sociales entre los cuales se destacan, entre otros, la estructura macroeconómica, el nivel de industrialización, la organización (y volumen) de las empresas y el grado de desenvolvimiento (socio-económico y cultural). El avance económico más importante en Portugal ocurrió, históricamente, con la industrialización que se prolongó hasta la llegada del Estado Nuevo (años 30). Hasta el siglo XIX el desarrollo fue lento, disperso, y se redujo esencialmente a la importación de maquinaria de la revolución industrial inglesa y francesa, épocas en las que se realizaron en Portugal obras públicas de grande envergadura1. La influencia negativa de los factores profesionales de la Salud y Seguridad de los trabajadores (SST) envolvió, históricamente, la insalubridad del ambiente de trabajo como factor determinante de la aparición de enfermedades profesionales y de accidentes de trabajo. Las malas condiciones de trabajo, en la perspectiva de la Salud y de la Seguridad, llevaron a la creación de programas de prevención de los riesgos profesionales centrados, por un lado, en el ambiente de trabajo y, por otro lado, en la protección de la salud de los trabajadores expuestos.N

Multitask Learning with Deep Neural Networks for Community Question Answering

In this paper, we developed a deep neural network (DNN) that learns to solve simultaneously the three tasks of the cQA challenge proposed by the SemEval-2016 Task 3, i.e., question-comment similarity, question-question similarity and new question-comment similarity. The latter is the main task, which can exploit the previous two for achieving better results. Our DNN is trained jointly on all the three cQA tasks and learns to encode questions and comments into a single vector representation shared across the multiple tasks. The results on the official challenge test set show that our approach produces higher accuracy and faster convergence rates than the individual neural networks. Additionally, our method, which does not use any manual feature engineering, approaches the state of the art established with methods that make heavy use of it

Rigid Object Tracking Algorithms for Low-Cost AR Devices

Augmented reality (AR) applications rely on robust and efficient methods for tracking. Tracking methods use a computer-internal representation of the object to track, which can be either sparse or dense representations. Sparse representations use only a limited set of feature points to represent an object to track, whereas dense representations almost mimic the shape of an object. While algorithms performed on sparse representations are faster, dense representations can distinguish multiple objects. The research presented in this paper investigates the feasibility of a dense tracking method for rigid object tracking, which incorporates the both object identification and object tracking steps. We adopted a tracking method that has been developed for the Microsoft Kinect to support single object tracking. The paper describes this method and presents the results. We also compared two different methods for mesh reconstruction in this algorithm. Since meshes are more informative when identifying a rigid object, this comparison indicates which algorithm shows the best performance for this task and guides our future research efforts

Effects of bonding on the performance of optical fiber strain sensors

[EN] The structural health monitoring (SHM) of existing buildings, structures, and infrastructures has become increasingly important in recent years, while the interest of the scientific community is focused on the use of new high-performance technologies. Fiber optic sensors have become particularly attractive, thanks to their potential for monitoring strain in smart structures. The performance of this new technology depends to a large extent on the bonding technique used for its manufacture. Although the related literature has identified a correlation between some efficiency issues and the geometrical parameters of the bonding and mechanical properties of the materials adopted, the phenomenon is still not completely understood. This paper describes an in-depth study of the geometrical and mechanical parameters that influence the efficiency of optical fiber point sensors' surface bonding by synergistically related techniques such as computational simulation, experimental tests, sensor manufacturing, and data analysis. The paper's novelty is fourfold: (1) the investigation of the strain transfer mechanism of surface-bonded fiber optic sensors by considering, for the first time, all the parameters influencing the phenomenon through a considerable number of finite element (FE) analyses (117 three-dimensional FE models); (2) the development of a series of bonding efficiency predictive models; (3) the design of a specific laboratory test to validate the computational outcomes; and (4) the definition of useful guidelines for effective bonding manufacturing in order to maximize the performance of these sensors when acquiring monitoring data.Project Manufacturing Education and Training Governance Model; Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Grant/Award Number: PAID-01-18; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Grant/Award Number: DIMENSION TEC2017-88029-R; H2020 Marie SklodowskaCurie Actions, Grant/Award Number: 722509Floris, I.; Sangiorgio, V.; Adam, JM.; Uva, G.; Rapido, M.; Calderón García, PA.; Madrigal-Madrigal, J. (2021). Effects of bonding on the performance of optical fiber strain sensors. Structural Control and Health Monitoring. 28(9):1-23. https://doi.org/10.1002/stc.278212328

The Future Looks Good: Examining the Associations Between Coping, Psychological Distress, and Optimism

The recent pandemic and consequent lockdown had a substantial impact on mental health and optimism regarding the future. Previous research showed that levels of depression, anxiety, and stress had increased throughout the pandemic. Nonetheless, how individuals cope when faced with adversity may be associated with positive expectations regarding the future. A sample of 274 Portuguese workers (female = 54) with a mean age of 40.86 (SD = 0.70) and work experience of 19.68 years (SD = 12.07) met inclusion criteria and agreed to participate in the proposed study. They represented a variety of working classes (i.e., arts, engineering, marketers, transportation and logistic, clerks, personal trainers, managers, lawyers, accountants, directors, journalism, health care). We investigated the associations between depression, stress, anxiety, adaptive and maladaptive coping, and optimism while controlling for working experience, gender, and work type. We found that depression was related to lower levels of optimism. However, for participants scoring high on adaptive coping and anxiety, higher scores of optimism were reported. Gender, work type, and experience did not significantly influence the results. These results provide evidence through which positive mental health can be promoted after the pandemic.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Morphology of the optic nerve head in glaucomatous eyes with visual field defects in superior or inferior hemifield

To evaluate the morphology of optic nerve head (ONH) and border tissue (BT) of Elschnig in glaucomatous eyes with visual field defects in superior or inferior hemifield

An Optical System to Monitor the Displacement Field of Glass-fibre Posts Subjected to Thermal Loading

Endocanalar posts are necessary to build up and retain coronal restorations but they do not reinforce dental roots. It was observed that the dislodgement of post-retained restorations commonly occurs after several years of function and long-term retention may be influenced by various factors such as temperature changes. Temperature changes, in fact, produce micrometric deformations of post and surrounding tissues/materials that may generate high stress concentrations at the interface thus leading to failure. In this study we present an optical system based on the projection moiré technique that has been utilized to monitor the displacement field of endocanalar glass-fibre posts subjected to temperature changes. Measurements were performed on forty samples and the average displacement values registered at the apical and middle region were determined for six different temperature levels. A total of 480 displacement measurements was hence performed. The values of the standard deviation computed for each of the tested temperatures over the forty samples appear reasonably small which proves the robustness and the reliability of the proposed optical technique. The possible implications for the use of the system in the applicative context were discussed