Adaptive Momentum for Neural Network Optimization

In this thesis, we develop a novel and efficient algorithm for optimizing neural networks inspired by a recently proposed geodesic optimization algorithm. Our algorithm, which we call Stochastic Geodesic Optimization (SGeO), utilizes an adaptive coefficient on top of Polyaks Heavy Ball method effectively controlling the amount of weight put on the previous update to the parameters based on the change of direction in the optimization path. Experimental results on strongly convex functions with Lipschitz gradients and deep Autoencoder benchmarks show that SGeO reaches lower errors than established first-order methods and competes well with lower or similar errors to a recent second-order method called K-FAC (Kronecker-Factored Approximate Curvature). We also incorporate Nesterov style lookahead gradient into our algorithm (SGeO-N) and observe notable improvements. We believe that our research will open up new directions for high-dimensional neural network optimization where combining the efficiency of first-order methods and the effectiveness of second-order methods proves a promising avenue to explore

Decenntralization and Democratic Local Governance in Ghana: Assessing the Performance of District Assemblies and Exploring the Scope of Partnerships

Matthias Zana Naab, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2005This study examines decentralization and democratic local governance in Ghana by assessing the effectiveness of the performance of District Assemblies (DAs) in order to better understand how DAs plan, implement, and manage development activities in close partnership with communities. It applied the proposition that decentralization and democratic local governance are expected to result in more efficient, effective, sustainable, and equitable outcomes through the hypotheses that decentralization results in more effective local government; more responsive local government; local government that is democratic, more accountable, and more participatory; local people having more positive perceptions of government; and local governments providing high quality services that respond to local demands.Engaging in both exploratory and explanatory research, this study identifies important variables and relationships as well as plausible causal networks that shaped local government and governance in Ghana. Using an inductive and theory-building design, it explains a model of decentralized governance and highlights potential partnership arrangements for the effective engagement of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) in complementing the efforts of local governments.The results of decentralization, interpreted through questionnaires as well as stories and conversations with local people in two Ghanaian District Assemblies, was a combination of success and failure. In the two case study districts, the assemblies have resulted in a slight increase in development projects and services. However, the poor level of local revenue mobilization has limited the ability of the assemblies to finance significant development projects in their districts. Consequently, this has forced the assemblies to depend on the District Assemblies' Common Fund as well as on external donor funded projects and programs and on local people in self-help projects. The analysis of revenue and expenditure patterns in the two districts showed that per capita development spending was low, while recurrent expenditure and spending on local government infrastructure was high. District assemblies and CBOs often remain unwilling partners, and both are faced with serious capacity constraints which militate against structuring effective partnerships for service delivery. The successful implementation of decentralization depends on the degree to which national political leaders are committed to decentralization, and the ability and willingness of the national bureaucracy to facilitate and support decentralized development. Therefore, the ongoing process of decentralization in Ghana must be seen in the broader context of a deliberate redirection and change in the internal regulatory framework of the state

Langmuir probe surveys of an arcjet exhaust

Electrostatic (Langmuir) probes of both spherical and cylindrical geometry have been used to obtain electron number density and temperature in the exhaust of a laboratory arcjet. The arcjet thruster operated on nitrogen and hydrogen mixtures to simulate fully decomposed hydrazine in a vacuum environment with background pressures less than 0.05 Pa. The exhaust appears to be only slightly ionized (less than 1 percent) with local plasma potentials near facility ground. The current-voltage characteristics of the probes indicate a Maxwellian temperature distribution. Plume data are presented as a function of arcjet operating conditions and also position in the exhaust

Rail accelerator technology and applications

Rail accelerators offer a viable means of launching ton-size payloads from the Earth's surface to space. The results of two mission studies which indicate that an Earth-to-Space Rail Launcher (ESRL) system is not only technically feasible but also economically beneficial, particularly when large amounts of bulk cago are to be delivered to space are given. An in-house experimental program at the Lewis Research Center (LeRC) was conducted in parallel with the mission studies with the objective of examining technical feasibility issues. A 1 m long - 12.5 by 12.5 mm bore rail accelerator as designed with clear polycarbonate sidewalls to visually observe the plasma armature acceleration. The general character of plasma/projectile dynamics is described for a typical test firing

IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE SITE PLANNING AND DESIGN PRINCIPLES IN URBAN DESIGN

In my article, I have explored a concern for the relationship between the implementation of sustainable site planning and design principles and the integration of building location, in the context of achieving a state of coexistence between the two: first, the encouragement of new developments and renovation of existing ones and second, the limitation of the environmental impact of buildings on regional ecosystems. This concern originated from the trend of modern society's constant separation from the natural environment and the resulting negative impacts on human health and well-being. As inhabitants, we are constantly influenced by as well as continuously influencing the prevailing urban conditions. Reduction of open space areas and landscape site conditions, increasing impervious surfaces and the resulting runoff water volume, heat absorbed from paved surfaces, unnecessary light pollution to the night sky, distances from public transportation, automobile fuel consumption and emission contributing to pollution, are among several pressing environmental conditions that require our attention. In response, the importance of a study of inclusion of environmentally sensitive elements into the project is evident. The outcomes of the study are to include the sustainable principles with the education process and to inform the practice of urban design with the knowledge of viewing sustainability as a different approach that purifies the urban design process further. A detailed analysis of the benefits of sustainable design will make the design potential of these concepts understandable. Implementations of sustainable site planning and design principles allow buildings to take advantage of natural systems such as climate, topography, sun, wind, rain, and groundwater. In addition, they contribute to the design of naturally enriched spaces where the buildings and designed interstitial spaces serve as the link between the person and natural environment. A link that is crucial in the future of our cities and of our well-being

PROSPECTS FOR EXPANDED EGG PRODUCTION IN WESTERN CANADA

This research project is an assessment of potential competitiveness of the egg industry in Manitoba compared to other western provinces, eastern Canada and the US.Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics,

Parallel Hierarchies: Interactive Visualization of Multidimensional Hierarchical Aggregates

Exploring multi-dimensional hierarchical data is a long-standing problem present in a wide range of fields such as bioinformatics, software systems, social sciences and business intelligence. While each hierarchical dimension within these data structures can be explored in isolation, critical information lies in the relationships between dimensions. Existing approaches can either simultaneously visualize multiple non-hierarchical dimensions, or only one or two hierarchical dimensions. Yet, the challenge of visualizing multi-dimensional hierarchical data remains open. To address this problem, we developed a novel data visualization approach -- Parallel Hierarchies -- that we demonstrate on a real-life SAP SE product called SAP Product Lifecycle Costing. The starting point of the research is a thorough customer-driven requirement engineering phase including an iterative design process. To avoid restricting ourselves to a domain-specific solution, we abstract the data and tasks gathered from users, and demonstrate the approach generality by applying Parallel Hierarchies to datasets from bioinformatics and social sciences. Moreover, we report on a qualitative user study conducted in an industrial scenario with 15 experts from 9 different companies. As a result of this co-innovation experience, several SAP customers requested a product feature out of our solution. Moreover, Parallel Hierarchies integration as a standard diagram type into SAP Analytics Cloud platform is in progress. This thesis further introduces different uncertainty representation methods applicable to Parallel Hierarchies and in general to flow diagrams. We also present a visual comparison taxonomy for time-series of hierarchically structured data with one or multiple dimensions. Moreover, we propose several visual solutions for comparing hierarchies employing flow diagrams. Finally, after presenting two application examples of Parallel Hierarchies on industrial datasets, we detail two validation methods to examine the effectiveness of the visualization solution. Particularly, we introduce a novel design validation table to assess the perceptual aspects of eight different visualization solutions including Parallel Hierarchies.:1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation and Problem Statement 1.2 Research Goals 1.3 Outline and Contributions 2 Foundations of Visualization 2.1 Information Visualization 2.1.1 Terms and Definition 2.1.2 What: Data Structures 2.1.3 Why: Visualization Tasks 2.1.4 How: Visualization Techniques 2.1.5 How: Interaction Techniques 2.2 Visual Perception 2.2.1 Visual Variables 2.2.2 Attributes of Preattentive and Attentive Processing 2.2.3 Gestalt Principles 2.3 Flow Diagrams 2.3.1 Classifications of Flow Diagrams 2.3.2 Main Visual Features 2.4 Summary 3 Related Work 3.1 Cross-tabulating Hierarchical Categories 3.1.1 Visualizing Categorical Aggregates of Item Sets 3.1.2 Hierarchical Visualization of Categorical Aggregates 3.1.3 Visualizing Item Sets and Their Hierarchical Properties 3.1.4 Hierarchical Visualization of Categorical Set Aggregates 3.2 Uncertainty Visualization 3.2.1 Uncertainty Taxonomies 3.2.2 Uncertainty in Flow Diagrams 3.3 Time-Series Data Visualization 3.3.1 Time & Data 3.3.2 User Tasks 3.3.3 Visual Representation 3.4 Summary ii Contents 4 Requirement Engineering Phase 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Environment 4.2.1 The Product 4.2.2 The Customers and Development Methodology 4.2.3 Lessons Learned 4.3 Visualization Requirements for Product Costing 4.3.1 Current Visualization Practice 4.3.2 Visualization Tasks 4.3.3 Data Structure and Size 4.3.4 Early Visualization Prototypes 4.3.5 Challenges and Lessons Learned 4.4 Data and Task Abstraction 4.4.1 Data Abstraction 4.4.2 Task Abstraction 4.5 Summary and Outlook 5 Parallel Hierarchies 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Parallel Hierarchies Technique 5.2.1 The Individual Axis: Showing Hierarchical Categories 5.2.2 Two Interlinked Axes: Showing Pairwise Frequencies 5.2.3 Multiple Linked Axes: Propagating Frequencies 5.2.4 Fine-tuning Parallel Hierarchies through Reordering 5.3 Design Choices 5.4 Applying Parallel Hierarchies 5.4.1 US Census Data 5.4.2 Yeast Gene Ontology Annotations 5.5 Evaluation 5.5.1 Setup of the Evaluation 5.5.2 Procedure of the Evaluation 5.5.3 Results from the Evaluation 5.5.4 Validity of the Evaluation 5.6 Summary and Outlook 6 Visualizing Uncertainty in Flow Diagrams 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Uncertainty in Product Costing 6.2.1 Background 6.2.2 Main Causes of Bad Quality in Costing Data 6.3 Visualization Concepts 6.4 Uncertainty Visualization using Ribbons 6.4.1 Selected Visualization Techniques 6.4.2 Study Design and Procedure 6.4.3 Results 6.4.4 Discussion 6.5 Revised Visualization Approach using Ribbons 6.5.1 Application to Sankey Diagram 6.5.2 Application to Parallel Sets 6.5.3 Application to Parallel Hierarchies 6.6 Uncertainty Visualization using Nodes 6.6.1 Visual Design of Nodes 6.6.2 Expert Evaluation 6.7 Summary and Outlook 7 Visual Comparison Task 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Comparing Two One-dimensional Time Steps 7.2.1 Problem Statement 7.2.2 Visualization Design 7.3 Comparing Two N-dimensional Time Steps 7.4 Comparing Several One-dimensional Time Steps 7.5 Summary and Outlook 8 Parallel Hierarchies in Practice 8.1 Application to Plausibility Check Task 8.1.1 Plausibility Check Process 8.1.2 Visual Exploration of Machine Learning Results 8.2 Integration into SAP Analytics Cloud 8.2.1 SAP Analytics Cloud 8.2.2 Ocean to Table Project 8.3 Summary and Outlook 9 Validation 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Nested Model Validation Approach 9.3 Perceptual Validation of Visualization Techniques 9.3.1 Design Validation Table 9.3.2 Discussion 9.4 Summary and Outlook 10 Conclusion and Outlook 10.1 Summary of Findings 10.2 Discussion 10.3 Outlook A Questionnaires of the Evaluation B Survey of the Quality of Product Costing Data C Questionnaire of Current Practice Bibliograph

Teacher education in Albania : past, present, future

In this thesis I describe and analyze the development of teacher education in Albania from the 1830s, known as the Rilindja Kombëtare Shqiptare* (National Awakening) period, all the way to the present This focus is highlighted against the general background of Albanian politics and education as a whole. I investigate the historical, social and political factors influencing the development of teacher education, its structure, changes in the teacher education curriculum to respond to the changing political contexts, as well as changes of the status of teachers in different periods. I show that education, status and supply of teachers is a very useful litmus paper issue which reflects almost every tension and problem besetting the Albanian state over the past century or more such as its economic poverty, its cultural and political marginality, its problems of geographical, religious and linguistic division, its uncertain borders and exposure to foreign exploitation. My ambition and determination is to place Albania within a powerful west European tradition. The thesis is divided into three sections; The first section examines the literature relating to developments in teacher education in other countries as well as the underpinning issues. I introduce six guiding concepts developed from the literature with regard to: Firstly, the development of teacher education in Albania influenced by the changing nature of the political and social control and influence, secondly, the importance of social, economic and political factors in forming societal perceptions of teacher status, thirdly, the evolution of teacher education, fourthly, the emergence of pre-communist ideas once the political control and influence loosened, fifthly, the influence of global developments on the content of teacher education, sixthly, the involvement of a wider number of interest groups in debates around the nature and quality of teacher education. The second section describes the development of teacher education in Albania from the period of the Rilindja Kombëtare Shqiptare (1830) to the present. I examine these developments as they relate to the historical and political developments at a given period. Reference is made with regard to important individuals who exercised their influence on developments on teacher education. I also point to the breaks and ruptures that take place due to the political and historical factors. This section also considers the increasing public expectations of teacher education. In the third section I return to the six original guiding concepts and discuss the key findings in relation to the importance of historical, political social and economic factors that have influenced the development of teacher education in Albania; the stages of these developments and their nature; the social perceptions of teacher education and teacher status; the development of teacher education in Albania versus global developments and public expectations about the quality and nature of teacher education. Finally I provide conclusions drawn from the analysis. The thesis makes an important contribution to knowledge in providing: a) A public written account, which constitutes the only coherent and solidly based work in English on Albanian teacher education on a national and international scale.b) Analysis of teacher education as a political process more sharply evident in Albania than in most countries because of the sudden and radical character of successive political changes and the exposure of the system to external forces.Within that analysis there is clear evidence that changes in teacher education were a local variant of changes compared to other Central and Eastern European countries in the decades after 1945. However, the thesis makes it evident that strong European tradition remained alive during decades and has become influential even today